testimony | Craig T. Owens

April 2026
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Thursdays With Oswald—Experience Or Expression?

February 18, 2016 — 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.

Experience Or Expression?

It is not sufficient to have an experience. If all I can do is to preach and recount the experiences God has given me, it is dangerously inefficient. … Experience must be worked out into expression; the expression is a strong family likeness to Jesus, and its mark is found in the secular life, not in the sequestered life. …

A witness is not one who is entranced by Jesus, by the revelation He gives, by what He has done; but one who has received the energy Jesus Himself had, and is become a witness that pleases Him, wherever he is placed, whatever he is doing, whether he is known or unknown. …

The spiritual life can never be lived in religious meetings, it can only be lived on sordid earth, where Jesus lived, amongst the things that makes human life what it is.

From The Place Of Help

It’s not what I’ve experienced from Jesus, but how I am expressing that experience in my daily life. People don’t need me to be a storyteller of my experiences, but a living expression of the change that has taken place in me because of that experience with Christ!

All of the stories of my spiritual experiences can be undone in a single moment of un-Christlike living. But when I live a life energized by the power of Jesus in me, the story of His life-changing power is told without words.

Do I want to merely experience God’s life-changing power, or do I want to be a living expression of His life-changing power?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: example, God's power, Jesus Christ, lifestyle, Oswald Chambers, personal experience, testimony, witness. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

September 14, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

No matter how loving Christians are, and no matter how carefully we present our beliefs, people will still be offended. Check out this short video from Alan Shlemon at Stand To Reason.

“I am considering not how, but why, [God] makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you—you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another’s. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction.” —C.S. Lewis in The Problem Of Pain

“One doesn’t realize in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied.” —C.S. Lewis

Eric Metaxas asks, “What’s the difference between evolutionary theory and an octopus?” You will love his answer!

“We make a mistake as Christians if we hold the view that all non-Christian culture is worthless and should be avoided. This is simply not the case. God has given gifts for making culture to every human being, and very often those who do not know Him are capable of making artifacts, establishing institutions, or promoting conventions that actually are very useful for human flourishing. This is a measure of God’s common grace to all people. Believers must not despise such gifts, and we must not ignore or avoid them. … We do not repudiate those unbelieving aspects of culture which are good and useful. Rather, we appropriate all such forms, learning as much as we can about them and considering ways they might be put to use for the glory of God.” —T.M. Moore

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood wanted to rid society of “human weeds,” and in 1925 she wrote, “We must clear the way for a better world; we must cultivate our garden.” Read more here.

“There is no rule binding with iron force upon you, for we are not under law in Christ’s church, but under grace, and grace will prompt you to do more than law might suggest….” —Charles Spurgeon

“We wouldn’t dare rob somebody of his gold watch or bank account. Yet God states clearly that slandering someone’s name is robbery of the worst kind. And we can do it in the subtlest of ways: by pointing an accusing finger, questioning one’s character, passing on tidbits of gossip. Indeed, three of the most damning words we can speak are, ‘Have you heard?’ The mere suggestion of the question robs a person of something valuable. And it defiles our own mouth.” —David Wilkerson

Frank Turek has an interesting look at the Kim Davis situation in Kentucky.

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.

Forgive Me (book review)

July 7, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

If you see a book entitled Forgive Me, you might think that it is a book extolling the virtue of asking forgiveness. Although author David Kirkwood is asking forgiveness from his family, friends, and neighbors, this isn’t a book telling us how or why to forgive.

David Kirkwood’s apology is to those he interacts with on an everyday basis. His sin: not telling them the simple truth about how much God loves them!

Forgive Me is an excellent book for Christians to buy in bulk, and then hand out to people they care about. David will lead the reader through a logical progression of why we are here, the futility of trying to find purpose or a lasting legacy on our own, and how God’s love led to Jesus purchasing the forgiveness from our sins.

This isn’t a deep doctrinal book, nor is it a “preachy” book. It’s loving, and kind, and easy for anyone to read. Please share this book with any of your family or friends who haven’t yet experienced the joy of knowing Jesus as their Savior.

The Kirkwood family graciously provided me with a copy of this book so I could read it and review it for you.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: book review, family, friends, God's love, Jesus Christ, neighbor, salvation, testimony. 1 Comment »

Links & Quotes

June 30, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“While it’s true we need to shape up our practice of the faith, now is no time for shying away from engagement for the Gospel. Now is the favorable time for Christians to declare and defend the Christian worldview. Now is the day of salvation, and all believers must be diligent in proclaiming the Good News at every opportunity and by every means.” —T.M. Moore

“If you tell the world that Jesus is your Lord, your Savior and your Healer, a God Who can perform the impossible, they will watch to see how you react in impossible situations. Their eyes are glued to everyone who boasts of God’s goodness, power and glory. And the devil looks on, too, hoping our faith will fail.” —David Wilkerson

“There is a great God of grace Who magnifies His own infinite self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust Him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook and cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.” —John Piper

“When your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart.” ―Ann Voskamp

Spiritual leaders need to be emotionally healthy. Peter Scazzero has written a couple of books on this topic, and I believe this interview will entice you to check out his books.

Ty Cobb is hands-down my favorite Detroit Tiger (maybe even my all-time favorite baseball player). He has gotten a bad rap from shoddy reporting. A Terrible Beauty is on my Amazon wish list (hint, hint!), and here is a cool interview with the book’s author Charles Leerhsen.

Jesus encouraged His followers to be childlike in their innocence and wonder. Here’s a great post to help us do that: How Not To Be A Boring Adult.

[VIDEO] Bobby Conway gives a good explanation of an important piece of church history: The Apostles Creed—

Links & Quotes

June 17, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“People in the unbelieving world have witnessed a good bit of hypocrisy, shallowness, disingenuousness, dishonesty, and corruption among the members of the Church. Many of them have installed a spam filter on their brains which automatically blocks anyone calling himself a Christian as having anything meaningful or significant to say. The only way to remove that filter is through a credible life of goodness, sincerity, and love. … Our credible lives, by themselves, won’t lead anyone to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. For this, we must be bold to make God’s Good News known, and to make it make sense.” —T.M. Moore

“God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket brigade. If you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart’s satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell people what you’ve found. My hope as a desperate sinner hangs on this biblical truth: that God is the kind of God Who will be pleased with the one thing I have to offer—my thirst. That is why the sovereign freedom and self-sufficiency of God are so precious to me: they are the foundation of my hope that God is delighted not by the resourcefulness of bucket brigades, but by the bending down of broken sinners to drink at the fountain of grace.” —John Piper

Pornography destroys lives! Here are 5 ways porn devastates lives.

In his battle against pornography and gluttony, Jimmy Needham wrote, “Real freedom came for me when I began, by God’s grace, to see that my cravings were for more than just food or sex. All my appetites were, at root, for an all-satisfying God.” Read more in his post Our Odyssey Against Sexual Temptation.

“If America is to survive, we must elect…individuals who will seek Divine guidance in the affairs of state.” —Billy Graham

“God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted.” —Noah Webster

[VIDEO] John Maxwell shares one of my favorite anecdotes to make a good point about efficiency—

Thursdays With Oswald—Standing In A Crisis

June 11, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

This is a periodic 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.

Standing In A Crisis

If, when no one is watching us, we are building ourselves up in the Word of God, then, when a crisis comes, we shall stand; but if we are not building on the Word of God, when a crisis comes we shall go down, no matter what our wills are like. …

We may be able to give a testimony as to what God has done for us, but does the life we live evidence that we are not listening now, but living only in the memory of what we once heard? We have to keep our ears trained to detect God’s voice, to be continually renewed in the spirit of our mind. If when a crisis comes we instinctively turn to God, we know that the habit of harkening has been formed. … We have to learn to hearken to Jesus in everything, to get into the habit of finding out what He says. … The Holy Spirit will bring back to our remembrance a certain word of our Lord’s and apply it to the particular circumstance we are in, the point is—are we going to obey it?

From Our Brilliant Heritage

Standing in a crisis involves two things: (1) Reading the Word of God regularly, and (2) Obeying the Word of God every time the Holy Spirit illuminates it to our heart and mind. It’s not a matter of if a crisis will come in your life, but when. Will you be ready?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, crisis, Holy Spirit, obedience, Oswald Chambers, remember, testimony, trials, Word of God. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

June 10, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“In this version of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2-4) Jesus says, ‘When you pray say’ … and then in verse 4 He includes this petition, ‘and forgive us our sins.’ So, if you connect the beginning of the prayer with the middle, what He says is, ‘Whenever you pray say … forgive us our sins.’ I take this to mean that this should be as much a part of all our praying as ‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ Which means that Jesus assumes that we need to seek forgiveness virtually every time we pray. In other words, we are always sinners. … It doesn’t matter how obedient we have been before we pray. We always come to the Lord as sinners—all of us. And God does not turn away the prayers of sinners when they pray like this.” —John Piper

“What if I say that it is not unjust but according to law that when a woman gets into debt her husband should bear it? And with the church of God sinning, it was but right that her Husband, who had espoused her unto Himself, should become the debtor on her behalf. The Lord Jesus stood in the relationship of a married Husband unto His church, and it was not, therefore, a strange thing that He should bear her burdens.” —Charles Spurgeon

“We can have confidence in our ability, through reason, to help our unbelieving friends consider the Good News of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. We know this because God Himself is reasonable, and we believe He commends the use of reason in making Himself and His will known to men.” —T.M. Moore

“Listen to your conscience. Don’t be afraid not to join the mob—if you feel inside it’s wrong. Don’t confuse being ‘soft’ with seeing the other guy’s point of view. … Avoid self-righteously turning on a friend, but have your friendship mean enough that you would be willing to share with your friend your judgment. Don’t assign away your judgment to achieve power.” —George H.W. Bush, in a letter to his sons during the Watergate scandal

Some interesting lessons in Fast Company’s list of the 50 most well-liked CEOs in the United States.

“satan has tripped up many Christians by convincing them they’ve lost something in the Lord.” But David Wilkerson urges us to forget those things!

If you are praying for one of your loved ones to accept Jesus as their Savior, Tim Dilena has an encouraging word for you in The Amazing Now Becomes More Amazing.

[VIDEO] Conrad Mbewe shows how the so-called prosperity gospel isn’t honest with the entirety of Scripture—

12 Quotes From “Rise”

May 13, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

Trip Lee has given parents, teachers and anyone who mentors teens and 20-somethings an excellent resource in his book Rise. I read this book for myself, and now I’m reading it and discussing it with my teenage son. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are just a few of the quotes I especially appreciated in Rise.

“There are great benefits to living for Jesus in the present. Now is the time when we have the most strength. Now is the time when we have the most energy. Now is the time when we can give it everything we have. Now is the time to get up and live.”

“Every decision we make is a small piece of a larger puzzle. And without looking at the big picture for reference, we’ll place the pieces incorrectly every time. It’s tragic to treasure a moment in time more than an entire lifetime.”

“It’s loving of me to stop my son when he tries to put his finger in a socket or put a penny in his mouth. It’s loving of Jesus to tell me to say no to myself when I’m doing the wrong thing. … Let’s be clear, though. He’s not saying you can’t be yourself. He’s not calling you to ignore your personality and abandon your interests. Instead, He’s saying, ‘Submit all those things to Me.’ Your personality and your interests are His, and following Him shapes those things to bring you joy and bring God glory.”

“One of our problems is that we think we belong to ourselves. Our assumption is that we are the masters of our lives and we get to make all the big decisions. That’s a myth. I belong to God. First, because He created me (Psalm 139:13), and second, because He purchased me (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). And that has serious implications for how I invest each hour of my day. I don’t have the right to rob God of time.”

“We allow our desire for approval to push us in directions we wouldn’t go otherwise. The answer is to be more content with the acceptance of Jesus, while praying that God would make us more passionate about pleasing Him than pleasing other people. … One of the quickest ways to ensure compromise is to obsess over what other people think of you.”

“Confession of sin can only be perceived as your enemy if you have a goal other than God’s glory. If your goal is your glory, then confessing your sin works against that goal and therefore should be avoided. But if you’re living for the glory of God, confessing your sin to the right people will only help.”

“With Christians or non-Christians, when we pretend, we are using them instead of loving them. Instead of saying or doing what would be most beneficial for them, we say or do what makes us look good. We’re using them to get to that end goal, the magical feeling of acceptance and approval, that sweet ego stroke. And that will eventually crush us and crush them.”

“The mature Christian doesn’t just ask, ‘What can I do?’ but ‘What can I do to glorify God?’”

“A Christian’s job is to live in such a way that shows off the real Jesus, the all-powerful, Almighty, sinner-loving King of the universe.”

“One of the reasons we struggle is because we forget that Jesus is the Lord of all. When I say Lord of all, I don’t just mean Lord of all people; I mean Lord of all things and spheres of life. It’s easy for us to section off our lives into little quadrants. There’s the fun stuff, the family stuff, the boring stuff, and the spiritual stuff. But the Bible doesn’t recognize any area of our lives that’s not spiritual. God made every sphere of life, He rules over every sphere of life, and He can be glorified in every sphere of life. This means everything is sacred.”

“The symptom of an encounter with the compassion of Jesus is compassion for others.”

“People go to hell because they haven’t seen the glory of God in the Gospel and trusted in Christ. Seeing the glory of God matters, and we want them to see it. Where the glorious light of Christ is not seen, sins are not forgiven and souls are not saved. This is why we share the Good News. The end goal of evangelism is that people would see the glory of God and worship Him forever.”

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, book review, Christian, compassion, confession, evangelism, God's approval, God's glory, Gospel, Jesus Christ, man's approval, maturity, mentor, parents, personality, quotes, sin, teacher, testimony, time management, Trip Lee. Leave a Comment »

Rise (book review)

May 12, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

I first knew of Trip Lee as a talented musician, but I have to admit that when I first heard he had written a book I had no idea what to expect. I am happy to say that Rise blew me away!

Trip himself states that his main target audience is teenagers and those in their early- to mid-twenties. Certainly the material in Rise is age-appropriate for them, but I found it to be challenging and confronting and reaffirming for me too. Trip’s message—as the title of the book suggests—is a call for Christians to not simply “go with the cultural flow,” but rise up to let Jesus be seen in a culture desperately searching for truth.

Trip talks about attitudes, involvement in church, sharing our Christian faith with others, having a great work ethic, and so many other topics that are relevant to young people. Perhaps I felt it relevant to me as well because of my work with students. In that case, I have two recommendations for this book: (1) Give it as a gift to those in Trip’s target audience (teens and 20-somethings), and (2) Get a copy for yourself and read/study/discuss the ideas in this book with the teens and 20-year-olds to whom you gave a copy. I really believe this will pay excellent dividends!

I am a Thomas Nelson book reviewer.