Zondervan Inspire

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?

A Clear Sense of True North

From the Editor: Today's excerpt from author Joe Hilley touches on an area that is sorely lacking in many of today's leaders whether they lead nations, states, cities, businesses, schools, churches, or families.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith 

As the twenty-first century unfolds, leaders who lead effectively will possess a clear sense of True North. While not necessarily Christian, they will have an acknowledged sense of purpose that is completely integrated with their life and their approach to leadership. A worldview that encompasses every aspect of their life. A clearly defined sense of right and wrong. And a driving imperative of personal responsibility. In a century in which meaning is more often derived from relationship rather than from acceptance of unquestioned absolutes, perhaps no other leadership quality will be more important.

From Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader

by Joe Hilley

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?

Hardwired to Seek God

This is the message God conveyed through Moses, the prophets, and finally through Jesus: No human being or material thing can satisfy our deepest longings because God has hardwired us for himself first. Just as birds are hardwired to fly south for winter, we were hardwired to seek God. We will never find the life we long for apart from him because he is the Source of all we love.

If we put other things, no matter how good, in the center of our lives, they become rival gods that lead us to destruction — the loss of the life our thirsty souls crave. But when a new vision of God's goodness motivates us to seek him with all we have, everything else comes alive. All our pursuits for relationship, success, security, and purpose get rightly ordered and become life-giving in new ways.

From Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended

by John Burke

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?

This Is Who God Is

God is looking for a body, flesh and blood to show the world a proper marriage of the divine and human. What happens when your body looks nothing like you? What happens when your people become the embodiment of everything you are against? What happens when you're being given a bad name? What happens when your people are unfaithful to the vow they made to you? What happens when your people "go back that way again," the way you rescued them from?

The Hebrew Scriptures have a very simple and direct message: God always hears the cry of the oppressed; God cares about human suffering and the conditions that cause it. God is searching for a body, a community of people to care for the things God cares about. God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them. This is what God is like. This is what God is about. This is who God is.

From Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Any comments or testimonies today?

How to Be Human

Slavery is a fundamentally inhumane condition. Being owned and treated as property robs people of the dignity and honor of being a human. This has deeply affected how these [post-exodus] Israelites see themselves and the world around them. What God begins here at Sinai with the Ten Commandments is the long process of teaching them how to be human again (see Exodus 19-20). These commands are vital truths about what it means to live in authentic human community.

The first commandment instructs the people to "have no other gods." Their humanity is directly connected to their ability to remember their liberation, which was a gift from God. If they forget God — the one, true God who freed them — they are at that very same moment forgetting their story. If they forget their story, they might forget what it was like to be slaves, and they might find themselves back in a new sort of slavery (see Romans 6:15-18).

From Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Any comments or testimonies today?

A Different Kind of Nation

Genesis is about the progression of sin, violence, and death—what started with one son killing the other quickly led to an entire civilization in opposition to God. And then Exodus begins with the Israelites enslaved by a nation. Sin always gains a head of steam when it goes unchecked. And that always leads to institutions and cultures and structures that are anti-kingdom. This leads to dehumanizing places, like Egypt had become, which these former slaves standing at the base of Sinai know all too well. And God's response is to form a different kind of nation, a "holy" one shaped not by greed, violence, and abusive power but by compassion, justice, and care for one's neighbor.

From Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Any comments or testimonies today?

Chuck Colson’s Story about How The Faith Made an Eternal Difference

Watch Chuck Colson tell the story about how his new book The Faith made an eternal difference in the life of a person he had been witnessing to for years.

“Every pastor should read The Faith and every pastor should preach through this book with their congregation—it’s that good.”  —Bill Hybels

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