The Michigan Wolverines defeated the Washington Huskies decisively last night to win this year’s NCAA football national championship. The annual title game has become the biggest sporting event outside the National Football League; since ninety-three of the top one hundred television broadcasts in 2023 were NFL games, we don’t have to wonder how popular football has become in American culture. Now that the NFL playoffs are ramping up, even more attention will be drawn to the game.

I was discussing the popularity of spectator sports with my son, Dr. Ryan Denison, and he noted, “The best part of sports is the chance to be irrationally hopeful with little consequence for doing so.” He’s right: not much that can happen to an athlete during a game is likely to happen to a fan watching the game. We get to “play” the game with little risk to ourselves.

If only life worked that way.

“We literally thought we were going to die”

Imagine you’re in an airplane that has just departed from Portland, Oregon. It is dark in the cabin as the plane’s lights have been dimmed for takeoff. Ten to fifteen minutes into your ascent, traveling roughly 440 miles an hour at sixteen thousand feet, a chunk of your plane blows out.

Gasps of shock fill the plane as a cellphone, a teddy bear, and a passenger’s shirt are sucked out of the hole. Oxygen masks drop from overhead compartments. “We literally thought we were going to die,” one of the passengers says later. The Alaska Airlines flight carrying 171 passengers and six crew members circles back to Portland where it lands safely.

The Boeing 737 Max 9 involved in Friday’s accident was essentially brand new. After the FAA grounded all such aircraft for inspections, hundreds of flights were canceled. United Airlines announced yesterday that it found loose bolts and other parts on the plug doors of at least five other 737 Max 9 aircraft. Alaska Airlines technicians also reported that “loose hardware was visible on some aircraft.”

If you have ever flown on an airplane, you might respond to this story with the realization, “That could have been me.” If you don’t, you should.

Hurtling through space at 67,000 mph

Life is not a spectator sport. Even those attending sporting events are not entirely safe: hundreds of people have been injured by foul balls at baseball games; NBA players have collided with spectators; fans have fought with fans at football and soccer games; hockey pucks have turned into sometimes-deadly projectiles.

We are all passengers on a tiny planet spinning at about a thousand miles per hour while hurtling at 67,000 miles per hour through space. We don’t feel this motion because it’s a constant, like traveling in a car at the same speed.

But when things slow down or speed up, we take notice.

Now is the time to prepare for then. To this end, I want to invite you to reflect on a text that has meant much to me this week. It begins: “Trust in the Lᴏʀᴅ, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3).

• Trust in the Hebrew means to “rely on.”
• Do good means to “produce that which is desirable.”
• As you do your best while trusting God for his best, wherever you dwell in the land, you will befriend faithfulness—the Hebrew is translated literally, “nourish honesty and trustworthiness.”

Once you have made these commitments in your lifestyle, you can claim God’s promise: “Delight yourself in the Lᴏʀᴅ, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (v. 4).

• Delight yourself means to “find pleasure and joy.”
• When you do this in the Lᴏʀᴅ, in his presence while seeking and serving him, he will give you the desires of your heart.

This can mean that he will give you what your heart should desire, or that he will give you the desires you now feel in your heart.

Either way, you will experience God’s best by giving him your best. As a mantra classically attributed to St. Augustine advises, “Love God and do what you will.”

“Don’t cheat yourself out of spiritual victory”

The greatest need in America today is for America’s Christians to follow Jesus fully. If we do, our lives will be the change the culture needs to see, the light in the dark that leads to the Light of the world (Matthew 5:14; John 1:9; 8:12).

Billy Graham wrote: “If Christianity is important at all, then it is all-important. If it is anything at all, then it is everything. It is either the most vital thing in your life, or it isn’t worth bothering with.”

Consequently, he urged us: “Don’t give the lie to the Christian faith by professing Christ without possessing him. . . . Don’t hinder revival by your unbelief and prayerlessness. Don’t cheat yourself out of spiritual victory by allowing sin to imprison you. Seek God’s face and turn from your wicked ways. Then you will hear from heaven and true revival will begin—starting with you.”

He added: “The Church holds the key to revival. It is within our grasp. Will we rise to the challenge? Will we dare pay the price? The supply of heaven is adequate for the demands of our spiritually starved world. Will we offer that supply to the hungry masses? May the revival that the world needs begin in you—starting today.”

Why not you?

Why not now?

Denison Forum

Oppenheimer won five Golden Globes last night, including best drama, while Barbie took the award for cinematic and box office achievement. But everyone who attended the ceremony won something as well: they each received a gift bag worth $500,000. You read that right—thirty-eight different items were included in the bags, among them Colombian emerald earrings valued at $69,000 and six bottles of wine worth $193,500.

Giving such opulent gifts to such wealthy people seems to say something about the materialism of our consumeristic culture. The two movies pointed in the same direction.

Reviewer Simon Western explained the popularity of Barbie, the highest-grossing worldwide movie of 2023: “It reaffirmed the chosen ideology of our times, i.e. America Dream individualism, which makes us feel that we are filled with individual agency and are in control, and we can choose our futures.”

While I refused to see Oppenheimer due to its nudity and sex scenes, I found a New York Times interview with director Christopher Nolan most interesting. The film centers on scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work in building the first atomic weapon, leading to the bombs that were later dropped on Japan and the atomic age that followed. Nolan describes Oppenheimer as “the most important person who ever lived,” explaining: “If my worst fears are true, he’ll be the man who destroyed the world. Who’s more important than that?”

Perhaps the One who created the world?

“The end of godlessness is anarchy”

Several people suffered gunshot wounds when six or seven shooters opened fire late Saturday night in Abbeville, Alabama. There have been six mass shootings so far in 2024, including the one in Perry, Iowa, that killed eleven-year-old Ahmir Jolliff. Ahmir kept a trunk of toys unlocked in his front yard so anyone could play with them, loved soccer, played the tuba, and sang in choir. Because of his joyful spirit, he was known as “Smiley” around his house.

What explains such senseless, horrific tragedy?

John Piper writes in Taste and See:

The root of all injustice in our urban centers, or anywhere else, is the pervasive human injustice against God. When the rights of our Creator and Savior are daily denied, we should not be surprised that the rights of persons created in his image are denied in a cavalier and selfish way. Until God is given his rights, no human rights will have much significance beyond convenience. And when they are no longer convenient, they will be ignored, whether by violent police, traffic violators, looters, or murderers. The end of godlessness is anarchy.

Piper is right. At the beginning of humanity’s story, we read: “The Lᴏʀᴅ saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Our quest to “be like God,” (Genesis 3:5), to be creator rather than creature, to be the hero of history, explains every sin we commit and every evil we face in this broken world (cf. Romans 8:22).

In Jeremiah 17, God describes our fallen condition: “Thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lᴏʀᴅ. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land’” (vv. 5–6).

By contrast, the text continues: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lᴏʀᴅ, whose trust is the Lᴏʀᴅ. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit” (vv. 7–8).

Who of us would want to be a “shrub in the desert” when we could be a “tree planted by water”? Obviously, then, we should choose to trust in the Lord rather than in ourselves.

Why don’t we?

My father’s heart condition

The next verse answers our question and explains our predicament: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (v. 9). Heart in the Hebrew refers to “one’s inner self, will, inclination.” Desperately sick translates a word meaning “incurable, disastrous beyond repair.”

Clearly, our problem is “heart” disease. I know something about this illness: my father had a massive heart attack when I was two years old. In the years that followed, he did everything he could to manage his condition, but he could not heal himself. The only solution was a heart transplant, but he was too weak to survive the operation. As a result, he died of a second heart attack when I was in college.

Every human being is in the same condition spiritually that my father was in physically. But there’s good news: God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He promises: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). Here’s how: “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (v. 27).

If you have asked Jesus to be your Savior and Lord, God has already put his Spirit within you (1 Corinthians 3:16; Romans 8:9). But you must decide every day to submit your life to this indwelling Spirit. Begin your day by surrendering your mind and heart to him (Ephesians 5:18). Pray through the day ahead, inviting him to lead, empower, and use you.

Make your commitment holistic and unconditional. As Elisabeth Elliot observed, “We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.”

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).

Are you “in step” with him right now?

If not, why not?

Denison Forum

With the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot (or attack or protest or insurrection or whichever descriptor you prefer) coming up tomorrow, reactions to the event continue to dominate the news. President Biden plans to address the subject in a speech that uses the events of that day to portray former President Trump as a threat who, in the words of Biden’s communications director Michael Taylor, “will use all his power to systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy.”
Not to be outdone, Trump plans to hold two campaign rallies on Saturday as well in what-if current polls are to be believed-will mark one of many attempts for the two candidates to control the national narrative surrounding the election across the coming months.
My purpose today is not to relitigate what happened at the January 6 Capitol riot three years ago or cast judgment on how the event continues to be used for political ends. Overall, my thoughts on that day have not really changed since I discussed it last year, and Dr. Jim Denison did an excellent job of speaking to why having a productive conversation on the topic can be so challenging in yesterday’s article.
Rather, I would like to look at what I think is the most pertinent and applicable lesson we can take from that event to help us protect our witness and grow in our walk with the Lord.
An indelible part of Trump’s legacy
Debate continues over how much responsibility the former president bears for what happened at the January 6 Capitol riot three years ago. However, it is beyond dispute that the day’s events continue to play an inescapable part in the narrative surrounding Donald Trump’s attempt to regain the Oval Office. It was felt in the red wave that turned into a trickle during the 2022 midterms and the repeated accusations of wanting to destroy democracy that have been part of the Democratic rhetoric whenever Trump is discussed.
And, ultimately, he has no one to blame but himself.
You see, people don’t typically get to choose the consequences of their decisions. For Trump, the consequence of his actions-or inactions-is that his political opponents have all the fodder necessary to repeatedly level accusations that he is a threat to democracy. And while you may or may not find those accusations convincing, enough Americans do that it has greatly clouded his path back to the White House.
And there is nothing the former president or any of his supporters can do to stop it. Those events and his role in them-whether accurately perceived or not-are an indelible part of his legacy.
When people discuss his presidency in fifty years, be it one term or two, January 6 will come up. As we discussed on a recent episode of The Denison Forum Podcast, the nature of what that conversation will look like is yet to be determined, but the odds are good that Trump will be remembered as much for the election he lost as for the four years that preceded it.
And therein lies the lesson for us today.
When Saul faced grave consequences
One of the facets of the Bible that sets it apart from the holy books of many other faiths is that its most important figures are often among its most flawed characters. Take King Saul, for example.
Saul was no stranger to thoughtless actions and the consequences that ensued, but perhaps the most noteworthy instance occurred in 1 Samuel 13. Facing the imposing might of the Philistines and an army that had begun to scatter, Saul took it upon himself to offer sacrifices that only Samuel was supposed to give. It’s important to note that he was not trying to usurp the prophet’s position or claim any special rights for himself. Rather, he was simply trying to keep his army together ahead of battle.
Yet, despite his motivations being reasonable on the surface, they demonstrated a lack of faith in the Lord, and it exhausted God’s patience.
Through Samuel, God told the king “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the L??? your God, with which he commanded you. For then the L??? would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The L??? has sought out a man after his own heart, and the L??? has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the L??? commanded you” (1 Samuel 13:13-14).
When Saul offered those sacrifices, he had no way of knowing that it would cost him his kingdom. Had he understood what the consequences would be, chances are good that he would have acted differently. But, again, we typically don’t get to choose the consequence when we make a mistake, and focusing on whether the result of our sin seems proportionate or fair to us is ultimately pointless.
After all, the purpose of God’s judgment is to bring us back into a right relationship with him and to help us avoid sin in the first place. Far too often, though, we act like a child who is surprised to learn that his choices come with a cost. And while we serve a God who is quick to forgive any sin we confess, that forgiveness does not necessarily remove the natural consequences of our mistakes. Those are still often ours to bear, and the price is rarely what we might expect.
Dr. Jim Denison has frequently stated that sin will always take you further than you want to go, cost you more than you want to pay, and keep you longer than you want to stay.
That statement is just as true for former presidents as it is for you and for me.
Will you heed its warning today?

Denison Forum