Following Jesus

Six Ways Your Phone Is Changing You- Tony Reinke

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Did you know your smart phone is changing the way you think, the way you relate and the way you worship? A thought-provoking article from Tony Reinke.

 

Six Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

July 19, 2014

 

 

Six Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld Expo 2007, and I got my first one a year later. I can’t remember life without it.

For seven years an iPhone has always been within my reach, there to wake me in the morning, there to play my music library, there to keep my calendar, there to capture my life in pics and video, there for me to enjoy sling-shooting wingless birds into enemy swine, there as my ever-present portal to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

My iPhone is such a part of my daily life, I rarely think self-reflectively about it. That’s precisely what concerns David Wells, 75, a careful thinker who has watched trends in the church for many decades.

Wells asks Christians to consider the consequences of the smartphone. “What is it doing to our minds when we are living with this constant distraction?” he said recently in an interview. “We are, in fact, now living with a parallel universe, a virtual universe that can take all of the time we have. So what happens to us when we are in constant motion, when we are addicted to constant visual stimulation? What happens to us? That is the big question.”

That’s a huge question. What is life like now because of the smartphone? How has the iPhone changed us? These self-reflective questions may seem daunting, but we must ask them.

Read the full article here

Paul Tripp- If God Weren’t Angry

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An excellent (but too brief) desription of the holy anger of God

 

If God Weren’t Angry

Called to represent God’s work of grace in the lives of others, many of us in ministry need to reevaluate how we think about the anger of God. Sometimes we can treat God’s anger like the embarrassing uncle in our extended family. It’s as if we’re working hard to keep this attribute of God away from public exposure. Are we secretly worried about causing undue embarrassment to the family of faith? We’re tempted to act as if anger were the dark side of God’s character.

God doesn’t have a dark side! John says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It’s impossible for there to be anything evil in God. It is impossible for him to feel or act unrighteously. He’s entirely holy in every respect. He’s completely good in everything he does. He’s not evil, can’t be tempted by evil, and doesn’t tempt anyone to do evil. He’s perfectly holy, always, and in every possible way.

Implications for a Fallen World

All of this has very important implications as we seek to live and minister productively in this fallen world. If God is holy and angry at the same time, then anger is not evil in and of itself. If it were, God would never be angry. The many passages that teach us God is angry simply wouldn’t be in the Bible (see Exodus 32:10, 34:6; Deuteronomy 29:28; 2 Kings 22:13; Psalms 2:12, 30:5; Romans 1:18; and more). Therefore, it is not merely possible to be holy and angry at the same time, it is a calling. If you recognize and treasure the unchanging holiness of God and his call to be holy as he is holy, you’ll find it impossible to be in contact with anything that’s in any way evil and not be angry.

This means if we’re to take seriously the call to imitate our Father in heaven, calling ourselves and others to act and respond as he does within our human limitations, we must be angry. Not selfishly angry because we’re not getting our own way, but worshipfully angry in the face of anything that’s a violation of what God says is right, good, loving, and true.

The Anger of Grace

Let’s be very clear. God’s anger is the anger of grace. It isn’t the violent anger of unbridled and unrighteous fury. God’s anger always works to right what’s wrong. That’s what grace does. This gracious anger has two sides to it: justice and mercy. In the gracious anger of justice, God works to punish wrong, but he does even more. God isn’t satisfied merely with punishing wrong. His hunger for right is so strong that he will not relent until wrong has been completely destroyed. He will not rest until evil is no more and justice and righteousness reign forever and ever!

There is also another side to his gracious anger. It’s the anger of mercy. In mercy he works to convict—that is, to produce in us a sorrow for the wrongs that we think, say, and do. In mercy he works to forgive—that is, to clear our moral debt. In mercy he works to empower—that is, to give us everything we need to resist wrong and to do what’s right. And in mercy he works to deliver. He won’t be satisfied until every microbe of sin is completely eradicated from every cell of the heart of every one of his children.

Where do we see both sides of God’s anger coming together in one moment? On that hill outside the city gates where Jesus hung. That’s where we see justice and mercy kiss. As he hung there, Jesus bore the full weight of the justice of God’s anger. He paid the penalty our sin required. And on the cross Jesus became the instrument of God’s merciful anger that every sinner needs. He purchased our forgiveness.

If God were incapable of anger, there would have been no cross. You see, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ forces us to deal with God’s anger. It requires us to help those to whom we minister to think of God’s anger in a deeper, more richly biblical way. Think about it: no anger, no cross; no cross, no hope of the final victory of righteousness, mercy, and justice. This would leave us in a world where evil exists inside us and outside us with nothing that we could do about it. The entire world and everyone in it would literally be going to hell, and we’d be along for the ride with no way of getting off. We would be both victims and also victimizers living in a now and future hell of separation from God and everything that is good, watching darkness get darker with no hope of light. There’d be no redeeming hope, no message worth taking the time to prepare and preach.

Anger is one of God’s most beautiful characteristics. For God’s children, his anger is a place of bright hope. Because he’s righteously angry with sin every day, we can rest assured that everything sin has broken will be restored. Everything sin has twisted will be straightened. Everything that’s gone wrong will be made right again. God’s anger assures us that all things will be made new.

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Book Review “Rethinking Hell”

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Rethinking HellHell is one of those doctrines which most people don’t want to think about. In our age of seeker-sensitive services we focus on the positives and so preachers tend to avoid topics like Hell.

It’s unpleasant to think about what might happen to our unsaved relatives, so we try to put the eternal torment of souls out of our minds.

Of all the doctrines which have been comprehensively debated and looked at in the context of the Bible, the fate of those who die without Christ has been ignored. We have just taken at face value the Medieval imagery of the fired of hell tormenting people eternally.

The Biblical references to Gehenna can be interpreted differently, and increasingly evangelical Bible scholars are suggesting that the traditional picture bears very little resemblance to what Jesus and Paul actually taught. They say that the “everlasting fire” does not necessarily mean that people are continually tormented by fire for ever, but rather the language is about total irreversible destruction- what John calls the “second death.”

There is no denial of judgement implied here nor of people receiving due punishment for their unrepented sin.

At the heart of the traditional view is the idea of the immortality of the soul, that is the classical Greek idea that once created humans live for ever, and not even God can kill them. Those who refuse to embrace the love of God have to be parked somewhere for eternity and pay for their ongoing rebellion against God.

Opposed to this view, the New Testament seems to teach that only God by nature is immortal and humans receive eternal life by the grace of God. Immortality is therefore conditional on God’s grace. The overwhelming imagery when talking about punishment in the New Testament is death not torment.

“Rethinking Hell” is a collection of essays by scholars of impeccable evangelical pedigree. They argue their respective points of view from the teaching of Scripture, and the totality covers the topic from every conceivable angle.

The book has prompted me to look more seriously at what the Bible( rather than tradition) teaches about the judgement of God and the end of times.

Violence and the Christian

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Crusades

Last night my Cell Group viewed a short presentation by Ray Vander Laan from a former Crusdaer fortress in the Holy Lands. It was a powerful depiction of what Ray called “Misguided Faith”, the belief that we can turn Jesus’ command to love our enemies into a program of death and destruction.

While it is not possible to accurately estimate the number of people killed in this series of wars launched by Europeans to reclaim the Holy Lands from Muslims, a million deaths seems to be an average guess. 

This morning I read about an atrocity committed against Christians in a Muslim country and someone responded that Christians need to get smart and retaliate “like the Buddhists.”

I can understand the motivation for such a statement, but it isn’t a christian attitude.

I get angry and I want to lash out at times. If a group of people attacked my church, my friends, my family I would want to retaliate.

Jesus dealt with the sin of the world- which at its heart is a violent attack on the sovereignty of God- by showing love not retaliation, by dying not killing, with grace not war. There will be judgement, but that is God’s last resort, not the first option.

To be clear, I’m not talking about self-defence here or protecting your family in the face of a real danger. This is about wanting to use the weapons of the world to achieve the goals of the Kingdom of God.

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4 (ESV)

In relation to the Crusades, these acts of warfare 1000 years ago in the name of Christ are still a stumbling block to talking to people about Christ in the Middle East. 

When we seek to do Christ’s work in ways that are not Christ’s the long term effects are always disastrous.

 

Christians, Drugs, Alcohol and Coffee

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I was shocked to get this answer from a guy on a mission team when I asked him how he had slept: “Not too well. I normally smoke some weed at night to help me calm down.” His pastor assured me that he is receiving prayer and help to deal with this addiction, so, like all of us, he is a work in progress.

Apart from the fact that marijuana is illegal here, this raises all sorts of questions for me about our attitude to drugs. By drugs I mean any chemical other than food or prescription drugs used to change our state of mind. There are a whole lot of grey areas here, such as anti-depressants which are a boon to people struggling with chemical imbalances but can become over-prescribed to medicate sadness.

Let’s look at some common examples:

  • the use of weed to help with sleep
  • needing a glass of wine or beer (or two or three glasses) after work to relax
  • taking “uppers” to help with long work hours
  • needing the cup of coffee to get started in the morning
  • smoking

Caffeine, for most of us, is harmless. It stimulates the body a little bit and doesn’t have any long term effects on the body. However it is being used in larger quantities in so-called energy drinks and in many soft drinks. If you regularly “need” caffeine to keep going then there is a problem. If you need coffee before you can face humanity in the morning there is an addiction issue.

Christ came to set us free from every bondage. I like tea and coffee, and I used to drink wine some times. I have never been addicted to any of these things. If I were to start to depend on them to make me feel good, then I would no longer be free. When we depend on anything other than Christ, we are in captivity.

Paul writes in Galatians 5:1:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

To say that I need anything other than Christ is idolatry. We are saying that God doesn’t really meet our needs, and we will only be happy if we have something in addition to what He gives us in Christ. This of course is the original temptation in the Garden of Eden. Eve didn’t really believe that God had given her all that she needed and much more. We often don’t really believe God’s word either.

Modern idolatry takes all kinds of forms- sex, possessions, sports, entertainment, drugs. In each from there is an element of placing something at the centre of our desires (that’s what worship really means) that is not God. To be dependent on drugs is to bow down to an idol.

Addiction, particularly to drugs which alter our state of mind, is a gateway for spiritual bondage. There is a spirit of addiction which keeps us dependent. If you open your spirit to an evil spirit, there is no room for the Holy Spirit. We are each meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, so no unclean thing should be allowed access.

Relying on chemicals, whether legal or not, inhaled, injected, eaten or drunk, holds us back from maturity. We are looking to them and not to Christ for our fulfilment.

If you are struggling with any addiction  and you are a follower of Jesus, then you need to repent, ask for grace to overcome and seek help from trusted people. The Lord has the strength to overcome this in you.

‘Unique’ Religious Freedom Restrictions in Saudi Arabia

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Disturbing news from Saudi Arabia. From the Christian Post.

‘Unique’ Religious Freedom Restrictions in Saudi Arabia:

Not a Single Church Exists, Entire Country Is ‘Sacred Mosque,’

Watchdog Reveals

“Not a single church or other non-Muslim house of worship exists in the country,” says Bandar al-Aiban, the director of the Saudi National Human Rights commission. Churches are not allowed to exist “because the entire country is a ‘sacred mosque’ for Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.”

International Christian Concern has highlighted the extent of the restrictions in Saudi Arabia, which is officially an Islamic state, and the consequences they have on the millions of Christians, who are mostly foreign workers, living there.

“Saudi Arabia remains unique in the extent to which it restricts the public expression of any religion other than Islam,” the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its 2014 Annual Report.

Operation World estimates that close to 2 million non-Muslim foreign workers live in Saudi Arabia, and around 1.5 million of them are Christians. Statistics on how many Saudis are Christians are harder to come by, as the government does not recognize such believers, but they face a situation in which there is not a single church in the entire country where they are allowed to publicly meet.

Saudi Arabia has close to 4,000 religious police officers entrusted to enforce its Islamic laws. Leaving the Islamic faith is considered apostasy and punishable by death, with non-Islamic prisoners often pressured to convert to the religion.

Other Christian groups have also documented the intense persecution Christians face in Saudi Arabia. Open Doors ranks it at No.6 on its list where Christians face the most persecution. In 2013, it was ranked at No.2, behind North Korea.

ICC pointed out that the United States government maintains a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, and in March President Barack Obama met with King Abdullah during an overseas trip. Obama failed to call out Saudi Arabia on its severe religious freedom violations, however.

“This visit was an excellent opportunity for the president to speak up on an issue that affects millions of Saudi citizens and millions more foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia,” ICC Middle East Regional Manager Todd Daniels said then.

“Only last month the president clearly stated that promoting religious freedom is a key objective of American foreign policy, and then reaffirmed that opinion in remarks following his meeting with Pope Francis on Thursday, according to the White House. On top of this, 70 members of Congress specifically asked him to publicly address the issue, as well as other human rights concerns, with King Abdullah today. How, despite all of this, the president could stay completely silent about religious freedom during his meeting is remarkable.”

Read the article here

More Air, More Spirit

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Before going on my almost daily bike ride this afternoon, I decided to check the pressure in my tyres. I was surprised to find that they were down to only 20 psi and 30 psi instead of the preferred 50 psi . I got out  the compressor and in the space of a few minutes I corrected the problem.

When I rode, I immediately noticed the difference. Instead of slogging away,feeling as if there was a stiff wind blowing against me, I almost seemed to fly. My speed was nearly 5 km/hr faster than yesterday, and I returned home feeling refreshed rather than exhausted.

A bit of air in the tyres makes all the difference.

In the bible the words for spirit in both Hebrew and Greek can also mean breath or wind.

If we have the Holy Spirit leading our lives, directing our paths and empowering our deeds, we will find ourselves able to do more with less effort. Instead of it being all my work, I become energised by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Next Sunday the church marks Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out into the church. Lives were transformed and within a couple of generations the whole of the Roman Empire was filled with people proclaiming the message that “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Pumped up, full of the Holy Spirit- nothing can stop the man or woman of God.

Spurgeon- The Lack of the Times

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mildorfer_pentecost340x600

“We must confess that just now we have not the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that we could wish.  Many are being converted.  I hope that few of us are labouring unsuccessfully; but we are none of us labouring as our hearts could desire.  Oh, that I could feel the Spirit of God in me, till I was filled to the brim . . . . We seek not for extraordinary excitements, those spurious attendants of genuine revivals, but we do seek for the pouring-out of the Spirit of God.  There is a secret operation which we do not understand; it is like the wind, we know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth; yet, though we understand it not, we can and do perceive its divine effect.  It is this breath of Heaven which we want.  The Spirit is blowing upon our churches now with his genial breath, but it is as a soft evening gale.  Oh, that there would come a mighty rushing wind that should carry everything before it, so that even the dry bones of the Valley of Vision might be filled with life and be made to stand up before the Lord, an exceeding great army.  This is the lack of the times, the grand want of our country.  May this come as a blessing from the Most High.”

C. H. Spurgeon, in Lectures Delivered Before The Young Men’s Christian Association in Exeter Hall From November 1858 to February 1859 (London, 1859), pages 168-169.

The Cost of Faith

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P1020018I met Pastor Suum at the Apostolic Summit in Rockhampton last month.

This quietly spoken, gentle man told us in his broken English about his life in Myanmar.

At one stage the local villagers were angry about his ministry. They took him out to a rice paddy and beat him severely. They abandoned him there, believing him to be dead. Friends found him and took him to hospital where it took him three months to recover. One wound to his head came perilously close to his brain.

The local authorities arrested the perpetrators, which is quite unusual in these cases.

Today he sent me some pictures of the recent “graduation” that he organised for children who attend the preschool he runs at his church. Despite some opposition and huge poverty, Suum is making a difference in his area. He works hard to educate children so that they have a chance to earn a better income and rise above the captivity of poverty. He also talks to people about Jesus so that they can be lifted out of spiritual poverty and set free for eternal life.

Suum is a reminder to me of how easy we have it in Australia in so many ways.

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