Thursdays With Oswald—Christ Exhibited In Me

September 20, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

Christ Exhibited In Me 

     The inspiration of God does not patch up my natural virtues; He re-makes the whole of my being until we find that every virtue we possess is His alone. God does not come in and patch up our good works, He puts in the Spirit that was characteristic of Jesus; it is His patience, His love, and His tenderness and gentleness that are exhibited through us. … When God alters a man’s heart and plants His Spirit within, his actions have the inspiration of God behind them; if they have not, they may have the inspiration of satan. 

From Biblical Psychology

This passage reminds me of a story told about Francis of Assisi. While he was hoeing his garden, someone asked him, “What would you do if you knew you would die at the end of the day today?” Francis thoughtfully replied, “I’d finish hoeing this garden.”

Francis’ view should be ours as well: Every thought, every word, every action is directed by the Spirit of Christ in me. What I am doing now, I’m doing because the Holy Spirit inspired me to do it.

It’s encouraging to know that Christ can be exhibited in everything I think, say, and do. But it’s also very sobering to realize that I need to be constantly tuned in to the influence of the Holy Spirit.

I never want to be out-of-step with the Holy Spirit, but I want all my thoughts, words, and actions to be Christ exhibited in me.

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A Checklist For Influencers

September 19, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

As the apostle Paul is wrapping up his letter to his friends in the Church at Philippi, he encourages them to be people others want to be around. After all…

The #1 Rule of Influence: You can only influence people who are close to you.

The #2 Rule of Influence: People won’t get close to you unless you are approachable.

So here’s a quick checklist from Paul to Christians who want to be influencers from Philippians 4:4-9:

  • Rejoice in God. Always.
  • Be gentlemen and gentlewomen. Manners matter.
  • Understand God is always with you.
  • Don’t be anxious or fretful.
  • Pray about everything.
  • Be a thank-full person.
  • Be discerning of what goes in your eyes and ears.
  • Continue to learn and practice godly, biblical principles.

A short list, but a lifetime of growth opportunities.

The more you exhibit these qualities, the more approachable you will be. And the more approachable you are, the more you can influence people to learn about the life-changing power of a personal relationship with Jesus.

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14 Quotes From “Billy Graham In Quotes”

August 28, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

There are just way too many great quotes from Billy Graham In Quotes to share them all here, since the whole book is basically the best from all of Rev. Graham’s books and sermons. You can read my full review of this wonderful book by clicking here.

Normally I share some of my favorite quotes from the books I have reviewed, but that’s next to impossible for this book. So let me just say here are 14 quotes that seemed to stand out a little more to me this afternoon:

“America is said to have the highest per capita boredom of any spot on earth! We know that because we have the greatest variety and greatest number of artificial amusements of any country. People have become so empty that they can’t even entertain themselves.”

“The great flaw in the American economic system has finally been revealed: an unrealistic faith in the power of prosperity rather than in the ultimate power and benevolence of God.”

“What makes us Christians shrug our shoulders when we ought to be flexing our muscles? What makes us apathetic in a day when there are loads to lift, a world to be won, and captives to be set free? Why are so many bored, when the times demand action? Christ told us that in the last days there would be an insipid attitude toward life.”

“Our generation has become well versed in Christian terminology but is remiss in the actual practice of Christ’s principles and teachings. Hence, our greatest need today is not more Christianity but more true Christians.” 

“The very ones whose social pressure cause you to compromise will despise you for it. They probably respect your convictions, and many of them wish they had the moral stamina to stand alone. May the Lord give you added courage to be a witness for Him, even in a hard place.”

“When the Christian or the church becomes popular with the unbelieving world, something is seriously wrong. Because Christ runs counter to evil and because we are Christ-owned, we must also stand against evil.”

“Talk about God can become dreary and lackluster if God isn’t in you. Church can become a drab thing and the Bible an irksome Book if the Holy Spirit does not illuminate your soul with His indwelling presence.”

“The Gospel shows people their wounds and bestows on them love. It shows them their bondage and supplies the hammer to knock away their chains. It shows them their nakedness and provides them the garments of purity. It shows them their poverty and pours into their lives the wealth of Heaven. It shows them their sins and points them to the Savior.” 

“Some people have said that man has improved . . . [and] that if Christ came back today, He would not be crucified but would be given a glorious reception. Christ does come to us every day in the form of Bibles that we do not read, in the form of churches that we do not attend, in the form of human need that we pass by. I am convinced that if Christ came back today, He would be crucified more quickly than He was two thousand years ago. Sin never improves. Human nature has not changed.”

“It has always been a mark of decaying civilizations to become obsessed with sex. When people lose their way, their purpose, their will, and their goals, as well as their faith . . . they go ‘a whoring.’ It is a form of diversion that requires no thought, no character, and no restraint.”

“God wants to use you right where you are. Every day you probably come in contact with people who will never enter a church, or talk with a pastor, or open a Bible—and God wants to use you to point them to Christ. You may be the ‘bridge’ God would use to bring them to Himself.”

“There is not one verse of Scripture that indicates you can be a Christian and live any kind of a life you want to. When Christ enters into the human heart, He expects to be Lord and Master. He commands complete surrender.”

“The Christian should stand out like a sparkling diamond against a rough background. He should be more wholesome than anyone else. He should be poised, cultured, courteous, gracious, but firm in the things that he does and does not do. He should laugh and be radiant, but he should refuse to allow the world to pull him down to its level.”

“Our world needs to be touched by Christians who are Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, and Spirit-empowered.” 

This is an amazing book… go get it!

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Counterculture

August 21, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

[koun-ter-kuhl-cher] noun the lifestyle of those people who reject or oppose the dominant values and behavior of society.

In Ephesians 4:17 Paul tells his audience “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do.” Okay, but his audience was made up of, um, Gentiles! Paul was not telling them to change their heredity, but to change their mindset.

He was asking them to live counterculture. 

If the Apostle Paul was writing to us in America today, no doubt he would tell us: you must no longer live as the Americans do.

Here is the Christian Counterculture:

  • Speak only what’s true
  • Deal with your anger quickly and productively
  • Have a strong work ethic
  • Only speak wholesome words
  • Please the Holy Spirit in all you do
  • Get rid of unbecoming behaviors
  • Be kind to everyone
  • Be compassionate toward everyone
  • Be forgiving of everyone
  • Imitate Christ
  • Remain sexually pure
  • Don’t be greedy
  • Don’t use obscenities
  • Be perpetually thankful

(You can find all of these in Ephesians 4:24-5:4.)

That’s a lot to work on! But as a Christian I want to exhibit a lifestyle that rejects the dominant values and behavior of American society.

With God’s help, I want to live counterculture.

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17 Quotes From “What Matters Most”

August 14, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

What Matters Most is sure to be a thought-provoking, conversation-starting, paradigm-challenging book. You can read my full review of Leonard Sweet’s book by clicking here. To help whet your appetite for this book (that you’re going to read very soon, right?), here are 17 quotes that especially caught my attention…

“To save the world we don’t need the courage of our convictions. We need the courage of our relationships… Especially the courage of our relationship with the Creator, the creation, and our fellow creatures. Our problem in reaching the world is that we’ve made rules more important than relationships.”

“Western Christianity is largely belief based and church focused. It is concerned with landing on the right theology and doctrine and making sure everyone else toes the line. The Jesus trimtab, in contrast, is relationship based and world focused. It is concerned not so much with what you believe as with Whom you are following.” 

“Relationship is one of the things that distinguishes Judaism and its radical Christian revision from other religions: God calls us into a relationship. Christianity is much more than a wisdom tradition or a moral system or a path leading to higher states of existence.”

“We don’t follow Jesus because we understand Him or because we know the truth about Him. We follow Jesus because He is the Truth, and He leads us into truth through our relationship with Him. …The Jesus call to discipleship is an invitation to enter a relationship with the person doing the teaching, not simply an intellectual encounter with the principles He taught.”

“The postmodern quest has been misunderstood as an abandonment of the quest for truth. It is far from an abandonment, but is rather a rerouting of the quest for truth along more relational and less rational paths.”

“If we shift our focus away from truth as right teaching and correct doctrine, and instead center our lives on truth as a Person and faith as a relationship with that Person, what does this do to evangelism? Evangelism shifts from an attempt to indoctrinate a skeptic into a new belief system and makes the gospel proclamation a process of inviting others into a relationship with God. Evangelism is as much invitation as it is proclamation. It is inviting others into a relationship with God so that the Holy Spirit can make Christ come alive in them and live in them and they can live in God’s fullness and providence. Evangelism is not leading people into right beliefs about Jesus. It is introducing people to a relationship with Jesus the Christ.” 

“Obedience, in the biblical sense, is not ‘doing what you are told.‘Obedience is living relationally, even ‘indivisibly,’ with the Holy One so that we honor, uphold, receive, and follow all that God is and all that God is calling us to become.”

“It’s time to end the theological error of talking about how to make the Scriptures ‘come alive.’ The Word of God is alive. It’s we who must ‘come alive’ to the Scriptures.”

“I can either be right, or I can be in a relationship with my neighbor.”

“The Holy Spirit is not a gift to individuals. The Holy Spirit is a gift to the body of Christ.”

“Relationship, not numbers, show if growth is biblical, healthy, and truly fruitful. Perhaps it’s times to declare a moratorium on statistics in the church. What if the only thing we reported was the answer to this question: ‘Is spiritual fruit in evidence in your church? Give me the stories, not more statistics.’ My dream for the church? God’s people telling more God stories than golf stories. An authentic Great Awakening is when people can’t stop talking about what God is doing.”

“James Hillman defines deepening growth as ‘work in the dirt.’ Plants can’t grow heavenward without first growing downward. Colorful blossoms are the byproduct of bland, down-and-dirty roots. Relationships that blossom are knee-bending, hands-dirtying digs into the bedrock issues. …If our relationships are to bear fruit, they first must become rooted in the soil of the Spirit. …If you’re concerned about your dignity, think about this: Where’s the dignity in being hung naked on a tree? Where’s the dignity in kneeling down to wash the dirtiest parts of someone’s body? Where’s the dignity in being born in a manger?”

“Prayer doesn’t plunge us deeper into ourselves, but deeper into others. The early church looked at prayer as a conversation with God that brings us into greater intimacy with God and others. Prayer is not what you do to get God’s attention. Prayer is what you do to bring yourself to attend to God and to pay attention to others.”

“For Jesus it was not ‘Poor people and other outcasts, find yourself a church’; it was ‘Church people, find yourself the poor and the outcasts.’” 

“Sadly, the church is too busy connecting people with the memory of Jesus, the Jesus Who ‘once was’ or the promise of a returning Christ Who ‘is to come.’ Meanwhile, the church is neglecting the Jesus Who ‘is right now,’ the Jesus Who lives all around us in the lives of the poor, the sick, the disabled, the persecuted, and the dying.”

“Being a Christian is more about relationship with God than beliefs about God; more about the presence of God than the proofs of God; more about intimacy with truth than the tenets of truth; more about knowing God’s activities than knowing God’s attributes. It is time to move from a religion that seeks to comprehend God to a relationship that seeks to encounter and be a home for God.”

“God does not come to us offering rules; God comes offering relationship. Truth is not found in the solving of difficult theological riddles. Truth is found as we get lost in the mystery of faith. You can maintain your bearings while getting lost… if Jesus is leading the way.”

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What Matters Most (book review)

August 13, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

The Old Testament prophet thundered out, “Thus saith the Lord!” and called the people back into a right relationship with God. The prophet’s words were not always well-received or well-liked, but they were always proved correct by God Himself. In many ways I felt like I was hearing a prophet’s voice in Leonard Sweet’s thundering words in What Matters Most, words calling us back into a right relationship with God.

The subtitle of the book is dead-on: How we got the point but missed the Person. Wow, how true that is! Christians and the Church today have so focused on getting the point of Christianity right, that we’ve missed the central point of CHRISTianity: Jesus Christ!

Leonard Sweet reminds us that we weren’t created to follow the rules of religion in isolated, solitary lives, but we were created to be in an intimate relationship with the Creator and with His creation. Sweet writes:

“What makes us human is the same thing that makes us created in the image of God. We are not isolated entities, self-contained, existing apart from God or from one another or even from God’s creation. We are made for “community” and “communion” and “ecology” …. We are judged by the world not on the basis of how “right” we’ve gotten what we believe but on how well we’re living it—on how we love God and people.”

So in What Matters Most Leonard Sweet focuses on those living relationships that should be the hallmark of Christians. Things like our relationship with…

  • our faith
  • our Creator
  • other people of faith
  • other people outside the faith
  • creation
  • arts
  • the unseen spiritual world

As I wrote earlier, often the prophet’s message was not received well initially. This is how you may feel when you first read What Matters Most. But if you will prayerfully read through this book, I think you will find (as I did) how these words resonate with the “Thus saith the Lord” tenor of Scripture and cause you to reevaluate your relationship with God and others.

I am a Waterbrook book reviewer. Check out some of the quotes I shared from this book by clicking here.

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8 Quotes From “Secret Power”

August 2, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

D.L. Moody’s book Secret Power is addressed to both individual Christians and church leaders (you can read my full book review by clicking here).

Here are eight quotes for Christians to consider.

“Joy is love exulting; peace is love in repose; long suffering is love on trial; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield; meekness is love at school; and temperance is love in training.”

“Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us.”

“The reason why the Church cannot overcome the enemy is, because she doesn’t know how to use the sword of the Spirit. People will get up and try to fight the devil with their experiences, but he doesn’t care for that, he will overcome them every time. People are trying to fight the devil with theories and pet ideas, but he will get the victory over them likewise. What we want is to draw the sword of the Spirit. It is that which cuts deeper than anything else. …The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, and what we need specially is to be filled with the Spirit, so we shall know how to use the Word.”

“The fact is, we are leaky vessels, and we have to keep right under the fountain all the time to keep full of Christ, and so have a fresh supply.”

“The Holy Spirit tells a man of his faults in order to lead him to a better life. In John 16:8, we read: ‘He is to reprove the world of sin.’ Now, there are a class of people who don’t like this part of the Spirit’s work. Do you know why? Because He convicts them of sin; they don’t like that. What they want is some one to speak comforting words and make everything pleasant; keep everything all quiet; tell them there is peace when there is war; tell them it is light when it is dark, and tell them everything is growing better; that the world is getting on amazingly in goodness; that it is growing better all the time; that is the kind of preaching they seek for. …It is my work to preach and hold up the Cross and testify of Christ; but it is His work to convict men of sin and lead them to Christ.”

“I think there is no way so sure to win our families and our neighbors, and those about whom we are anxious, to Christ, than just to adorn the doctrine of Jesus Christ in our lives, and grow in all these graces. If we have peace and joy and love and gentleness and goodness and temperance; not only being temperate in what we drink, but in what we eat, and temperate in our language, guarded in our expressions; if we just live in our homes as the Lord would have us, an even Christian life day by day, we shall have a quiet and silent power proceeding from us, that will constrain them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But an uneven life, hot today and cold tomorrow, will only repel. Many are watching God’s people.”

“Love will rebuke evil, but will not rejoice in it. Love will be impatient of sin, but patient with the sinner. To form the habit of finding fault constantly, is very damaging to spiritual life; it is about the lowest and meanest position that a man can take.”

“Oh, the privilege, the blessed privilege, to be used of God to win a soul to Christ, and to see a man or woman being led out of bondage by some act of ours toward them. To think that God should condescend to allow us to be co-workers with Him. It is the highest honor we can wear.”

(You may also be interested in quotes from this book that are especially for pastors and church leaders, which you can read by clicking here.)

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Secret Power (book review)

August 1, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Dwight L. Moody is my kind of pastor: he said exactly what was on his mind. He wasn’t worried about political correctness, or couching his words in comfortable words. He was a modern-day prophet of his day, clearly stating, “Thus says the Lord!” Thankfully for us in our day, D.L. Moody’s books sound just like his sermons. In Secret Power, Moody calls Christians and churches back to a fuller understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Moody writes:

“How much we have dishonored Him [the Holy Spirit] in the past! How ignorant of His grace, and love and presence we have been? True, we have heard of Him and read of Him, but we have had little intelligent knowledge of His attributes, His offices and His relations to us. I fear He has not been to many professed Christians an actual existence, nor is He known to them as a personality of the Godhead.”

I am convinced that this is true. The Holy Spirit seems “spooky” or out-of-date or inapplicable in many churches. Moody explains this is the reason why our churches are not experiencing the same miracle-working power that was seen in the New Testament church.

As a result, individual Christians are lacking in power in their personal lives, too, because they are not being taught about the role of the Holy Spirit in their churches. As a result, Christians are not soul winners as were New Testament Christians.

A secondary title for this book is “The Secret Of Success In Christian Life And Work.” That success can be yours today if you will only allow God to operate in your life and church in all of His fullness. 

If you are thirsty for this sort of fuller relationship with the Holy Spirit, I encourage you to read this book! You may also want to check out some quotes I shared from this book here and here.

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10 Quotes from The Gospel Of Yes

June 13, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

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.”

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The Gospel Of Yes (book review)

May 31, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

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.

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