C H R I S T I A N

F A M I L I E S

T O D A Y

Living LIFE!
Christs Life Expressed Through Tom and Tess Price
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me Galatians 2:20b
A Quarterly Newsletter

Issue No 7 - Fall 2014

t has been a great summer and fall.

Participating with God in what He is
doing in the lives of folks who walk
through our doors at CFT is very
rewarding. The heart of this ministry is to
see people living their lives out of their
relationship with Christ. This means all
aspects of their lives, whether it is
involvement in their church or serving
their family at home, working at their jobs
or going on a vacation. The heart of God is
relationship. He wants all of us to know
Him intimately and to express His life in
our relationships with each other.
My counseling load has almost doubled
since the spring. I currently have 22
active counselees. Tess has been sitting in
with me during my sessions with women.
It has been fun having her with me. In all
the years I have been counseling, she has
never participated with me in the
counseling room. She has been a huge
asset. She observes aspects I miss (being a
left-brain guy). I think she was a little

apprehensive at Iirst, but she seems fully

comfortable being in there with me. God
has currently blessed us with Iive ladies.

with the students notebook, we will write

a facilitators guide. That will take us at
least two months to develop.

I will be participating full-time in our

Advanced Discipleship Training (ADT) on
Tuesday nights in 2015. Besides teaching
and mentoring (ADT students), I am
honored to have a counselee or two
participate in the upcoming ADT. I want
to share that journey with them.

I want to close with an awesome

testimony of Gods amazing grace. We
recently attended a special service where
a couple expressed their love for one
another and committed to loving one
another unconditionally. They recognized
before God and those gathered that their
strength to express the commitment they
were making was through the power of
Christ in them. At the beginning of this
past summer, their marriage was over
and divorce was inevitable. They didnt
just decide to stay together, God is
reviving their love for one another and He
is renewing their minds to truth. CFT was
honored to walk along side them as God
restored this family. Your prayers and
Iinancial gifts make it possible for us to
take part in this miracle. Thank you!

The discipleship notebook our team has

been working on is almost completed. We
recently gave it the title, Living IN Christ:
Growing in the Life We Were Made to
Live. We have spent the last three
months editing and re-editing. It has been
a slow process, but worth every minute.
Ben Brezina is creatively taking what we
have written and is formatting it into a
Iinished product we can place into the
hands of our trained ADT students. They
will be able to use this tool to aid them in
making disciples. After we are Iinished

Testimonies
Here are some quotes from our students
who completed ADT 1 this year!

The ADT gave

me an increased
revelation of what
it means to abide.

True freedom! I am
nt
fully accepted.I do
in
have to find value
.
ce
my performan

God used my
traumatic
ring
experience to b
d.
me close to Go

I no longer
have to build
walls to protect
my heart.

I am free to
be the me that
God intended
me to be.

A new
adventure
with
God.

Iam experiencing
freedomfrom my
anger,
my bitterness, and
being a
people pleaser.

Made For Relationship

By Tom Price
Apart from Me you can do nothing.
John 15:5b
The Bible is very clear that we are vessels
or containers who contain the glory of
God. He designed us to contain and
express His glory (2 Cor. 4:6-7). If I had a
lamp with a light bulb, that lamp still
needs power outside of itself to produce
light. It cant produce the power, but it
can receive the power and display that
power through its bulb. We are like that
lamp. We need Gods life in us to produce
the fruit of His life.
When Jesus said we could do nothing
apart from Him, He is saying we need Him
to be our power. Just as the electricity has
a relationship with the lamp that
produces visible light, we too have a
relationship with Christ that produces His
light.
Lets not stop there, though. By Gods
design and purpose He wants to display
Himself in and through us. Just as the
lamp needs the electricity, the electricity
needs the lamp. Its not that God needs us
- He wants us. He said He could make the
rocks cry out, but He would rather use us
as the vessel of His glory than a rock!

We are the vessel and Christ is the power.

Our relationship with Him reveals the
light. What the darkened world needs is
the light. Going back to the lamp analogy,
we tend to focus on the outward
appearance of the lamp. There are nice
looking lamps, bold looking lamps, plain
lamps and ugly lamps, large lamps and
small lamps. The one thing they all have
in common, when the electricity is Ilowing
into them, is light. It is not the appearance
of the lamp that overcomes the darkness,
but the emanating light.
I grew up believing that God wants to help
me live a good life. So I would pray, God,
please help me to be patient, or God,
help me stop committing this sin I know
You dont like. Then I would continue to
struggle with impatience and sinning.
This defeat would cause me to either
question whether God was listening or if I
was sincere enough in my prayers for
help. I suspected He was listening, so
ultimately the focus was on my
depravity. In other words, I saw myself
as broken, not good enough, and inferior.
Christ came to set us free from our
depraved sin natures. He did this by
remaking us into a holy and righteous
creature with new desires. Our truest
desires now reIlect the very nature of God.
Our hearts soar with the desire to behave
in a way that mirrors Gods behavior.

Too many prescriptions for victory

involve making the vessel look better and
act better. Victory doesnt come from the
outside; it comes from the inside. Paul
said in 2 Corinthians 4:7, But we have
this treasure in earthen vessels, so that
the surpassing greatness of the power will
be of God and not from
ourselves (NASB)
God made us for relationship. The reason
we cant do anything apart from Christ is
because we were made that way, just as
the lamp cannot produce light apart from
the power. Our inability to behave
righteously apart from Christ is not proof
of a sinful nature; it is proof that we are
totally dependent on Christ for life.
We are now free to focus on expressing
Christs life in our everyday life. It doesnt
matter what our circumstances look like,
Christ is able to navigate every condition,
every temptation, every thought, emotion
and choice. If we could walk in victory
simply because we desire to, we would
not need Christ. We were made for
relationship and in that relationship with
Christ His light (glory) is displayed.
Trust your godly desires; God put them
there. With those desires, He supplies the
power. You dont have to manufacture
strength, you get to rest in His strength!

Prayer Requests
Ministry:

Personal:

1) Advanced Discipleship Training

at CFT (starts January 13, 2015)

1) Growing in the truth that Christ

is our life as we live out each
day in full dependence on God

2) Finish Life IN Christ student

book and facilitators guide
3) Increase of space for counseling
and training
4) New and future discipleship
counselors
5) Connecting opportunities with
local pastors

2) Trusting God for His provision of

every need
3) Opportunities to share Gods
love in the everyday ordinary
circumstances
4) Our daughter Cherise as she is
pregnant with their second
child (due June 2015) (our 4th
grandchild!)

174 Ashley Park Blvd STE 1

Newnan, GA 30263
www.ChristianFamiliesToday.org
TomP@CFTministry.org
770-502-8050
tomtess1.blogspot.com