Monthly Archives: March 2013
The Greatest Event in History!
What would your answer be if you were asked to name the greatest event in the history of the world?
I suspect that your answer would depend on your overall worldview. A Christian, who fully understands the Gospel message, would say that the resurrection of Christ was the greatest event in history. But I don’t think any non-Christians would agree with that answer. Regardless of what their religious or ideological beliefs might be, all non-Christians have one thing in common; they don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ.
Lee Strobel has been a follower of Christ and a well-known Christian apologist for over 30 years. Before becoming a Christian, Lee was an award-winning investigative journalist and the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune. He was also a self-professed “drunk” and an “angry atheist.” His wife, Leslie, was agnostic when they married, but later became a Christian. Leslie’s conversion to Christianity infuriated Lee to the point that he was considering a divorce.
Lee wanted the agnostic Leslie back so he devised a plan; he reasoned that if he could prove to Leslie that Christianity wasn’t true, she’d ditch her newfound faith and her new friends from church and return to her agnosticism. As an investigative journalist and Yale-educated lawyer, Lee was qualified to gather the evidence and also prosecute his case against Christianity. He rightly concluded that to successfully prove (to Leslie and the world) that Christianity was based on myths and superstition, the only thing he had to demonstrate was that the resurrection of Christ never occurred.
Lee took a two year leave of absence from his job at the Tribune and began traveling all over the world interviewing experts in many different fields. As many of you know, Lee’s research is now compiled in his best-selling book, The Case for Christ. Through his research, Lee became a firm believer in the resurrection of Christ and found that it took more faith for him to maintain his atheism than it did for him to commit to following Christ.
As Lee says, when you accept the resurrection of Christ as a historical fact, it leads to hope and transformation – “It gives me hope that as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, so I will someday be too. It gives me confidence in the teachings of Jesus, that I can apply them to my life, that they’ll make a difference in my life. They’re not just the teachings of a bright and loving individual; they’re the teachings of the Son of God himself. It means to me that Jesus deserves my worship and my allegiance. It also means that I want to spend my life helping other people see the evidence for the resurrection, that they too may experience what I’ve experienced, which is a 180-degree life change from my days as an atheist, to my days as a Christian.”
Jesus wasn’t merely resurrected; Jesus IS the resurrection! Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
At the top of my blog, I have a page titled Christian? For two-thousand years the verses on this page have been used to explain what committing one’s life to following Christ entails. The final and key verses are the following – “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10)
The resurrection of Christ is the greatest event in the history of the world!
HAPPY EASTER!
“It is Finished!”
Sweating drops of blood, in anguish I prayed,
While friends sleep in the cool of the night’s shade,
A crowd, a commotion; with a kiss I am betrayed,
Scorn and ridicule; with a crown of thorns and a royal robe I am arrayed,
With the shards of a crude whip my body is beaten and flayed,
“CRUCIFY HIM” came the verdict of the angry brigade,
Hands and feet nailed to a cross, as a trophy I was displayed,
“It is finished!” In a dark tomb my body was laid,
Hell and death defeated; for you the price of sin I paid!
“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
A Temptation I Can Relate To
Do you ever feel as if your Facebook friends have more exciting lives than yours; that by comparison your life is boring?
I recently read about a study, which concluded that Facebook and other social networking sites are leading many users to feel “dissatisfied with their lives.” The study found that, “Witnessing friends’ vacations, love lives and work successes on Facebook can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness.” Additionally, some people admitted that Facebook caused them to feel “frustrated or angry.”
Covet: To desire what belongs to another. (Webster’s Dictionary)
As someone who rarely leaves home, I can relate to this. If it wasn’t for the Discovery Channel and the Travel Channel, I’d never even have imaginary adventures or vacations. When ALS forced me to quit work and began limiting my ability to travel, I quickly figured out just how dangerous and depressing coveting (the health and lifestyle of others) could be. Thankfully, with God’s help, I’ve moved beyond that temptation and am now genuinely happy when I see family and friends enjoying the health and wealth that God has blessed them with.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15)
Thankfully, a few years after being diagnosed with ALS, I figured out that one of the problems with jealousy, or what the Bible calls covetousness, is that it keeps you from truly Rejoicing with those who rejoice” and, when you’re having a pity party, it’s also impossible to genuinely empathize with others – we cannot “weep with those who weep” because they’re stealing the spotlight that we think should be on us.
If you are one of the 33 percent of Facebook users that gets jealous when you read posts about your friends successes or see pictures of their fun vacations etc, ask yourself if you would be happy if none of your friends had any successes and never took vacations. I hope, like me, that’s the last thing you would want. In fact, to be honest, I only get frustrated with able-bodied couch potatoes; if I could speak I’d tell them to get up and go enjoy their life – like my mom used to tell me when, as a teenager, I was sitting on the couch watching Gilligan’s Island on a beautiful summer afternoon. If medical science ever makes it possible to do head transplants, watch out couch potatoes – I know of a lot of people with ALS and other disabilities that would make good use of your sedentary bodies.
The problem with sites like Facebook is that most people only post the highlights of the lives; they post pictures of their vacations, but rarely do they post pictures of themselves working. Mary’s sister is an executive with a large airline and for several years she would take our girls on exotic summer vacations; fun places like resorts in the Caribbean and Cabo San Lucas or the mountains of Colorado. Because their Aunt Kathy lives far away in another city, these trips were usually the only time the girls got to spend with her; they never saw her coming home exhausted after one of her frequent long days at work. Like our girls only seeing the good part of Aunt Kathy’s life, I think that Facebook, and the Internet in general, can give us a distorted view of reality.
You cannot be grateful for what you have when you’re focusing on what you desire.
“Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not steal,” seem to get all the press these days, but “Thou shalt not covet” is still one of the Ten Commandments.
Unshakable Hope 