Zondervan Inspire

Evidence of Changed Lives

From the Editor: I lead a Bible study on Tuesday evenings, and this Tuesday we studied Acts 14 where Paul is stoned and left for dead. After the brothers gathered around him (I’m sure there was some praying and healing going on), Paul gets up and waltzes back into the city where he was just stoned! The very guy who stood supporting those who stoned Stephen for proclaiming Jesus as Lord is now stoned for the same reason. Pretty dramatic change.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith

A proud, vindictive, violent, arrogant, self-occupied religious leader named Saul of Tarsus was traveling down the road when suddenly he had a vision of Jesus. As a matter of historical record, he became Paul — a different man with a different name, whose mind, writings, love for people, and self-sacrificial gift of his life to the world were so compelling that human minds are still fascinated by him two thousand years later. People devote their lives to studying what he wrote. How did that life get changed? The evidence of lives changed by Jesus is so abundant that the full story can never be told. It can never be matched. Not by any culture, by any book, by any program, by any hero. I have never heard the story of an accidental, meaningless universe changing a life like that.

From Faith & Doubt

by John Ortberg

Any comments or testimonies today?

Everyone Knows Two Things

From the Editor: I’m finding Faith & Doubt by John Ortberg to be an intriguing work, not like his usual fare, but geared more toward those who are searching for answers. He gently addresses questions many have about Christianity all the while presenting it as both reasonable and appealing.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith

Every human being knows two things: There is a way we ought to behave. We do not invent this code; we only discover it. We might be fuzzy on the details of it sometimes, but we have a general idea of what it is. We also know that we don't live up to this standard. We all fall short. We need forgiveness. We need grace. We need to get fixed.

Every time people argue, they are implying that the universe is not an accident, that there is a moral order built into the way things are, because it was put there by Somebody, and that Somebody is God. The good news is that he is a gracious God. That's part of why I believe in God.

From Faith & Doubt

by John Ortberg

Any comments or testimonies today?

We Must Move On

Theologian Lesslie Newbigin writes that we live in an age that favors doubt over faith. We often speak of "blind faith" and "honest doubt." Both faith and doubt can be honest or blind, but we rarely speak of "honest faith" or "blind doubt." Both faith and doubt are needed, yet it is faith that is more fundamental. Even if I doubt something, I must believe there are criteria by which it can be judged. I must believe something before I can doubt anything. Doubt is to belief what darkness is to light, what sickness is to health. It is an absence. Sickness may be the absence of health, but health is more than the absence of sickness. So it is with doubt and faith. Doubt is a good servant but a poor master.

"Doubt is useful for a while.... If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if he burst out from the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

From Faith & Doubt

by John Ortberg

Any comments or testimonies today?

One Road to Certainty

There is one road to certainty — through a door marked "death." Then I will know, or there will be no me left to know. But I need to decide how I will live on this side of the door. Once we have been born, trying to put off deciding what to do about God is like jumping off a diving board and trying to put off actually entering the water. When I think about this urgency, I'm reminded of a saying my friend Kent the drummer told me about: "If I refuse to sing a word or play a note until I'm certain of perfection, there will never be music."

The question of faith is never just a question of calculating the odds of God's existence. We are not just probability calculators. We live in a burning building. It's called a body. The clock is ticking.

From Faith & Doubt

by John Ortberg

Any comments or testimonies today?

Faith Keeps Spreading

Ever since what was modestly called the Enlightenment, people have been predicting the demise of faith in God. I want to listen to doubters and not just argue with them, partly because deep down I have doubts enough of my own, and partly because when I'm just trying to win arguments, I turn into Dan Ackroyd debating Jane Curtain in an old Saturday Night Live sketch: "Jane, you ignorant ..." Nobody wants to be around me then. Not even me.

I do not like books by believers or doubters that make it sound like the question of God is simple, that anyone with half a brain will agree with them, that people in the other camp are foolish and evil. I have read and known too many people who don't believe in God who are better and wiser than me. But I do not think the professional doubters will make faith go away. The predictors keep dying, and faith keeps spreading.

From Faith & Doubt

by John Ortberg

Any comments or testimonies today?

God Is

Since all basic presuppositions begin with faith, "God is" is as rational as any other first premise. Evidence that points toward the intelligent design of the universe increases the probability that God is. The more that is learned of the structure of the billions of human cells that make up our body, the clearer it is that cells function based on intelligent information, DNA, that is more complicated, as Bill Gates has said, than any software ever written. And there is now abundant cosmological evidence that this planet is uniquely hospitable to human life—the unique orbit of the earth, the distance from the sun, and the like. It is as if, one scientist wrote, "the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming."

The presupposition "God is" is today not without abundant supporting empirical evidence. It requires no flight from reason to believe it.

—Charles Colson, The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters

Any comments or testimonies today?

---

Technorati tags: Christianity, God, presuppositions, Charles Colson, The Faith, religion, worldview, Zondervan

Liars Make Poor Martyrs

We know from multiple sources that Paul—who was then known as Saul of Tarsus—was an enemy of the church and committed to persecuting the faithful. But Paul himself says that he was converted to a follower of Jesus because he had personally encountered the resurrected Jesus. So we have Jesus' resurrection attested by friend and foe alike, which is very significant.

Then we have six ancient sources in addition to Paul—such as Luke, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Tertullian, Dionysius of Corinth, and Origen—reporting
that Paul was willing to suffer continuously and even die for his beliefs. Again, liars make poor martyrs. So we can be confident that Paul not only claimed the
risen Jesus appeared to him, but that he really believed it.

—Michael Licona

The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ by Lee Strobel

Any comments or testimonies today?

---

Technorati tags:
Christianity, Paul, apologetics, martyr, Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Bible, Jesus

Labels: apologetics, Jesus, Lee Strobel, Paul

Are the Canonical Gospels Trustworthy?

Go back to Helmut Koester’s statement: it's just dogmatism and prejudice to privilege the canonical Gospels. If you picture fifteen or twenty gospels as all being part of one soupy gray porridge, then picking out four of them and saying these four are privileged—well, yeah, that does sound rather dogmatic. But that grossly misrepresents the evidence. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were earlier than all these other gospels, and they have credible connections with the first generation, apostolic, eyewitness sources. The only way to deny that is to say, well, I don't care what the evidence says, I will instead rely on my own intuition and guesswork and preference. Now, I call that dogmatic and prejudiced!

—Craig A. Evans, PhD

The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ by Lee Strobel

Any comments or testimonies today?

---

Technorati tags:
Christianity, God, Gospels, canon, Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Bible, Jesus

Labels: Bible, Canon, Christianity, Gospels, Lee Strobel

"My Opinion About Jesus..."

If you had asked my opinion about Jesus when I was the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, I would have given you an adamant answer: if he lived, he was undoubtedly a rabble-rousing prophet who found himself on the wrong side of the religious and political leaders of his day. Claims about his divinity clearly were manufactured by his followers long after his unfortunate demise. As an atheist, I ruled out any possibility of the virgin birth, miracles, the resurrection, or anything else supernatural.

It was my agnostic wife's conversion to Christianity and the ensuing positive changes in her character that prompted me to use my legal training and journalism experience to systematically search for the real Jesus. After nearly two years of studying ancient history and archaeology, I found the evidence leading me to the unexpected verdict that Jesus is the unique Son of God who authenticated his divinity by returning from the dead. It wasn't the outcome I was necessarily seeking, but it was the conclusion that I believe the evidence persuasively warranted.

—Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ

Any comments or testimonies today?

---

Technorati tags:
Christianity, God, salvation, heaven, hell, Zondervan, Bible, Jesus

Labels: Christianity, Jesus, Lee Strobel, Zondervan