You can change

Years ago I started reading articles by Tim Chester that were published in a magazine/journal called "The Briefing". His approach to ministry was refreshing and I have since read a few of his books. The post here appeared on the Desiring God Blog not long ago.

I wanted my book on sanctification, You Can Change, to be an anti-self-help book written in the style of a self-help book! So each chapter is built around a question to ask of yourself and ends with questions to help readers work through an area of their lives they would like to change.

But the central message is that we cannot change ourselves through our own effort. Instead, we are changed by God through faith. The key is understand how the dynamic of change by faith takes place and how other disciplines (like avoiding temptation and the means of grace) fit into a faith-based approach.

Here’s how the book unfolds:

1. How would you like to change?

We were made in the image of God to reflect his glory in the world. Jesus is the true image of God who reflects God’s glory. Through Jesus we can again reflect God’s glory as we image his Son. So the change that matters is becoming more like Jesus so that we reflect God’s glory.

2. Why would you like to change?

We often want to change to prove ourselves to God or to other people or to ourselves. But this puts our glory at the centre of change and that is pretty much a definition of sin. Plus Jesus has proved us right or justified us through his death. Instead, we change to enjoy the freedom from sin and delight in God that God gives to us through Jesus.

3. How are you going to change?

We cannot change ourselves through rules and disciplines because behaviour comes from the heart. Instead God changes us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the Spirit in us.

4. What’s going on in your heart?

Our circumstances and struggles can trigger sin, but sin is caused by the thoughts and desires of our hearts.

5. What truths do you need to turn to?

We sin when we think or believe a lie instead of trusting God. Change takes place as, in response to God’s goodness and grace, we turn to him in faith. Legalism says, ‘You should not…’ Faith says, ‘You need not… because God is bigger and better than anything sin offers.’

6. What desires do you need to turn from?

We sin when we desire or worship or treasure an idol instead of worshipping God. Change takes place as, in response to God’s goodness and grace, we turn from idolatrous desires in repentance. This repentance is a continual act of turning from sin and denying self. It is often called ‘mortification’—putting to death whatever belongs to the sinful nature. Repentance is the flip-side of faith: we turn from sin in repentance as by faith we recognise that God is bigger and better than anything sin offers.

7. What stops you changing?

What stops us changing is our pride. Our pride makes us minimize or excuse or hide our sin. Or we think we can change on our own.

8. What strategies do you need to put in place to reinforce faith and repentance?

We are not to sow to the sinful nature. This means saying ‘no’ to whatever might provoke our sinful natures (which we do by fleeing temptation) and saying ‘no’ to whatever might strengthen our sinful desires (which we do by avoiding the influence of the world). Instead, we are to sow to the Spirit. This means saying ‘Yes’ to whatever might strengthen our new, Spirit-given desire for holiness (which we do through the word, prayer, community, worship, service and so on).

9. How can we support one another in change?

God has given us the Christian community so that we can change together by speaking the truth in love to one another to reinforce faith and repentance.

10. Are you ready for a lifetime of daily change?

Change is a lifelong, daily struggle that will end with an eternal harvest of holiness.

The key moves in the book, but also the key moves for anyone wanting to help others change are:

ensuring the what, why and how of change are God-oriented not self-oriented (otherwise we will just produce more effective legalists);
moving the discussion from merely looking at behaviour to looking at the affections of the heart;
showing how change takes place through daily faith and repentance, and making this connection concrete for people;
introducing the ideas of fleeing temptation and discipling life only once this foundation has been built as means to reinforce faith and repentance rather mechanisms for self-induced changed;
showing how the Christian community is the normative context for change and how we can help one another change.

I have been intrigued by LaCrae and Trip Lee and others who are communicating good theology through Rap these days. Christianity Today has an article on some of these guys that you can download in PDF format.

Don’t Merely Defend the Bible. Know What’s in it.

This is worth taking a few minutes to read...

Perhaps before we go out to defend that the Bible is absolutely true, binding, and authoritative we should make sure that the people we are talking to actually understand what the Bible says. It seems to be that more and more people that I talk to really don’t know what the Bible is about.

When we talk to people using phrases that we understand – sin, faith, judgment, hell, heaven, repentance, Jesus, the cross, resurrection, etc. – we need to know that they might have no idea what these words really mean. Hardly anyone knows what sin is and why it’s serious. How can they be helped if we simply tell them, “You can be forgiven of your sins if you repent and believe in the Gospel”?

The rest is here

How Timothy Keller Spreads the Gospel in New York City, and Beyond

There is a great article online about Tim Keller's newest book and his work in NYC. If you are not aware of or had not thought about how challenging it is to do gospel ministry in NYC, read this. It is very cool.

Jonathan Edwards still inspires

Several links here that might inspire you... all related to Jonathan Edwards and his resolutions as a young man. First an article about Edwards and then a bit about the resolutions and then a poster that you can buy if you want to (but it's really expensive cause it's a fundraiser).

An excerpt from the article by Stephen Nichols...

He was a young man unsure of his future. He had many gifts and not a few options before him. His father and grandfather were ministers, as were uncles and others in the family tree. He had a first-rate education, one of the finest of the day, so he was well-prepared for a future in the halls of the academy, should he so choose. He even had a penchant for science and perhaps could have headed off in that direction. But for the time being he was a pastor, a young pastor at that. Eighteen going on nineteen, he found himself far from his native soil of the Connecticut River Valley in the throes of a church split in a Presbyterian church in New York City. He had been invited to pastor the minority faction somewhere along the docks of the city’s harbor. New York City wasn’t nearly as busy in 1722, the year in question, as it is now. The population hovered around just under ten thousand. For a young man from the idyllic setting of small town New England, however, it was a place unlike any he had ever seen.

Amidst all of this uncertainty and flux, this young man, Jonathan Edwards, needed both a place to stand and a compass for some direction. So he took to writing. He kept a diary and he penned some guidelines, which he came to call his “Resolutions.” These resolutions would supply both that place for him to stand and a compass to guide him as he made his way.

Pelagianism and the gospel

At our youth commission training day, I threw out a few terms that I only briefly explained. I thought it would be good to give you more background and detail.

Here it is...

Pelagius was a heretic in the church back around roughly 400 AD. He believed that every person is responsible for their own life. Adam gave us a bad example and Christ gave us a good example, but neither affected us. We choose freely and are judged by our own choices. The impact Pelagius left on the church, besides being noted in history as having been declared a heretic by the Council of Carthage, is that today we use the term “pelagian” to describe the view that we save ourselves. We can see some of this idea when people talk about free will (and mean that we totally control whether or not we get to heaven) or describe Jesus as a great moral example.

Semi-pelagian then is the perspective that we save ourselves with God’s help, or that it is somehow a shared process. This view might suggest that free will means that Jesus’ death on the cross made it possible for me to choose him and decide to be a Christian. Semi-pelagianism is the view of the Roman Catholic Church because they teach that salvation is by grace and man’s good works. This view means that we contribute something to our salvation... namely being good enough to be saved. They do not teach that we are already good enough but through confession and penitence, we work towards salvation.

This contrasts with the quote we put before you.

"The gospel of submission, commitment, decision, and victorious living is not good news about what God has achieved but a demand to save ourselves with God’s help. Besides the fact that Scripture never refers to the gospel as having a personal relationship with Jesus nor defines faith as a decision to ask Jesus to come into our heart, this concept of salvation fails to realize that everyone has a personal relationship with God already: either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified coheir with Christ and adopted child of the Father."
— Michael Horton

We looked at Col 2:6-15 and asked the question... “What part did you contribute?” The answer is nothing, nada, zero, zip! God did it all. This is salvation by grace because grace is unmerited favor. In other words, it is good stuff we get - that we do not in any way deserve.

We did not have time to look at Phil 2:12-13 On that passage, I wanted to point out that our will power is God’s workmanship. Most of the time we notice the idea of working out our salvation but we don’t notice the phrase after it which tells us that it is God’s work not ours. We have to learn to live as people who have been saved already by God’s grace. Which leads us back to the phrase that Thomas Cranmer believed...

“What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” ~ Thomas Cranmer

I don’t recall if I explained fully who Thomas Cranmer was. He was the first Archbishop of Canterbury after the Church of England left the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote our first book of common prayer in 1549 and revised it in 1552 to make it more clearly unlike the Roman Mass. Our BCP comes from his work. However, our BCP has been significantly influenced by Roman Catholic theology and it really is very different from Cranmer’s final work. That is a different topic though.

We talked about the fact that if we want to get rid of sin in our lives, we need to focus our attention on Jesus and put our hearts on him. The more we love God, the more our behavior will change to reflect that. This is good news! Not that we keep making commitments or rededicating our lives but that we seek to fall in love with Jesus every day. This is also humbling news because we recognize that the sin in other people’s lives and the sin in our society is the result of people not knowing the love of God. It’s not that they are bad people and we are not. We are all sinners in need of a savior.

So to sum up things... salvation is totally God’s work. We merely receive the gift through faith, which is a gift in itself. Where does that leave free will then? Simple... free will is generally true of our choices apart from the matter of salvation. Meaning, I choose who I marry, where I got to college, what kind of car I will buy, where I will live, etc etc. Of course we seek God’s direction on all that stuff, but the bottom line is that we can make these choices. We ought to make these based on where we sense that God is pointing us. If we did not have this sort of free will, we would be merely puppets on strings. If you don’t understand that metaphor, sorry.

So, does that shed some more light on things we discussed way back in January?

Follow Lauren this year...

The Adventures of Lauren

We moved the blog...

At Growing Leaders '09 Leadership camp, we set up a new blog and moved the content of this one to that location. All future posts will go there. Visit Growing Leaders Blog HERE

Time to register...

Live The Word - Confess from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

12

From Youthwalk...

As research, Laurin was reading a secular book online about how nonbelievers view faith. “Christianity is a myth,” the book said. “It’s just a crutch that people want to be true.” As she read more of the book, she heard in her head: “Your faith is a myth. How can you believe in a Man who lived 2,000 years ago that you never met? And you believe He set you free? Free from what? It’s very convenient that He was the One who told you what He’d be setting you free from. It’s all a farce, and you’ve bought it.” As the thoughts rolled around, a feeling of panic rose up.

Laurin closed the window on her computer screen and tried to remind herself of the truth. It wasn’t helping. She took a couple of deep breaths and asked, “Lord, help. I feel like I’m under attack. I know these thoughts and feelings aren’t from You. What is attacking me right now?”

She asked the question a couple more times, waiting for an answer. Soon she heard, “Disillusionment.” “Disillusionment?” she asked, “I don’t even know what that word means.” She looked up the definition, and sure enough, it was exactly what she was experiencing. “I bring the full work of the cross of Jesus Christ between me and the spirit of disillusionment,” she said out loud. “I am covered in Jesus’ blood, protected by His Spirit who lives in me, and in Jesus’ name you must leave.” Immediately, like turning a light on in a dark room, the panic left.

Have you ever felt a heaviness or deep despair for no good reason? Have you suddenly felt a feeling of panic about a situation where nothing has changed about it? While we can’t explain everything about it, sometimes demons work this way.

God’s Kingdom is marked by the fruit of His Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). So, when you encounter something contrary to God’s Kingdom, there’s a good possibility that it has an evil, supernatural source. And that source must be resisted.

More often than not, spiritual warfare is not fought directly against demons, but against the environments they seek to suck us into. Refuse to go along with an atmosphere that’s not of God’s Spirit. Don’t let things like discouragement, despair, bitterness, and shame suck you in. Refusing to step into the climate that demons have created is a powerful tactic in spiritual warfare.

Does the thought of demons shock you a little? In places where cultures interact more directly with the spirit world, demons often show up more directly. Satan and his cronies are more overt in those places. In cultures that are more skeptical of the spiritual world, demonic beings prefer to be more undercover because they can get away with more if they aren’t recognized. They can operate under people’s radars.

If you’re in a situation that requires a direct confrontation with a demonic influence, be decisive with it like Jesus was (Matthew 17:14-21; Luke 4:31-36; 8:26-37). Rebuke the spirit in the name of Jesus. Command it to stop and leave in Jesus’ name. Remember, you operate in His authority. Do like the archangel Michael did when he had a direct confrontation with Satan: When he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, [he] did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 9).

Ask God for help, and keep in mind that you operate from victory.

Memorize Ephesians 6:12.

The Rebelution's Do Hard Things Tour is coming to five major cities across the United States in Summer of 2009. Each conference is a challenging one-day event for teens by teens who believe that our generation is ready for a change. Ready for something that doesn't promise a whole new life if you'll just buy the right pair of jeans or use the right brand of deodorant.

We believe that our generation is ready to rethink what teens are capable of doing and becoming. And we've noticed that once wrong ideas are debunked and cleared away, our generation is quick to choose a better way, even if it's also more difficult.

The Do Hard Things Tour invites you to explore some radical questions:
Is it possible that even though teens today have more freedom than any other generation in history, we're actually missing out on some of the best years of our lives?

Is it possible that what our culture says about the purpose and potential of the teen years is a lie, and that we are its victims?

Is it possible that our teen years give us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for huge accomplishments -- as individuals and as a generation?

And finally, what would our lives look like if we set out on a different path entirely -- a path that required more effort but promised a lot more reward?
We describe that alternative path with three simple words: Do Hard Things.

More info HERE

What is a Worldview?

Summer

Why do I hope to be in Atlanta briefly this summer with my three students? Go HERE

Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend by Ravi Zacharias

A few clips from the book...

What I did not anticipate was having to give a defense of why I was defending the faith. “You can’t argue anybody into the kingdom.” “Apologetics only caters to pride, you know.” “Conversion is not about the intellect; it is all about the heart.” As the litany of questions runs for why we should study apologetics, so the reasons run as to why we should stay out of it.

Apologetics is a subject that ends up defending itself. The one who argues against apologetics ends up using argument to denounce argument. The one who says apologetics is a matter of pride ends up proudly defending one’s own impoverishment. The one who says conversion is a matter of the heart and not the intellect ends up presenting intellectual arguments to convince others of this position. So goes the process of self-contradiction.

The ultimate calling upon the follower of Christ is to live a life reflecting who he is, and in this book we will highlight three components of discipleship. In part 1, we will look at skeptics’—and believers’—difficult questions. We will suggest that we cannot begin to understand these questions until we ourselves have also wrestled with them intellectually and personally. In part 2, we see that our answers must then be internalized—the essential, lifelong process of spiritual transformation—such that, as seen in part 3, these answers may be lived out with compassion for the lost and a passion for the gospel. These are critical issues, for as I have said many times, I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out.

Sometime in the 1980s, Christians in the West began to label evangelistic techniques and reconfigure church services to reduce the message to the lowest level of cognition in the audience. As nobly intentioned as that was, the end result was the lowest level of writing and gospel preaching one could imagine. Mass media was brought to aid this purpose, and before long evangelicals were seen to be masters in entertainment and minimalists in thought. As this was happening, the intellectual arenas were being plundered and young minds gradually driven away from their “faith” in the gospel message. Christians are paying our dues today and likely will pay for an entire generation.

Read more HERE

A word on recent outcomes

Want a better understanding?

A helpful outline that sheds some light on part of the Old Testament can be found HERE

We need to understand the Old Testament simply because we
don’t. There is a system of theology teaching that certain portions of
the Bible are relevant only for a particular time and, therefore, we
don’t have to be concerned with that portion of Scripture. That is
simply not true. The Bible is a reflection of the God of the universe
and, as such, should be studied as a whole.

What is your group like?

An interesting interview with a college student about what prepared her (and did not) for college...

CPYU: As you reflect on your church youth group experience, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done more of to prepare you for college?

Gabrielle: I was in several youth groups in high school and unfortunately found that youth group was too “soft”—we played a lot of games and had a lot of fun retreats, but rarely learned about the fundamentals of faith, why we believe what we believe, and what it is that we do believe. Now that I am in college, my faith is under constant scrutiny and always being tested by scientific concepts and the secular slant of most universities. I wish I had been equipped with a more solid justification for my faith: knowing how to answer the tough questions, how to respond to arguments, and how to stand firm in what feels like a storm against my spirituality.

CPYU: Understanding the challenges that college life brings, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done less of?

Gabrielle: While I loved the friendships I made in youth group, there were far too many social events and not enough deep studying of God’s word. I felt this left me ill-prepared for the questions I would be faced with in college. Also, instead of so much group time, I wish we would’ve had more time one-on-one with a pastor, youth leader, or mentor.

Read it all HERE

Tolerance

Because of relativism, “tolerance” is another word that gets tossed around a lot in our culture. We’re told that we need to be more tolerant.

Being tolerant used to mean simply putting up with something that you disagreed with. But now because of relativism—and its teaching that there is no such thing as something that’s absolutely true for everyone—when people play the “be tolerant” card, they’re really implying that we should accept all beliefs as true.

But accepting all beliefs as true is impossible because different religions claim that contradictory things are true.

For instance, Christianity teaches that Jesus rose from the dead. Islam teaches that Jesus never died. How can both be true? They’re opposites. They contradict each other. Hindus believe that people’s souls live in cows. Muslims don’t believe that. Either people’s souls live in cows or they don’t. How can both be true? Islam teaches that Allah, the god of Islam, is unknowable and impersonal. But Scripture teaches that Yahweh, the God of Christianity, wants us to know Him on a personal level. How can both of those gods be the one, true, infinite, all-powerful God? It’s impossible.

Relativism is also behind the idea that all religions teach the same thing—that we ought to get along and love each other. But that simply isn’t true. The major world religions—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age—disagree about practically every major issue, including what God is like, the nature of man, sin, salvation, heaven, and hell. Those are extremely important issues!

Since Christianity is true, it’s actually unloving for Christians to suggest to anyone who holds opposing religious beliefs that their beliefs are true as well. Why? Because if they believe lies, it could cost them eternal life with the God who made them. Jesus is the only way to God (John 14:6), and accepting His death on our behalf is the only way that our sins can be paid for. So acting as if someone else’s beliefs are true when they contradict that essential truth is very unloving.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to love and accept people. That doesn’t mean accepting their beliefs. We can respect the beliefs of others, but we also need to lovingly tell them the truth about Jesus. To not do so is very unloving.

But wait! Isn’t “Don’t judge” a biblical statement? Isn’t it a sin for us to judge other people? A lot of people use Matthew 7:1-5 as biblical backup for why we shouldn’t judge others. But that passage is about judging other people hypocritically. God’s Word actually instructs us judge ideas and beliefs. He wants us to judge, evaluate, and investigate ideas. He doesn’t want us to blindly accept lies. Read Matthew 7:15-23 and 1 John 4:1.

Visit www.ywspace.org and check out the Beliefs charts we made comparing the teachings of Christianity to the teachings of other religions—Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The major world religions teach very different things, so they can’t all be true. First and foremost, let’s love the people who ascribe to these beliefs, and as an act of love we can respect their beliefs, but we don’t have to act as if those beliefs are true.

[from YouthWalk e-Devo]

More on Relativism

Relativism muddies the waters of morality. When there are disagreements about what is right and wrong in certain situations, relativists like to say, “See? There is no absolute morality. It’s all just people’s opinion.” But arguing over what’s right and wrong doesn’t mean that there isn’t an absolute right and wrong in every situation. It just means people disagree about it—even if God’s Word is very clear.

God has promised us that His ways are the truth and they lead to life. Disobedience to His ways lead to death. As Paul explained: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Take, for example, one of the saddest products of relativism—abortion. There are obviously differing opinions about the “morality” of abortion—some people say that a woman has a right to the freedom to control her own body; others think that a woman should not be allowed to end an unborn child’s life. Relativists use these differing opinions to say that there isn’t an absolute moral law in this case, just people’s opinions.

Oddly enough, each side of the argument is protecting what it thinks is a moral value: Those against abortion are defending the value that life should be protected, and those for abortion are defending the value that a woman should have freedom over her body. In the case of abortion, the real issue is about which value is greater or more important—is life more important, or is a woman’s freedom over her body more important? Since the unborn are human beings, a baby’s right to life is the value that should win out because a person’s right to life outweighs a person’s right to individual freedom. Even if there’s a debate on when life actually begins, abortion is still always wrong because it robs the unborn of the opportunity to live.

Even though there may be debate about what’s right, that doesn’t mean that the truth about what’s right and what’s wrong doesn’t exist at all. The disagreement about abortion exists because people are ignoring the Moral Law so that they can do what they want to do.

God has given us the absolute Moral Law in His Word. Moral values are absolute—even if we don’t quite understand how to apply them in certain circumstances and even if we don’t always live by them.

When you’re struggling with what it looks like to honor God in a certain moral situation, ask Him to guide you, and ask some of His faithful followers to help you. He promises that He’ll give you wisdom whenever you ask for it: “If you need wisdom—if you want to know what God wants you to do—ask him, and he will gladly tell you” (James 1:5 NLT).

When you know what is right and true in a situation, don’t let other people’s arguments about the matter sway you. Ask yourself: What are these people looking to get out of this situation? What motivation could they have for disobeying God? Behind their lofty arguments and philosophies will be the fact that they simply want to do what they want to do

[From YouthWalk e-Devo]

Relativism

Relativism. It’s the idea that nothing is absolutely, completely true all of the time and in all places. If nothing is absolutely true, as relativism claims, then how can Christianity be true?

But relativism doesn’t hold water—it isn’t true. It can be demolished by its one foundational claim: There is no such thing as absolute truth.

How can relativism be dismantled by that one statement? Because “there is no such thing as absolute truth” is an absolute statement. But if there are no such things as statements that are absolutely true, as relativism claims, then “there is no such thing as absolute truth”—an absolute statement itself—can’t be absolutely true either.

But the proof that relativism is bogus is way more extensive than that. The reality is that there is such a thing as truth—absolute truth. Truth exists. And we can know it. In fact, God wants us to know it. It’s why Jesus came to earth: “For this reason I was born . . . to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37).

What is truth? Truth is the way things really are regardless of how anybody feels about it. To combat relativism, we need to know what truth is. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek list several characteristics of truth in their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be an Atheist:

“Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge about it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)”
“Truth is transcultural. If something is true, it’s true for all people, at all places, at all times. (2 + 2 = 4 for everyone, everywhere, at every time.)”
“Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth change. (When we began to believe that the world was round instead of flat, the truth about the earth didn’t change, but our belief about it did.)”
“Beliefs cannot change a fact, no matter how sincerely they are held. (Someone can sincerely believe that the world is flat, but that only makes that person sincerely mistaken.)”
“Truth is not affected by the attitude of the one professing it. (An arrogant person doesn’t make the truth he professes false. A humble person doesn’t make the error he professes true.)”

Where did relativism come from? Why does it exist? The bottom line of relativism is this: It’s just a philosophically worded excuse for people to live the way they want to and write God off. Because if nothing is absolutely true then there’s no right or wrong. It’s just what works for you. A lot of people want to live the way they want to so they choose what they believe based on how they want to live. All the while, Truth still exists. And He wants people to know Him.

[From Youthwalk Devo]

Books I dug over the summer...

Calvin for Armchair Theologians
Christopher Elwood

The book is described on google as “An introduction to the life and main teachings of John Calvin (1509-1564), this book blends Calvin's theology into the story of his life to provide those with no knowledge of the Genevan reformer with a concise picture of his key theological views.

This was one of the audio books I explored over the summer. It was so good I listened to most of it twice! Having read some of Calvin’s Institutes and heard lectures on him, I was really seeking a rounded summary of the man and his ideas. I was not disappointed! The fun thing about listening to the audio version was that it is read by a Brit ,which made it sound a bit like listening to Harry Potter books as the reader on those audio books has the same posh, well educated accent. I highly recommend it and in fact discovered that you can read this book online for free! It is a fun and easy read. The armchair series has a variety of people covered. The next one I will be exploring is Augustine.

Bittersweet moments

Back at re:generate I stood at the front on Saturday night and announced to the crowd that there was a party going on up in Heaven. I had just been told that one of the girls from Porter Gaud had given her life to Christ. I was more than thrilled because she and her twin sister were two students who had really reached out to my kids at the school . Their bubbling enthusiasm and joy in life was constantly overflowing. I would say to the point that some did not know what to make of it. Now, I don’t think I will ever forget that moment… but a few months ago I did not fully realize it’s significance.

On Friday I attended a memorial service for one of the twins. She and her mother were killed in a tragic car accident. The other twin survived with fairly minimal injuries. It was a tough service to attend. My kids have had a rough time with this death two months after losing their grandfather and it is the second tragic death of a classmate this year. While I sat there surrounded by masses of students and family, the assistant chaplain of the school started the service with prayer. Before praying though he read two letters from the mom that he had received earlier this year. One was a powerful testament to the goodness of the mom. The other expressed deep appreciation for the impact that re:generate had on her daughters. She shared how they came home changed from that weekend with a renewed faith, a desire to read scripture, and a new prayer life. She was thrilled by the spiritual growth that had taken place on re:generate. Needless to say I was a mess at this point with tears of both joy and sorrow filling my eyes. There is nothing more amazing than knowing that a young girl and her mom are in a better place even though we grieve their absence.

The pastor took the time to share a bit of a gospel message in the service. I don’t think any such service should be without this, and am still annoyed that nothing of the sort took place at my dad’s funeral. He relayed what he thought that the mother and daughter would want everyone to know – namely that God did not take their lives (accidents happen in this world), that they are in a better place, and that we can all see them again if we surrender our lives to Jesus. As I left the service I praised God that the gospel is clear in our events and my passion for seeing people come to a saving faith in Christ was renewed once again.

Amazing Testimony

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Youth Commission Interviews

Youth Commission 1

Oh Dear...