Posted on Tuesday,

#25: Why Ideas Are So Powerful

Why Ideas Are So Powerful

Ideas have always been and continue to be our Enemy’s favorite method of undermining the work of God.

Dallas Willard comments on what happened in the garden of Eden:

“Ideas and images are … the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday. Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.”

Ideas have always been our Enemy’s favorite method of undermining the work of God.

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Two observations. First, both Adam and Eve fell for the bad idea that God really can’t be trusted. Second, once ideas take root, they have a mind of their own and pick up speed like a snowball rolling down a hill!

That is why God’s Word reminds us:

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”–2 Cor 10:3-5

Notice that part of our (more…)

Posted on Tuesday,

#24: Does the Bible Teach That Jesus is the Only Way to God?

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Does the Bible really teach that Jesus is the only way to God?

That’s a good question. Our culture is definitely headed in the direction of pluralism and relativism.

For example, 6 out of 10 teenagers today agree with the statement “many religions can lead to eternal life; there is no one true religion.” Prominent religious leaders like the Dalai Lama agree when he says, “the essential message of all religions is very much the same.”

There are different parts of this question worth looking at and responding to, but I want to focus on what the Bible says. Because if the Bible teaches that Jesus is the only way to God, then it doesn’t matter what our increasingly secular thinks.

It turns out (more…)

Posted on Tuesday,

#23: What Are Spiritual Disciplines?

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What Are Spiritual Disciplines?

Right off the bat, we need to acknowledge that Paul commands us to discipline ourselves “for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:7 – 8 NASB; cf. 2 Peter 1:5 – 10).

They are essential for our growth and not optional when it comes to the Christian life.

A discipline is “any activity I can do by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot now do by direct effort.”

For example, we practice scales on a piano to learn to play music — not to get really good at playing scales.

I don’t practice grammar to get really good at grammar. I study vocabulary and grammar so that I can learn to speak a new language and experience the whole new world that language opens up.

The eternal kind of life is (more…)

Posted on Tuesday,

#22: Is Science Our Only Source of Knowledge?

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Is Science our only Source of knowledge?

With the rise and success of modern science (and these advances have been beneficial in many ways), some people have unfortunately come to believe that science, and science alone offers true knowledge of reality.

Famous atheist Bertrand Russell put it this way:

“Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”

Initially, this sounds sophisticated and intelligent. The only problem is that if it’s true, we couldn’t know it to be true. Why?

Scientism is Self-Refuting

Because the statement (more…)

Posted on Tuesday,

#21: How Do We Overcome Hurry Sickness?

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How do we overcome hurry sickness?

Dr. Richard Swenson is a futurist who writes about the social and personal factors that afflict America. Swenson has diagnosed the problem of our day as “overload.”

If you were to take an MRI of our lives, here is what you would see:

“We have too many choices and decisions, too many activities and commitments, too much change creating too much stress. We have too much speed and hurry. We have too much technology, complexity, traffic, information, possessions, debt, expectations, advertisements, and media. We even have too much work.”

And all God’s people said — “Amen!”

When There Is No Margin

When we no longer have any margin in our lives, no space between our load and our limits, then we are in a constant state of overload. And that is not a healthy place to be.

There is perhaps no greater barrier to spiritual transformation and cultural engagement today than lack of time. If we are to be who God calls us to be, we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives. God’s word instructs us “to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12 ESV).

Paul admonishes us to “look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16 ESV).

We can have (more…)