I love this…
Is Jesus The Only Way?
September 18, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
“Sometimes people ask me ‘Is Jesus the only way?’ and of course the question alludes to a journey. It occurs to me that when attempting to be helpful in giving directions, some facts are more relevant than others. In this case, perhaps none more so than one: the question of destination. When asking ‘Is Jesus the only way?’ it begs at least one further question, which is ‘To what?’ or ‘To where?’
“In our society, it is not uncommon to hear the statement ‘All religions lead to God.’ Although it’s not a logical statement, I find the second part of it—the ‘lead to God’ bit—very interesting. There seems to be an awareness, however subconscious, however little thought through, that only God Himself is the appropriate destination. Where does this thought come from? …
“Don’t all religions lead to God? No, they don’t even claim to.
“I have found it helpful at times to ask, ‘What is the destination you are aiming for? What is the destination you hope would be true?’ It seems to me that in the search for truth and meaning, many of us are not primarily or only looking for logical answers, but for a response to the existential longing for true life.
“Jesus says that He has come so that we might have life and life in all its fullness—life abundantly. The Message translation puts it as ‘real and eternal life, more and better life than [you] ever dreamed of’ (John 10:10). But what I find so intriguing about this is that Jesus tells us not just that He will give us life, not just that He will change and transform our lives, not just that He will show us the way to life, but that He Himself is the life (John 14:6). In other words, He is the destination. There is one faith that does claim to lead to God: Jesus stands unique across the ages. He is not simply the means through which we might get to some other destination. He is not a means to an end. Relationship with Jesus is the end.” —Tanya Walker, in A New Kind Of Apologist
How Should Christians Handle Unfriendly Earthlings?
September 18, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
Christians are citizens of Heaven who are merely passing through Earth, so this isn’t a Christian’s final home. Because of this, it’s not unusual for Earthlings to mistreat, insult, and even persecute these “aliens and strangers.”
How are Christians supposed to respond to this?
First off, let’s make sure the persecution is for the right reason. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me” (Matthew 5:11).
Jesus also told us that this persecution has a blessing in it: we would be able to share our faith in Jesus Christ at the highest levels on Earth: “On account of Me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them” (Mark 13:9).
In 1 Peter 3:8, the apostle tells us how to live with everyone, Christian and Earthling alike:
- Harmoniously—keep The Main Thing the main thing; don’t get caught up in petty arguments
- Empathetically—put yourself in others’ shoes
- Kindly—treat everyone like a sibling that shares the same parents with you
- Compassionately—be strong enough to handle other people’s stuff
- Courteously—remember this: manners matter!
This list may be easy to live out when people are friendly to you, but what about when unfriendly Earthlings are downright mean to you? In the very next verse Peter gives us two Don’ts and one Do:
- Don’t repay evil with evil—Jesus is our example of this (see 1 Peter 2:21-23)
- Don’t insult the insulters—treat others as you want them to treat you (Luke 6:31)
- Do bless those who slander and persecute you—Jesus says we get absolutely no credit if we only treat kind people kindly (see Luke 6:32-33)
In Psalm 35 David is dealing with people who are fighting against him. They are saying mean things and trying to do even meaner things. This prayer shows both God’s part and our part…
God’s part—defend me against the evildoers … remind me of Your salvation … pursue those who are falsely pursuing me … stay close to me.
My part—listen to God’s voice of assurance … live quietly … don’t give others cause to mistreat me … pray for those who persecute me … continually turn my thoughts and praise to God.
Peter wraps up this thought with these words—Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even it you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed (1 Peter 3:13-14).
Don’t give in to mistreatment and lash out in anger. Trust God to handle things. Keep on living a good life that is focused on bringing God all the glory due His name!
If you’ve missed any messages in this series, you may find the complete list by clicking here.
Saturday In The Psalms—The Glory Due God’s Name
September 16, 2017 — Craig T. OwensGive unto the Lord the glory due His name…. (Psalm 29)
How in the world can I do that?! How can a mere mortal possibly give the All-Glorious, All-Powerful God glory that is equal to His majesty?
Verses 3-9 try to capture God’s power—
- His voice thunders in the powerful crash of ocean waves
- His voice cracks like the lightning that snaps the mighty cedar trees as though they are mere twigs
- His voice splits the earth like a volcano rips through rock
- His voice rumbles and shakes the tectonic plates of the earth like an earthquake
How do I give this God the glory due His name? How can my voice of praise even be heard above the voice of His majestic voice?
How? By simply worshiping the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
That means I come into His presence in the holiness of Christ—I remain clothed in His righteousness—then I can stand in God’s presence and join my voice with the voices of the mighty ones (v.1), with all His people (v. 11).
I can stand unafraid and unashamed in the presence of the King of the Universe and declare, “How beautiful and powerful and majestic and magnificent and loving You are!”
And He hears me.
And the glory due His name that comes from my lips causes all the creatures in His temple to exclaim, “Glory!” (v. 9)
I can give God all the glory due His majestic name by simply realizing that I am only in His presence because He wants me there, and has made the way possible for me to be there through His Son Jesus.
Jesus Doesn’t Need Salesmanship Techniques
September 14, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
“Evangelical Christians commonly offered Christ to mankind as a nostrum to cure their ills, a way out of their troubles, a quick and easy means to the achievement of personal ends. They use the right words, but their emphasis is awry. The message is so presented as to leave the hearer with the impression that he is being asked to give up much to gain more. And that is not good, however well intentioned it may be.
“What we do is precisely what a good salesman does when he presents the excellence of his product as compared with that of his closest competitor. The customer chooses the better of the two, as who would not? But the weakness of the whole salesmanship technique is apparent: the idea of selfish gain is presented in the whole transaction. …
“In those early Galilean days Christ’s followers heard His call, forsook the old life, attached themselves to Him, began to obey His teachings and joined themselves to His band of disciples. This total commitment was their confirmation of faith. Nothing less will do. And it is not different today. He calls us to leave the old life and to begin the new. There must never be any vacuum, never any place of neutrality where the world cannot identify us.” —A.W. Tozer, Man—The Dwelling Place Of God
Thursdays With Oswald—Ready For God … No Matter What
September 14, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
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.
Ready For God—No Matter What
The greatest need of the missionary is to be ready to face Jesus Christ at any and every turn…. The great battle all along is not so much against sin, as against being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ. … This attitude of being ready to face Him means more and more disentanglement from so-called religious work, and more and more intense spiritual reality in so-called secular work. The whole meaning of the Christian life from Our Lord’s standpoint is to be ready for Him. …
Jesus appears in the most illogical connections, where we least expect Him…. When we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous joyful uncertainty and expectancy—we do not know what God is going to do next; and He packs our life with surprises all the time. …
Readiness implies a right relationship to God and a knowledge of where we are at present. We are so busy telling God where we should like to go. Most of us are waiting for some great opportunity, something that is sensational, then we cry—“Here am I; send me.” … But readiness for God and for His work means that we are ready to do the tiniest thing or the great big thing, it makes no difference. …
Remember there is no such thing as prominent service and obscure service; it is all the same with God.
From So Send I You (emphasis mine)
I fear that many Christians have the idea that “missionary work” or “ministry work” is a separate calling from their “real work.” But according to both the biblical examples and these thoughts from Oswald Chambers, ALL work can be spiritual / missionary / ministry work if we are simply ready for God to use us.
What about you? Are you ready to be surprised by God? Are you ready to be His ministry whenever and wherever He wants to use you?
10 Quotes From “Live Dead Life”
September 6, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
Joy Hawthorne is a 16-year-old living with her parents in a radically Islamic Middle East country. Live Dead Life is her personal journal that she is sharing with other students in the same setting, but I find her words compelling, challenging, and encouraging for readers of all ages! Check out my full book review of Live Dead Life by clicking here.
“I step outside my door and follow Jesus where He leads. I seek to keep my feet on the path with Jesus, knowing a great adventure awaits.”
“To go through my day for Jesus, I need to spend time with Him. I can only give for Jesus what I received from Him. That is why I need time with Him daily.”
“I discovered that it’s easier to walk with Jesus all day when I think of Him as a friend I live with and not a duty I spend time with.”
“It takes a lot of practice to intentionally involve Jesus in all part of my day, and I often forget, but I keep trying. And maybe that’s what Jesus wants—not perfection in a moment but persistence over time.”
“To reflect the image of God to the world, I have to know what He looks like and sounds like, right? I can’t do that without spending time with Him, and so it’s through my abiding time that I see Jesus and know Him and hear His voice. As I spend time with Him, I get a picture of Him to reflect to others. Jesus in me naturally flows out of me. Abiding affects everything and everyone around me.”
“I didn’t pick this place, but I can decide how I am going to live here.”
“All I have to do is look around. I might not be perfect, but I can follow Jesus and be there for others. I can be their first Christian friend. I can live with them. I can share my heart and the Gospel with them. All I have to do is say, ‘Yes.’ Yes to whatever Jesus has for me and wherever He wants to take me, whether I feel ready or not.”
“As God gives me life, He doesn’t give it so I can keep it for myself. God gives it so I can give it back. This is my chance to express the love that He shows to me, back to Him. I have one life to spend, and one death to give, so what happens when I stop trying to steal the gift He has given and instead offer it back? What happens when I let go of my plan and follow His, no matter how inconvenient? Choosing to live dead points me in that direction, to constantly turn things over to Jesus.”
“Jesus is too good to keep to myself. He’s worth telling the whole world. He’s worth sharing with my unreached neighbors.”
“When I cry out to Jesus, God delights to give an answer, and the answer is Himself—His heart in us. Then when I cry out for more, the answer is again Himself! When I cry for a broken world, hurt people, evil things, a deep wound, or gaping holes in hearts, God delights to be the answer to my prayers. He is the answer. I was never meant to be the answer to a lost, broken world. I am just meant to be in the place God calls me to be, to be able to tell the lost that He hears, that He hasn’t forgotten, that He knows.”
More quotes from this amazing book are coming soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I would highly encourage all Christians to download a free copy of Joy Hawthorne’s book (the download link is in my book review).
How To Experience More Of Christ’s Joy
August 31, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
“Many people are selective about which parts of themselves they bring to Me in prayer. Some hesitate to approach Me about traits they consider shameful or embarrassing. Others are so used to living with painful feelings—loneliness, fear, guilt, shame—that it never occurs to them to ask for help in dealing with those things. Still others get so preoccupied with their struggles that they forget I’m even here. This is not My way for you, beloved.
“There are hurting parts of you that I desire to heal. Some of them have been with you so long that you consider them facets of your identity. You carry them with you wherever you go, barely aware of their impact on your life. I want to help you learn to walk in freedom. However, you are so addicted to certain painful patterns that it will take time to break free from them. Only repeatedly exposing them to My loving presence will bring you long-term healing. As you grow increasingly free, you’ll be released to experience My joy in greater and greater measure!” —Jesus (in Sarah Young’s Jesus Always)
Thursdays With Oswald—Spiritual Honor
August 31, 2017 — Craig T. OwensThis 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.
Spiritual Honor
“I am a debtor to Greeks and to Barbarians” (Romans 1:14). Do I feel this sense of indebtedness to Christ Paul felt with regard to every unsaved soul I meet, every unsaved nation? Is it a point of spiritual honor with me that I do not hoard blessings for myself? The point of spiritual honor in my life as a saint is the realization that I am a debtor to every man on the face of the earth because of the Redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.” …
Am I doing anything to enable Jesus Christ to bring His Redemption into actual manifestation in other lives? I can do it only if the Holy Spirit has wrought in me this sense of spiritual honor. When I realize what Jesus Christ has done for me, then I am a debtor to every human being until they know Him too.” …
Is it my conviction among men that every man can be presented “perfect in Christ Jesus”? Or do I allow men’s sins and wrongs so to obliterate the power of the Redemption that I sink under them?
From So Send I You
Some powerful questions for every Christian to honestly answer:
- Does my salvation mean enough to me that I am burning with passion for others to know this salvation too?
- Am I hoarding God’s blessings, or am I passing them on?
- What am I doing to make sure everyone knows about Jesus?
- Do I write some people off as “unsavable,” or do I believe Jesus can reach every single person?
- Am I living like I really believe that?
8 Quotes From “The World’s Last Night”
August 30, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
In seven essays expressly shared to get the reader to think in terms of eternity, C.S. Lewis masterfully practices his craft. Check out my full book review of The World’s Last Night by clicking here. Below is just a small sampling of a few of the outstanding quotes in this book.
“Simply to say prayers is not to pray; otherwise a team of properly trained parrots would serve as well as men.”
“Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate.”
“Scientists are mainly concerned not with believing things but with finding things out. And no one, to the best of my knowledge, uses the word believe about things he has found out. The doctor says he ‘believes’ a man was poisoned before he has examined the body; after the examination, he says the man was poisoned. No one says that he believes the multiplication table. No one who catches a thief red-handed says he believes that man was stealing. The scientist, when at work, that is, when he is a scientist, is labouring to escape from belief and unbelief into knowledge. Of course he uses hypotheses or supposals. I do not think these are beliefs.”
“Since most men, as Aristotle observed, do not like to be merely equal with all other men, we find all sorts of people building themselves into groups within which they can feel superior to the mass.”
“‘Good works’ in the plural is an expression much more familiar to modern Christendom than ‘good work.’ Good works are chiefly alms-giving or ‘helping’ in the parish. They are quite separate from one’s ‘work.’ And good works need not be good work, as anyone can see by inspecting some of the objects made to be sold at bazaars for charitable purposes. This is not according to our example. When our Lord provided a poor wedding party with an extra glass of wine all round, He was doing good works. But also good work; it was a wine really worth drinking.”
“Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”
“It would be difficult, and, to me, repellent, to suppose that Jesus never asked a genuine question, that is, a question to which He did not know the answer. That would make of His humanity something so unlike ours as scarcely to deserve the name. I find it easier to believe that when He said ‘Who touched Me?’ (Luke 7:45) He really wanted to know.”
“For what comes [after Christ’s Second Coming] is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.”
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