Grace Church of Avondale

Grace Church of Avondale Grace Church exists to reach people with the love of Christ & empower them to walk in their identity

Keeping everyone up to date with events, prayer, worship, messages, and Kingdom activity at Grace Church of Avondale.

08/20/2026

Everyone goes through a journey like Job
Don’t belittle them! Enter in with them!

08/18/2026

The Ragamuffin Challenge

We’ve gotten really good at building beautiful buildings. We’ve gotten really good at Instagram-worthy family photos, matching Sunday outfits, and posting our “blessed” lives for everyone to see.

But somewhere along the way, we forgot why the doors were ever supposed to open. It’s time to get out. Out of the pews. Out of the lobby. Out of the comfortable four walls we’ve mistaken for the whole mission. The broken are not going to wander in and find us, we have to go find them.

They’re under the overpass. They’re in the addiction they can’t shake alone. They’re the divorced person nobody calls anymore. They’re the elderly man nobody visits. They’re the teenager who feels like a rejection wearing skin. They’re lonely in a crowd of people who “like” their posts but never actually show up.

Here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: we are all a mess! Every single one of us. Ragamuffins, worn out, patched up, thrown away by somebody, somewhere, at some point. And here’s the beautiful part: an old ragamuffin doll, torn and forgotten in the donation pile, becomes a treasure the moment it lands in the right hands. Not because it changed. Because someone decided it was worth picking up.
That’s the whole gospel in a doll.

So here’s the challenge: Stop being consumed with your perfect little world. Your perfect family photo. Your perfect schedule protecting your perfect peace. I know it’s comfortable in there. I know your family is precious to you, it should be. But what if we stopped living like our love has a fence around it? What if we thought about someone else’s kid the way we think about our own? Because let’s be honest, if it was YOUR child out there on the street, lost, hurting, ashamed to come home… would you want people to just keep living their normal lives? Or would you want a village of people who wouldn’t stop searching until they were found? It takes a village to raise each other’s families. Not just our own, everyone’s.

So this week, sit with someone in their mess instead of pointing at it. Look someone in the eyes who everyone else looks past. Tell somebody they are valuable, not because they cleaned up, but because they’re breathing. Unconditional love isn’t a sermon. It’s a decision to show up.

Who’s in? Tag someone, share this, then go find your ragamuffin and remind them they were never trash. They were always His treasure, just waiting for the right hands.

08/15/2026

“Nothing devours the present like the hunger for what’s next.”

08/11/2026

Do you believe Jesus is LORD, The Great “I AM that I AM”?

Do you believe that God clothed Himself in human flesh, born of a virgin, Mary?

Do you believe He lived without sin, and shed His holy blood for the forgiveness of all humanity’s sin, that through His sacrifice on the cross, He reconciled us to Himself, once and for all time?

It was the Lord making a covenant with Himself, because we could not keep His holy covenant on our own.

Do you believe He who knew no sin became sin for us on the cross, so that we might become the righteousness of God, not by our own works, but by faith, as His free gift?

He was buried in a borrowed tomb for three days. He rose again, walked the earth for forty days, and ascended into heaven. Do you believe?

He is coming again. Do you believe?

Many still wait for a Messiah yet to come. Others see Him only as a prophet, a man among men. But unless we know Him as Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and our Salvation, we cannot see the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, The Great I AM, who is coming again for us.

Won’t you join me in calling on His name for your salvation? For salvation belongs to the Lord.

Believe, receive and rest in His finished work, for it is freely given to all of humanity.

08/06/2026

Christ is Risen! Because He lives, we celebrate new life in Him through baptism-a public declaration of our union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:4). Baptism services will be held every Sunday for the next several weeks. If you're ready to take this next step in your faith, please message us for instructions and to choose a Sunday. We can't wait to celebrate with you!

08/03/2026

Good morning Beloved of Abba, Father,

I have called you not to a religion of obligation, but to a love that cannot stay silent.

Lift up your eyes. Look around you, the fields are white for harvest even now, today, in this hour. I did not say the fields will be ready. I said look, they are ready now. Every face you pass, every neighbor, every stranger in your path, is a soul standing in a field ripe for harvest, and the harvest does not wait for your convenience.

I finished the work. On the cross, I said, “It is finished,” not “It has begun” or “It remains to be seen.” The debt is paid. The veil is torn. Death is defeated. This is not a message you carry out of duty, like a burden strapped to your back. This is good news you carry because your heart is too full to hold it in.

Do not let this become obligation dressed as ministry. I am not asking you to check a box. I am asking you to love the way I loved you, first, without waiting to be asked, without counting the cost too carefully, without holding back until it’s convenient.

And hear this urgency, for it is real: night is coming, when no one can work. I said it myself, while it is day, we must work the works of Him who sent me. The day is not endless. Opportunities close, hearts harden, lives end. The person you feel prompted to speak to today may not be reachable tomorrow. Do not let comfort convince you that later will be just as good as now.

So go, not reluctantly, not because a program told you to. Go because you have tasted my love and cannot help but pour it out. Go because the fields are ripe today. Go because I am with you in it, every conversation, every risk of rejection, every act of compassion done in my name.

The harvest will not wait, how will they know unless we go.

“The Kingdom of God advances by love!”

07/17/2026

If I stand behind a pulpit and speak with the eloquence of scholars, quote scripture in every ancient tongue, and move a crowd to tears but I walk past the homeless man on the church steps without seeing him, I am nothing but noise. A clanging cymbal in a sanctuary built for God, echoing off walls that never learned to open its doors.

If I can recite doctrine flawlessly, unpack every hidden mystery of the Word, defend the faith in every debate, and quote enough verses to silence any critic but I have no room in my heart for the addict, the alcoholic, the adulterer, the outcast my community has already written off, I have gained nothing. I am a theologian without a heart, a Bible without hands.

If I tithe faithfully, volunteer every Sunday, and let my name be known for generosity from the pulpit but I have not first loved the person everyone else refuses to sit beside, my offering means nothing. It is performance, not sacrifice.

Real love is patient with the addict trying again for the tenth time. Real love is kind to the person the congregation whispers about. It doesn’t need someone else to fall so it can feel righteous by comparison. It doesn’t boast about its own holiness while measuring others’ sin. It doesn’t gossip about the divorced, the pregnant teenager, the one who relapsed. It isn’t easily offended by someone who doesn’t look, dress, or believe the way we do. It doesn’t celebrate when someone falls, it grieves it, and it stays.

Real love doesn’t give up on the outcast when they disappoint it. It doesn’t abandon the sinner when they’re inconvenient. It keeps showing up at the shelter, at the hospital bed, at the family gathering where things are still broken, at the door of the one everyone else has locked out.

Programs will end. Sermon series will be forgotten. Even our best theology is incomplete, we see through a glass darkly, certain of so little. But love does not fade. And so, faith, hope, and love remain but the greatest of these is love. Not the love we preach. The love we practice, with our hands, in the places no one is watching, for the people no one else will touch.

The Body of Christ must return to LOVE Who is YHWH. We ARE in UNION with YHWH, this is who the children of YHWH ARE, pure undefiled and unconditional LOVE. It’s natural, it’s divine, it’s CHRIST in us as us.

07/15/2026

“True kingdom growth isn’t counting who walked through your doors, it’s counting who wouldn’t have known Jesus at all if you hadn’t gone out and told them.”

07/12/2026

If you’re near the finish line don’t start walking, sprint home!

04/16/2026

The glory which Father gave Jesus Jesus has given us
Show the world His glory

Address

3519 Herschel Street
Jacksonville, FL
32205

Telephone

(904)3870418

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