God uses bad people to do his work and even horrible events to accomplish his purposes. Does this not put him in bad light as he is using apparently bad means to accomplish good things? Habakkuk asked this very question and a look at this recent century does much more. See what Habakkuk says: Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow …
As Christians, we are all children under our all knowing God. All are sinners, living under God’s mercy. God gave us the Bible, so we could know him. We can, from the Bible, know what makes God smile and what makes God frown. God died for us for a handful of reasons. One reason is that we could kive before hin as sons and daughters rather than living in fear of not being accepted. We follow God’s commands in the …
Today, I have a more innocuous topic that I think we might learn from. During the Middle Ages in the West, Aristotle was seen as so great that his ideas were a barrier to further scientific development. In 1277, the West started to leave Aristotle. God is bigger was the start. How About the East? In China Confucius was almost deified and held China back for hundreds of years until roughly 1919. Only the disastrous Treaty of Versailles saved China. …
It, Consistent readers of the Main Thing know that I have some tendencies in the Autistic realm and grew up in a house determined to repress all feelings. Therefore, I especially had something to learn about loving God with my heart. I will convey that story below the Bible passages. It might help some readers to consider deeper what Jesus said. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind …
We believe that Jesus died on a Roman Cross outside Jerusalem in about 30 AD. Interestingly, we have some good reasons outside of our experience that Jesus lives. There is a remarkable amount of proof that the Christians did not write mythology to make the New Testament. Let’s look together at much of this data. See also: Josephus on Jesus, Pliny the Younger on Christians, and Suetonius on Christians The earliest known (non biblical) references to Christianity are found in Antiquities of the …
In the 1675, Philip Jacob Spener published Pious Desires (Pia Desideria). He was a Lutheran German pastor who saw that going to church was not changing people’s lives. He saw that correct doctrine alone leads to dead faith. I see nothing has changed. So how do we face the Correct Doctrine Dead Faith problem? Philip had some ideas and we can think as well. At West Point I became best friends with Erin who came from an Orthodox Presbyterian Church …
How about a Chinese Church faith report? I should have blogged on this insightful article last year, but find myself only now starting to write. The question is: Should we see the Chinese church as persecuted and needy or perfectly provided for? Or just how should we see them? This article brought a hearty Amen from my heart. See the quote below. Though this narrative (China as a persecuted needy church) may have been accurate in the 1980s as China …
I went to school at West Point and certainly grew in faith in there. They had a written prayer that we often prayed that is of benefit to West Point’s culture but also has some good things in it for Christians. Here is the whole thing taken from the West Point website. Cadet Prayer O God, our Father, Thou Searcher of human hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with …
Read this liturgy of the Lutheran Church Pastor: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. People: But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (Short Silence for reflection on God’s Word and for self-examination.) Pastor: Let us then confess our sins to God our Father. People: Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature …
Pat Lencioni is a great leadership book writer to include his classic, 5 Dysfunctions of a Team (He is also a Christian by the way. Many of the great leadership writers like Zigler and Maxwell are Christian by the way). In that book, Lencioni says that the first step for a team to become great is for the leader to show vulnerability. For example, you can say to a subordinate. “You do this so much better than me.” or “I …
