For the Christian who is filled with the Holy Spirit, confident in the identity of sons and daughters in Christ, this unraveling of society through moral confusion and dogmatic, angry insistence on loyalty to a narrative of self-destruction, is unthinkable. Salt preserves what rot and spoilage would destroy. Light exposes, showing the people the fruitlessness of sin that destroys and divides.
A Christian who has tasted and experienced the beauty of Jesus and His restorative, renewing power longs for those who have not to enjoy God to the same measure that he or she has. The best evangelism flows from the life of the one who has known Jesus as a Father, and has experienced truth through the love and the power of the Holy Spirit in a way that has left them eternally and deeply transformed. Biblical truth is something far more than truth one merely believes demons believe and tremble, as James wrote in his epistle.
Biblical truth is something that we can see, feel, and touch as we watch it work within people we care about, bearing incredible fruit in their lives.
- Resource Library?
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- 4 reasons Christians should care about politics | ERLC.
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- THE TRANSGRESSOR;
This is our great advantage within a decaying society. As a Christian, I do not begin with the premise that my nation is in great need of truth and transformation as I stand above in moral superiority. I find the answer for the moral decay around me when the gospel solves my own moral decay, and imparts within me a righteousness that is not my own. Truth from outside of me begins to first transform my perspective, then my emotions, working down into my desires and values, and ultimately transforming my behaviors and ability to love and be loved.
As it did, it re-wrote my story, and redefined my life and my future. Therefore, what I bring to a society that has empowered individuals to define truth for themselves as long as it hews closely to the accepted secular narrative , is my story. What is unique about my story and yours is that it does not point to me, or my perspective.
4 reasons Christians should care about politics
It points to Jesus and His story. My story folds into His, and has become about Him. As Jesus said, simply and powerfully, we know a tree by its fruit. Followers of Christ are called to love and serve their neighbors Matthew In a very real sense, politics is one of the most important areas in which Christians demonstrate love to neighbor. In fact, how can Christians claim to care about others and not engage the arena that most profoundly shapes basic rights and freedoms? Caring for the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and lonely is important to Jesus and should be to His followers as well.
Again, a holistic approach is essential. Loving neighbor includes volunteering at a homeless shelter, as well as influencing laws that encourage human flourishing. Good government and laws are not negligible factors in the prosperity and freedom of a society. For example, the majority of North Koreans are held in economic bondage by corrupt political forces, whereas in South Korea, citizens are given liberty and a system that encourages prosperity.
The people of North Korea need more than food pantries and improved hospitals; they need political leadership and policies that recognize human rights. Advocating for these changes in totalitarian countries is crucial for loving our neighbors in oppressed areas. Obedience to the golden rule includes seeking laws that protect unborn children, strengthen marriages and families, advocate for the vulnerable, and provide opportunity for flourishing.
Politics is a means of effecting great change and must be engaged by Christians who love their neighbor.
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- See a Problem?!
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- David F. Wells Quotes (Author of No Place for Truth);
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- Little Red Riding Crop: 1!
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Government restrains evil and promotes good. Government derives its authority from God to promote good and restrain evil.
This mandate is expressly stated in Romans Paul understood the need for Christian participation in government. Good government encourages an environment conducive for people living peaceably, whereas bad government fosters unrest and instability. Because of sin, the legitimate institution of government has, at times, been used illegitimately throughout history.
Loving God’s Truth in the Era of “Your Truth”
However, numerous examples persist of Christians reasserting their influence and redeeming government to promote good and restrain evil. Examples include outlawing infanticide, child abandonment and gladiatorial games in ancient Rome, ending the practice of human sacrifice among European cultures, banning pedophilia and polygamy, and prohibiting the burning of widows in India. William Wilberforce, a committed Christian, was the force behind the successful effort to abolish the slave trade in England.
Wells, God in the Whirlwind: These will inevitably distract us. He is not known on our terms. This summons is heard in and through his Word. It is not heard through our intuitions.
I see it in the deep discontent that is being voiced with the threadbare state of the evangelical world, with its empty worship, its market-driven superficiality, and its trivial thought. It is a breeze blowing toward better, deeper, more honest things. I suspect that it is the Holy Spirit who is blowing, that this is his breeze, and that these leaves that are shaking are the signs of better things to come within an evangelical faith that is thus being reformed. What may be different from age to age is the political organization, the kind of economy that exists and how it works, the architectural style, the nature of the calamities that occur - such as war, famine, natural disasters, or social upheaval - the dominance or absence of religion, life expectancy, the scope of medical care, and any number of other factors that impinge on daily life.
In these areas, life in seventeenth-century America, for example, was very different indeed from life in the twentieth.
At the same time, if Christian assumptions can be accepted, life in these two times also shared some things. Human nature has remained unchanged as created and fallen, as has God in his character and purposes, as has the truth of the revelation he has given us in the Bible, as has the significance of his redemptive acts and most importantly the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. These have not changed.
Loving God’s Truth in the Era of “Your Truth” - IHOPKC BLOG
They are the threads that are woven through ages that, in many other ways, have no connections with each other at all. They give continuity to life amidst its many jarring discontinuities. For this reason, there is only one Gospel applicable to all people in all places and believed in the same way in every age. If this were not so, Christian faith would mean something entirely different today from what it meant last century, and faith would mean something entirely different in America than in Asia, Europe, or Africa.
Wells, Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. Instead of offering great thoughts about God, the meaning of reality, and the gospel, there are evangelical churches that are offering only little therapeutic nostrums that are sweet but mostly worthless. One even wonders whether some current churchgoers might even be resistant were they to encounter a Christianity that is deep, costly, and demanding. We all have our theologies, for we all have a way of putting things together in our own minds that, if we are Christian, has a shape that arises from our knowledge of God and his Word.
We might not be conscious of the process.
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Indeed, we frequently are not. But at the very least we will organize our perceptions into some sort of pattern that seems to make sense to us. The question at issue, then, is not whether we will have a theology but whether it will be a good or bad one, whether we will become conscious of our thinking processes or not, and, more particularly, whether we will learn to bring all of our thoughts into obedience to Christ or not. The biblical authors had a theology in this sense, after all, and so too did Jesus.
He explained himself in terms of biblical revelation, understood his life and work in relation to God, and viewed all of life from this perspective.