5 Quotes From “Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask”

Earlier this week I reviewed Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask Them (you can read my review here).

I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from this book:

“When we fail to answer someone’s questions and objections, we become just one more excuse for them to disbelieve.” —Walter Martin

“I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate. … We are truly meant to be here.” —Paul Davies, a physicist, cosmologist, and atheist

“Consider what you’d need for a protein molecule to form by chance. First, you need the right bonds between the amino acids. Second, amino acids come in right-handed and left-handed versions, and you’ve got to get only left-handed ones. Third, the amino acids must link up in a specified sequence, like letters in a sentence. Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find that the probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s a ten with 125 zeroes after it! And that would only be one protein molecule—a minimally complex cell would need between three hundred and five hundred protein molecules. … To suggest chance against those odds is really to invoke a naturalistic miracle.” —Stephen Meyer, a Cambridge-trained philosopher of science

“Here’s the key point to remember: there never was a time when the earliest community of followers of Jesus did not regard Him as far, far more than a good teacher.” —Mark Mittelberg

“If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong? … My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? … Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” —C.S. Lewis

Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask (book review)

Apologetics is not the right way to ask forgiveness. Apologetics is the art and science of defending what you believe. One of the most accessible apologists we have is Mark Mittelberg and his very helpful book Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask.

I have taken a passage from the Bible as my guideline for defending the Christian faith. The Apostle Peter wrote:

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:15-16)

Focus on Christ … Be prepared to answer … Answer gently and respectfully. In this book, Mark Mittelberg arms Christians with information to help them do just that. He doesn’t shy away from the tough questions like the apparent disharmony between Science and the Bible, or God’s existence, or Christ’s divinity. All of these he addresses using Scripture, philosophy, science, and logic. Mittelberg frequently quotes both Christian and atheist apologists to help make his point. And he does so very winsomely.

Each chapter is designed as sort of a lecture and lab. Mittelberg teaches, and then he walks through some possible conversations and objections an atheist or non-Christian may have about Christian’s beliefs. s

It’s a helpful and enjoyable read.

10 Quotes from The Gospel Of Yes

I really loved this book by Pastor Mike Glenn. Check out my review here. These are 10 quotes I loved from this book:

“Following Jesus is much more than being careful not to do wrong. …Defining your life by what you oppose makes your life small….”

“For too many of us, Christianity has been narrowed down to sin management. Sure, we all want to go to Heaven. But under the sin-management paradigm, getting to Heaven is no longer about Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf and His invitation to follow Him in a new life. The focus on sin makes getting to Heaven a matter of keeping score. You get points for doing good things and lose points for doing bad things. Being a Christian becomes a spiritual frequent-flier program. If you work at it hard enough and accumulate enough points, you can fly for free.”

“As long as our first thought is What do I need to avoid?, the guiding influence in our lives is sin, not Christ. To be sure, we are working hard to avoid things that God disapproves of, but we are missing God in the process. The hard work of avoiding a mistake or misstep looms so large that God gets blocked from our view. If all we think about is sin, even when we’re thinking of ways to avoid it, we increase our chance of failure. This is the irony of sin-management Christianity.”

“No matter how much [your circumstances] look like ‘no,’ God does everything possible to turn then into a ‘yes.’”

“God said ‘no’ to sin because it violates His holiness, but wanting us not to break His laws is not His number-one reason for opposing sin. He hates sin because it destroys the people He loves. Jesus took into Himself the ‘no’ of our sin and died in God’s mercy so we might find our ‘yes.’” 

“Christianity is not an escape from the past but redemption of the past.”

“Why do we think that we alone committed a sin so horrible it exceeds Jesus’ ability to forgive? This kind of thinking is the ultimate heresy. What we are saying is the death of Jesus was payment enough for everyone else’s sin, but our sin is so monstrous that His death isn’t enough to cover it.”

“The gospel message isn’t ‘Do these ten things, and you can get to God.’ The gospel message is ‘The Shepherd is still looking for lost sheep.’”

“The Christian teaching is that people are extremely valuable indeed. But our value is not based on the promise of exceptional achievement or a positive feeling about ourselves. It is grounded in the reality of Who God is and what He has done for us in Christ.”

“What unifies us as believers is our shared relationship with Jesus Christ, not the protocol of a particular discipleship process.”

The Truth About Forgiveness (book review)

One of my favorite quotes about forgiveness comes from the pen of C.S. Lewis. He wrote: “We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.” How true that is! In this short, but power-packed book, The Truth About Forgiveness, John MacArthur shares how beautiful and freeing true forgiveness is.

You may know John MacArthur as a preeminent Bible teacher. If so, you will not be disappointed in the content of this amazing book. Pastor MacArthur eloquently explains the need for forgiveness, how unworthy we are of God’s forgiveness, how unthinkable it is that God forgives us anyway, and how we should now live as people who regularly ask for forgiveness.

Pastor MacArthur’s Bible teaching skills are on full display as he digs deeply into well-known scriptural stories, and places us squarely in the middle of the character’s lives. In fact, one story he so beautifully portrays through the lens of forgiveness, but I had never seen it that way before!

This is not a long treatise on forgiveness, but it is a easy-to-read guide into new thinking about forgiveness. Trust me, after reading The Truth About Forgiveness, you will never look at forgiveness the same way again.

I am a Thomas Nelson book reviewer.

What Would Jesus Read? (book review)

Many people are familiar with the phrase that goes with the acrostic WWJD: What Would Jesus Do. But I was very intrigued to see WWJR, which turns out to be an interesting book What Would Jesus Read? by Joe Amaral.

The premise behind the book is a historical setting. As the Jews were dispersed into captivity after Jerusalem fell, there was no longer a Temple to serve as the gathering place for religious worship, nor was there a central location for the storing and preservation of the scrolls which made up what we now refer to as the Old Testament of the Bible. The Jews themselves were now going to be the keepers of Scripture, and their homes would be the places of worship. So the Jewish rabbis divided up the biblical texts into daily reading portions, and distributed these among the scattering Jewish families. So each day of each week, a different portion of Scripture was read, and meditated on, and memorized so that it could be passed on to future generations.

So by following the reading plan in What Would Jesus Read you will be participating in a 2500-year-old tradition. It’s pretty cool to think of Bible reading that way!

Each day includes a portion of Old Testament scripture to read, and a brief devotional thought from Joe Amaral. It’s a great way to join your heart and thoughts to a tradition that started so long ago, and still continues today.

I am a FaithWords book reviewer.

The Gospel Of Yes (book review)

I run into so many people who know so much about what Christians are against, and very little about what Christians are for. Or others who don’t want to step into a relationship with Jesus because they mistakenly believe that their life will then be ruled by a bunch of don’t-do-that rules.

Sadly, many Christians help perpetuate these stereotypes. That’s why I’m so excited about The Gospel Of Yes by Pastor Mike Glenn!

Pastor Glenn reframes the whole discussion from “No” to “Yes.” He makes the case that God is for us and wants to tell us “Yes!” From our relationships with others, to the way we view our circumstances, even to the way we think about prayer and Bible reading, there is a huge difference if we see it from the “Yes” paradigm.

Here’s a video review I was asked to do for other pastors:

I would encourage you to read The Gospel Of Yes to learn how to look at our relationship with God in a completely different light. I found this book very liberating!

I am a Multnomah book reviewer.

6 Quotes from “Porn-Again Christian”

Earlier today I posted a review of Porn-Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on Pornography and Masturbation. Here are some of the quotes from this book that really caught my eye

“Simply, according to God, marriage and sex are related, connected, and exclusive.”

“The cold hard truth is that most guys’ struggles are only known by their fellow Christian buddies and unless Christian dudes man up and stop arguing about stupid secondary theological issues and spend their energies holding one another accountable to get dominion over their underwear, then Christian friendship is nothing more than Christian fakery.”

“The act of lusting after the unclothed body of a woman is not a sin. The issue is which woman’s unclothed body you are lusting after. If she is your bride, then you are simply making the Song of Songs sing again to God’s glory and your joy. If she is not your bride, then you are simply sinning. It was God who clothed our mother Eve after her sin, and it is Eve’s daughters who undress themselves for themselves for the camera in violation of God’s desire that the female bodies he formed be seen only in their full glory by their husbands.”

“Pornography has the sad effect of objectifying people into objects with parts, thereby divorcing a person from their body and consequently diminishing their dignity.”

“The Bible is emphatically clear that God’s men should abstain from certain sins that war against their souls. First, God’s men should not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14). Second, God’s men should not covet their neighbor’s wife, even if her clothes leave little to the imagination (Exodus 20:17). Third, God’s men should not participate with prostitutes who use their bodies as a commodity to be rented for a good time or a good photo (Proverbs 23:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:15-16). Fourth, God’s men should not be polygamous, because their father Adam and Head Jesus each had one bride (Eve and the Church). Fifth, God’s men should not be fornicators who slide their hands, which God made to lift up in prayer (1 Timothy 2:8), up the shirt of their girlfriend, even if she asks (1 Corinthians 6:9-13).”

“Eve may or may not have been beautiful, but to Adam she was glorious because she was all he had ever known. Practically, he had no standard of beauty to compare his bride to—she was his only standard of beauty. In creation, we see the wise pattern that for every man his standard of beauty is not to be objectified, but rather it should simply be his wife. This means that if a man has a tall, skinny red-headed wife then that is sexy for him, and if his neighbor has a short, curvy brunette wife than that is sexy for him. Pornographic lust exists to elicit coveting and dissatisfaction that no woman can satisfy because she cannot be tall and short, endowed and waifish, black and white, young and old, like the harem laid out in pornography.”

Christian men, you MUST read this book!

Porn-Again Christian (book review)

The title of this book should let you know that it’s a PG-13 topic. And by that, I mean that Dads should be discussing these topics with their sons by the time they are 13 years old. Mark Driscoll is simply brilliant in Porn-Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on Pornography and Masturbation.

The Bible has the best ideas for not only safe sex, but for the most enjoyable sex. In fact, as Pastor Mark points out, the Bible is more explicit on the topic of married sexual relations than most pastors are!

God is the Creator. He only creates what is good. satan is a counterfeiter and a plagiarist. Anything that is good and will bring glory to God (like a marriage that is sexually satisfying), satan will pervert and distort and mar in his attempt to keep people from glorifying God and finding their fullest satisfaction in Him. This book uncovers the lies and calls biblical truth to the forefront.

Porn-Again Christian is written directly to Christian men. It is a wake-up call for these men to become real men and take the biblical lead in maintaining purity, in increasing the level of intimacy in their marriage, and in teaching their children the difference between God’s truth and the devil’s lies.

Guys, there is no excuse for you to not read this book. You can click here to get the ebook version for FREE. The book is not very long, and you should be able to read it rather quickly. Look up the Scriptures Pastor Mark shares in this book, and then be the man God created you to be: the man who will say “No!” to the lies this culture has bought into about sex and pornography, and who will say “Yes!” to the fulfilling, satisfying relationship God intended your marriage to be.

Dads, this would be a great resource for you to use with your teenage son (and perhaps even your pre-teen son, if you deem it necessary).

C’mon men, let’s do it God’s way!

P.S. To whet your appetite for this book, I have shared some quotes that really caught my attention.

Men Of The Bible (book review)

Here’s the thing I especially like about Dwight Lyman Moody: He tells it like it is. He was not a pastor that tiptoed around an issue, nor did he have long flowery sermons. He always went right to the heart of the manner in such a straightforward way. So I was delighted to find that his book Men Of The Bible was written in this characteristic style.

Men Of The Bible digs into the lives of several men we read about in Scripture. Some of them are prominent, and some are rather obscure; some were godly men, and some were not. But in every instance, Moody gets right to the key points of their lives, and then shows us how to apply them.

Since the focus of the book is the men of the Bible, this would be an excellent resource for a men’s Bible study, or a small group meeting; although I think anyone would benefit from studying this very readable book.

My Utmost For His Highest (book review)

Most people probably think that My Utmost For His Highest is the only book that Oswald Chambers wrote. Although My Utmost is a great devotional book, it should just be a launching pad to read more of his writings.

I am currently in the process of reading through everything Oswald Chamber wrote. And, let me tell you, it’s a lot to take in! This man was so prolific and so anointed, that not only is there much to read, but it has to be read slowly and prayerfully. That’s why I say that My Utmost is such a great starting place.

Each day’s devotional is only a page long. A few of the devotionals appear only in this book, while the remaining come from the thoughts in his many other sermons and writings. So I encourage you to spend a whole year soaking in the thoughts in My Utmost For His Highest, and then allow that to whet your appetite for more of his writings.

This book is definitely on my “must read” list!