Application Christian Quotes

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. [Adams submitted and signed the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797]

Knowledge alone makes Christians haughty. Application makes us holy.

You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application.

Are you born again?" he asked, as we taxied down the runway. He was rather prim and tense, maybe a little like David Eisenhower with a spastic colon. I did not know how to answer for a moment. "Yes," I said. "I am." My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, "I'm not really a Jew -- I'm Jew-ish." They think I am Christian-ish. But I'm not. I'm just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it's not true. And I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed. So I told the truth; that I am a believer, a convert. I'm probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement. And believe me, all this boggles even *my* mind. But it's true. I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in. I would wash their feet; I would let them wash mine.

The problem with the prosperity gospel is that it makes prosperity the Gospel. God's word is flawless, however if your interpretation of the word is wrong, your application will be wrong also.

So I offer my definition of theology: theology is the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life.11

Look-Then-Leap Rule: You set a predetermined amount of time for “looking”—that is, exploring your options, gathering data—in which you categorically don’t choose anyone, no matter how impressive. After that point, you enter the “leap” phase, prepared to instantly commit to anyone who outshines the best applicant you saw in the look phase. We

Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do

The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday

Defining systematic theology to include "what the whole Bible TEACHES US today" implies that application to life is a necessary part of the proper pursuit of systematic theology. Thus a doctrine under consideration is seen in terms of its practical value for living the Christian life. Nowhere in Scripture do we find doctrine studied for its own sake or in isolation from life.

So in considering the writings of Paul, the question is not, Are head coverings good or bad? The question is, in that context, Did head coverings help or hurt the advancement of the gospel and the preservation of unity? The question is not, Should Christians eat meat? but rather, in that context, Did eating meat help or hurt the advancement of the gospel and the preservation of unity? And as we consider the application of Paul’s teachings in our various contexts today, the question is not, Should women be allowed to preach? but Do women preachers help or hurt the advancement of the gospel and the preservation of unity? Paul was smart enough to know the answers to these questions would vary from church to church and person to person, so surely he was smart enough to also know they would vary from culture to culture and century to century. Was Paul a man of his time? Of course. But that’s exactly the point. God meets us where we are, as we are. The Spirit shows up in the thick of it.

Listen to yourself speak, saying, “The knowledge of God has no practical application.” Do you know why all your Christian bookstores are filled up with self-help books, and five ways to do this or that, and six ways to be godly, and 10 ways not to fall?—because people don’t know God! And so they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them walking as sheep ought to walk! “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (1Co 15:34). Why the rampant sinning even among God’s people? It is a lack of the knowledge of God!

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him. The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction. That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

It seems that in our society Christianity has made permanent inroads in the eye-for-an-eye department but has made little progress on the practical application of forgiveness.

The Bible tells us that, 'A quarrelsome wife is like the constant dripping of a leaky roof” (Proverbs 19:13), but that doesn’t mean women should not speak up. It means we should not speak up in a quarrelsome way.

There have been applied sciences throughout the ages. ... However this so-called practice was not much more than paper in nearly all of these cases, and the various applied sciences were only lacking a bagatelle, namely proper scientific practice. The applied sciences show the application of theoretic doctrines in existing events; but that is precisely what it does, it merely shows. Whereas the scientific practice autonomously puts to use these theories.

It is an error to believe that Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather that He inaugurated a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted, to different times and different places.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult. To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.

As the applicant pool grows, the exact place to draw the line between looking and leaping settles to 37% of the pool, yielding the 37% Rule: look at the first 37% of the applicants,* choosing none, then be ready to leap for anyone better than all those you’ve seen so far.

Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be “scriptural.” I could select Sartre’s “Existentialism and Humanism” off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his “word” at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits.

The same ingenious application of slogans, coined by others and tried out before, was apparent in the Nazis' treatment of other relevant issues. When public attention was equally focused on nationalism on the one hand and socialism on the other, when the two were thought to be incompatible and actually constituted the ideological watershed between the Right and the Left, the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" (Nazi) offered a synthesis supposed to lead to national unity, a semantic solution whose double trademark of "German" and "Worker" connected the nationalism of the Right with the internationalism of the Left. The very name of the Nazi movement stole the political contents of all other parties and pretended implicitly to incorporate them all. Combinations of supposedly antagonistic political doctrines (national-socialist, christian-social, etc.) had been tried, and successfully, before; but the Nazis realized their own combination in such a way that the whole struggle in Parliament between the socialists and the nationalists, between those who pretended to be workers first of all and those who were Germans first, appeared as a sham designed to hide ulterior sinister motives—for was not a member of the Nazi movement all these things at once?

Becuase of dualistic, sacred/secular thinking among Christians, a truly effective application of biblical thought and practice to the whole of our culture "out there" has been short-circuited. Christians have become their own worst enemies, having spiritualized themselves right out of the ball game and on to the bench.

The application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education, must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists—not from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and novels in their spare time.

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

My so-called love for humanity, for instance, isn't something I get to carry around in my heart. It has to find application among the weird, desperate people who populate my daily experience. It has to put on flesh. If it doesn't, I might take pleasure in the warm, fuzzy feeling of my personal, private faith, but it wouldn't be appropriate to call it Christianity.

We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.

Christian political theory does not adhere to a passive conservatism. nor is it enamored of progress. It is conservative in principles, but progressive in application of these principles to the ever-changing circumstances. In the struggle between the passionate urge for limitless freedom and conservative order, Christian political theory stands on the side of order. In the struggle between man's longing for freedom and dehumanizing absolute power, it will fight for freedom. In the struggle between social justice and reactionary defense of the vested interests of selfish classes, it will unite with justice. Faced by the choice between the dignity of the human person and political expediency, it will defend the dignity of the human person.

Four centuries and more of modern thought have been, from one point of view, an experiment in the possibilities of knowledge open to man, assuming that there is no Revealed Truth. The conclusion--which Hume already saw and from which he fled into the comfort of "common sense" and conventional life, and which the multitudes sense today without possessing any such secure refuge--the conclusion of this experiment is an absolute negation: if there is no Revealed Truth, there is no truth at all; the search for truth outside of Revelation has come to a dead end. The scientist admits this by restricting himself to the narrowest of specialties, content if he sees a certain coherence in a limited aggregate of facts, without troubling himself over the existence of any truth, large or small; the multitudes demonstrate it by looking to the scientist, not for truth, but for the technological applications of a knowledge which has no more than a practical value, and by looking to other, irrational sources for the ultimate values men once expected to find in truth. The despotism of science over practical life is contemporaneous with the advent of a whole series of pseudo-religious "revelations"; the two are correlative symptoms of the same malady: the abandonment of truth.

His direction may not be a booming thunder or a voice in your ear. It may be a high-risk loan application going through, a referral seemingly out of nowhere or a scholarship award for something you were not qualified for. If these sorts of things are happening, God is creating a path for you. He is providing confirmation that tells you, “This is right!” Isaiah, 30:21 proves this to be true, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,“This is the way; walk in it.

The point that the Scientific Christian needs to note is that, as usual, the vital bearing of the principle covered in this Beatitude lies in its application to the realm of thought. The thing that really matters is that you be merciful in your thought. Kind actions coupled with unkind thoughts are hypocrisy, dictated by fear, or desire for self-glory, or some such motive. They are counterfeits and they bless neither the giver nor the recipient. On the other hand, the true thought about fellowman blesses him spiritually, mentally, and materially; and blesses you too. Let us be merciful in our mental judgments of our brother, for, in truth, we are all one, and the more deeply he seems to err, the more urgent is the need for us to help him with the right thought, and so make it easier for him to get free. You—because you understand the power of the Spiritual Idea, the Christ Truth—have a responsibility that others have not; see that you do not evade it. When his delinquency comes to your notice, remember that the Christ in him is calling out for help to you who are enlightened—so be merciful.

John Passmore writes in his book Science and Its Critics, The Spanish Inquisition sought to avoid direct responsibility for the burning of heretics by handing them over to the secular arm; to burn them itself, it piously explained, would be wholly inconsistent with its Christian principles. Few of us would allow the Inquisition thus easily to wipe its hands clean of bloodshed; it knew quite well what would happen. Equally, where the technological application of scientific discoveries is clear and obvious—as when a scientist works on nerve gases—he cannot properly claim that such applications are “none of his business,” merely on the ground that it is the military forces, not scientists, who use the gases to disable or kill. This is even more obvious when the scientist deliberately offers help to governments, in exchange for funds. If a scientist, or a philosopher, accepts funds from some such body as an office of naval research, then he is cheating if he knows his work will be useless to them and must take some responsibility for the outcome if he knows that it will be useful. He is subject, properly subject, to praise or blame in relation to any innovations which flow from his work.

Muslims tend to blame the infidels among them for calling down the wrath of Allah. So they purify the land and court Allah's favor by killing them. That may be why Christians in Pakistan and elsewhere have been having a harder time of it lately, when passions are enflamed throughout the House of Islam. That is also why Christians and Jews will always be in danger of persecution in Islamic lands. Until Muslims in general come to view the Qur'an and the hadiths the way Christians and Jews regard some portions of the Old Testament, as limited in their modern application by their historical context, it is unlikely that this situation will change.

Everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process. As long as there is one unsaved person on my campus or in my city, then my church is not big enough. One of the underlying principles of our discipleship strategy is that every believer can and should make disciples. When a discipleship process fails, many times the fatal flaw is that the definition of discipleship is either unclear, unbiblical, or not commonly shared by the leadership team. Write down what you love to do most, and then go do it with unbelievers. Whatever you love to do, turn it into an outreach. You have to formulate a system that is appropriate for your cultural setting. Writing your own program for making disciples takes time, prayer, and some trial and error—just as it did with us. Learn and incorporate ideas from other churches around the world, but only after modification to make sure the strategies make sense in our culture and community. Culture is changing so quickly that staying relevant requires our constant attention. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on the mechanics of our own efforts rather than our culture, we will become irrelevant almost overnight. The easiest and most common way to fail at discipleship is to import a model or copy a method that worked somewhere else without first understanding the values that create a healthy discipleship culture. Principles and process are much more important than material, models, and methods. The church is an organization that exists for its nonmembers. Christianity does not promise a storm-free life. However, if we build our lives on biblical foundations, the storms of life will not destroy us. We cannot have lives that are storm-free, but we can become storm-proof. Just as we have to figure out the most effective way to engage our community for Christ, we also have to figure out the most effective way to establish spiritual foundations in each unique context. There is really only one biblical foundation we can build our lives on, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastors, teachers, and church staff believe their primary role is to serve as mentors. Their task is to equip every believer for the work of the ministry. It is not to do all the ministry, but to equip all the people to do it. Their top priority is to equip disciples to do ministry and to make disciples. Do you spend more time ministering to people or preparing people to minister? No matter what your church responsibilities are, you can prepare others for the same ministry. Insecurity in leadership is a deadly thing that will destroy any organization. It drives pastors and presidents to defensive positions, protecting their authority or exercising it simply to show who is the boss. Disciple-making is a process that systematically moves people toward Christ and spiritual maturity; it is not a bunch of randomly disconnected church activities. In the context of church leadership, one of the greatest and most important applications of faith is to trust the Holy Spirit to work in and through those you are leading. Without confidence that the Holy Spirit is in control, there is no empowering, no shared leadership, and, as a consequence, no multiplication.

Some will be ready to enjoy freedom of access to Christ and familiarity with Him; but the "little children" of God who have been living only in the elements of the world will be disgraced at His appearing. What are we to do, as Christian men and women, in the light of these two possibilities? I give two passages from the Epistle, as my closing words: "My little children, abide in Him"; "Every one that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself." Those who are abiding in Christ here on earth, who purify themselves as He is pure, separated once cut clean adrift from the ungodliness of the age, loyal of heart to the King in the days of waiting for Him these are the men and women who will have boldness in the day of His coming. Who shall draw the line? I do not. It is for each of us to make application of this truth in solitude.

Moreover, seeing ourselves as a majority led at times to both a theological downgrade and a counter-productive public stance. The application of the promises to Israel to the United States of America, for example, caused many to miss, as we will see in the next chapter, the meaning of the kingdom of God, and thus to bypass Jesus Christ himself. The idea of America as a Christian nation is able to get “Amens” in the churches only as long as the churches believe America is, at least in some ways, with us and not against us. But what happens when the cultural climate starts to shift in obvious ways? If the church believes the United States is a sort of new Israel, then we become frantic when we see ourselves “losing America.” We then start to speak in gloomy terms of America as, at best, Babylon, a place of hopeless exile, or, at worst, Gomorrah, slouching toward the judgment of God.

CRT teaches that a person’s identity cannot be separated from the group to which they belong. If you are born white, you are labeled an oppressor regardless of your character or personal attitude; individuality is lost within the group you belong to. And if you are born white and you choose to defend yourself against the charge of racism, this only proves that indeed you are racist! Wealthy black Americans are not considered persons of privilege, but a white person born into abject poverty is considered a person of privilege. There is no room for individuality, kindness, forgiveness, or meaningful reconciliation. Even more importantly, in the purely secular application of CRT, redemption is viewed as separating a group from oppressors, not as the need to be freed from sin by the gospel of God’s saving grace. Salvation, in the radical view of CRT, is to gain power over your oppressors. Until the oppressed triumph over their oppressors, the conflict must continue. Pure Marx.

Truth engages the citadel of the human heart and is not satisfied until it has conquered everything there. The will must come forth and surrender its sword. It must stand at attention to receive orders, and those orders it must joyfully obey. Short of this any knowledge of Christian truth is inadequate and unavailing. Bible exposition without moral application raises no opposition. It is only when the hearer is made to understand that truth is in conflict with his heart that resistance sets in. As long as people can hear orthodox truth divorced from life, they will attend and support churches and institutions without objection. The truth is a lovely song, become sweet by long and tender association; and since it asks nothing but a few dollars, and offers good music, pleasant friendships and a comfortable sense of well-being, it meets with no resistance from the faithful. Much that passes for New Testament Christianity is little more than objective truth sweetened with song and made palatable by religious entertainment.

Within the evangelical community, Dobson emerged as Obama’s fiercest critic. In June 2008 he lashed out at Obama on his radio program, accusing him of distorting the Bible to fit his worldview, of having a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution,” and of appealing to the “lowest common denominator of morality.” Dobson especially took issue with a speech Obama had given in 2006 in which he had defended the right of people of faith to bring their religious beliefs into the public square, while also pointing out that Christians disagreed among themselves on how best to do so. Whose Christianity would win out? “Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharp-ton’s?” Obama had asked. “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy?” Should Old Testament passages dictate that slavery was acceptable but eating shellfish was not? “Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount—a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?” Dobson was not amused. 5

Ephesians 4:18 talks about “having the understanding darkened.” If you don’t renew your mind and use it to study and meditate God’s Word, it’ll automatically gravitate toward what you can see, taste, hear, smell, and feel. This darkens your understanding. Understanding is the application of knowledge. “Knowledge” puts food into your mouth and chews. “Understanding” actually swallows and digests it so that the beneficial nutrients can be released into your body. The knowledge of God is critical, but must be understood to be useful. Without understanding, you can’t release the life that’s in it. When a Christian walks like an unbeliever, they get the same results—death. Believers who don’t understand and apply the knowledge of God in their lives gravitate toward carnal mindedness. Without spiritual knowledge and understanding, your mind can’t be renewed, and the life of God in your spirit can’t be released. That’s why understanding this revelation of spirit, soul, and body is the first step toward walking in life and peace! When a believer’s understanding is darkened, they are “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18). In other words, the life of God is still there, but they are alienated from it due to ignorance, which refers to the mind. This is where most Christians live their lives—separated from the life of God within, due to their own ignorance of spiritual truth. In His Word, God declares that by His stripes, you were healed (1 Pet. 2:24). You look at yourself and ask, “Is that cancerous tumor gone?” Still feeling pain, emotionally drained, and fearful, you continue, “God says I’m healed, but I’m not. It’s still there, so I must not be healed.” By adopting that attitude, you’ve allowed your five senses to dominate you more than God’s Word. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is in you, but you didn’t believe it (Eph. 1:18-20). You let your mind be controlled by what it saw in the physical realm more than the spiritual realm. Therefore, even though you have the resurrection life of God in your spirit, it won’t manifest in the physical realm because you’re carnally minded, which equals death.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. JAMES 1:5 SEPTEMBER 20 All preaching should have practical applications, for Christianity is a way of life that really works—when it’s lived properly. This includes making right decisions. In the long run, you determine what your life will be by your decisions. You can decide yourself into failure or into success, into mental turmoil or into mental peace, into unhappiness or into happiness. A man remarked to me, “Let’s face it: life goes the way the ball bounces.” I don’t go for any such idea as that at all. There is a deeper reality. We can control the bouncing of life’s circumstances and outcomes as we learn the art of making right decisions. And how do we learn it? I repeat: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, . . . and it will be given to him.” Believe, really believe, that there is an answer for you and that God will give you the wisdom to find that answer. People who have become great people have been those who have discovered that God will guide them through the problems of their

The flourishing of historical and political legends came to a rather abrupt end with the birth of Christianity. Its interpretation of history, from the days of Adam to the Last Judgment, as one single road to redemption and salvation, offered the most powerful and all-inclusive legendary explanation of human destiny. Only after the spiritual unity of Christian peoples gave way to the plurality of nations, when the road to salvation became an uncertain article of individual faith rather than a universal theory applicable to all happenings, did new kinds of historical explanations emerge. The nineteenth century has offered us the curious spectacle of an almost simultaneous birth of the most varying and contradictory ideologies, each of which claimed to know the hidden truth about otherwise incomprehensible facts. Legends, however, are not ideologies; they do not aim at universal explanation but are always concerned with concrete facts. It seems rather significant that the growth of national bodies was nowhere accompanied by a foundation legend, and that a first unique attempt in modern times was made precisely when the decline of the national body had become obvious and imperialism seemed to take the place of old-fashioned nationalism.

We are nobler. Loyalty, magnanimity, care for one's reputation: these three united in a single disposition we call noble, and in this quality we excel the Greeks. Let us not abandon it, as we might be tempted to do as a result of feeling that the ancient objects of these virtues have lost in estimation (and rightly), but see to it that this precious inherited drive is applied to new objects. To grasp how, from the viewpoint of our own aristocracy, which is still chivalrous and feudal in nature, the disposition of even the noblest Greeks has to seem of a lower sort and, indeed, hardly decent, one should recall the words with which Odysseus comforted himself in ignominious situations: 'Endure it, my dear heart! you have already endured the lowest things!' And, as a practical application of this mythical model, one should add the story of the Athenian officer who, threatened with a stick by another officer in the presence of the entire general staff, shook this disgrace from himself with the words: 'Hit me! But also hear me!' (This was Themistocles, that dextrous Odysseus of the classical age, who was certainly the man to send down to his 'dear heart' those lines of consolation at so shameful a moment.) The Greeks were far from making as light of life and death on account of an insult as we do under the impress of inherited chivalrous adventurousness and desire for self-sacrifice; or from Seeking out opportunities for risking both in a game of honour, as we do in duels; or from valuing a good name (honour) more highly than the acquisition of a bad name if the latter is compatible with fame and the feeling of power; or from remaining loyal to their class prejudices and articles of faith if these could hinder them from becoming tyrants. For this is the ignoble secret of every good Greek aristocrat: out of the profoundest jealousy he considers each of his peers to stand on an equal footing with him, but is prepared at any moment to leap like a tiger upon his prey, which is rule over them all: what are lies, murder, treachery, selling his native city, to him then! This species of man found justice extraordinarily difficult and regarded it as something nearly incredible; 'the just man' sounded to the Greeks like 'the saint' does among Christians. But when Socrates went so far as to say: 'the virtuous man is the happiest man' they did not believe their ears and fancied they had heard something insane. For when he pictures the happiest man, every man of noble origin included in the picture the perfect ruthlessness and devilry of the tyrant who sacrifices everyone and everything to his arrogance and pleasure. Among people who secretly revelled in fantasies of this kind of happiness, respect for the state could, to be sure, not be implanted deeply enough but I think that people whose lust for power no longer rages as blindly as that of those noble Greeks also no longer require the idolisation of the concept of the state with which that lust was formerly kept in check.

In every age there are threads of continuity and discontinuity. What may be different from age to age is the political organization, the kind of economy that exists and how it works, the architectural style, the nature of the calamities that occur - such as war, famine, natural disasters, or social upheaval - the dominance or absence of religion, life expectancy, the scope of medical care, and any number of other factors that impinge on daily life. In these areas, life in seventeenth-century America, for example, was very different indeed from life in the twentieth. At the same time, if Christian assumptions can be accepted, life in these two times also shared some things. Human nature has remained unchanged as created and fallen, as has God in his character and purposes, as has the truth of the revelation he has given us in the Bible, as has the significance of his redemptive acts and most importantly the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. These have not changed. They are the threads that are woven through ages that, in many other ways, have no connections with each other at all. They give continuity to life amidst its many jarring discontinuities. For this reason, there is only one Gospel applicable to all people in all places and believed in the same way in every age. If this were not so, Christian faith would mean something entirely different today from what it meant last century, and faith would mean something entirely different in America than in Asia, Europe, or Africa.

The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked, however, by the rise and rapid progress of the new Platonists. The school of Alexandria silenced those of Athens; and the ancient sects enrolled themselves under the banners of the more fashionable teachers, who recommended their system by the novelty of their method and the austerity of their manners. Several of these masters—Ammonius, Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry—were men of profound thought and intense application; but, by mistaking the true object of philosophy, their labors contributed much less to improve than to corrupt human understanding. The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both of these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in these deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from its corporeal prison, claimed a familiar intercourse withe dæmons and spirits; and, by a very singular revolution, converted the study of philosophy into that of magic. The ancient sages had derided the popular superstition; after disguising its extravagance by the this pretense of allegory, the disciples of Plotinus and Porphyry becomes its most zealous defenders. As they agreed with the Christians in a few mysterious points of faith, they attacked the remainder of their theological system with all the fury of civil war. The new Platonists would scarcely deserve a place in the history of science, but in that of the church the mention of them will very frequently occur.

1. Divine Writing: The Bible, down to the details of its words, consists of and is identical with God’s very own words written inerrantly in human language. 2. Total Representation: The Bible represents the totality of God’s communication to and will for humanity, both in containing all that God has to say to humans and in being the exclusive mode of God’s true communication.[11] 3. Complete Coverage: The divine will about all of the issues relevant to Christian belief and life are contained in the Bible.[12] 4. Democratic Perspicuity: Any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible in his or her own language and correctly understand the plain meaning of the text.[13] 5. Commonsense Hermeneutics: The best way to understand biblical texts is by reading them in their explicit, plain, most obvious, literal sense, as the author intended them at face value, which may or may not involve taking into account their literary, cultural, and historical contexts. 6. Solo Scriptura:[14] The significance of any given biblical text can be understood without reliance on creeds, confessions, historical church traditions, or other forms of larger theological hermeneutical frameworks, such that theological formulations can be built up directly out of the Bible from scratch. 7. Internal Harmony: All related passages of the Bible on any given subject fit together almost like puzzle pieces into single, unified, internally consistent bodies of instruction about right and wrong beliefs and behaviors. 8. Universal Applicability: What the biblical authors taught God’s people at any point in history remains universally valid for all Christians at every other time, unless explicitly revoked by subsequent scriptural teaching. 9. Inductive Method: All matters of Christian belief and practice can be learned by sitting down with the Bible and piecing together through careful study the clear “biblical” truths that it teaches. The prior nine assumptions and beliefs generate a tenth viewpoint that—although often not stated in explications of biblicist principles and beliefs by its advocates—also commonly characterizes the general biblicist outlook, particularly as it is received and practiced in popular circles: 10. Handbook Model: The Bible teaches doctrine and morals with every affirmation that it makes, so that together those affirmations comprise something like a handbook or textbook for Christian belief and living, a compendium of divine and therefore inerrant teachings on a full array of subjects—including science, economics, health, politics, and romance.[15]

I have been negligent this month past, in these three things: I have not been watchful enough over my appetites, in eating and drinking; in rising too late in the morning; and in not applying myself with sufficient application to the duty of secret prayer.

And then something happened. The rock-hard truth unchanging became circumstantial application. The pursuit of relevancy fully took over. The pursuit of influence, of power, became more naked. The same figures who denounced Bill Clinton on the grounds of his moral disqualification suddenly found moral relativism a workable strategy in defense of a Republican at least as unqualified. One Christian spokesperson was asked if there was anything the president could do that would endanger his support from evangelical leaders, and he replied flatly, “No.”3

But let’s be clear: the madness of everyday life was its own issue. It didn’t have any relationship to whether or not Christianity was bullshit. Obviously, Christianity was total bullshit. It was the most insane bullshit! But it was impossible to make an argument against superstition and magical nonsense, and have it stick, when that argument was delivered from a society where every citizen was a magician. And yes, reader, that includes you. You too are a magician. Your life is dominated by one of the oldest and most perverse forms of magic, one with less interior cohesion than the Christian faith, and you invest its empty symbolism with a level of belief that far outpaces that of any Christian. Here are some strips of paper and bits of metal! Watch as I transform these strips of paper and bits of metal into: (a) sex (b) food (c) clothing (d) shelter (e) transportation that allows me to acquire strips of paper and bits of money (f) intoxicants that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (g) leisure items that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (h) pointless vacations to exotic locales where I will replicate the brutish behavior that I display in my point of origin as a brief respite from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (i) unfair social advantages that allow my rotten children to undertake their own moronic pursuits of strips of paper and bits of metal. Humiliate yourself for strips of paper. Murder for the strips of paper. Humiliate others for the strips of paper. Worship the people who’ve accumulated such vast quantities of strips of paper that their strips of paper no longer have any physical existence and are now represented by binary notation. Treat the vast accumulators like gods. Free blowies for the moldering corpse of Steve Jobs! Fawning profile pieces for Jay-Z! The Presidency for billionaire socialite and real-estate developer Donald J. Trump! Kill! Kill! Kill! Work! Work! Work! Die! Die! Die! Go on. Pretend this is not the most magical thing that has ever happened. Historical arguments against Christianity tended to be delivered in tones of pearl-clutching horror, usually by subpar British intellectuals pimping their accent in America, a country where sounding like an Oxbridge twat conferred an unearned credibility. Yes, the Crusades were horrible. Yes, the Inquisition was awful. Yes, they shouldn’t have burned witches in Salem. Yes, there is an unfathomable amount of sexually abused walking wounded. Yes, every Christian country has oriented itself around the rich and done nothing but abuse the fuck out of its poor. But it’s not like the secular conversion of the industrialized world has alleviated any of the horror. Read the news. Murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape...Despair. All secularism has done, really, is remove a yoke from the rich. They’d always been horrible, but at least when they still paid lip service to Christian virtues, they could be shamed into philanthropy. Now they use market forces to slide the whole thing into feudalism. New York University built a campus [in Abu Dhabi] with slave labor! In the Twenty-First Century AD! And has suffered no rebuke! Applications are at an all-time high! The historical arguments against Christianity are as facile as reviews on Goodreads.com, and come down to this: Why do you organize around bad people who tell you that a Skyman wants you to be good? To which the rejoinder is: yes, the clergy sucks, but who cares how normal people are delivered into goodness?

Then by chance Mother learns sponsors prefer those whose applications say, "Christians." Just like that Mother amends our faith, saying all beliefs are pretty much the same.

certain flexibility in the 37% Rule: it can be applied to either the number of applicants or the time over which one is searching.

As a Christian, you are carving Christ name upon human hearts so be careful how you represent Christ to others

To conform to the biblical teaching, we must view a human being holistically. The biblical descriptions of men and women as God’s created beings assume psychological and physical laws. These essential laws affecting all levels of a person’s being must be taken into account. The more of God’s psychological truth we are able to discover, the more understanding we will have of great biblical truths and their application to the whole person. It is clear that psychology as a science can never instruct us concerning a human being’s meaning or value, so the church must learn to distinguish between a valid psychological finding and an unwarranted (perhaps even anti-Christian) philosophical interpretation of it. If we do not make use of the valid psychological finding, we may be depriving ourselves of God’s truth as revealed in psychology and thereby harm many Christian believers whose suffering could be greatly alleviated. We may also to some extent be misrepresenting God’s message of redemption, for distortion of the human psyche is part of that which was redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross. Christ came to heal and redeem our damaged emotions as well as our souls.

But does anyone truly understand the message of the cross apart from brokenness, contrition, repentance, and faith? To repeat rather mechanically the nature of the transaction that Christians think took place at Golgotha is one thing; to look at God and his holiness, and people and their sin, from the perspective of the cross, is life changing. What Paul says, then, is that our self-centeredness, our sin, is so deep that we cannot truly see the cross for what it is, apart from the work of the Spirit. What the Spirit accomplishes in us is more than mere application of truth already grasped.

A 63% failure rate, when following the best possible strategy, is a sobering fact. Even when we act optimally in the secretary problem, we will still fail most of the time—that is, we won’t end up with the single best applicant in the pool.

Each document and each utterance within that document, like Jesus Christ and each of his utterances, is anchored in a particular historical situation — this particularity marks all the Christian revelation — and to discern within these particularities truths from God for universal application is the interpreter's major task.

Joey Tomlinson, in his much-needed and timely book, The Day of Trouble: Depression, Scripture, and the God Who Is Near, masterfully tackles the issues of mental health and well-being from a Christian and biblical perspective. Speaking with a pastor’s heart, Tomlinson helps his readers wrestle with the spiritually, mentally, and physically debilitating scourge of depression. In seeking to help hurting people, Tomlinson draws from years of pastoral ministry as a counsellor, as well as drawing from the Bible, current medical and pharmaceutical studies, and tried-tested-and-true insights from other godly writers, preachers, and pastors both past and present. The result is a book that gives readers a well-grounded, balanced, applicable, and effective dose of biblical wisdom, godly encouragement, and convicting exhortation. This book is extremely helpful for all Christians–whether you’re managing personal challenges with mental health or helping others in treating theirs. Tomlinson doesn’t mince words in his direct and honest dealings with the subject, but his Christ-like love for his readers is evident on every page. The Day of Trouble is a well-written, sincere, and highly practical gift to the church, a book that sheds gospel-transforming light on an often overlooked and ignored area of the Christian life. I hope and pray that it is widely read among God’s people, for I know it will be a healing balm used by the Triune God to restore Christian joy to the minds and hearts of suffering souls.

A veteran mountain climber was sharing his experiences with a group of novices preparing for their first major climb. “Remember this,” he said, “your goal is to experience the exhilaration of the climb and the joy of reaching . . . the peak. Each step draws you closer to the top. If your purpose for climbing is just to avoid death, your experience will be minimal.” I see an application to the Christian’s experience. Jesus did not call us to live the Christian life just to escape hell. It’s not to be a life of minimum joy and fulfillment, but a life that is full and overflowing. The Lord promised us “life . . . to the full” (John 10:10). We cannot experience a full and abundant life if we are living in fear. When we walk by faith, we will see each day of the Christian life as a challenge to be met and as one more upward step to glory! Do not live minimally. Live life to the max! Climb that mountain with confidence! David Egner

The principles of dharma, like the principles of mathematics, are both eternal and universal in their application. Just as mathematics has no originator or author or connotation of any culture, the same is true of dharma. Dharma is discovered, not created, by human beings. For example, “Euclidian Geometry” was discovered by the Greek Euclid, but it is not Greek in any way and carries no connotation of Hellenism.

Then by chance Mother learns sponsors prefer those whose application say "Christians." Just like that Mother amends our faith, saying all beliefs are pretty much the same.

Life played God’s way is a relational sport. Played well, it volleys back and for the between the Trinity and us, between us and others. Discipleship has been given to the grace training we undergo; this implies that we are intentional about processes of learning, self-discipline, and life application as is led by God.

Christianity embodied all the moral instincts of our race, such as our concepts of personal honor, of personal self-respect and integrity, of fair play, of pity for the unfortunate, of loyalty- all of which seem preposterous to other races, at least in the form and application that we give to them. They simply lack our instincts. We think that it makes a great difference whether we kill a man in a fair fight or by treacherously stabbing him in the back or by putting poison in the cup that he accepts from our friendly hand; to at least one other race, we are simply childish and irrational: if you are to kill a man, kill him in the safest and most convenient way. Again, we, whether Christians or atheists, have an instinct for truth, so that if we lie, we have physical reactions that can be detected by a sphygmomanometer (often called a polygraph or "lie detector"). When officers of American military intelligence tried to use that device in the interrogation of prisoners during the Korean War, they discovered that Koreans and Chinese have no reaction that the instrument can detect, no matter how outrageous the lies they tell. We and they are differently constituted. We can no longer be so obtuse as to ignore the vast differences in mentality and instinct that separate us from all other races - not merely from savages, but from highly civilized races. The differences are innate, and to attempt to change their way of thinking with argument, generosity, or holy water is as absurd as attempting to change the color of their skins. That is a fact that we must accept. However, one may relate that fact to Christian doctrine, if we, a small minority among the teeming and terribly fecund populations of the globe, call all other peoples perverse or wicked, we merely confuse ourselves. If we are to think objectively and rationally, we must do so in the terms used by Maurice Samuel, who, after his discerning and admirably candid study of the "unbridgeable gulf' that separates Indo-Europeans from Jews, had to conclude that "This difference in behavior and reaction springs from something more earnest and significant than a difference of beliefs: it springs from a difference in our biologic equipment.

Contemporary philosopher John Gray says that there is much less distance between liberal democrats and Marxists than we like to think: “Technology—the practical application of scientific knowledge—produces a convergence in values. This is the central modern myth which the Positivists propagated and everyone today accepts as fact.”6

Adams disagreed. “I told Calhoun I could not see things in the same light.” And as he later reflected on the day’s discussion, he realized how thoroughly he disagreed with nearly everything Calhoun and the other Southerners said by way of defense of slavery. “It is, in truth, all perverted sentiment—mistaking labor for slavery, and dominion for freedom. The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract, they admit that slavery is an evil, they disclaim all participation in the introduction of it, and cast it all upon the shoulders of our old Grandam Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen who labor for subsistence. They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee’s manners, because he has no habit of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion, that slaves are happy and contented in their condition, that between master and slave there are ties of mutual attachment and affection, that the virtues of the master are refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave; while at the same they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and write in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color.” Adams had never pondered slavery at such length, and the experience made him fear for the future of the republic. “The impression produced upon my mind by the progress of this discussion is that the bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution of the United States is morally and politically vicious, inconsistent with the principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified; cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery, by pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and perpetuate the tyranny of the master; and grossly unequal and impolitic, by admitting that slaves are at once enemies to be kept in subjection, property to be secured or restored to their owners, and persons not to be represented themselves, but for whom their masters are privileged with nearly a double share of representation. The consequence has been that this slave representation has governed the Union.

Saint John Chrysostom commented on St. Paul’s distinction between the spiritual man and the natural man and what it means to have the mind of Christ. His preference for spiritual insight over the application of human reasoning is completely consistent with the patristic (and thus, Orthodox) view of the use of human wisdom and philosophy in theology. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit.” For he is “a natural man,” who attributes everything to reasonings of the mind and considers not that he needs help from above; which is a mark of sheer folly. For God bestowed it that it might learn and receive help from Him, not that it should consider itself sufficient unto itself. . . . For the mind which we have about these things we have of Christ; that is, the knowledge which we have concerning the things of the faith is spiritual; so that with reason we are “judged of no man.” For it is not possible that a natural man should know divine things. . . . For reason was absolutely made of no effect by our inability to apprehend through Gentile wisdom the things above us. You may observe, too, that it was more advantageous to learn in this way from the Spirit. For that is the easiest and clearest of all teaching. . . . “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), that is, spiritual, divine, that which has nothing human. For it is not of Plato, nor of Pythagoras, but it is Christ Himself, putting His own things into our mind.9

In cross-cultural communication a further step must be taken, the Christian teacher must re-apply revealed absolutes to persons living in a culture that is not the teacher’s own. The demands of this task highlight the importance of his being clear on what is absolute in the biblical presentation of the will and work of God and what is a culturally-relative application of it. Engaging in the task may help him toward clarity at this point by making him more alert than before to the presence in Scripture of culturally-conditioned applications of truth, which have to be adjusted according to the cultural variable.

By the early 2000s, was it even possible to separate “cultural Christianity” from a purer, more authentic form of American evangelicalism? What did it mean to be an evangelical? Did it mean upholding a set of doctrinal truths, or did it mean embracing a culture-wars application of those truths—a God-and-country religiosity that championed white rural and working-class values, one that spilled over into a denigration of outsiders and elites, and that was organized around a deep attachment to militarism and patriarchal masculinity?

Intimacy with the Lord without distraction would also mean greater availability for the service of the Lord, his people, and his kingdom, as the Christian experience of millennia has shown. Reflection and Application (7:25–35) This passage, along with Jesus’ commendation of celibacy (Matt 19:12), forms the Magna Carta of the consecrated life. It is primarily a declaration of independence and freedom. The great good of charity, the love of God, which alone outlasts the changing scenery of this world, is worth committing oneself to in celibate consecration as a state of life. If Paul coincides with Plato in saying that the figure of this world is passing away, he does not make the philosophical principle of the changeableness of temporal things the main motive for his praise of virginity. Rather, we are living in a segment of time marked at either end by the Christ event. In the resurrection, which is behind us, the glorious consummation of salvation is forecast and guaranteed. Thus we are living in a new kind of time, because its goal as well as its beginning has been revealed. So radically has the meaning of time been changed that unnecessary involvement in essentially transitory states can be a curtailment of freedom. Virginity, then, is the visible symbol of Christ’s lordship over time.

If you, Peter says to his readers, learn to yearn for spiritual nourishment, you will “grow up in your salvation” (2:2). Peter is not concerned here about “church growth” in a numerical sense, but about the church, regardless of its numerical strength, becoming desirous of spiritual nourishment and spiritual growth. As John Stott said at the Lausanne Conference, “We confess that we have sometimes pursued church growth at the expense of church depth, and divorced evangelism from Christian nurture.”9 This leads, not to church growth, but to stunting the growth of the church.

Cosmopolitanism,..., _speaks_ about the urgent need for and the significance of relocating our discourse on,..., the scope and application of rights and justice for every singular human being regardless of the person's birth and belonging.

Christians must never compromise with sinful ideas and practices. We should not blend in with people around us. You must live up to God’s standard of morality and not condone immoral behavior, even if society accepts it.

THE ONENESS OF ALL BELIEVERS Ephesians 4:4-6 Believers are one in   Our unity is experienced in Body   The fellowship of believers—the church Spirit   The Holy Spirit, who activates the fellowship Hope   That glorious future to which we are all called Lord   Christ, to whom we all belong Faith   Our singular commitment to Christ Baptism   Baptism—the sign of entry into the church God   God, who is our Father who keeps us for eternity Too often believers are separated because of minor differences in doctrine. But Paul here shows those areas where Christians must agree to attain true unity. When believers have this unity of spirit, petty differences should never be allowed to dissolve that unity.

Empathy is a special application of the imagination. The ability to imagine what it would be like to experience what someone else is experiencing can be crucial to moral sensitivity.

I believe many Christians are just like I used to be. They are convinced they are allowing the Word to do its sanctifying work simply by a steady diet of sermons and Bible studies. They even love the Word. Still they may have unknowingly practiced such selective application that some places remain inadvertently unprotected. No need to wait until something painful happens. You can change your approach today! Begin aggressively asking God to plow through your precious life with His Word. Don't be scared to do it! Be scared not to do it! You're perfectly safe with God.

The application of their rules routinely produces immense amounts of suffering and even threatens to breakdown solid marriages as well.[96]  Their sense of compassion and mercy, however, is severely limited by their presuppositions.  To maintain their absolute certainties, they have to tell themselves that they have chosen the “narrow path” upholding God’s sexual purity codes.  As they follow in Christ’s footsteps, the thistles and thorns on both sides of the path cut into their flesh.  They are content not to be happy in this world; their eyes are on the prize in the world to come.  Being disposed to relish pain more than joy, they naturally listen to the suffering of their victims with the same disposition that they give to their own suffering. 

I stopped being a little Christ and instead began filling out the application that I had labeled Christian. It was not a definition based on the actual namesake, but rather on those who frequent the clubhouse. And in the midst of being an American Christian among all the other American Christians, I stopped truly searching the nuances of who Christ was and is in order to fully grasp what a little Christ might, indeed, act like.

[H]eaven … is inconceivable, … it can only be thought of by us according to the standard of this world, a standard not applicable to any other. … It is just so with God[:] what he is, or how he exists is inscrutable.

That this is really the case was made plain to me by the questions asked me, mostly by young men, about my Canterbury play, The Zeal of Thy House. The action of the play involves a dramatic presentation of a few fundamental Christian dogmas— in particular, the application to human affairs of the doctrine of the Incarnation. That the Church believed Christ to be in any real sense God, or that the eternal word was supposed to be associated in any way with the word of creation; that Christ was held to be at the same time man in any real sense of the word; that the doctrine of the Trinity could be considered to have any relation to fact or any bearing on psychological truth; that the Church considered pride to be sinful, or indeed took notice of any sin beyond the more disreputable sins of the flesh—all these things were looked upon as astonishing and revolutionary novelties, imported into the faith by the feverish imagination of a playwright. I protested in vain against this flattering tribute to my powers of invention, referring my inquirers to the creeds, to the gospels, and to the offices of the Church; I insisted that if my play were dramatic it was so, not in spite of the dogma, but because of it—that, in short, the dogma was the drama. The explanation was, however, not well received; it was felt that if there were anything attractive in Christian philosophy I must have put it there myself.

Islamic apologists in the West today commonly assert that verse 9:29 commands warfare only against the Jews and Christians who fought against Muhammad. It would be comforting if every Muslim believed that, but unfortunately that has never been the mainstream Islamic understanding of this verse. Indeed, if it had been, the regulations delineated in the Pact of Umar would never have been formulated—and Islamic tradition even specifies that they were formulated after Muhammad’s death with Christians against whom he did not fight. That in itself, as well as the teachings of all the schools of Islamic law, illustrates that this verse was always understood to have a universal application.

Revelation 2: 1–7 confirms that the church was hard hit as a result of all of this, and by the end of the second century Christian influence had seriously waned in and around Ephesus. And this in the community that had received more apostolic ministry during the first century than any other! Yet there is actually an encouraging, albeit backhanded, application from all of this. If a ministry can die out with all that positive input, then we can take heart when we give it our best “shot” in ministry, and the results, humanly speaking at least, seem to be a failure. It is not necessarily our fault! We should do all we can in the power of the Holy Sprit, but then leave the results to God.

Insight + Application = Revelation

parallel to all other ages, not a chronological series of events. Indeed, one of the great marvels of God’s gracious activity toward us is that it occurs in real time without being prejudiced in favor of any particular age. Just because we are the latest does not mean we are the best. The effects of sin prevent any age—including ours—from being “golden,” at least in the spiritual sense. Every Christian generation learns equally the lessons of Revelation—that God is in control, that the powers of the world are minuscule when compared with God, that God is as likely to work through apparent weakness and failure as through strength and success, and that in the end God’s people will prevail. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It reveals important truths about the end times. But it is also last in another important sense—it calls on all the hermeneutical courage, wisdom, and maturity one can muster in order to be understood properly. In many ways it serves as a graduation exercise for the NIV Application Commentary Series, an opportunity to fully apply the many lessons we have learned in the Bridging Contexts sections of previous volumes. God’s time is his, not ours. The story of God’s gracious activity on our behalf will be fulfilled in a great and glorious conclusion. But all Christians, everywhere and at all times, have equal access to the time. That access has been and is made possible by God’s message in the book of Revelation. Terry C. Muck Author’s Preface AS A NEW CHRISTIAN recently converted from atheism, I eagerly hurried through Paul’s letters, reaching Revelation as soon as possible. Once I reached it, however, I could hardly understand a word of it. I listened attentively to the first few “prophecy teachers” I heard, but even if they had not contradicted one another, over the years I watched as most of their detailed predictions failed to materialize. Perhaps six years after my conversion, as I began to read Revelation in Greek for the first time, the book came alive to me. Because I was now moving through the text more carefully, I noticed the transitions and the structure, and I realized it was probably addressing something much different from what I had first supposed. At the same time, I catalogued parallels I found between Revelation and biblical prophets like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. I also began reading an apocalypse contemporary with Revelation, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras in the Apocrypha), to learn more about the way Revelation’s original, first-century audience may have heard its claims. Yet even in my first two years as a Christian, Revelation and other end-time passages proved a turning point for me. As a young Christian, I was immediately schooled in a particular, popular end-time view, which I respectfully swallowed (the

I’ve spent the last 11 years meditating, concentrating, contemplating, applicating, educating, investigating, and instigating a higher ideal. I’ve been a born again Christian, a crystal holding new age visualizationist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Christian scientist, a universalist, a bullshit artist, a seeker of truth, a charlatan, a holy roller, a shamanistic dancer, a guru, a disciple, and an enigma to my friends.

In Greek, the most significant area to which these curricula were reduced was the rudiments of Aristotelian logic. It is possible, for instance, to discern a major structural change in the medical curriculum in Alexandria toward the end of the sixth century, perhaps as a reaction to the decline of philosophical instruction in that last remaining center of Greek philosophical studies. ...The theological applications of philosophy in Greek patristic literature, by contrast, were many and longevous, though clearly harnessed to their theological, apologetic, and polemical goals rather than free philosophical discourse. In Syriac Christianity, as in Greek, there is a similar development of a logical curriculum, except that it was rather shorter: The Sasanian rulers actively endorsed a translation culture that viewed the transferral of Greek texts and ideas into Middle Persian as the “restitution” of an Iranian heritage that was allegedly pilfered by the Greeks after the campaigns of Alexander the Great.17 It was this cultural context, and the atmosphere of open debate fostered most energetically by Chosroes I Anushirwan (ruled 531–78), that must have prompted the Greek philosophers to seek refuge in his court after Justinian’s 529 edict prohibited them from teaching.

Is Western Christianity genuinely different enough from our cultures to delay God’s judgment on our societies?

Accordingly, Dr. Williams, the opponent of Mr. Booth, inquires, ‘Are not the same reasons, which are brought for infant baptism, in like manner, applicable to infant communion? And will not the objections against the latter, admit of the same answer, as those against the former?’208 The reasons stated in both parts of this discourse, lead us to the conclusion, that the immersion of a professing believer, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is the only Christian baptism. ‘He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned’.209 To believe in Christ is necessary to salvation; and to be baptized is the instituted method of professing our belief. It is, therefore, not only an infinitely important question to all men, whether they believe in Christ; but it is also a very important question to all Christians, whether they have been baptized.

It has, however, been supposed, that the church membership of infants is supported in the following passage: ‘Suffer little children, and for bid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven’.150 In the Gospels of Mark and Luke, it follows, ‘Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein’.151 We cannot suppose, that our Lord used words, in such different senses, in the same speech, as would unavoidably mislead his hearers. In the latter passage, the kingdom of God denotes heaven, and to receive the kingdom, as a little child, is to receive it with the humility and docile disposition which characterize children. This passage explains the former. Of such, says Christ, is the kingdom of heaven. Does he mean, of such in age and size, of such in the moral temper of the heart, or of such in humility and docility of disposition? His subsequent remark determines in favor of the latter meaning. Nor is this a singular application of the phrase. On another occasion, he says ‘Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’.152 He certainly does not mean, Except ye become as little children, in age and size, but in humility; for he immediately adds, ‘Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself, as this little child,’ zampc.

Apologetics, however, does not just entail defense.It also involves offense, the positive task of constructing a case for Christianity that shows itself to be applicable to every culture, as well as being the only (and therefore the best) alternative to the world’s philosophical and theological systems of thought.In other words, apologetics can be used to show that Christianity is true and that all non-Christian worldviews are false.The

Received much knowledge throughout the year Sermons are absorbed pulpit to ear Situations test your walk Tribulations make you talk Apply wisdom to all you hold dear - A portion of 'Applications

Jesus suffered for us. Yet we are called to participate in His suffering. Though He was uniquely the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy, there is still an application of this vocation for us. We are given both the duty and the privilege to participate in the suffering of Christ.

If a young man has capacity; culture and application may make him a scholar, a philosopher, or an orator; but a true Minister must have certain principles, motives, feelings, and aims, which no industry or endeavours of men can either acquire or communicate. They must be given from above, or they cannot be received.

being renewed or restored. I have met many Christians who love Jesus with all their hearts, but they say they have grown bored with worship, they just don’t feel the same sense of the presence of God they once did. Perhaps the problem is that God has called them to something new and yet they cling to something old. He is an infinite God and there are infinite ways to worship Him. We try reading books, or listening to CD’s of other people’s experience with God and try to duplicate that in our own lives. Yet, God may be trying to do something different in your own life. He may be trying to do something that is special for you and you alone. Maybe He is trying to make a Word that you, only you and you alone will hear within your own heart. God’s Word is only limited by the amount of your heart that you are willing to share with Him. We also learn that His compassions do not fail. The word fail has two possible roots, which could both be applicable to this verse. The first root word is kala’, which carries the idea of

Male HR reps weigh the female applicants’ beauty as they would in a romantic setting

Paul clearly sets forth the foundations of the Christian faith. All people are sinful; Christ died to forgive sin; we are made right with God through faith; this begins a new life with a new relationship with God. Like a sports team that constantly reviews the basics, we will be greatly helped in our faith by keeping close to these foundations. If we study Romans carefully, we will never be at a loss to know what to believe.

Paul gives clear, practical guidelines for the believers in Rome. The Christian life is not abstract theology unconnected with life, but it has practical implications that will affect how we choose to behave each day. It is not enough merely to know the gospel; we must let it transform our lives and let God impact every aspect of our lives.

We should also point out the significance of the fact that Jesus' ministry differed so markedly in character from that expected of the Coming One by the Baptist. Why should Jesus so fully ignore the prophetic expectation of one so obviously inspired (cf. Mark 11.30) ? Why did Jesus not see his ministry in terms of judgment? How came he to be so selective in his use of OT prophecy? The most obvious answer is that he had found God in his own experience to be a God of grace more than of judgment. The power which he experienced working through his ministry was a power to heal not to destroy. The message given him to proclaim was the message of God's favour not of God's vengeance. His own experience of God, of divine power and inspiration, made clear to him what parts of OT prophecy were applicable to and descriptive of his ministry, and what were not.

MIRACULOUS!” . . . “Revolutionary!” . . . “Greatest ever!” We are inundated by a flood of extravagant claims as we channel surf the television or flip magazine pages. The messages leap out at us. The products assure that they are new, improved, fantastic, and capable of changing our lives. For only a few dollars, we can have “cleaner clothes,” “whiter teeth,” “glamorous hair,” and “tastier food.” Automobiles, perfume, diet drinks, and mouthwash are guaranteed to bring happiness, friends, and the good life. And just before an election, no one can match the politicians’ promises. But talk is cheap, and too often we soon realize that the boasts were hollow, quite far from the truth. “Jesus is the answer!” . . . “Believe in God!” . . . “Follow me to church!” Christians also make great claims but are often guilty of belying them with their actions. Professing to trust God and to be his people, they cling tightly to the world and its values. Possessing all the right answers, they contradict the gospel with their lives. With energetic style and crisp, well-chosen words, James confronts this conflict head-on. It is not enough to talk the Christian faith, he says; we must live it. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?” (2:14). The proof of the reality of our faith is a changed life. Genuine faith will inevitably produce good deeds. This is the central theme of James’ letter, around which he supplies practical advice on living the Christian life. James begins his letter by outlining some general characteristics of the Christian life (1:1–27). Next, he exhorts Christians to act justly in society (2:1–13). He follows this practical advice with a theological discourse on the relationship between faith and action (2:14–26). Then James shows the importance of controlling one’s speech (3:1–12). In 3:13–18, James distinguishes two kinds of wisdom—earthly and heavenly. Then he encourages his readers to turn from evil desires and obey God (4:1–12). James reproves those who trust in their own plans and possessions (4:13—5:6). Finally, he exhorts his readers to be patient with each other (5:7–11), to be straightforward in their promises (5:12), to pray for each other (5:13–18), and to help each other remain faithful to God (5:19, 20). This letter could be considered a how-to book on Christian living. Confrontation, challenges, and a call to commitment await you in its pages. Read James and become a doer of the Word (1:22–25).

Alfred Krupp sponsored an essay prize on the application of social Darwinism to state policy, winning entries advocating stern policies to preserve the Volk, such as sending Jews and other ‘degenerate’ types to the front as cannon-fodder. It included a new element of German neo-paganism. Thus Paul de Lagarde rejected Christianity, which had been corruptly invented by the Jew, St Paul, and wished it replaced by a specifically German Volk religion, which would conduct a crusade to drive the Jews, with their international materialist conspiracy, from the sacred German soil:

Even the most sophisticated philosopher has no defense against the most uneducated and untrained Christian whose plain assertion of the gospel is empowered by the Holy Spirit. Although it is far better to be properly equipped, not by worldly professionalism but by a sound understanding and application of the faith, our overall success and progress is guaranteed by the divine promise.

Christians commit crimes with their hands, the Jews use their reason.’ A typical Jewish big-time criminal was Jacob ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik (1887-1956), who was Al Capone’s bookkeeper and treasurer. Another was Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928), the pioneer of big business crime, who is portrayed as ‘The Brain’ in Damon Runyon’s stories, and by Scott Fitzgerald as Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby. Then there was Meyer Lansky, who created and lost a gambling empire and had his application for Israeli citizenship turned down in 1971.