instruments in the redeemer's hands

The staff team at Woody Road meet one afternoon a week to study together. For the next month or so we're alternating between being taught (by each other or someone coming in) some issue of doctrine or church history or the like with reading and discussing a section of a book by Paul Tripp. The book is entitled 'Instruments in the Redeemer's hands' - it's a book aimed at 'people in need of change helping people in need of change'. All people in church are in need of change, and all people in church are called to be ministering to one another; providing support, encouragament, rebuking where necessary etc.

So far I've found it to be a very useful book, and there are some quotes that I thought I'd share every now and then. Here's the first:

A Life Worth Living

The central work of God's kingdom is change. God accomplishes this work as the Holy Spirit empowers people to bring his Word to others. We bring more than solutions, strategies, principles and commands. We bring the greatest story ever told, the story of the Redeemer. Our goal is to help one another live with a "God's story" mentality. Our mission is to teach, admonish, and encourage one another to rest in his sovereignty, rather than establishing our own; to rely on his grace rather than performing on our own; and to submit to his glory rather than seeking our own. this is the work of the kingdom of God people in the hands of the Redeemer, daily functioning as his tools of lasting change.