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A Prayer and Fasting Devotional

Even within the evangelical community, there has been debate over the last decade on the crucial biblical teaching of justification. Luther called justification “the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls,” so we want to make sure that we put up fences to protect this precious truth.

What is so precious about justification? We could recite a long list to answer this question, but I want to focus in on one particular reason why this truth is precious, namely, it is the spark which ignites the fire of love for Jesus in the hearts of sinners like you and me. Let me show you this from Luke 7:36 – 50.

Pastor, author and theologian Dr. Jack Deere delivered this message on Pain at Christian Union's Winter Faculty and Staff Conference.

Pain (52:15)

A Prayer and Fasting Devotional

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35 ESV)

“Daddy!  Are you hungry?  What’s for dinner?  Can we go to…Shake Shack?!”  This conversation occurs semi-regularly in our family; my kids are well aware of my proclivity for Shake Shack.  They attempt to use my disposition toward their own ends in ways that are savvy beyond their years.  It’s not uncommon, however, in consideration of their question, for me to need to pause and take account of the state of my stomach.  I have to stop myself, attempt to gauge what is happening in my mid-section, and determine just how hungry I am.  It often surprises me that I can get so caught up with what I am doing (work, the NY Times, a good book, a basketball game on TV) that I don’t even realize, until I stop, pause, and assess, that I actually am hungry!  Certainly there are times when sizable hunger interrupts those distractions of its own accord and lets me know, in no uncertain terms, that it needs to be assuaged.  But there are also times when my physical hunger goes ignored until someone helps me to stop and recognize my own internal state.

A Prayer and Fasting Devotional

It is possible to do all the right things in all the wrong ways. You may already know this, but it is something very easy to forget. It, therefore, ought to come as no surprise that we find warnings about this very thing throughout Scripture, especially in the Prophets. It is put perhaps most poignantly in the first chapter of Isaiah:

Hear the word of the LORD,
    you rulers of Sodom!
Give ear to the teaching of our God,
    you people of Gomorrah!
"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
    says the LORD;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
    and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
    or of lambs, or of goats.
"When you come to appear before me,
    who has required of you
this trampling of my courts?

A Prayer and Fasting Devotional

Our culture is obsessed with being the most famous, the best, and the brightest. Perhaps it's not our culture so much as our human nature just exaggerated by technological capabilities. Regardless, this obsession has taken the secret, silent beauty out of the hard and mundane. The problem is that while perusing Instagram or Facebook, discontentment can begin to creep in as you creep on other people's so-called lives. We want to climb mountaintops and reach the stars so badly that the concept of being faithful in the little feels boring. But the truth is, the daily grind of small, faithful diligence is as admirable as it is difficult. Personally, my ability to be diligent is far from amazing, but with each new day I see that God has sustained me from the last and that I get to start over (Lamentations 3:23, Romans 8:28).

Acclaimed author and social critic Dr. Os Guinness was the special guest speaker at the Christian Union New York City Forum. (52:02)

A Prayer and Fasting Devotional

Hebrews 13:5 says, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. . .” That’s good enough advice, if nearly impossible to follow.  But what I find so compelling in it is the reasoning that follows the directive.  Do you know what it is?  If not, take a guess.  What source of motivating power does the author append to this enjoinder?

Give up? It is this:  “. . . because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’”


Click the image above to view Christian Union's 2015 Annual Report. If you do not see an image, download a .pdf version of the 2015 annual report.

Seeking God & Building Bridges

 
Princeton alumnus, Cambridge University MPhil, and current California Berkeley PhD student Dave Kurz grew up in a Christian home, but faith was not the center of his life until he went to college and began attending Christian Union bible courses. Hear how these experiences helped shape his beliefs and led him to earnestly seek God.

Excellent Additions to Your Reading List

The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook 
by Niall Ferguson 

ferg

The 21st century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always been with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to rule, but often real power has resided in the networks in the town square below. For it is networks that tend to innovate. And it is through networks that revolutionary ideas can contagiously spread. Just because conspiracy theorists like to fantasize about such networks doesn't mean they are not real. (Amazon)

 

The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction
by Justin Whitmel Earley

TheCommonRule

Twenty-first-century Christianity has experienced a much-needed renaissance in its theology of work, but it takes formational habits to work with the purpose we preach, and this ingredient is still largely missing from the conversation.  In the meantime our workplaces are being fragmented by the distractions of technology, uncontrollable busyness, and the question of whether we want a job driven by purpose or upward mobility. This book addresses the need to pair our theology on the meaning of work with the formational practice of spiritual work habits in order to bring order and purpose back to the workplace - and to our lives.

 

True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World
by David Skeel

TrueP

Although the twentieth century saw several landmark contributions to Christian apologetics, these Christian classics have lost some of their effectiveness in an era when America is more pluralistic than ever before and many Americans imagine that science has explained or will soon explain all of the mysteries of life.  Skeel, however, argues that Christianity actually offers better explanations than materialism or other perspectives for many of the most important puzzles of our existence - such as our idea-making capacity, our perceptions of beauty and suffering, and our repeated optimism that we can create a truly just social order and repeated failure to do so.


On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books
by Karen Swallow Prior

reading

Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue. Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to practice numerous virtues, such as patience, diligence, and prudence. And learning to judge wisely a character in a book, in turn, forms the reader's own character.

 

Prior takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life.  (Amazon)

 

The Road to Character
by David Brooks

the road to character"Brooks focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance the scales between our "résumé virtues"—achieving wealth, fame, and status—and our "eulogy virtues," those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, or faithfulness, focusing on what kind of relationships we have formed." (Amazon)



A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918

by Joseph Loconte

a hobbitt a wardrobe"The First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence—and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been noHobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis." (Amazon)

The Professor and the President: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House
by Stephen Hess

professor and president"Written by Stephen Hess, who served on the White House staff during both the Eisenhower and Nixon presidencies, this book is a uniquely personal account of what happened behind closed doors when conservative Richard Nixon made Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal Ivy League professor, his top urban affairs adviser." (Brookings)




Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet
by Jonathan Schneer

ministers war"Ministers at War tells the gripping story of how the man who certainly saved Britain and arguably saved western civilization managed his cabinet "team of rivals," a coalition of men who had spent most of their interrelated, pre-war political lives at daggers drawn." (First Things)





To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
by James Davison Hunter

to change the world"The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? 

Hunter argues that all too often current political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls "faithful presence"-- an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life." (Amazon)