Parkside Mission

The following article is the product of what I adapted from early days of discipleship in campus ministry, my seminary training, and my work as a pastor in Atlanta. The result is a thorough but flexible personal devotion plan. Personal Devotion Plan by Trent McEntyre Approach Pray for God’s Spirit to give you understanding and submission to God and His will revealed in the Scripture. (Pray Psalm 119:10 or Ephesians 3:14-20) Study Read a paragraph or a chapter of the Bible. 1. List what the passage tells about God or Christ.      a. His character or attributes    b. His ways or works 2. List what the passage tells about us.    a. Our sins or limitations    b. Our likeness to God or potential   3. List examples to follow or avoid, promises to claim, or commands to follow.   Meditate   Now write out one or two (at most!) of the main thoughts/teachings you derived from the passage. For each teach...

Life with Christ, in Christ, by faith in God's Spirit...a key, if not the key to real Christian life. Believing our real union with Christ is what the real Christian life is all about.  True Christians operate, not from their own resources alone, but with the life of God connecting with their lives. A relationship with God is not merely knowing things about him. It is supposed to intimate, like a wife knowing her husband. Quote from John Calvin about union with Christ: “We must now examine this question. How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son–not for Christ’s own private use, but that He might enrich poor and needy men? First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from Him, all that He has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what He has received from the Father, He had to become ours and t...

How does God speak to your desires? Desires might be the difference between humans and any other creature. Never content to have just what we need, we are driven by desire. Call it a thirst for something more. Call it a hunger for more than bread, more than meat. The ancient revelation of the scriptures ask us to not just control desire, but to listen to our desire.  For example, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah poetically related our desire to an invitation from God. Listen to how God wants to meet us in our quest: “Come, all you who are thirsty,   come to the waters; and you who have no money,   come, buy  and eat  .  Come, buy wine and milk   without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread,   and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,   and you will delight in the richest  of fare.   Give ear and come to me;   listen,  that you may live. 1 Did you not...