It’s no coincidence that Xi Jinping doubled down on his own cult of personality and cracked down on religious freedom just as China’s economy began to slow. The renewed call to Chinese nationalism from Beijing effectively distracted the population from growing economic worries and offered an effective pretext for cracking down on Hong Kong protestors, many of whom see their protesting as an outworking of their Christian faith and as something for which they are willing to die.
We can allow Jesus’ horrific sacrifice to be an event like Memorial Day that we remember occasionally with gratitude. Or we can allow the One who died so we could live to lead us into “life in all its fullness” today (John 10:10 GNT).
Many of the men and women who died for our freedoms did not die for what we are becoming today. Many gave their lives so that we would be “one nation under God,” not above God.
This weekend, whether surrounded by your family or alone in rest and reflection, ask and answer the question, “What makes Memorial Day different from all other days?” And in answering that question may you remember the hand of God in founding and guiding this nation.
By reframing race as our responsibility, white churches will find the ministry of reconciliation that was waiting for us all along.
Darrin was a pastor, through and through. So he subjected himself to a restoration process that was, by all accounts, brutal and exhausting. Yet through it all, he remained honest, and vulnerable.
Baylor historian Philip Jenkins predicts that in the people will think about church in terms of “BC…Before Coronavirus,” and after.
The key factor in Jenkin’s fascinating analysis is what we might call “pre-existing conditions.” In other words, in many ways, the coronavirus hasn’t so much created problems for the Church as it has revealed and accelerated them.
We’ve focused this week on ways to love our neighbor during the pandemic by loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30-31). We’ll close today by focusing on loving God “with all your heart” (v. 30).
In 2013, I met Ravi Zacharias and we instantly became friends. Ravi changed my life, and I believe his homecoming will produce an exponential wave of evangelists, apologists and everyday believers emboldened to follow his example.
If you’ve experienced the transformative nature of God’s Word in your own life, there’s no doubt you would want your children to have the same hunger in their lives. Since we as parents cannot guarantee our children won’t face hardship, we can only trust that properly equipping them with His Word will give them a firm foundation to stand on.
