• On April 7, 2008 by

    Revival?


    I’ve been thinking on my “thinking day.” Thinking about…

    Revival.

    For evangelicals it’s a powerful and evocative word. It can almost cast a spell upon us. It conjures images of great days gone by and elicits the hope that perhaps it could happen again. You know, the second coming of Charles Finney and the ghost of D.L. Moody. If the word revival is spoken in the right way and in the right setting it can cause Christians to get a faraway look in their eyes and a pang in their soul. Especially if we happen to be living in a time when it is generally assumed the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

    (A hand basket? Why a hand basket? Well, that’s what they say.)

    I’ve been fascinated with revival ever since my conversion in 1974. It was during the height of the Jesus Movement and since I already had strong counterculture sympathies I promptly became the school Jesus freak. Overnight I went from Led Zeppelin to Larry Norman, started carrying a bible to school and traded my Erich von Daniken books for the writings of Watchman Nee. Pretty soon I was conducting bible studies almost every night of the week and helping lead a Christian coffeehouse. Then through the personal influence of Keith Green and Leonard Ravenhill I became student of historical revival and a seeker of contemporary revival for my own generation.

    Actually the Jesus Movement was a revival — a new kind of revival. It was not a geographically centered revival but a demographic revival located among the youth counterculture, though few evangelicals were able to recognize it as a revival at the time.
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  • On March 23, 2008 by

    Anastasis


    This is another blog that is actually a letter. I was in conversation with an important Christian leader and I had asked him this question: “Why did Jesus come?” He answered, “So we can go to heaven when we die.” I told him this was the wrong answer and explained the true purpose of the Incarnation and the true nature of salvation. A short time later he asked me to to put what I had said to him in writing so that he could preach on it. The following is my reply. It is by no means a full treatment of the subject, but the “notes” of what I said during our conversation:

    Why did Jesus come? The answer is not, “so we can go to heaven when we die.”

    The problem with saying that Jesus came so that we can go to heaven when we die is that it diminishes the full scope of salvation and misunderstands the purpose of humanity.

    God created man from the dust of the earth, breathed into him the breath of life and in this act man became the creature that is uniquely human. (Genesis 2:7)

    Animals are physical creatures (dust of the earth) while angels are spirit beings (breath of God), but humans are neither animals nor angels. Humans are a hybrid creature suited for both the heavens (spiritual dimension) and the earth (physical dimension).
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  • On March 21, 2008 by

    Good Friday Mosaic


    (Click here for larger version)

    Peri took this close-up of a mosaic in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

    I hope you can be with us for Good Friday and Easter Sunday at Word of Life Church.

    Good Friday: 7:30 p.m.

    Easter Sunday: 9 and 11 a.m.

  • On March 15, 2008 by

    Crassus and The Appian Way

    Marcus Licinius Crassus

    I promise you a new Rome.
    I promise you a new Empire.
    -Marcus Licinius Crassus

    Went down the road to Damascus,
    The road to Mandalay
    Met the ghost of Caesar
    On the Appian Way
    He said, It’s hard to stop this binging
    Once you get a taste
    But the road to empire
    Is a bloody, stupid waste
    And it’s a long road out of Eden
    -The Eagles

    My kingdom is not of this world.
    -Jesus

    An Ides of March and Palm Sunday Blog

    The Appian Way.
    The Great Road to Rome.
    The Road of the Roman Triumphs.
    “All roads lead to Rome.”
    I hope not.
    I believe there is another way.
    A better way than the Appian Way.
    The King’s Highway.
    Read more

  • On March 5, 2008 by

    The Road of Unknowing

    “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going.” -Hebrews 11:8

    God is a mystery
    Jesus is the answer
    -Paul (Colossians 2:2)

    Life is a mystery
    Love is a dancer
    -Larry Norman (1948-2008)

    Whatever faith may be, it’s certainly not certainty.
    Certainty is an edifice built on empirical proof.
    Faith is a journey on the Road of Unknowing.

    The “need” for certainty is a birth defect in the children of the Enlightenment.
    Confusing faith with certainty creates a lot of needless anxiety in the children of God.

    We walk by faith, not by sight.
    We walk by faith, not by certainty.
    Read more

  • On February 26, 2008 by

    Seeking Salvation in Varanasi


    To open their eyes
    To turn from darkness to light
    From the power of Satan to God
    That they may receive forgiveness of sins
    And an inheritance
    Among those who are sanctified
    By faith in me.
    -Jesus (Acts 26:18)

    Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent because he has appointed a day by which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained.
    He has given us assurance of this by raising him from the dead. -Paul (Acts 17:30-32)

    What must I do to be saved?
    -The Philippian Jailer (Acts 16:30)

    Peri and I are in Varanasi India. Probably the holiest city in Hinduism. Hindus come here to bathe in the Ganges in hope of finding salvation as they conceive it — freedom from the cycle of rebirth. Many come here to die. They come here old and ill and wait for death so that they might be cremated on the banks of the river and have their ashes sprinkled on the Ganges in order to escape this world.

    This morning Peri and I witnessed some of these rites. The following is a photo blog of what we saw.
    Read more

  • On February 21, 2008 by

    Knowing and Believing


    Unless I see…I will not believe.
    Thomas

    Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe.
    Jesus

    The fig trees are budding
    The vines are in blossom
    How delicious they smell
    Rise up my love, my beautiful one
    Come with me
    Song of Songs

    People are often confused about knowing and believing.

    The atheist and agnostic will say to the believer, “You don’t know there is a God, you believe there is a God” — as if that were, aha, gotcha!

    Believers (yes, they are called believers, not knowers) often try to up the ante by saying something like, “I don’t believe, I know!”

    There is some confusion going on here.

    Let’s see if we can make some sense of it
    Read more

  • On February 14, 2008 by

    Being A Christian In America

    “Christians traditionally have been worried about getting Jesus wrong. American Christians are not so worried. There isn’t the sense that this is a life-and-death matter, that you don’t mess with divinity. There’s a freedom and even a playfulness that Americans have…the flexibility of the American Jesus is unprecedented. There’s a Gumbylike quality to Jesus in the United States. Even turning Jesus into a pal among born-again Christians—that kind of chutzpah is unknown historically.” -Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a Cultural Icon

    I recently gave a series of messages where I attempted to answer this question: What does it mean to be a Christian? I talked about the Christian as the convert, the believer and the disciple. Those messages are available as archived audio at the Word of Life site.

    What I said in those messages was a general treatment of the subject dealing with broad truths pertaining to what it means to be a Christian irrespective of time or place. But as we actually attempt to live out a Christian life we don’t do it in a vacuum, but in specific times and cultures, and each age and culture presents its own particular challenges to living the Christian life, whether it’s as a 4th century Roman, a 7th century Byzantine, a 13th century Italian, a 17th century Russian, or a 21st century American. So let me share a few thoughts that are pertinent to what it means to be a Christian in the specific context of contemporary American life.
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  • On February 6, 2008 by

    Ash Wednesday


    Steve Miller sang,
    Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.

    I’ve always been one to pay attention to the calendar.

    I like living where the year flows in distinct seasons.

    Time. Calendar. Seasons.

    Always a part of me.

    Now I pay more attention to the Christian calendar.

    Christians have been making sacred time
    Out of what would otherwise be ordinary time
    Since the beginning of Christian time.

    I like it.

    Today is Ash Wednesday.
    Read more

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