Paul Washer is easily one of my favorite preachers of today. I love how he cuts through all the junk and gets right to the message. Battle 4 Truth has a good collection of some of his quotes. A couple of my favorites:
“Here stands God on the day of creation. He looks at stars and He says “all you stars move yourself to this place and start in this order and move in a circle and move exactly as I tell you, until I give you another word. Planets-pick yourself up and whirl, make this formation at my command, until I give you another word. He looks at mountains and says “be lifted up” and they obey him. He tells valleys “be cast down” and they obey him. He looks at the sea and says “you will come this far”, and the sea obeys. Then, he looks at you and says “come” and you go “No! Does that bother anyone?”
“People tell me judge not lest ye be judged. I always tell them, twist not scripture lest ye be like satan.”
“I think modern life, including life in the Church, suffers from a phony unwillingness to offend that poses as prudence and good manners, but too often turns out to be cowardice. Human beings owe each other respect and appropriate courtesy. But we also owe each other the truth — which means candor.”
Looking ahead to the coming months and years, Chaput offered four “simple things” to remember.
“First,” he said, “all political leaders draw their authority from God. We owe no leader any submission or cooperation in the pursuit of grave evil.”
“In fact, we have the duty to change bad laws and resist grave evil in our public life, both by our words and our non-violent actions. The truest respect we can show to civil authority is the witness of our Catholic faith and our moral convictions, without excuses or apologies.”
“Americans, including many Catholics, elected a gifted man to fix an economic crisis. That’s the mandate. They gave nobody a mandate to retool American culture on the issues of marriage and the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion in public life and abortion. That retooling could easily happen, and it clearly will happen — but only if Catholics and other religious believers allow it.”
The third point to focus on when the beliefs of Catholics are challenged is that “it doesn’t matter what we claim to believe if we’re unwilling to act on our beliefs,” Chaput counseled.
Seeing Clearly puts up a great list of the teachings about Jesus in the Qur’an:
Jesus was born of a virgin (Surah 3:45-50)
Jesus is sinless (Surah 6:85)
Jesus is the Messiah (Surah 3:45)
Jesus performed miracles (Surah 3:49)
One of these miracles is especially interesting (although only attested elsewhere in the Gospel of Thomas). Surah 3:49 and 5:110 teach that Jesus created a bird out of clay while He was upon this earth.
Jesus ascended into heaven in bodily form (Surah 3:55)
Jesus spoke at his birth (Surah 19:27-35)
Jesus raised the dead (Surah 3:49)
Question for Muslims: since none of the above is true of Muhammed, how can he be called the greatest prophet?
[Whole list taken from Norman Geisler, “Jesus and Muhammed in the Qur’an: A Comparison and Contrast,” SBJT 8:1 (2004), 50-58.]
A friend of mine lost her grandfather last year. While in Florida helping out, her Grandmother gave her a wrinkled, torn piece of paper on which her Grandfather had written a poem. Beautiful and simple:
By dying, I live.
By surrender, I win the victory.
By giving, I am made rich.
By kneeling, I stand firm.
By weakness, I am made strong.
By fasting, I am made fat.
By selflessness, I am made satisfied.
By praying for others, I am blessed beyond measure.
By serving others, all my needs are met.
By comforting the lonely, I receive fellowship.
By praising the Lord, I receive high honor.
By being a fool in the world’s eyes, I am made wise by the Lord.
By not seeking my own comfort, I receive all my satisfaction.
By dying to self, I will live forever.
She also writes about the difficulties of the family situation following her grandfather’s death, but also about how the Lord was using her and about the life that her grandfather built:
These last few days have been hell on earth for her [grandmother], and it has been almost unbearably hard to watch it happen. I say “almost” because, through it all, our Father has been faithful to guide and comfort us. He has been using my mouth to speak His Word to her in an amazing way. It seems that Scripture comes forth without any effort on my part to seek out the right word for the moment or to recall verses memorized in Sunday school. I open my mouth, or rather, my mouth opens and out come these words–His Words, apt and true, sometimes ones that I didn’t even know I’d memorized.
He also continues to remind me that the house I’m living in, the subject of the new debate, was built by a godly man, my great-grandfather, for the purposes of raising his family in a God-honoring way. Every nail was hammered into place with that purpose. In my grandma’s despondency, I was pushed to remind her of this. This house is God’s. It always has been. I have seen the enemy trying to infiltrate and subvert, taking advantage of the death of my grandfather, pillar of faith that he was, but the enemy has no place here. This place was consecrated to His service then, and we will fight to keep it that way. This house will not be a stumbling block or a millstone but a sanctuary.
I found a box of letters that my great-grandmother wrote to her sister at the turn of the last century (1901 mostly). I also found a book written in 1848 Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments. Right up my alley. I intend to read its fragile and fragrant pages with care. And lastly, I found a some poetry from another relative written in 1880. All so interesting and enlightening. Be jealous.
I am sleeping in the room in which my dad spent his first few months of life. His crib was by the window where my dresser now stands. That’s kinda cool.
My grandmother has been sharing much of her wonderful marriage and life with my grandfather. Each new story leaves me both hopeful, eager, and in pain.
I spent a significant portion of the past few years overseas, and so I’m not always up to speed on American pop culture. As such, I sometimes feel like the man from 2002. I first heard the band The Fray when I returned to America a year ago, and they were already well-established. I must admit, I wasn’t a big fan when I first heard them – I’m not really into Emo or anything close – though they have grown on me.
The Fray
I randomly came across this article last week, I didn’t know they were a Christian band. It’s worth a read and explains some of their origins:
The band members’ lives were largely formed in Denver churches where they helped lead worship, and in the Christian school three of them attended. Slade, 24, and guitarist Joe King, 25, were several years ahead of drummer Ben Wysocki, 21, at Faith Christian Academy. Wysocki and guitarist David Welsh, 21, played in the same worship band.
They have an interesting take on how they choose to label themselves and share the Gospel:
The band avoided Christian record labels, saying God called them to the secular market instead. “I feel he would be disappointed with us if we limited ourselves,” Wysocki says.
Slade says he used to “write all Christian lyrics” until he had an epiphany while working a shift at Starbucks: “None of my friends outside the church understood any of my songs; we had a different set of vocabulary,” he says. “So I went home and threw away all those songs.”
Slade says he used to “write all Christian lyrics” until he had an epiphany while working a shift at Starbucks: “None of my friends outside the church understood any of my songs; we had a different set of vocabulary,” he says. “So I went home and threw away all those songs.”
“If I handed somebody a double grande mocha latte and told them, ‘Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,’ they might throw it back on me.
“If we grow up in the church, it’s easy to think it’s our Christian duty to preach to every single person because God is the most important thing. And he is, but I’m a musician first. This is my job. We’re not pastors. We’re not preachers. We’re not even missionaries.”
Slade likens his job to any other. “If you’re a painter, paint, but you don’t have to have Jesus in every picture. Paint well, and if you paint well enough, they might ask you why you do that.”
I was most glad to see them talk about facing the pressures and temptations that any famous band would:
The recent changes include learning to deal with the temptations that often accompany fame—including female fans who are looking for more than just an autograph.
The men say they take the temptations seriously and serve as accountability partners for one another. If any member of the band were caught with a woman, Welsh jokes that the other guys wouldn’t just reprimand him: “We’d skip right to murder.”
“There’s also this subconscious pressure,” says Welsh, the only unmarried member of the group—and he’s getting married in a few weeks. “You don’t want to disappoint yourself and the three guys you’re spending most of your life with.” He adds that their years of friendship make it easier for them to speak frankly with one another.
Still, they admit that one of their biggest struggles is staying grounded in their relationship with Jesus.
“We’re all just learning that there are a lot of more proactive things that need to be done,” says Welsh, adding that with time on the road, they’re rarely able to attend their home churches. “So,” he says, “a lot of that now falls into our hands.
Do you listen to The Fray? Do you agree with their take on doing one’s job well, and letting the Gospel come in after that? I get what they’re saying, but I’m afraid it borders on a kind of mentality that pushes evangelizing to the back burner, when in fact, it is our Great Commission.
