Videos from the Passion Conference 07 are online for a short time here. I don’t see a way to save the files or to skip ahead to the preaching. A couple of the speakers are John Piper and Francis Chan. Didn’t that second guy have humble beginnings?
Urgent Need
If you want to help save a life, take a look at these children who have serious heart defects. Surgeries like these cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Israeli doctors are donating their skills to operate on the hearts of these Iraqi kids. But there are still some costs of transportation, housing, and hospital expenses. You can give directly online and then track the progress of the child at the website. My family came to love the work of Shevet Achim through one of their staff, Philip Berg, who passed away earlier this year. Maybe there’s something you can do without to help save a child today.
Hemen Kawa, 5 years old from northern Iraq
Snow
Israel got some snow Wednesday night. It wasn’t much where I live, but today (2 days after the snowfall), it was still sticking pretty well in the Hebron hills.
Today I went to two biblical sites I had never been to. There’s always something more to do.
Book Review: Going Places With God
The problem with studying the geography of Israel is that it can quickly become divorced from the life-changing truths of Scripture. After all, how do hills and valleys help you grow closer to God? Wayne Stiles has the answer to that in his new book, Going Places With God: A Devotional Journey Through the Lands of the Bible. I am often asked what is the perfect follow-up to a trip to Israel. My typical answer (“read a Bible atlas”) just got better: read and meditate on the truths of this devotional guide. What makes this book so good is that it takes “boring” details of Scripture and shows how they are profitable for life and godliness.
Here’s an example: Stiles shows how the geography of Joseph’s brothers tending their sheep brought Joseph to slavery in Egypt and ultimately Israel’s deliverance from famine. Unless you understand the geography, you won’t fully appreciate God’s sovereignty. The author draws from that just how we should relate to our sometimes bewildering circumstances. In another story, Israel has to travel all the way around Edom, and Stiles explains that in God’s plan, sometimes the long way is the best way.
I love too the way that Stiles draws beautiful word pictures. With him as guide, I picture myself one day walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and another day watching the sunrise from the Mount of Olives. A pastor for fourteen years, Stiles is a truly gifted communicator with a knowledge of where people are hurting today. One devotional will encourage you to increase your trust in the all-powerful God, and another devotional will challenge you to take heed lest you fall. Familiar lessons some, but brought to life from places in the Bible that you would never otherwise look.
I love the geographical nuggets contained in this book, but the reason that I am recommending it to all of my friends and former students is this: Going Places With God will challenge you to live a radical, Christ-centered life. The book came out a week ago: I encourage you to buy it, read it, and buy a couple for friends.
You can see more about the book and its author at this website. The book lists for $15, but Amazon has it for $10.
[Disclosure: there are some beautiful photos in the book, taken by my wife’s husband. I don’t get any royalties from the sales, so that’s not why I’m so enthusiastic about it. But I did get a few free copies in trade, and I’d be happy to send you one if you will read the book and write a review on your blog or a book website (like Amazon or CBD). Just send me a note with your address. While quantities last. UPDATE: All free copies have been claimed.]
A Study on Jet Lag
Older people have told me that it gets harder to adjust to jet lag as you get older. Now there is science to back that up. The majority of the older mice in the experiment died after 8 weeks of simulated D.C. to Paris flights.
If you do much flying, this Washington Post article is worth reading. Apparently not much solid research has been done on the subject, but now the University of Virginia has started.
They include one surefire solution for avoiding jet lag: take a boat.
On Reading Better
These are truths you didn’t learn in English class. From Thomas Brooks, “The Unsearchable Riches of Christ,” via GraceGems.
You must meditate and dwell upon what you read; otherwise your pains and mine will be lost. The more any man is in the contemplation of truth, the more deep and firm impression is made upon his heart by truth. Heavenly meditation brings out the sweetness that is in divine truths. Not those who get most–but those who keep most, are richest. So not those who hear most, or read most–but those who meditate most, are most edified and enriched.
You must also practice and live out what you read. To read much and practice nothing–is to hunt much and catch nothing. Ah! what cause have most to sigh, that they have heard so much, and read so much–and yet done so little!
You must also pray over what you read. Many read much, and pray little, and therefore get little by all they read. Galen writes of a fish called Uranoscopos, that has but one eye, which looks continually up to heaven. When a Christian has one eye upon his book–the other should be looking up to heaven for a blessing upon what he reads!
Jews in America: How Many and Where
Arutz-7 has the results of a new survey of American Jews.
According to a new American Jewish Year Book survey, there are currently 6.4 million Jews in the United States – about a million more than in Israel….
About 2.2 percent of the US population is Jewish, according to American Jewish Year Book statistics.
New York, as in years past, was found to have the largest Jewish population of any state, at 1,618,000. California (1,194,000), Florida (653,000) and New Jersey (480,000) had the next largest numbers of Jewish residents. These four states account for more than 60 percent of the entire national Jewish estimate.
Regionally, 44 percent of Jews live in the Northeast; 11 percent live in the Midwest; 22 percent live in the South; and 24 percent live in the West.
San Francisco, California, showed the largest single reported growth nationally among Jewish communities, increasing from 107,900 in 2001 to 227,800 in 2006 – or 10% of the local population. Other areas showing growth of 70,000 or more were Atlanta, Georgia (33,900 to 119,800); San Diego, California (19,000 to 89,000); Montgomery and Price Georges County, Maryland (16,500 to 121,000); and South Palm Beach Florida (14,500 to 107,500)….
According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, as of late 2006, there were 7,077,000 Israelis, including 5,368,000 Jews.
Everyone's Doing It
Well, almost everyone, and that’s not an exaggeration. A new study, published by USA Today, interviewed about 40,000 people and they found that 95% had sex before marriage. That’s 19 out of 20.
The study is being used by some to attack government-funded abstinence programs. One expert says that these face an “extremely high hurdle. … Is it really feasible to make it normative behavior to have everyone wait until they’re married to have sex?”
I think there are some things that need to be considered in light of this:
1. To what degree should the government be involved in promoting abstinence? Does anyone think that the government can make a compelling enough case for abstinence to have success in teaching it (and thus to justify the expenditure)?
2. How should churches (and Christian schools) address this issue? How aggressively should they be teaching it, at what ages, and how frequently? What should the primary motivation(s) be to encourage abstinence?
I encourage any readers who are youth leaders (in any shape) to think about their approach carefully. If 95% are doing it, a large percentage of those are Christians, and that means the church is losing the battle for sexual holiness before marriage. And probably not doing much better after.
Religious People are Dangerous
Pyromaniacs has a great quote today from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
I feel it is an interesting and profitable subject to try to decide which is the more dangerous position for a man to be in —to state openly and avowedly that he is not at all interested in Christ and religion, or to follow Christ for the wrong and false reason. I know that, ultimately, there is no difference between these two men. The one who follows Christ for the wrong reason is as much outside the kingdom as the man who makes no pretence to follow Christ at all. That is perfectly true. But I do think there is an important distinction between the two when you regard things merely from the human standpoint. The difficulty with the man who follows Christ for a wrong reason is that he not only deludes himself, but he also deludes the church. When you are confronted by one who says he does not believe in Christ, then you know exactly what to say and what to do with him. When a man presents himself as a religious person, the church tends to take him for granted; it would be an insult to question him. The church assumes that because he acknowledges himself to be a religious man, therefore he is a Christian. One of the most dangerous places for such a man to be in is the church of the living God.
I am not at all sure but that one explanation for the present state of the church is to be found at just that point: she has been far too ready to associate church membership with true discipleship, and to assume that all who join the church are really following Christ.
I’d say there’s some application to Christian colleges and seminaries, but that’d get me in trouble.
A Fetus or an Infant?
From Best of the Web Today:
“The remains of what were tentatively identified as three human fetuses or infants were discovered in the freezer of a woman who was found dead in her home last month,” the Associated Press reports from Columbia, Tenn. “The age and cause of death will be determined in an autopsy expected to be done Saturday.”
These Bible Belt rubes need an autopsy to tell the difference between a fetus and an infant? Don’t they know that a fetus is just a clump of cells, while an infant is an actual person? More than three decades after Roe v. Wade, some parts of the country remain shockingly ignorant about science.