On the Bible and Business

For Sunday morning Bible class the last two weeks, we studied Romans 6 and 7. In these chapters, Paul talks about how we might abuse the grace of God and the gift of salvation offered to us. Paul begins here his conversation with the Christians in Rome about doing good and doing evil. He talks about this in a way different from the way we usually talk about. We might ask if doing this specific work is good or bad. Paul does not deal at the level of the specific but at the level of what is alive in us and in terms of what enslaves us. In chapters one through five, Paul outlines the gift of God's grace which we receive by faith. He first details how we have nothing good in us and how works righteousness is not an option for us because of the corruption of our bodies and the sins we commit. He then goes on to explain that there is a righteousness apart from works we can receive because of Christ through faith. In chapter 6, Paul deals with one improper response to this grace: licent...

I want to say thank you to all those who have supported ILT in 2017. There are many of you and each of you is important to ILT's success and future. It is difficult to overstate just how much we depend upon each donation we receive. So, from all of us at ILT, I want to give a sincere thank you. We truly appreciate your kindness and generosity. To show just how much this is true, let me tell you a little about ILT's revenue structure. The total operations revenue for ILT in 2017 was $1,163,000. This is the income we received from donations and tuition. We do not pay income tax on this income because it is a part of our non-profit mission. We also received income from the rentals we have in the facility we own. The total rental income, the income we received from library donations, interest and growth on the endowment fund, and other miscellaneous revenue is $118,000. Bottom line, this means ILT had a total revenue of $1,281,000 in 2017. $179,000 of this income was restricte...