Christian | Craig T. Owens

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Our Brilliant Heritage (book review)

July 28, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

Sometimes talking about Oswald Chambers’ books, I almost run out of glowing adjectives! Our Brilliant Heritage is no exception: it’s an outstanding book.

Technically it’s three books in one. Our Brilliant Heritage was combined with Grow Up Into Him and As He Walked to create one volume. As you may be able to figure out from the titles of the books, the message in this combined volume is encouraging disciples to look to Jesus in order to live out our brilliant heritage as Christians.

This material all came from lectures that Oswald Chambers delivered, which gives the book a conversational feel. The lectures are short, but packed with challenges that the student needs to spend time unpacking in their own life. Although I cannot verify this, it seemed to me that in these lectures Chambers asked more questions than usual, giving this book even more of an introspective feel.

If you are serious about taking your Christian walk deeper, you can never go wrong reading Oswald Chambers, and Our Brilliant Heritage is as good of a place to start as any!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: book review, Christian, disciples, introspection, lecture, Oswald Chambers. 3 Comments »

Links & Quotes

July 27, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“The way to thwart the devil is to strengthen the very thing he is trying most to destroy—your faith.” —John Piper

“O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God and God alone! … And now you have nothing but your God to trust to, what are you going to do? To fret? To whine? O, I pray you, do not thus dishonor your Lord and Master! Now, play the man, play the man of God. Show the world that your God is worth ten thousand worlds to you. Show rich men how rich you are in your poverty when the Lord God is your helper. Show the strong man how strong you are in your weakness when underneath you are the everlasting arms. Now man, now is your time to glorify God.” —Charles Spurgeon

“When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different [from asking God to forgive us]. It is the same because, here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, ‘But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.’ Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn’t mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.” ―C.S. Lewis, in Weight Of Glory

“Forgiveness is not foolishness. Forgiveness, at its core, is choosing to see your offender with different eyes. By the way, how can we grace-recipients do anything less? Dare we ask God for grace when we refuse to give it?” —Max Lucado

“Money is the currency of human resources. So the heart that loves money is a heart that pins its hopes, and pursues its pleasures, and puts its trust in what human resources can offer. So the love of money [1 Timothy 6:10] is virtually the same as faith in money—belief (trust, confidence, assurance) that money will meet your needs and make you happy.” —John Piper

“When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He is, there shall I be also.’” ―Martin Luther

Really proud to see how my fellowship, The Assemblies of God, is helping those with mental diseases.

What emotions pop up when someone says to you, “Can we talk about this?” Seth Godin has some helpful thoughts on this.

Spurgeon: Speak Up For Your Master

July 23, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“The servants of satan shame me; they shame me! There comes at night a message to some of you who are the servants of satan—‘The master is come, and calleth for thee.’ You leave your wife and your children without a tear, you go to your master’s house, and there are foul cups passing round, and you will drink, and drink still on; never denying your master; confessing him with many an oath; saying to your comrades many things which injure your poor souls; and yet you do it so bravely. You hardly know how you get home at night, but when the morning comes, and you wake, there is the redness of the eyes, the headache, and the sickness; but the next night when your master wants you, you go again; and so you will do year after year, even though delirium tears you like a whirlwind.

“But here am I, a servant of God, and when my Master calls for me and bids me go and confess Him, I am tempted to be still, and when He tells me to speak to yonder man I would wickedly avoid the task; and whereas you confess your master and imprecate a curse upon your head, how often do some of us confess our Master as timidly as if we feared a curse, when instead thereof it is by confession that the curse is turned away! It is enough to make us Christians ashamed to think how sinners will confess their god! Hear them at night, as they reel home through the streets; they are not ashamed of their lord and master. Hear how they swear, and defy heaven! They are ashamed of nothing for their lord; and yet we, who have heaven for our reward, and such a Christ to serve, and One so good and gracious to us—look at us! What poor lovers of our Savior are we! What poor lovers of the souls of men!” —Charles Spurgeon (emphasis added)

I am convicted by this. How about you?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Charles Spurgeon, Christian, confession, Jesus Christ, Lord, satan, sermon. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 22, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“Be not satisfied, my dear friends, with being saved; desire to know how you are saved, why you are saved, the method by which you are saved. It is a rock on which you stand, I know, but think upon the questions—how you were put upon that rock, by whose love you came there, and why that love was set on you. I would to God that all the members of this church were not only in Christ Jesus, but understood Him, and knew by the assurance of the understanding whereunto they have attained.” —Charles Spurgeon

“I get the impression that some Christians think there are two kinds of history, two kinds of time. First, there is Bible time, and Bible history. Things happened in the Bible that were unique, and that we don’t expect to see happen in normal time and history, where we live, you know, today. Things like God doing extraordinary acts of deliverance, help, and support, or extraordinary empowerments for witness or service. Like Moses leading the people out of Egypt, or Joshua leading them to subdue the land of promise, or David leading an entire nation to build a glorious temple for the Lord. That was then, many Christians seem to think; this is now. But when we think this way we may be cutting ourselves off from one of the most powerful resources for visionary leadership, and that is the promise of the past … Visionary leaders understand that God has done remarkable, nearly incredible things in the past, and they reach back and recall those mighty works of God in order to encourage His people in the present. They recognize that the straight line of the covenant continues from Scripture through Church history right down to our day.” —T.M. Moore

“The psalmist does not yield. He battles unbelief with counterattack. In essence, he says, ‘In myself I feel very weak and helpless and unable to cope. My body is shot and my heart is almost dead. But whatever the reason for this despondency, I will not yield. I will trust God and not myself. He is my strength and my portion’ [Psalm 73:26]. … God has put these testimonies in the Bible so that we might use them to fight the unbelief of despondency.” —John Piper

Yesterday I posted a book review about our brains. Here is 11 things you need to know to keep your brain healthy.

“If homosexuals are bullied, we need to protect them. If they’re unjustly discriminated against, we need to help them. If they’re treated with contempt, the person hurting them should be stopped. If a family member comes out as gay and then is belittled, harmed, or vilified, then the offending family needs to be corrected. If Christians ridicule people who identify as gay or lesbian, they need to admonished. If a church doesn’t welcome seekers of all stripes (including people who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual), then it needs to change. But none of these circumstances are reasons to reinterpret Scripture to affirm homosexuality” (emphasis mine). Read more in Bad Reasons To Adopt Pro-Gay Theology.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: application, assurance, book review, brain, Charles Spurgeon, Christian, God's promise, homosexuality, John Piper, leadership, medical science, physical health, Psalm, questions, quotes, salvation, Scripture, T.M. Moore, theology. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 16, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such). The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death, the brighter the re-birth.” —C.S. Lewis

“Zeal for God feeds itself upon the thought of the eternal future. It looks with tearful eyes down to the flames of Hell and it cannot slumber: it looks up with anxious gaze to the glories of Heaven, and it cannot but bestir itself. Zeal for God thinks of death, and hears the hoofs of the white horse with the skeleton rider close behind. Zeal for God feels that all it can do is little compared with what is wanting, and that time is short compared with the work to be done, and therefore it devotes all that it has to the cause of its Lord.” —Charles Spurgeon

“For those who know the sound of a Goliath, David gives us this reminder: Focus on giants—you stumble. Focus on God—your giants tumble.” —Max Lucado

Frank Viola has some excellent thoughts for Christians to respond to the narrative of the culture.

Porn survey Fight The New Drug shares the results of a survey of pornography actresses, that shows their lifestyles are highly unhealthy compared to the general population. Read the full article here. Here is the important takeaway: If you are watching porn, you are keeping these young ladies in bondage to these destructive habits.

Jeffrey Kranz at the Overview Bible Project has a great infographic to help us all understand why publishers sometimes change an English translation of the Bible. (And while you’re there, check out all the other great resources on the Overview site.)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, C.S. Lewis, Charles Spurgeon, Christian, culture, David, disciples, drug addiction, Fight The New Drug, Frank Viola, Goliath, Heaven, Hell, infographic, Max Lucado, mercy, passion, pornography, quotes, redemption, The Overview Bible Project, translation, unhealthy, zeal. 2 Comments »

C.S. Lewis On Marriage

July 14, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

Two powerful passages on marriage from C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity—

“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined. The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”

“My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British [or American] people are not Christian and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.”

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, C.S. Lewis, Christian, church, government, Jesus Christ, marriage, Mere Christianity, sexuality. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 4, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

Kevin DeYoung has an amazing post—40 Questions For Christians Now Waving Rainbow Flags.

“The more people talk about their worldview, the more open and confident they are in making their case, the bolder they become. The bolder and more outspoken they become, the more a ‘spiral of silence’ begins to engulf those who believe otherwise. No one wants to be thought of as holding to a ‘minority position’ on anything, so, rather than speak up in the face of many who are doing so, most will remain silent. This is where the Christian community finds itself at this time, trapped in a spiral of silence before a blustering but empty secular and unbelieving worldview. So it is very important that believers in Jesus Christ make the best use of every opportunity to talk about what is good and pleasing to God.” —T.M. Moore

“Being infinite, God is inexhaustibly interesting. It is impossible, therefore, that God be boring. His continual demonstration of the most intelligent and interesting actions is volcanic. As the source of every good pleasure, He Himself pleases fully and finally. If that’s not how we experience Him, we are either dead or sleeping. It is therefore astonishing how little effort is put into knowing God. … Let us pray that our infinitely great God would open our eyes and hearts to see Him and seek to know Him more.” —John Piper

“The Lord doesn’t want our victory to be merely a one-time experience. His goal isn’t for us to emerge from a crisis, saying, ‘Thank God, I kept my faith through that.’ Yes, you may have made it through that one. But, like victorious Israel at the Red Sea, another trial will eventually come and it may be a different kind of test altogether. Living in God’s rest is a way of life. He wants us to be maintained by His peace and confidence in all our trials, knowing our High Priest is touched by the feelings of our infirmities.” —David Wilkerson

“Part of God’s fullness which He communicates is His happiness. This happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in Himself; so does also the creature’s happiness.” —Jonathan Edwards

Jeff Bonzelaar has a fascinating look at the difference between self-esteem and God-esteem.

Eric Metaxas tells an inspiring story about churches making a difference in their community.

[VIDEOS] Bobby Conway at the One Minute Apologist has two videos worth your time—

Links & Quotes

July 2, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“You have heard many men’s dying words, and these are mine: A life spent in communion with God is the pleasantest life in the world.” —Matthew Henry, to a friend when near his death

“By the serpent’s seed, we are to understand the devil and all his children, who are permitted by God to tempt and sift His children. But, blessed be God, he can reach no further than our heel.” —George Whitefield

Anyone working with youth should keep close tabs on what Dr. Tim Elmore has to say, as he is very tuned-in to the youth culture. Parents / coaches / teachers / youth pastors, check out 7 Shifts As Generation Y Becomes Generation Z.

3 reasons why heterosexual married sex is better is a good read. But I would add a fourth reason: Because this is the way God intended it to be, so it carries His blessing!

Pastor and church leaders, here is a helpful article from Richard Hammer, lead counsel for the Assemblies of God, following the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded decision on the issue of homosexual “marriage.”

Trip Lee talks about help for people battling a struggle with pornography. Trip discusses this in more depth in his outstanding book Rise. Check this out—

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Assembly of God, Christian, church, coaching, death, Dr. Tim Elmore, Generation Y, Generation Z, George Whitefield, God's blessing, homosexuality, marriage, Matthew Henry, parenting, pastors, pornography, quotes, satan, SCOTUS, sex, Supreme Court, teaching, temptation, Trip Lee, victory, video, youth. Leave a Comment »

Oswald Chambers On Prayer

July 2, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

Some great quotes from Oswald Chambers on prayer…

“Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.” —Oswald Chambers

“It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.” —Oswald Chambers

“Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God.” —Oswald Chambers

“The men with God’s ‘go’ in them have these three characteristics—a saving experience, the evidence of supernatural power at work, and the spiritual efficacy of success in prayer.” —Oswald Chambers

“God never hears prayer because a man is in earnest; He hears and answers prayer that is on the right platform—we have ‘boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus,’ and by no other way. It is not our agony and our distress, but our childlike confidence in God.” —Oswald Chambers

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, childlike, Christian, disciples, intercession, Jesus Christ, New Testament, Oswald Chambers, prayer, quotes, salvation. 1 Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 1, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“I firmly believe that the Church of God will have to confess her own sins, before there can be any great work of grace. There must be a deeper work among God’s believing people. I sometimes think it is about time to give up preaching to the ungodly, and preach to those who confess to be Christians. If we had a higher standard of life in the Church of God, there would be thousands more flocking into the Kingdom. So it was in the past; when God’s believing children turned away from their sins and their idols, the fear of God fell upon the people round about. Take up the history of Israel, and you will find that when they put away their strange gods, God visited the nation, and there came a mighty work of grace. … The judgment of God must begin with us.” —Dwight L. Moody

Dr. George Delgado has pioneered a treatment to reverse medically-induced abortions, and save babies’ lives. I am grateful for doctors who honor their Hippocratic Oath.

The Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, Rev. Charles Blake, has a strong, loving statement on the recent Supreme Court’s ruling on homosexual “marriage.” I especially like this reminder: “We understand even better now why the Bible calls Christians ‘strangers and pilgrims’ in the world (1 Peter 2:11). It is clearer now why Jesus instructed us to be in the world but ‘not of the world’ (John 17:15-16). In fact, today’s Supreme Court decision is just another legal law that makes the holiness message even stranger to our society. While the moral landscape of our society has definitely shifted, we know that the Bible is yet right and God still reigns.”

No surprise here: Fatherhood & Marriage Bring Out The Best In Men. Among other things: “The contribution of fathers to child-rearing is unique and irreplaceable.” … “Children are not the only ones who benefit; fatherhood and marriage bring out the best in men, too. Recent studies show fatherhood facilitates biological changes that are linked to reductions in risky behavior for men and reduced anger and increased empathy.”

Dr. Tim Elmore discusses why young athletes lack grit and how to build it. I highly recommend Dr. Elmore’s books Generation iY and 12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid.