Two brothers—one a doctor and one a pastor—addressed the prevalence of anxiety in our culture. They wrote, “A recent survey of primary care physicians in the United States revealed that at least one-third of office visits were prompted by some form of anxiety.”
Anxiety can negatively impact our relationships, our ability to think creatively, our physical health, and even our relationship with God. Thankfully, one of the titles given to Jesus is The Prince of Peace.
Join us for this freeing series called X-ing Out Anxiety, where we will be learning what God’s Word says about getting free from the anxiety that is robbing us of life, and replacing that anxiety with His peace. Please join me either in-person or online at Calvary Assembly of God.
If you have missed any of the messages in this series, check them out here:
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Some of my regular readers who check out my book reviews might be saying, “A comic book? Craig read and reviewed a comic book?” That’s because I’ve stated many times that with all of the wonderful books there are to read, I had to make a choice to be very discriminating in my reading. As a result, I almost exclusively read non-fiction books.
But Simon Amadeus Pillario has done something so wonderful with my all-time favorite Book—the Bible—by graphically illustrating the people, places, expressions, and activities of the biblical storyline. The Word-For-Word Bible Comic I read was The Book of Jonah.
When I was a parent with young children, I would tell them the story of Jonah in a very dramatic way, by giving voices to the characters and adding my own sound effects to the events. This is how Simon Pillario has helped all of us. He’s taking the amazing stories of Scripture, and helping us read and tell these accounts in memorable ways. I can envision these comic books engaging people into reading the Bible like nothing else has before.
Part of the title of this series of comic books is “word-for-word.” That is precisely what this comic book does. It contains every word of the story from the Bible, but Simon does it in such a clever way, that some of the descriptive text that is captured in a drawing is so seamlessly integrated into the page design that it never becomes distracting. Then at the back of the comic book you will find some additional historical information that went into the creative process of illustrating these books.
There are several books of the Bible already completed in word-for-word comic books, which you can check out here. Parents and youth pastors will especially want to check these out as a compelling way to draw young people into reading the Bible for themselves.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
As we wrap up our series looking at our foundational belief statements, I want to combine the last four statements together, not only because they all cover the same theme of end-times events, but also because these statements should give every Christian hope!
“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.” —G.K. Chesterton
“One of the great enemies of hope is forgetting God’s promises.” —John Piper
“Hope is not wishful thinking; it’s well-founded believing!” —Craig T. Owens
Christians have a fantastic, unshakable, blessed hope on which we can stand not only secure but joyful!
Foundational truth #13: “The resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in Christ and their translation together with those who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord is the imminent and blessed hope of the church.”
This blessed hope in the future helps us live with joy today! Knowing that death has been defeated and Jesus will come back to take us home with Him should fuel us to say “no” to the temporary pleasures of sin, and live such godly lives that it turns others’ eyes to Jesus (Titus 2:11-14; 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
Foundational truth #14: “The second coming of Christ includes the rapture of the saints, which is our blessed hope, followed by the visible return of Christ with His saints to reign on earth for one thousand years.”
Sometimes you will hear Christians talk about the “rapture” of the Church. Although this word itself isn’t in the Bible, the Greek word harpazo in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 means “catching up.” It also means “to eagerly claim for one’s self,” which reminds me that Jesus is thrilled to bring His Bride home to be with Him forever! After the Church has been caught up to Heaven, a period of tribulation will plague the earth, followed by Christ’s Second Coming and His millennial reign (Zechariah 14:4-5; Revelation 19:11-15; 20:1-10).
Foundational truth #15: “There will be a final judgment in which the wicked dead will be raised and judged according to their works. Whosoever is not found written in the Book of Life, together with the devil and his angels, the beast and the false prophet, will be consigned to the everlasting punishment in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Christians have no fear of the second (or final) death because our names are written in the Book of Life (Luke 12:4-6; Revelation 20:11-15). Not only is there judgment for the wicked, but there will be rewards for the righteous.
Foundational truth #16: “In keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). Revelation 21-22 give us a small glimpse of our eternal home.
In light of these truths, how should Christians live while still on earth? I think there are three ways we should live:
With this blessed hope of the Second Coming of Jesus and our security in knowing we will remain with Him forever, let’s tell everyone we can how they too can know what it is to live with this hope in their heart.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
In my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter I take two chapters to talk about how confident leaders need to add humility to their confidence, and how humble leaders need to add confidence to their humility.
For me, I created and became a character named Plungerman to help me learn some humility.
At a recent Q&A and book signing event I was asked about the origins of Plungerman. Take a listen to my explanation of how Plungerman came to be, and then stay tuned to hear the epic adventure of Plungerman himself!
Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter is available in print or ebook, and in audiobook through either Audible or Apple.
Leaders need to give their teammates permission to try some things, to take some chances.
If they are just standing still, doing nothing, that means there is nothing for you to coach. Let them take some chances and see what happens! You never know when their big swing is going to result in something amazing!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
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Always Follow The Example Of Jesus
The heathen moralists, when they wished to teach virtue, could not point to the example of their gods, for, according to their mythologists, the gods were a compound of every imaginable and, I had almost said, unimaginable vice! Many of the classic deities surpassed the worst of men in their crimes—they were as much greater in iniquity as they were supposed to be superior in power. It is an ill day for a people when their gods are worse than themselves! The blessed purity of our holy faith is conspicuous, not only in its precepts, but in the character of the God whom it reveals. There is no excellence that we can propose, but we can see it brightly shining in the Lord our God! There is no line of conduct in which a believer should excel, but we can point to Christ Jesus our Lord and Master as the pattern of it! In the highest places of the Christian faith, you have the highest virtue, and to God our Father and the Lord Jesus be the highest praise.
From Forgiveness Made Easy
If you’ve ever studied ancient mythologies, the gods and goddesses of those stories did not live a life worthy of emulation! But Jesus is an entirely different story. Even people who don’t want to acknowledge the deity of Jesus still find His lifestyle worthy of following.
So not only did Jesus say, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you,” but He lived it out. “When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly,” and said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (See Luke 6:28; 1 Peter 2:21-23; Luke 23:34).
Don’t say, “That person really injured me. It was unfair! I cannot forgive them.” Instead, follow the example of Jesus, the only one who ever lived an absolutely perfect life and yet He was still shamefully mistreated. Peter reminds us that by forgiving His tormenters, Jesus was entrusting Himself to the Perfect Judge—He trusted God to take care of it.
It may seem impossible, but the same Holy Spirit that empowered Jesus to do these things is living in you and He will empower you too. Always, always, always follow the example of Jesus.
Star Struck by Dr. David Bradstreet is an insightful book for astronomical issues, but I found it lacking in the way he missed multiple opportunities to use the mind-boggling discoveries in astronomy to point to a majestic Creator. Check out my full book review by clicking here.
“Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.” —Tycho Brahe, a sixteenth-century astronomer
“Almost all ancient civilizations believed that the universe had existed forever. Throughout the ancient world there was just one civilization that didn’t subscribe to this cyclical vision of eternity. Jewish Scripture, with the story of the Creation, stated clearly that the world had a beginning.” —Martin Gorst, historian
“Science is great as science, but it makes a lousy religion.” —Guy Consolmagno
“The atoms that so liberally and congenially flock together to form living things on Earth are exactly the same atoms that decline to do it elsewhere.” —Bill Bryson
“Eratosthenes of Alexandria (276–194 BC) “did the math, concluding that the earth was 24,662 miles around. His results were shockingly accurate: within 1 percent of our current estimate of 24,859 miles.” —Dr. David Bradstreet
“The sun is so powerful that we sometimes must shield ourselves from its heat, even after that heat has taken an eight-minute journey to earth, losing a third to half of its radiant energy to the protective atmosphere of our clouds. ‘Nothing is deprived of its warmth,’ says the psalmist (Psalm 19:6).” —Dr. David Bradstreet
“I wanted to become a theologian. For a long time I was restless. Now, however, behold how through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy.” —Johannes Kepler
“Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If we study science without Scripture, we risk falling into the ditch of atheistic evolutionism; on the other hand, the study of Scripture separated from God’s laws in nature risks ideologies that misinterpret God and distort His character.” —Timothy Jennings
“Holy Scripture and nature are both emanations from the divine Word.” —Galileo
“God cannot be reduced to the role of a scientific hypothesis.” —Father Georges Lemaître
Interesting astronomical tidbits:
Unlike everyone else in the neighborhood, Venus rotates backwards.
Jupiter rotates on its axis in slightly less than ten hours, faster than on any other planet.
Saturn is twice as far away from the sun, lowering its temperature and stretching out its orbital period to nearly thirty Earth years.
Neptune is so far away that it takes 164 years to orbit the Sun.
Uranus’ North Pole is tipped a whopping 98 degrees to its orbital plane.
Every day our powerful atmospheric shield hijacks some 100 tons of small rocks and other pieces of space stuff heading our way, breaking up and incinerating everything before it can hit us.
Our own Milky Way galaxy is home to more than 200 billion stars. There are more than 200 billion additional galaxies in the cosmos. These galaxies serve as gigantic star factories, each of which has its own 100 to 300 billion stars. Do the math and the numbers are mind-boggling: our Sun is merely one among some 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.
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Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy (Proverbs 27:6 NLT).
Proverbs 27 may have more wisdom about our friends than any other chapter in this book. But sprinkled throughout the entire book of Proverbs is outstanding wisdom about our closest relationships. Allow me to share just a few observations with you.
Friends love me through my worst moments (17:17) because they have committed to stick closer than a brother to me (18:24).
I must be careful not to make friends with a hot-tempered person (22:24), and to be cautious of people who want to be friends with me only for what I can give them (19:4).
My true friends will wound me in love to help me become the best that God intended me to be (27:5-6, 9, 17), so I must never forsake these friends (27:10).
False friends will gossip to me and about me, but my true friends will guard my secrets and guard my reputation (16:28; 17:9).
In order to have true friends, I first have to be a true friend.
David was the gold standard for every king of Israel who followed him. Numerous times throughout the history of Israel, we will see a note that a certain king either followed God like David, or turned from God unlike David. Yet there exists a wart on David’s portrait: an adulterous affair with the wife of a man in his inner circle, and then subsequent lies and a murder to cover up the affair. “The thing David had done displeased the Lord” (see 2 Samuel 11).
But I’d like to turn your attention to when this affair occurred: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war…David remained in Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1). He was without his usual comrades. The men who knew David best, who could probably sense if something was amiss, weren’t around to warn him. When David tried to find out the identity of the bathing beauty on the roof next door to his palace, an unnamed attendant tried to remind him, “Isn’t that Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah?” but David dismissed him.
Elijah was arguably the most forceful and fearless prophet in Israel’s history. Not only did he stand up to the evil kings of Israel, but he spoke out against the kings of surrounding nations, too. In answer to Elijah’s prayer, God brought a drought on the land, and again in answer to Elijah’s prayer, God sent rain. Elijah challenged the 450 prophets of the god Baal and the 400 prophets of the goddess Asherah to a duel to the death, which ended up in a decisive victory for Yahweh. Yet, shortly after this massive victory, Elijah was depressed to the point that he wanted to die.
What led to Elijah’s depression? Something very similar to David’s slide into adultery: He was alone. Elijah ran away from Queen Jezebel’s death threat, left his servant behind, and proceeded all by himself into the desert. It was when he was without a comrade that he prayed to God, “I’ve had enough. Take my life” (see 2 Kings 17–19).
And what about Peter? He boldly claimed his loyalty to Jesus, even to the point of wielding a sword at the guards who came to arrest his Master. But when Peter was alone, after the other disciples fled, he denied three times that he knew Jesus (Matthew 26:33, 51, 69–75).
God designed us to be in relationship with others. His statement to Adam in some of the earliest words of the Bible—“It is not good for you to be alone”—are words for us still today. —from the chapter “Going Farther”
We need true, God-fearing friends close to us. Ask God to bring those friends around you, and ask the Holy Spirit to make you into that kind of friend for those He does bring around you.
Willie Mays is arguably the best all-around player in baseball history. There’s only a few that surpass him in individual statistics like home runs, stolen bases, and fielding prowess, but combining all of his stats puts the Say Hey Kid into a rarefied category!
Willie overcame such huge obstacles and racism, took time away from baseball to serve his country during the Korean War and still racked up mind-boggling statistics, and exhibited a loyalty to both teammates and opposing players that make hardly anyone a comparable peer. He played the game competitively, seldom took a day off, always had time for the fans (especially the kids), and has remained an integral part of his beloved San Francisco Giants for more years in retirement than he even did as a player.
He accomplished all of this with class and professionalism.
John Shey compiled twenty-four life lessons from Willie Mays’ life, to match his iconic jersey number. Each chapter tells the story of his life before, during, and after baseball while elaborating on that particular leadership lesson. This book is extremely well written.
Both baseball fans and students of leadership will find many rich lessons in 24, all presented in a very enjoyable format.
Two brothers—one a doctor and one a pastor—addressed the prevalence of anxiety in our culture. They wrote, “A recent survey of primary care physicians in the United States revealed that at least one-third of office visits were prompted by some form of anxiety.” 
Craig T. Owens 