C.S. Lewis (author of the Chronicles of Narnia) greatest realization after he had finally recognized who Jesus is and what he offers to every human heart was that he had not come to a place or accepted a belief; he had come to a person, and that person is the very person of God. (CS - Read More -
In one of Jesus messages to his disciples He warned us that in the last days “sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold.” (Mat. 24:12 NLT) Wast He talking about us, the believers, or about the world? Both?
But why should our, those who believe in and follow Him, love grow cold? Maybe we are frustrated with what we see. Maybe we are hurt with the way we are treated and talked about by those who do not believe. If we read the verses that come before we can understand why the love of many is growing cold. Let’s read verses 3 through 11: - Read More -
To engage non-Christians and point them to Jesus, we have to understand and approach them based on what they really think, not what we assume about them.
Pray for your role in being the Church to a culture that is gospel-ignorant, if not gospel-resistant. Pray for your own influence for the kingdom of God in times that are changing, uncertain, and challenging.
The United Nations has named October 11th “Day of the Girl Child” and many organizations are working to bring awareness to the realities many young girls face around the world. One of these is the movement to end child marriage.
According to UNICEF, 10 million girls under the age of 18 are married each year, often forced into marriages with grown men. 1 in 9 of those children are between the ages of 10 and 14. It works out to 25,000 girls a day or 175,000 a week being forced into marriage (to put that in perspective, there are about 40,000 legal adult marriages a weekend in the U.S.). While laws are being passed making child marriage illegal, it is still happening. In Nepal, child marriage and the dowry system are now illegal, but the practice is still common: 1 in 3 brides in Nepal are children and some are as young as five years old. FIVE! That is not a typo. That means some of the babies born in 2007 were married off this year. - Read More -