Obstacle To Obedience #2 – Time by Ryan Doherty

This is the third of a six-part blog series on “obstacles to obedience,” reasons we tell God, “No.” This comes to you courtesy of Ryan Doherty, the Summit’s North Durham campus pastor. (Be sure to check our Part 1& Part 2.)

We say we are too busy. We think we are too busy. We are too busy. Gordon McDonald points out, “The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. We are naively inclined to believe that the most publicly active person is the most privately spiritual.” In the midst of working in a cotton mill twelve hours a day, six days a week, Mary Slessor, remembering David Livingstone’s brave adventures in Central Africa, thought to herself, “There has to be more to my life. I don’t care where I go as long as I go forward.” The Lord soon answered her prayer and sent her to Calabar.

If we are too busy to serve God and listen to him, then we are simply too busy. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “We must be ready to be interrupted by God. For God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans.” Regarding packed schedules and busyness, Corrie Ten Boom encouraged,“Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.” 

Jesus clearly understood the importance of using his time wisely, and he measured his use of time against his God-given mission: “The Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost.” Jesus organized his time around his priorities—serving the Father and saving people. He identified with us as he shared our limitations—including time limitations!—but showed us how to manage them effectively.

Francis Asbury managed his time so well that at the end of his life, he was completely exhausted from spending his time traveling by horseback over 100,000 miles to spread the gospel, enduring many hardships during the American War of Independence. He shared, “My soul is more at rest from the tempter when I am busily employed be the Lord.” For where our priorities are, there our time will be.

Jonathan Goforth, a missionary to China, was convinced the best way to use our time is to “seek each day to do or say something to further Christianity among the lost.” But to draw people to Christ, as George Müeller noted, “The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.” Müller often prayed, “Lord, let me be a light to those around me, and help me to find a way to reach the orphans before it’s too late.” He used his time intentionally, obediently responding to the Lord’s prompting to run an orphanage and take full responsibility for the care of over 10,000 orphans.
By integrating the word of God into our day to day living, as we create space in our schedules to meet with and hear from God, our passion for God and for sharing his gospel will grow. When we love something enough to have it fill our free time, then our passion for obeying God will grow. And that can only happen when we realize the full impact of what he has done for us.

Moses told us to “number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Paul reminds us, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time” (Col 4:5). Reflecting on these passagesC.T. Studd wrote, “We are so busy with a million pursuits that we don’t even notice the most important things. We have been waiting far too long for someone else to get the job done. The time for waiting has past.”

On finishing well and spending our time on earth wisely, America’s first foreign missionary, Adoniram Judson said, “I am not tired of my work, nor am I tired of the world; yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with gladness.” Around the same time, but scattered around the Pacific Ocean, John Williamsreflected, “I feel still that the work of Christians is the greatest, noblest and sublimest to which the energies of the human mind can be devoted. I think, friends that no labor we can bestow, no sacrifice we can make, no journeys that we can undertake, are too great to be undertaken for the glorious purpose of illuminating the dark world with the light of the glorious gospel.”

What legacy are you leaving? Where are you investing your time? Is the amount of time spent following Jesus proportionate to the quality of the relationship you want to have with him?
Does your schedule show that God is a priority in your life? Where can you create more margin in your life to listen to God and serve him?

Obstacle To Obedience #1 – Not Recognizing “The Call” - by J.D. Greear

This is the second of a six-part blog series on “obstacles to obedience,” reasons we tell God, “No.” This comes to you courtesy of Ryan Doherty, the Summit’s North Durham campus pastor. (Be sure to check outpart 1.)

The rhythms of revelation and response permeate the Scriptures: God reveals himself to humanity and invites us to respond. Scripture reveals to us characteristics and attributes of God and invites us to respond in worship. Jesus himself revealed his plan to save humanity and invited his hearers to respond by believing in him and repenting from sin. After his death, he rose again, revealing his plan to share the greatest news in all the world-his gospel with every tribe, tongue and nation and invites us to respond in obedience to his command. After all, as Carl F. H. Henry said, “The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.”

Unfortunately, many of God’s people have ignored Jesus’ command to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18-20 ESV). They effectively ignore his promise: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt 24:14). They may agree, but do nothing to participate in that great reality of which John wrote: “For [Jesus was] slain, and by his blood, he ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev 5:9).

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, bluntly concluded, “‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heardthe call,’ I think you should say.” He went on to encourage others to “put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.”

Booth’s predecessor and missionary to India, William Carey, put it well, “To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.”

J. Stuart Holden offers a sobering reflection: “‘Go ye’ is as much a part of Christ’s gospel as ‘Come unto Me.’ You are not even a Christian until you have honestly faced your responsibility in regard to the carrying of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.” James S. Stewart adds, “The distinctive mark of being a Christian is the concern for world evangelization—not just something tacked on to a mans personal Christianity in which he may take or leave as he chooses.”

The “prince of preachers,” Charles Spurgeon (after whom we named our Congolese son) understood this well. After someone asked, “Will the heathen who have never heard the Gospel be saved?”, he warned, “It is more a question with me whether we—who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not—can be saved.”

Perhaps Jesus was right when he said, “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt 7:14).

During his lifetime, Oswald J. Smith made 21 world tours promoting evangelism and world missions. He reminds us of the selfishness and absurdity of disobeying the Lord: “No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once! We talk of Jesus’ Second Coming, when half the world has never heard of the first.”

Highlighting the insanity of disobedience, Amanda Berry Smith, a former slave who became an inspiration to thousands of woman, shared, “To stay here and disobey God—I can’t afford to take the consequence. I would rather go and obey God than to stay here and know that I disobeyed.”

What is the Lord asking you to do? Where is he wanting to send you? What is your excuse for disobeying the Lord? What is preventing you from taking the next step? In order to take even the slightest step towards obedience, we must “put our ear down to the Bible and look Christ in the face.”

AN HONEST CONVERSATION ABOUT TELLING GOD, “NO” by Ryan Doherty

This is the first of a six-part blog series on “obstacles to obedience,” reasons we tell God, “No.” This comes to you courtesy of Ryan Doherty, the Summit’s North Durham campus pastor.

“All along, let us remember: we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey.”~Amy Carmichael, missionary among orphans in India for 55 years (without a furlough)

Reading 40 missionary biographies in 40 days actually began several years ago when my wife and I began the pursuit of our international adoption of our son, Charlie.

After deciding that we would adopt from the heart of Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) soon became our subject of study. Our free time was consumed by browsing through various websites such as BBC News, CNN, The Huffington Post, and Wikipedia. Our Amazon wish list and library were soon filled with such titles as, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, and Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country. 

Every book and each author highlighted a different aspect of our son’s country of birth. Together, my wife and I sought to understand the history of the DRC and its people, beginning with the Belgian exploration there in the 1870s. One of the most helpful resources we read was Martin Dugard’s Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone. David Livingstone was one of the first pioneer medical missionaries who explored this foreign land, seeking to discover the source of the Nile River. His work eventually aided in opening this uncharted territory to the outside world.

Intrigued after reading Dugard’s insightful book, I began to read several other biographies about this famous missionary. One such book was Geoff and Janet Benge’s David Livingston: Africa’s Trailblazer. The Benges helped color in for me some of Dr. Livingstone’s early history, work in Africa, and his eventual legacy. It was only after finishing this biography that I realized it was actually a part of a larger set, entitled Christian Heroes: Then & Now. This series of 40+ biographies “chronicle the exciting, challenging, and deeply touching true stories of ordinary men and women whose trust in God accomplished extraordinary exploits for His kingdom and glory.”

It was after buying the entire set on sale and having them stare at me for the past year that I decided that I was going to personally challenge myself—as a sort of spiritual discipline—to read about 40 of these men and woman over the span of 40 days. Yes, that is onebiography per day, all in the midst of a very busy ministry schedule, active family life, and plenty of other distractions. It would have been easy to fall behind or give up, but with the Lord’s strength and by his grace, I made it through!

The more I read, the more I was struck by how frequently their stories included excuses, barriers, and other roadblocks that could have prevented them from going where God wanted to send them and doing what he asked of them. After noticing these patterns and commonalities, I started to keep track, and found that despite coming from different backgrounds and living in different times, there werefive common obstacles to their obedience that they could have used as excuses, which would have led to their disobedience. And I believe the very same obedience obstacles are just as prevalent today.

So, perhaps these stories could lead us to have an honest conversation about why we tell God, “no.”

Lead with Empathy, Love Your Neighbor, Let the Truth Come Out — A Response to Ferguson - by Al Mohler

From a modified transcript of today’s edition of The Briefing:

I first addressed the situation in Ferguson back on August 12th, which was then the first opportunity I had to speak to the issue. Since then I have not addressed the question because I wanted to stand by what I said back on August 12th. We should not speak to the facts on the ground until we know what those facts are. The facts we know now are pretty much the facts we knew then—that there was an 18-year old African American young man who was shot 6 times, twice in the head and four times in the forearm by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. We know that also there was an immediate backlash in terms of controversy, cries of racism, and then moral protest that led to over 10 days of successive riots and protests—some of them breaking out into violence, some of them to which police responded with military tactics. We also know that now the Attorney General of the United States and the FBI are involved in an independent investigation to find out what exactly took place. We also know that yesterday in Clayton, Missouri—a suburb in the west of Saint Louis—a local grand jury was convened with the very same aim, to try to determine exactly what happened.

The one thing that Christians committed to a biblical worldview have to understand is that the facts never cease to be important. We simply cannot move to judgment until we know exactly what took place and why. Thus we have to resist the very real temptation to say too much. And that is what has worried me in terms of my own responsibility on “The Briefing.” Actually, my point here was very well made by President Obama himself—because in statements made earlier this week responding to the situation in Ferguson, the President said, “I have to be very careful about not prejudging these events before investigations are completed.” The President continued, “I’ve got to make sure I don’t look like I’m putting my thumb on the scales one way or the other.” That’s a very good and important statement from the President of the United States. And quite frankly, it’s a statement all of us should take to heart.

We do know this much. It is an unmitigated tragedy. It’s a tragedy that an 18-year old young man is dead. We also know that the tragedy is complicated by the fact that this was an unarmed African American teenager. We know that there are any number of other complications as well to be revealed in the investigation, which we are assured will be undertaken not only by local authorities but also by federal authorities. And after all, Eric Holder is the first African American attorney general of the United States and one who has spent his life as an activist and advocate in the civil rights movement. In this case, he is uniquely equipped and qualified to deal directly with the questions on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri. The rest of us need to hold back and allow the justice system to do its work.

That doesn’t mean that we should suspend justice on these questions indefinitely. It means the time for judgment is after the facts are determined. And even if there are competing facts, at least the facts need to be set out as they are claimed in order that we can have an understanding—each to ourselves and commonly as citizens—of what this situation really is, how it happened, and what it means. Once we have those facts, we need to move to the kind of moral judgment that justice requires. But a part of the biblical worldview that is made abundantly clear even in the Old Testament law is that evidence (in other words, the determination of the facts) never ceases to be the first and foremost important question.

But there is another dimension to this… “Americans need to lead with empathy.” That too is something important to the Christian worldview. We need to lead with empathy, understanding that the ability to empathize is an ability to understand every single human being around us as our neighbor. Love of neighbor—one of the most important commands of Christ—…should lead us to lead with empathy… And in this case, that means we empathize with those in the African American community who are outraged at what they see as racial injustice. It means we empathize with those who look at the situation and see it as part of a larger pattern of inequity and injustice against young African American males.

We need to lead with empathy. But that empathy needs to be expressed in ways that do not prejudge the facts on the ground and lead to an immediate and premature understanding of exactly what happened. Sometimes (as every parent knows) you need to put an arm around someone and let them cry before you ask them what happened. Even when we see people expressing outrage—in clearly inappropriate, violent, and illegal ways—we need to understand that behind them are many people who are not violent who are equally offended, who are not protesting, who are equally hurt. And we need to realize that empathy—and indeed leading with empathy—is a very important first act.

There’s a double problem in so many of these crises. There’s an immediate temptation to say too much. And then on the other side of them, once those facts are determined, there is often the reality of saying too little. The Christian responsibility in a situation like this—and we are all inadequate to the task—is to say just enough at the right time. And until the facts are more clarified—something that is the responsibility of our justice system at every level—that’s about the most we should now say.

To listen to today’s edition of The Briefing, go here: http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/08/21/the-briefing-08-21-14/
To subscribe to The Briefing by feed or by iTunes, go here:http://www.albertmohler.com/category/the-briefing/
I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler
For more information on Southern Seminary, visit SBTS.edu and for more information on Boyce College, visit BoyceCollege.com.

Sunday, August 17, 2014 Sermon "Caught in the Middle"

I preached from John 8:1-12 "Caught in the Middle" on Sunday, August 17, 2014.  The testimony heard in the beginning of the message is from one of the members at CrossRoads, Ruth Craig.

The audio of the message is here:

A good laugh....

Paving Paradise by James Emery White - A MUST READ

Vol. 10, No. 64

Paving Paradise

Most of the people on staff at the church I serve were not only hired from within (meaning, they were already an attender), but came to Christ here.

One of them came to Meck many years ago after a bruising experience at another church.

She and her (then) college roommate were heavy into the party scene.  Her friend became pregnant, decided against an abortion, and both decided to rethink their lives.

They went to a church near the campus and, at first, were welcomed.  They didn’t particularly "get" the music or the message, but they were eager to try and find out what God might mean for their lives.

A few weeks into their fledgling attendance, it became known that Kristina’s roommate was pregnant outside of wedlock.

Then it began.

They were not greeted with smiles at the door.

No one came and sat next to them in the pew.

People glanced sideways at them and whispered to those around them.

Finally, the pastor approached them and told them that perhaps they shouldn’t be coming to their church.  He said something along the lines of "not really being their type."

Floored, embarrassed, angry, confused – the emotions were many – they left the church vowing never to darken the doorstep of one again.

But then Meck came on their radar screen, and they decided to give church (and God) one last shot.  They came, and six weeks later, both gave their lives to Christ.

I had the privilege of baptizing both.

Kristina’s roommate moved out of the city after graduation, but Kristina remained.

Over the years I've watched that precious young woman grow up in her faith.

I've seen her meet and fall in love with a godly man.

I had the joy of officiating at their wedding.

God graced her with children, and I’ve had the privilege of dedicating each one.  And then seeing them come to faith in Christ, and baptizing them.

Over the years, she felt the call to ministry, and now oversees everything related to arts and weekend services here at Meck, impacting thousands every weekend who were just like her.

She sent me an email just a few weeks ago:

"On my way to the new Mountain Island Lake campus, I drove by the street of that very first church I attended in Charlotte.  The church that asked us to leave.

"It’s gone.  It’s literally a parking lot.

"I sat in front of it for a solid minute just stunned…Though I’m not sure why.  Such an odd combination of having your heart break for God’s church and the reality that God’s church wouldn’t be a parking lot right now."

She’s right.

A church that really was God’s, dripping with grace toward His sin-soaked children, wouldn’t be just a parking lot.

It reminds me of a story that Fred Craddock once told about the first church he ever pastored.  It was a small church in the hills of East Tennessee, near Oak Ridge. 

Because of the huge facility built at Oak Ridge, where the materials for the Manhattan nuclear project were developed, this little, sleepy country church suddenly found itself in the midst of a booming population.  The town became filled with temporary workers, living in RV's, tents, and make‑shift shelters all over the area.

And here was this 112 year‑old church.

Craddock saw it as a wonderful opportunity to reach out.  So after church one Sunday he told the leaders he wanted to start a campaign to invite these workers into the church.

And then he began to hear it: 

"I don't think they'd fit in."

"Are we sure that they're our type?"

"What kind of people are they, anyway?"

"They're only temporary ‑ they don't have houses or own property or anything!"

They decided to take a vote the next Sunday.  The day came and the first thing that happened was a motion that in order to be a member of the church, you had to own property in the county.

It was seconded, and passed.

And that ended that.

Years later Craddock went to find that church that had given him such a painful memory.  He wanted to show his wife the first church he had ever pastored.  He found the church building, but it was different.  The parking lot was full of cars ‑ RV's and vans, motorcycles and trailers. 

And then he noticed the sign out front:

"Barbecue:  All You Can Eat." 

The church had died.  It had become a restaurant.

Craddock turned to his wife and said, "Good thing this still isn't a church, or all these people couldn't even be in there."

Two stories, two churches, two parking lots.  Both of them, borrowing from the song by Joni Mitchell,

…"paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

James Emery White

    

  

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president.  His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon.  To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world.  Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Sunday Sermon, August 10, 2014 "A Servant Helps Those Who Are Weary" Isaiah 50:4

I preached yesterday "A Servant Helps Those Who Are Weary" from Isaiah 50:4.

Here is the audio of it:

Sunday, August 3, 2014 "No Fear for the Future"

I preached on Sunday, August 3, 2014 "No Fear to Face the Future" from II Timothy 1: 7.

Here is the audio of that message:

Islam: The Ultimate Religion of Works by J.D. Greear

One of my frustrations when sharing Christ with Muslims was that I had a hard time getting them todisagree with me that only God’s grace could save us. When I would say something like, “We can only be reconciled to God by his grace,” they would say, “That’s exactly what we believe!” But the reality of Islam shows a very different idea of “grace” than the gospel.

The Qur’an gives a long and detailed list of how to act, dress, think, and behave. If you follow carefully these instructions, Allah will approve of you and you are more likely to be accepted into eternal bliss. Islam is the ultimate religion of “works-righteousness,” and works according to the principle, “I obey; therefore I am accepted.”

But there are three reasons this kind of righteousness just doesn’t work:

1. Works-righteousness fails to address the “root” idolatries that drive our sin.

The root of sin is esteeming something to be a more satisfying object of worship than God. Works-righteousness religions, including Islam, fail to address that issue. They simply give a prescribed set of practices to avoid judgment or inherit blessings.

Islam, for example, warns Muslims of the terrors of hell and uses that to motivate Muslims to obey. It promises them the sensual luxuries of heaven if they live righteously. Many Muslims pursue these things without caring for God at all. They are using God. For them, God’s favor is a means to an end. And any end other than God is idolatry.

The starkest New Testament example of this kind of attitude is Judas Iscariot. Most New Testament scholars believe that Judas betrayed Jesus because he was disappointed with him. Judas wanted a Messiah who would reward “the righteous” (himself included) with power and money. Jesus taught that hehimself was the reward. Judas never perceives the value of simply knowing Jesus. Jesus, for Judas, was a means to something else, and never the end itself.

Love for God is genuine only when God is a means to nothing else but God. Righteous acts are righteous only when they are done out of a love for righteousness and not as a means to anything else.

The Qur’an, however, is not an adoring, worshipping love letter about God. It is a guide for what behavior will increase your chances of avoiding hell. Merit, threat, and reward form the entire foundation on which Islam is built. And this never addresses the root of man’s sin—our desire to substitute God with something else.

2. When our acceptance is based on our performance, we exacerbate two root sins in our heart: pride and fear.

When we meet a religion’s standards of goodness and acceptability, we feel proud and look down on those who don’t meet those same standards. At the same time, we live in constant fear that if we don’t meet those standards, we will be rejected. Our religious devotion is fueled by our fear of rejection and love of praise. This kind of motivation might change our outward behavior, but only at the cost of magnifying the root sins in our hearts.

Islamic culture is rife with both pride and fear. Pride is easy to see in the ostentatious rituals of many Muslims, the way shameful elements are hidden in Islamic communities, and in the condemning violence some Muslims commit against outsiders. Fear is present in the heart of even the most ardent Muslims,because their status before God is never sure. Islam has no way of gaining assurance of the tender affection of God.

3. The insecurity of always wondering if we’ve done enough to be accepted causes spiritual fatigue and even hatred of God.

When you constantly wonder if you’ve done enough to be accepted by God, you resent the God that threatens you with punishment. You may outwardly continue to attest your love for him, but inwardly you will inevitably rage against the God that “enslaves” you. As the wickedness of your heart surges inside of you, you begin to resent the God who makes you act contrary to your heart’s desires and holds you captive only by his power to throw you into hell.

The apostle Paul was a great example of a religiously zealous man who hated God. Paul said of himself that, though zealous for the law, he could not keep his heart from coveting. The commandment of God to “not covet” only exacerbated his desires, stoking the power of sin (cf. Rom 7:10). In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul speaks of people—like he once was—who are zealous in religion, giving even their own bodies to be burned in sacrifice. But for all their devotion, they cannot produce an ounce of love in their hearts for God. Without the love of God, Paul says, all religious devotion is “worthless.”

Such a description matches Muslims perfectly. They live with the understanding that after living the best life they can, they must still walk the tightrope of God’s judgment, unsure if their goodness is sufficient to carry them to heaven. This produces fear, fatigue, and resentment of God. You cannot really love someone you fear rejects you.

Only the gospel of God’s perfect, unconditional love for us can create a real love in our hearts for him. Realizing how much God has loved us, we begin to delight in him. His love for us begins to overflow in us toward others. We begin to serve others not as a way to gain favor from God, but because we know that we have it. We don’t do religious, moral, or “loving” things because we have to, but because we want to. Love begets love: love from God produces love for God.

As the Puritan John Owen once said, religious devotion may trim down the fruits of sin, but only the love of Jesus can pull up the roots.

This is a modified excerpt from my book, Breaking The Islam Code.

Making Much of Jesus! by John Thweatt

ND Wilson said, “God is a God of galaxies, of storms, of roaring seas and boiling thunder, but He is also the God of bread baking, of a child’s smile, of dust motes in the sun. He is who He is, and always shall be. Look around you now. He is speaking always and everywhere. His personality can be seen and known and leaned upon. The sun is belching flares while mountains scrape our sky while ants are milking aphids on their colonial leaves and dolphins are laughing in the surf and wheat is rippling and wind is whipping and a boy is looking into the eyes of a girl and morals are dying.” (Death by Living)

Every single day a choir of birds cheer the creation’s effort to make much of Him! From the ant to the elephant, the sparrow to the eagle, the minnow to the whale—they all make much of Him because they were created for His glory.

I love GK Chesterton’s quote,

“Children…always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon…  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. 

Do we have the sense to join His creation today in making much of our Creator? Do we have the sense to hear the song bird and remember to sing praises to Him? Do we have the sense to see the beauty of this grand ball spinning through space at a little over 67,000 miles per hour and groan with it for our redemption? Do we have the sense to life today in expectation of His coming and if He chooses to give us another day on this earth will we have the sense to spend every moment for His glory.

Of all that He has created—we should lead the way in making much of Him! We were created in His image. Let’s make much of Jesus today!

How To Engage Non-Believers: 5 Insights by Pastor J.D. Greear

When we think of a traveling preacher addressing a crowd, most of us conjure up an image like UNC’s (in)famous Pit Preacher. He stands up in the middle of a public space and loudly proclaims that everyone is going to hell because of their short skirts, rock music, and liberal politics. I imagine he thinks he’s “engaging the public square” with the gospel, much like Paul did in Acts 17.
I can’t speak to the Pit Preacher’s motives, but he’s certainly not the rightful heir to Paul in Acts 17. A quick look shows us that engaging the public square means something completely different. I see 5 insights for engaging people outside the Christian faith:

1. Grieve over idolatry (and do something about it).

When encountering idolatry in a culture, we tend to respond in one of two equally unbiblical extremes: either we share our culture’s idolatry, or we are so offended by it that we run away. But when Paul saw the idolatry of Athens for what it was, it broke his heart. And instead of running away from it in fear, he ran toward it in love.

That’s what Jesus did for us. He saw us in our idolatry and was provoked by it—but instead of writing us off, he ran toward us in love.

When we see the idolatrous structures of our society, will we respond the same way? Tim Keller points out that the largest buildings in a city reveal the idols of that city. For us in Raleigh-Durham, that meansmoney, academic pride, and sports. So what is our response? Are we so impressed by the wealth and sporting prowess around us that we fail to see the idolatry of it? Or are we also grieved that these things are getting more glory than God?

To properly grieve over our culture’s idolatry, we need to spend time getting to know that culture. Paul was only able to grieve deeply over Athens’ idolatry because he had spent time getting to know it. Most of our missionaries overseas spend months and years studying cultures in order to understand the people they serve. The sad thing is, most of them have better insight into foreign cultures than we do into our own. We must become people who are deeply aware of our culture and able to dialogue with it—while remaining untainted by its idolatry.

2. Find points of agreement: “I can see you are searching for God.”

When Paul walks into Athens, he expands his normal pattern of evangelism. In every other city, Paul would find the local synagogue and show that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament promises. He started with the synagogue in Athens, too (v. 17). But when Paul went into “the marketplace,” he knew that the Old Testament held no authority whatsoever. So instead he starts with their questions. He notices an altar to an “unknown god” (a “just in case” god, on the off chance that that the other thousands of statues in the city didn’t quite cover it), and the images of struggle all around their city, sees in those things a picture of their struggle for God, and starts there. “It looks like you’re searching for something here, aren’t you?”

Because God created us to worship, humanity is incurably religious. Even in the most supposedly secular society, the remnants of that worship drive are there. As Ecclesiastes says, God “has put eternity in man’s heart” (3:11), so that every person you meet is at some point in their religious search. Like the Athenians, they are probably not sure what they are searching for, but everyone asks questions about the world around them, about right and wrong, about their purpose and destiny—in short, about God. This search for God can and should be affirmed wherever possible.

So to atheists we can say, “I admire your passion for truth. I can see that you want to be an intellectually honest and moral person.” To non-believing parents we say, “I can see you really care about the future of your children.” To activists we say, “I’m touched by how compassionate you are and how much you want to see this broken world healed.”

3. ‘Blow the roof off’: “Is your approach to life working?”

Paul knows, of course, that it’s not enough to merely search for God. But his listeners don’t. So before presenting Jesus as the solution, Paul needs to show the Athenians that their current search isn’t leading anywhere. “Does it make sense,” he asks, “that the God who created everything could be contained in a temple?”

Paul does here what Francis Schaeffer calls “blowing the roof off” of a person’s belief system. Reveal the inner inconsistencies and logical problems with a person’s way of living, and they’ll be forced to seek shelter elsewhere. “I can see you searching for God,” Paul begins, but immediately follows with, “How is it turning out for you? Is your approach to life working?”

So when activists are concerned about global suffering, but seek to address it apart from the gospel, we ask, “It’s great that you want to give food and education to everyone. But is it working? Has education solved our problems here in the West? How can we avoid what every utopian attempt in history has ended in—tyranny?”

When we talk with people who say that morality is relative, that everyone is entitled to their own values, we ask, “Do you really believe that? Some societies believe that life works best when women are kept uneducated and hidden at home. Are you prepared to say that those moral values are equal, too?”

When we interact with people who have really given themselves to some idol—whether money or romance or success or family—we ask, “Is this working? Is this giving you the happiness and security it promised?”Do the most famous celebrities in our world seem like satisfied, happy, well-adjusted people?

Are the richest people we know really more secure and less anxious because of their wealth? Is any of this going to sustain you after you die?

And if we can quote our culture’s “prophets” to further show the problem, we should do that. Contemporary news is ripe with reports of rich people musing about how there must be more to life than money, successful people wondering why their success hasn’t quite delivered, or beautiful people moving on to their second (or third or fourth…) marriage in search of the right romantic fit.

We don’t need to be experts on every philosophy out there. We just need to ask the questions, encourage people to be honest, and listen to their answers. Is the god you’re sacrificing for really worth it?

4. Demonstrate God’s greatness above their idols: “Your view of God is too small.”

One of the chief characteristics of all false religions is a truncated view of God. That’s what Paul goes after in Athens: “Your view of God is too small.”

Too many people talk about God as if he should be easy to explain. They want answers about God, but aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t like: “Until God explains this to me and I can fully understand it, I simply won’t believe in him.” But if we’re talking about the infinite God, whose power and wisdom are insurmountably greater than our own, shouldn’t we expect that some aspects of his character would be beyond our imagination? As Evelyn Underhill said, “If God were small enough to be understood, he would not be big enough to be worshipped.”

The real God is transcendent and glorious, which means he is going to baffle you sometimes. And I’ll admit:that is often exceedingly frustrating. I don’t like unanswered questions any more than anyone else. But as soon as I suspect that I completely understand all of the ways of God, I’ve put him in so small a box that he’s no longer a God worth yearning after.

Deep down, don’t you know that? Don’t you have a yearning for a God who is more than a reflection of preconceived notions and cultural ideals? Isn’t that the sort of “unknown god” you have been searching for?

And wouldn’t it be tragic if you rejected him—the most valuable being in the universe—because he wasn’t like you had expected?

5. Proclaim Jesus: “Who do you say that he is?”

Acts 17 doesn’t give much air-time to Paul’s presentation of the gospel, but we can tell where he’s headed.“The God you are looking for isn’t someone you can simply reason out,” Paul says. “He came to earth to give us proof of who he was.”

Jesus asked a question when he was on earth. It wasn’t, “Does this make sense?” or “Do you agree?” It was the most important question any of us would ever consider: “Who do you say that I am?” The real God comes not by clever explanations, but by divine illumination in the person of Jesus Christ. Truth did not come to us through a group of philosophers speculating idly on a hill in Athens; truth came in a God dying on a hill for us outside of Jerusalem.

The best apologetics in the world aren’t going to change people. What changes people is an encounter with Jesus Christ, the only God who died so that we might live. Religion and philosophy may speculate, “Who is right? What is true?” But in the end, the most important question is still, “Who do you say that I am?”

A Holy Disturbance by Greg Laurie

It seems that wherever Paul went there was either a conversion or a riot. In Acts 17:6 for example, the people of Thessalonica told their city’ leaders, “Paul and Silas have turned the rest of the world upside down, and now they are here disturbing our city.”

That’s what we need in our culture today—a holy disturbance!

G. Campbell Morgan said, “Organized Christianity which fails to make a disturbance is dead,” and A.W. Tozer said that “if the Holy Spirit were taken away from the New Testament church, 90% of what they did would come to a halt. But if the Holy Spirit were taken away from today’s church, only 10% of what it does would cease.”

Vance Havner wrote, “We are not going to move this world by criticism of it, nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.”

So, if the world is turning you upside down, it’s time to make a change.

And it starts one person at a time. It starts with you and with me.

The early church was just a handful of men and women who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, did not leave their world the same way they found it—ordinary people who were enabled and empowered by God to do extraordinary things. It was the beginning of a movement that continues to this very day.

How about you? Are you allowing the Holy Spirit to enable you and empower you? Ask God for a fresh refill of the Holy Spirit today.