God's Mercy

Props: Ray Ortlund

The Gospel For ABQ-UNM

From Church Planting Novice:

I was recently asked to write up an explanation of the “good news” for a newspaper as a part of JR Woodward’s Good News Series. I wrote up a contextualized expression of the gospel for Austin, the gospel for my city. I’ve also submitted it to our local paper. This is a good exercise for all church planters. Thanks to JR for stimulating this good line of thinking. I hope you’ll do something similar for your local newspaper.

Jonathan Dodson gives us something very important to think through. How does the Gospel speak to our city? How would you explain it to a student at UNM, CNM or a young adult at Starbucks?

The Day Is Not Yours

From The Gospel Driven Church:

The truth is, the day does not belong to us. It is not our day to do with as we please. We serve a sovereign God. He created the end from the beginning, knows our future exhaustively, and is firmly in control. He made our days and they belong to him.

As such, isn't it a wee bit arrogant to begin with the idea that each day is ours and then worry about fitting God in? Instead, we should work at the humble awe of knowing all of our moments, each millisecond, waking or sleeping, are perfectly accounted for within his economy. It is a wonder then, that God makes time for us.

He then goes on to show 2 ways the understanding that the day belongs to a sovereign God changes our outlook.

1. It makes us more conscious of how we use our day.

2. It makes us more conscious of him within our day.

We need these reminders every morning, at least I know I do!

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Human Creativity That Points To The Maker's

In case you are one of the few who have not seen this, it is pretty sweet!

Tim Keller at Google

The Well's community groups went through "The Reason for God" by Tim Keller this past semester. We chose this book in order to better equip our students for their engagements with the culture they are in here in Albuquerque, NM.

We actually look forward to some exciting things coming next year, which we will be announcing over the summer in relation to this book!

During the book tour that Dr. Keller went on, he gave many lectures at places like Cal Berkeley, Stanford, Penn and Google. Below I have embedded his talk he gave to Google. It is a great lecture and engagement and I recommend taking a hour out to watch.

Click here for more Tim Keller Resources.

Understanding People Before Culture

Mark Lauterbach in this month's NEXT Webzine gives some great words of wisdom when it comes to how we as Christians should engage the world around us. We so often (myself for sure included) get caught up with thinking more about culture than anything else. Sometimes we do so out of our own self-justification, so we can watch South Park or listen to this or that. We engage in "cultural studies" without ever actually engaging the culture we study with the gospel of Jesus Christ! That is wrong, that is sin and we must heed this wisdom from Lauterbach.

Here is an excerpt:

In light of this, there’s a big question many Christians are asking today: How should a Christian relate to their culture?

Should we insulate ourselves in Christian ghettos? Or are we to study the culture–stay in touch with the best of TV and cinema, keep up with the bestsellers, and know some of the new music?

Personally, I am not sure I know exactly how to answer all these questions or where to draw all the lines. I know we should ask these questions, carefully and biblically. And I know we will all answer them, in good conscience, in different ways.

But I want to suggest that this question–“How should a Christian relate to culture?”–may be the wrong question. This may be the wrong place for us, as Christians in the middle of culture, to start. Here’s why: I am not sure how I am to relate to the culture, but I am sure I am to relate to people outside of Christ for the sake of their salvation. Before we ask how we as Christians should relate to our culture we must ask how and why Christ came into culture. Christ and his mission should define the questions we ask about culture.

Click here for the rest of the article.

The Driscolls on How Not To Marry a Coward

Mark and Grace Driscoll offer some great wisdom for ladies in trying to avoid marrying a coward.

Ladies, this is something I cannot plead with you enough on, what you may find cute right now will be painful in 5 years.

Men, you are to be the spiritual leader, you are to take the bullets, you are to protect, lead, guide and sacrifice. There are too many boys today, that are lazy, video game players, sports fanatics, gym rats who don't read their Bible, don't know how to sacrifice, neglect prayer and act like whiney little wimps. I am not even talking about physical strength, that's easy.

I am talking about the crap that I have seen, where men do not respect women, they do not see their calling to lead and serve, they actually expect to be led and served. It is disgusting. And God will eventually deal with you, either by breaking you in front of the Cross with repentance and grace. OR by judging you guilty, and unleashing His full wrath upon you for eternity.

In short: Men be Men. Ladies seek Men, not boys, no matter how "hot" they are!!