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I just stumbled upon an interesting discussion today about God’s Righteousness that I thought you all might like. Specifically, it is a four part blog series about the current John Piper / N.T. Wright justification/righteousness debate written by J. R. Daniel Kirk, a New Testament Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. To summarize the debate [...] The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life released today the results to their 2010 “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey” and the results are interesting to say the least:
When it came to questions specifically about Christianity, Protestants answered 6.5 of the 12 questions correctly (on average), Catholic 5.4, and Mormons 7.9. Similarly, Protestants only correctly answered 4.6 questions about other religions – Catholic 4.7 and Mormon 5.6. Atheist/Agnostics put us to shame correctly answering 6.7 questions about Christianity and 7.5 about other religions.
And yes, if you pushed these same folks would say that it is impossible to fully understand God…yet, their actions did not follow that line of reasoning. Their actions said that people with the right education could come up with the right theology which would explain God, His actions, and the world around us. This book offered a different route. My friend Jason Coker recently wrote a parable about Christendom’s unholy focus on right beliefs/theology. It is a hard hitting, thought provoking read. This parable is dedicated to John MacArthur, who at a recent conference said, “You can get Jesus mostly right and still go to hell,” and to Rick Holland, who at the [...]
Using a pattern I found in a Handyman book, I went wood shopping. As I did so, I quickly discovered that oak plywood cost the same amount as birch wood (which the pattern originally called for) – or fairly close to the same amount. So, I bought a bunch of oak – besides, it is TONS cooler to say that it is solid oak versus solid birch. (oh – and oak grain is very pretty – as you will see later). The only problem was that once I had the wood in hand, I wasn’t quite sure of where to start…. This issue was resolved with a visit from my father and stepmother at the end of May/beginning of June.  A Family Of Helpers
Alan Hirsch does this every thing with his book The Forgotten Ways. Instead of focusing on the negative side of the decline of Christianity, Hirsch began with asking what would be left if all the Christian seminaries, school, books, NGOs, buildings and 501-C3s were removed. Then, drawing insight from the first 200 years of the Christian church and the modern underground church in China, he developed a model doing ‘church.’ This model (displayed below) is centered around one crucial element: Jesus is Lord. While this statement may sound trivia or Sunday shcoolish – it is in fact the center of the entire Bible. Jesus is Lord, King, Ruler of everything. It was this understanding that drove the early church onward in the face of persecutions and death. As such, it should be the center piece of everything a Believer does. Spreading out from this center are five different intertwined elements that help fill out the model: Today we continue on our three part sermon series on Acts 3:11-26. God Is Looking For Willing Vessels Peter could have walked past that beggar that day. He could have refused to look at him. He could have even refused to have opened his mouth and speak the words that God told him to speak. He could have. But he didn’t. God is looking for willing vessels. People who are willing to be used by Him. He is not looking for perfect people – for if He was, He would never do anything for there was only one perfect human, Jesus Christ. No. God is looking for people who are willing to be used by Him. His blood alone cleanses us and His Spirit alone flows through us – changing lives and destroying the works of the evil one. All that we must do is be willing. We must be willing to be a fool for God. To open our mouths – to move our legs – to move our arms – to walk where He says walk and say that He says. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, we will fall on our faces sometime. Ah…but there will be times when we will hit the ball out of the park. One thing I guarantee, you will never see God work if you never pray for the sick or never open your ears and listen to Him. The blessed thing is that He is willing to work with cracked pots – for He….
God is not looking for superstars. He is looking for normal average day people who are willing to trust Him – to look past their weaknesses to God’s strength. Peter said in Acts 3 that it was faith that comes through Jesus. It is only through Jesus that see God work – it is His strength, His power that flows through us that changes the world – that changes our circumstances. Continue reading Sermon: Willing Vessels (Part 3 of 3) Today we continue on our three part sermon series on Acts 3:11-26. Faith In Him And Through Him Let us turn back to Peter’s words in Acts 3:16:
Peter said that it was by faith in the ‘name of Jesus’ that the beggar was healed. Let’s take a minute to unpack this as there is a lot of misgiving about the role of faith in the Christian walk. First off, what did Peter mean by the phrase, “faith in the name of Jesus”? Is there something magical about the letters J-E-S-U-S? NO! It was not about five letters in the English language – besides the book of Acts was written in Greek not English! It was about the person of Jesus – the living God. Here’s another way of looking at this. When I was in college I worked as a security officer patrolling the campus, giving out tickets, unlocking doors, etc. One evening I was locking up a computer lab when a student refused to leave. He said he was working on a project and had permission to be in the lab – however, his name was not on my list and he did not have written proof. I explained this to him – but he still refused to leave. Things were quickly getting heated…I remember standing there thinking about how in the world was I going to force him to leave if things got physical….then he ask, ‘by whose authority are you kicking me out?” “By the name of Frank, the Director of Security. You are not allowed in his room.” I had a choice: I could let him stay or I could believe the word of my boss that the list I had was correct and that he wasn’t supposed to be in there. In other words, I had to have faith in my boss. I had to believe that Frank had given me the authority to decide who stayed and who did not. Continue reading Sermon: Willing Vessels (Part 2 of 3) Last week Brian spoke about the healing of the beggar at the Gate Beautiful; about how Peter looked at the beggar and saw the hand of God on him. Today we are going to look at the story once again as there are a few more gems for us in this passage. Let us read Acts 3:11-26 and see what the Word of God has for us this morning.
While there is a ton of good stuff in this passage, there are three things that I would like to dwell on today.
This questioning lead to a two part blog series in which I talked about Augustine and Pelagius view on original sin (Augustine – genetic; Pelagius – social). The end result of the series was to grudgingly follow Wayne Grudem’s conclusions, which was the best view I had heard at the time. Fast forward a few years. Yesterday I was reading about the Creator God in the book The Orthodox Way by Bishop Ware. This is an Eastern Orthodox theology book which has really watered my soul over the last few weeks. In this selection, Bishop Ware talks a bit about original sin and the Eastern Orthodox view on it. As I read it, my heart jumped because it was very close to the view that I had to hold over the last four years. This, however, was the first time I have ever seen it written down – hence the excitement of my heart. Continue reading Original Sin: Revisted |
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It took five months – but I am proud to say that I have completed my first ‘real’ piece of furniture. (sorry son, but I’m not sure if your toy box counts as furniture…)
Sometimes when you have a problem it is good to have someone else look at the issue with new eyes as they can sometime see things you can not.
Four years ago during a systematic theology class through
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