An Ocean Of Grace - Introduction

 You're invited to read Tim Chester's book, An Ocean of Grace: A Journey to Easter with Great Voices from the Past (Good Book Company, 2021) with me and some others from church this Lent. 

https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/an-ocean-of-grace

Please feel free to comment / share what you're learning or thinking about. 

Here are some jottings arising from the introduction (which I may revise / expand on in the future):

 

Read the Introduction (p7ff)

 

Some questions for reflection

 

Think about Hebrews 12:1-2.

 

Are you conscious of any sins or other distractions that keep you from running the Christian race with perseverance?

 

What helps you / might help you to fix your eyes on Jesus?

 

Pray that this book and our engagement with it might help us to follow Jesus more faithfully.

 

Are there any witnesses who have gone before us, either biblical or post-biblical, who especially encourage you to follow Jesus? How? Why? What is it about Jesus that these witnesses have especially highlighted for you?

 

(When I was a youth the 19^th Century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was important to me. I learned a love of Scripture and its authority from him. And The Doctrines of Grace or the Five Points of Calvinism TULIP – Google will know more about them. He preached to the heart in a way that some contemporary conservative evangelicals can fail to do.

 

C. S. Lewis helped me to see the rationality and appeal of the Christian faith.

 

John Calvin has also mattered to me.

 

For an Anglican, Bishop J. C. Ryle.

 

John Owen and Jonathan Edwards are probably the greatest British and American theologians who have ever lived.

 

There are probably many others I’d like to know better: Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Herman Bavinck.

 

It would be good to add some women to the list too.

 

And as evangelicals perhaps we tend to neglect the period from Augustine to Luther. It would be good to know more about Bernard of Clairvaux or Thomas Aquinas, for example.) 

 

Do you think its appropriate to have Christian heroes and heroines? Can you see any dangers in this?

 

(Do you ever fall into the trap of fascination with the witness and failure to focus on Jesus? What would the witness make of that?)

 

Could you read something by or about a Christian from the past which might help you? Maybe study one of the Bible characters mentioned in Hebrews 11. Or buy a Christian biography. E.g., https://www.10ofthose.com/uk/products/christian-life/biography

 

You might like to adopt a Christian from the past and try to get to know their witness to Jesus better.

 

How can we too be witnesses to Jesus Christ? Is there someone you could encourage?

 

A prayer:

 

Father God, thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfector of our faith.

 

And for all the Christian witnesses who have gone before us.

 

Help us as we read this book and reflect on it to be encouraged by their voices urging us on.

 

May we throw off all that hinders and the sin which entangles us and run with perseverance the race which is marked out for us.

 

Show us afresh the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and fix our eyes ever on him and his victory we pray.

 

Grant us perseverance in him and bless our witness to a watching world.

 

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

 

Suggested hymn: By Faith We See The Hand of God https://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/by-faith/