Category: Christian Worldview

Your family makes a poor god

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Matt Chandler, pastor at The Village Church in Texas, is preaching through a series called “The Great Cause.” During this past Sunday’s message, “The Reason,”  he spoke about how we really aren’t good at all, pointing to God loving us way more than we deserve. One part of the message I thought was particularly apt was when he talked about how our sins keep us from God.

In Isaiah 59:2 it says: “but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” When we are fallen we try to make secondary things in our lives the primary thing. The excerpt below is stinging in our church culture.

The Great Cause excerpt

A reason to smile as a Christian

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There’s a lot of “self” in our culture, even as Christians. But the truth is, if we were just left to ourselves, we would be in dire straits. Thankfully, God breaks through our lives to show us something truly wonderful that we can look at with great joy. Thanks much to Erik Raymond at Irish Calvinist for this great post. Here is just a portion of it:

Apart from Christ we are alienated; we have no way to God. But on top of this, we are neither able nor willing to come. We are content in the giving God the stiff arm with one hand and with the other, holding up the mirror as we admire our own perceived glory.

But God does not leave us there.

He powerfully, lovingly, mercifully, and graciously overtakes the sinner with an irresistible view of the glory of Jesus Christ. This is called sovereign grace.

In 2 Corinthians 4 we learn that in addition to being totally depraved we are under the influence of Satan’s eye blinding techniques (2 Cor. 4..4). But notice what we can’t see? The text says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

It is the glory of Christ that we are blinded from seeing.

Ah, but what does the ever gracious and sovereign God do?

The God “who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4.6).

God has made us to see the glory of Christ! We did not stumble upon this truth. We were not taught it by men. We didn’t inherit it in this country like some sort of unalienable right. NO! The sovereign God of the universe has crashed through your sinfully barricaded heart with his powerful sovereign grace so that you would be able to see the beauty, worth, goodness, power, and attractiveness of Christ! He has done this for you!

Don’t be cowards: Christ rose so we could get on mission

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Matt Chandler, who pastors at The Village Church in Texas, gave this admonition to his congregation on Easter Sunday as part of his message entitled “The Call to Mission.” He wanted them to think about what the resurrection of Jesus means in how they live their lives. In other words, since Jesus didn’t just die for our sins but rose, what does it mean? It is a sharp but helpful point he drives home:

Ladies, how many Bible studies are we going to do, I am just saying, can we maybe run some of the plays instead of just studying them? Men, how many Bible studies we gonna do, how much you going to study before you start to play? I mean that’s what makes the thing so stupid down here. Everybody can talk it, nobody wants to engage anybody with it. Or at least very few of us do. 

Why? ‘Well, cause I have a lust issue.’ Well OK, submit to Christ, get in recovery, and live on mission, it will reveal all that stuff, it will be horrible, God will just rip it out of you and replace it with His grace and mercy, it will be awesome in the end. I mean if you’re waiting till you’re perfect to live life on mission you’re going to die without much mission. 

It’s coming! Do you get this? Do you get that 2000 years ago, in fact farther back than than He told Abram, “This is how it’s going down.” and it has stayed true to the line right up till now where a massive portion of Africa has become believers, a massive portion of China has become believers, South America blowing up with the gospel. 

The gospel is penetrating the world, do you know how this ends? With you and me in front of Him with the Kingdom of God, new heaven, new earth coming down, no more injustice, no more pain, no more sorrow, God’s redeemed, God’s elect, God’s Kingdom, Kingdom of God, established! Now do you think anybody is going to give a trash how much money you have right now? How much comfort you have right now? Who’s cool and who’s not? Who drove what and who didn’t? Who was well liked in the neighborhood and who wasn’t? You think ANY of that is going to matter? No one will care! But a lot of people will be embarrassed.

Chandler points to the book “Total Church”  where Steve Timmis and Tim Chester encourage people to imagine that they are a part of a church planting team in a cross-cultural situation in some other part of the world and answer the following questions:

  • What criteria would you use to decide where to live?
  • How would you approach secular employment?
  • What standard of living would you expect as a pioneer missionary?
  • What would you spend your time doing?
  • What opportunities to share the gospel would you be looking for?
  • What would your prayers be like?
  • What would you be trying to do with your new friends?
  • What kind of team would you want around you?
  • How would you conduct your meetings together?

Chandler says their point is that we tend to think of missional living as something that just missionaries in foreign countries do instead of what we should all be doing. That is the challenge for all of us.

A great site to aid your devotions

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Devotional Christian

Tony Kummer has created a wonderful site to help your daily devotions. Here is a brief description of what it does:

Devotional Christian makes it easy to read your daily Bible devotional online. We list all the best Christian devotionals on one page. We aggreagate daily Bible devotions and present them in a user friendly format.

Here are just some of the devotionals that can be found there:

  • My Utmost For His Highest
  • Our Daily Bread Devotional
  • Pray for World Missions
  • Charles Spurgeon Devotional
  • A.W. Tozer Devotions
  • Max Lucado Devotion
  • Billy Graham Devotions
  • John MacArthur Devotions
  • Read Through The Bible Daily (ESV)

Great testimony by Kathy Ireland

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Kathy Ireland, who rose to fame in the 1980s as a model and was even on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue, has gone on to become a successful businesswoman and author. More importantly, though, is that she became a believer in Jesus Christ and has turned her life over to him.

In a recent interview with former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show she explained her growth as a Christian and how she changed from being pro choice to pro life. In all, a very thoughtful testimony.

kathy-ireland-testimony
HT: Justin Taylor

The wisdom of John Wooden

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Born in 1910, John Wooden is the first person to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and coach. ESPN ranks him as the greatest coach of all time, across all sports, as he won 10 NCAA men’s basketball titles — including seven straight — and had winning streaks of 47 and 80 games. In his 40 years at UCLA, he mentored legends such as Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His career has been illustrious to say the least, and he has created a model, the Pyramid of Success, and authored several books to impart his insight on achievement to others.

Wooden wanted his players to be victors in life and not just on the court, so he treated them as an extended family and emphasized that winning was more than scoring. Indeed, most of his inspiring theories were born from conversations with his father, as a boy on their farm in Indiana. One that sums up his ideology quite well is his often quoted definition of success: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

There is much to be gained from the wisdom of a 98-year-old man. Below is video of a talk Wooden gave in 2001. It would also be worth your while to check out his Web site and some of the wisdom contained there.

 

Christ bids us to come and die

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From John Piper:

Today, sixty-four years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He is known by many for one main sentence. It is worthy of Holy Week.

Here is the context of his most famous quote:

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our  lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call. (The Cost of Discipleship, 99)

Be a biblical Christian, not a tribal Christian

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Beginning in April 1994, between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed in Rwanda over the space of about 100 days. During that time, many Christians killed each other. Hutu Christians killed Tutsi Christians. Tutsi Christians killed Hutu Christians. I heard this on this video and thought, “How awful. Why are people like that?” Why? Because their Christian identity was less than their tribal identity.

And when we think about it, isn’t that what we all face? Don’t we all line up our allegiances so much that we end up putting our Christianity aside? Be careful where you put your loyalty.

 

tribal-christianity

God, marriage and family

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A recommendation from Mark Driscoll:

About the book, from Crossway Books:

We live in a time of crisis regarding marriage and the family, and only by a return to the biblical foundation can these institutions be rebuilt. To provide an integrated, biblical treatment of the full range of marriage and family issues, the authors of God, Marriage, and Family examine what Scripture says about God’s purposes for humans in their marriage and family interactions. Their examination covers the special issues stemming from marriage, childrearing, singleness, homosexuality, and divorce and remarriage. With study questions and points for further discussion, this book is a comprehensive yet concise resource for anyone seeking a Scriptural response to our culture’s complex challenges to God’s intentions for marriage and family.

To get Andreas Kostenberger’s “God, Marriage and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation,” go here.