God Of All!

Can you look at the starry sky or admire a gorgeous autumn glade and not wonder about their creation? Can you live very long without marveling about your own existence? Only fools say in their hearts there is no God.

A Prayer begins . . .

Our Father in heaven, we praise your holy name. We recognize your glory everywhere. We are not foolish. We know that you are God!

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Two selected book quotations begin . . .

Uncurable Love

Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg, Becoming A Contagious Christian, Zondervan Publishing House, 1994, p. 23.    SoAmazing.com

Category: Church And Ministry, Evangelism
ISBN: 0310485002
Keywords: Christian, purposes, church, worshipping God, missing, God, contagious Christians, love, grace, truth, epidemic, world, message, Hybels, Bill Hybels, Mittleberg, Mark Mittleberg, Zondervan Publishing House

"Deep in every true Christian, there is an awareness that we are on this planet for purposes greater than having a career, paying the bills, loving our families, and fulfilling our role as upstanding citizens. Even going to church and worshiping God--important as these are--sometimes leave us feeling that something is missing. After all, we'll worship God for eternity in heaven; we don't have to be here to do that.

What is it that's absent in the lives of so many believers who are crying out for fulfillment? What on earth is God asking us to do?

God wants us to become contagious Christians--His agents, who will first catch His love and then urgently and infectiously offer it to all who are willing to consider it. This is His primary plan, the one Jesus modeled so powerfully, to spread God's grace and truth person to person until there's an epidemic of changed lives around the world.

And how can you get personally involved in this exciting endeavor? Well, that's the goal of this book; to give you practical steps toward becoming an effective carrier of God's life-changing message."

SoAmazing Review: Bill Hybels and Mark Mittleberg seek to infect Christian hearts with the love of God so they spread God's life-changing message .   Becoming A Contagious Christian could make you want to be a carrier!

Buy Becoming A Contagious Christian Now!   Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Christianbook.

The Tide That Binds

Leonard Sweet, SoulTsunami, Sink Or Swim In New Millennium Culture, Zondervan, 2001, pp. 20, 21.    SoAmazing.com

Category: Christian Living
Keywords: bunker mentality, premodern, modern, Christian, Montana, church, defensive, suvivialist mentality, demythologize, culture, myths, evil, Jesus, reality, postmodern, language, media, engage, Zondervan, Sweet, Leonard Sweet

"Bunker mania is understandable. People want the world to hold still. The temptation to return to unmistakably premodern or modern ideals is strong. The way to do this is to disengage from society and live within the bounds of a recognizable reality. It is not just Christian survivalists in Montana who are pulling the shutters down on the outside world, insulating themselves, and refusing to move into the future. Much of the church has bought into a defensive, 'survivalist' mentality based on confessional, apostolic, sectarian, or 'let the church be the church' subculture stances.

. . . The truth of hunker-in-the-bunker survivalism is that we are called to live 'in the world' without becoming 'of the world' or removing ourselves 'out of it' (John 17). Substitute the word 'water' for 'world' and 'boat' for 'church.' The boat belongs 'in' the water. If the boat takes on too much water, however, we become 'of' the water and quickly sink. But the ship's airy abstractions can also raise her right up 'out of' the water, the church is a hovercraft haughtily perched above the realities in which we are to enact God's mission and with a respect for the realities of culture and history that is essentially Olympian.

. . . Indeed, it is precisely to preserve dissidence as an essential quality of the Christian that the boat must move not against the tide, not with the tide, but ahead of the tide. If the church is to demythologize the culture's reigning myths instead of the culture always demythologizing the church; if the church is to say that the Emperor of Technism, the Emperor of Scientism, the Emperor of Miraculism has no clothes; if technologies are to be deflected so that they do not degenerate into unspeakable evil--then the church must be prepared to anticipate change and get ahead of the culture, not always be in a reactive--whether catch-up or put-down--posture.

The falsity of bunkering is that it makes Jesus into a Savior from the world, not the Savior of the world. Gated churches are designed to keep people in and the reality out. Separation and engagement go together. The best way to defuse the principalities and powers of postmodern culture is not to escape from it, but to learn its language, master its media, and engage it on a higher level."

SoAmazing Review: In SoulTsunami, Leonard Sweet spares no metaphors to catch our attention. The culture has changed and continues to change in ways which greatly affect the church! We need to get with it!

Buy SoulTsunami Now!   Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Christianbook.

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