SHAPED BY RELIGION OR THE GOSPEL

SHAPED BY RELIGION OR THE GOSPEL

 
Dear Champions,
 
The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is John 10:14-15 I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me­ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father­and I lay down my life for the sheep.
 
Why do Christians live the way that they do?  Not how do they live because basically they live like other good people, but why do they live the way that they do?  Jesus says that all shepherds basically tell you that here is how you should live, but I am the only Shepherd who does not just tell you how you have to live, but I came to live the life that you should have lived and died the death that you should have died in your place.  So when you come to God in my name, God delights in you now.
 
Religion says that if I try real hard to live right, then God will accept me.  The gospel says that because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; you are already accepted, now live right.
 
In religion you live right out of the anxious hope that if you try hard enough to live right you will move God to bless you and take you to heaven.  It also says that you better live right, or God will reject you.  The gospel says that because of an infinite cost to Himself, God will never reject you, and it makes you want to live right to delight and please Him.
 
A person shaped by religion is shepherded by fear and a whip is what is moving that person to live right.  A person shaped by the gospel is moved to live right out of joy. 
 
Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

A DEBT THAT MUST BE PAID FOR

A DEBT THAT MUST BE PAID FOR

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is 1 Peter 3:18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

This idea of a debt that has to be paid for, surely if there is a God, can He not just forgive it?  No, He cannot just forgive without a payment.
 
If someone really, really wrongs you, there is a debt.  There is something between you and that person who has seriously wronged you, and it cannot be washed away or ignored.  There are only 2 things you can do with a debt.  You can make them pay it down by hurting, berating or excluding them or by finding ways of making them suffer.  As you see them paying for their debt, you can sense the debt being paid down and at a certain point it is gone. 
 
The other thing you can do is forgive them.   To forgive means that when I want to hurt someone, I do not do it.  When I want to slice up their reputation by talking to other people, when I want to just think hateful thoughts about how they have done awful things I do not do it.  And if I do that, I will find as time goes on that my anger slowly subsides because I am paying the debt down myself.  It is costly and difficult, but someone has to pay the debt. 
 
There is no one on the face of the earth that can face an evaluation of how they have lived their lives.  We have wronged God and our neighbor, and there is a debt that must be paid.  There is a debt that must be paid and when Jesus Christ cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?  The Father paid the debt -- Jesus had to die.
 
Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

A Violinist in the Metro

A Violinist in the Metro

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt was sent to me by Cammy Bethea, and the Scripture is in the excerpt.

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.  

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.  

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.  

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. 

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.  

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Romans 1:19-20 what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities­his eternal power and divine nature­have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

P.S. You can verify this story by going into Google and typing Pearls before Breakfast.

Angry Prayers

Angry Prayers

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Andrew Murray, and the Scripture is Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

There are a lot of books on the subject of prayer, but few contain chapters on Angry Prayers. The greatest book on prayer, however, is the Bible; and it records some angry prayers times when perplexed souls, confused by life, complained to God. The writer of Psalm 44:23-24, for example, wrote, Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?

In Jeremiah 12, the weeping prophet complained to the Lord, saying, in effect, Lord, I know You are righteous, but I do not understand why You are allowing these heartbreaks.

While we must not harbor bitterness toward God after all, He is righteous, and He does do all things well it is all right to express our frustrations and questions to Him. Even Jesus cried, My God, My God, why . . . ?

God knows all about us, and He is concerned about the details of our situations. We should never fear telling Him anything. It's by expressing our innermost feelings that we come to the point of confessing our sins and understanding His perspective which heals our minds.

So be honest in prayer, even when you are angry. Tell Him all about it, and you will find His grace is sufficient.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

From Rags to Riches-Part 2

From Rags to Riches-Part 2

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Reach Boivin and is more on Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner. The Scripture is 1 Corinthians 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

During his final season at the University of Northern Iowa in 1993, Kurt Warner went to a country-music dance bar called Wild E. Coyotes. He spotted Brenda Carney Meoni and asked her to dance. Her immediate reaction? Get away. Get away, she thought. Here is this cute guy in a bar with an entourage of females, and I am the last person that makes sense for him to go to, Brenda said. I am a divorced woman with two kids, one with special needs. And Kurt is 21. They danced, and the next day, Warner was knocking on her door with a rose.

Again, I am screaming in my head, Go away, but I opened the door and said, Come on in, she said. My 2 and a half year old grabs him by the hand and shows him every radio we own. He fell in love with my kids before he fell in love with me. When we would have a fight and were going to break up, he would say, Well I get the kids. I am like, but they are my kids!

They stuck together, even when it appeared football was not in the future. He signed with the Green Bay Packers as a free agent in 1994 but was cut before the season began. He returned to UNI to work as a graduate assistant football coach and spent nights stocking shelves at the local Hy-Vee grocery store. He moved in with Brenda, who was struggling financially and turned to food stamps for a while. They drove a car that died every time it turned left.

Around this time, Warner began challenging Brenda about her faith. He questioned her, suggesting she was picking and choosing her beliefs from the Bible at her convenience. During this exploration, he closely studied the Bible. When I did, it was obvious what the truth was, Warner said.

Before they married, he told Brenda they should follow the Bible faithfully, which meant, among other things, no premarital sex. They married in 1997, and what followed was two Super Bowls and two MVP titles. During a visit to The Oprah Winfrey Show, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner basically had three sentences to say, so, in the middle one, I made sure I mentioned my faith, because how could they cut it out? I went to watch the show on replay . . . and they cut it out!

Warner says, If you ever really want to do a story about who I am, God has got to be at the center of it. Every time I hear a piece or read a story that does not have that, they are missing the whole lesson of who I am.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

From Rags to Riches

Dear Champions,

I received this excerpt several years ago, and I think that it came from an FCA article but I'm not sure. The Scripture is at the end of the excerpt.

Kurt Warner, quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals, became a Christian shortly after tragedy touched his life. The parents of his girlfriend Brenda, now his wife, were killed when a tornado demolished their home in Mountain View, Ark. They had planned to be baptized that night, but stayed home because Brenda's mother had a headache, USA Today said. People at the church were spared. Warner watched as Brenda, a Christian, responded to the tragedy with poise and grace rather than self-pity. He also knew how she had dealt with a crippling accident suffered by her son, Zachary, eight years earlier, when he was dropped on his head as a baby. Brenda sat in a rocking chair next to Zachary's hospital crib for 17 days, watching as he suffered seizures, quoting Bible verses, and asking God to perform a miracle. Although legally blind and brain-damaged, Zachary can read and gets around fairly well.

Warner's long road to gridiron success was filled with setbacks and bad breaks. He warmed the bench for four years at the University of Northern Iowa. Finally getting a chance as a fifth-year senior, he led the Panthers to the NCAA Division I-AA semifinals and was named the Gateway Conference Offensive Player of the Year. But he was passed over in the NFL draft and rejected by the Canadian Football League. Warner took a job stocking shelves for minimum wage at the Hy-Vee supermarket in Cedar Falls, Iowa, while he worked out at a college practice field during the day. A year later he was playing again, but in small-time Arena football, an indoor game using eight players on a side and 50-yard fields. He missed a tryout for the Chicago Bears in 1997 when he was bitten on the elbow by a vicious spider, leaving him unable to throw. After three years he took a step up. He was signed by the Rams and sent to the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe, where in the spring of 1998 he led the league in passing yardage and touchdowns. The Rams hired Warner for the 1998 season, but he played in only one game. He was left unprotected in the expansion draft, but the new Cleveland Browns didn't want him, either. Warner was still with the Rams in 1999, but the team signed superstar-prospect quarterback Trent Green before the season for $16.5 million, and it looked like Warner would be overlooked again. Green got hurt, and Warner stepped up to take his place. To the surprise of almost everyone, he threw a record 41 touchdown passes, led the league in completion percentage, and took the Rams to the best record in their conference, 13-3. In five months he had gone from being an anonymous bench-sitter to a Pro Bowl selection, and was named the NFL's most valuable player.

Warner told his story years ago at a Billy Graham event. Who am I? I am a devout Christian man, he told the crowd of 40,000. I am not a football player. That is what I do. When I throw a touchdown pass now, my thoughts are on how can I use this success on the field as a platform to glorify and praise my Lord Jesus Christ.

Colossians 3:4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Performance or Grace Based Christianity

Performance or Grace Based Christianity

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Jerry Bridges with a little help at the end by Tim Keller.

�As I see it, the Christian community is largely a performance-based culture today. We think we earn God�s blessing or forfeit it by how well we live the Christian life. Most Christians have a baseline of acceptable performance by which they gauge their acceptance by God. For many, this baseline is no more than regular church attendance and the avoidance of major sins.

For committed Christians, this baseline of acceptable performance includes regular practice of spiritual disciplines, obedience to God�s Word, and involvement in some form of ministry. If we focus on outward behavior, many score fairly well. But these Christians are even more vulnerable to self-righteousness, for they can look down their spiritual noses not only at the sinful society around them but even at other believers who are not as committed as they are.

�We think we earn God�s blessing or forfeit it by how well we live the Christian life.�

Then there is a third group. The baseline of this group includes more than the outward performance of disciplines, obedience, and ministry. These Christians also recognize the need to deal with sins of the heart like a critical spirit, pride, selfishness, envy, resentment, and anxiety. This group of Christians is far more likely to be plagued by a sense of guilt because group members have not met their own expectations. And because they think God�s acceptance of them is based on their performance, they have little joy in their Christian lives.

Tim Keller puts it this way. Religion says, �I give God a record of righteousness, and then God owes me blessing.� But the gospel says, �God through Jesus Christ has given me a perfect record of righteousness which I receive by faith, and now I live for him.� The gospel message is that you are more sinful and evil and weak than you ever dared believe, but you are more valued and accepted and loved than you ever dared hope. John 14:6 Jesus answered, �I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.� Grace shows you that you can only be saved through the works of Jesus and not your own works.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining