The power to obey God

Imagine coming upon someone who’s pushing his car along the road.

You assume he’s out of gas.

So you stop, roll down the window, and offer to drive him to the nearest gas station.

But think of how shocked you’d be if he said –

Oh, that’s OK, I don’t use gas. I just get to where I want to go by pushing my car.

Crazy

You’d think that was crazy.

Because cars are not supposed to be pushed — by us.

They are supposed to be powered — by gasoline.

But too often that’s exactly how we try to obey God.

By what power do we obey God?

Read the rest of this article by Steve Fuller who explains that the power to obey God doesn’t come from the commands in the Bible, but from the promises in the Bible.

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A few thought-provoking, non-biblical proverbs

Dan Phillips (who has written a helpful book on Proverbs) shares a few of his own proverbs which he recognizes as uninspired and yet ones he has used in counseling, preaching, and evangelism. They range from the practical to the theological to the political.  Here are a few samples, but click here for more:

1. Folks who are full of themselves don’t leave much room for anyone else.
2. Every vote is a vote for the lesser of two evils.
3. Men shouldn’t let our eyes rest anywhere our hands shouldn’t.
4. Looking may just be looking, but doing starts with a look.
5. Only way to be certain not to forget something is to do it now.
6. Anyone who claims to be an apostle today is ‘way, ‘way too young.
7. If you ever weren’t God, you never will be.

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Starting and continuing evangelistic conversations

I want to do better at engaging others in evangelistic conversations on an everyday level.  I want to do more than just learn six steps to talking about Jesus, I want to actually do it.  So I found this article by Timmy Brister very convicting.  After briefly giving five foundational principles regarding evangelism, he offers seven sequential steps that lead toward and actually result in evangelistic conversations.

He urges us to dwell, engage, listen, ask, bridge, share, and follow up (all with adverbs attached).

If this is something you need help with, read more here.  The reading is the easy part, the following through is what I find most challenging. Lord, help me to do what I know you have called me to do!

 

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Sin: worse than you thought

Drawing on the words the Bible uses to describe our sin, Terry Enns provides this biblical overview that shows us how sinful sin is:

• Sin is a blasphemous insult against God (putting self in His place by flouting His commands).
• Sin is a deceitful lie, promising that which it cannot provide.
• Sin is an illicit, self-gratifying desire for something that cannot satisfy.
• Sin is lawlessness that seeks the removal of all restraints.
• Sin is unrighteousness that refuses its duty to God and men.
• Sin is an acceptance of the world’s standards above the standards and protection of God.
• Sin is to “miss the mark” — we’ve failed to hit the bull’s-eye demand of God’s righteousness (Mt. 5:48).
• The essence of all sin is to not glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31) and not love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And it is not just that we have failed to glorify him on occasion in the past, but we even now, constantly, fail to glorify Him.

One novelist summarized our sinfulness well when he acknowledged, “I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like, but I do know that the heart of a good man is like, and it is terrible.”

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Praying the Psalms

Graeme Goldsworthy:

“For any Christian for whom prayer is becoming formal and stereotyped, the Psalms provide a rich source of inspiration. It is true that to read the Psalms on your knees, as it were, can be a great boost to one’s prayer experience. The book of Psalms provides the most sustained and concentrated biblical expressions of prayer. There are two qualifications I would make to this recommendation to resort directly to the Psalms for prayer. . . .”

Find out what his two qualification are here.

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