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Grace Place joined together last year with more than one million Christ-followers in a series called One Prayer.  We prayed together for the unity in the church that Jesus prayed for in John 17.  We listened to teaching by gifted communicators and participated in an offering, partnering together to make a lasting difference in the world through an ambitious mission initiative: planting 500 new churches in Cambodia, India, Sudan, and China in 18 months.

God has blessed this effort, and through the leadership of Lifechurch.tv and Granger Community Church and their partner organization, we met and exceeded our goal! Check out these numbers:

• 667 churches planted
• 607 pastors trained
• 7112 people baptized
• 44,618 people in Bible studies

Exciting results!  Once again, we are joining One Prayer this June. We will hear from gifted teachers, participate with local churches in Sharefest (showing God’s love in action by serving at our high schools on June 13), and receive an offering to continue taking the gospel forward in cooperation with the One Prayer movement.  In addition to carrying on and expanding the mission work from last year, the goal is to also launch a community transformation component to improve the quality of life for individuals in the One Prayer target areas.  As a nondenominational church, this cooperative endeavor gives Grace Place a unique and valuable opportunity to partner with hundreds of other similar churches to impact people with the gospel of Jesus.  More info will follow!

 “And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing…” (1 Timothy 2:14-15)

I bet you have never heard that verse used in celebration of Mother’s Day.  What does that verse mean?  Does it mean that men get saved by grace through faith, but woman get saved by having babies?  Of course not!  So what does it mean? 

Here’s my take.  A woman (Eve) was deceived in the Garden.  Adam sinned knowingly (which makes his sin even worse), but the promise was made that a descendant who would come through the woman who would be the Savior.  Indeed, Eve’s descendant, born through Mary, was the long anticipated Messiah—Jesus.  So in whatever way Eve brought reproach on women by being deceived and the first to sin, through Eve’s great, great, great, great… grandson—Mary’s child, Jesus—salvation came.  Thus any reproach was removed and women (along with all humanity) were “saved through childbearing.”

What a noble thing to be a mom.  Happy Mother’s Day!