President Biden will mark the one-month anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with three global summits in Europe today. At one of these events, he will address an emergency NATO summit at which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will also speak.

Meanwhile, a “face” of the crisis in Ukraine is back in the news. 

Two weeks ago, I profiled a seven-year-old Ukrainian girl who beautifully sang “Let It Go” from the movie Frozen in a Kyiv bomb shelter. The girl, Amelia Anisovych, is now one of the 3.5 million Ukrainians who have become refugees since Russia invaded their country. More than two million of them have fled to Poland, where Amelia is now with her mother and grandmother. 

Last Sunday, she sang the Ukrainian national anthem in a Polish arena. Tickets for the arena’s ten thousand seats sold out, and the event raised over $380,000 for a humanitarian group serving Ukrainian refugees at the Polish border. 

From a gifted young girl to an acclaimed senior adult: the death of eighty-four-year-old Madeleine Albright is also leading the news. Her story was remarkable as well: born in Prague, her family fled to London when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia. She earned a doctorate from Columbia, became fluent or close to it in six languages, and served as America’s first female Secretary of State. 

Proposed bill decriminalizes killing newborn babies 

Encouragement and inspiration are vital gifts in these challenging days. 

According to a new report profiled in the New York Times, alcohol-related deaths in the US rose 25 percent from 2019 to 2020 and outnumbered COVID-19 deaths among adults younger than sixty-five. Drug overdose deaths also increased by 30 percent during the first year of the pandemic, reaching record levels. 

From “deaths of despair” to a culture in disarray: A Yale professor is warning that law schools are in crisis after students disrupted a free speech panel. The University of Virginia’s student newspaper opposed a campus visit from Mike Pence, claiming that the former vice president’s beliefs threaten “the well-being and safety of students.” Miami Beach declared a state of emergency this week after a pair of weekend shootings, part of a surge in such violence across the country. 

And a proposed bill in California would codify the killing of unborn children throughout all nine months of pregnancy and would decriminalize killing newborns even after their birth. It shields a mother from civil and criminal charges for any “actions and omissions” related to her pregnancy “including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.” “Perinatal death” includes the death of a child up to seven completed days after its birth. 

“The telegraphic wire which links earth and heaven” 

This week, we’ve been focusing on ways we can redeem the crises of these days by meeting needs with courageous compassion. Today, let’s explore the faith it takes to make a difference in discouraging times. 

One of my mentors, John Edmund Haggai, often encouraged those he led to “attempt something for God so great it is doomed to failure unless God be in it.” Seeking a moral reformation in a culture that has abandoned biblical morality certainly qualifies. 

The good news is that, no matter how discouraged we become, the amount of our faith is less important than its object. Charles Spurgeon observed: “Faith is the telegraphic wire which links earth and heaven—on which God’s messages of love fly so fast, that before we call he answers, and while we are yet speaking he hears us.” 

He added: “Faith clothes me with the power of God. Faith engages on my side the omnipotence of Jehovah. Faith ensures every attribute of God in my defense. It helps me to defy the hosts of hell. It makes me march triumphant over the necks of my enemies.” 

A leap into the light 

Our skeptical world by definition lacks such faith in God. As. C. S. Lewis noted, we have put God “in the dock” (the British term for putting him on trial) and make demands of him that we make of no one else. 

I have received two COVID-19 vaccines and a booster. However, I did not study pharmaceutical science to verify their contents before receiving them. I take a few prescription medications each day, but I have not sought advanced medical training to certify their efficacy. If faith is trusting that which I have not proven, I do almost everything I do by faith. 

Sitting in this chair, breathing this air, eating the food I will eat today—all of it is done by faith. Since selling my 1965 Ford Mustang many years ago, I have not driven a car whose technology and engineering I understood. I wouldn’t even know how to change the oil on my current vehicle. 

Not only do most of our decisions and actions require faith—all of our relationships do. Every relationship requires a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating. You cannot prove you should marry your spouse before you marry them. You can examine the “evidence,” but you must step beyond it into a commitment that eventually validates itself. It is the same with friendships, employment, choosing schools to attend, and so on. 

And it is the same with a relationship with God: you cannot prove his love until you experience it. You cannot prove his forgiveness until you seek it. You cannot prove his providence until you submit to it. 

Such faith is not a leap into the dark but into the light. 

“A period when true faith can emerge” 

Oswald Chambers noted: “The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is because we have no Almighty Christ. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment to Jesus Christ.” 

The way to know God is all you hope him to be is to believe him to be all you hope him to be. Such faith positions you to experience his best, to receive his grace, to experience his transforming love. 

Henri Nouwen wrote: “I really want to encourage you not to despair, not to lose faith, not to let go of God in your life, but stand in your suffering as a person who believes that she is deeply loved by God. When you look inside yourself, you might sometimes be overwhelmed by all the brokenness and confusion, but when you look outside toward him who died on the cross for you, you might suddenly realize that your brokenness has been lived through for you long before you touched it yourself. 

“Suffering is a period in your life in which true faith can emerge, a naked faith, a faith that comes to life in the midst of great pain. The grain, indeed, has to die in order to bear fruit, and when you dare to stand in your suffering, your life will bear fruit in ways that are far beyond your own predications or understanding.” 

Will your life bear such fruit today?

Denison Forum

“America stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they fight for their freedom and their future.” This statement was posted by former President George W. Bush on his Instagram page along with a video of himself and former President Bill Clinton laying flowers at Saints Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church in Chicago. Mr. Clinton also tweeted a video of their ceremony and said, “America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression.”

In related news, a Ukrainian official accused Russia of bombing 135 hospitals and shelters since the invasion began on February 24. She tweeted, “Inhumanity of Russian troops has no limits” and claimed, “Russia is a war criminal.” 

These two stories have this in common: they both presuppose the sanctity of every human life. Former American presidents stand in solidarity with unnamed Ukrainian citizens. Attacks on hospitals and shelters are rightly viewed as attacks on humanity. 

Is our moral compass pointed in the wrong direction? 

NASA has now confirmed more than five thousand worlds beyond our solar system. However, so far as scientists know, our planet uniquely hosts life created in the image of our Creator (Genesis 1:27). Corporate CEOs can face discouragement amid these “unprecedented times” just like the rest of us. 

A new survey reports that 72 percent of Americans say the nation’s moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction, a finding that suggests there is a “right” direction and that we can and should find and follow it. And a Wall Street Journal reporter responded to the fact that “all my millennial friends are rethinking their lives” by choosing to embark on a “reassessment” for the sake of his “mental and spiritual health.” His observation assumes that such health is possible and desirable. 

This week, we’ve been discussing proactive ways we can respond to the crises and challenges in the daily news and our daily lives. On Monday, we honored and sought to emulate Christians in Poland who are ministering sacrificially to Ukrainian refugees. Yesterday, we sought to answer our Father’s invitation to deeper intimacy with him that empowers our compassion and our courage. 

Today, let’s take another step into the significance of service that touches hurts and transforms hearts. I once heard a pastor state that every Christian needs a personal Acts 1:8 strategy, a plan to use their influence where they live, across their larger region, and around the world. 

How can you and I fulfill such a strategy effectively? 

Worship leads to sanctification leads to service 

In Exodus 31, God told Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship” (vv. 1–3). The text then describes the ways Bezalel would serve in building the tabernacle (vv. 4–5). 

He would not labor alone: God “appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach” and has “given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you” (v. 6). 

To fulfill this calling, these servants of God are called to a counterintuitive commitment: “And the Lᴏʀᴅ said to Moses, ‘You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, “Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lᴏʀᴅ, sanctify you“‘” (vv. 12–13, my emphases). 

Before Bezalel, Oholiab, and their team could begin building the tabernacle, they were called to worship the Lord of the tabernacle. Before I can preach sermons or write articles for God, I must meet with God. When I do, I can share a word not just about him but from him. 

When relevance becomes a problem 

Here’s our problem: if we do not see God as he truly is, we will not worship and serve him as he truly deserves. 

The evangelical church in my lifetime has made a dramatic shift in how we relate to the culture. There was a day when most people went to church (or said they did). Many Americans grew up with a basic understanding of the Christian faith. Churches therefore did not feel the need to appeal to the secular culture in ways that were intentionally accessible to secular people. 

As the culture began shifting to a post-Christian culture in the 1960s, many pastors and leaders sought to change their methods of ministry to reach the unreached. Some megachurch buildings came to resemble shopping malls. Hymns led by choirs and organs became choruses led by bands and contemporary instruments. Sermons focused more on practical advice regarding marriage, money, self-esteem, and other felt needs. The goal was to demonstrate cultural relevance in everything we did. 

I agree completely that we need to take Christ to the lost. Jesus called us to be “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19); fishermen go where the fish are to be found and use methods appropriate to the fish they are trying to catch. 

However, in an effort to make the church more accessible to the culture, there is the risk of unintentionally diluting the biblical call to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). 

When last were you awed by God? 

“Something immeasurably superior to yourself” 

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis noted: “In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. 

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” 

Which way are you looking today?

Denison Forum

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger, 120 miles west of Dallas. He held an outdoor worship service last Sunday in front of their 103-year-old building, which was destroyed by fire last Thursday evening.

In his sermon, he spoke of residents who lost everything as their homes were turned to rubble and firefighters from thirteen state agencies and forty-eight local fire departments who dropped everything to help. Among them was Eastland County Sheriff Deputy Sgt. Barbara Fenley, who was killed while going door to door trying to help people escape. 

In other news, four US soldiers were killed in a plane crash during a NATO exercise. The White House warned yesterday that the Russian government “is exploring options for potential cyberattacks.” Public health experts warn that a more transmissible version of the omicron variant may fuel a surge of COVID-19 infections in the US. In the continuing strategy to normalize LGBTQ activity, the movie Lightyear will feature Pixar’s first same-sex kiss. 

And amid the escalating tragedy in Ukraine, this report was especially grievous: Boris Romanchenko survived the Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, but he did not survive the carnage being perpetrated by Vladimir Putin. The ninety-six-year-old was recently killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, another victim of Russia’s atrocities. 

However, while we seem to be surrounded by evil, suffering, and deception on every side, there’s always more to the story. Pastor Berry testified in his sermon: “We are always more than the tragedies we face. There is beauty in ashes, hope in despair, and hope is evident, even in mourning.” 

How can we find such hope where we need it most today? 

Why Denzel Washington is grateful for the “grace of God” 

Yesterday, we discussed God’s invitation to see pain and suffering as opportunities for the gospel when we exercise the power of courageous compassion. Today, let’s focus on the power we need to demonstrate that power to others. 

Like a group of investors who purchased a Caribbean island, we can withdraw from the world and its problems. But for Christians, this keeps our salt in the saltshaker, our light under a basket (Matthew 5:13–16). 

Or, like actor Denzel Washington, we can view our abilities and resources as gifts given by the “grace of God” and use what we have “to help others.” 

The difference Jesus makes in those who follow him is documented regularly by research. For example, a new study shows that teenage Christian boys from working-class families who regularly participate in their church and demonstrate faith in God are twice as likely to earn bachelor’s degrees as their nonreligious or moderately religious peers. And research by the Barna Group reports that 61 percent of practicing Christians said they are flourishing in romantic relationships and friendships, compared to only 28 percent of all US adults who said the same. 

“This is the way, walk in it.” 

I was privileged to speak last Sunday and Monday at the First Baptist Church in Midland, Texas, where Janet and I served as pastor from 1988–94. They are one of the finest New Testament congregations I have ever known. Their vision statement, displayed where everyone who walks the halls of the church can see it, explains why: “To know Christ and make him known.” 

Their outstanding pastor, Dr. Darin Wood, and the congregation understand that each side of the statement is essential to the other. We must know Christ before we can make him known, and we must make him known to know him better. 

We must breathe in to breathe out and breathe out to breathe in. 

You and I obviously cannot give others what we do not possess ourselves. To teach you to speak French, I would first have to learn how to speak French. But the harder I work to teach you French, the more French I am likely to learn. 

Craig Denison is right: “It’s in seeking relationship with God that we become familiar with his voice and are able to follow him as sheep with their Shepherd.” Craig cites these promises: 

• “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known” (Jeremiah 33:3). When last did you hear “things that you have not known” from God?
• “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isaiah 30:21). When last did you hear such a word from your Father?
• “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13). When last did you hear the Spirit’s voice in your mind and heart?

“Let not the rich man boast in his riches” 

Our hurting world desperately needs the gift of authentic Christianity. Lives being transformed every day by the living Lord Jesus are proof that God’s word is true and his grace is amazing. 

Unfortunately, many of us settle for a religion about Jesus when we could have an intimate relationship with him. To experience such a relationship daily, as Oswald Chambers reminds us, I must give up “my claim to my right to myself.” When I do, “The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.” 

When last did you make such a “free committal” of yourself to Jesus? 

The Lord spoke through his prophet: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lᴏʀᴅ who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth” (Jeremiah 9:23–24). 

In what will you boast today?

Denison Forum

Refugees, mostly women with children, wait for transportation at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, Saturday, March 5, 2022, after fleeing from the Ukraine. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

The Baptist church in Chelm, Poland, has become a gateway to safety and security for hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing their homeland. Church volunteers tell refugees that the church has free drinks, showers, and places to sleep. The congregation has also set up a children’s area where they can play or watch educational videos on a screen.

Marek Glodek, president of the Baptist Union of Poland, says, “What we’re seeing is a movement of love and generosity across this nation. Poles are opening their doors and arms to Ukrainians. They are taking them into their churches. They are taking them into their homes. They are feeding them. They are caring for them.” 

He adds: “This is what Jesus calls his believers to do all the time. Polish Christians are taking the teachings of Jesus seriously and living them out each day during this situation.” 

Chinese airliner crashes in southern China 

This morning’s headlines remind us that such “situations” are a tragic part of life on this fallen planet. 

China’s Civil Aviation Administration is reporting this morning that a China Eastern Airlines jetliner has crashed in southern China with 132 people on board. Police are hunting two suspects after gunfire broke out Saturday at a car show in Arkansas, killing one person and injuring at least twenty-eight, including several children. Four people were shot in downtown Austin early Sunday. 

Wildfires in areas west of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex had burned about 54,000 acres as of last night. At least one person has been killed and fifty homes have been destroyed. One of them belonged to a relative of my wife; their family lost everything. 

And according to the United Nations, ten million Ukrainians, roughly a quarter of the nation’s population, have been displaced inside their country or fled as refugees. 

However, as we have seen across history, God’s people demonstrating God’s compassion can demonstrate the relevance of his grace and transform hurting hearts. 

How early Christians “turned the world upside down” 

When Peter and John encountered a “man lame from birth” (Acts 3:2), Peter said to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (v. 6). When “his feet and ankles were made strong” (v. 7), “all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what happened to him” (vv. 9–10). In response, Peter preached the gospel to the assembled crowd (vv. 11–26). 

When early Christians encountered those in need, those who were “owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34–35). When “the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits” were brought to the church, “they were all healed” (Acts 5:16). 

When Peter “found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed” (Acts 9:33), he said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed” (v. 34a). Luke records: “Immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord” (vv. 34b–35). 

When unwanted babies were abandoned, early Christians rescued them and raised them as their own. When slaves were marketed, Christians bought them and set them free. In a culture where women were the possession of their father until they were the possession of their husband, Christians valued women equally with men and embraced the eternal significance of their kingdom callings (cf. Galatians 3:28). In a day when Jews despised Gentiles as unclean and Gentiles oppressed Jews, Christians proclaimed that “God shows no partiality” and welcomed all into the family of God (Acts 10:34). 

The pattern of early Christianity is clear: the need was the opportunity. When followers of Jesus saw someone suffering, they intervened personally in the power of the Lord in a way that met felt needs to meet spiritual needs. They embraced every problem, every pain, every challenge as an invitation to prove the relevance of God’s love through their compassion. 

And by Acts 17:6, they had “turned the world upside down” and sparked the mightiest spiritual movement the world has ever known. 

Giving away “gas for God” 

God wants his people today to view challenges as opportunities just as the first Christians did. 

When disaster and disease strike, our skeptical culture is prone to ask, “Why did God allow this?” Early Christians would ask, “What can we do about it?” When we adopt an abundance mentality that sees every problem as an open door for God’s love and grace, we then become instruments of that grace in transformative ways and the culture takes note. 

Tillie Burgin began what we know today as Mission Arlington thirty-five years ago with a simple phone call. A woman called First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, seeking help with a bill she could not pay. Tillie met with her and promised to pay her bill. But she also asked if she could begin a Bible study in her apartment for the residents. 

That first gathering has grown to 360 Bible studies and congregations in the DFW Metroplex. In total, Mission Arlington / Mission Metroplex led 757 people to Christ last year and touched more than 350,000 lives. My wife and I have witnessed personally the transformative power of their daily commitment to meeting needs in Jesus’ name. 

Last Saturday, Pastor Brian Carn of the multi-campus Kingdom City Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, spent $10,000 from his personal finances to give away $35 gas cards to more than 300 drivers on the west side of his city. His “Gas for God” event is just one example: churches in Chicago, North Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi held similar gas giveaways. Each was reported by their local media. 

How to measure your life 

Our skeptical, post-Christian culture is not likely to be won to Christ through business-as-usual Sunday religiosity. But when we are a movement that rushes to the front lines of suffering armed with courageous and sacrificial compassion, God redeems deprivation and pain by leading its victims to his transforming grace. 

Erasmus was right: “Length of life should be measured not by the number of years but by the number of right actions.” 

How long will your life be?

Denison Forum

 “It’s been a joy in the midst of all this tragedy to see how God’s people have responded. . . . God’s church is operating exactly like it was intended to, to minister to people and getting them hope and to share Christ with them.” This is how Keith Townsend, International Cooperating Ministries’ director for Russia and former Soviet Republics, characterizes humanitarian efforts underway in Ukraine.

He describes churches and ministry centers that are removing their chairs and pews so people can sleep in them: “They’re housing the people, feeding the people, making sure they’re taken care of with their medical issues and things like that.” 

In related news, a fifteenth-century Romanian Orthodox monastery has opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees. Roughly one hundred people, mostly women and children, have so far taken shelter there. The archdiocese has offered hundreds of beds in monasteries and parish houses as well. 

Samaritan’s Purse is operating an emergency field hospital in Ukraine and has stationed scores of disaster response specialists in the region. I am hearing daily about other ministries and churches that are working on specific projects to assist the Ukrainian people and the millions of refugees fleeing the country. 

One more example: an American pastor in Bronx, New York, has traveled to Ukraine with a team of four others at the invitation of the Ukrainian military. He is working with the army to provide combat field trauma supplies. He says that as he serves soldiers and civilians who are “hit with a bullet or they’re hit with shrapnel,” he is also working to “provide spiritual, emotional, and psychological support and also to pray with people, to be a pastor to people, to share God’s love and to give them hope.” 

Is Putin a “war criminal”? 

When Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago, the Russian Defense Ministry said it was using precision weapons and claimed that “there is no threat to [the] civilian population.” Since that time, Russian airstrikes have hit a maternity hospital, a church, and apartment towers. Nearly one million child refugees have fled the country since the war began. Fears are rising that Russia could resort to chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. 

According to Ukrainian officials in the besieged city of Mariupol, Russian forces bombed a theater in which thousands had taken refuge, even though satellite footage shows the word children in Russian written on the ground near the theater. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia in an overnight speech of deliberately attacking the theater. A Ukrainian news platform reports this morning that Russian troops have destroyed 90 percent of Mariupol and killed thousands of town residents. 

In light of such atrocities, President Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” this week. He amplified his condemnation yesterday, calling Putin “a murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented, “Personally, I agree. Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.” 

Tragically, analysts warn that we can expect such tragedies to escalate. 

How the war “could get much worse” 

Angela Stent, a former US National Intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, writes in Foreign Affairs: Putin’s “overarching aim” is “reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War.” As a result, “the current crisis is ultimately about Russia redrawing the post-Cold War map and seeking to reassert its influence over half of Europe, based on the claim that it is guaranteeing its own security.” 

Another Foreign Affairs article warns that the war in Ukraine “could get much worse.” It explains that an “insecurity spiral ensues when the choices one country makes to advance its interests end up imperiling the interests of another country, which responds in turn.” The result can be a “vicious cycle of unintended escalation, something that’s happened many times before.” 

Scholars point to “the stability-instability paradox, in which states, stalemated in the nuclear realm, might be more willing to escalate in conventional terms.” For example, Putin might respond to economic sanctions against Russia with cyberattacks on NATO countries. NATO leaders might consider such attacks to trigger Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which states that an attack on one member state is an attack on them all, and respond with retaliatory cyberattacks on Russia. Such cyberattacks could prompt military responses leading to another world war. 

Or conflict in Ukraine could spill over its borders. Russia could attack land transfers of support into Ukraine from NATO states bordering the war zone, which could kill or harm NATO personnel and trigger Article 5. Or Ukrainian forces could withdraw into NATO countries; if Russia attacked them there, this could also trigger Article 5. 

When “I have no right to preach the gospel” 

This growing crisis is an opportunity for God’s people to demonstrate God’s compassion in the power of God’s Spirit. The darker the room, the more necessary and powerful the light. 

I was interviewed recently by nationally syndicated radio host Bill Martinez. As we discussed Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine, he quoted this convicting statement in Proverbs 24: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?” (vv. 11–12). 

In other words, you and I are responsible to know what is happening, to pray about it, and then to find ways to answer our prayers personally. When we do this, the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27) acts as the hands and feet of Jesus in our war-torn world. We demonstrate the relevance of our faith by the relevance of our service. Those who experience our courageous compassion will be marked by God’s grace at work in and through us. 

This is the model of Jesus at work. Our Savior healed bodies so he could heal souls. He opened blind eyes so he could open blind hearts. He met felt need to meet spiritual need, and he calls us to do the same. 

My friend Dr. Randel Everett is right: “I have no right to preach the gospel to a hungry person.” 

What “hungry person” will you serve in Jesus’ name today?

Denison Forum

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the US House and Senate yesterday. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove calls his speech “an extraordinarily powerful historic moment” and says that he and the Ukrainians are “defining courage for our time.”

Mr. Zelensky’s remarks were so significant that I will devote this Daily Article to them. 

Among his statements were these very perceptive observations: “Russia has attacked not just us, not just our land, not just our cities. It went on a brutal offensive against our values, basic human values. It threw tanks and planes against our freedom, against our right to live freely in our own country, choosing our own future, against our desire for happiness, against our national dreams, just like the same dreams you have, you Americans.” 

After delivering most of his speech in Ukrainian through a translator, Mr. Zelensky closed by speaking in English. He told the members of Congress, “Peace in your country doesn’t depend anymore only on you and your people. It depends on those next to you and those who are strong. Strong doesn’t mean big. Strong is brave and ready to fight for the life of his citizens and citizens of the world. For human rights, for freedom, for the right to live decently, and to die when your time comes, and not when it’s wanted by someone else, by your neighbor.” 

As Mr. Zelensky delivered these statements in English, Senator Angus King said later, “There was a collective holding of the breath.” 

“I wish you to be the leader of the world” 

President Zelensky closed his historic address with statements that deserve to be read in their entirety: “Today, the Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine, we are fighting for the values of Europe and the world, sacrificing our lives in the name of the future. That’s why today the American people are helping not just Ukraine, but Europe and the world to give the planet the life to keep justice in history. 

“Now, I am almost forty-five years old; today, my age stopped when the hearts of more than one hundred children stopped beating. I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the deaths. And this is my main issue as the leader of my people, great Ukrainians. 

“And as the leader of my nation, I am addressing the President Biden, you are the leader of the nation, of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world; being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace. 

“Thank you. Glory to Ukraine. Thank you for your support. Thank you.” 

Peace “depends on those next to you” 

In its simplest form, human life can be reduced to two options: we can live for ourselves, or we can live for each other. We can be Cain slaying Abel, or we can be Joseph forgiving his brothers. We can be Peter denying Jesus, or we can be Peter preaching to the Pentecost crowds. 

We can make the war in Ukraine the Ukrainians’ problem, or we can make it our problem. We can say with Volodymyr Zelensky that our hearts stop when the hearts of children stop beating. We can fight “for human rights, for freedom, for the right to live decently, and to die when your time comes.” 

Said differently, we can embrace the self-evident truths “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Paradoxically, the best way to assure these personal freedoms is to ensure the world’s freedom. Mr. Zelensky was right: “Peace in your country doesn’t depend anymore only on you and your people. It depends on those next to you.” 

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so perceptively noted in Letter from Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 

“Let justice roll down like waters” 

When we seek “justice everywhere,” we stand on the right side of history. In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Dr. King stated, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” 

The word of God agrees. Scripture assures us that “God will judge the righteous and the wicked” (Ecclesiastes 3:17). He calls us to join him: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression” (Isaiah 1:17). We are to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).  

As a biblical philosopher, my purpose today is not to take a personal position regarding political or military responses to the war in Ukraine. Rather, it is to make the biblical case that what is happening in Ukraine matters as much to God and should therefore matter as much to us as if it were happening in America. 

I agree with Volodymyr Zelensky that his people are “fighting for the values of Europe and the world.” They are “sacrificing [their] lives in the name of the future,” our future. It is incumbent upon us to join them. 

“Our most basic common link” 

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. In addition to parades and parties, we should remember his story: kidnapped from his native England by Irish invaders, he was enslaved for several years before escaping and returning home. However, years later, God called him to return to Ireland as a missionary. He led more than one hundred thousand people to faith in Christ and became the patron saint of Ireland. His death on March 17, 461, is remembered each year on this day. 

But there’s more to his story: Irish Christians who were spiritual descendants of St. Patrick’s ministry sailed to Britain in the following century, where they evangelized the heathen who had overrun the country. According to Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, they “single-handedly refounded European civilization throughout the continent.” 

As a result, every American owes a debt to St. Patrick’s courageous ministry in Ireland and his spiritual descendants who preserved the benefits of Western civilization we enjoy today. This fact is just one more reminder that President John F. Kennedy was right: “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.” 

What happens to any of us should therefore matter to all of us. 

God assures us, “Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!” (Psalm 106:3). 

As we respond to President Zelensky’s historic speech, will America be “blessed”?

Denison Forum

It is surreal to consider how different the world has become in three weeks.

As of this morning, more than three million refugees have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to the US Congress later today “could be [the] most important by a foreign leader since Churchill in 1941.” The leaders of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv last night to meet with Mr. Zelensky to offer a broad package of support. The White House announced that President Biden will travel to Brussels for a March 24 NATO summit on the invasion. 

The Metropolitan Opera presented a benefit performance Monday night in New York City, with all ticket sales and donations going to support relief efforts in Ukraine. And a Russian television producer courageously interrupted a live TV state media broadcast on Monday to hold up a sign protesting the war. Her actions prompted others to protest; she was found guilty of organizing an illegal protest and fined. 

“World War III may already have arrived” 

It is obvious that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is changing the world far beyond Ukraine. The question is, how much of the world? 

Veronika Melkozerova, a journalist based in Kyiv, writes in the Atlantic, “Every night I close my eyes thinking I might be next on Putin’s death-toll list. Nowadays, you never know where the Russians will drop their bombs—onto a residential building, a kindergarten classroom, a monastery, or a maternity hospital.” She understands that people of the West “are scared of World War III” but adds, “Don’t you understand that World War III may have already arrived?” 

Putin clearly wants to rebuild a new Russian Empire, which could lead him to advance beyond Ukraine into NATO-allied countries and force the US into the conflict. I noted on Monday the growing concern that Russia could use “tactical nuclear weapons” to win its war with Ukraine; that same day, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters, “The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.” 

China’s continued escalation of its nuclear capacities only adds to the growing danger. Adm. Charles Richard leads US Strategic Forces, which oversees the military’s nuclear arsenal. He told lawmakers last week, “Today, we face two nuclear-capable near peers who have the capability to unilaterally escalate to any level of violence, in any domain worldwide, with any instrument of national power, at any time.” 

How might God redeem the fears of these days? 

By now your stress level is probably higher than it was when you began reading this article. And we haven’t even considered that the world has now surpassed six million COVID-19 deaths as the US nears one million such tragedies. Vox has reported that “deaths of despair” (suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver disease) “amount to the equivalent of a catastrophic pandemic every single year.” And now we are dealing with an enemy that might deploy nuclear weapons with unforeseeable global consequences. 

However, none of this surprises God. He is not reading these words with the same anxiety you and I might be feeling. 

Since I am convinced that the Lord redeems all he allows, I asked myself today how he might redeem the fears of these perilous days. Instantly a simple thought occurred to me: by showing us how deeply we need what only our Father can give. 

It is human nature to depend on human nature. From the first sin in human history to the last sin you and I committed, the common denominator has been the same: we want to be our own god (Genesis 3:5), to be king of our own kingdom. To show us our need for his redemptive grace, God then responds by allowing us the consequences of our misused freedom (cf. Romans 1:24–32). Inevitably, such self-exaltation comes at the expense of others. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the latest in a line of murderous crimes extending to the dawn of human history (cf. Genesis 4:1–16). 

The defining question of our lives 

Denison Ministries Creative Director Josh Miller has a fascinating new article on our website titled “‘Blessed are the self-sufficient’: How the anti-Beatitudes explain our cultural anxieties.” After exposing the fallacy of living by our culture’s self-sufficient values, he asks, “What kingdom defines your life?” 

This is the defining question of our lives. You and I can seek to advance our own kingdoms, or we can “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” in the assurance that “all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). 

When we turn our world and our fears over to the true king of the universe, what does he give us in return? Jesus assured us, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27, my emphasis). 

When we name our fears and trust them specifically and unconditionally to Jesus, we experience more than his help and hope—we experience him. We experience his peace, his joy (Hebrews 12:2), his abundant life (John 10:10). We can say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). We can experience fully “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). 

Henri Nouwen observed: 

“We tend to emphasize the distance between Jesus and ourselves. We see Jesus as the all-knowing and all-powerful Son of God who is unreachable for us sinful, broken human beings. But thinking this way, we forget that Jesus came to give us his own life. He came to lift us up into loving community with the Father. Only when we recognize the radical purpose of Jesus’ ministry will we be able to understand the meaning of the spiritual life. Everything that belongs to Jesus is given for us to receive. All that Jesus does we may also do.” 

Do you “understand the meaning of the spiritual life” today? 

Denison Forum

If Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has a face, it is the wounded pregnant woman who was taken on a stretcher from a maternity hospital bombed by Russia last week. Now the Associated Press is reporting that the mother and her baby have died.

Is Putin suffering from dementia? 

How much Ukrainian death and destruction will be enough for Putin? 

Does he want only to remove President Zelensky and install a puppet regime loyal to Moscow similar to the one in Belarus? 

He has already arrested the mayor of the southern city of Melitopol and replaced him with a new “acting mayor” who is urging residents to adjust to “the new reality” and end their resistance to Russian occupation. 

Does he want to control the entire country, making it part of a new Russian Empire as it was part of the old USSR? 

In justifying his invasion of Ukraine, he claimed that the very idea of Ukrainian statehood was a fiction and argued that “modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia.” 

Are his motives more personal? 

It has been widely noted that Peter the Great (1672–1725), the giant tsar (historians estimate he stood at least six-foot-eight) who is credited with transforming Russia into a feared world power, is Putin’s personal hero. For more on Putin’s military ambitions and personal background, please see Ryan Denison’s excellent new paper, “The inevitability of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: How Putin’s history reveals his destiny.”

Some experts are even wondering if Putin is suffering from dementia, Parkinson’s disease, or “roid rage” from potential cancer treatment that involves heavy steroid use. 

But there is another factor we must consider in seeking to understand Vladimir Putin’s motives for invading Ukraine and threatening the West so perilously. 

Putin’s “spiritual destiny” 

Yesterday we discussed a March 12 article by cultural commentator David French on the threat posed by Russian “tactical nuclear weapons.” Today, we’ll turn to another article by French, this one published on March 13.  

French refers to research by former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler describing an ideological “fusion” between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service. According to Schindler, Putin does not seek Russian greatness only out of a sense of secular national chauvinism, but also out of religious mission rooted in the ROC. 

Schindler notes that Patriarch Kirill, head of the ROC, considers the “main threat” to Russia to be “the loss of faith” in Western Christianity. ROC spokesmen constantly denounce feminism and LGBTQ activism as Satanic creations of the West that aim to destroy faith, family, and the nation. 

As a result, the ROC believes it has a “spiritual security” mission to defend Russia from Western spiritual influences in partnership with Moscow’s intelligence agencies. French cites Giles Fraser’s article on the British website UnHerd, which states that “Putin regards his spiritual destiny as the rebuilding of Christendom, based in Moscow.” 

Is Moscow the “New Rome”? 

Kyiv is centrally important to this narrative. 

The Russian news agency TASS quotes ROC Archbishop Kirill: “For us Kiev [the Russian spelling of Kyiv] is what Jerusalem is for many. Russian Orthodoxy began there, so under no circumstances can we abandon this historical and spiritual relationship.” The 2019 creation of a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine separated from the ROC further inflamed tensions as the ROC viewed this action as a direct attack on its “canonical territory.” 

We should add this historical note. The Roman Catholic Church is obviously based in Rome. In AD 324, the Roman Emperor Constantine declared the city of Byzantium the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it Constantinople and calling it the “New Rome.” When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 (and was renamed Istanbul), many in Russia began claiming that Moscow became the “third Rome” and the spiritual heir of Jerusalem. 

French concludes: “Putin has fused Russian identity with the ROC, sees his nation and his church as a bulwark against western decadence, and is now not just attempting to seize his church’s ‘Jerusalem’ but potentially forcibly reuniting his church after a schism it rejects.” 

The peril of transactional religion 

When Christianity is used to advance secular aims, it ceases to be true Christianity. This is true whether these aims are Russian or American, your agendas or mine. 

Transactional religion was dominant in the Greco-Roman world; if a worshiper sacrificed on a god’s altar, the god could be persuaded to do what the worshiper wanted. We do the same when we go to church on Sunday so God will bless us on Monday or give money to the church so God will bless us financially. 

However, Jesus was clear: 

• “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). 
• We are to be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” to our Lord (Romans 12:1). 
• The King of kings and Lord of lords does not exist as a means to our ends. Rather, we exist to glorify him: “To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever” (1 Peter 4:11). 

This mandate should be our daily aim: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). 

Abraham Lincoln’s “greatest concern” 

Joe Carter noted in First Things that during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was purportedly asked if God was on his side. 

He replied, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” 

One day, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lᴏʀᴅ as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). 

How will you hasten that day today?

Denison Forum

Legendary quarterback Tom Brady made global headlines when he retired after his team lost the Super Bowl last month. However, he announced on Twitter last night, “These past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands.” As a result, he stated, “I’m coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. Unfinished business.”

In more normal times, this announcement might be the subject of today’s Daily Article. Or we could focus on former President Barack Obama’s report yesterday that he has tested positive for COVID-19. Or we could discuss the opening of baseball’s spring training, the NCAA basketball playoffs, or a variety of other cultural stories. We might even note that today is “Pi” Day (3.14) with $3.14 sales on pizza. 

But these are not normal times. 

In fact, they may soon become dangerous on a level we have never seen. 

Why “this is a uniquely perilous moment” 

David French is a military veteran, an attorney, and one of the most perceptive cultural commentators I know. His March 12 article in the Atlantic, “This Is a Uniquely Perilous Moment,” is subtitled: “Smaller-scale tactical nuclear weapons could bring the great powers into a brutal, deadly, and unprecedented conflict.” 

He describes “tactical nuclear weapons” as “low-yield, short-range weapons that are designed for use against military targets such as enemy airfields or columns of enemy forces.” He explains that “tactical nukes can be mounted in simple gravity bombs, on rockets, or even in artillery shells.” 

According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Russia possesses close to two thousand of these weapons. By contrast, the US stores roughly one hundred nuclear weapons in Europe. 

Here’s where this news becomes even more concerning: French notes that “there is considerable evidence that use of those tactical nuclear weapons is part of contemporary Russian-military planning.” He cites reports that Russia has adopted a military strategy known as “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to terminate.” 

Putin could use low-yield nuclear weapons to destroy key air bases throughout Europe, attack an aircraft-carrier task force, or destroy specific army bases. As French warns, Putin’s tactical weapons “make him the first opponent that NATO allies have faced since the end of the Cold War who has the raw military capability to destroy a substantial portion of NATO forces in the field.” 

Could this be what Putin meant when he warned on February 24 that countries who interfere with his invasion of Ukraine would face “consequences you have never seen”? 

“The most dangerous confrontation of all” 

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Russia has asked China for military equipment and support for its invasion of Ukraine. The longer Ukrainian forces withstand Russia’s invasion, the more desperate Putin may become. 

If he were to use tactical nuclear weapons to defeat Ukraine, given NATO’s limited tactical nuclear arsenal, would we escalate our response? French asks, “Would we risk Washington and New York to dislodge Putin from Ukraine?” 

If Putin thinks we would not, would this embolden him to use his tactical nuclear arsenal against Ukraine? 

Here’s another scenario. Russian missiles struck a military base near the border with Poland, killing at least thirty-five people. The Associated Press reports that “the attack so near a NATO member-country raised the possibility that the alliance could be drawn into the fight.” Also, Poland’s president said yesterday that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine by Russia would “be a game changer in the whole thing.” 

If NATO forces entered the conflict and Putin responded with tactical nuclear strikes, what would come next? Again, would the US risk our cities to defend NATO forces? 

French concludes: “It’s one thing to confront a potential nuclear conflict when both sides know they’ll lose. Mutual assured destruction kept the peace even during the darkest days of the Cold War. It’s another thing entirely to confront a potential nuclear conflict when one side believes it can win. That’s the most dangerous confrontation of all, and we may be close to that now.” 

The paradoxical best way to live every day 

Dr. Lane Ogden’s outstanding paper, How to manage fear in a time of crisis, was written at my request and published on our website earlier this morning. 

Dr. Ogden is a brilliant psychologist and the person I recommend whenever someone in the Dallas area asks me to direct them to a counseling professional. His paper offers biblical reflections and practical steps you and I can take today in responding to the fears we face. His paper is so timely because the threats we face are so significant.  

In such times, the Christian faith offers a unique perspective that can empower our courage and attract others to our Lord. 

Unlike our secular friends, we know that this world is not our home: “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). We also know that “if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). 

As a result, we can face the perils of our broken world by trusting Jesus’ promise, “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26). 

Paradoxically, the best way to live every day is to be prepared to die every day. To live with our sins confessed, our relationships healthy, and our lives fully yielded to our Lord and Master is not only the best way to die—it is the best way to live. 

The Puritan Thomas Watson warned, “Let them fear death who do not fear sin.” 

Which do you fear today?

Denison Forum

Hassan is an eleven-year-old Ukrainian boy. When Russia invaded his country, his mother, a widow, was unable to travel because she had to stay with her sick mother. So she sent her son out of the country on a train by himself with only a plastic bag, a passport, and a telephone number written on his hand.

He traveled roughly 620 miles to Slovakia to meet relatives. After he arrived safely, she said, “I am very grateful that they saved the life of my child.” 

Vladimir Putin clearly considers expanding the Russian Empire worth the lives of thousands of Hassans. 

A story as old as humanity 

The first fact we discover about humans in God’s word is that we are each made in the image and likeness of God. After we learn that “God created man in his own image,” we are even told, “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Clearly, every male and every female is equally valuable in the eyes of his or her Maker (cf. Acts 10:34; Galatians 3:28). 

From then until now, nearly every sin we commit against each other is a violation of this fact. Cain considered Abel’s life worth less than his own. Joseph’s brothers felt the same about him. From Egypt’s enslavement of the Hebrews to the Western world’s enslavement of Africans, sex traffickers enslaving their victims today, and nearly every other kind of crime in the day’s news, we see all around us the horrific consequences of rejecting Genesis 1:27. 

In this sense, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a contemporary example of a tragic story as old as humanity. His Communist upbringing and KGB career taught him the Communist worldview with its depreciation of the individual as a means to the end of the state. 

“Primeval conditions in besieged cities” 

The New York Times reports this morning that the war has taken “a decidedly darker turn, with hundreds of thousands of people now living in primeval conditions in besieged cities as Russian forces try to batter the country into submission.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an overnight address, “We are doing everything to save our people in the cities that the enemy just wants to destroy.” 

Writing for The Times of Israel, Rachel Sharansky Danziger notes, “Vladimir Putin’s invasion is very eloquent and very loud in this regard. It says: Might Makes Right. It says: human lives are cheap. It says: liberties and free speech must give way to the good of the state, and the good of the state lies in its glory, not in its people’s safety and welfare.” 

Then she asks, “Are we willing to accept a world shaped on these terms?” 

China’s horrific treatment of the Uyghurs and Kim Jong Un’s imprisonment and torture of those viewed as threats to his dictatorship are other examples. The long history of anti-Semitism is yet another illustration of humanity’s sinful “will to power” and willingness to subjugate other races and peoples to the advancement of our own. 

“A rule which is not tyranny” 

There is another side to this story. America’s founding on the biblical fact that “all men are created equal,” while fueling our pioneer spirit and entrepreneurial culture, must be balanced with the biblical fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Otherwise, the equality of human lives leads to the equality of human ideas. There can be no right and wrong, only what is right for me and wrong for you. 

As D. A. Carson notes in The Intolerance of Tolerance, tolerance then becomes not the right to be wrong but the insistence that there is no such thing as “wrong.” The result is the destruction of institutions foundational to human flourishing. 

From the equal rights of the unborn to the definition and sanctity of marriage, the healthy expression of sexuality within biblical marriage, the dignity and value of the elderly and infirm, and the urgency of justice for all races and ethnicities, every dimension of human experience is damaged when objective truth is replaced by relativistic tolerance. 

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis noted that “the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means . . . the power of some men to make other men what they please.” By contrast, “A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.” 

A light that “cannot be hidden” 

Such a “rule” and “obedience” is captured in the biblical call to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” to God (Romans 12:1). As a “living sacrifice,” every dimension of our lives is to be yielded every moment of every day to our Master and King. 

Here we find one of the reasons why a “compartmentalized” life is so hazardous to the life of faith. When Jesus is a sermon subject and a person of history but not an intimate, present reality in our day-to-day lives, we miss the joy and the power he infuses in every soul that is truly united with him. 

Conversely, when Jesus is king of every part of our lives every day, we experience the “abundant life” he came to bring (John 10:10) and become the light that “cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14) and “overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4). 

So, like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, we can reject Genesis 1:27 by viewing other people as a means to the advancement of the state. Similarly, we can reject Genesis 1:27 by viewing other people as a means to our personal advancement and agendas. Alternately, we can embrace Genesis 1:27 as mandating the relativistic equality of all ideas and values and thus replacing truth with tolerance. 

Or we can decide today to become a “living sacrifice” to our Lord and King. 

“Let there be peace on earth” 

Imagine a world in which every Christian made that choice every day. Imagine the impact on every person we influence. Imagine the difference if Christians around the world led the nations of the world to value every person as God does. 

A beloved hymn so relevant to our war-torn world begins, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” 

Would you make these words your prayer today, to the glory of God?

Denison Forum

My granddaughter’s favorite song is “Let It Go” from the movie Frozen. When I watched this little girl sing the song in a Ukrainian shelter, I was nearly moved to tears. She is likely someone’s granddaughter.

What if she were mine? What if she were yours? 

Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine is generating some of the most moving stories that I have ever seen. For example, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave the first speech by a foreign leader ever to Britain’s House of Commons Tuesday, echoing Winston Churchill’s famous words to the same chamber at the dawn of World War II: “We will fight till the end, at sea, in the air. We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.” 

The whereabouts of his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, and their two children are secret since Ukraine believes they are being targeted by Russia for assassination. However, she has played an active role on social media, shining a spotlight on what she calls “the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians.” 

Then there are the children who are such innocent victims of Vladimir Putin’s escalating atrocities. 

At least three people were killed and seventeen were wounded when a Russian airstrike bombed a maternity hospital yesterday. One million children have been forced to flee Ukraine, leaving behind their lives and their friends. Polio is even making a comeback as the war has halted vaccination efforts. Russian bombardment has killed so many people in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that workers are forced to bury civilians and soldiers in a mass grave. 

And US intelligence leaders are warning that Putin is likely to escalate attacks even further in the coming days. 

Only 4 percent of Russians blame Russia for the invasion 

While the world increasingly sees Putin and Russia as an international pariah, the story is far different on the Russian side. ​​

The New York Times reports this morning that top diplomats from Ukraine and Russia failed to reach an agreement today to calm the fighting in Ukraine or even to ease the worsening humanitarian crisis. Note this statement by Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov: “We are not planning to attack other countries. We didn’t attack Ukraine, either.” He was repeating Russian claims that his country was forced to conduct a “special military operation” in Ukraine to protect its own security.

Many in Russia believe him.

Putin’s approval rating soared as Russia prepared to attack Ukraine. While thousands of protesters have demonstrated against the invasion, only 4 percent of Russians blame the conflict on Russia. More than two-thirds blame it on the US, NATO, or Ukraine. 

The vast majority who do not blame Russia for the invasion is unlikely to blame Putin for Western sanctions enacted in response to the invasion. In fact, such measures may harden their opinion against the West and reinforce Putin’s narrative that he is defending his people from Western aggression. This does not mean that the West should not do all we can to defend and support Ukraine, of course. But it does illustrate the fact that nations have narratives. 

Even the way the two sides describe the country being invaded demonstrates this reality. Russians refer to it as “the Ukraine,” with the definite article indicating that it is a region rather than an independent entity. Ukrainians refer to their homeland as “Ukraine” without the definite article to reinforce its independent status. Americans follow this custom when we speak of “the Bluegrass region” (with the definite article) of “Kentucky” (without the definite article). 

In reading British scholar Geoffrey Hosking’s Russian History this week, I found context that further clarifies Russia’s narrative of this conflict. Hosking reports, “Whatever else they may have wanted, Russians have always longed for security from terrifying and murderous assaults across the flat open frontiers to east and west.” 

This need “motivated the creation of the first Rus” state in the ninth century. It explains their support for Ivan IV (1530–84), the first “Tsar” (a form of the Roman imperial title Caesar), and later for Peter the Great (ruled 1682–1725), who built Russia into an empire. 

Rebuilding this empire is Vladimir Putin’s expressed and determined purpose. To the degree that Russians see his invasion of Ukraine as necessary in defending them from alleged threats from the West and restoring their national pride and power, they are supporting his invasion. 

“It is good for me that I was afflicted” 

So, each side of the war in Ukraine believes that its side is “moral.” Notice what is missing in this debate: a question as to whether objective morality exists. 

As I have discussed often over the years (and in two chapters of The Coming Tsunami), it is conventional wisdom in our postmodern culture that all truth claims are personal and subjective. But when children are hiding in shelters and bombs are falling on a children’s hospital, such relativism is one of the first casualties. 

Suffering has a way of clarifying our priorities and exposing our fallacies. The psalmist spoke for many when he admitted to God, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word” (Psalm 119:67). He could then observe, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (v. 71). 

I am praying that postmodern skeptics learn from this horrific conflict the absolute fact of absolute truth, the moral imperative of embracing and defending objective morality. I am praying for Christians to exhibit the transformative power of living by such morality as revealed in the word of God (Hebrews 4:12) and empowered by the Spirit of God (cf. Galatians 5:22–23). 

And I am praying that such Spirit-empowered integrity will begin with me. 

“God will make you fit” 

The reality of suffering and sin forces us to admit the reality of our finitude and our consequent need for divine grace. Oswald Chambers noted in a devotional that to be united with Jesus Christ, “We must relinquish all pretense of being anything, all claim of being worthy of God’s consideration.” 

He explains: “There will have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase. . . . When a man really sees himself as the Lord sees him, it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him, but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ.” 

He concludes: “If you are up against the question of relinquishing, go through the crisis, relinquish all, and God will make you fit for all that he requires of you.” 

Do you see yourself as the Lord sees you today?

Denison Forum

Anatoly was a twenty-six-year-old member of Irpin Bible Church, northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine. Note that he “was.”

An IT professional in a local company, he also served in his church’s media ministry. When the Russian invasion began on February 24, Anatoly evacuated his wife and other family members to safety. Then he courageously returned last Friday to join his church’s skeleton crew.

As a young mother and her two children fled Russian shelling, Anatoly volunteered to carry her suitcase across Irpin’s collapsed bridge. All four died when a Russian bombshell landed in the middle of their would-be humanitarian corridor.

As with Abel of old, “through his faith, though he died, he still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4). 

What is he saying to us?

Boy dropped from burning apartment building

Anatoly is just one of the hundreds if not thousands of Ukrainians killed so far in Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral invasion of their country. Why, then, did I want to tell his story this morning? Why did you choose to read it?

Here’s some good news: A three-year-old boy was dropped from the window of a burning apartment building in New Jersey Monday morning and caught by first responders. And some tragic news: a New Jersey man was swept out to sea while swimming off a beach in Hawaii last Saturday. And some more tragic news: an eleven-year-old girl died after falling under a moving school bus in Colorado last Thursday.

How did these stories make you feel?

I told each of them to make the same point: there is something in us that rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep (Romans 12:15). This is part of our identity as beings made in the image of a God (Genesis 1:27) who loves each of us as if there were only one of us (St. Augustine). Each person is therefore someone of infinite worth to our Creator, not a means to the ends of a nation or its rulers.

This fact is vital to understanding the larger significance of the war in Ukraine for America’s future and American Christians today.

The future of our cultural freedom

US intelligence officials testified at a congressional hearing Tuesday that Putin is likely to escalate the conflict in Ukraine with no concern for civilian casualties, viewing his invasion as a “war he cannot afford to lose.”

Yesterday, we began discussing the fact that Russia’s invasion represents a “new Cold War” pitting the autocratic regimes of Russia and China against the individual freedom ethic espoused by Democratic nations of the West. Putin’s invasion is just one example of the degree to which he sees democracy as impeding his tsarist vision for Russia.

In response, I noted that America’s founders clearly linked freedom with morality and morality with religion.

They were right. 

As the Bible notes, we are all “pinched off from a piece of clay” (Job 33:6). As a result, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). It is therefore crucial that Christians embody and share with others the good news of God’s transforming grace (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Said bluntly, the future of our cultural freedom depends on the degree to which we embrace our spiritual freedom in Christ (cf. Galatians 5:1; John 8:31–32). In a day when American society is more opposed to Christian truth and morality than ever before, this fact is more crucial than ever before.

What percent of Americans elected our president?

The more secular our democracy becomes, the weaker our democracy becomes.

Princeton University scholar Allen C. Guelzo, in reviewing political scientist Jan-Werner Müller’s book Democracy Rules, cites Müller’s argument that “democracy has a deep philosophical affinity with relativism.” This is because our democracy rests on the two pillars of freedom (of speech, assembly, and association) and equality (of all citizens as equal political participants).

As a result, we make decisions based on popular voting, not objective truths, and trust that a free media will hold our leaders and institutions accountable.

But what happens when fewer and fewer of us participate in our democracy? (Kevin D. Williamson notes that Joe Biden was elected president by only 24.6 percent of all Americans.) 

What happens when the Americans who do vote are increasingly uninformed about the issues we face? And what happens when the people and the media they trust increasingly insist on tolerance over truth and seek personal and partisan advancement over the common good?

In The Republic, Plato warned that democracy is inherently flawed: freedom is supreme, but laws are not obeyed and chaos results. Leaders pander to the wants of the people whose support they require. A few people take advantage and accumulate great wealth. To restore order and put down the rich, the people then vote a tyrant into power and democracy ends.

Is this our future?

A difference that will echo in eternity

The last world war united Americans in defense of freedom and democracy with a sacrificial ethic and resolve of character that enabled us to defeat the greatest enemies our nation had ever faced. I am praying that the “new Cold War” will unite us once again in the same cause and evoke from us the same character.

And I am praying that America’s Christians will lead the way by surrendering daily to Christ as our King (Matthew 6:33; Ephesians 5:18) and then advancing his kingdom through our gracious witness, godly influence, and sacrificial faith (Ephesians 4:15).

In this day of global social media and connectivity, a single courageous Christian like Anatoly can make global headlines and a global impact. As with Isaiah of old, a single committed believer can use his or her influence to make a difference that will echo in eternity.

In answering his Lord’s call, the prophet cried, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). 

What will you say to your Lord today?

NOTE: One very practical way we can be the presence of Christ to those suffering in this conflict is to care for refugees as Jesus cares for us. For more, please see our website article, “As 2 million Ukrainian refugees flee, how will you welcome the refugee next door?“

Denison Forum

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi announced this morning that two million people have now fled Ukraine as conditions worsen by the day. How did you react to this news?

I fear that you and I are becoming accustomed to this unfolding tragedy and thus inured to the suffering we see in our daily headlines. This is understandable, as humans can withstand only so much bad news.

In this sense, Ukraine may be turning into another version of the coronavirus pandemic. We learned yesterday that the global COVID-19 death toll has passed six million. If one of the six million was someone close to you, I suspect you feel very differently about this report than those who have been spared such tragedy (so far).

Humans naturally filter the news through the lens of personal self-interest. For example, when I saw a headline about a “giant spider” infestation spreading across the southern US, I scanned the article to learn whether these insects are poisonous or not. (They are, but their bite is so tiny that they are reportedly not much of a threat to humans.) I did the same with news about a COVID-19 roadmap for the future, new DNA tests to detect diseases, and a report that women who visit a crisis pregnancy center are less likely to get an abortion.

Since, like you, I engage the culture through the prism of personal relevance, an article explaining why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the beginning of a “new Cold War” that will affect every American caught my immediate attention.

This challenge “will test our nation to its core”

Ukraine and Russia have been engaged in conflict for many centuries. (For the history of their often-fraught relationship, I recommend Mark Legg’s excellent article on our website, “Why does Russia want Ukraine?“).

However, as geopolitical analyst Elliott Abrams explains in an article titled “The New Cold War,” this time is different: “A fully rearmed, aggressive Russia and a rich, aggressive, and technologically advanced China [are telling] us that the international order that has lasted since 1945 must end, and American predominance with it.”

Abrams points to the Vladimir Putin–Xi Jinping joint statement on February 4: “The new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” He then comments: “This is a clear announcement of a new alliance meant to go beyond the Cold War—in part by creating a partnership that will lead to a very different outcome this time.”

In Abrams’ opinion, responding to this “new Cold War” is a challenge that “will test our nation to its core.” He believes the US should support Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invaders with money and weapons, then redeploy our European forces east to protect the nations that have borders with Russia and (now) Ukraine.

Next, he believes we should rally our allies across the globe, match China in advanced military technology, modernize and expand our nuclear arsenal, and enhance our energy production to support Europe as it weans itself from Russian energy sources.

According to Abrams, this “new Cold War” is fundamentally a battle between dictatorial autocracy and freedom. For context, he notes that Ronald Reagan “always understood that the Cold War was more than a conflict among states; it was even more fundamentally an ideological conflict between the forces of liberty and the powers that would snuff it out nation by nation until our own was in jeopardy.”

Abrams concludes: “This new struggle has been thrust upon us by Russia and China; there is no escaping it. Strength will be rewarded, and weakness will be punished. The days of easy American preponderance have come to an end; for the next few decades we will have to work hard to keep the global balance of forces from turning against us.”

Why liberty needs God

In such a global conflict between totalitarianism and freedom, you and I have a foundational role to play.

George Washington famously observed in his 1796 Farewell Address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Our first president added that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Consensual democracy depends upon consensual morality, but as Gen. Washington noted, morality requires religion. C. S. Lewis explained why in Mere Christianity: “You cannot make men good by law; and without good men you cannot have a good society.”

The good news is that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Any of us who turns to Christ as our Savior and surrenders daily to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) can manifest his character (Romans 8:29; Galatians 5:22–23) in ways that empower our democracy and enrich the common good.

The bad news is that this new “Cold War” over freedom is coming at the worst time in American history for such holistic faith.

The fastest-growing religious demographic in America is that segment of our population that professes no religion. Gallup announced last year that the percentage of Americans who claim membership in a church, synagogue, or mosque has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in our nation’s history. As I document in my latest book, The Coming Tsunami, our culture brands Christians as outdated, intolerant, oppressive, and dangerous on a level unprecedented in our nation’s history.

As a result, it is imperative that you and I become the change we wish to see. We cannot give what we do not possess or lead others where we will not go. As I noted yesterday, our example as Spirit-empowered Christ-followers can attract our secular culture to the One who is transforming us by his love and grace. But if we are “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2), why would the world want what we have?

We will continue this vital conversation tomorrow. For today, I invite you to join me in asking God to empower a great movement of believers who say to Jesus every day, “Whatever you ask, whatever it takes, whatever the cost.” Then let’s answer our prayer with our daily, holistic submission to our King.

In The Normal Christian Life, Watchman Nee observed: “Not until the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a settled thing in our hearts can the Spirit really operate effectively in us. He cannot direct our lives effectually until all control of them is committed to him. If we do not give him absolute authority in our lives, he can be present, but he cannot be powerful. The power of the Spirit is stayed.”

Is the Lordship of Jesus Christ a “settled thing” in your heart today?

If not, why not?

Denison Forum

There are an estimated 115,000 weddings per day around the world, but one that occurred yesterday is making global headlines this morning. Here’s why: the bride wore fatigues, the groom wore a helmet, and the wedding party carried rifles and RPGs. Their wedding took place next to a military checkpoint in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Kyiv’s mayor attended the ceremony and noted that a week ago, the couple were “normal people” with no plans to carry weapons. Now “they want to defend our city together.” 

This courageous couple is simply following their president’s example. 

Andriy Yermak is head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine. He recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he stated, “I am writing this appeal from a bunker in the capital, with President Volodymyr Zelensky by my side. For a week, Russian bombs have fallen overhead. Despite the constant barrage of Russian fire, we stand firm and united in our resolve to defeat the invaders. We will fight to the last breath to protect our country.” 

Rep. John Garamendi, a senior member of the House of Representatives armed services committee, spoke with Mr. Zelensky on Saturday and said later, “He knows that he is at the top of the kill list, and he knows that his life is in jeopardy, but he has pushed that aside to lead this nation.” Rep. Garamendi called him “an incredible man of courage and leadership.” 

“The face of Ukrainian resilience” 

An article in the New Yorker by David Remnick is headlined, “Volodymyr Zelensky leads the defense of Ukraine with his voice.” Remnick describes Mr. Zelensky as having “assumed the role of Winston Churchill.” 

Michael Blake, a political philosopher at the University of Washington, notes that “whatever happens in the coming weeks,” the president “will go down as the face of Ukrainian resilience during the Russian invasion of his country.” He contrasts Mr. Zelensky’s everyman story with Vladimir Putin’s carefully cultivated “strongman” persona. In his opinion, Mr. Zelensky’s appeal resides largely in “the most central lesson of democratic politics—that our leaders are no better, morally speaking, than those they lead.” 

In a Western secular sense, Dr. Blake is absolutely correct. America’s founding document, for example, rejects the monarchy of our mother country for the assertion that “all men are created equal.” There’s a reason our presidential candidates appear at state fairs and town hall gatherings across the country. 

When they succeed, we feel that we have all succeeded. If someone can do something, Americans think we can do it. This Western focus on the individual stands in contrast to the stratified cultural classes of Europe, the class-centric ideology of Marxism, the caste system that still exists in many ways in India, and the tsarist and emperor-driven historical narratives of Russia and China. 

Mr. Zelensky is especially emblematic of this anyone-can-be-someone ethos. I wrote a biography of him for our website last Friday in which I chronicled his unlikely rise from improvisational comedy, television, and movie roles to president of his nation. 

“Struggling with all his energy” 

Offering the world a transformational example they can follow is a biblical model as well, but with an important caveat. 

Paul encouraged the Philippians, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9, my emphasis). It was not enough for the apostle to have taught them what they should practice—he showed them by his personal example that they could do so. 

But here’s what makes the biblical leadership-by-example ethos different from the secular modeling Dr. Blake and others are celebrating with regard to Volodymyr Zelensky’s courageous leadership: Christians know that the most powerful source of character and courage does not lie within us. 

Paul testified, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29, my emphasis). He embraced his Father’s assurance, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9) and could therefore state, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13 NKJV). 

As we work, God works. As God works, we work. 

“The founder and perfecter of our faith” 

The writer of Hebrews 12 captured this balance perfectly. 

First, he reminded us that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” and encouraged us to emulate them: “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (v. 1). 

Second, he showed us the power to run our race: “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (v. 2). 

When we remember what others have done in the power of Christ, we are encouraged to emulate them by making their Source ours and finding in Jesus the strength and hope we need. Then others will follow our example by trusting our Lord as theirs. 

“The thing that tells in the long run” 

As we intercede for Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Yermak, and other courageous Ukrainians, let’s pray not only for their courage, protection, and perseverance. Let’s also pray for God to redeem their suffering by leading them to Jesus and the source of strength they need most. 

Then let’s pray the same for ourselves. I often warn myself and others that self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide. Our greatest need as Christians is to be empowered and transformed every day by Christ (Romans 8:29; Ephesians 5:18). 

Oswald Chambers was right: “The thing that tells in the long run for God and for men is the steady persevering work in the unseen, and the only way to keep the life uncrushed is to live looking to God. Ask God to keep the eyes of your spirit open to the Risen Christ.” 

Are your eyes open to him today?

Denison Forum

Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that Queen Elizabeth II has tested positive for coronavirus. The ninety-five-year-old monarch is reportedly experiencing mild cold-like symptoms but expects to continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week.

One fact the pandemic has made emphatically clear is that we are each mortal. We enter this world with nothing and we leave it with nothing. One day, the queen will stand alone before the King, as will we all: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

If we could all remember that fact, our world would be dramatically transformed. My friend John Stonestreet is right: “Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.”

“The biggest war in Europe since 1945”

CBS News reported yesterday that Russian commanders have received orders to proceed with an invasion of Ukraine and commanders on the ground are now making specific battlefield plans. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said all signs suggest that we are on the brink of an invasion. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the BBC that Russia is planning “the biggest war in Europe since 1945.”

Meanwhile, the Winter Olympics came to a close in China yesterday, ending what the New York Times is calling “a games marked by triumph, heartbreak, and scandal.” China’s horrific treatment of the Uyghur people has been in the headlines since 2014, with more than a million Turkic Muslims in this northwestern region of China incarcerated. This is being called “the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II” with forced abortions, forced sterilization, forced birth control, forced labor, torture, and brainwashing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in such complete control of his government and military that the Moscow Times called him “a modern-day Tsar.” China is ruled by the seven members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo but led in actuality by Xi Jinping, who is general secretary, president, and head of the military.

Both men reflect the cultural narratives of their cultures. Russia has historically been governed by a single strong leader, whether a tsar, a General Secretary of the Communist Party, or a president. China has functioned in a similar fashion across its history, whether its leaders were emperors or Communist officials.

When we usurp God’s throne

By contrast, America’s founding ideal is captured in our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This ethic is itself founded on the Judeo-Christian worldview and its claims that every human is equally created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) but also equally fallen and sinful (Romans 3:23).

Here we find the two catalytic reasons for our republic: we are each equally deserving of life, liberty, and happiness, but we are each so finite and fallen that none of us can be trusted with unaccountable power and authority. For both reasons, there should be no kings, tsars, despots, or otherwise unelected leaders among us.

In Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words, our founders created a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

My purpose is not to extol my country in contrast with others. Admittedly, our nation, as it is led by fallen people, has not fully lived up to our constitutional values. The man who wrote the Declaration was a slave owner who fathered children by one of his slaves. It took a civil war and another century of civil rights advances to eradicate governmentally sanctioned racism and Jim Crow laws. We still have far to go to realize fully our ideals.

But my point is this: the equality of all people is our ideal. Like Queen Elizabeth II, we are all mortal: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). When we usurp God’s throne and seek to be our own gods (Genesis 3:15), tragedy soon ensues, whether in the garden of Eden, Ukraine, China, or our own backyards.

“Christianity is a power religion”

Imagine a world in which every person valued every other person equally as made in God’s image. Imagine a world in which our leaders saw themselves as servants of those they led (cf. John 13:14–15). These ideas would have monumental and transformative consequences for our entire world. By contrast, rejecting them leads to victims of every kind, including adultery in marriage, child abuse in families, crime in our cities, and wars against nations.

So, it turns out, John Stonestreet is right about the power of ideas. John F. Kennedy noted, “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.” This fact shows us a powerful way Christians can respond to the crisis in Ukraine, with the Uyghurs, or anywhere people are oppressing people: we can and should pray for God to change the minds and hearts of the oppressors.

Christians as disparate as David French and Franklin Graham are praying that God “turns Vladimir Putin’s heart from war,” as French states. We should join them, and we should do the same for Xi Jinping. If you doubt God’s ability to change the heart of someone who seems so far from his word and will, remember what the risen Christ did with Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–22).

As we pray for the Holy Spirit to convict people who are sinning against people, let’s remember to pray the same for ourselves. Peter Marshall was right: “Christianity is a power religion. Christ has the power to recreate men from the inside out.”

R. C. Sproul asserted: “The Spirit brings order out of chaos and beauty out of ugliness. He can transform a sin-blistered man into a paragon of virtue. The Spirit changes people. The Author of life is also the Transformer of life.”

Is he transforming you today?

Denison Forum

 “Nordic combined skiing” is so named because it combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing. The sport has been dominated in recent years by Norwegian athlete Jarl Magnus Riiber, considered by NBC analyst Johnny Spillane to be “the best Nordic combined skier ever.” As Riiber prepared to compete in this year’s Olympics, Spillane predicted, “If he has a good day, he’s pretty much unstoppable.”

He didn’t have a good day.

Riiber tested positive for COVID-19 upon his arrival at the Games, missing his first event and every training session. He cleared isolation on Monday in time to ski cross-country for ten kilometers on Tuesday. As he entered the first of four 2.5-kilometer loops on the course, he came to a fork. To the left was the cross-country circuit; to the right was the path to the finish line. He had not had a chance to practice on the track, so he had to guess and picked the lane on the right.

He chose poorly. 

After skiing around fifty yards, he realized he was going the wrong way and turned around. It was too late, however—he’d frittered away his lead and finished in eighth place. “It’s a silly mistake,” Riiber said later, “and it’s not fun to show the world that I’m maybe wasting a gold medal on that.”

Let’s consider his mishap as a cultural parable.

What George Clooney thinks about heaven and hell

There are many reasons to believe that we’re skiing in the wrong direction these days, but unlike Jarl Magnus Riiber, it’s not too late to turn around.

Let’s begin by identifying the wrong lane. From surging inflation to rising sea levels to religious persecution to continuing tensions in Ukraine, it’s harder to find good news than bad news in the news.

Harvard history professor Tiya Miles writes for the New York Times: “Everyone around me seems to be talking about the end. The end of nearly a million American lives in the Covid pandemic; the end of American democracy; the end of a public bulwark against racism and blatant antisemitism; the end of the post-Cold War peace in Europe; the end of the stable climate; and the end of our children’s best futures, to name a few undeniable possibilities. A condition of apocalyptic anxiety has overtaken us, raising our collective blood pressure, and sending us deeper into a maelstrom of suspicion, conspiracy thinking, and pessimism.”

Filmmaker Woody Allen complained ironically, “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it’s all over much too soon.” Actor George Clooney added, “I don’t believe in heaven and hell. All I know is that as an individual, I won’t allow this life—the only thing I know to exist—to be wasted.”

They and the multitudes who share their skepticism obviously do not believe that Jesus died and rose again, offering each of us eternal life through his grace and “abundant” life every day (John 10:10). They don’t agree that Christians can now “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4) because we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

In short, they do not believe that Jesus is who he claims to be, and their unbelief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is a wrong path Christians must beware, for it is open to us as well.

A girl and boy I will never forget

Mark 6 tells us that when Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth, the people were skeptical and “took offense at him” (v. 3). As a result, “he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief” (vv. 5–6).

God created us in his image (Genesis 1:27) with free will and a capacity for choice that he chooses to honor. He therefore will “stand at the door and knock,” waiting for us to open our hearts to him (Revelation 3:20). If we do not believe he is omnipotent, we are unlikely to seek his power for our problems. If we do not believe he is omniscient, we are unlikely to seek his guidance for our decisions. If we do not believe he is omnibenevolent, we are unlikely to trust that his will is best for us.

As a result, we will not experience his power, wisdom, or love. The less we experience of God, the less we believe in him, and the less we believe in him, the less we experience of him. Taking this wrong path inevitably leads us further down the wrong path.

By contrast, I have seen what happens when people take the right path, choosing to believe that Jesus is who he says he is and that he will do what he says he will do. I have seen Cuban Christians who have no medicines turn to the Great Physician and then experience miraculous healings. I have seen Muslim-background believers facing enormous oppression turn to Jesus for strength and then stand courageously for their Lord.

I will always remember the teenage girl I met in East Malaysia decades ago. Her father told her that if she was baptized as a Christian she could never go home again, so she brought her luggage to the church. And the young Christian I met in Singapore who faced abuse from his father every time he went to church but continued living at home because, as he explained, his father “needed to know about Jesus.”

“God does not give us overcoming life”

A relationship with God, like a relationship with anyone else, requires a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating. You cannot prove that a job is the right job until you take it. You examine the evidence, but then you must step beyond the evidence into a relationship. It is the same with being married, or having children, or even reading this article. All relationships require a step of faith that becomes self-validating once we take it.

Oswald Chambers was right: “God does not give us overcoming life; he gives us life as we overcome” (his emphasis). He illustrates: “Our Lord said to the man with the withered hand—’Stretch forth thy hand,’ and as soon as the man did so, his hand was healed, but he had to take the initiative. If we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God because he gives life immediately.”

What “overcoming” path is God asking you to choose today?

Denison Forum

Actor and comedian Bob Saget died from accidental head trauma, a Florida medical examiner declared yesterday. “His injuries were most likely incurred from an unwitnessed fall,” according to Dr. Joshua Stephany, who added that no illicit drugs or toxins were found in his system. Mr. Saget was found in his Orlando hotel room by hotel security on January 9 and pronounced dead at the scene.

We also learned yesterday that Prince Charles has tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time. Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II and Spain’s King Felipe VI announced this week that they also tested positive for the virus.

This news is relevant to Sunday’s Super Bowl in ways that might not be obvious but are deeply significant for our lives today.

Why do we care?

Front row seats at the big game can be yours for $62,095 each. You could buy a thirty-second ad for $6.5 to $7 million. You could star in one of these commercials, but apparently you have to be a superstar celebrity first.

Or you can be one of the one hundred million people who are expected to watch the game in the US. According to the Athletic, only two non-Super Bowl programs—the February 1983 MASH finale and the 1978 Leon Spinks–Muhammad Ali rematch—rank among the all-time top thirty US broadcasts for audience size.

On one level, this is merely a football game. Nothing that happens Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles will resolve the crisis in Ukraine, the truck blockade at the US–Canadian border, or the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. On another level, it is an opportunity for football immortality for the winners.

America is a celebrity-driven culture in ways that have only been exacerbated by pandemic quarantines, the explosion of social media, and the proliferation of streaming entertainment. Mr. Saget’s death was tragic, but only one of the 7,708 deaths that occur on average each day in the US. The monarchs who tested positive for COVID-19 are three of the more than 2.5 million confirmed cases each day.

We care about athletes who win championships, celebrities who fall ill or die, actors who are nominated for Oscars, and singers who win music awards because many of us live vicariously through them.

Why is this?

How to “live peaceably with all”

This week, I’ve been discussing the significance and implications of Christians’ status as the “children of God.” We have noted that we are loved passionately and unconditionally by our Father and thus called and privileged to love our fellow Christians and those outside the faith as our Father loves us.

Let’s close with this fact: When we truly believe that we are who God says we are, we find peace the world can neither give nor take and significance that lasts forever.

Many of us fixate on athletes and celebrities because our secularized culture has conditioned us to measure success by popularity, performance, and possessions. But all three are fleeting. Just ask any former celebrity, retired athlete, or now-bankrupt former billionaire. Then consider the presidents and kings, athletes and tycoons who now own the same six feet of dirt that will be yours and mine one day (if the Lord tarries).

Now decide that you want to define yourself as God defines you. Decide that your status and identity as the child of God is the foundational fact about you. Decide that there is nothing you can do to make God love you any more or less than he already does. Decide that you therefore need nothing the world can give or take, that you are a child of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Now you are free to love others whether they love you or not. You are free to serve Jesus whether the world rewards you or punishes you for your service.

You can “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Romans 12:14). You can “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (v. 15). You can “live in harmony with one another” and “associate with the lowly” (v. 16). You can “repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all” (v. 17). And, “If possible, so far as it depends on you,” you can “live peaceably with all” (v. 18).

Imagine a world where everyone did this. Or a country, a state, a city, a community, or a family. Or a single Christian.

Why not you? Why not today?

Galaxies in the eye of a needle

Philip Yancey writes: “Scientists now believe that if you had unlimited vision, you could hold a sewing needle at arm’s length toward the night sky and see ten thousand galaxies in the eye of the needle. Move it an inch to the left and you’d find ten thousand more. Same to the right, or no matter where else you moved it. There are approximately a trillion galaxies out there, each encompassing an average of one hundred to two hundred billion stars.”

If Jesus is your Lord, you are the child of the God who made all of that.

Now, what’s your problem?

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As football fans and the culture at large gear up for the biggest sports event of the year as the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals face off in the Super Bowl this Sunday, I find myself in the unfortunate position of not really caring who wins. 

My Dallas Cowboys lost in heartbreaking—and rage-inducing—fashion a few weeks ago, but I’m still looking forward to the game and everything that surrounds it. That said, sports tend to be more fun when you have someone to root for.

With that in mind, I’ve enjoyed getting to know a bit more about the faith of several athletes who will be playing this weekend. 

Cooper Kupp

Cooper Kupp, for example, has become one of the most valuable wide receivers in the league and has consistently been the focal point of the Rams offense all season. He’s also among the most vocal and open Christians in the sport. 

Whether it’s reflecting on the lessons he learned while recovering from a torn ACL a few seasons ago or when he’s asked about his growing stardom in the league, Kupp consistently points people back to God as the reason for his success and the secret to staying grounded amidst his rise in prominence. 

For example, when asked earlier this season if he felt like the NFL fully appreciated his abilities, he simply paraphrased Proverbs 16:9, telling the reporter “Today, the verse that was on my mind was, ‘The heart of man chooses his path but the Lord establishes his steps. It just gave me so much freedom to go out there and play free, give everything I had [and] know the results rested in him.” 

When discussing the violence inherent to the sport, he notes that “it’s the nature of the game. In the same way, it’s also sporadic and oftentimes out of your control. I couldn’t imagine stepping onto a football field and not having a full body-mind-spirit belief that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, and doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing. My faith in God and His plan for me allows me to play freely without doubt or fear.”

Evan McPherson

However, Kupp is far from the only participant to have made the news recently as a result of his faith. The Cincinnati Bengals are playing for the championship in large part because rookie kicker Evan McPherson ended the last two weeks with game-winning field goals. After his kick that sent the Bengals to the AFC Championship game, he attended the press conference wearing a black shirt with “God is good” printed across the top. 

He also regularly quotes Scripture on social media and responded to being named the AFC Special Teams Player of the Month for December by posting on Instagram: “Glory to God! 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.” Paul’s instruction in that passage is to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you,” which seems to sum up McPherson’s approach to the game quite well. 

Sony Michel

And Rams running back Sony Michel would agree with him. He told reporters during a previous trip to the Super Bowl—ironically when he was playing against the Rams—that “without Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, there is none of this. We get all this glory, but the glory is not for us. It’s for Him. We do this for Him. That’s kind of my purpose. So really, none of this matters to me.”

Akeem Davis-Gaither

Bengals linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither hasn’t been a Christian for as long as the others listed above, but he speaks of his faith with a wisdom and perspective that would surely resonate with the others in this article. 

After being baptized last summer, Davis-Gaither posted that “after 23 years I am so proud to have given my life to Christ and Received the gift of new life! God has done wonderful things in my life, picked me up from my lows and humbled me at my highs. Every step of my life, God has blessed me in so many ways. I’m blessed that I’m able to share his love and let my life be a testimony of his unwavering love for us all.”

The impact of Christians in Super Bowl LVI

Regardless of whom you choose to cheer for this Sunday night—or even if you choose to ignore the game altogether—having Christians publicly stand for their faith while the world is watching should be an encouragement to all of us. 

It should also be a reminder to pray for those willing to take that step because doing so puts a target on their back that Satan would love nothing more than to exploit. None of these men are perfect, and they will surely make decisions from time to time that our Lord would not approve of. After all, they’re still just as fallen and human as the rest of us. 

So please take some time today to pray for each of these players by name. 

Pray that God would continue to use their courage and their witness in ways that expand the kingdom. 

Pray that God would protect them from temptation and help them to remain faithful to his will. 

And pray that God will use their example to spark the desire to be used in similar ways in your own life as well. 

We may never have the same reach or audience as professional football players on the sport’s biggest stage, but that’s not an excuse to take the opportunities that the Lord does give us any less seriously than if we did. 

What opportunities will God bring your way today? 

Will you be ready when he does?

Denison Forum

The recent volcanic eruption in the South Pacific island kingdom of Tonga was hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, according to NASA scientists.

As Morgan Lee reports in Christianity Today, the blast generated waves that reached estimated heights of fifty feet. Coastline villages and resorts were swept away. Rushing water buried roads under boulders and debris.

Yet only three people died and, despite the ash that covers large parts of the islands, life is returning to normal.

Fe’ilaokitau Kaho Tevi, the former general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, is grateful: “We feel that we have been the subject of the prayers of the worldwide Christian community.” Tongan Christians also point to King Tupou I (1797–1893), who dedicated the islands to God. The only remaining monarchy in the Pacific is overwhelmingly Christian today; Protestants make up 64.9 percent of the population, while the rest are evenly divided between Catholics and Mormons.

These believers approach Christian solidarity in a unique way: “The nuclear family in the context of the West does not define nor exist in the Pasifika Island family structure,” as a pastor of Tongan congregations in Seattle explains. “Similarly, Jesus viewed others as his brothers and sisters, particularly those who followed God’s way, as told in Matthew 12. We all belong to God’s family. We all belong to the body, as the apostle Paul would describe in 1 Corinthians 12.”

A unified response to unprecedented challenges

This week I’ve been focusing on the transformational fact that Christians are “children of God” whose worth is found in our Father’s unshakable love and who can experience every day the forgiveness, freedom, and joy of his unconditional grace.

Today, let’s consider another aspect of our theme: if we are all children of one Father, we are all members of one family. Every believer across twenty centuries of Christian faith is our sister or brother.

More than at any time in my lifetime, you and I need this empowering encouragement today, for this simple reason: the unprecedented challenges we face require the unified response of God’s people.

In The Coming Tsunami, I explain why and how Christians are castigated today as outdated, intolerant, oppressive, and even dangerous. Biblical morality is branded as homophobic and bigoted. Followers of Jesus are increasingly facing antagonism and oppression on a level we have never experienced in America. Our founders believed that our Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people” and would not recognize our culture.

But the good news is, we do not have to face our battles alone.

“People need embodied community”

Every image of the church in the New Testament is collective—we are members of one body (1 Corinthians 12:12–27) and branches of one vine (John 15:1–2). The apostle John was given a vision of our future in heaven: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9).

I can find no solos in the book of Revelation.

As Covenant College theologian Kelly M. Kapic observes, “It takes the entire church to be the one body of Christ.” Our existentialist, isolated culture desperately needs this “body,” as Anglican priest and New York Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren notes: “People need physical touch and interaction. We need to connect with other human beings through our bodies, through the ordinary vulnerability of looking into their eyes, hearing their voice, sharing their space, their smells, their presence. . . . People need embodied community.”

As a result, she claims, “A chief thing that the church has to offer the world now is to remind us all how to be human creatures, with all the embodiment and physical limits that implies. We need to embrace that countercultural call.”

“Thank you for the fiery sermon”

One consequence of the pandemic has been a significant decline in church attendance even as restrictions have eased. Going to church online is apparently becoming more permanent for many who could attend in person. This trend reflects the growing consumerism of American Christianity in my lifetime as many go to church for what they can “get out of it” more than what they can give in worship to God and service to others.

But the time to prepare for a tsunami is before it strikes. The time to engage personally and passionately with fellow believers is before we need what only the body of Christ can provide.

It’s been said that every Christian needs a Paul (a mentor), a Barnabas (an encourager), and a Timothy (someone to mentor). Who are yours? Who would name you as one of theirs?

A pastor went to visit a church member who had stopped coming to worship. The man expected the pastor to scold him for his laxity and to urge him to return. Instead, the pastor stepped into the den and took a seat before the fire roaring in the fireplace. The puzzled church member took a seat next to him.

The two watched the fire in silence. Then the pastor stood up, took the fireplace tongs, picked up a blazing ember, set it to the side of the fire, and then sat back down. The two watched as it sputtered, smoked, and eventually went out and grew cold. Then the pastor retrieved the tongs, picked up the dead coal, and placed it back into the fire. Instantly, it leapt back to flaming life.

As the pastor stood up to leave, the church member said, “Thank you for the fiery sermon. I will be back in worship this Sunday.”

How close to God’s fire are you today?

Denison Forum

Kyle Mullen was a football star at his New Jersey high school and for Yale (where he was a second-team All-Ivy League selection) and Monmouth University. He was also an honor society student described by a former coach as a “great athlete but a better person.” The coach added that Mullen was “probably one of the best kids I ever had. Great, great kid on the field but even better off the field.”

Mullen, age twenty-four, died last Friday during Navy SEAL “Hell Week” training. The commander of Naval Special Warfare Command said, “We are extending every form of support we can to the Mullen family.”

That same day, five-year-old Rayan Oram died after being extricated from a Moroccan well. He fell one hundred feet into the well the previous Tuesday; the rescue attempt captured global attention. Moroccan King Mohammed VI called his parents after he died; French President Emmanuel Macron added on a Facebook post, “Tonight, I want to tell the family of little Rayan and the Moroccan people that we share their pain.”

Leaders are right to extend every possible support to these families. Society’s attention will soon shift from these two tragedies, but their parents and families will be marked by them forever. This is how it is with families and how it should be.

As Queen Elizabeth II noted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

A story I will not forget

Yesterday, we began a week-long focus on the transformational implications of the biblical declaration that Christians are the “children of God.” I wrote that “this changes everything. Knowing that we are now and forever the beloved children of the God of the universe gives us status and significance the world can neither bestow on us nor take from us. It fills the deep hunger of our souls for meaning and worth.”

Here’s the story behind this metaphor’s recent impact on my life.

Last week, Dr. Mark Turman and I were honored to speak to a group of ministers in the Houston area about my new book, The Coming Tsunami, and the larger topic of cultural apologetics. At one point, several of the men described ways they are engaging their culture with redemptive truth. One of them told a story I will not forget.

I would guess that this man is in his fifties or sixties. He is a minister and a professional building inspector who shares Christ wherever he can with whomever he can. He told us that his starting point is usually to tell people that he was adopted by his parents.

He makes this point: “They knew nothing about me when they chose me. Unlike biological children who inherited their genetics from their parents, my parents did not know my parents or anything about my story. They chose me as I was, where I was.” He notes that such unconditional love obviously changed his life, then explains how God’s unconditional love has been even more transformative for him.

He had tears in his eyes when he finished his story. I had tears in mine as I heard it.

Why being adopted by God is so empowering

Upon reflection, I realized that there is another way to tell his story. Unlike his adoptive parents, his heavenly Father knew everything about him. He knew everything about his parents, his genetics, and his background. He knew everything about what he had done before coming to Christ and who he was when he became a Christian. He knew everything that this man would do for the rest of his life, including every sin he would commit.

And yet, the God of the universe chose him and adopted him as his child.

Paul described this miraculous reality: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15). There was no Jewish process of adoption: if a man died, his brother immediately became the head of his family and the father of his children. In Roman context and thus for Paul’s readers, however, the concept of adoption took on a powerful meaning.

Patria potestas (“the power of the father”) extended to a father’s children from their birth to his death. He could disown them, sell them as slaves, and even have them killed if he saw fit. However, if he adopted a child, that child could never be disowned, sold, or executed. They would be a permanent part of the family.

When the Spirit inspired Paul to use adoption in describing our status with our heavenly Father, he meant us to understand that nothing can cause God to disown us. To the contrary, as Paul declared later in Romans 8, “Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vv. 38–39).

The biblical answer to the “human condition”

In a culture that measures us by our appearance, possessions, performance, and popularity, it is terrifying to be known as we truly are. In Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?, psychologist John Powell writes of “the imprisoning fears and self-doubt which cripple most of us and keep us from forward movement on the road to maturity, happiness, and true love.”

He adds: “None of us wants to be a fraud or to live a lie; none of us wants to be a sham, a phony. But the fears that we experience and the risks that honest self-communication would involve seem so intense to us that seeking refuge in our roles, masks, and games becomes an almost natural reflex action.

“After a while, it may even be quite difficult for us to distinguish between what we really are, at any given moment in our development as persons, and what we pose as being. It is such a universally human problem that we might justifiably call it ‘the human condition.’”

Here’s the biblical answer to this “condition”: the God who is love (1 John 4:8) loves you more deeply, passionately, and unconditionally than an earthly father can love his children. He grieves your struggles and suffering even more than parents grieving the death of a child. He stands ready to guide your path with omniscient wisdom no human father can match. He will empower your obedience with omnipotence the strongest father cannot begin to offer.

What hidden pain, shame, or grief do you need to entrust to his loving grace today?

What temptation, challenge, or decision do you need to entrust to his omnipotent providence?

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