BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS

Tuesday, 3 March 2020

One-on-One with Joel Dillon on ‘Jill’s House: The Gift of Rest’

The Body of Christ isn’t complete without people with disabilities and their families, but in our experience, the vast majority of them are cut off from the Body of Christ.

Ed: Why did you write this book?

Joel: We wrote this book for one simple reason: The Body of Christ isn’t complete without people with disabilities and their families, but in our experience, the vast majority of them are cut off from the Body of Christ. There are just too many barriers between them and being a part of a local church.

Most Christians understand this and they want to do something about it. But often, they just don’t know quite what to do or how to do it. Our hope in writing The Gift of Rest is to take the story of Jill’s House and use it to inspire and equip churches to make their congregations places of true belonging for people with disabilities and their families.

Ed: Who is it for?

Joel: This book was written for every church and every Christian interested in digging deeper into the call to love all our neighbors—particularly people with disabilities and their families. If a church is just getting started on this journey, it is my hope that The Gift of Rest will encourage them to take those all-important first steps and to provide them with some very practical tips for doing so.

And even if they are already well on their way to being a community where people with disabilities and their families belong, I think The Gift of Rest can encourage them to think even bigger and more broadly than they have before, and give them some guidance along the way.

Ed: Why do you think the church needs the message of this book right now?

Joel: Next Sunday morning, I’d encourage you to take a look around the sanctuary and count how many people you see who have a disability (of course, not every disability is visible, but that is a discussion for another time). Similarly, walk through all the Sunday ...

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Be Careful About Reading the Bible as a Political Guide

Without a mature understanding of God’s purpose for governments, we’ll default to the commonplace views of our culture.

When it comes to determining how the Bible addresses political issues, its many related verses can feel like a massive sack of Legos. One person opens the sack and builds a car, another a brontosaurus, another an old Western town. With enough skill, you can build whatever you want.

Want to make the Bible say welfare policies are bad? Find a proverb on laziness leading to poverty (Prov. 10:4). Want to say the opposite? Find another calling people to “defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Prov. 31:8–9).

The point is not that Proverbs contradicts itself. All these passages say something true. But we lack clear rules for knowing how any one of them should guide today’s public policy. Further, we too often witness people and parties exploiting the Bible for their purposes.

Longtime Westmont College professor Tremper Longman III brings his Old Testament expertise to bear in The Bible and the Ballot: Using Scripture in Political Decisions. The book offers counsel on how to read Scripture politically, followed by what Longman believes the Bible teaches on ten public policy issues of our day: nationalism, religious liberty, war, abortion, criminal justice and capital punishment, immigration, same-sex marriage, the environment, poverty, and racism.

Institutional Awareness

Most of what Longman offers about how to read the Bible politically is sensible. He argues that the Bible does not provide us with specific public policies, only general principles we should take seriously. I agree entirely.

Longman offers good, solid principles of interpretation. They include paying attention to a book’s genre and original context and taking account of continuities and discontinuities between the Testaments, especially ...

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Monday, 2 March 2020

Nigeria’s Government Finally Agrees: Islamist Terrorists Target Christians

The goal of Boko Haram and ISWAP is “to divide Christian brother against Muslim brother,” Buhari administration tells CT.

The Nigerian government now agrees with what church leaders have been complaining for years: Christians are the target of jihadist terrorism.

“In the wake of a renewed onslaught by our tireless military against Boko Haram and their ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) allies in recent times, the insurgents have apparently changed their strategy,” said Lai Mohammed, the minister of information and culture, at a press conference last week.

“They have started targeting Christians and Christian villages for a specific reason, which is to trigger a religious war and throw the nation into chaos.”

In comments given exclusively to CT, the administration of President Muhammad Buhari clarified that this targeting is not new.

“Yes, Boko Haram is targeting individual Christians. In doing so, their target is all Nigerians, and their goal is to divide Christian brother against Muslim brother,” Mohammed, the information minister, told CT.

“What Boko Haram seeks—and always has sought—is to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.

“By targeting Christians, they seek to promulgate the falsehood that the democratically elected Nigerian government does not care to protect them.

“By targeting Muslims, they seek to promulgate the falsehood that the terrorists themselves follow truthfully Islamic teachings, and those they target do not.

“It is the strategy of the desperate.”

CT previously reported on the martyrdom of 11 Nigerian Christians killed by ISWAP over the Christmas holiday, as well as the January 21 killing of Lawan Andimi, a Brethren pastor and regional leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), beheaded by Boko Haram.

In response, the ...

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Evangelism Formation: Created to Be CREATIVE for Christ

Are you prayerfully discerning where God is creatively leading in seeking the lost?

If I was to testify about the four spiritual aliens (called my family) whom I live with on a daily basis, I could tell you that there is never a dull moment in our lives. I live in a house where boredom will never want to visit, where monotony could not find a room, and where the ordinary wouldn’t leave his luggage.

Our home is busy with creative people. As I often wondered where all of our children’s uniqueness derived, I had to realize that from generation to generation in both my family and wife’s family, there was and still remains some creative minds that has made their mark on society.

I believe that all children of God who are followers of Christ, should understand what they have inherited from their God and Father. At the moment of our salvation, our daddy in heaven has spiritually deposited in us his image and DNA in order to do a great missional work in our time that reflects who HE is through us.

We should be encouraged to know that our God has gifted each of us, through the extraordinary redemptive work of Jesus Christ, with the power of the Holy Spirit, to use his creative abilities to share our faith with others for his glory praise and honor.

So as Christ-followers who already have the creative power of God dwelling inside of us, it would be ideal to answer the questions for ourselves: How does God want us to access the creative ideas that he wants us to have to evangelize in different ways with others who are far away from Christ? Let’s consider these questions.

First, when will God hear from you first?

In other words, are you prayerfully discerning where God is creatively leading in seeking the lost? Luke 11:9-10, 13 says,

“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and ...

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My Same-Sex Attraction Has an Answer

But it’s the answer God gives all of us.

When I wrote my first article on being a same-sex-attracted Christian, what surprised me most were the emails I started receiving from straight men. The notes often came from men my parents’ age, the same message nestled again and again into my inbox: “I never expected this to help me.”

People attracted to the opposite sex read about same-sex attraction for many reasons. Sometimes a pastor wants to disciple a young man who experiences same-sex attraction. Sometimes a woman wants to know how to love a sister who identifies as lesbian and has left the church. Still others simply want to think biblically about trends they see in the culture around them. But what they don’t usually expect, it seems, is commentary that helps them in their own fight for the obedience of faith.

My latest book, Born Again This Way: Coming Out, Coming to Faith, and What Comes Next, is meant to help same-sex-attracted Christians thrive in Jesus and also help others come alongside us in our journeys. But Christians who experience same-sex attraction are asking questions that tap into some very universal streams. God has made all of us embodied desirers, and as sinners who fall short of his glory (Rom. 3:23), we have similar challenges spring-loaded into our systems.

First, we all need to test our desires against the same target: Christ.

In the book, I wrestle in public with a very private experience: Many of us who love Jesus cannot shake romantic and sexual desire for those of our same gender. That desire is so potent that it can look and feel like our rightful master, and we wonder if we should bow down and serve.

But doesn’t that same siren call reach for all of us, in some way or another? Whether our desires are targeted ...

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Set Free by the Cross, Why Do We Live in Bondage?

The Enemy wants us to doubt the efficacy of God’s grace and the assurance of his mercy.

The United States of America is built upon the ideal of freedom. Though it has not always lived up to the true meaning of its creed, the great struggle in the conscience of America has been the struggle for freedom. On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry spoke the immortal words in defense of freedom and the American Revolution: “Give me liberty or give me death!” For Henry, it was liberty or death. For Jesus Christ, it was liberty by death. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ set us free. Yet, as all Americans know, freedom is not free. This is never truer than of the freedom we have in Jesus.

The Good News of the gospel is that Jesus died and rose again so we would be free from sin. Sin is a power that enslaves. From the beginning, the sin of Adam and Eve became the sin of all (Rom. 5:12). Consequently, being born in Adam is being born in bondage to sin. This is much like the great evil of human slavery we see in our history; one of the tragedies of the American slave system was that children born to slaves were slaves as well. But Christ broke the curse of sin in Adam and thus set the children of Adam free (v. 19). No longer slaves to sin, but now slaves to righteousness. No longer bound by the yoke of bondage, but now free in Christ. Nevertheless, that freedom is always under attack.

Following the Emancipation Proclamation and the formal end of slavery in the United States, there came a new kind of slavery, namely the oppression of Jim Crow laws. In some regards, this was more insidious and demeaning than the first. It gave the impression of freedom, yet it systematically and institutionally kept black Americans in bondage. This new slave system was not formal bondage, but it was oppression and bondage nonetheless ...

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Turning Up the Volume: Joyful Noise or Noise Ordinance Violation?

Concerned neighbors and church members sound off about megachurch worship becoming “too loud.”

Nearby businesses and residents initially welcomed Transformation Church when it bought the abandoned Spirit Bank Event Center in Bixby, Oklahoma, last August. But some neighbors have already had enough.

Sound complaints have reached a fever pitch, with those living in a housing development behind the church claiming it’s so loud their coffee mugs shake during worship, according to a recent report by Tulsa ABC affiliate KTUL. The city attorney called on Transformation—which draws 3,500 visitors each week to the Tulsa suburb—to lower the volume or build a wall to block the excessive noise.

Despite exhortations in the Bible to “make a joyful noise to the Lord” and “praise him with loud clashing cymbals” (Ps. 100:1; 150:5, ESV), volume has been a major factor in the so-called worship wars for years, causing discord in communities and within congregations themselves.

News reports indicate more than a dozen US churches faced significant backlash for their noise, such as police warnings or citations, in the past year. Complaints tend to be lodged against megachurches with auditoriums containing sophisticated sound systems for bombastic music sets and high-energy sermons.

Neighbors in the Charlotte, North Carolina, Ballantyne neighborhood have repeatedly complained about noise from Elevation Church continuing as late as 10 p.m. And between December 2018 and November 2019, police in Seminole County, Florida, received 222 complaints against Action Church for noise issues.

Some smaller churches also draw complaints from residents, particularly as the makeup of a neighborhood changes around them. In recent years, the city of Oakland threatened to impose a $500-per-day fine on Mount Pleasant Baptist ...

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