Trials are tests that authenticate our faith. They are painful, but they strengthen us spiritually and build our character.
Right now America is living through one of the greatest trials we have faced as a nation.
Trials are tests that authenticate our faith. They are painful, but they strengthen us spiritually and build our character.
Right now America is living through one of the greatest trials we have faced as a nation.
After finding out that I was in contact with someone who has contracted COVID-19, I went into self-isolation. While under quarantine, I was convicted of the fact that as a Christian, I’m called to lead with my example as well as my word. Here are three ways to love by example during this pandemic.
In Italy, reports are emerging that doctors are being forced to ration medical treatment. Doctors are being forced to ask if a bed and care should be given to an eighty-five-year-old with a low chance of survival, or a forty-five-year-old with a much better chance of survival?
During the third-century Plague of Cyprian, Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote that the Romans “pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt…”
Christians, however, as sociologist Rodney Stark famously put it, “ran into the plague.”
A veteran member of the International Olympic Committee told USA Today that the 2020 Summer Olympic Games set to be held in Tokyo are going to be postponed. It's is likely the games will occur in 2021.
I thought the world would be watching how the Christian community would handle a divisive election year. That’s not the case – at least not right now. Rather than watching how Christians react to an election cycle, Americans may instead be turning to faith to answer their questions about how to deal with worry, anxiety, fear and even death.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian who spent eight years waiting for execution on a trumped-up charge of blasphemy, recalled her mistreatment. She described how much of sham her “trial” was, and how she was not even allowed to say anything in her own defense. She talked about the pressure she faced to renounce her faith.
And then she said, “I am not angry at all. I have forgiven everyone from my heart. And there is no hardness in me.”
Many of us struggle while trying to carry the weight of our burdens -- burdens we could put down if we wanted to, but endlessly struggle nonetheless.
According to Barna's State of the Church 2020 report, in the last twenty years church engagement has dropped by nearly half.
We have a politician actually doing what he said he would do. His past is not perfect, but he is guiding America in the right direction. He is surrounded by many godly men and women, and many governmental agencies are now hosting Bible studies.
