Helping Kids to Love Missions

As Christians, it is important for us to teach the importance and the joys of missions. Therefore, it is vitally important that we teach children how to love missions and to help support missionaries. Desiring God has a blog post on 10 ways in which families and teachers can help teach kids how to love and support missionaries. Check it out here!

Pray for Muslims During Ramadan

Mission Network News is calling for a month of prayer for Muslims around the world during the Ramadan season, August 22nd to September 20th. Ramadan is a very holy month for Muslims in which they try to purge their bodies of all kinds of evil through fasting. Let's be in prayer for them that God would open their eyes to His love for them and that they would find the only true cleansing from sin that comes by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Click here to read the full article from the Mission Network News.

Prepare for Suffering - Now!

The following quote comes from the book, Let the Nations be Glad: the Supremacy of God in Missions by John Piper. In this quote, Piper quote Richard Wurmbrand who suffered in his home country of Romania to help stress the importance of preparing for suffering before we have to face suffering.

"Richard Wurmbrand endured fourteen years of imprisonment and torture in his homeland of Romania between 1948 and 1946. He had been leading a secret underground ministry when the Communists seized Romania and tried to control the church for their purposes. Wurmbrand, like the apostle Peter, stressed the tremendous need to get spiritually ready to suffer.

"What shall we do about these tortures? Will we be able to bear them? If I do not bear them I put in prison another fifty or sixty men whom I know, because that is what the Communists wish from me, to betray those around me. And here comes the great need for the role of preparation for suffering which must start now. It is too difficult to prepare yourself for it when the Communists have you in prison.
I remember my last Confirmation class before I left Romania. I took a group of ten to fifteen boys and girls on a Sunday morning, not to a church, but to the zoo. Before the cage of lions I told them, "Your forefathers in faith were thrown before such wild beasts for their faith. Know that you also will have to suffer. You will not be thrown before lions, but you will have to do with men who would be much worse than lions. Decide here and now if you wish to pledge allegiance to Christ." They had tears in their eyes when they said yes.
We have to make the preparation now, before we are imprisoned. In prison you lose everything. You are undressed and given a prisoner's suit. No more nice furniture, nice carpets, or nice curtains. You do not have a wife any more and you do not have your children. You do not have your library and you never see a flower. Nothing of what makes life pleasant remains. Nobody resists who has not renounced the pleasures of life beforehand." (Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, p. 78-79)

May we be able to say with Paul that "I can do all things (even suffer and die) through Him who strengthens me."

Biblically Sound Hip Hop

Anybody who knows me, knows that I love music, especially Christian music. But one of the problems I've found is that alot of what is classified as Christian music is little more than just secular music that just happens to mention Jesus' name once in a while to make it fit the Christian genre. Of course, over the years that's been changing. You now have bands such as Shane and Shane, David Crowder Band, Chris Tomlin, Casting Crowns, and Todd Agnew (just to name a few) which all seek to keep Christ central in all of their music. But all of these fit within the praise and worship genre of music. It's hard to find anything other than the contemporary/praise genre that keeps Christ and the Scriptures central in their songs. However, recently I have come across a hip hop artist that is just as Christ centered as the other bands that I have just mentioned. I can confidently recommend this artist to anybody who is looking for a deep, biblically sound message in this genre of music. The artist is Lecrae. Throughout his songs he talks about keeping Christ as the treasure of your heart, living the kind of holy life that honors God, what it means to be a part of the body of Christ, and finding our indentity not in the things of the world, but in Christ alone. Lecrae is about as biblically sound as any praise and worship artist that I've listened to. Granted, not everybody is into this kind of music, but there a lot of people who are and it is great to know that there is finally some music to be able to confidently recommend to those people. Be sure to check out this artist. He is currently on his "Don't Waste Your Life" Tour.

Here are a couple videos to check out on this artist. You can also go to YouTube and look under Lecrae:


"Send Me"



"Truth"

Don't Waste Your Life

Each of us who are called by God have been called for a purpose. Not to live according to the purpose in which God has created us with is to waste our life. Sadly, many Christians go through life only to come to the end and weep because they have wasted their life. We only have one life to live and unless we live it to the glory of God we will have wasted it. According to Paul, to live is Christ and to die is gain. May we live our lives so we can honestly say that about our lives.

Penn Gillette on Christian Evangelism

I had this video emailed to me a few weeks ago and wanted to share it with all of you. This video is of Penn Gillette giving his take on evangelism. The reason why I think this is interesting, because, if you know of Penn Gillette, you will recognize him as being one of the most popular magicians today. He is also an outspoken atheist. However, I think he has some interesting things to say about evangelism that we as Christians need to learn and practice as we go into all the world with the gospel. Penn talks about a situation where a Christian came up to him after one of his shows and offered him one of those green Gideon Bibles. Penn, though he has not received Christ (as of yet), was very impressed with the manner and behavior of the Christian who approached him. There are things that we can learn from this man.

Happy 500th Birthday!

Five hundred years ago on July 10th, 1509, one of the most influential men of God in the protestant reformation was born, John Calvin. His name usually evokes some kind of emotion in people, normally negative feelings. However, he, along with others such as Luther and Zwingli, was used by God to bring reformation to the church and to bring the focus back to a true focus of the gospel of Christ and to bring individual access to the Word of God. Before the reformation, the people had to depend upon the clergy to preach the Word of God and trust that what they were being told lined up with what God had revealed to us in His Word. However, with the reformation, the Bible was translated into the common languages and people could read the Word for themselves. The Roman Catholic church had also manipulated the people into buying indulgences in order to earn favor with God or to help a loved one escape purgatory. The reformers, such as Calvin and Luther helped bring back the true message of the gospel that a person is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, not by works lest anyone should boast.

Whether or not you agree with all of his personal theology, and honestly, I do not think any two people agree on everything, we must thank God for men like Calvin who followed God in obedience and was thus used by Him to bring the truth of the gospel back to the people. Let us continue to pray for men like these to be raised up by God to lead His people in the truth of His Word.