Can We Be Good Without God?

On January 29th, 2009 Dan Barker, a former Christian pastor turned atheist, and Dinesh D'Souza, a former atheist turned Christian, debated at the University of Minnesota over the topic "Can We Be Good Without God?

The Lord's Prayer as Answers to the Lord's Questions

From J. I. Packer's Praying the Lord's Prayer:

We need to see that the Lord's Pray is offering us model answers to the series of questions God puts to us to shape our conversation with him. Thus:

What do you take me for, and what am I to you?

Our Father in heaven.

That being so, what is it that you really want most?

The hallowing of your name; the coming of your kingdom; to see your will known and done.

So what are you asking for right now, as a means to that end?

Provision, pardon, protection.

How can you be so bold and confident in asking for these things?

Because we know you can do it, and when you do it, it will bring you glory!

By the way, Packer also writes:

Three venerable formulae together add up to Christianity: the Apostle's Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, summarizing respectively the Christian way of believing, behaving, and communing with God.

Toward that end he's written three short studies: Affirming the Apostle's Creed, Keeping the Ten Commandments, and Praying the Lord's Prayer. I'd highly recommend all three. You can also find these studies in one volume: Growing in Christ.

HT: Between Two Worlds

How to Share Christ's Love Conversationally & Visually

Many people feel that to be effective in evangelism they must memorize a complex illustration and a multitude of verses. But the Gospel is most powerful when shared with love, clarity, and simplicity.

One-Verse Evangelism(r) is a simple, interactive way to share Christ's love conversationally and visually. It is based on asking questions and sharing. It's easy to learn because it uses just one verse. One-Verse Evangelism is also sensitive to peoples' busy schedules because it can be shared in just 10 or 15 minutes.

Here's a brief look at how it works.

HT: The Navigators

Why Mess with Bible Memorization?

At the beginning of the year my church begin a church-wide effort to make memorizing scripture a priority by utilizing the Fighter Verse strategy. But why mess with Bible memorization at all? Here's at least five reasons:

1) You can meditate on Scripture at any time, whether you’re behind the steering wheel, waiting on the bus, turning the treadmill, or cooking dinner. You always have something profitable to think over, rather than just leaving your mind open to entertain less worthy thoughts.

2) You’re always ready to share godly wisdom, whether you’re chatting online, talking on the phone, writing a letter, or conversing over coffee. Sure, you can flip open your Bible and scan for a verse, but how much more would God’s word be on our tongues if it was already on our hearts and minds!

3) You can pray for yourself and others with the Word of God. You don’t have to fumble around your head trying to think of something to say, but you can recall God’s promises and apply them directly to the situation at hand. In my experience, praying Scripture adds much power, confidence and comfort to prayer.

4) You are better prepared for evangelism. I think most of us are scared to share our faith because we’re never sure about what to say. We don’t want to misrepresent the gospel, nor do we want to come across as pushers of our own opinions. But if we have Scripture in our mouths we can appeal to its message and its authority, rather than our own. We can let God’s word do the talking and the persuading, while we simply remain His messengers.

5) Your Bible study is richly enhanced. Scripture has expressions and themes that connect all over the place, and you will notice these better in your reading if you remember what has been said elsewhere. For example: last night in small group we noticed while discussing Proverbs 3:11-12 that the word “despise” occurred just two weeks ago in our 1 Timothy 4:12 fighterverse.

Is there a relationship between “do not despise the Lord’s discipline” and “let no one despise you for your youth”? Questions like this, which help us gain a better understanding of Scripture, are the fruit of memorization.

HT: Fighter Verses

Sons of God through Faith

Galatians 3:26 says something amazing:

“for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”

It’s common for people today to say something like, “We’re all children of God.” They mean that we’re all created by God, which is true. But the title of “children” or “sons” is reserved for those who have placed their faith in Christ.

What an incredible title! Anyone who’s a parent knows the love and joy you have in your children. Just think — God has that same joy over his sons and daughters!

May your faith be in Jesus and may you know the delight of being God’s loved child.

Is it ever okay to lie?

Gregory Koukl at Stand to Reason ponders whether or not lying is always wrong and he makes some good points. He writes ...

It seems that not all deceptions are immoral. Did you ever make a fake while playing basketball? Isn't such a feint a deception? It is, but I don't think most people would consider it immoral, even though it was, in fact, deceptive.

There are other examples. We dress to flatter our figures instead of being entirely truthful about our physical shape. We wear hairpieces if our hair is thinner than we'd like to show. There are times we're not forthcoming with all the truth. More could be said, but we withhold information.

So it seems reasonable to say there are "deceptions" we wouldn't really consider immoral--faking in basketball, trying to dress in a flattering way, or not being forthcoming with all the information we might have.

Incidentally, I don't think Jesus was always forthright. Take, for example, the woman at the well (John 4). Jesus had a goal He was not immediately forthright about. I don't see this as manipulation, though, but as sensitivity to the moment. If Jesus wasn't always entirely forthright in some cases, yet we know He never committed any sin, then that means it isn't necessarily a sin if you're not forthright about everything.

Read more.

HT: Stand to Reason

Knowing the Nature of Your Evil By John Piper

It is important that we know the nature of the evil in our hearts.

Do you think the essence of your evil is disobeying commandments? That’s a good start. But it’s not the essence of our evil. Commands simply name the evil and its fruits, and tell us not to do them.

The essence of our evil is that we prefer anything to God (Romans 1:23; 2:23). Commands do not create the possibility of evil. Commands name it.

Long before we are told not to covet, we covet. Disobeying the command, “Thou shalt not covet,” is not equivalent to the evil of coveting. The evil of coveting is there first, and then is compounded by the transgression of the commandment not to covet.

Paul said, “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’” (Romans 7:7). That is, I wouldn’t have known the seriousness of my evil if God had not named it in the law.

But lawbreaking is not the essence of my evil. Desiring anything above God is the essence of my evil, before any commands name it.

One reason this is important to know is that it will affect the way you pursue change. If you think the essence of your evil is commandment-breaking, your focus for change will be commandment-keeping.

That is doomed to fail for two reasons. If we get good at it, we think we have changed, but the essence of our evil remains. If we can’t get good at it, we despair and quit trying.

But if we know that the essence of our evil is not commandment-breaking, but preferring anything to God, then our focus for change will be a change of heart. That is hopeful, because God promised, “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19).

This is the new covenant that Jesus purchased with his blood (Luke 22:20). We receive it by faith.

HT: Desiring God

Christian Life Conference

Here are some great sermons from the Christian Life Conference at Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis. Sinclair Ferguson and Alistair Begg are excellent preachers and, at the very least, you’ll enjoy hearing their accents!

Luncheon: Sinclair Ferguson-Preaching Christ in All of Scripture

Session 1: Sinclair Ferguson - The Seed of the Woman (Genesis 3:1-15)

Session 2: Alistair Begg - The True Prophet (John 4:21-26)

Session 3: Alistair Begg - The Suffering Servant (Luke 24:39-46)

Session 4: Sinclair Ferguson - The Son of Man (Daniel 7:9-14)

Session 5: Sinclair Ferguson - The Great High Priest (Hebrews 2:5-18)

Session 6: Alistair Begg - The Divine King (Luke 19:28-40)

Session 7: Alistair Begg -The Lamb on the Throne (Revelation 5)

Take a Look at Mark 4:1-34

Take a look at Mark 4:1-34 as created by wordle.net, which creates “word clouds” that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text you type in.

What do you think God's telling us here?

See it big at wordle’s site.

The Gospel Changes Everything

The Bible's purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible's purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome... religion is 'if you obey, then you will be accepted'. But the Gospel is, 'if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey'. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.

– Tim Keller

The Gospel changes everything.

You are far worse than you dared imagined, and you are far more accepted than you dared dream. Jesus' death on the Cross is the centerpiece of the Gospel.

Where does this word come from? The Greek term "gospel" (eu-angelion / good news) is the #1 difference that sets followers of Jesus from followers of any of the other world religions. In olden times when a king went off to war, the people of his city would sit and wait for news. If a herald would come and shout with joy, "Our king has triumphed!" then the city would celebrate and throw the gates open to welcome the victorious army. If the battle did not go well for the king, he would not send heralds. He would send military advisors. These men would shout a warning, "The king has lost and is retreating. Man your battle stations!" If this happened every able bodied person would work to defend the city, or would flee into the country side.

Many spiritual journeys look like the second situation. People work hard, or flee, because enemies larger than themselves are bearing down. Death and disease, crisis and conflict, wars and worry - we man the walls, pick up our weapons and try to hold these off. Followers of Jesus know the truth. The battle has been won, and even though we didn't lift a hand to help, we gain the reward.

This means that the Gospel is not about what we have to do. It is not advice. The gospel is news of what God has already done. When Jesus yelled, "It is finished" it really was!

I Love You More Than…

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Luke 12:34

Visit the I Love You More Than Blank site and read through the real life items that people used as measuring sticks of their love and then ask, "Can we make these same statements to God?" The question may sound simple, but to me it is not. Where is my heart, and where do I spend my time? My love needs to be to God first. Everything we have in our lives are gifts, and we should never love the gifts more than giver.

What real life item do you love God more than?

HT: The Plow

Do You Love Christ? Loving God in a Lukewarn Church by Francis Chan

I Love Jesus Christ

I admire Jesus Christ more than any other human or angelic being.

I enjoy his ways and his words more than I enjoy the ways and words of anyone else.

I want his approval more than I want the approval of anyone else.

I want to be with him more than I want to be with anyone else.

I feel more grateful to him for what he has done for me than I do to anyone else.

I trust his words more fully than I trust what anyone else says.

I am more glad in his exaltation than in the exaltation of anyone else, including me.

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8).

HT: John Piper

Love or Lust?

It's nearly Valentine's Day and love is in the air ... right? Unfortunately many confuse love for what is in fact lust - and it's a horrible mistake to make. While love builds us up and has our best interests in mind, lust comes to steal - to rip from us whatever it can for the purpose of satisfying selfish needs.

John Piper helps us flee from lust by encouraging us to rely on Love, the God-man and Savior, Jesus Christ. Who came to love. Who died for love. And who lives today so that we can know true love. He puts his help in the form of an acronym, A N T H E M.

A - AVOID as much as is possible and reasonable the sights and situations that arouse unfitting desire. "Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness" (2 Timothy 2:22). "Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires" (Romans 13:14).

N - Say NO to every lustful thought within five seconds. And say it with the authority of Jesus Christ. "In the name of Jesus, NO!" " Strike fast and strike hard. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7).

T - TURN the mind forcefully toward Christ as a superior satisfaction. Saying "no" will not suffice. The Bible calls lusts "deceitful desires" (Ephesians 4:22). They lie. They promise more than they can deliver. We must stock our minds with the superior promises and pleasures of Jesus. Then we must turn to them immediately after saying, "NO!"

H - HOLD the promise and the pleasure of Christ firmly in your mind until it pushes the other images out. "Fix your eyes on Jesus" (Hebrews 3:1). Here is where many fail. They give in too soon. They say, "I tried to push it out, and it didn't work." I ask, "How long did you try?" How hard did you exert your mind? The mind is a muscle. You can flex it with vehemence. Take the kingdom violently (Matthew 11:12).

E - ENJOY a superior satisfaction. Cultivate the capacities for pleasure in Christ. One reason lust reigns in so many is that Christ has so little appeal. We default to deceit because we have little delight in Christ.

M - MOVE into a useful activity away from idleness and other vulnerable behaviors. Lust grows fast in the garden of leisure. Find a good work to do, and do it with all your might. "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord" (Romans 12:11).

HT: Desiring God