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Presidential Prayer Team – Faith over Funds

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During the recent presidential campaign, donors in California paid $40,000 each for the opportunity to eat dinner with George Clooney and President Obama. Meanwhile in Florida, supporters of Governor Mitt Romney paid $50,000 a plate for lunch with the Republican nominee. Getting access to important people in this world can be difficult, and sometimes it takes money – a lot of it.

All the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him.Luke 6:19

As Jesus ministered in Galilee, people scrambled to be close to Him. But their motives did not involve a quest for influence, fame or prestige. They simply wanted to be healed. Scripture tells you their faith was immediately rewarded. You can’t physically reach out and touch Jesus as they did during His earthly ministry, but still…He’s just that close. The Savior is ready to minister to you, as He has always been.

Will you take the time to reach out in prayer for His power? Today, ask God to touch your neighborhood and your nation with His truth and love. You can be sure He will respond – not to your funds, but to your faith.

Recommended Reading: Psalm 86:1-10

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Presidential Prayer Team – Real Power Source

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A 300-foot tower stood in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The Solar One project was the first test of a large-scale thermal power plant.

Behold, I have given you authority…over all the power of the enemy – Luke 10:19

Solar One collected energy by concentrating the sun’s rays onto a common focal point to produce heat to run a generator. It had 1,818 mirrors that reflected solar energy onto a tower where a black receiver absorbed the heat. The tower itself did not have the ability to generate power. Light from the sun, the real source of energy, was reflected onto a helpless receiver.

God’s power is most evident when it is displayed through weak vessels. II Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” In this verse, clay jars are a metaphor for fragile human bodies.

God has all the power you need to overcome challenges and be a shining reflection of His love to others. Tap into His energy source through prayer and reading the Bible. Pray also that God’s light will be shown through Christians so their lives will have a positive effect on the nation’s leaders.

Recommended Reading: I Corinthians 1:18-31

 

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Presidential Prayer Team – Instant Delivery

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If you send a letter to the President of the United States, will he read it? Well, first consider that the White House receives 65,000 letters weekly – not including other forms of communication like emails and phone calls. If the president did nothing but read around the clock, he will have to read 6.4 letters a minute just to keep up. Instead, the White House has a correspondence division with 13 departments to channel incoming mail. And an “autopen,” a mechanical device that mimics the president’s signature, is used to send most replies.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned. Mark 5:30

Now…consider Jesus. The very moment you send Him a message through prayer, He knows. And without a hint of distraction, He turns to hear your plea. Your message isn’t sent to some sorting department where it will be delayed, forgotten or evaluated by some clerk for its importance. Imagine if every Christian in America utilized this power of direct access to the Omnipotent One.

Don’t make the mistake today – or any day – of thinking God will not hear your prayers for yourself, your loved ones, or your nation. He will hear…and immediately turn to you!

Recommended Reading: I Kings 18:20-29, 36-39

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Mystery of Faith

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Long before Horatio Caine or Gil Grissom made crime scene investigating a primetime enterprise, the Bloodhound Gang was “there on the double” “wherever there’s trouble,” a doughty group of junior detectives who used science to solve crimes. Written by Newbery Medal-winning children’s author Sid Fleischman, the Bloodhound Gang was a beloved segment on the PBS television program 3-2-1 Contact, and my first encounter with the almost unbearable suspension, “To be continued.” Thankfully, with the help of their knowledge of science, no mystery remained unsolved for long.

What I did not realize at the time, or through years of absorbing Unsolved Mysteries, CSI, and my own scientific pursuits, was the hold that simple word “solve” would have on my understanding of mystery. For the Bloodhound Gang, as much as for the philosophers of science who have given rise to the notion, science is the invasion and defeat of mystery. That is to say, for many scientists (though certainly not for all historically), mysteries are there to be solved and put finally beyond us.

One can see how such a notion fuels the perception that science and faith are at odds with one another; science being the conquest of mystery and faith the act of making room for it. For Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor and cognitive scientist, certain aspects of religious belief can be thought of as “desperate measure[s] that people resort to when the stakes are high and they’ve exhausted the usual techniques for the causation of success.”(1) In other words, religion, like the story of the stork for parents not ready for their kids to know where babies come from, is simply a desperate attempt to explain away mystery, even if only by making space for it. And faith is thus seen as the grossly inferior CSI agent.

But what if mystery is less like a case for the Bloodhound Gang and more like the molecule of DNA they use to solve the crime? In so much of the culture in which we operate today, mystery is thought of in reductionistic terms. It is a momentary fascination that needs some higher reasoning, future information, or an hour of crime scene investigating to solve and explain. Everything we do technologically, medically, and scientifically is an attempt to put an end to mystery—to explain everything. But is that remotely possible? And would a reasonable explanation always dispel the mystery in the first place? As Thomas Huxley once put it, “[H]ow is it that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue?”(2) Is mystery always something to be solved?

In fact, the Greek word ‘mysterion,’ from which we get the word “mystery” does not necessarily mean something that is concealed (and hence, in need of our solution). It can also mean something that is revealed—as in a secret. In other words, mystery is not a problem in need of resolution, a concealed issue in need of an explanation. But mystery in this sense is something shown or given, albeit in a surprising, obscure way. It is in this sense of the word that early church father Tertullian spoke of the mystery of faith and ceremonial acts that join the believer to Christ—namely, our baptisms into his life, death, and resurrection, our celebration and consumption of his body and blood. It is a mystery, a gift, a fuller life revealed. Faith is not a theological solution to mystery in the CSI sense of the word; it is the celebration of this mystery—indeed, The mystery.

And at this, it is a mystery all the more captivating than those that can be solved in an hour or in a microscope. For it is a mystery that God has revealed to minds which don’t fully understand or yet fully see, a mystery worthy of a whole lifetime. It is mystery reminiscent of the words of Simone Weil: “God wears Himself out through the infinite thickness of time and space in order to reach the soul and to captivate it…it has in its turn, but gropingly, to cross the infinite thickness of time and space in search of Him whom it loves. It is thus that the soul, starting from the opposite end, makes the same journey that God made towards it. And that is the cross.”(3)

Every Sunday before holding the bread by which we remember all that has been revealed in Christ, all that has been given in the cross, whether seen in part or partly understood, Christians profess in unison the mystery of faith. It is a mystery that does not need my solution, a mystery that continues to surprise, to nourish, and to reveal itself in life and in death: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Steven Pinker, “The Evolutionary Psychology of Religion,” presented at the annual meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Madison, Wisconsin, October 29, 2004.

(2) T.H. Huxley & W.J. Youmans, The Elements of Physiology and Hygiene: A Text-book for Educational Institutions (New York: Appleton & Co., 1868), 178.

(3) Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Arthur Wills (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 140-141.

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Max Lucado – Because of What He Did

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Few things can weary you more than the fast pace of the human race.  Too many sprints for success. Too many days of doing whatever it takes eventually take their toll.  You’re left gasping for air, holding your sides on the side of the track. You’re asking yourself, “When I get what I want, will it be worth the price I paid?”

It’s this weariness that makes the words of Jesus so compelling. “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).

Come to Me.  Why Him?  He offers the invitation as a penniless rabbi in an oppressed nation.  He has no political office.  He hasn’t written a best-seller or earned a diploma.  Yet they called Him Lord. They called Him Savior. Not so much because of what He said, but because of what He did. What He did—on the Cross!  He did it for the weary people of this world.

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Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – The End Will Come

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“And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it, and then, finally, the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

I applaud every effort to warn Christians and nonbelievers to be ready for our Lord’s return, as Scripture clearly teaches that He will come again and has delayed His return in order that more people might have a chance to hear the gospel. To this end, we must give priority to taking the gospel to all men everywhere throughout the world.

However, we dare not wrongly interpret the Scriptures, as so many in previous generations have done, resulting in a lack of concern for the souls of men and a failure to correct the evils of society.

God expects us as His children to be His representatives here on earth. We are to love with His love, sharing the message of salvation with all who will listen and helping to meet the needs of widows, orphans and prisoners in His name.

True believers in previous generations have always been at the forefront of moral and social reforms as well as being active in evangelism. Child labor laws, women’s suffrage and abolition of slavery, for example, grew out of a mighty spiritual awakening that swept England through the ministry of John Wesley, George Whitefield and their colleagues.

We in our generation must be no less concerned about injustice wherever we find it. The most important way to solve our social ills, however, is to change the hearts of men by introducing them to our Lord Jesus Christ. Our priority commitment as Christians must be to disciple and evangelize in obedience to our Lord’s command.

Then we should instruct new believers that “loving our neighbors as ourselves” includes helping them where they hurt. But remember, the Lord cares more about the soul than He does about the body. The body will soon perish but the soul will live forever.

Bible Reading: Matthew 24:7-13

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: I will keep my priorities straight – first sharing the good news of salvation to as many as possible, but at the same time demonstrating love and compassion to widows, orphans, prisoners and all who are in need, in obedience to our Lord’s command.

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Presidential Prayer Team – Cruelty and Compassion

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A pitiful sight often seen on the streets of New York City in the late 1800s was a woman they called the “Witch of Wall Street.” Hetty Green was always dressed in a tattered black dress and appeared to be homeless. She ate mostly oatmeal and lived in a decrepit flat with no hot water or heat. She and her son suffered a wide range of preventable physical ailments due to a lack of basic medical care.

A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself. Proverbs 11:17

But Hetty was no pauper. She was, in her day, the richest woman in the world…a shrewd Wall Street investor worth $2 billion in today’s money. Yet she was utterly miserable and cruel to everyone around her, and died after suffering several strokes brought on by irrational anger.

Your impact as a Christian is not determined by how many – or how few – resources you have. Of much greater importance: a servant’s heart, and a commitment to honor the Lord with everything. Today, America is in dire need of more leaders dedicated to giving, not getting. As you lift them up, pray also that God will help you set the standard in your own neighborhood for kindness and compassion.

Recommended Reading: Mark 10:17-27

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Charles Stanley – An Unseen Battle

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Ephesians 6:10-12

Satan does exist—our broken society testifies to his reality. Those who ignore him do so at their own peril. This is also true of Christians, because we are all at war against him. Spiritual warfare is personal; Satan crafts specific attacks for each individual. Though he cannot steal a believer’s spirit from God, he can and does harass us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Every ambush and frontal attack is meant to defeat our witness so we can’t live a victorious Christ-centered life.

Our foe is not omniscient, but he is crafty. He observes our strong and weak points to determine the best areas for attack. As soon as his quarry becomes comfortable and least expects trouble, the Adversary springs a trap. Among his most deceptive tactics is hiding behind familiar faces in order to misguide our fury. For example, he may tempt a husband to make an unwise financial decision that angers the wife and leaves her feeling insecure. But the husband is not her enemy—he needs her love and forgiveness. The enemy is always Satan and his legion of demons.

The first rule of warfare is to know one’s enemy, and thanks to Scripture, we can. The Bible also contains an important assurance: “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

The combined forces of hell cannot equal the supernatural power of a single believer. We have Christ living within us—the same Christ who was triumphant on the cross and whose final victory over Satan is prophesied in Revelation. Through Him, we can conquer Satan and win our unseen battles.

 

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Hyperseeing from the Towers of Babel – Ravi Zacharias Ministry

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On the influence of media and technology, discussions abound. “Is Google making us stupid?” “Is Twitter bad for the soul?” “Is Facebook changing the way we relate?”(1) In fact, there seems a recent upsurge in articles questioning our faltering minds, morals, and communities (ironically reaching us through the very mediums that are blamed for it). Some note the shifting of thought patterns, attention spans that are beginning to prefer 140 characters or less, information gluttony, news addiction, and so on.

In fact, there is good reason, I think, to step away from the torrent surges of information and hyper-networking to think meaningfully about how it all might be changing us—for good and for ill. For with every new improvement and invention irrefutably comes gain and loss. And just as quickly as I can build a case against the gods of media-and-technology, I can also double check my footnotes on Google, find twenty additional perspectives on Twitter, and watch an interview with the author of one of the headlines mentioned above—all of which came from articles I read online in the first place. There are clearly advantages to having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information, inasmuch as this hyper-access to people, news, and facts assuredly has far-reaching effects on cognition, as well as the way we see, or don’t see, the world.

Speaking decades before the debates over Twitter or the wonders of Google, Malcolm Muggeridge seemed to foresee the possibilities of too much information. “Accumulating knowledge is a form of avarice and lends itself to another version of the Midas story,” he wrote. “Man is so avid for knowledge that everything he touches turns to facts; his faith becomes theology, his love becomes lechery, his wisdom becomes science.  Pursuing meaning, he ignores truth.”(2) In other words, Muggeridge saw that it was possible to see so many news clips that we are no longer seeing, to hear so many sound-bites that we are no longer hearing, to seek so many “exclusives” that we are no longer understanding.

Speaking centuries before Muggeridge, the prophet Isaiah and the rabbi Jesus described their audiences quite similarly. “This is why I speak to them in parables,” said Jesus, “because ‘they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand’” (cf. Matthew 13:13, Isaiah 6:9-10). Undoubtedly, we are living in a time that is complicated by towering opportunities of information and knowledge; news clips, sound bites, blogs, and editorials, all piled so high and wide that we can scarcely see around our fortresses of facts. But perhaps regardless of the era, humanity’s skill in building towers of Babel—built to see beyond ourselves yet ironically blocking our vision—is both timeless and unprecedented.(3) Learning to see in a way that “reaches the heavens,” or, as Einstein once said, “to think the thoughts of God,” is far more about seeing God than it is about seeing facts.

In the art and work of sculpture, there is a term used to describe an artist’s ability to look at an unformed rock and see it in its completed state. It has been said of the sculptor Henry Moore that he had the gift of “hyperseeing,” the gift of seeing the form and beauty latent in a mass of unshaped material.(4) Hyperseeing is a word used to describe a sculptor’s extraordinary gift of seeing in four dimensional space—that is, seeing all around the exterior but also seeing all points within, seeing in a rough piece of stone the astounding possibilities of art.

It strikes me that the exercise of hyperseeing, then, as it might apply to our towering mountains of rough and unmolded facts, is something to which God tirelessly calls us. Far from building towers of knowledge that make names for ourselves, or accumulating sound-bites until we are no longer hearing, hyperseeing (and hyperhearing) the world around us requires God’s vision and voice. “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3). Far better than a world of mere facts is a world made visible by the wisdom of God.

Perhaps we practice the exercise of hyperseeing as we learn to see the power of the resurrection, the glory of the transfiguration, the gift of the Lord’s Supper, or the wisdom of the parables in the daily facts and movements of our lives in God’s kingdom. To be sure, the resurrection of Jesus—the rising of dead flesh to life again—is no more jarring than every other promise we hold because of him, promises we can now see in part, while hyperseeing the extraordinary possibilities of all they will look like upon completion:

“Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

and all people shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:4-5).

Indeed, 5the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6the lame will leap like deer, the tongue of the speechless sing for joy; waters will break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.(5) In a world hyper-filled with facts and knowledge, such are the sights and sounds of a kingdom the pure in heart (with or without the help of Google) shall see.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) cf. Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic, (July/August 2008), “Scientists Warn of Rapid-fire Media Dangers,” CNN Health, April 14, 2009, Peggy Orenstein, “Growing Up on Facebook,” The New York Times, March 10, 2009.

(2) From Firing Line, “Do We Need Religion or Religious Institutions” an interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, September 6, 1980, chapter 6.

(3) See Genesis 11.

(4) As cited by Jeremy Begbie in an interview with Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio Review, vol. 94, Nov./Dec. 2008.

(5) See Isaiah 35:5-6 and Luke 7:22.

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Our Daily Bread — By Our Deeds

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Matthew 23:23-31

Even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is pure and right. —Proverbs 20:11

One night a clergyman was walking to church when a thief pulled a gun on him and demanded his money or his life. When he reached in his pocket to hand over his wallet, the robber saw his clerical collar and said: “I see you are a priest. Never mind, you can go.” The clergyman, surprised by the robber’s unexpected act of piety, offered him a candy bar. The robber said, “No thank you. I don’t eat candy during Lent.”

The man had given up candy as a supposed sacrifice for Lent, but his lifestyle of stealing showed his real character! According to the writer of Proverbs, conduct is the best indicator of character. If someone says he is a godly person, his words can only be proven by consistent actions (20:11). This was true of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day as well. He condemned the Pharisees and exposed their sham for professing godliness but denying that profession with sin in their lives (Matt. 23:13-36). Appearances and words are deceiving; behavior is the best judge of character. This applies to all of us.

As followers of Jesus, we demonstrate our love for Him by what we do, not just by what we say. May our devotion to God, because of His love for us, be revealed in our actions today. —Marvin Williams

Spiritual words are mere distractions

If not backed up by our godly actions,

And all our good and beautiful creeds

Are nothing without God-honoring deeds. —Williams

 

Conduct is the best proof of character.

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Shattering Fear with Truth – Charles Stanley

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Joshua 1:6-8

Fear enslaves us. Anxiety can color our entire perspective until we live with a constant sense of unease. But fear does not fit who we are as believers. We are children of the living God, who has promised to care for us and work all things for our good. If we choose to live in tense apprehension, then at the end of our life, we’ll look back and wish we had trusted God more. But instead of living in a way that leads to regret, we can be freed from our fear now.

Identify your specific worries and be willing to deal with them. We cannot begin to understand our anxieties until we recognize the basic root of all fear. Certainly, there are numerous causes of fearful concern—ignorance, an inherited mindset, an overactive imagination—but ultimately the root of all our worry is doubt regarding divine sovereignty. God is in control of all things. We are under His power, provision, and protection every single moment of our life. Fear is shattered on the foundational truth of the Lord’s omnipotent control.

Focus on the Lord instead of on fear. When we understand that we are in the hand of our almighty, all-knowing, loving Father, the choice to refocus on Him becomes easier. But we must make this courageous decision every time we face anxiety.

By far the most powerful way to overcome fear is to meditate on the Word of God. In times of trouble, we must hold fast to the truths of Scripture. The Bible is intended to be an immovable anchor for your life. As God’s thoughts become part of your own thinking, fear will fade and faith will grow.

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The Just Will Rise – Ravi Zacharias

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In his famed “I have a Dream speech,” Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” At these words, King painted for a troubled nation a powerful image of hope, and forever rooted the civil rights movement in images of justice and the image of God.

The images presented in the book of Daniel are similarly rooted in images of justice and God. In fact, it is for this reason that the sixth chapter of Daniel was a favorite Scripture passage among civil rights preachers in the early 1960s. The story told in Daniel 6 presents a king who loses sight of his purpose as king and the purpose of the law, creating a system void of justice and a law that only hinders and traps its makers. But against the images of lawlessness and corruption, the story portrays a silent but active Daniel clinging to a higher law, bowing before the King of Kings in the midst of persecution, in the hands of his oppressors, and the shadows of the lions’ den. Living within the hopelessness of exile, sweltering under the heat of injustice, Daniel unflinchingly declares the sovereignty of God, and with faithfulness and perseverance refuses to believe otherwise.

In a kingdom in which he was a mere foreigner, Daniel was appointed a position of great authority because the king found him to be useful. The story quickly hints that in the peaceful dominion of King Darius all is not peaceful. The leaders serving under Daniel want to get rid of him. The story does not provide a thorough explanation for their hatred of Daniel and yet, perhaps in this silence much is said. The nature of any prejudice is absent of explanation. Without reason, without logic, we discriminate and are discriminated against. There is no explanation because to explain our reasons behind prejudice is to become our own judge. In fact, Daniel’s enemies announce their illogic when they conclude, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God” (6:5).

Whatever their motivation, the men proceed with their plan. Approaching the king with flattery that he does not refuse, they convince him to establish an ordinance that holds the kingdom accountable to praying only to him. The king, who is pleased with his high and lofty position and his authority to rule, agrees to test the loyalty of his citizens, and to make the law irrevocable.

It is significant to note that Daniel does not speak until the end of the story, yet throughout it, he is anything but complacent. Knowing the document had been signed, Daniel goes to his house, opens his windows, faces Jerusalem, and prays as he had done before. Just as planned, he is immediately caught by the men who are quick to point out his guilt before the king. While the king stands guilt-ridden, Daniel stands accused, and nothing can be done to save him. Bound by his own law, the king must release his faithful servant into the hands of injustice. Daniel is thrown into the lions’ den, which is then sealed at the remorseful hand of the king.

As we await the outcome, the injustice of the situation palpable, the voices we most want to hear from remain discouragingly silent. We hear nothing from the lips of Daniel. And we hear nothing from the mouth of Daniel’s God.

In the face of injustice, silence is indeed oppressive; filled at once with despairing questions. Where is God? What of the silent victims? Who will speak over the deafening sounds of injustice, over the word games and manipulative arguments, when hands are tied, options are exhausted, and fates seem irreversible?

Daniel eventually speaks, but only after his irreversible sentence was overruled by the hand of God. Daniel’s story, not unlike the stories of the civil rights movement worldwide, is a declaration that in silence God is still acting, in the weariness of injustice, in the shadows of those who seek to devour, God is sovereign. Justly, thankfully, God comes near to the oppressed. “Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise.”

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Surprised by Suffering – Ravi Zacharias

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Gayle Williams was a 34 year-old foreign aid worker serving among the disabled in a country where humanitarian work is both needed and dangerous. Williams was killed as she walked to work, targeted by a militant group because they believed she was spreading Christianity.

Elsewhere, a young medical student at a prestigious university described in detail the hostility he confronts daily as a Christian. He spoke of students and friends who deride the possibility of possessing both faith and intellect, medical professors who actually apologize when the language of design inadvertently slips into lectures on the body, and the isolation that comes from trying to stand in the shadows of this increasingly antagonistic majority.

When confronted by the stories of those who live their faith among people who hate them for it, I am confounded, inspired, saddened, and thankful all at once. The death and murder of Gayle Williams startles those at ease in their faith to reflection. The pervasive opposition in the lives of believing university students awakens even seasoned believers to their own apathy. How courageous is the believer who follows Christ among those who hurl insults and hostility? How treasured is the Bible that must be buried in the backyard for protection? How sacred is the faith of one who is willing to die for it?

For those of us who live in far less hostile environments, news of persecution is foreign, frightening, and difficult to fathom. Their experiences bring the words of the early church to life in a way that many of us have never considered. When the apostle Paul wrote that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ—neither “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword”—he was referring to struggles that were dangerously real to him and the people to whom he was writing. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). Peter, too, encouraged believers in their troubling situations. He urged them to stand firm in their convictions regardless of their affliction; he reminded them that discomfort and suffering was a sacred part of following the wounded one. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

The apostles’ words do not take away the injustice of brutal murder. But they do assuage the shock of its occurrence. Jesus told his followers to expect persecution; in fact, he said they would be blessed by it. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12). Peter’s words encourage the suffering not to see their painful trials as strange or out of the ordinary, but as something that further marks them as believers and unites them in even greater intimacy with their leader. Persecution may be always jarring, unfair, or lamentable, but it is not strange when it happens to those who follow Christ. Perhaps it is stranger when it is not happening.

Mark Twain once said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” For those of us who live the faith we profess without challenge, trial, or risk, reflection may well be appropriate. Is it possible that we have so shut ourselves up in Christian circles that we have closed ourselves off from the world and hence any chance of suffering for Christ? Is it possible that we are so at ease among the majority that we avoid venturing out as the minority among those who might hate or hurt us? Certainly we experience hostility and persecution indirectly. But how we are personally interacting with the angry, the lost, and the broken masses Jesus once wept over is another thing entirely. How effectively we live as “the salt of the earth” that Jesus described depends on our place and posture within it. Surely salt that remains content within the shaker has lost its saltiness.

The struggles of Christian students on university campuses, the sufferings of Christian aid workers across the world, and the daily trials of believers who live courageously in dangerous places are stories that frighten and sadden us.  They are also stories that depict what can happen when the salt of the kingdom is allowed to season the earth. Gayle Williams is said to have been the hand of Christ among some of the world’s most forgotten. “Remember the words I spoke to you,” said Jesus to his disciples. “‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). And then he was led away like a sheep to the slaughter.(1)

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Isaiah 53:7

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Life, Death, and Incarnation – Ravi Zacharias

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The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is one of the world’s largest maximum-security prisons, an eighteen-thousand acre habitat to people who have committed horrible crimes. It houses roughly five thousand inmates, more than half of which are serving life sentences. Death looms large at Angola; ninety-four percent of inmates who enter are expected to die while incarcerated. The fear of dying alone in prison, coupled with the reality that for many inmates their first encounter with death was committing murder, makes death a weighted subject, often locked up in anger, guilt, and dread.

For a few inmates, however, the Angola Hospice volunteer program has drastically changed this. In 1998, equipped with a variety of staff trustees and inmate volunteers, the LSP hospice opened its doors to its first terminally ill inmate. Today it is recognized as one of the best programs of its kind. Giving inmate volunteers a role in the creation of the hospice and the primary care during the dying process, inmates find themselves in the position to tangibly affect the lives of others for good. Reckoning with death as a fate that awaits all of humanity as they care for dying friends and strangers, prisoners gradually let go of hardened demeanors. One inmate notes, “I’ve seen guys that used to run around Angola, and want to fight and drug up, actually cry and be heartbroken over the patient.”(1) Another describes being present in the lives of the dying and how much this takes from the living. “But it puts a lot in you,” he adds. A third inmate describes how caring for strangers on the brink of death has put an end to his lifelong anger and helped him to confront his guilt with honesty.

It may seem for some an odd story as a means of examining the story of Christmas, but in some ways it is the only story to ever truly introduce the story of Christmas: broken, guilty souls longing for someone to be present. As martyred archbishop Oscar Romero once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those most aware they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas. For the prisoners at Angola who stare death in the eyes and realize the tender importance of presence, for the child whose mother left and whose father was never there, for the melancholic soul that laments the evils of a fallen world, the Incarnation is the only story that touches every pain, every lost hope, every ounce of our guilt, every joy that ever matters. Where other creeds fail, Christmas, in essence, is about coming poor and weary, guilty and famished to the very scene in history where God reached down and touched the world by stepping into it.

The Incarnation is hard to dismiss out of hand because it so radically comes near our needs. Into the world of lives and deaths, the arrival of Christ as a child turns fears of isolation, weakness, and condemnation on their heads. C.S. Lewis describes the doctrine of the Incarnation as a story that gets under our skin unlike any other creed, religion, or theory. “[The Incarnation] digs beneath the surface, works through the rest of our knowledge by unexpected channels, harmonises best with our deepest apprehensions… and undermines our superficial opinions. It has little to say to the man who is still certain that everything is going to the dogs, or that everything is getting better and better, or that everything is God, or that everything is electricity. Its hour comes when these wholesale creeds have begun to fail us.”(2) Standing over the precipices of the things that matter, nothing matters more than that there is a loving, forgiving, eager God who draws near.

The great hope of the Incarnation is that God comes for us. God is present and Christ is aware, and it changes everything. “[I]f accepted,” writes Lewis, “[the Incarnation] illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die,…[and] covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected.”(3) The coming of Christ as an infant in Bethlehem puts flesh on humanity’s worth and puts God in humanity’s weakness. To the captive, there is no other freedom.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Stephen Kiernan, Last Rights (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2006), 274.

(2) C.S. Lewis, The Complete C.S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 282.

(3) Ibid.

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The Certainty of Judgment – John MacArthur

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“If the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Heb. 2:2-3).

Today the majority believes that God is a God of love and grace, but not of justice. One brief look at Hebrews 2:2-3 ought to convince anyone otherwise. The writer’s point is this: Since the Old Testament makes it clear that transgression and disobedience met with severe and just punishment, how much more so will equal or greater punishment be rendered under the New Testament, which was revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself?

Both the Old and New Testaments confirm that angels were instrumental in bringing the law (Deut. 33:2; Acts 7:38). The law the angels spoke, primarily the Ten Commandments, was steadfast. That meant if someone broke the law, the law would break the lawbreaker. The law was inviolable; punishment for breaking it was certain.

“Every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense” (v. 2). Transgression refers to stepping across a line–a willful, purposeful sin. Disobedience, however, refers to imperfect hearing–the sin of shutting one’s ears to the commands, warnings, and invitations of God. It is a sin of neglect or omission, doing nothing when something should be done.

Hebrews 2:2 also puts to rest the notion that God is not fair. The writer says every sin received a “just recompense.” God, by His very nature, is just. Every punishment He meted out to those who defied Him was a deterrent to the sin He wanted to stop.

God severely punished the nation of Israel because they knew better. That leads to the important principle that punishment is always related to how much truth one knows but rejects. The person who knows the gospel, who has intellectually understood it and believed it, yet drifts away will experience the severest punishment of all.

Suggestion for Prayer:  Ask God to give you an even greater appreciation of the punishment He has saved you from to motivate you to pursue the lost more vigorously.

For Further Study:  Read Matthew 11:20-24, 12:38-42, and Luke 12:47-48 to discover Christ’s attitude toward those who know the truth yet rebel against it.

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God and Disappointment

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I struggled as a teenager growing up in Delhi. Failure was writ large on my life. My dad basically looked at me and said, “You know, you’re going to be a huge embarrassment to the family—one failure after another.” And he was right given the way I was headed. I wanted to get out of everything I was setting my hand to, and I lacked discipline.(1)

During this time, India was at war and the defense academy was looking for general duties pilots to be trained. So I applied and I went to be interviewed, which involved an overnight train journey from the city of Delhi. It was wintertime and we were outside freezing for about five days as we went through physical endurance and other tests. There were three hundred applicants; they were going to select ten. On the last day they put their selection of names out on the board, and I was positioned number three.

I phoned my family and said, “You aren’t going to believe this. I’m going to make it. I’m number three. The only thing that’s left is the interview. The psychological testing is tomorrow, and I’ll be home.”

The next morning I began my interview with the chief commanding officer, who looked to me like Churchill sitting across the table. He asked me question after question. Then he said, “Son, I’m going to break your heart today.” He continued, “I’m going to reject you. I’m not going to pass you in this test.”

“May I ask you why, sir?” I replied.

“Yes. Psychologically, you’re not wired to kill. And this job is about killing.”

I felt that I was on the verge of wanting to prove him wrong—but I knew better, both for moral reasons and for his size! I went back to my room and didn’t talk to anybody. I packed my bags, got into the train, and arrived in Delhi. My parents and friends were waiting at the platform with garlands and sweets in their hands to congratulate me. No one knew. I thought to myself, “How do I even handle this? Where do I even begin?” They were celebrating, and yet for me, it was all over.

Or so I thought.

I was to discover later that God is the Grand Weaver of our lives. Every thread matters and is there for a purpose. Had I been selected, I would have had to commit twenty years to the Indian armed forces. It was the very next year that my father had the opportunity to move to Canada. My brother and I moved there as the first installment, and the rest of them followed. It was there I was in business school and God redirected my path to theological training. It was there that I met my wife, Margie; there my whole life changed. The rest is history. Had I been in the Indian Air Force, who knows what thread I’d have pulled to try to wreck the fabric.

Thankfully, our disappointments matter to God, and God has a way of taking even some of the bitterest moments we go through and making them into something of great significance in our lives. It’s hard to understand at the time. Not one of us says, “I can hardly wait to see where this thread is going to fit.”  Rather, we say, “This is not the pattern I want.” Yet one day the Shepherd of our souls will put it all together—and give us an eternity to revel in the marvel of what God has done. Our Father holds the threads of the design, and I’m so immensely grateful that God is the Grand Weaver.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

(1) Excerpted and adapted from Ravi Zacharias’s The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).

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Christ, the King

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Most of us only know of kings and queens through fairy tales. Especially those who reside in North America, we have not witnessed the coronation of a royal, nor visited the museum that houses crown jewels. For most of us living in the modern world, kings and queens are the product of legend and myth, or remembered through history classes as those often tyrannical figures overthrown by revolution.

Yet, if you are part of a church that journeys through the liturgical church year, then you’ll be aware that this past Sunday, November 25 was the Sunday of Christ, the King. This special Sunday marks the end of the church year, and inaugurates the Advent Season that includes Christmas Day. This day, for Christians, celebrates and recalls the rule of Christ over all creation. Special hymns, Scripture readings, and prayers fill the day captured by the apostle Paul’s words to the Philippians: “God highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”(1)

For many living today, the language of kingship may seem outdated or oppressive. And perhaps for many, the dominant images of kings and kingdoms conjure up thoughts of tyrants. We think of ancient feudal societies with despotic rulers and overlords, or power-hungry leaders who will stop at nothing, nor think twice about stepping over anyone who gets in their way. As a result, these images often negatively impact thoughts about Christ being called the King.

But the biblical imagery and descriptions of Christ’s kingship are not despotic or oppressive. The ancient Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, both envision a Messiah who presents an alternative vision to the stereotypical understanding of kingship:

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth…the wolf and the lamb shall graze together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox…they shall do no evil or harm in all my holy mountain, says the Lord….Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I shall raise up for David a righteous Branch; and he will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness I the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is his name by which he will be called, ‘The Lord our righteousness.’”(2)

In addition to this prophetic vision, the way in which Jesus lives radically alters the human understanding of kingship. For, the earthly ministry of Jesus was not one of power, military might or oppression. Indeed, Jesus turns the whole concept on its head in a discussion with his disciples:

“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to become great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.“(3)

Jesus argued before Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world. He understood all too well popular images of kings and lords and he specifically sought to undermine them. Jesus demonstrated that as king and as ruler of all, he would be the servant of all. Indeed, even the Incarnation celebrated on Christmas day is an example of this: God the Son, King of all creation, humbled himself to become human, even sharing the ultimate fate of his would-be captive subjects: human death.

For those who care to see and hear in a new way during this season of Advent, Christ, the King Sunday points us to King Jesus who did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of humans. It is before the rule of this servant-king that one day all will bow.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Philippians 2:9-11.

(2) Isaiah 65:17, 25; Jeremiah 23:5-6.

(3) Mark 10:42-45.

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Reflections on X

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There are two ways to look at a mirror. This fairly unoriginal thought crossed my mind as I stood before my bathroom mirror focused on the spots I was wiping away, when my gaze suddenly shifted to a dark smudge under my eye. With one hand still cleaning the spots on the mirror, I tried to remove the spot under my eye with the other. It didn’t work; or at least, as I attempted to do both, I didn’t do either job well. You can’t look in a mirror and at a mirror at the same time.

Because the Christian scriptures are compared (among other striking images) to a mirror, the illustration seemed to be one worth contemplating. But instead of being stirred with thoughts and theology, I was caught off guard by the stirring of my own conscience.

Earlier that day, as I was reading a passage I can’t remember now, I thought to myself with a self-assured sigh:  “If only [so-and-so] were reading these verses, they would see their situation more clearly, and the thing they’re completely overlooking.” It is little wonder why I can’t remember the verses; I wasn’t looking in the mirror. My eyes had shifted elsewhere.

Jesus once asked, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” His question at once uncovers a familiar behavior, exposing our tendency to focus on the faults of others while remaining blind to our own. Jesus isolates the motive we disguise as concern—like a sword dividing bone and marrow. It obviously made an impression on the ones who first heard him say it; all four gospel writers make note of Jesus’s words.

In an essay titled “The Trouble With ‘X’”, C.S. Lewis writes candidly of this all too common human trait: the ability to see clearly “X” and “X’s” flaws while having a harder time with our own. “X” is whomever we find in our lives with characteristics that annoy or even grieve us. Each of us can readily name people with traits that keep them in the miserable state they’re in, even as they claim they want out. Or we can easily describe a person who is just generally difficult or moody or dishonest. Lewis’s rejoinder to our ability to state clearly the trouble with the many “X’s” in our lives is similar to Christ’s:  Realize that there are similar flaws in you. There is most certainly something that gives others the same feeling of despair that their flaws give you. Writes Lewis, “You see clearly enough that nothing […] can make ‘X’ really happy as long as ‘X’ remains envious, self-centred, and spiteful.” Be sure, he warns, that there is something also inside of you that, unless given to God to be altered, will remain similarly unscathed and unmoved.

The unique promise of a God who speaks into the world is that chaos is moved to order. Of course, this may mean first that chaos is simply revealed. God speaks and shows us our reflections, exposing the areas we are blind to and piercing our hearts with truth only a mirror can reveal.  But like a mirror, God’s words can also be looked at in more than one way. As I read the Bible that morning, my intentions were good—or at least nearly good—I thought. The verses made me think of someone important to me; a common occurrence, I suspect, amongst us all. Nonetheless, it was a moment like my experience at the bathroom mirror. I had shifted my eyes to someone else’s spots. I was looking to see something other than me. And examining God’s words for someone else is like looking at a mirror and seeing in all the spots a reflection other than your own.

To approach a speaking God with eyes searching and ears listening for everyone but ourselves is to cease to hear and see as God intended. “Anyone who listens to the word,” writes James, “but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” (1:23-24). The choice is crucial. Of all the spotted reflections around us, there is only one you can really examine and see changed. Putting ourselves, and our spots, in God’s able hands is the most urgent use of the mirror.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.