God is still at work in the world today. He has left us on our own as He waits in the shadows until the end days. He is tenderly seeking intimate relationship with all people. He loves us so much that He came as a man to walk this earth and live out a life of perfect obedience and to offer Himself as a sacrifice to cover over all the wrongs we have committed. He does the work of making us clean. He does the work of drawing us to Him. He seeks all people from all backgrounds and persuasions. He has carried the burden of all of our sickness, hurts, and sin so that we no longer need to be weighed down by it all. He is still at work in and through His people.
Isaiah 53: 4-6 (NIV)
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted, bring liberty to those captives, and to set free those who are imprisoned (Luke 4:18). He came and did that work, putting His Father’s power on display and empowering His disciples to do likewise. He commanded His disciples to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons (Matthew 10:8). We believe that the command to do as He did still stands. Jesus told us that those who love Him will perform the miracles He did and do even greater things (John 14:12). We believe that His words are true and that the act of obeying Him brings Him glory…That glory is not for us, but for Him and we praise Him for the good things He does.
We Believe:
- God is the Eternal King in His everlasting kingdom. He is infinite, unchangeable, and perfect in all ways. He exists in perfect community with Himself as One Living and True God in three persons of one substance, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He created all things good and actively governs His created things.
- God created mankind, male and female, in His image for intimate relationship with Him. Mankind fell from His grace under the temptation of satan (a once mighty angel who rebelled against God and was cast out of His heavenly courts with a host of angels that had joined him in rebellion). The fall of mankind allowed for satan and his demons to gain access to creation. Creation now experiences the consequences of man’s sin as humans are born into sin and subject to judgement of death, held as captives to satan’s kingdom of darkness
- Mankind’s fall has not caused God to abandon them. God established covenants with his people, Israel first through their delivered, Moses, and all mankind now through The Deliverer, Jesus Christ. The Law given to His people convicts all men of sin. Mankind has been made righteous through the work of God in Christ alone for salvation
- Jesus, His only Son with Him at the beginning of creation, came to earth as a man conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, fully man and fully God, honored the complete Law. He was the fulfillment of prophecy and overpowered satan and his reign of death by offering Himself as a sinless, perfect sacrifice by dying for the sin of the world on a cross. Jesus was dead and buried in a borrowed tomb and was raised to life on the third day. He met with his disciples and walked among them for time until ascending the throne with the Father.
- The Holy Spirit was poured out on the church when Jesus breathed out on the disciples and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings the permanent indwelling presence of God in every believer and every believer has the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers believers for spiritual worship, personal sanctification, working in His gifts for the building of the church and ministering to people, and emboldens believers to proclaim the word of Jesus and doing the works of Jesus.
- The Holy Spirit works in the hearts and minds of mankind to bring about transformation of the inner man. We practice the laying on of hands for the empowering of the Spirit, for healing, for impartations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and for recognizing and empowering those ordained to serve the church. We also recognize that another of the two ways recorded in the Bible that God empowers people is through individual and corporate prayer and waiting upon God, and in this latter scenario there is no laying on of hands. We value both ways of receiving impartations and empowering experiences from God.
- The Holy Spirit inspired human authors to write holy scripture that we call the Bible. All scripture is God-breathed. We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments as our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
- The world is under the domination of satan and that people are sinners by nature and by choice. All people are under God’s judgement. Through the preaching of the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, God regenerates, justifies, adopts and sanctifies through Jesus Christ by the Spirit all who choose to repent of their sins and trust Jesus as Lord and Savior. By this they are set free from satan’s domain and enter God’s kingdom.
- There is one, holy, universal Church and all who repent of their sins and trust Jesus as Lord and Savior are part of the Living Body of Christ, of which He is head. The Church was established by our Lord, received the Spirit and is commissioned to preach the Good News of Jesus and proclaim the His Kingdom’s presence. The Body is empowered to proclaim this news through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
- Jesus Christ constituted two ordinances for the Church: water baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both are available to all believers. We recognize that grace is also conveyed through preaching and the study of the Word of God. We believe that the preached, taught, or read Word of God, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper can all be means by which we experience the Triune God.
- God’s kingdom has come in the ministry of Jesus Christ and it continues to come in the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Church. It will be fully consummated in the glorious, visible, and triumphant appearing of Christ: His return to earth as King. He will bring a final defeat to satan and his co-laborers, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment and eternal punishment of the wicked and the eternal blessing of the righteous. God will be all in all in His new heavens and new earth recreated by His mighty power in which righteousness dwells and He will be worshipped forever.