The Secret To Revival Found In Christ’s High Priestly Prayer-”that the love you have for Me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

 

9-27-2012 Update- Dr. Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan New York has released a new book called,”Center Church”, a road map for renewal for the church in which the focus is The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Keller has also called for renewed emphasis on the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all our theology in a 54 minute video you can watch here. http://wp.me/p1Lr49-MG

~The Secret To Revival~

Salvation, Sanctification, Revival, and Renewal of The Church are Not Dependent on Eliminating Evil But rather on Embracing God Through Christ.This is the most common mistake we make in our efforts to change ourselves and the Church.

The most troubling condition is present in America today. As I read ,”Tabletalk”,(June 2012 issue), R.C.Sproul, a man of God whom I greatly respect, wrote ,”The Church is One”, using John 17:26, in an effort to identify and correct our disunity in Christ.

Yet as he listed the issues to correct he omitted Christ as the answer.

I find no error in his comments, only in who he did not embrace as the answer.

Our answer is a who not a what, personal not mere intellectual assent, involving both the risen Christ and His truth, not one or the other.

All our problems represent an absence, and void within each of us who comprise the Church and our World.

And it’s not just R.C.Sroul! Tim Keller is doing a series of book reviews on the Gospel Coalition site about Renewal of The Church in America, and so far each book talks all about the problems we face and almost never mentions the only real solution, who is Christ in us!

 

By now you are saying, “who does this guy think he is!”

I feel like I’m some fool, who despite his obvious condition has been entrusted with the single most valuable thing ever imaginable. I am the antithesis of the mind of R.C. Sproul or the intellect, heart and reason of Tim Keller.

I assure you I’m nobody, but I know who my God and Father is and I know He has loved me with an everlasting love and I cannot but tell everyone I can how much He loves them and how much they need to know His love personally.

Starting with His Church, whom He gave His life to ransom.

Somebody who is really somebody, pick up this message and run with it!

Embrace Christ to displace death, and be saved, for He alone can save.

Embrace Christ to displace sin, because He alone, by His indwelling Spirit, can empower you overcome.

Embrace Christ to displace self,and become Christ like, for to attempt anything else would be nonsensical.

Embrace Christ to displace your desires, for He alone is the most beautiful entity in the universe to be desired and you will trade everything for more of Him.

Embrace Christ to displace all the things that entice the Church away from It’s first love, for Christ alone is worthy of all glory, power and praise!

Embrace Christ to change the world, for if any man is in Christ he is a new creation, old things are passes away, behold all have become new, and that is the only real social reform.

^{Christ’s ,”High Priestly Prayer”, ends with the following summary purpose for His prayer.}

 ^”I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:26)

His love is the context for all our theology and that context was also not given preeminence by our Church Fathers when they made the Nicene Creed, comprised totally of truth, one, holy,catholic, (universal), and apostolic, but hardly making even indirect mention of the context for all truth which is God’s love.

Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
If Christ is no longer supreme in my heart and daily living, then I have lost the Way, neglected the Truth, and turned away from Life.
A very simple theology in the context of God’s love, for he indwells the true believer and love grows and shows.

Somebody tell me I’m not alone in my deep concern, that we must be one IN Christ, but we have become Ephesus.

 ^”Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.” Revelation 2:4,5

Christ is our first love, and His arms are ever wide open to our full embrace.

http://christcenteredteaching.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/the-simplicity-that-is-in-christ/

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/04/an-agenda-for-recovering-christianity-in-america/?comments#comments#comment-29950

Related articles and updates

Tim Keller delivered this challenge to church leaders to be ,”Gospel Shaped”, in all our ministry.

“Every sermon should ultimately be about Jesus.” Tim Keller

• Gospel Shaped Ministry By Tim Keller (christcenteredteaching.wordpress.com)

Discovering that God is Love While in a Nazi Concentration Camp – Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”

Deutsch: Viktor Frankl (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Vitor Frankl was a psychologist who was trained in Vienna.  and was imprisoned in Auschwitz, and other Nazi Germany death camps, as well as his wife and family.

Even though the Nazi prison camp meant facing death, and surrounded by constant threat and hatred, Victor Frankl found the meaning of life there.

From  ”Man’s Search for Meaning”- Experiences in a Concentration Camp”

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,

“The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

Viktor Frankl

1 John 4:10

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

Where the Battle Rages, there the Loyalty of the Soldier is Proved

“If I proclaim in the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

Martin Luther

A Letter to My Brothers – Concerns about America

The EU has already given over a lot of land to Islam without a single shot being fired.
They occupy, use gangs to harass, put up signs declaring Sharia law, and then throw stones at first responders, so that even law enforcement agencies won’t go there.
Sweden just started allowing public prayers to go out morning,noon, and night.
Can’t happen here?
All they need is persistent patience and time.
And more presidents like O.
Did you know the head of our CIA is Muslim?
I’ve studied Islam. The Koran does not seperate the powers of church and state. The Koran insists they be combined and that the supreme law be Sharia law, the law of Islam.

The idea of Islam being a peaceful religion should have been clearly disproven to everyone by know.

What can we do?

Laws may help, for sure, but what about the example I talked about above? Islam took over an entire district of the third largest city in Belgium. Could Dearborn be taken over the same way?

Here’s my answer. Know what you believe.

Muslims know what they believe and that they believe is that people must submit to Alah, it is forced religion enforced by Sharia law. In fact the word “Islam” means “Submit”.

Here’s what I believe.

Christianity today in America is confused and no longer provides a consensus of integrity whereby it can effectively influence a free society to be responsible with the very freedoms it once crafted and that we have long enjoyed.

The truth is that for decades now, Christianity has been a poor reflection of the love of God while also attempting to influence society to embrace it’s moral standard.

Someone said, “Rules without relationship breeds resentment.”

True Christianity isn’t a set of rules though Christianity has rules, the heart of being a Christian is being able to say, Jesus Christ died for me and I trust His sacrifice for my sin, He is my savior.

Then if its genuine, Christ puts His Spirit in us and begins to influence our hearts  only God can do from the inside out.

And He promises never to leave us or forsake us.

No other religion on earth has a relationship like this, where a God became man, lived humbly and sinless with us and then died for us to take away sin, then offers it as a gift of love by faith.

Islam offers no assurance of salvation besides dying for Allah.

Christianity does offer assurance of salvation, but God as Christ died for us.

Someone said that radical Islam is not the greatest threat in the world. Mediocre Christianity is the greatest threat in the world.

Last word.
If you don’t like what you see in Christians, look at Christ in the Bible. You’ll find nothing wrong with Him.
My motto is,Don’t follow Christians, follow Christ.

Your loving brother,

Ravi Zacharias Appeals to America – “What will it take for us to wake up to the avowed threat of our time?”

Adolf Hitler in Yugoslavia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Adolf Hitler told the world what he was planning to do. The naïve of that time did not take him seriously.

It took one of the bloodiest and most senseless wars in history to stop that genocide orchestrated by him. What will it take for us to wake up to the avowed threat of our time?”

Ravi Zacharias

“Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules.”

G.K.Chesterson

“Dear Friend,

It has been a little over two weeks since the atrocity was committed in Boston by the murderous intent of two young men. University students supposedly on scholarships, family on welfare payments, and all the benefits of receiving, with no moral obligation. How sad it is to see the face of that little eight-year-old boy who had just come to have a fun day with his family only to become a part of the death list and a victim of a cold blooded and calculated act. What parent can ever get over that? What country can afford to not stop and ask “why” until we know the truth?
 
How does one make judgments on such matters? How do we examine our own beliefs so as to deny such people with violent intent their murderous goals?
 
I travel an awful lot. I visit countries that do not like Americans. With that prejudice in many a country, I am quizzed as to why I am there. In the Middle East on more than one occasion I have been asked to come and meet the Chief of Intelligence and quizzed. This is the way my last quizzing went in Syria about three years ago:
 
“Mr. Zacharias, we know you are visiting here. We just want to caution you not to get engaged in any political activity or make any comments on politics.”
 
I assured them I would honor that. Then he went on to say, “But you are very welcome here. We need people like you.”
 
It was astounding to hear that. Why would he make such a comment when the prevailing religion there was not my faith, nor what I came to preach?  For one, he knew the Christians there posed no threat to the regime but were a peaceable minority. The rest of the conversation made it clear. But there was obviously more to why he said that. I asked, “Can you tell me what you think of the situation in this part of the world?”
 
With beads in his hand as he compulsively scrolled through them out of sheer habit, he quietly said, “I don’t give this part of the world more than five years, and this whole place will blow up.” Rather taken aback by such a drastic pronouncement, I asked him what he meant. It was clear that they knew of rebellious forces working to topple the government and spread turmoil in that area. Ironically, when it all happened, including his own assassination, our media naively branded it “The Arab Spring.” Really? Is that what we are witnessing in Libya, in Egypt, in Iran after the Shah? Is that what spring looks like politically?
 
This ignorance or deliberately distorted way of thinking, supporting bloody and ruthless acts to supposedly topple dictators, is precisely what that part of the world is now experiencing. Suddenly, revolutions are the “in” thing and any establishment is at risk, as forces that destabilize are gleefully supported by the media elite, the intellectual elite, and the entertainment elite. We pontificate without the slightest understanding of history, religion, or of cultural distinctives. The average citizen is once again sacrificed at the altar of demagogic factions each seeking the power to enforce and dictate.
 
This abysmal failure in the media elite, to understand history and worldview, now puts America facing possible extinction herself. Those are not overstated words. 
 
When one gets on to a plane, you hear, “Your safety is our first priority.” Evidently, in the journey of life itself, our power brokers don’t feel the same for their citizens. A visitor’s rights seem to be the first priority; those who seek our destruction are given greater privileges than our children who enjoy and love this land.
 
Something is wrong. Dreadfully wrong. Our definitions are at an all-time confusion, our values at an all-time low, our fiscal policies at an all-time danger, our beliefs at an all-time peril, and yet we want to tell our young people that we are building for their future.

Do our leaders ever sit down and read the primary sources to understand what lies beneath these worldviews to which we are pandering? We brand a religion “peaceful” or “great” without even reading its text. Only an uninformed person can make such sweeping statements. This does not assure us that our safety is a priority.
 
There is so much one can say on what needs to be done to provide for our safety. I simply resist the temptation and will not go into all of that, but rather respond in two ways. First, we must ask our political representatives to convene a formal study on this particular worldview of millions who have explicitly or implicitly screamed for our destruction.

Adolf Hitler told the world what he was planning to do. The naïve of that time did not take him seriously. It took one of the bloodiest and most senseless wars in history to stop that genocide orchestrated by him. What will it take for us to wake up to the avowed threat of our time?
 
Second, I suggest that the rights we give our immigrants must be granted only by strict means of scrutiny. I went through that when I first moved to the west. My brother and I were quizzed thoroughly. I respected that. But that was over four decades ago. We are now politically correct and politically endangered at the same time. As I write this, I am about to depart for one particular country. I will be there for five days. To get a visa, I had to list all the countries I have visited in the last ten years. That was a task and a half. Did I object?  No. They are protecting their political system and they have a right to demand of me disclosure that they feel is necessary to keep their values intact. Anyone without subversive intent will not be afraid of such scrutiny.

But in our homeland we have become so all-encompassing that the only thing we don’t have any more is “values.” Interestingly, that was a term coined by the nihilists and existentialists to replace absolutes. When absolutes went, values came. When counter values came, our own values went. When our own values went, we watch a little eight-year-old boy blown to bits and the ones doing it tweet to their friends “LOL.” Such subversives do not fear our legal system. They know the perverse way in which their defenders can use it.

When hate can laugh, decency is crying and America stands at the crossroads of choosing the path of Right or else to bury what is right in the ever-shifting quicksand of so called “rights.”
 
This is a sad day as we mourn the decimation in Boston. But sadder days are ahead unless we understand what we are dealing with here. What happened in Boston was a deadly atrocity. Our failure to stem the rot will be a suicidal tragedy. We have confused what is lawful with what is legal.
 
Chesterton said it well: “For under the smooth legal surface of our society there are already moving very lawless things. We are always near the breaking-point when we care only for what is legal and nothing for what is lawful. Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules. There will be so many hard cases that everything will go soft.”
 
This is America today. We do not know the essential difference between what is lawful and what is legal. Our moral reasoning is dying before our eyes. Nobody knows this better than the lawless.”

 

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English: Ravi Zacharias Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Ethos,Pathos,Logos – The Image of God

God created man in His image.

Aristotle identified three primary areas of influence and response that comprise the mind, heart, and soul of mankind.

He called them Ethos, Pathos, and logos.

God is sovereign and all Powerful- this is Ethos

God is the author of wisdom and is all knowing- this is Logos

God is Love and so loved the world He gave His Son – this is Pathos

The Psalms puts it this way;

Psalms 139:1-4 “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways. For there  is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.”

God knows us, understands us, comprehensive us, altogether because He loves us.

His pathos brought His ethos and logos to our rescue.

His pathos / love bridged the gap between us and God through Christ.

Humble Orthodoxy in Action

Reblogged from the Ink Slinger:

Hey Brad,

This is Shai Linne. I’m writing to reply to the recent open letter you wrote in response to my song, “Fal$e Teacher$“. In that song, I referred to Paula White, among others, as a false teacher. I’m glad that you responded because it serves as a reminder to us all that this discussion involves real people with real families and real souls.

Read more… 130 more words

My fellow Christianblogger, "Ink Slinger", posted a a dialogue by the author of the rap song,"Fal$eTeacher$". Shai Linne responds to an open letter about his song, his Biblical rational, and his beliefs. May Christ be preeminent in our hearts,lives,and ministry.

Ravi Zacharias – “The Law of Non-Contradiction and the Trinity” Video

Most people today believe that there are no absolute truths and nothing is sure.

The law of non-contradiction easily refutes these common misconceptions.

Ravi Zacharias explains that two conflicting statements cannot both be true at the same time.

Example-

To, “nothing is sure”, we ask, “are you sure?”

To ,”there are no absolutes,” we respond, ” are you absolutely sure?”

The statement contradicts itself in the same statement.