Search for 'prayer' (Page 14)

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The Negotiables

I am a lover of the local church in any form I find it, provided we mean the same thing by “church.” I’ve had forty years of ministry in all kinds of churches, internationally and here in the States. I have seen some great ones and some very sad, sickly ones—and that has little to do with size. If it is a true church, however, I’m for it and wish to see it flourish. I’ve not lost my enthusiasm for…

Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now — A Critical Review

  Osteen, Joel, Your Best Life Now, New York, Warner Faith Publishers, 2004. Inspirational/motivational; 310 pages.   It may seem foolish to disagree theologically with the man who pastors the largest congregation in America. Thirty-thousand adults attend Joel Osteen’s church every Sunday. Millions more tune in to his national and international television broadcasts. Certainly (one might assume) a man with this incredible following must be on the right track. Joel Osteen’s book, Your Best Life Now, is even endorsed by…

Life of Trust

Long ago I learned that people are not so interested in what a man can do for God, but rather what God can do for a man. I wanted my life to be a visible demonstration of the fact that God exists and that He hears and answers prayer. This led me to make financial choices that many of you ask me about. I am happy to talk about this since one of the very reasons I have taken this…

Thinking and Speaking Biblically about Natural Condition of Man, Part 1

Part 1: Thinking Biblically "Every person has an image of himself or herself. The question is, does your image of who you are line up correctly with who God says you are?" I found those words in a best-selling religious book, in a chapter entitled "Who Do You Think You Are?" The author, who is also the pastor of a very large church, made no attempt to distinguish between Christians and unbelievers before saying, to every reader, "God sees you…

Thinking and Speaking Biblically about Natural Condition of Man, Part 2

Part 2: Speaking Biblically In his book, So Great Salvation, Dr. Charles Ryrie, the former Professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, includes a chapter entitled, "It’s Not Easy To Believe." In the beginning of the chapter he writes, "When we ask someone to believe in the Lord Jesus, we are asking something very difficult." The difficulty Dr. Ryrie speaks of is the nature of the body of truth that must be believed. Factors such as our historical distance…

Thinking and Speaking Biblically About The Love of God for Man, Part 2

Part 2: Speaking Biblically1 On a Christian radio station, a speaker recently declared: “God loves you so much that if He had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.” Messages like this are not hard to find these days. People are inundated with images of God’s love that picture Him in heaven, longingly looking down at the human race and wringing His hands, hoping every single person will realize just how much He loves them and how desperately He…

Thinking and Speaking Biblically about The Providence of God, Part 1

Part 1: Thinking Biblically “Providence” is a theological term describing God’s preserving, sustaining, ordering, ruling, and governing of His creation. Many have used the word “meticulous” to describe the extent of God’s providence. “Meticulous” providence depicts God as ordering and directing everything—every detail in the universe. According to this understanding, every event in nature and every human action and decision is according to God’s decree and purpose. There are a number of biblical texts which affirm this view. For example,…

Thinking and Speaking Biblically about The Providence of God, Part 2

Part 2: Speaking Biblically “God had nothing to do with September 11th.” Those words were reportedly spoken by a pastor in the days following the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Whether they were actually spoken as reported or not, I do not know. I certainly disagree with them. But they raise a good question: If it is biblical to understand, as I tried to affirm in Part 1 of this article, that God in His providence is the “Author”…

A Different Style of Evangelist: Laborers on the Loose

The disparity between what Christ and Paul did in evangelism and what we do, at least in the West, is dramatic. Let me explain a few of those differences: 1. The first radical departure from Jesus and Paul is our concept of time-specific, meeting-oriented evangelism. You will read in vain in the New Testament to find so many days of evangelistic preaching scheduled for Jesus or Paul and conducted at 7 p.m. in a certain location. You do not find…

A Mission of Peculiarity: John 17:13-19

It is the task of the Christian to demonstrate his or her peculiarity to the world. In reading through the catalogue of people of faith in Hebrews 11, it is the peculiarity of the men and women of faith that is most prominent. You cannot get much stranger than Noah, for instance, who hammered on a boat for 120 years waiting for a promised flood in a world that had not yet even seen rain. Think about it. This man…

Members’ Review of a Potential Elder

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that ( elder candidate’s name here ) desires the position of elder with Christ Fellowship of Kansas City. Elder appointment is not a popularity contest, nor is the position something that a man earns due to his level of education, his social status, his wealth, or his seniority. Elders must be qualified according to God’s standard, capable of fulfilling the responsibilities they desire to assume, and doctrinally as well as philosophically…

Thinking and Speaking Biblically About the Death of Christ, Part 2

The Unambiguous and Unified Teaching of Scripture The Bible makes it clear that Jesus did not intend to merely make all men savable. His purpose was to actually "save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Jesus described His own mission on earth, saying, "the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10, also see Ezekiel 34:11-15). And the saving of all of His people, God’s elect, is consistently said not only…