Sometimes a news article catches your eye immediately, such as the New York Post headline, “Aussie news network broadcasts Satanic ritual accidentally.” As a news anchor reported on a new law protecting police animals, a clip was accidentally shown of a cloaked figure who “enthusiastically says ‘Hail Satan’ in front of an inverted cross and behind a red-clothed altar.” The anchor explained later that this was “a system error and rather unfortunate timing!”

Other stories are less likely to catch your attention. For instance, I’m not sure that you have been following with rapt attention the minutiae of congressional action regarding infrastructure legislation. As a result, you may not know (or care) that House Democrats narrowly passed a measure yesterday approving a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint while locking in a late September vote on a roughly $1 trillion Senate-approved infrastructure bill.

Meanwhile, another legislative debate is going even further under most people’s radar.

Five ways taxpayers could be funding abortions

The 2022 appropriations bill put forward by Democrats in the House of Representatives removes the following provisions:

• The 1976 Hyde Amendment prohibiting the Department of Health and Human Services from spending taxpayer dollars for most abortions
• The 1973 Helms Amendment restricting foreign aid funds from being expended on abortion
• The 1983 Smith Amendment that prohibits the Federal Employee Health Benefits program from funding elective abortions
• The 1989 Dornan Amendment that prohibits funding elective abortions within Washington, DC
• The 2004 Weldon Amendment that protects health care providers from discrimination on the basis of their refusal to pay for and provide abortions or refer women to have them

The Daily Signal adds that “a slim majority of Senators still support pro-life policy and may not follow the House’s approach.” That is good news, but if the House approach becomes law, my tax dollars will pay for elective abortions, despite my vociferous objection to this sin.

I’m not alone in my concern: nearly six in ten Americans (including one in three pro-choice advocates) oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortion. But abortion advocates in the House seem intent on ignoring the wishes of the majority of Americans by adopting unprecedented taxpayer abortion funding.

Benjamin Watson’s brilliant defense of life

Here’s a related story that has likewise received little media attention: the FDA determined last April that abortion-causing drugs could be mailed to patients during the coronavirus pandemic without requiring a visit to a doctor or clinic. Now abortion advocates are fighting to make so-called “abortion by mail” permanently legal in the US.

Benjamin Watson, a former Super Bowl champion and NFL tight end, recently wrote a brilliant article in USA Today in which he stated that “preborn babies don’t have to prove their worth” to us. Unlike football players who are judged constantly by their performance, he states, “Our dignity as humans—our fundamental worthiness to exist—doesn’t have to be proven; it is an endowment we receive at the moment of conception and keep forever until our natural death.”

He adds: “Nobody should have to pass a test to deserve to exist.”

However, Watson reports, thirty-nine states in the US let you abort a baby “for reason of sex selection,” killing the unborn child specifically because of his or her gender. In addition, forty-six states let you abort a child specifically because of his or her race.

What does God think about children? His word calls them “a heritage from the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Psalm 127:3). Jesus said of them, “To such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).

In Jeremiah 32, the Lord grieves that his people “built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech” (v. 35), a reference to child sacrifice. God calls this horrific practice an “abomination,” from  the Hebrew word toebah describing something that is “detestable,” “loathsome,” or “horrifying.”

If abortion advocates in the Congress have their way, taxpayer funds will soon be paying for such a toebah in America.

Relativism is infecting the church

How could this happen in a nation founded on the principle that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator” with the “unalienable” right to “life”?

Americans were united in World War II against the threat of Nazi Germany, as when our soldiers liberated Paris from Nazi occupation on this day in 1944. Humans must deal every day with objective realities such as the laws of physics; for example, the world’s fastest roller coaster in Japan suspended operations after four reports of people breaking their backs or necks on the ride. Mortality is a fact for us all, as illustrated by the death of the tallest man in the US, who was seven foot, eight inches and died of heart disease at the age of thirty-eight.

But recent generations have been taught that truth itself is a subjective construct, resulting from the subjective way our minds interpret our senses. With regard to abortion, your body is yours to do with as you wish, or so we’re told. The same moral relativism is applied to sexual orientation and gender identity, euthanasia, and a host of other ethical issues.

Such relativism is infecting the church as well. For example, according to a new study, more than 60 percent of self-described born-again Christians between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine now say Jesus is not the only way to salvation, claiming that Buddha and Muhammad are also valid paths to salvation.

Let’s test ourselves personally. I recently saw this quote by Ella Fitzgerald: “Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” Fitzgerald was one of the greatest singers in history; as the first African American woman to win a Grammy Award, her story of overcoming racial discrimination is truly inspiring.

But are “love and inspiration” all we need to not “go wrong” in life? Are right and wrong this subjective?

Paul Simon on “the way we’re ignorant”

This week, we’ve been exploring the role of the Holy Spirit in catalyzing the moral and spiritual transformation our culture so desperately needs. On Monday, we focused on steps you and I must take each day to be “filled” and empowered by him. (Have you taken these steps yet today?) On Tuesday, we discussed the urgency of being empowered by the Spirit before we face the crises endemic to this fallen world.

Today, let’s consider what is perhaps Satan’s most pernicious strategy in keeping God’s people from experiencing God’s power through God’s Spirit.

Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Sin blocks his work in and through our lives. This is why we are commanded, “Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). We are likewise commanded, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30).

However, if we believe the lies of postmodern relativism, we will not consider our sins to be sins. As a result, we won’t feel the need to avoid them when they tempt us or to confess them when we commit them.

This is a vicious cycle: if we ignore the reality of sin, we grieve and quench the Spirit in our lives, which further weakens us and makes the allure of temptation and the effects of sin even worse. Not only do we lose the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22) and thus the joy of the Lord, we also decimate our witness and demean our Lord.

In “So Beautiful or So What?” Paul Simon sings:

Ain’t it strange the way we’re ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price

The formula for spiritual victory

The answer is to begin each day by surrendering that day to the power and leading of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), then turning every temptation we face immediately over to him for his strength, perspective, and help.

I have learned this fact over the years: Satan is better at tempting than I am at resisting. He knows me better than I know myself. As a result, he knows those temptations I can easily resist and seldom wastes his efforts with them. He also knows those temptations I cannot resist without the Spirit’s help and uses them to entice me into sin.

However, he obviously doesn’t want me to turn to the Spirit for help, so along with the temptation, he tempts me to resist it in my strength. He wants me to believe that I can say no to this sin, that I can stop that behavior before it gets worse, that I don’t need God’s power.

He likes to turn the lights down gradually so that my eyes adjust to the dark before I realize my danger. Or, to change metaphors, he wants to drag me into deadly quicksand an inch at a time until I am trapped before I know it.

As a consequence, I must turn to the Spirit immediately whenever I face temptation. I must remember that if I could defeat this temptation myself, I wouldn’t be facing it. The same is true for you.

Here’s the formula: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Submit, then you will be empowered to resist, and then you will have the victory. But only in that order.

Dark tunnels and wind catchers

Corrie ten Boom was the only member of her family to survive the Nazi concentration camps. She experienced human depravity and suffering at their worst. She therefore had the moral authority to say, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

Is your train going through a spiritual tunnel today? If not, it likely will tomorrow. When it does, trust the Engineer.

“Wind catchers” are structures first perfected by the ancient Persians that funnel passing winds from the tops of buildings to the rooms below. They have been making a comeback recently. As Ryan Denison explains in his latest website article, “the fact that conventional air conditioning currently accounts for roughly a fifth of all electricity consumption worldwide means that we’re likely to see more wind catchers dotting the skies in the coming years.”

Ryan notes that the same Greek word (pneuma) was used by early believers both for spirit and for wind “because the latter concept so aptly describes the former.” He adds: “Just as the ancient cultures relied upon working with the wind to harness its power and improve their lives thousands of years ago, we too must learn to work with the Spirit” to experience the power of God.

Is the wind of the Spirit free to work in and through your life today?

Denison Forum

If you’re from the south (or have ever visited during the summer), you’ve probably asked yourself how people survived in a time before air conditioning. 

Turns out, people didn’t wait until the first air conditioner was invented in the early 1900s to decide that question needed an answer. Evidence suggests that humans have been finding ways to beat the heat for the better part of three thousand years. 

The ancient Egyptians appear to be the first to find a solid solution, though they mostly relied on harnessing the wind rather than creating their own. As is often the case, later generations would continue to improve upon the technology, and you can still see some of the best efforts today in places like the Iranian city of Yazd. There, the ancient Persians perfected structures, called bâdgirs, that sat high atop their buildings and funneled the passing winds down to the rooms below. 

And while the structures have largely fallen out of favor in recent centuries, given that the wind was often accompanied by dirt and pests, they’ve started to make a comeback in recent decades. 

In the UK, for example, roughly seven thousand versions of the wind catchers were installed on buildings constructed between 1979 and 1994, including the Royal Chelsea Hospital in London and various supermarkets in Manchester. Closer to home, the visitor center at Zion National Park in southern Utah also employs a wind catcher to help regulate the summer heat. Scientists have recorded a temperature difference of roughly 29 degrees Fahrenheit between inside and outside of the building. And that’s with people regularly passing through. 

While not every location will allow the wind catchers to work well, the fact that conventional air conditioning currently accounts for roughly a fifth of all electricity consumption worldwide means that we’re likely to see more wind catchers dotting the skies in the coming years. 

Are you working with or against the Spirit? 

Wind is a powerful force, and learning how to work with it rather than against it has often proven to make a profound difference in the degree to which a culture prospers. 

The same is true, from a spiritual point of view, for us as well. 

There’s a reason that Scripture frequently references the Holy Spirit as akin to a gust of wind. In fact, early believers used the same Greek word (pneuma) for spirit and wind because the latter concept so aptly describes the former. 

As Christians, learning to work with the Holy Spirit’s presence and power in our lives instead of against it is one of the most important factors in our maturation as believers. And the key to working with the Spirit is embracing the kind of lifestyle God can bless. 

In Galatians 5, Paul famously writes that the fruit of the spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). However, to experience that fruit in our lives, we must first heed the instruction that comes a few verses earlier: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:16–18). 

Just as the ancient cultures relied upon working with the wind to harness its power and improve their lives thousands of years ago, we too must learn to work with the Spirit by living in accordance with God’s desires as revealed throughout Scripture and through his daily guidance if we want to experience his power and fruit in our lives today. 

So take a moment to step back and ask God to help you use this Spirit-focused perspective to evaluate your walk with him. Does it feel like that relationship is pushing against the wind or moving with it? 

But note that the latter does not necessarily mean everything has gone smoothly or that your days have been problem-free. In fact, it’s often when the tough times arise that we can gain the greatest clarity into the state of our spiritual life. 

The degree to which it seems like we are able to face our problems without being robbed of the fruit described above is perhaps the best way to gauge whether we are working with or against the Spirit’s presence in our lives. 

Which best describes your relationship with him today? 

Denison Forum

Tropical Storm Henri made landfall Sunday afternoon in Rhode Island. More than 135,000 customers from Maine to New Jersey are without power this morning; storm surges threaten eastern Long Island and southern New England. A state of emergency was declared in New York and Connecticut due to the storm, with five hundred National Guard troops activated for deployment to Long Island and the Hudson Valley.

In other weather news, severe flooding in Middle Tennessee has left at least twenty-two people dead as of this morning and dozens of people missing. The dead reportedly include twin toddlers who were swept from their father’s arms.

President Biden spoke yesterday afternoon on the tropical storm and the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. He announced that his administration had activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, ordering US commercial airlines to provide flights for the Afghanistan evacuation efforts. The flights would not go to Afghanistan but would be used to transport those already flown out of the country.

The conflict in Afghanistan continues to dominate headlines and hearts today. Germany’s armed forces reported a firefight at Kabul airport this morning between unidentified gunmen, Western security forces, and Afghan guards. One Afghan guard was killed and three were wounded at the airport’s north gate. All gates were closed in response.

An American mom trapped in the Taliban-controlled country pleaded for help in evacuating. Reports indicate that the Taliban set a woman on fire for “bad cooking” as other women are reportedly being forced into sex slavery. Many are concerned that the Taliban now possess tens of billions of dollars of military equipment and supplies formerly under control of the Afghan security forces, some of which they could transfer or sell to transnational terror groups such as al-Qaeda or ISIS.

And we continue to hear reports of the Taliban searching for Christians. The leader of an underground church in Afghanistan said, “The Taliban has a hit list of known Christians they are targeting to pursue and kill. The US Embassy is defunct and there is no longer a safe place for believers to take refuge.” An Afghan church leader said the Taliban will “eliminate the Christian population” in the country.

In a world racked with natural and man-made disasters, what is the way forward for the gospel?

“The Unconquerable Islamic World”

Robert Nicholson’s article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye. Titled “The Unconquerable Islamic World,” it declares that “Afghanistan shows the folly of mistaking Christian ideals for ‘universal’ ones.”

Discussing the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, he writes: “We Westerners failed not for lack of effort, but because military and economic power alone cannot change the Islamic world in a lasting way.” He claims, “It never occurred to us that America was what it was because of Christianity, and Afghanistan was what it was because of Islam.”

He identifies the “pillars” on which Islam stands: “The Qur’an is Allah’s final revelation, binding on all humanity; faith is a matter of private devotion as well as public law, best lived out in a state that blends religion and politics; and Muslims should, where possible, hold power over non-Muslims to ensure that Allah’s law is rightly enforced.”

Nicholson claims, “It is doctrines like these that cause the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Hamas to fight the ‘Jews and Crusaders’ who tread on land that historically belonged to Islam. But their commitments are far from radical; most Muslims see them as normative even if they fail to act on them.”

As a result, he declares, “The West cannot change the Islamic world.” He believes that “the best strategy will move from rollback to containment and prioritize the defense of American interests and allies over the promotion of values and institutions.” He adds, “This does not mean we will stand by when their choices cross American red lines, but the US must affirm their right to make them.”

I am seeing similar arguments across the political spectrum as analysts begin dissecting what went wrong in Afghanistan and suggesting better paths forward. The consensus is that the West cannot change Islam. Unless we are forced to defend ourselves from Islamic extremists, we should learn to live and let live.

“The man in a white robe”

This argument is attractive and compelling for Americans, not just for our engagement with Muslims but for Christians’ engagement with the secular culture in which we live. As more and more Americans reject organized religion and embrace unbiblical morality, evangelicals are told that tolerance is our society’s highest value and that we should live and let live.

Secularists ask us: What business is it of ours if others choose abortion or euthanasia? What right do we have to tell people what gender they can love and marry? Isn’t everyone’s sexual orientation and gender identity their business? The “culture wars,” by which evangelicals have sought to declare and defend biblical truth and morality, are being lost—or so we’re told.

As with Muslims in Afghanistan, our critics claim that it would be best for us to recognize that we cannot change others and stop promoting “values and institutions” that are countercultural.

But Nicholson overlooks a crucial factor: the spiritual awakening now occurring in the Muslim world. As missionary Tom Doyle and many others have documented, Muslims in recent years have been coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers. Some are hearing the gospel through media ministries, while many are seeing visions and dreams of Jesus.

Tom Doyle told author Lee Strobel of ministries placing ads in Egyptian newspapers that say, “Have you seen the man in a white robe in your dreams? He has a message for you. Call this number.” Doyle added, “So many Muslims were having these dreams that Christian ministries started placing ads to reach them.”

What the Holy Spirit is doing in the Muslim world is the key to the transformation we need in our culture as well.

“Religion has become more important than God”

Why are we not seeing such a spiritual awakening in the West? The fault is not with God. He never changes (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). Anything the Spirit has ever done he can still do.

The fault is with us.

In his most recent newsletter, former Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli highlighted a sermon by German pastor Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842–1919). At one point, Blumhardt observed: “Our civilization simply doesn’t need God anymore. What good is God when you are on the train? The man at the controls, it is his job to get me to Stuttgart. The conductor can groan, the fireman can break his back, the engineer can worry, but isn’t it all the same to me? I just sit there on the train.

“That is why we can be so crude and ruthless about enjoying everything these modern times offer us; we do not need God. Science and technology do not need God. They are succeeding quite well without him!”

He added: “God is of no real importance, even for people with religion, because religion has become more important than God. Though people get into tremendous arguments about religious questions, all the time God is dead. And it is perfectly all right with them if he is dead, because they can do what they like. That is another trait of our times, people want to be able to do whatever pops into their heads or feels good at the moment.”

Blumhardt responds: “God in Christ is not dead; he still is the Alpha and the Omega. And everything in between is chaos, not just a spiritual alienation in which people don’t know where life is going, but real chaos. Men and women are meant to share in the work for the end, for God’s kingdom on earth, but they won’t share. And so the madness goes on.”

For his part, Blumhardt testifies: “I don’t want a minute of easy happiness until this earth knows that God is alive! We must bow down under the living God and weep aloud for having killed him up to now. We are born for trouble, born for battle. Shame on us Christians who are always wanting to have it nice and soft, with a bit of God in our lives! We’ve got to fight until we’re dead, or we aren’t worth Christ’s name. God calls out to us, ‘Share in my business!’ and we are fooling ourselves until we do this.”

He concludes: “Let each one of us be earnest with himself and get off his soft bed. Even if it costs you your life, go right in, into the thick of the fight! Jesus is alive, and Jesus is victor, and he has given us our part to carry out.”

“We must obey God rather than men”

Before Pentecost, when Peter was asked whether he was a follower of Jesus, “he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, ‘I do not know this man of whom you speak’” (Mark 15:71). After Pentecost, when the same Sanhedrin that arranged Jesus’ execution demanded that he cease preaching the gospel, Peter replied, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) and proceeded to declare God’s word to them (vv. 30–32).

Before Pentecost, when John and his brother James encountered Samaritans who “did not receive” Jesus, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:53–54). After Pentecost, when John and Peter encountered a crippled man beside the temple gate, they stopped for him, shared Christ with him, and helped him experience Jesus’ healing transformation (Acts 3:1–10).

Before Pentecost, the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane “left Jesus and fled” (Matthew 26:56) and met together behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19). After Pentecost, they were so bold in their faith that the religious authorities were “astonished” (Acts 4:13).

The difference was simple: at Pentecost, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4).

“The greatest imperative in the Christian life”

To be “filled” with the Spirit is to be controlled and empowered by him. God commands every Christian every day to “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). To experience this “filling,” we must take these steps:

1. Get alone with the Lord.
2. Ask the Spirit to bring to mind anything in our lives that displeases God and is blocking the Spirit’s power in our lives (we will say more of this later in the week).
3. Confess all that comes to our thoughts, claiming God’s forgiving grace (1 John 1:9).
4. Ask the Spirit to take control of our feelings, attitudes, thoughts, words, and actions. Submit our plans for the day specifically to him.
5. Believe that he has answered our prayer.
6. Stay in surrendered communion with the Spirit throughout the day. When we face challenges and temptations, pray for his help. If we fall to temptation, pray for him to forgive us, cleanse us, and restore us. When we face opportunities and decisions, pray for him to lead us. Stay “connected” with him all day long.

When I lead study tours to Israel, we always go to the “Upper Room,” a Crusader-era structure located near the place where Pentecost occurred. I always teach the Acts 2 Pentecost miracle to the group and the steps I just outlined.

Then I say to them what I say to you today: “The greatest imperative in the Christian life is to be filled with the Spirit. The greatest enemy of the Christian life is self-sufficiency that resists such empowerment. Self-reliance is spiritual suicide. Spirit dependence is spiritual victory.”

Whether we are facing natural disasters, man-made crises, or the daily challenges of living in a fallen world, you and I were designed by God to depend daily on the power of his Spirit.

“In Afghanistan, the real church is going on”

An Afghan pastor and evangelist named David Paiman was recently interviewed by Christianity Today. His father was a Muslim imam; Paiman went to Mecca six times before coming to faith in Jesus. He first heard the gospel from a former Muslim who had a vision of Christ during a pilgrimage to Mecca. Paiman came to Christ after Christians prayed for a friend with epilepsy who was healed.

His explanation of the crisis in Afghanistan is different from what we are seeing in the secular media. When asked what life was like for Christians after the American invasion in 2001, he replied: “That’s what I call false hope. I will never forget in 2001 when the American army came and took over, everyone was celebrating, everyone got freedom and people were praising and thankful for America. Exactly twenty years later, we see what’s happening now.”

The interviewer asked, “With the hope that you experienced, what did you think might happen?”

In words that echo Pastor Blumhardt’s indictment of Western religion, Paiman replied, “The real hope is Jesus Christ. Afghanistan has been trying many ways to get hope, to get peace inside Afghanistan, but they did not try Jesus Christ. They did not try God. They did not try his love and his mercy. My prayer and zeal are to share Christ with them.

“They can receive Christ and they can get the real hope, the living hope that never ends.”

Then the pastor noted: “In Afghanistan, people know they are the church, and they understand that. But here, in most of America, they say the building is a church. There is a building with a cross on it. That’s what they call church but, in Afghanistan, the real church is going on.”

Would the Holy Spirit say “the real church is going on” in your life today?

Denison Forum