[The City Church] Strategies for Single Adults

Todd Keller / Carla Campbell
Wednesday, April 19, 2006 (7:00pm at Kirkland)

Click here to go to thecity.org to listen or download.

Hardcore issues with our churches

Excerpt from Just Thinking: Ravi at Roxy Q&A part 2:

It is mind-boggling to me that our young men and women are raised in some churches where they are not taught what an absolute is, how to defend an absolute. I've just been invited by one of the major news network. I'll leave it unnamed. In a few days I will go to do some recording with them. And the whole issue is one of their anchors read the book "Can Men Live Without God?" And she was quite profoundly moved by that and says, "I really want to do a television program on this, and bring in a skeptic who is a naturalist to hold the counter position and we both are going to dialog on these issues. What really fascinates me is how does the skeptic really talk about moral ideas when they have no moral framework to which they refer. The skeptic draws a circle around himself or herself on these issues. The tragedy is the Christians themselves have lost this absolute. Where do we go to an absolute? Why do we need an absolute? What is the guideline for my life, for my conduct and my belief? It is critical that we read the scripture and understand that it is both good for the doctrine and for conduct. We have to teach them how to understand this.

The second thing is that really worries me and I know I'll come in for a lot of criticism with this but with each passing birthday I less worry about criticism and I have to be honest that I am willing to take it in stride: someday we might find out that we hurt a whole generation in our churches by not allowing them to think seriously. You can lose a whole generation in this. We have bought into this idea that you engineer emotions in the one hour that you have them. You manufacture feelings and we send them out of there and the net result is that their lifestyles are no different to the people of those around them who don’t believe the same thing they do. It is going to take a huge recovery operation. And sometimes my wife would tell you sometimes I really do get disheartened about this and wonder "where we are losing this battle?" I think we are really losing it in our churches by not giving our young people the credit to think and go deeper and deeper into an understanding of the nature of truth and why it is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Light. When we manufacture emotions, the emotions stand in isolation. When emotions are generated because of knowledge, then they always remain in tandem and that is the way it should be. So I think in these two ways we are flirting with some very dangerous ground: the lost of the absolute and I think the inability to get our young people and our church people to think again. That's a tragedy.

The Anatomy of Faith & the Quest for Reason

"Once you have cut off a person's nose, there's no point in giving them a rose to smell."

If you are interested, go to RZIM.org.

"Therein will lie your content."

Take two seconds to read the bold lines below that came from Ravi's messge "A Life that Lost Its Focus: Saul" part 2. You'll know whether God is speaking to you through it.

If you define a person in terms of what they do, that's when the existential philosophy takes over, and experience becomes the sole definition of who you are.
I remember that day as I settled before the Lord in the heavens, I wanted to make sure that never again I would try to be somebody else but only be grateful to God for making me the way He has. Follow me my friend? Be grateful to God for the way He has made you. Don’t try to be anybody else. Saul envied David and it was his downfall. As you look into your own life, are you willing to accept yourself with your weaknesses with your deprivations? And I don’t say this to be funny. Some of you may look into the mirror and wonder why God gave you the face He did. I’ve met people like that who come and sit in front of me and weep. I’ve met people who cursed the color with which they were born. I’ve talked to them. I’ve talked to students who’ve sat in my office and wept because they do not think they have the preaching skills that somebody else does and think they are not going to make it. I’ve talked to people who got a deformity that is such a deprivation and a disadvantage to them and they have wanted to clinch their fists and anger before God. One of the greatest sense of releases comes when you can lift your countenance toward the heavens and thank Him for the way He has made you and He has made you distinctively you. Do not try to be a David. Do not try to be a Moses. Do not try to be an Abraham. Do not try to be some great hero before you today. Try to be the kind of person God has made you to be. And therein will lie your content.

Praise the Lord for His Word. You may find Ravi's message here.

What is your work ethics as a Christian?

"All personal pleasure and enjoyment is bought at a price--for the legitimate pleasure you pay it before the pleasure. For the illegitimate you pay it after."

Sincerely, I invite all of you to listen to apologist Ravi Zacharias's message " Faith under Fire" before we claim to be Christians in home, at church and in our workplace.