Sometimes we short change salvation, by thinking Jesus saves us and pays off our debt to God. We think of it like a massive debt we get into, so someone generously pays it off and we have a bank balance of zero, so we can start again without that debt hanging over us.  Too often that’s how we wrongly think about the salvation God promises.  Jesus pays our debt and gets us to zero, now I have to start earning God’s favour.  When I do good my spiritual account goes up, when I fail it’s like a spiritual direct debit.  God is pleased with me when I’m in the spiritual black.

What is Christmas all about?  We look forward to Christmas and all it brings, yet it’s hugely complicated and complex.  It’s like an articulated lorry.  Christmas is the cab, but with it comes the huge 44 tonne articulated trailer of expectations, traditions, and busyness that Christmas pulls around with it.  There’s the expectation of seeing the family – all of them at some point, of food cooked to perfection, of family time without conflict or needle, and certain family traditions that have to repeated year after year.
So often what comes with Christmas is what we mistake for Christmas.  So what is Christmas all about?  The angels sum it up beautifully “good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”  Christmas, the birth of Jesus brings not just a flicker of a smile, not just a temporary warm fuzzy feeling, not just joy but great joy, literally ‘mega-joy.’ It’s another of those great Christmas words.   It is on Christmas jumpers and cards and decorations; joy.  But what does it mean and how do we embrace it?  And how can we know great joy not just at Christmas?
Joy is a strong word.  It means to be glad, to be happy, to rejoice and celebrate.  And the Bible isn’t anti-joy, God isn’t a killjoy, the Bible is full of joy because God is the giver of joy.  It begins with God creating a world that is “very good” – overflowing with bounty and beauty.  And God puts Adam and Eve into that world to find joy in it.  That’s still true isn’t it?  Just think of 5 things that bring you joy, 5 things that make you happy?  Go on, stop and actually do it!.  They were all created by God because God is generous and provides things that bring joy.
As you read the Bible you see joy and rejoicing in all sorts of things.  There’s the joy of birthday and wedding celebrations.  There’s joy at feasting and celebrating victory in battle.  There’s joy in good wine.  Proverbs tells us a wise son bring joy to his parents.  In Song of Solomon there is joy and rejoicing in marriage and the intimacy it brings.  God is a joy giving God, every moment of joy we experience, from the joy of celebrating a last minute winner, to the birth of a child, or the joy of that first mouthful your favourite meal cooked to perfection, is given to us by a joy giving God.
But the Bible is also honest about the problem we have with joy.  Joy leaks.  It’s like a balloon or tyre with a slow puncture, it gradually lets us down.  In the world this side of the fall we’re tempted to seek joy in the gift when every gift was always intended to point us to joy in the giver.  And therein lies the problem, things bring us joy but that joy is only temporary.  We’re like a bucket with a hole, we have to constantly top our joy up to maintain any semblance of it.  Constantly seeking new joy.  But parties end, celebrations finish, our children aren’t always wise or delightful and nor are our parents, marriages are hard and so is intimacy, food spoils, wine turns, and reality intrudes.  Joy leaks.  And the danger is we become consumed by our search for joy, insatiably hungry for something it just can’t give us.
The joy we experience is meant to point us not to the gift but the giver.  But because of sin we tend to forget the giver in pursuit of the gift.  In the garden the real joy was relationship with God, but it is easily lost.
That’s not unique to us, it’s a universal problem.  It’s the problem of Israel.  They knew great joy.  They knew the joy of being saved miraculously from slavery, and brought through the Red Sea – we tend to think seeing a miracle would change everything but Israel are proof it doesn’t – because they soon grumble and moan and fixate on gifts not giver.  They’re given a land with houses built, vineyards dug and cities walled, but they soon become fixated on the gifts, trying to fill their bucket but unsatisfied because they forget the giver.
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By God’s grace, under Christ’s authority, we vow to strive for purity, peace, and Scriptural order in the formation of the Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church. Therefore, we endeavor to exclude those who disturb her peace, corrupt her testimony, and subvert her established forms from her communion. Therefore, as previous generations of Presbyterians did before us, we covenant together as elders in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ to be “True to the Scriptures, the Reformed Faith, and the Great Commission!”

In order to guard against committing the same errors of our past affiliation, we submit this as our Testimony and Covenant.
Our Testimony
Brethren beloved in the Lord:
As to the crisis in which we now find ourselves, we are conscience bound to separate from those constitutional abuses and alarming theological errors, which have been perpetrated by many and now have been approved and sustained by a majority in the highest court of Vanguard Presbytery. Not wanting these failures to lead to this, we had hoped for more brotherly treatment and a willingness to hear all sides. At the least, we had expected from her stated commitments there would be a willingness to hear and consider Holy Scripture in her deliberations. Sadly, we have found that this has not been the case at all. Rather, we have seen a party spirit, deference to men, justification by legislation, an overturning of our Book of Church Order, and our most solemn covenant together broken by supplanting the Word of God with the word of man, and thus effectively denying the Headship of Christ over His Church. This most basic tenet of Biblical Presbyterianism being denied at the highest court of Vanguard Presbytery, we see no other recourse but to separate from her fellowship and form a denomination which will by the grace of God be a faithful expression of Biblical Presbyterianism and a true continuation of the work of Christ in history to call and perfect his Bride.
We love God in Christ; we love God’s Word; we stand in the long line and rich history of the Presbyterian Church. While we freely acknowledge that it is a history marked by the spots and wrinkles which Christ is progressively removing by the washing of water with the Word, we rejoice to give God the glory for the manifold testimony of His grace in working in and through her. With joy, we look back in history at her instrumentality in promoting the welfare of men; her love of human rights; her efforts for the advancement of human happiness; her clear testimonies for the truth of God, and her tremendous and blessed efforts to enlarge and establish the kingdom of Christ our Lord. We delight to dwell on the things our God has wrought by our beloved Church. We pray His grace will enable us to resolve to continue these earthly blessings, that our children shall not have the same occasion to weep over unfaithfulness as we have experienced in leaving Vanguard Presbytery. Sadly, a survey of the larger Presbyterian Church offers us no alternatives which promise to uphold the tenets of The Reformed Faith without apology. We are encouraged by the kingdom promises of our Lord Jesus Christ that He will honor those who honor Him, and would rather stand with a few for Christ, than with many against Him.
Our Covenant
Persuaded that if God is for us, who can be against us, we are committing to be a faithful continuation of all that is faithful in our glorious heritage in Biblical Presbyterianism as practiced by the Apostolic Church and largely rediscovered in the Protestant Reformation. As the only infallible rule of faith and practice, we vow and commit together to keep the Word of God at the center of all our deliberations and actions, desiring above all else to hear the voice of Christ speaking and ruling in His Church, which is the best evidence of His walking among us and the best means we have of showing the honor due to His eminence. For the honor of Christ’s name, for the witness of the Church to the world, for the preservation of the deposit entrusted to us for future generations of the people of God, we cannot stand idly by and behold the ruin of this glorious edifice we know as the Presbyterian Church.
“Now I plead with you brethren,” says the Apostle, “by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (1 Cor. 1:10 NKJV) Therefore, in the presence of that Redeemer, we wholeheartedly affirm that the standard of doctrine and ecclesiastical order here subscribed to is that known as The Reformed Faith and Presbyterian church government, as definitively and infallibly revealed in Holy Scripture and as faithfully though fallibly summarized in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.
By God’s grace, under Christ’s authority, we vow to strive for purity, peace, and Scriptural order in the formation of the Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church. Therefore, we endeavor to exclude those who disturb her peace, corrupt her testimony, and subvert her established forms from her communion. Therefore, as previous generations of Presbyterians did before us, we covenant together as elders in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ to be “True to the Scriptures, the Reformed Faith, and the Great Commission!”
Therefore, our commitment is to follow Jesus Christ, the only actual Head of His Church. We humbly stand upon the shoulders of past faithful servants of Christ. We will obey our Lord’s commandment to disciple the nations and baptize them in the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all of Christ’s commands, ministering under that great and encouraging promise, the blessing of His presence.
Signed and adopted, May 8th, 2022, by the inaugural assembly of Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church.
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In all things, ask the Lord for wisdom and then apply the principles of God’s Word when choosing between options. If you make your choice according to wisdom and aren’t sinning in making the choice, you need not worry. You don’t need a sign from heaven to know God’s will. As long as you are seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness, enjoy the freedom you have in Christ.

How can you discover God’s will for your life?
On my website once, I posted a spoof news item which was taken from a satirical website. The headline was “Man, 91, Dies Waiting for Will of God.”
It was meant to be a joke poking fun at the way many Christians think that we need to pray and pray and pray for God to supernaturally and unmistakably reveal His will for our life before we can actually do anything.
However, something strange happened. Some visitors to my blog didn’t realize it was a joke. They thought it was true.
Take this comment, left by a Christian man called Evan: “Oh man, this hit me hard. . . . Dang if I didn’t have to get up and walk around in the middle of reading this tragic post. . . . [It] made me cry.”
I did feel a bit guilty about making Evan cry, but actually, that is an entirely appropriate response to this idea that we somehow can’t make decisions about who to date, who to marry, where to live, and where to work unless God gives us some kind of clear supernatural “nudge” or inward “impression.”
So how can we know God’s will for our lives in any given situation?
Biblically speaking, God’s will is spoken of in two ways. There’s what theologians call “the revealed will of God,” and there’s also what’s known as “the hidden will of God.” You see both referred to in Deuteronomy chapter 29, verse 29, which says: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
“The things that are revealed”—this is what theologians mean when they talk about “the revealed will of God.” God has revealed His will for our lives by giving us His law, His commandments.
What is His will for your life? That you should obey His commands.
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