VIDEO: You Can’t Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded) by Cynthia Tobias
The Power of Connection
In a world torn apart by divorce and emotional detachment, we need heaven-breathed friendships and strategic relationships in order to train and protect each other’s children. To realize the rescue of the lost and at-risk children of our world, heaven-breathed strategies and answers will need to be implemented. No one is an island. We are in this together. Because of this dynamic, what you do has the power to affect me, and what I do has the power to affect you. With coordinated efforts we have a chance to turn the tide in our homes, churches, and communities. We live in a time when there is great opportunity for social networking. It is up to us to decide if we will use these connections for good.
Excerpted from Lioness Arising by Lisa Bevere
Daily Reflection:
How [ … ]
Childlike Faith
I once served as a counselor for third-grade campers at a Christian camp in the North Carolina mountains. It was an especially hot, dry, Carolina July. On the way to arts and crafts, I overheard one of my campers say thoughtfully to another, “I sure hope it rains soon. My grandmother’s garden needs water.”
Immediately his friend let out a confident war cry and began a primitive rain dance. A third child then chimed in, “Don’t be so silly. God’s not going to make it rain just because of your stupid dance.”
Now defiant, the original “rain wisher” made a grand theological statement: “God can do anything He wants to!”
The first step to a childlike heart is the most important one. You must admit that God can do whatever He wantsand that you can’t. It means [ … ]
Answering the Call
For you, the call is literally within your grasp. It’s the place you show up each day and the problems you encounter in the process. Possibly for you, it’s putting a dent in the never- ending cycle of poverty that destroys so many lives, neighborhoods, and nations. Or creatively addressing the malnutrition, poor health, and disease that’s wrecking so many families. Or tutoring, mentoring, and fostering fatherless children. Perhaps the addiction to drugs, alcohol, career advancement, affluence, or pornography is what enslaves and torments your friends the most. What ever it is that’s broken, whatever you see wrong, remember God’s intention and method of restoration is to use you to bring his redeeming love to the world.
This is the “power of the ought” at work the way restoration living begins to flood and transform our entire cosmos. [ … ]
The Lover of Our Souls
Sometimes I fear we are like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Throughout the entire story, Rhett Butler tried to win her heart, but Scarlett was smitten by the milquetoast Ashley Wilkes. Finally, as the story comes to a close, Rhett walks away in frustration. “I feel sorry for you, Scarlett,” he declares. “You are throwing away love with both hands and grabbing for that which will never love you.” As I watched the movie, I kept thinking, Doesn’t she see how much Rhett really loves her? He’d move heaven and earth to please her, if she would but let him. Why is she going after someone who would never make her truly happy? And we are Scarlett, ignoring the only one who can make us truly happy and chasing after figments of our imagination things that will never make [ … ]
The Reality of Grace
Grace is a reality, a fact of life. It is by grace that one becomes a Christian, and it is by grace that one lives the Christian life.
Because prior to his conversion Paul persecuted and murdered Christians, he did not consider himself fit to be called an apostle. Yet, grace conquered his feelings. If anyone understood that grace covers our past and equips us for God’s future, it was Paul! Listen to his words: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Corinthians 5:10).
In Paul’s writing of those God-breathed words, we see that the whole of life is to be lived in the understanding and [ … ]
Altared, a new book by two anonymous authors, examines the “marriage-happy” phenomenon among young Christians and consider the greater vision of Christ’s call to love.
Publishers Weekly gives the book a starred review and says, “This book is a must for evangelicals who come anywhere near to offering premarital counseling or young adult ministry.”
On Sale September 18
Grace
Now, if it is true that we’re saved by grace, then it’s important to ask ourselves: Can we define it? And if it is true, as I suppose, that no unconverted person can tell me what it is, I think it would be important to you to make sure you can define it.
Think for a moment. Grace is _______. What? Your answer to that question may reveal where you really stand with God.
Did you answer it? Do you know what this marvelous term means?
We may be able to define it some way, but one thing is certain: We can never comprehend it, because it plumbs the profoundest depths of human thought. It scales the dizziest heights of divine revelation. And though we may get a hold of a little corner of it, we can never fully comprehend [ … ]