Oreo is the best-selling cookie brand in the US and the number one selling cookie globally. In this age of “woke” business, it’s not surprising that Oreo’s parent company, Nabisco, would want to capitalize on the popularity of their commodity. On Monday, they released a short film affirming a young Asian man who is coming out as gay.

Their film is just one example of the escalation of unbiblical sexual morality in American culture. Here are some others: GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ watchdog group, is urging Hollywood to incorporate more LGBTQ content into children’s programming. A former Disney Channel actor recently spoke of witnessing his female co-stars being sexually exploited at an early age. And new sex education guidelines in New Jersey will teach first-graders about gender identity.

“My identity isn’t a golf score”

However, if you’re discouraged by Western society’s continued decay and decline, take heart: God is still using his people in culture-changing ways.

For example, after Scottie Scheffler won the Masters last Sunday, he was asked at a press conference how he balances his fierce desire to compete without letting it define who he is as a person. He replied: “The reason why I play golf is I’m trying to glorify God and all that he’s done in my life. So for me, my identity isn’t a golf score.”

Then he added: “Like Meredith [his wife] told me this morning, ‘If you win this golf tournament today, if you lose this golf tournament by ten shots, if you never win another golf tournament again, I’m still going to love you, you’re still going to be the same person, Jesus loves you and nothing changes.’”

As a result, he said, “All I’m trying to do is glorify God and that’s why I’m here and that’s why I’m in [this] position.”

“No one ever spoke like this man!”

Yesterday we focused on the power of the Spirit to transform us into the character of Christ (Romans 8:29). Today, let’s build on this theme by focusing on one aspect of Jesus’ life and work: his brilliant mind.

On Tuesday of Holy Week, our Lord was confronted by the religious leaders of his day. They had already determined to put him to death (John 11:47–53) and now sought to bring charges that would turn the crowds against him as a false teacher and prophet.

One of their questions was especially incendiary: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” (Matthew 22:17). If Jesus said that it was, the crowds would turn against him for supporting the hated Roman Empire. If he said it was not, the Romans would arrest him for insurrection. It seemed that they had him trapped.

But Jesus turned the tables on them, asking to see the coin used to pay the tax in question. It was a denarius, with a profile of Tiberius Caesar. He then made his famous declaration, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (v. 21). Matthew records that “when they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away” (v. 22).

This event was by no means unusual in the life of our Lord. Even when he was just twelve years old, “all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47). When he concluded the Sermon on the Mount, “The crowds were astonished at his teaching” (Matthew 7:28).

When the authorities earlier sent soldiers to arrest him (John 7:30), the officers returned empty-handed and explained, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (v. 46). Jesus was such a brilliant thinker and speaker that biblical scholar Jonathan T. Pennington could write an entire book titled Jesus the Great Philosopher. (I recommend Pennington’s work highly, by the way.)

“He will teach you all things”

Here’s my point: Jesus taught and spoke in the power of the Holy Spirit.

John said of him: “He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34). Jesus said of himself, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63).

He promised the same to us: “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). Jesus added that the Spirit “will guide you into all the truth . . . and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13).

If we will seek and submit to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit each day, he will help us develop the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:5). We will “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). And we will “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

“The test of the artist”

In To Change the World, sociologist James Davison Hunter demonstrated conclusively that we change culture by achieving our highest place of influence and living there faithfully. Scottie Scheffler is an example: he was as fully devoted to Jesus before he began winning PGA tournaments as he is now that he is the world’s No. 1 golfer. But his excellence on the golf course has empowered his witness and platform off it.

You and I can follow the same culture-changing approach: work hard to be and do your best to the glory of God in daily submission to the omniscience and wisdom of the Spirit. He will “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13) if you are willing to be led. And he will use your excellence for his glory and our good.

Thomas Aquinas observed, “The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.”

What kind of work will you produce today?

NOTE: Christians today are increasingly marginalized—yet consider how the early Christians lived under Roman rule. In our new book, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, Dr. Ryan Denison looks at how the early church responded to their culture—which was arguably much more antagonistic to the Christian faith. Request your copy today to learn How to Bless God.

Denison Forum

“Blessed are the people whose God is the Lᴏʀᴅ!” (Psalm 144:15).

Let’s consider three very different stories as metaphors for our culture today.

One: The University of Texas will allow students to live together regardless of their gender or sexual identity. The university explained, “This helps enhance our residents’ sense of belonging and improve our competitiveness with the Austin market and other institutions. It also allows us to be more responsive to student needs.” The fact that you’re probably not surprised by this news is my point.

Two: on a lighter note, Major League Baseball will allow pitchers and catchers to use technology intended to prevent sign stealing. A catcher uses a pad with buttons on the wrist of his gloved hand to communicate the intended pitch and location to the pitcher through a listening device. This is intended to speed up the game and keep the other side from stealing signs. However, it says something about us that “America’s pastime” has to adopt such unprecedented means to prevent cheating.

Three: in other sports news, Scottie Scheffler won yesterday’s Masters tournament, solidifying his status as the world No. 1 golfer. Before Scheffler could win the tournament, however, he had to do something very important a few months ago: RSVP to his invitation to play. According to the New York Times, Augusta National sends invitations each year to golfers it wishes to invite to the tournament. They must signal their intention to play before they are permitted to compete.

There was a time when I played golf every week and practiced several times a week. However, no matter how much I worked on my game, I would never have received such an invitation. There are some things we cannot do for ourselves, no matter how hard we try.

It’s not a “Holocaust” museum

I returned Saturday after spending fifteen days in the Holy Land. I have led more than thirty study tours of Israel; each time I am deeply impressed by the continued courage and resilience of the Jewish people.

For example, terror attacks escalated in Jerusalem once again as Ramadan began. One of the victims was a former Israeli Olympian and father of three; another victim became engaged to his fiancé last month and was planning his wedding.

And of course, every visit to Israel is a reminder of the Holocaust. It is difficult to meet an Israeli who did not lose a family member to the Nazis and their collaborators.

Last Thursday, our group visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Except it’s not actually a “holocaust” museum. “Holocaust” is a Greek word referring to a “sacrifice by fire” made to God. The Nazis did not sacrifice the Jews to God—they murdered six million of them in cold blood.

For this reason, the Jewish people use the word Shoah, Hebrew for “catastrophe,” to describe what happened to their people.

Inside the museum, I noticed a quotation I had not seen before, this one from a poet and philosopher named Benjamin Fondane who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944: “Remember only that I was innocent and, just like you, mortal on that day. I, too, had a face marked by rage, by joy and pity, quite simply, a human face!”

“The best friend you have ever known”

From rising anti-Semitism around the world to the tragic death of twenty-four-year-old NFL quarterback Dwayne Haskins to the continuing tragedy in Ukraine to senseless violence against teenagers in the US and an epidemic of mental health challenges for American children, each day’s news proves again that fallen humans are incapable of changing fallen human nature. But what we cannot do, the Spirit of God can.

As Oswald Chambers noted, “It is gloriously and majestically true that the Holy Ghost can work in us the very nature of Jesus if we will obey him.”

Let’s apply his observation personally: identify an aspect of your life that you wish were different—something you are doing that you should stop or something you are not doing that you should begin. What can you do to enable the Spirit to transform that part of your life into the “very nature of Jesus”?

Craig Denison writes: “If you ask for a deeper friendship with the Holy Spirit, you will find he is the best friend you have ever known.” This is because “friendship with the Spirit is like any other friendship in that it develops over time. Like a new friend, you must get to know his character and personality. Spend time just talking with him, listening to him and allowing him to work in your heart and life.”

If we do, Craig assures us, “He is your gateway to experiencing the things of God. Walk in relationship with him, follow his guidance, and make a new best friend in the Holy Spirit.”

“The firstborn among many brothers”

We cannot change our hearts as the Spirit can. However, we can hinder the Spirit from doing his transforming work in our lives. Craig notes that “the Holy Spirit has a personality. He has likes and dislikes. He feels, thinks, enjoys, likes, suffers, and desires.”

As a result, it is vital that we “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30) and that we “do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). To this end, I want to encourage you to make a “spiritual inventory” part of your life each morning: ask God to bring to your mind anything that is hindering the Spirit from making you more like Jesus, then confess whatever comes to your thoughts and claim your Father’s forgiving and cleansing grace (1 John 1:9).

In addition, I encourage you to take time periodically for a deeper inventory. Offer the same prayer but with paper and pen in hand. Write down what comes to mind, giving the Spirit as much time as he needs to answer your prayer. Once again, confess these sins specifically and claim God’s forgiveness and mercy.

As Christians around the world noted yesterday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem triumphantly on Palm Sunday. As we will remember this Holy Week, he died in agony on Good Friday and rose in victory on Easter Sunday. All of it was not only to save humanity but to transform humans until we are “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).

Your Lord will settle for nothing less.

Will you?

Denison Forum

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed as America’s first Black female Supreme Court justice. Russia was suspended yesterday from the UN Human Rights Council. Tiger Woods’ return to the Masters is being called “his greatest achievement.” Opening Day for Major League Baseball was yesterday.

In the midst of such headline-making news, why should you care that Elon Musk is now on the board of Twitter, where he recently became the single largest shareholder? Less than one in four Americans even use Twitter. And yet, the Wall Street Journal calls Musk’s engagement on the social media site “a hopeful moment for political speech and debate at America’s increasingly censorious tech giants.”

Axios columnist Jim VandeHei explains: “Right now, Twitter decides if former President Trump can post on its platform, and whether to delete a post about vaccines if it and most scientists deem the post misinformation. In a decentralized web, you would decide if Trump appears on the web3 equivalent of your Twitter feed—and set your own thresholds on vaccine information providers” (his emphases).

In a day when Americans trust The Weather Channel more than all other media organizations (by a large margin), it is clear that media agendas are undermining trust in media. As I hope to explain today, this issue is vital not just for our news consumption but for the very future of our society.

Has FOX News “sold its soul”?

FOX News Media CEO Suzanne Scott recently announced that Caitlyn Jenner would be joining their organization as a contributor, stating, “Caitlyn’s story is an inspiration to us all.” The news prompted Christian Post contributor Michael Brown to write an article with the headline “Christian conservatives, you cannot put your trust in Fox News.” He claims that the news organization “has lost its voice and sold its soul.”

The transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been likened to Jackie Robinson, even though the comparison is illogical and unfounded on a variety of levels.

Bills that would legalize infanticide have been introduced in Maryland and in California. Colorado’s governor signed a bill legalizing abortions up to birth with no limits. A battle over abortions induced by “abortion pills” is looming. The Atlantic has a long essay profiling abortion activists who are developing ways to provide abortions if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this June.

What could these disparate stories have in common?

The best historical explanation of our cultural crisis

Carl R. Trueman’s new book is titled Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution. It is the best historical explanation of our current cultural crisis I have ever read. (For a summary of his argument, please see my overview of the book on our website.)

Trueman believes we are facing today “a situation without obvious historical parallel.” In brief, contemporary society has made two catastrophic decisions that are undermining our culture and endangering our future.

One: We have decided that we are whatever we feel ourselves to be. 

Trueman defines “the modern self” as “one where authenticity is achieved by acting outwardly in accordance with one’s inward feelings.” He traces this evolution from Descartes through Rousseau, the Romantics, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Wilhelm Reich.

Whether we have read these thinkers or not, we are now all influenced by their assertions. In fact, any attempt to express disapproval of one’s decision to act in accordance with one’s feelings is seen as a blow “against the right of that person to be whoever they wish to be.”

For example, we are told that if one feels oneself to be “a woman trapped in a man’s body,” one should be free to change one’s physical body to align with one’s inner feelings. And society should honor and even celebrate the courage of such an “authentic” person.

Two: We have jettisoned the traditional frameworks by which we have always identified ourselves: nation, religion, family, and geography. 

Trueman shows how Reich and Herbert Marcuse have been especially influential in persuading our culture that historical norms and institutions have “restrained” us and kept us from experiencing personal authenticity. Now it is conventional wisdom that such institutions must be repudiated on behalf of sexual, gender, and racial “equality” and replaced with new norms that celebrate personal freedom. Any speech that disagrees or disapproves of this movement is viewed as dangerous to society and worthy of cancelation.

Satan “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers”

It is therefore unsurprising that Twitter and other media platforms would censor speech with which they disagree (ignoring the illogic of being intolerant with the “intolerant”). Or that transgender athletes are hailed as courageous victims (ignoring the athletes against whom they compete so unfairly). Or that abortion would be hailed as a “healthcare” right (ignoring the healthcare of unborn babies).

Christians can expect this narrative to continue and even escalate. As I note in The Coming Tsunami, our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion are more imperiled than at any time in American history.

However, Trueman reminds us that early Christians faced a culture far more antagonistic than ours (so far). Many paid for their faith with their lives. And yet they engaged their antagonists with a positive argument that “Christians made the best citizens, the best parents, the best servants, the best neighbors, the best employees.” Over time, the positive difference Jesus makes in those who follow him fully became obvious, attractive, and empowering.

Paul warned that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Here is how he responded: “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (v. 5).

Whom do you know who has been “blinded” by “the god of this world”?

Whom will you serve “for Jesus’ sake” today?

Denison Forum

My great aunts Daisy and Clella were convinced Americans never went to the moon. They died many years ago believing that the television coverage of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969 was staged, probably on sand dunes in Arizona. When I asked them about moon rocks I had seen in a museum, they replied, “How do you know they were from the moon?”

I am guessing they would not have been candidates for an unusual auction next week: the Bonhams Space History sale will offer lunar dust collected by Armstrong from the Apollo 11 mission. You can own your own (tiny) souvenir from the moon for a mere $800,000 to $1,200,000.

I have no way to estimate the physical comparison of this dust to the moon from which it came. But I can tell you that our moon is 27 percent the size of our planet and yet our planet is so small that 1.3 million Earths can fit inside our sun. While our sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass in our solar system, it is just one of 200 billion stars in our galaxy. Astrophysicists estimate that our galaxy is just one of between one hundred billion and two hundred billion galaxies in the universe.

And the God who made all of that measures it in the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

Could aliens see us as “bacteria”?

Scientists recently designed a radio message to be beamed into deep space and reveal Earth’s location. They hope it will be received and understood by an intelligent alien civilization.

This despite Stephen Hawking’s warning in 2015 that aliens could be vastly more powerful than us and “may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.” As a result, he advised that if we receive a signal from another planet, “We should be wary of answering back.”

Our planet has in fact received a message from beyond ourselves. More than a signal, it is an entire book written by the God of the universe. Since he is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, living by his revealed truth is by definition the most loving, wise, and empowering way to live (cf. Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

By contrast, ignoring or rejecting his word comes at our peril, always.

The scientific benefits of gratitude

When humans reject the sanctity of all humans, atrocities such as the slaughter of civilians in Ukraine result along with the authoritarian quest to expand one’s empire that is a perennial feature of human history.

In a secularized culture that has replaced biblical sexuality with the claim that any consenting behavior is therefore moral, David French demonstrates persuasively that such “morality” is “profoundly harmful” and cites several secular writers who are “giving voice to deep pain” in our culture.

When we reject biblical guidance for marriage and family, we should be grieved but not shocked by a CDC report documenting increased drug and alcohol use, reported abuse, and feelings of mental distress among America’s teenagers. “These data echo a cry for help,” according to a CDC official.

A New Yorker article reports that between 1950 and 1988, the proportion of teenagers aged between fifteen and nineteen who died by suicide quadrupled. Between 2007 and 2017, the number of children aged ten to fourteen who died in the same way more than doubled. And research shows that boys without fathers fare worse than boys with fathers on more than seventy different metrics, including the likelihood to commit mass shootings.

By contrast, John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander demonstrate that the biblical value of gratitude can bring “a range of benefits” such as “better sleep, improved interpersonal relationships, better stress and hormonal regulation, and even reduced physical pains.” And the rhythms of spirituality have been shown to correlate significantly with better mental health.

“I have to give glory to God”

In Psalm 18, David testified, “I love you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, my strength” (v. 1). Here’s why: “The Lᴏʀᴅ is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (v. 2). Count how many times David uses “my” to refer to his Lord.

Could the depth of his intimacy with God explain the divine omnipotence he experienced?

If we do not believe in an omnipotent God, we will not position ourselves by faith to experience his omnipotence. Then our lack of faith becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on the path to a heightened secularism that eventually rejects his relevance and even his existence.

However, the converse is true as well. South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said her team’s recent national championship victory was “divinely ordered” and told an ESPN reporter, “I have to give glory to God, glory to God.” Before Jalen Wilson led Kansas to the men’s title, he tweeted, “Thank you God, without your blessings I wouldn’t have any of this.”

I don’t mean to suggest that faith in an omnipotent God guarantees success in life. On the contrary, I mean to suggest that success in life is cause for praise for those with such faith.

“We already have a home”

Henri Nouwen described our Father’s omniscient and omnipotent love for us this way: “You are loved long before other people can love you or you can love others. You are accepted long before you can accept others or receive their acceptance. You are safe long before you can offer or receive safety.”

He notes that such love means “we already have a home” with God. When we grasp this truth, “we may at last have the strength to unmask the illusions created by our fears and continue to return again and again and again.”

When last did you return home?

When next will you?

Denison Forum

One reporter called it “the stuff of sporting legend.” Another called it “borderline surreal.” A director of sports medicine called it “a story that’s just beyond belief.”

They were describing the news that Tiger Woods might play in tomorrow’s Masters Tournament less than fourteen months after a car accident that nearly led to the amputation of his right leg. Woods ended the speculation with his announcement yesterday, “As of right now I feel like I am going to play.” More than thirty-five thousand fans were on the grounds at Augusta National on Monday hoping to get a glimpse of his practice round, and his fellow professionals were more than excited to see him.

Tiger Woods has eighty-two PGA Tour wins, tied with Sam Snead for the most in history. In 2001, he became the first golfer ever to hold all four professional major championships at the same time. He was the youngest Masters champion ever and is the career money list leader.

At age forty-six, Woods is fourteen years older than the average age for a major golf champion. Only two players in the last fifty-four years were his age or older when they won a Grand Slam title. And neither was attempting to come back from a life-threatening accident.

Why would Woods even consider doing this?

The question is actually relevant not just for him but for us all.

Our “collective worship of work”

Carolyn Chen is co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion at UC Berkeley. In a recent article for the Atlantic, she discusses one of the most fascinating and troubling trends in American culture: our “collective worship of work.”

She cites a McKinsey report that 70 percent of employees said their sense of purpose is defined by their work. In her view, the “invisible religion of work” has “become an unassailable part of our culture.”

According to Chen, “At a time when religious-affiliation rates are the lowest they’ve been in the past seventy-three years, we worship work—meaning we sacrifice for and surrender to it—because it gives us identity, belonging, and meaning, not to mention that it puts food on our tables” (her emphasis).

In her view, “houses of worship” that can compete with the worship of work “would have to claim our time, energy, and devotion like work does. We would have to sacrifice and submit to their demands, as we do for work. We would have to build communities of belonging, together seeking meaning and purpose outside of our productive labor.”

Chen adds that such “houses of worship needn’t be only religious ones; they could also be our co-ops, neighborhoods, unions, reading groups, or political clubs.” The goal would be to build “civic organizations that can help us visualize human flourishing that rises above a company’s bottom line.”

“I am not who I think I am”

I do not know Tiger Woods personally (though I have watched him play at the Masters in person and am in awe of his talent). As a result, I cannot say with any certainty what is motivating his possible return to golf. But I do believe his story is a parable of a culture that defines who we are by what we do.

A man stood on a busy street corner and asked a thousand people as they went by, “Who are you?”

Without exception, every person who responded answered by describing their job: “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a teacher,” or “I’m a pastor.”

A counselor once explained our culture’s sense of self this way: “I am not who I think I am. I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.”

And I think you think I am what I do.

By contrast, the Bible defines our identity not by what we do but by Whose we are. We are told that “to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). If our identity is our unchanging essence, this is our identity as Christians. Everything else about us can change, but this cannot. Once we become the children of God, we are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We will forever be the children of our Father in heaven.

A penetrating life question

How can Christians convince secularized people to choose God’s grace over our cultural worship of work?

We will need to show our skeptical society that our Father’s way is better than their way. To do this, as Chen notes, we will need to “sacrifice and submit” to God’s claim on “our time, energy, and devotion.”

In other words, we desperately need to reject the Western cultural division between the sacred and the secular, Sunday and Monday, religion and the “real world.” We need to adopt the biblical call to holistic faith that submits our lives as a “living sacrifice” to God every day (Romans 12:1). We need to vacate the throne and enthrone the one true King (Matthew 6:33) by being “filled with the Spirit” every day (Ephesians 5:18).

Then the Spirit can empower and direct us to, in Chen’s words, “build communities of belonging, together seeking meaning and purpose.”

Author James Clear recently asked a penetrating question: “If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what’s the first thing they would change?”

Let’s amend his question: “If God took control of your life tomorrow, what’s the first thing he would change?”

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Graphic images from Bucha, Ukraine, are shocking the world. According to CNN, they show the bodies of at least twenty dead men in the street, some of whom had their arms bound behind their back. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “This is genocide.” President Biden called for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes.

NATO’s chief described the reports as “horrific” and said they represent “a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe in decades.” He also noted that the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into potential war crimes in Ukraine so that “those responsible are held accountable.”

The fact that you and I are following this war so closely is part of what makes it “our first true world war,” in the opinion of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Anyone with a smartphone—and that’s nearly half the planet’s population, according to Friedman—can watch what is happening in Ukraine and express their opinions globally through social media.

Friedman also reports that Ukraine’s government has raised more than $70 million worth of cryptocurrency after appealing on social media for donations and that cyberwarriors are attacking Russia’s government, news, and corporate websites. He calls this conflict “World War Wired.”

America’s states are becoming “radically different”

Americans are joining the world in uniting against Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine at the same time we are witnessing a deepening chasm of division at home.

The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked yesterday, with all eleven Democrats supporting Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court and all eleven Republicans opposed. And a wave of legislation is making American states “not only a little different but radically different,” according to a UCLA law professor.

For example, when Idaho proposed a new ban on abortions, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of out-of-state patients. When the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, lawmakers in California proposed a law making their state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

Only two states—Minnesota and Virginia—have legislative chambers split between political parties. As more state governments are controlled by single parties, partisanship is deepening. If the Supreme Court rolls back federal abortion rights, we are likely to see a sharp escalation in political battles over abortion on the state level and between states.

Arabs and Jews working together in Israel

A common crisis can be a powerful force for unity and community.

According to President Biden, NATO has “never been more united” in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As extremist violence in Israel has escalated recently, Arabs and Jews are working together in unprecedented ways to forge a common future.

Ranchers from as far away as Wyoming gathered in South Dakota to pray for rain in the face of ongoing drought and its devastating consequences. Christianity Today reports that “pastors and churches across Ukraine are working to bring people the bread they need to feed their bodies and the bread they need for their souls.”

Poland and Romania have launched programs to help Ukrainian refugees integrate by providing housing, jobs, schooling, and personal kindness. Meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, “members of faith communities have been leading the charge to welcome the displaced” in America.

Why Jesus is praying for you right now

You may know that “Christ Jesus . . . is interceding for us” right now (Romans 8:34; cf. Hebrews 7:25). But do you know the subject of Jesus’ prayers for us?

The night before he was crucified, our Savior prayed “for those who will believe in me through [his disciples’] word” (John 17:20). That’s you and me. To this end: “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (v. 21).

Until we are as “one” as the Father and the Son, I believe the Son will continue praying to the Father for our unity “so that the world may believe” that the Father sent the Son. And I believe he wants us to join him in such intercession.

In a fragmented and war-torn world, our unity can be a compelling witness. Our community empowered by compassion can change the world one hurting soul at a time. And our unified intercession can empower our unified ministry in supernatural ways.

Baylor students pray for revival

The first Christians prayed together for God to grant them boldness to continue speaking his word (Acts 4:29). As a result, “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (v. 31).

Paul asked the Thessalonians to “pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored” (2 Thessalonians 3:1). And he asked the Ephesians to pray for him “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel” (Ephesians 6:19).

Are you praying for your fellow Christians to be so empowered? Are you asking your fellow Christians to pray the same for you?

Thousands of Baylor University students, joined by friends from other schools up to one hundred miles away, gathered recently at their football stadium for seventy-two hours to pray for revival and spiritual renewal. Their forty-foot by eighty-foot prayer tent was filled at times by standing-room-only crowds.

According to Charles Ramsey, director of campus ministries and associate chaplain at Baylor, “There were times when it was like a high-level festival of celebration. Other times, it was absolutely silent in the tent as students read Scripture and quietly prayed.”

How will you join them today?

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Denzel Washington spoke at pastor T. D. Jakes’ International Leadership Summit last Saturday, where he explained his reaction when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards last week. Washington went immediately to speak with Smith, a decision he explained to the group: “I don’t know all the ins and outs of this situation, but I know the only solution was prayer, the way I saw it, the way I see it.”

In other headline news, North Carolina defeated Duke last Saturday in what is being called a “game for the ages” and will play Kansas in tonight’s NCAA men’s basketball championship. When Hubert Davis, North Carolina’s first-year coach, was introduced last April, he told a press conference that his faith “is the most important thing to me. My faith and foundation is firmly in my relationship with Jesus. It just is.”

By contrast, this Atlantic headline caught my eye: “Why People Are Acting So Weird.” The writer documents a variety of ways people are acting more rudely and violently and points to heightened stress, the increased use of alcohol and drugs, and isolation enforced by the pandemic.

Today’s news offers tragic examples: at least six people were killed and at least twelve were wounded in a shooting yesterday morning in Sacramento, California. A man was shot to death in Atlanta. And one person was killed and at least eleven people were hospitalized Saturday night after a shooting incident at a concert in Dallas.

In light of all the bad news, how are Americans doing? In a recent Gallup poll, only 17 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the direction of the country. However, 85 percent were satisfied with their own lives.

This disparity highlights the point I want to make today.

The challenge of “compassion fatigue”

Denzel Washington and Hubert Davis are Christians who act on their faith when the opportunity arises. By contrast, the perennial temptation in Western culture is to keep our personal lives and our public lives separate.

This temptation extends not only to our actions but also to our intercession. “Compassion fatigue” is a real challenge in these hard days.

For example, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared on screen last night at the Grammy Awards. His speech began: “The war. What’s more opposite than music.” In reference to the music industry’s biggest night, he said, “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals.”

When you see the daily reports about the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, are you praying with the same passion you did a month ago?

Here’s another example: Ramadan began last Friday. There are more than two billion Muslims in the world, each of whom rejects the divinity of Jesus and is therefore without true hope of eternal life (cf. Romans 8:9). Does this fact weigh on your heart today?

By contrast, our Father loves each of us as if there were only one of us, Muslims included. And he is working in the Muslim world in ways we have not seen in Islamic history.

A sheikh leading other sheikhs to Christ

My friend Tom Doyle has been ministering in the Middle East for many years. His marvelous book, Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? tells story after story of ways God is “awakening” the Muslim world by his Spirit.

Over the weekend, I read a companion book, David Garrison’s A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ. Garrison reinforces Tom’s point by documenting statistically the fact that “Muslim movements to Jesus Christ are taking place in numbers we’ve never seen before.” He reports on nine different geographical regions in the Muslim world, identifying eighty-two movements to Christ in “what appears to be a historic hinge moment in the spread of the gospel across the Muslim world.”

Here’s just one example: Sheikh Hakim is a hafez, which means he has memorized the Qur’an. He told Garrison, “If someone said that Jesus was God, we would kill him. When I was a Muslim, I burned churches for Islam.”

He was an overseer of four mosques and was training three hundred Islamic teachers when an African evangelist gave him a New Testament in Arabic. “That night Isa [Jesus] came to me in a dream,” he says. He saw himself chopping down a mosque’s minaret. When he told the evangelist, “He smiled and explained to me, ‘You are going to win many sheikhs to the Lord.’”

When Hakim came to faith in Christ, he lost his job and his farm, and his father tried to murder him. Today he moves from town to town because there are always some trying to kill him. He has since led four hundred Muslim sheikhs to Christ, more than three hundred of whom have already been baptized.

Three ways to pray today

I invite you to join me in three prayer requests today.

First, ask God to give you his heart for our hurting world so that you can pray with passionate compassion.

Second, pray each day during the month of Ramadan (April 2–May 1) for millions of Muslims to come to faith in Jesus and for God to protect Ukraine, end this war, and redeem this tragedy.

Third, pray for the Spirit to move in power in our churches and broken culture. We have never needed a spiritual awakening more than we need a transformative movement of God today.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on this day in 1968. He died knowing that the movement for racial justice he led would ultimately triumph. While we still have far to go, we can claim his testimony as our own today: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Will you pray for the passion to speak unarmed truth in unconditional love today?

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 “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” —Psalm 14:1

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus illustrated the unpredictability of life with his now-famous metaphor, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” He might have been reading the news:

• Skippy is recalling 161,692 pounds of peanut butter because of possible contamination with stainless steel fragments.
• Bruce Willis is retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a language disorder caused by brain damage that affects a person’s communication ability.
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians is unexpectedly retiring.
• A massive pileup caused by a sudden snow squall on a Pennsylvania highway involved eighty vehicles and left six people dead.
• Singer Tom Parker passed away from brain cancer at the age of thirty-three.
• Americans will be able to choose a gender X designation on passport applications starting April 11.
• Yesterday was the international “Transgender Day of Visibility.”

In contrast to the constant flux and chaos of our fallen world, the Bible proclaims of our Maker, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God!” (Psalm 90:2). But fewer Americans than ever seem to agree.

Secularism continues to grow in the US. According to Pew Research, roughly three in ten Americans have no religious affiliation of any kind. Younger generations are less engaged in church than their parents; many committed Christians are not active in a local congregation.

On this April Fool’s Day, let’s consider King David’s admonition in Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” His observation applies not just to atheists and secularists but also to committed Christians in ways we may not fully appreciate today.

“The most dangerous period since the Soviet Union collapsed”

Our secular culture increasingly insists that personal authenticity is the path to flourishing, defining authenticity as “a feeling that people interpret as a sign that what they are doing in the moment aligns with their true self.”

Historian Carl Trueman calls this viewpoint “expressive individualism.” He explains that it enables a person to believe they are “a woman trapped in a man’s body” or that an unborn child is an organism encroaching on a woman’s life she is therefore free to remove. As I note in The Coming Tsunami, Christians who disagree are stigmatized as outdated, intolerant, oppressive, and even dangerous to society.

And yet, we might ask, how is this radical secularism working for us?

Consider this statement by the Wall Street Journal editorial board: “The world is entering the most dangerous period since the Soviet Union collapsed, and perhaps since the 1930s.” The editorial focuses on geopolitical dangers, but we could add the opioid epidemic and other “deaths of despair,” deepening political sectarianism that threatens democracy, and the escalating crime rate in the US.

“I think we are ready to listen”

In response, an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News caught my eye: “I’m an atheist, but between COVID and nuclear weapons, I’m ready to give God a try.”

Josh Selig is a ten-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and director. He writes: “We’ve entered a pantomime of our own lives. More often than not, it feels like we’re pretending. Pretending to live. Pretending to work. I read an article that said more people than ever are quitting their jobs. Perhaps it’s because our jobs no longer seem important. Not much does. All of our ceremonies feel unceremonious.”

He then tells God: “Although I check daily, there are no answers in my newsfeed, in my inbox, or on my phone. So, I’ve come to you. If you don’t exist then, of course, never mind. The joke’s on me. But if you do exist, and I suspect in your own way you do, then I hope you’ll get back to me.”

Selig concludes: “I’m here. We are all here. And, finally, I think we are ready to listen. Hope to see you on the mountain one day.”

Secular reasons for spiritual engagement

An atheist indeed has good reasons to “listen.” Contrary to American secularism, religion is growing dramatically around the world. Ramadan begins tonight, a month of fasting in Islam that is just one example of religion’s pervasive attraction for billions of people. (For more, see Shane Bennett’s article on our website, “4 things every Christian should know about Ramadan.”)

Even secular writers agree that “on average, religious people are generally happier, healthier, and live longer” and that “religious people are more likely to feel that they belong to a community.” Numerous studies show that the rituals and social bonding inherent in religious engagement are vital to flourishing.

The health benefits of religion are clear as well: a comprehensive Harvard study found that people who attend religious services weekly or more are 16 percent less likely to become depressed and show a 29 percent reduction in smoking and 34 percent reduction in heavy drinking.

For secular reasons alone, Psalm 14:1 turns out to be right.

Why Scottie Scheffler plays golf

Scottie Scheffler poses for photos with the trophy after winning the Dell Technologies Match Play Championship golf tournament, Sunday, March 27, 2022, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

However, the best evidence for biblical faith is its transformative effect on those who embrace it.

Pro golfer Scottie Scheffler is an example. Now ranked #1 in the world heading into next week’s Masters, Scheffler was profiled in Golf Digest after winning a difficult tournament last month. He explained how he keeps his composure under pressure: “I don’t place my value in golf. It’s kind of a tough balance because I spend so much of my time trying to improve and to be good at this game.

“You’ve really got to look at the motivation for why I play. For me, I have a relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s why I play golf. I’m out here to compete because that’s where he wants me. He’s in control of what happens in the end. So just really staying the course and staying faithful and letting him be the guidance for me versus anything that I do.”

When secular people like Josh Selig see the way our truth has changed our lives, they may consider making it their truth. When they do, they meet the Truth (John 14:6).

Is the Truth your truth today?

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Virginia (Ginni) Thomas is the wife of longtime Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. According to the Washington Post, twenty-nine text messages obtained by the Post and CBS News show that she “repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”

In response, some Democrats are calling on Justice Thomas to recuse himself on cases related to the January 6 Capitol riots. Some are even calling for Justice Thomas to step down from the court or be impeached.

As we will see today, this controversy is relevant far beyond Justice Thomas, his wife, and their critics.

A defense of Justice Thomas

Former prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy states that the statute governing judicial disqualification, Section 455 (of Title 28, US Code), involves “financial or legal stakes in the matter, or some connection to the matter as an attorney.” According to McCarthy, “Ginni Thomas’s conservative political activism—up to and including the text messages to Mark Meadows about the 2020 election—does not activate those triggers.”

He adds, “If it did, many judges appointed by Democrats would have been disqualified from cases over which they’ve presided despite the political and legal activism of their spouses.” His statement links to a Newsweek article detailing numerous examples of such activism.

To reinforce his argument, McCarthy states that “Supreme Court justices are not even subject to disqualification over their own activities that bear directly on cases.” He notes the example of Justice Elena Kagan, nominated by President Obama, who served as Mr. Obama’s solicitor general when the administration was formulating its legal strategy to defend the Affordable Care Act. When the Act came before the Supreme Court, she did not recuse herself from the case and in fact provided the critical vote to uphold it.

McCarthy therefore concludes: “The smearing of Justice Thomas is transparently partisan politics, nothing more.”

Using a senator’s words against him

Whether you agree with McCarthy or not is not my point. Rather, I want to focus on the method he used to make his case.

If you accuse me of wrongdoing and I can show that you have done what you now accuse me of doing, I can win our rhetorical battle. Unsurprisingly, politicians do the same.

For example, earlier this year, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sought to change the Senate’s filibuster rules. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton then used Sen. Schumer’s previous statements in support of the filibuster against him. 

My point is not to castigate our public officials. I am grateful to those who are willing to serve in a day when they face more criticism—fair and unfair—than at any time in my lifetime. My purpose today is actually the opposite: rather than criticizing political leaders, I want to point a finger at myself. And perhaps at you.

“She gave me fruit of the tree”

One very simple way to avoid responsibility for our sins is to point to the sins of others. This story begins early: when the Lord called Adam to account for his sin in the Garden of Eden, Adam responded, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). Eve in turn blamed the serpent (v. 13).

Satan is delighted by the degenerating moral condition of our culture. And he is also delighted when Christians point to the sins of others to justify their own.

Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine is obviously one of the most horrifically sinful acts by a political leader in recent times. But his sin does not justify my hatred of my brother. Even though the world would say the two have no comparison, Jesus disagrees (Matthew 5:21–22). It is the same with adultery and lust (vv. 27–30), proving the point that the sins of others do not excuse my sins or yours.

“Keep your heart with all vigilance”

I had a fascinating conversation recently with a millennial Christian leader. He believes that the single greatest reason many of his generation are dropping out of church is the ongoing moral crisis within the church.

I’m convinced that he’s right.

We can complain that critics are holding us to a different standard than they require for themselves, and we’re right. But they’re right to do so. We claim that the Holy Spirit of God lives in us (1 Corinthians 3:16) and that his “fruit” in our lives includes “goodness,” “faithfulness,” and “self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

If Muslims or Buddhists, Republicans or Democrats made the same claim, would we not hold them to it?

God’s word declares, “It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Peter 4:17). To this end, let’s remember Proverbs 4:23: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

The text explains how: “Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil” (vv. 24–27).

How cockroaches survive

Scientists tell us that cockroaches survived the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs by hiding in tiny soil crevices that protected them from heat and by being omnivorous scavengers who will eat what others will not.

Sin does the same: it hides from the heat and light of God’s truth and will “eat” anything we “feed” it.

If we would make a transformative impact on our culture, Christ must first make such an impact on us. Daily submission to him is vital to the sanctification that empowers our lives and witness. Oswald Chambers observed: “Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness. . . . When we are abandoned to God, he works through us all the time.”

How abandoned to God would he say you are today?

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Will Smith has apologized to Chris Rock for slapping him at last Sunday night’s Academy Awards after the comedian made a comment about Smith’s wife. The Academy announced a formal investigation and condemned Smith’s actions. (For more on our response as Christians, read Mark Legg’s “Should we forgive Will Smith?”)

The story dominated social media, eclipsing even the war in Ukraine. However, another story from the Oscars has received less coverage: the hosts took numerous opportunities to castigate Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill.

The legislation has been dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics and the mainstream press. Wanda Sykes slammed the bill in her opening monologue; she and fellow hosts Amy Schumer and Regina Hall repeated the word gay multiple times as the crowd applauded.

Florida’s governor nonetheless signed the bill into law the next day. So, let’s discuss what the legislation does and doesn’t do, identify the larger cultural narrative this controversy represents, and conclude with two biblical principles that apply to us all.

What does the bill actually say?

Ironically, the “Don’t Say Gay” bill never uses the word gay and does not prohibit its use. Rather, the measure bars classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for children in kindergarten through third grade (from about ages five to nine) in Florida public schools. The law takes effect on July 1 and allows parents to sue school districts they believe to be in violation. 

Republicans argue that parents should discuss these subjects with children. Democrats claim that the law demonizes LGBTQ people by excluding them from classroom lessons.

Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters when he signed the bill, “We will continue to recognize that in the state of Florida, parents have a fundamental role in the education, healthcare, and wellbeing of their children.” He added, “I don’t care what the big corporations say, here I stand. I’m not backing down.”

“Big corporations” have indeed said much about the law. For example, a Walt Disney Company spokesperson claimed that the bill “should never have passed and should never have been signed into law” and added, “Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.”

Why LGBTQ activists are focusing on children

My purpose in today’s Daily Article is not to provide a comprehensive discussion of the legislation. Rather, as a cultural philosopher, I want to focus on the worldview issues it represents since they are relevant to each of us, whether we live in Florida and have young children or not.

Nathanael Blake is a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of a perceptive article on our subject in Public Discourse. He notes that many in our culture now believe the LGBTQ activist narrative that humans are “born this way.” Blake explains the argument: “Each of us is born with an immutable sexual orientation and gender identity,” which would mean that some children are born LGBTQ. As a result, they should learn about their sexual orientation and gender identity as soon as possible so they can discover their authentic sexual selves, or so the argument runs.

In this view, teachers of elementary-age children are on the front lines helping their students “discover” and embrace their sexual identities. Parents and the rest of us should be affirming of such “discoveries” as well. Anyone who rejects LGBTQ ideology is by definition suspect and dangerous to children. This ideology can even lead to “non-affirming” parents losing custody of their children.

Blake reminds us that the search for a “gay gene” ended in failure three years ago. Nonetheless, he warns that LGBTQ activists are “pressuring our culture, curricula, and even churches to affirm the ostensibly intrinsic rainbow identities of children.”

Practical responses for parents

In response to this rising threat to our children, two biblical conclusions are vital.

One: It is urgent that you and I understand, embrace, proclaim, and defend biblical sexual morality in all its holistic relevance and beauty.

God’s word clearly teaches that:

• Humans are created in his image as male and female (Genesis 1:27). 
• Sex is intended only for a husband and wife within the covenant of marriage (Genesis 1:28; 2:24; 1 Corinthians 7:2–5).
• And homosexual relationships are outside his design for us and thus forbidden (cf. Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26–27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10).

For more, see my How to Defend Biblical Marriage.

Two: Parents are responsible for every dimension of their children’s lives.

One way I am asking God to redeem the frightening rise of LGBTQ activism with children is by using it to empower godly parents to become engaged in the entirety of their children’s experiences. They cannot “subcontract” their children’s education to schools, trust their private use of technology, or assume their friends share their biblical values.

God calls parents to teach his word “diligently to your children . . . when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7). Every part of their lives and yours should be informed and lived biblically.

Is your “train” running on God’s “track”?

Here’s the bottom line: Children need the spiritual and cultural protection of their families and churches more today than ever before in American history.

Pastor Paul Powell explained, “As a train was made to run on a track, so we were made to run on God’s law. A train runs most effectively when it stays on the track.”

Accordingly, the greatest gift we can give our children (and everyone we know) is to help them love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). When they know and live by his word, they live their best and most blessed lives.

Is your “train” running on God’s “track” today?

Is your family’s?

If not, why not?

Denison Forum

According to CNN, “Florida’s got yet another spring breaker in town: Scot, a massive great white shark, has been recorded swimming off the Gulf Coast.” The shark measures over twelve feet long and weighs sixteen hundred pounds.

A “massive great white shark” swimming just offshore feels like a metaphor for much that is happening in our culture, from rising inflation to a more contagious version of COVID-19 to deepening partisan divisions. But, of course, the “shark” that dominates the news each day and has captured so many of our hearts is the horrific invasion of Ukraine and the untold suffering that it is producing. 

As face-to-face talks between Ukraine and Russia continue this week, many analysts are asking how Russia’s aggression in Ukraine will end (assuming it does). In this context, three recent articles have greatly illuminated Vladimir Putin’s thinking and are therefore relevant to us today.

A “personalist regime” 

In a New Yorker article titled “What is Putin Thinking?,” David Remnick points back to the failure of democracy in Russia after the 1991 fall of the USSR. Oligarchs bought up the country’s most valuable state enterprises and made their fortunes while the people struggled. One historian said at the time, “These last four or five years in Russia have produced little besides pure hysteria.” 

In response, when Putin came to power in 1999, he set up what Remnick calls “a personalist regime built around his patronage and absolute authority.” Remnick explains that the national identity Putin created in opposition to the West “has played an essential role in his brutal invasion of Ukraine.” 

He also cites thinkers such as Nikolai Berdyaev and Ivan Ilyin who believed in the exalted destiny of Russia and the artificiality of Ukraine, both of whom were extremely influential for Putin.

A “civilization-state” 

Cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan takes us further back into history in “The Strange Rebirth Of Imperial Russia.” He cites Russian intellectuals who claimed after the fall of the Soviet Union that Russia is not just a nation-state but a “civilization-state.” 

Sullivan explains that this is “a whole way of being, straddling half the globe and wrapping countless other nations and cultures into Mother Russia’s spiritual bosom.” This worldview claims that Russia has always had such a civilizational destiny and mission which the West has countered and sought to undermine. Aleksandr Dugin popularized such theories in The Foundations of Geopolitics, which Sullivan calls “perhaps the best guide to understanding where Putin is coming from, and what Russia is now.” 

In light of this worldview, Putin proposed in 2011 a “Eurasian Union” to counter the European Union, reject the strategic control of the US, and resist Western liberal values. His invasion of Ukraine is but the next step in his passion to rebuild Imperial Russia.

An occupying force 

Journalist Jonathan Tepperman conducted a very illuminating interview with Alexander Gabuev, a former diplomatic correspondent and Russian newspaper editor who is now a scholar on Russia at the Carnegie Moscow Center. 

Gabuev explains that Putin thought his invasion would demoralize the Ukrainian army and that “part of the country would greet Russia with flowers and the other part would not resist.” He was clearly wrong. 

When Tepperman asked Gabuev if he can imagine a deal that could end the war, he replied that Ukraine would not “accept a peace settlement that makes them semi-dependent on the aggressor, even if it saves their cities.” To achieve Putin’s imperialistic agenda, Gabuev predicts that the Russian leader will seek to “occupy Ukraine, and there will be an Iraq-type insurgency, and ultimately this will end badly, because there is no way that Russia can occupy Ukraine forever.”

“An evil person will not go unpunished” 

In Romans 1 we read that God “gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:28). This is the permissive judgment of God whereby he allows us the consequences of our misused freedom. Tragically, the innocent are often harmed by these consequences as well. 

If nations and people do not repent, God then moves to his punitive judgment whereby he works directly to punish sin and lead sinners to repentance. We see this with the plagues of Egypt, divine judgment against King Herod (Acts 12:23), and the cataclysmic judgments depicted in the book of Revelation. 

Since we know that God judges nations (Psalm 110:6), it is plausible that Russia is experiencing God’s permissive judgment on its immoral invasion. If Putin persists, he and his people could see God’s punitive judgment. 

Here is what we can know without question: “An evil person will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 11:21) because “vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Whether in this world or in the next (cf. Luke 16:19–31), God’s judgment on sin is sure (Hebrews 9:27).

A missionary prayer I have not forgotten 

How does the thought of God’s judgment on Vladimir Putin resonate with you?  

Your first thought might be, “The sooner the better.” Obviously, the fewer Ukrainians who suffer or die at his immoral hands, the better. 

But we must not forget that God loves Russians as much as he loves Ukrainians. He loves North Koreans as much as he loves Americans and Iranians as much as he loves Israelis (cf. Galatians 3:28). He loves each of us as if there were only one of us because he is love (1 John 4:8). 

If we loved the Russians as God does, we would be praying fervently for their nation and leaders to repent of this sinful invasion. If we love Ukrainians as God does, we would be praying fervently for their protection and future. If we loved all nations as God does, we would be praying fervently for every person on earth to know Jesus as Savior and Lord. 

I will long remember the time I heard a missionary pray, “Lord, break my heart for what breaks your heart.” 

What breaks your heart today? 

Denison Forum

CODA made history last night as the first film distributed by a streaming service to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Jessica Chastain won her first Oscar when she was named Best Actress for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Will Smith received his first Academy Award when he won for Best Actor in King Richard.

But the headline story is that after comedian Chris Rock made a joke about actor Smith’s wife during the evening, Smith ran up on stage and struck Rock in the face. He later apologized “to the Academy and to all my fellow nominees” during his acceptance speech.

Of course, the conflict on everyone’s mind and heart is the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Several attendees at the Oscars paid tribute to Ukraine in various ways. Actress Mila Kunis, who was born in Ukraine, has partnered with her husband Ashton Kutcher to raise more than $35 million in humanitarian aid for the Ukrainian people. “Recent global events have left many of us feeling gutted,” she said last night. “Yet when you witness the strength and dignity of those facing such devastation, it’s impossible to not be moved by their resilience. One cannot help but be in awe of those who find strength to keep fighting through unimaginable darkness.”

Russian Nobel Prize winner will donate his medal for Ukraine relief

Kunis’ moving statement is not the only positive story amidst the horrific war in Ukraine. Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov has announced he will auction off the Nobel Peace Prize he won last year to raise money for Ukrainian refugees. He also called on Russia to stop combat fire, exchange prisoners, provide humanitarian assistance and corridors, release the bodies of the dead, and support refugees.

The Academy Awards and Vladimir Putin’s immoral invasion of Ukraine have this in common: they illustrate the brevity and fragility of life.

Who won last year’s Best Actor award? Anthony Hopkins. Best Actress? Frances McDormand. Best Picture? Nomadland. (I had to look up each answer).

Here’s an illustration of human frailty and fallenness from the Ukraine invasion: radioactive materials are reportedly missing from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Experts warn that they could be combined with conventional explosives to create a “dirty bomb” that would spread contamination over a wide area.

The weekend news brought more examples of life’s fragility:

• A Colorado wildfire forced the evacuation of nineteen thousand people.
• Country music singer Jeff Carson died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-eight.
• Phil Collins, who has been dealing with health concerns for years, held his last concert ever in London.
• A man who fell to his death from a Dallas rooftop had planned to propose to his longtime girlfriend.
• A fourteen-year-old boy fell to his death from an Orlando amusement ride.
• A mother was shot and killed while visiting her late son’s grave on his birthday.
• A Montana hiker and father of four was killed when he was apparently attacked by a grizzly bear outside Yellowstone National Park.
• Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died at the age of fifty.
• A police officer was gunned down in a Starbucks parking lot north of Seattle.

Prayer as a spiritual weapon

Last week, we discussed ways God uses his people to advance his kingdom and change their culture. Today, in the midst of our crises and challenges, as we face daily the brevity and fragility of life, let’s focus on ways our Father can change us.

In a Public Discourse article, philosopher Joshua Hochschild brilliantly describes the ways digital technology and social media are changing not just our world but also our minds. He explains that artificial intelligence is now using algorithms that predict our patterns of behavior, present us with customized digital stimuli, and thus shape what we think and do.

How should we defend ourselves? Professor Hochschild points us to “the power of prayer, sometimes described as a spiritual weapon.” He notes, “More than any other deliberate activity, prayer activates and directs the soul’s various modes of cognition, disciplining them and orienting them to deeper understanding of self and union with God.”

He recommends the prayer cycle in St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises as a model:

• Composition: Exercise your imagination and memory to recall sins and visualize yourself in the presence of God. 
• Analysis: Use your intellect to conceive, understand, and assent to truths (especially from Scripture, I would add), reasoning about their implications and contemplating their connections to your life. 
• Colloquy: Reflect on what you have learned and resolve to make good decisions, “exerting the will in acts of humility and love.”

“So shall my courage be firm”

Jesus promised us, “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (John 15:5a). But he warned that the converse is also true: “for apart from me you can do nothing” (v. 5b). 

Charles Spurgeon was right: “The stream must flow constantly from the fountainhead, or else the brook will soon be dry.” To this end, let’s make Scottish minister John Baillie’s prayer ours:

“By your grace, O God, I will go nowhere today where you cannot come, nor seek anyone’s presence that would rob me of yours. By your grace I will let no thought enter my heart that might hinder my closeness with you, nor let any word come from my mouth that is not meant for your ear. So shall my courage be firm and my heart be at peace.”

Is your heart at peace today?

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Ten-year-old Zlata Moiseinko is living in a schoolhouse in Ukraine that has been converted into a field hospital operated by Israeli medical workers. Russia’s invasion has now displaced half of Ukraine’s children, Zlata among them. She became so unsettled that her father risked his life to return to their apartment to rescue her pet hamster, Lola, to comfort her.

“I want peace for all Ukraine,” the little girl told an Associated Press reporter.

The human cost of this escalating crisis is staggering. The US Department of State released a statement this week describing “war crimes by Russia’s forces in Ukraine.” The Biden Administration announced yesterday that the US will accept up to one hundred thousand Ukrainian refugees fleeing the fighting. And NATO allies agreed yesterday to provide Ukraine with equipment and training to respond to a possible Russian attack using chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons.

In the face of such challenges, my claim across this week that Christians should reframe crises as opportunities for the gospel can seem naïve. We understand theologically that we are called to bring the “light of the world” to the darkness, that we are commissioned to make disciples of all nations, even those at war.

But it’s not enough to know we are called to be change agents in a broken culture—we must believe that we can make a transformative difference where we are, as we are. To that end, let’s close our week by focusing on the empowering ways God can change us.

What happens through us must first happen to us. Said differently, when something happens to us, it is likely to happen through us as well.

The only way to “find life and flourishing”

In Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life, biblical scholar Jonathan T. Pennington identifies two characteristics of biblical ethics: imitative and agentic.

Biblical moral standards are imitative in that God’s ethical demands are rooted in his own nature. According to Pennington, “Humans will only find life and flourishing when they imitate their Creator, when they learn to inhabit the world in the ways that accord with God’s own nature, will, and coming kingdom.”

Biblical ethics are agentic in that “we as moral agents matter.” As Pennington notes, “Who we are as people is significant—our understanding, our emotions, our motives, and our desires are wrapped up in what is right and wrong.”

This imitative and agentic ethic is a kind of “virtue ethics” that “focuses not just on the external issues of right and wrong but on our interior person and our development to be a certain kind of people. In the Bible, this means becoming more like God himself.”

Here’s the problem: we need God’s help to become more like God. Humans, because we are fallen and sinful by nature, cannot transform ourselves into a holiness we do not possess. I once heard our attempts to be good enough for God likened to a group of tourists who decided to swim from California to Hawaii. The best swimmers got further than the others, but all drowned.

“The condescension of compassion”

This is why, as Irenaeus noted, Jesus became one of us that we might be one with him. St. Leo the Great said of our Lord, “He took the nature of a servant without the stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity. He emptied himself: though invisible he made himself visible, though Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant, man himself.”

Because our sinless Savior died for our sins, paying our debt by dying on our cross, you and I now can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). If you have asked Jesus to forgive your sins and become your Lord, his Holy Spirit now dwells in you, making you his temple (1 Corinthians 3:16) and manifesting in and through you “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

If we will repent of our efforts to save, sanctify, and justify ourselves, coming with humble contrition and repentance to our loving Savior, he will forgive everything we confess (1 John 1:9), separate our sins from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12), “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19), and “remember [our] sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34; cf. Hebrews 8:12).

Then, when his love liberates us from our sins, through this grace “we draw near to God” (Hebrews 7:19), his Spirit demonstrates his “fruit” in our lives (Galatians 5:22–23), and we become changed people used by God to change the world.

“I am only one, but I am one”

You and I cannot stop Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. We cannot stop all crimes, prevent all disasters, or heal all diseases. However, we must not let what we cannot do keep us from doing what we can do.

If our hope was in our abilities and resources, we would have no real hope at all. But our hope is not in us but in the One who indwells us, empowers us, and wants to use us as his universal body to continue the ministry he began in his physical body (1 Corinthians 12:27).

All Jesus has ever done, he can still do. What he did on earth, he can do on earth. What he did through his first followers, he can do through us.

Will we kneel before his throne as our Lord today? Will we use his blessings, not for ourselves but to advance his kingdom? Will we seek his glory over our own?

If we do, we can say with author and minister Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909), “I am only one, but I am one. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.”

Will you?

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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?

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“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?

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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?

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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?

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 “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?

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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”?

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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? 

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