Who is Media Gratiae?

Hi, I'm John Snyder. I'm a pastor at Christ Church in New Albany, Mississippi, and the director of MediaGratia. Just in case this is the first time that you've come across us, let me give you an introduction.

We are a not-for-profit organization, and through film and print and podcasts, we try to draw attention to those aspects of the Christian life, which we could describe as the experiential parts of the Christian life.

How do we take the great concepts of Scripture and bring them down into the everyday stuff of life? We borrow help from previous generations, like the Reformers and the Puritans, the 18th century, and others.

MediaGratia is a strange name. It's a Latin phrase that means the means of grace. While this has been used throughout the centuries in Christianity, sometimes in different ways, it has become popular again.

What we mean by the means of grace, it's pretty simple. It's that these are the tools that God has given His people for the spread of His kingdom and the growth of the Christian. Now, there are so many options available to us, and especially I think of us in America with our pragmatism.

There are an endless array of very attractive options for growing a church, for guarding our families, for growing up Christians. But really, God has given us tools to do this, these means, these instruments or tools of grace.

And it may seem overly simplistic, but we trust God that what He's given us is best. And so we kind of pull back from what might be the most popular thing today and return again to the tools that God has designed.

These are simple things, the Word of God, prayer, fasting, worship, Christian fellowship or communion with believers in a body. Now, that includes a lot of things. Of course, that includes everything from discipleship to accountability, even to confessing our sins one to another.

While we want to return to these biblical means for working in the kingdom, there is a danger. And you might be surprised to think that there would be a danger attached to the tools that God Himself has given us.

But the danger lies within us. That is that we tend to over-respond or to kind of swing so far that we exaggerate things in a way the Bible doesn't. So when we're leaving behind some of the more modern approaches and we're going back to the biblical means, it is easy to exaggerate the importance of those means.

These are the tools that God has given us. So these are the tools that we limit ourselves to. But these tools in themselves do not accomplish the work that must be accomplished if one person is to be converted, if one church is to grow in Christlikeness.

The means of grace are tools that God has put in our hands and we are to use them with all our energy. But while we use them, we are constantly dependent upon God to cause the means themselves to be effective.

And this is summed up in a song, a hymn written by a preacher in the 18th century named John Berridge, one of my favorite revivalists in England. Listen to what he writes. Now he goes on. I cannot speak a proper word nor think a right but from the Lord preparing heart and tongue.

So while we preach the scriptures, while we study the scriptures, even in that we need God. He continues. Well, there's the dynamic that we want to maintain, the balance. An aggressive use of the tools that God gave us and a constant humility expressed in the way that we depend upon God to make those tools effective.

Now we produce a number of things here at Mediagrate to try to aid in that and one of them is podcasts. We have some podcasts that are weekly and some that are daily. They range from in-depth theological discussions to daily devotions and you can find those at Mediagrate .org and there'll be a tab there for the podcast.

We also have produced two documentaries, one on the life and ministry of Martin Lloyd-Jones and one in conjunction with Reformation Heritage Books on the Puritans. There are a couple of studies we've produced with other authors.

Jeff Johnson has worked with us to produce a study on the church, her nature, authority, purpose, and worship, and that's a multimedia study. And also Ryan Bush who has helped us to produce a practical guide to family worship.

And both of those are in the process now of being translated into Spanish through some believers in Ecuador. We have two larger scale studies called Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, and Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty.

And in these 12-week multimedia studies you have video where we travel around the world to talk about ministries that emphasize these truths. We also have interviews with ministers who are still alive today.

And then there is a sermon on one particular aspect of God's character or one particular aspect of applying God's character in the life of the Christian and the church. And finally, I want to mention our website, Mediagrate .org, and nearly all of our materials are available online there digitally and you can access those through monthly subscriptions.

It is easy in a day like our own to be unsure about certain things that once we took for granted. And maybe this, you know, this lack of security in our world has affected you spiritually. It is easy at times to become a complaining believer and that really reflects poorly on our Lord.

I want to read you a passage that Moses spoke to the people on behalf of God in Deuteronomy chapter 28 in verse 47 and 48. So the passage comes with Moses' final sermon to Israel as they are about to pass into the Promised Land without Moses.

And he says this, "...whom the Lord will send against you in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things. And He, that is God, will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.".

It's quite a shocking statement from Moses. You're about to go into the land, but let me say, I already know by watching you, I already know that when you get in there, you will forget the Lord. You will forget the kindness of the Lord and the abundance of His generosity and your hearts will go toward idols and God will hand you over to your enemies.

And if you persist unrepentant, God Himself will become your enemy. Why does Moses link these together? Not being glad presently in what God is giving to you and being under the judgment of God and handed over to your enemies.

And I think that the answer is obvious. When we fail to remember how lavish and generous God is being with us each moment, in the present moment, it's easy for our hearts to drift toward idols and think that God plus something else will make us secure.

God plus something else will grow our church. God plus something else will make me happy. We want to be careful, even in days like this, when we're tempted to complain or to constantly be caught up in the media and to think about what's wrong with planet Earth, and there's plenty there.

You could drown in it. We want to be careful to constantly remind ourselves that our God is accomplishing His great kingdom work. Redemption's plan is unfolding under that all authoritative eye of Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father.

And the evidence that we believe that is not that we say it, but that in the present moment, we can be glad because of His generosity. We ask that you would pray for us, that as we labor in these days and with the questions that we face and you face, that there would be a simple childlike gladness of heart here at Media Grazie, and so that there would be a demonstration that what we say about Christ is true.