Questions We Should Ask

 

"One ought to take time to reflect seriously upon the question, 'Has God truly wrought a miracle in my life?  Is my own heart proof of the supernatural intervention of God?'  That is the apologist's first question.  In the West we go through these seasons of new-fangled theologies.  The whole question of 'lordship' plagued our debates for some time as we asked, is there such a thing as a minimalist view of conversion?  W said the prayer and that's it.  Yet how can there be a minimalist view of conversion when conversion itself is a maximal work of God's grace?"

"If you are proposing marriage to someone, what would the one receiving the proposal say if you said, 'I want you to know this proposal changes nothing about my allegiances and my behavior and my daily life; however, I do want you to know that should you accept my proposal, we shall theoretically married.  There will be no other changes in me on your behalf.'  In a strange way we have minimized every sacred commitment and made it the lowest common denominator. What does my new birth mean to me?  That is the question we seldom ask.  Who was I before God's work in me, and who am I now?"

Ravi Zacharias, Christian apologist

Stupid Love

 

Attention all who may know someone who is infected with "stupid love" – share the following blog post at this link with them.

http://www.ccef.org/blog/why-love-so-stupid

Pastor Van

 

Digging For Treasure

 

One of my hobbies is treasure hunting. When I purchased my first metal detector, now over 20-years ago, the salesman, a treasure hunter himself with a huge display of goodies to validate his prowess, gave me two pieces of helpful advice.

First, he told me that once I found something buried in the ground, before filling in the hole, I should always scan the hole once again. He insisted that oftentimes where there was one coin, there would be others. He was right, and I have proved this time and time again.

Secondly, he told me never to believe that a place had been "hunted out," meaning that all the treasure had been taken. "For the patient hunter," he said, "there will likely be another treasure waiting." Once again he was right.

On one such occasion I was given permission to hunt the site of a home built in the late 1700s, a property that I was told had been hunted out. I started scanning early that morning, and hunted for six hours without finding a thing. Just when I was ready to give up, I started getting signals—one right after the other. I dug out so many coins they were literally running out of both of my pants pockets. One of the coins I found that day was an 1865 2-cent piece, worth about $70.

In the same way, new Christians desiring the milk of the Word can sweep over the Scriptures and find a host of marvelous treasures. But veteran students of the Bible can be sure that no matter how much we dig it will never be hunted out.

Keep on digging!

Pastor Van