Sunday, July 7, 2013
July 7th Bible Reading: Luke 19-21
Luke 19:41-42
And when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it saying, "Would that even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes!"
This passage really struck me because earlier today my pastor sermon on what we should we pray for. Though he was using verses from Ephesians, this verse references a similar idea, the idea of God hiding and reveling that which is unknown.
In his letter, Paul was praying that the Ephesian Christians would receive revelation in the knowledge of God. He was not only praying this for the unsaved, but the believers as well.
Spiritual truth is not perceived by the physical senses, though it may feel that way, but in the spiritual realm. We need to be diligently and fervently praying that the Lord continues to speak to us though His Word, because without Him giving us revelation we fall back into the motions of reading the Bible, and attempting to sanctify ourselves.
That is my prayer for you, my friends, as well as myself. That the Lord would continually open our eyes!
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
July 5th Bible Reading: Luke 13-15
The first commandment is to love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
(Mark 12)
Luke 14:26
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
Jesus is calling us to be willing to be willing to give up everything to follow Him. Look at the lives of the disciples. Most of them left their family's, devoted their lives to His service, and at the end, gave up their lives. God may not ask us to give up these things, or He may, but are we willing ?
And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
(Mark 12)
Luke 14:26
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
Jesus is calling us to be willing to be willing to give up everything to follow Him. Look at the lives of the disciples. Most of them left their family's, devoted their lives to His service, and at the end, gave up their lives. God may not ask us to give up these things, or He may, but are we willing ?
Thursday, July 4, 2013
July 4th Bible Reading: Luke 10-12
Prayer is such a privileged. It glorifies and pleases God, as well as brings us to a point of humility and a deeper relationship with Him. I encourage you not to forget to whom you are praying to, or to underestimate what He can do when it is within His will.
Luke 11:13
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!
Today, being the 4th of July, I just want to ask you to take a few minutes out of your celebrating to pray for this country and its leaders, who God has put in authority.
I was really blessed by this testimony to the power of prayer, and I pray you will be too:
President Lincoln's Prayer Before Gettysburg
"…oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His, and our cause His cause, but we could not stand another Fredricksburg or Chancellorsville. Then and there I made a solemn vow to almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him. And after that, I don't know how it was, and I cannot explain it, soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands, and that things would go right at Gettysburg…"
Gettysburg was won by the Union forces on July 3, 1863, and is often considered a major turning point in the war.
Luke 11:13
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!
Today, being the 4th of July, I just want to ask you to take a few minutes out of your celebrating to pray for this country and its leaders, who God has put in authority.
I was really blessed by this testimony to the power of prayer, and I pray you will be too:
President Lincoln's Prayer Before Gettysburg
"…oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His, and our cause His cause, but we could not stand another Fredricksburg or Chancellorsville. Then and there I made a solemn vow to almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him. And after that, I don't know how it was, and I cannot explain it, soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands, and that things would go right at Gettysburg…"
Gettysburg was won by the Union forces on July 3, 1863, and is often considered a major turning point in the war.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
July 3rd Bible Reading: Luke 7-9
Luke 8:16-18
New International Version (NIV)
A Lamp on a Stand
16 “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. 17 For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. 18 Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them.”
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Monday, July 1, 2013
July 1st Bible Reading: Luke 1-3
WHICH VIRGIN BIRTH?
A while back I received an email from a friend of mine, a retired Princeton University professor, in which he detailed some of his objections to Christianity, and in his last line—as if to trump all other considerations—he wrote, “Nor can I believe in a virgin birth.” No further argument. As if to say, it would be crazy to believe in such a thing.
It did make me think, why is it so often the virgin birth that we have the hardest time accepting? Why not Jesus walking on water? Why not him multiplying the loaves?
Maybe it’s because we’re happy for God to do what he wants with his own body, and we’re happy for him to give us gifts, but we get offended at the thought of a miracle that inconveniences us, that has a claim on our lives, that requires us to respond “I am the Lord’s servant,” as Mary did (Luke 1:38).
I thought to write back to my friend with reasons why perhaps he could believe in a virgin birth. But then I realized, he already does. In fact, every person is committed to a virgin birth, whether they realize it or not.
We find one virgin birth in Chapter 1 of Luke’s Gospel:
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:38).
Admittedly, this is out of the realm of the ordinary. But what exactly is the alternative?
My colleague John Lennox recently debated another Princeton professor—Peter Singer—who is one of the world’s most influential atheists. John challenged him to answer this question: why are we here? And here’s how Peter responded:
“We can assume that somehow in the primeval soup we got collections of molecules that became self-replicating; and I don’t think we need any miraculous or mysterious [explanation].”(1)
And I remember thinking, How does us somehow getting self-replicating molecules in the primeval soup not count as a mysterious explanation? That sounds a lot like a virgin birth to me.
Or take the brilliant Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest attempt to propose an atheistic explanation for our universe: “. . . the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”(2)
Is that any less miraculous of a birth than the account from Luke Chapter 1?
We live in a miraculous world. Regardless of whether you are a theist, an atheist, or an agnostic, there’s no getting around that fact. It’s not a matter of whether we believe in a virgin birth, it’s just a matter of which virgin birth we choose to accept.
We can believe in the virgin birth of an atheistic universe that is indifferent to us—a universe where “there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”(3) Or we can believe in the virgin birth of a God who loves us so deeply that he came to be born among us and to live beside us, to call us “family” (Hebrews 2:11) and “friends” (John 15:15), and to give himself the name “God with us” (Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:14).
There is a depth of relationship that is only possible between people who have been through the worst together— those who have been there in each other’s suffering, those who have fought through disaster side by side, those who have sat beside one another in devastation with nothing left to say other than “I know exactly what you’ve been through, and I still love you and I still believe in you.” Because of Jesus, that depth of relationship is possible with God. That is what we celebrate at Christmas.
Growing up near New York City, one of my most vivid memories of Christmas is of homeless people begging on the street corners. And I would give some change if I had some. Imagine someone who offers to trade his home for a cold street corner, who instead of giving a few coins sat down on the street corner himself and handed over the key to his home.
At Christmas, Jesus literally comes and lives in our home—with all of its suffering, sin, and shame—and he shows us the home it will be, the home he is preparing—an eternal home where “[God] will wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).
The way we accept this gift is with simple words: I’m sorry. Thank you.
I’m sorry for the times I’ve hid from you. I’m sorry for the times I’ve run from you. I’m thankful that you didn’t give up on me, but were willing to make even the greatest sacrifice in order to be with me. I want to be with you too, wherever that leads, not only this Christmas but always.
A while back I received an email from a friend of mine, a retired Princeton University professor, in which he detailed some of his objections to Christianity, and in his last line—as if to trump all other considerations—he wrote, “Nor can I believe in a virgin birth.” No further argument. As if to say, it would be crazy to believe in such a thing.
It did make me think, why is it so often the virgin birth that we have the hardest time accepting? Why not Jesus walking on water? Why not him multiplying the loaves?
Maybe it’s because we’re happy for God to do what he wants with his own body, and we’re happy for him to give us gifts, but we get offended at the thought of a miracle that inconveniences us, that has a claim on our lives, that requires us to respond “I am the Lord’s servant,” as Mary did (Luke 1:38).
I thought to write back to my friend with reasons why perhaps he could believe in a virgin birth. But then I realized, he already does. In fact, every person is committed to a virgin birth, whether they realize it or not.
We find one virgin birth in Chapter 1 of Luke’s Gospel:
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:38).
Admittedly, this is out of the realm of the ordinary. But what exactly is the alternative?
My colleague John Lennox recently debated another Princeton professor—Peter Singer—who is one of the world’s most influential atheists. John challenged him to answer this question: why are we here? And here’s how Peter responded:
“We can assume that somehow in the primeval soup we got collections of molecules that became self-replicating; and I don’t think we need any miraculous or mysterious [explanation].”(1)
And I remember thinking, How does us somehow getting self-replicating molecules in the primeval soup not count as a mysterious explanation? That sounds a lot like a virgin birth to me.
Or take the brilliant Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest attempt to propose an atheistic explanation for our universe: “. . . the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”(2)
Is that any less miraculous of a birth than the account from Luke Chapter 1?
We live in a miraculous world. Regardless of whether you are a theist, an atheist, or an agnostic, there’s no getting around that fact. It’s not a matter of whether we believe in a virgin birth, it’s just a matter of which virgin birth we choose to accept.
We can believe in the virgin birth of an atheistic universe that is indifferent to us—a universe where “there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”(3) Or we can believe in the virgin birth of a God who loves us so deeply that he came to be born among us and to live beside us, to call us “family” (Hebrews 2:11) and “friends” (John 15:15), and to give himself the name “God with us” (Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:14).
There is a depth of relationship that is only possible between people who have been through the worst together— those who have been there in each other’s suffering, those who have fought through disaster side by side, those who have sat beside one another in devastation with nothing left to say other than “I know exactly what you’ve been through, and I still love you and I still believe in you.” Because of Jesus, that depth of relationship is possible with God. That is what we celebrate at Christmas.
Growing up near New York City, one of my most vivid memories of Christmas is of homeless people begging on the street corners. And I would give some change if I had some. Imagine someone who offers to trade his home for a cold street corner, who instead of giving a few coins sat down on the street corner himself and handed over the key to his home.
At Christmas, Jesus literally comes and lives in our home—with all of its suffering, sin, and shame—and he shows us the home it will be, the home he is preparing—an eternal home where “[God] will wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).
The way we accept this gift is with simple words: I’m sorry. Thank you.
I’m sorry for the times I’ve hid from you. I’m sorry for the times I’ve run from you. I’m thankful that you didn’t give up on me, but were willing to make even the greatest sacrifice in order to be with me. I want to be with you too, wherever that leads, not only this Christmas but always.
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