Abounding in Faith - IBCNJ

Abounding in Faith is the broadcast ministry of Immanuel Bible Church in Howell, New Jersey, and it does one thing: it carries the church's sermons out of the building. Beyond a brief recorded intro and sign-off, the tape is the sermon. The preacher speaks straight to the people in the room, jokes about the ones who stayed home in the cold, mentions the pastors who can be sought out afterward, and prays over the congregation before the recording ends. A closing voice then thanks the listener and points to the church website.

The titles show where the pulpit keeps landing. 'Pattern of Prayer', 'Privilege of Prayer' and 'Developing a Daily Quiet Time' form a cluster on the practice of prayer itself. Access to God rests on the shed blood of Christ, one message argues, the way a broken friendship needs forgiveness before conversation can resume. Another builds outward from Isaiah 40: get God's holiness wrong, picture him as an angry ogre in the sky, and every affection that follows will be misdirected. Prayer here is dependence made visible. A preacher describes waking at 2.30 on a Friday night and praying for hours out of sheer felt need, and says that dependence only deepens with years in the Lord.

Grace is the second thread, and it is personal. 'Living to Give Yourself Away' opens on a childhood of confession booths and confirmation that felt like a merry-go-round with no relief, set against Ephesians 2 and the claim that salvation is God's work, finished once at the cross. 'Privilege of Prayer' reaches for Martin Luther climbing sixty stone steps on bare, bloodied knees before Romans taught him justification by faith. Pastor Joe then reads a letter a seasoned missionary sent him during discouraging early years in India: 'for every look you take at yourself, take 10 looks at Jesus'. He admits he needs that reminder every day, many times a day, and that feelings of inadequacy never go away.

'Studying God’s Word' is the most argumentative of the recent messages. It counts the surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, measures their agreement against the sparse and divergent copies of Plato's Republic, and settles on Jesus' words in Matthew 5 that not an iota of the law will pass away. The closing prayer asks for the will to spend time in Scripture each day instead of being carried off by media.

Illustrations stay close to home. Smokestacks on the drive to Newark Airport turn into evidence that engineers and workers bear God's creative image. Thanking God for central heating and sunshine on a bitter day becomes the first move of prayer, because worship comes before asking. Messages end with an invitation, sometimes a prayer the listener can pray where they sit, sometimes a walk to the Lord's table. A listener who wants the sermon itself, text open, with the warmth and occasional roughness of a live room, will find exactly that here.