God uses sinful people, but ...
Body
“First, let’s not be overly impressed with people. We can honor leaders for their service, but let’s save our high praises for the Lord Himself.” - Michael Brown
As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“First, let’s not be overly impressed with people. We can honor leaders for their service, but let’s save our high praises for the Lord Himself.” - Michael Brown
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A consequence of providence is that God has directed in your life as well as in the life of the planet. Your conception, birth, and life circumstances are not random or accidental; they are purposeful, and better yet, those purposes come from a good and great person, whose interest in you is entirely benevolent.
This week I made my annual journey back to Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa, for the Refresh Conference.
It was my fourth Refresh, so I realized that, in essence, I have witnessed another class of college students pass through Faith’s doors during these days. To me that time seems like it has just whisked by—as does the entire interval since I was a seminary student at Faith.
Read the series.
God not only runs the world; he created it. From scratch. (Google ex nihilo sometime. The official meaning is “from scratch.”) All of it. Everything is from his hand, originally.
(Editor’s note: Written in 2018, but doesn’t seem to have lost any relevance!)
Many of my Christian friends are angry. Or afraid. Or both. At least, that’s the way it looks in their posts on social media.
And that’s too bad, for several reasons—
“God’s sovereignty and the wicked acts of men coordinate most shockingly in the death of Jesus. God used ‘the hands of lawless men’ to execute His ‘definite plan’ to offer His precious Son as payment for our sins (Acts 2:23; 4:28).” - Ligonier
I distinctly remember the phone call. It was the spring of 1999, and I had worked up the nerve to telephone my esteemed professor, Dr. John C. Whitcomb—the man whose reputation caused me to choose my theological seminary five years previously.
To my surprise, he picked up the phone, stirring within me a mixture of relief and horror. It just seemed like it wasn’t the right instant to talk with him, however. I learned he was actually on his way to what would be his final international speaking trip, to London.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’m the only person in the world who reads through back issues of the Ann Arbor Baptist, a periodical from the late 1800s. But periodicals like that were the blogs of their era and within their pages I find such interesting articles and poems.” - Challies
“What do you think about going to Texas?”
Chris Katulka, director of North American Ministries for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, posed that question to me in the summer of 2020.
“To live?” I think that was my response.
Well, he explained, at least initially it would just be for a visit. I was given the task—the test?—of lining up and then executing my own ministry trip to Texas.
Many people yearn to make sense of their lives and this world. Why do things happen the way they do? Is it part of a plan? Is there no plan? Using the analogy of a train plodding its way along, there are at least three ways people often think of this world and their place:
Discussion