BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS

Thursday, 25 February 2021

Charles Spurgeon Knew It Was Possible to Be Faithful and Depressed

How his example can encourage believers who “walk in darkness, and see no light.”

For Charles Spurgeon, the celebrated 19th-century preacher, depression was more than just circumstantial. When he spoke of it in his sermons and lectures, his examples, which were often rooted in his own experience, included a significant form of depression: the kind that comes without cause. In one sermon, he said,

You may be surrounded with all the comforts of life and yet be in wretchedness more gloomy than death if the spirits are depressed. You may have no outward cause whatever for sorrow and yet if the mind is dejected, the brightest sunshine will not relieve your gloom. … There are times when all our evidences get clouded and all our joys are fled. Though we may still cling to the Cross, yet it is with a desperate grasp.

Spurgeon understood that depression isn’t always logical and its cause is not always clear. There are times, he said, when our spirits betray us, and we sink into darkness. We slip into the “bottomless pits” where our souls “can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.” There is no reasoning, and a remedy is hard to find. As he put it once in a lecture to students:

As well fight with the mist as with this shapeless, undefinable, yet, all-beclouding hopelessness. One affords himself no pity when in this case, because it seems to be unreasonable, and even sinful to be troubled without manifest cause; and yet troubled the man is, even in the very depths of his spirit … [it] needs a heavenly hand to push it back … but nothing short of this will chase away the nightmare of the soul.

I am so thankful for quotes like this from Spurgeon because you can hear his understanding. I remember how helpless I have felt in my own depression, ...

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And Campaign to Add 13 New Chapters During Pandemic

Political tensions and growing racial awareness have fueled interest in its message of social justice and biblical morality.

The And Campaign—the organization rallying urban Christians to “faithful civic engagement”—is on track to quadruple its size in the span of a year, with chapters launching in three Southern cities in 2020 and scheduled to launch in another 10 cities in the first half of 2021.

Last year’s convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and political and racial unrest in the United States catapulted organizations like the And Campaign, which were already addressing these complex issues, to a new level of prominence.

“The pandemic had a huge impact on our growth,” said attorney and political strategist Justin Giboney, who cofounded the And Campaign with pastor Angel Maldonado and hip-hop artist Sho Baraka in Atlanta in 2015.

In May, the group’s Statement on Racialized Violence went viral after the death of George Floyd, tripling its social media following.

“When that racialized violence happened, and everyone had their full attention on it because there was nothing else to pay attention to, our executive committee got together and said, ‘Hey, we need to speak into this,’” said Giboney, referencing the killings of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

“So many Christians are trying to find a way to process exactly what is going on in biblical terms. Some are ignoring it because their ideology is too far right. Some are getting too caught up in the moment and kind of changing their convictions because they have gotten too caught up on the left. I said we need to speak into this in a real way, and so we created a biblical statement on racialized violence.”

The statement addressed racism and criminal justice reform—one of the core political issues for ...

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Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Iraq’s Struggling Christians Hope for Boost from Pope Francis Visit

Landmark trip will include Qaraqosh, where most families fled ISIS yet some are now trying to restore the Christian heartland of the Nineveh Plains.

Nasser Banyameen speaks about his hometown of Qaraqosh in the historical heartland of Iraqi Christianity with nostalgia. Before Islamic State group fighters swept through the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq. Before the militants shattered his sense of peace. Before panicked relatives and neighbors fled, some never to return.

Iraq’s Christian communities in the area were dealt a severe blow when they were scattered by the ISIS onslaught in 2014, further shrinking the country’s already dwindling Christian population. Many hope their struggle to endure will get a boost from a historic visit by Pope Francis planned in March.

Among the places on his itinerary is Qaraqosh, where this week Vatican and Iraqi flags fluttered from light poles, some adorned with the pope’s image.

Francis’ visit, his first foreign trip since the coronavirus pandemic and the first ever by a pope to Iraq, is a sign that “You’re not alone,” said Monsignor Segundo Tejado Muñoz, the undersecretary of the Vatican’s development office. “There’s someone who is thinking of you, who is with you. And these signs are so important. So important.”

The ISIS juggernaut and the long war to drive the militants out left ransacked homes and charred or pulverized buildings around the north. But the biggest loss perhaps has been the people. Traditionally Christian towns across the Nineveh Plains virtually emptied out and, by some of the widely varying estimates, fewer than half of the Christians who fled have returned.

The Vatican and the pope have frequently insisted on the need to preserve Iraq’s ancient Christian communities and create the security, economic, and social conditions for those who ...

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A World Vision Employee Is Still Awaiting Fair Trial in Israel

The charges against him don’t make sense. And his day in court has been delayed again and again.

Every day, at least once and sometimes more, Khalil el-Halabi logs on to Twitter and posts pictures, videos, and appeals on behalf of his son Mohammad.

Tagging people he believes might come to his aid—human rights lawyers, politicians, and journalists—he calls for justice and mercy. On January 4, he posted, “To our Israeli neighbours. My son will be brought to court for the 154th time Tuesday facing a charge he has not committed without any credible evidence.”

He closed the tweet with a quote from Amos 5:24: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Khalil’s son Mohammad el-Halabi is the former Gaza director for World Vision International. He was arrested by Israeli authorities in 2016 on allegations of aiding terrorists by diverting millions of dollars from the evangelical humanitarian aid group to arm militants in Gaza—charges Mohammad el-Halabi, still employed at World Vision as a zonal manager, adamantly denies.

After more than four years, Halabi is still awaiting justice. He hasn’t had the chance to defend himself or even see much of the evidence against him. Human rights experts with the United Nations say Halabi has also been denied access to his lawyer and tortured. His case is causing consternation among politicians and legal experts and has cast a cloud over evangelical organizations doing charitable work in Gaza and the West Bank.

“World Vision has not seen any credible evidence supporting the charges,” said Kevin Jenkins, World Vision International’s president and CEO, in a statement immediately after the arrest. “None of the allegations against Mohammad el-Halabi have been tested in an open court, ...

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Died: Celebrate Recovery Founder John Baker, Who Shifted Evangelicals’ Approach to Addiction

The Saddleback Church pastor developed the popular Christ-centered 12-step program for “hurts, habits, and hang-ups.”

Celebrate Recovery founder John Baker, who turned his testimony recovering from alcoholism into a biblical 12-step program used by more than 7 million people, died unexpectedly on Tuesday at age 72.

Baker’s ministry began in 1991 at Saddleback Church in California and has spread to 35,000 churches nationwide over the decades. Celebrate Recovery is credited with helping destigmatize addiction among evangelicals and opening the church up as a safer place for recovery.

“Thirty years ago John Baker turned the ruins of his life over to Jesus Christ and God transformed him from a driven businessman with an addiction to alcohol, a failing marriage, and alienated children to a Christ-follower with a passion to help others with their ‘hurts, habits, and hang-ups’ through the principles of recovery,” wrote Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church and a mental health advocate. “There is simply no way to put into words how I love John and will miss this kind, creative, brilliant and faithful man.”

Evangelical leader Johnnie Moore, whose family previously belonged to Saddleback Church when living in California, remembered Baker’s commitment to “saving the lives of the people whom God loves.”

“He became a doctor of hope for those whose lives were caught in vicious cycles of guilt, shame, and failure. With God’s help, he showed again and again that those cycles can be broken,” he said. “Pastor John was never content just to save souls. He wanted to also save lives, now. It isn’t just the impact he had on individual lives but on all of those who loved those who decided to walk into a Celebrate Recovery meeting.”

Baker was raised in Collinsville, ...

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Black Church Group Offers Its Best Shot at Closing Vaccine Gap

To reach the most vulnerable, leaders say vaccine sites have to set up in hard-hit neighborhoods and let churches spread the word.

As the nation passed 500,000 coronavirus deaths this week, government data revealed that the life expectancy for African American men dropped three years—triple the decline among Americans overall during the first half of 2020.

In an effort to help reach minority communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 but less likely to get the shot, a coalition of 150,000 churches recently announced its plan for vaccinating over 100 million black and Latino churchgoers.

The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), which represents historic black denominations and partners with Latino leaders, has been lobbying the federal government for a more comprehensive plan to address disparities in COVID-19 vaccine uptake. NBCI president Anthony Evans wants to see the government more deliberately use churches’ built-in trust and familiarity to make the vaccine more accessible for minority populations.

Evans said at a press conference at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Washington, DC, last week that he supports Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for who should become vaccinated first but worries that African Americans and Latinos who qualify because of their age or underlying medical conditions aren’t getting the vaccine.

A representative from Health and Human Services (HHS) has not responded for comment on the NBCI plan, though the CDC distribution plan intends to address health inequities and “remove unfair, unjust, and avoidable barriers to COVID-19 vaccination.”

While black churches across the country have already opened their doors to help states and hospitals distribute the vaccine, Evans’s large network could add 300 church-based vaccination sites in the hardest-hit ...

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Tuesday, 23 February 2021

Southern Baptists Expel Two More Churches Over Abuse

Top leaders address divides in the denomination at the first in-person Executive Committee meeting in a year.

At its first in-person meeting since the pandemic took off a year ago, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee decided to cut ties with two churches whose pastors had been convicted of sexual offenses as well as two LGBT-affirming churches. But it was leaders’ concerns over ongoing tensions within the denomination that stirred Southern Baptists during the two-day gathering at its Nashville headquarters.

“Southern Baptists in large part are ready to walk into the future. But we are spending a lot of time tolerating those who would rip us apart…,” said SBC president and Executive Committee member J. D. Greear during remarks Monday night. “Brothers, let’s just call it: These things are demonic.”

During his presidency, Greear led the charge to stand by abuse victims in the wake of a watershed 2019 Houston Chronicle investigation, but some advocates are still disappointed that the denomination has not been more proactive in disaffiliating with pastors who mishandle abuse allegations or compiling a database of abusive leaders.

Though the disfellowshipped congregations represent a tiny proportion of a denomination with over 47,000 churches, it’s the biggest batch to be considered “no longer in friendly cooperation” with the SBC since it launched new efforts to improve its response to abuse.

This is the second year that the denomination’s repurposed credentials committee been tasked with making recommendations about churches’ status in the SBC. In 2020, the committee recommended one church lose its place in the convention due to past abuse by its pastor. This year, the committee recommended four. The SBC does not make public how many churches ...

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