Democratic and Republican senators announced an agreement yesterday on a legislative framework aimed at reducing mass shootings in America. The bipartisan group said they were working to write legislation that would give more funding to school security and mental-health programs. It would also provide incentives for states to implement and maintain red-flag laws and would include juvenile records in background checks for people buying guns who are under twenty-one years of age.

In a vital sign of support, ten Republicans have signed on to the agreement; if all fifty Democrats in the Senate support the legislation, it would then reach the sixty votes needed to advance. According to the Wall Street Journal, the framework puts lawmakers on course to advance the most expansive bipartisan gun violence measure since the assault weapons ban in 1994, which lapsed a decade later.

Their announcement comes a day after rallies and marches across the US advocated for gun reform in the wake of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. The nationwide event was organized by March for Our Lives, a group founded by student survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting that killed seventeen people in 2018.

China will “fight to the very end” for Taiwan

Violence and the threat of violence is dominating our news again this morning.

China’s defense minister stated yesterday that his country would “fight to the very end” to stop Taiwan’s independence. His speech came just weeks after President Joe Biden said the US would respond “militarily” if China attacked Taiwan.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that momentum in Ukraine is shifting in Russia’s favor, as Ukraine lacks the weaponry it needs and Western support for the war effort is fraying in the face of rising gas prices and escalating inflation. Russia’s immoral invasion is turning cities across the Donbas region into ghost towns. Residents are fleeing in droves, leaving behind empty streets. Many who remain have no money to live elsewhere and struggle to find water, food, gas, and power.

Even preparing for war can be deadly: five US Marines were killed during a training flight crash last week in the California desert. One of them was the son of former Los Angeles Dodgers player Steve Sax, who said of him, “He was my hero and the best man I know. There was no better person to defend our country.”

In an ironically tragic picture of our times, ministries devoted to saving the unborn are being firebombed, attacked, and vandalized. According to a US Conference of Bishops report, there have been at least 134 arson and vandalism attacks on churches in thirty-five states and the District of Columbia in the last two years.

The secret to changing the world

If the day’s news causes you to doubt whether there is anything you can do to make a difference, you’re right. You cannot convict Vladimir Putin, an arsonist, or anyone else of their sins or save their souls. Neither can I.

However, our Lord “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). Able translates the Greek dynamai, from which we get “dynamite.” Far more abundantly could be translated, “immeasurably more than.” The “power at work within us” is again dynamis.

A literal translation of Paul’s proclamation would therefore assure us that God “has the explosive power to do immeasurably more than anything we can ask and think according to the same explosive power that is already at work in us.” This “power at work within us” is the Holy Spirit.

When you trusted Christ as your Lord, his Spirit came to live in you as his temple (1 Corinthians 3:16) with the very power that created the world (Genesis 1:1), “convict[s] the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8), empowered Jesus’ ministry (Acts 10:38), “gives life” (John 6:63), and will “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). He will empower us and use us in ways beyond anything “that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

The secret to changing the world is admitting that we cannot change the world, then submitting to the only One who can.

Learning from the “Harp of the Holy Spirit”

St. Ephrem of Syria (AD 306–73) was a prolific poet, teacher, orator, and defender of the faith. He is especially known as one of the first to introduce song into the Church’s public worship as a means of instructing the faithful. He often took popular songs of heretical groups, used their melodies, and changed their words to embody orthodox doctrine. His many hymns earned him the title, “Harp of the Holy Spirit.”

What was the secret to such a remarkably effective ministry?

In Epistle to a Disciple, Ephrem wrote: “My beloved in the Lord, before every other thing set humility in thy mouth when thou art ready to make answer, for . . . thou knowest that by humility all the power of the Enemy is brought to naught. . . . My son, array thyself in humility, and thou shalt make the virtues of God be with thee. And if, my son, thou art in a state of humility, no passion whatsoever shall have power to draw nigh thee.”

Are you in “a state of humility” today?

NOTE: Long ago, Alfred North Whitehead asserted that great people plant trees they’ll never sit under. I use that quote often because it’s so true. Your ongoing support of our ministry sows seeds of biblical truth in the lives of believers across the globe. Please give today, knowing that your gift will be doubled by a generous matching grant of $35,000. Your giving makes a world of difference.

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“Imagine if Earth were much, much closer to the Sun. So close that an entire year lasts only a few hours. So close that gravity has locked one hemisphere in permanent searing daylight and the other in endless darkness. So close that the oceans boil away, rocks begin to melt, and the clouds rain lava.”

This is how NASA describes 55 Cancri e, a planet fifty light-years away from us. In the coming weeks, the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to give scientists their first look at this fiery world.

However, you don’t have to turn to the skies to find a planet filled with hellish behavior.

There has been another mass shooting, this one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where at least four people were killed on a hospital campus. Several others were injured; the gunman apparently then took his own life. In other news, the man accused in the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, has been indicted on more than two dozen charges. And the victims in Uvalde are being remembered and honored as burials continue this week. I could go on.

But even in our fallen and broken world, there is a pathway to peace available to each of us today.

Why temptation is spiritual dopamine

In The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, Andy Crouch explains addiction in a way I had not understood before. He cites Cambridge neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz, who reported that “drugs of addiction” such as cocaine, amphetamine, nicotine, and alcohol “generate, hijack, and amplify the dopamine reward signal.” However, Crouch notes that “the real power of these drugs goes beyond their ability to generate rewards.”

According to Crouch, Schultz and his collaborators discovered that “not only do these drugs unleash floods of rewarding dopamine, but they prevent us from learning that their rewards are fleeting. By interfering with ‘reward prediction,’ the most powerful hijackers of the dopamine pathway create the sensation, at a primal level of our brains, that their rewards are ever new and ever worth pursuing—even as our own self-awareness and reflection tell us they are damaging and degrading.”

Crouch warns that “everything from gambling to social media can grant us the same superpower sensation—and create the same learning-resistant illusion.”

Temptation works in the same way. Satan assures us that we can get away with whatever we are being tempted to do, that the benefits will outweigh the costs. Otherwise, we would not commit the sins we are being tempted to commit.

But Jesus warned us that Satan is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). As I often warn, sin will always take us further than we wanted to go, keep us longer than we wanted to stay, and cost us more than we wanted to pay.

In a culture filled with conflict and confusion, what is the path to the peace our souls long to experience?

How to find “perfect peace”

The prophet Isaiah testified, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3). Keep translates a Hebrew word meaning to “watch, guard, protect.” Perfect peace translates shalom, which refers to “completeness, soundness, prosperity, being whole.” The mind refers to “forming a purpose through thought.” Stayed means to “support, lean on.” Trusts means to “be full of confidence.”

A literal translation of this assurance would therefore be: “You keep and protect in completeness and wholeness the person who forms his thoughts and purposes by depending on you, because he places his full confidence in you.”

Why should we trust God in this way? The text continues: “Trust in the Lᴏʀᴅ forever, for the Lᴏʀᴅ God is an everlasting rock” (v. 4). The prophet responded, “My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you” (v. 9a). For this reason: “For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” (v. 9b).

However, if we seek this peace from any source but God, he cannot bless such idolatry: “If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 10). As we noted yesterday, God cannot encourage idolatry lest he participate in it and reward that which harms us.

By contrast, when we seek God, “O Lᴏʀᴅ, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works” (v. 12).

We may have committed such idolatry in the past, but it is not too late to repent: “O Lᴏʀᴅ our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance” (v. 13). If we do not, judgment is inevitable: “Behold, the Lᴏʀᴅ is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain” (v. 21).

“How can we be a blessing in this neighborhood?”

Let’s respond to this remarkable text in two ways.

One: Seek divine peace today. 

Ask the Spirit to bring to mind any ways in which you are trusting someone or something other than the Lord for your peace. Then confess what comes to your thoughts, claim his forgiving grace (1 John 1:9), and make the intentional decision to rely on his peace and power.

Two: Extend the peace of Christ to others. 

A church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, asked its neighbors, “How can we be a blessing in this neighborhood?” Their response: “Help us close Rebels Bar,” a “nuisance bar” that had been used for prostitution, drug sales, and other criminal activity for decades. So the church bought the bar. Since that time, new businesses and restaurants have moved into the area. And the church has brought the peace of Christ into its community.

“Let that loving voice be my guide”

Let’s close with a prayer by Henri Nouwen that seeks the peace our Lord offers:

Dear God,

Speak gently in my silence.
When the loud outer noises of my surroundings
and the loud inner noises of my fears
keep pulling me away from you,
help me to trust that you are still there
even when I am unable to hear you.
Give me ears to listen to your small, soft voice saying:
“Come to me, you who are overburdened, and I will give you rest
for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Let that loving voice be my guide.

Amen.

Denison Forum

Dr. Tony Evans is one of the most brilliant biblical expositors in the evangelical world. Always measured and thoughtful, he is the opposite of a reactionary voice. As a result, when he says America is under judgment, you and I should listen. And when he explains why, we should listen even more personally.

In an interview with the Christian Post, Dr. Evans stated his belief that God’s judgment on our world is evidenced by conflicts which seem unending in recent years. He cited 2 Chronicles 15:3–6, which reads in part, “One nation was being crushed by another and one city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress.” He also pointed to Romans 1, which speaks of God removing himself from those who remove themselves from him.

Why is God judging us?

Dr. Evans stated, “I think one of the things we’re facing now is the judgment on America because of the failure of the church to be the people of God that represents his kingdom more than we represent the nation.” This is because, as he states, “We’ve been more cultural Christians than biblical Christians.”

Is he right?

LGBTQ flash cards in a preschool class

Funerals began yesterday afternoon in Uvalde, Texas, a week after a mass shooting that killed nineteen children and two teachers. Several schools have faced copycat threats in the days since. Just days after the school shooting in Uvalde, more than thirty people lost their lives from gun violence around the country.

In other news, today marks the first day of Pride Month, an annual focus on the LGBTQ community. As evidence of the further normalization of unbiblical sexuality, a school system in North Carolina is investigating how LGBTQ-themed flash cards were used in a preschool classroom.

As another sign of our times, consider this headline: “Laverne Cox is first trans woman to have Barbie doll modeled after her.” The article came to me in an “Optimist” email from the Washington Post among other “feel good” stories.

And the ongoing pandemic is impacting our children in deeply significant ways. In a New York Times survey, 94 percent of school counselors said their students were showing more signs of anxiety and depression than before the pandemic. One said, “Anxiety is filling our kids right now. They are worried about their family and friends. They are stressed because they are behind in school.”

Parents are struggling as well. They are dealing with the rising costs of gas, groceries, and other daily expenses. Black, Latino, and Asian parents are stressed about racism, bullying, and violence their kids may encounter. And 62 percent of parents said they feared their children could be victims of a mass shooting.

One parenting expert said, “There’s almost not a word to express the stress parents are under right now. ‘Overwhelmed’ doesn’t cut it. It’s beyond anything we’ve experienced.”

Beware “the coral insects of thy little sins”

Yesterday we focused on Alan Noble’s perceptive book, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, and his assertion that we belong either to ourselves or to God. Here’s why his book is relevant to Dr. Evans’ warning: when we belong to ourselves, we commit idolatry. We worship the creature rather than the creator.

God cannot bless such sin because he cannot be complicit in idolatry, and he knows how much this sin harms us. In fact, he must judge such sin as a means to our repentance and restoration to himself.

As a result, it is imperative that you and I see sin as God does. There are no “small” sins with a holy God, no “private” sins we can commit without consequences. On the contrary, “sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15).

Charles Spurgeon noted that God “hides his face behind the wall of thy sins” and observed, “That wall may be built up of little pebbles, as easily as of great stones. The sea is made of drops; the rocks are made of grains; and the sea which divides thee from Christ may be filled with the drops of thy little sins; and the rock which has well nigh wrecked thy ship may have been made of the daily working of the coral insects of thy little sins” (his emphasis).

However, he added, “Christians can never sin cheaply; they pay a heavy price for iniquity. Transgression destroys peace of mind, obscures fellowship with Jesus, hinders prayer, brings darkness over the soul; therefore be not the serf and bondman of sin” (his emphasis).

How to be blessed

Dr. Evans is right: The further our culture turns away from God, the further we turn into idolatry and the inevitable judgment of God. What is true of our nation is also true of your soul and mine.

However, our Lord can empower us to live for Christ and not for ourselves, to choose holiness over idolatrous sinfulness.

He promised Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Sufficient in the Greek means to have all we could want or need. Made perfect could be translated as “brings its intended purpose to completion.” If we will admit our weakness over temptation and ask God for his power to fulfill his Christlike purpose in our lives (Romans 8:29), his grace becomes sufficient for us, always.

When we face temptation, therefore, our first response must be to turn to our Lord for such help and victory. Our second response must be to then do what he tells us to do. As we obey God, we are empowered by God. When we do what we are called to do, God does what only he can do.

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

John Calvin observed, “It is a most blessed thing to be subject to the sovereignty of God.”

Will you be blessed today?

NOTE: For more on today’s conversation, please see my latest personal blog, “How I resolved one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith.”

Denison Forum