Hang-ups

Take a moment, clear your mind, and answer this question as honestly as you can:

What is hindering you from believing in God? What is keeping you from accepting the person of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?

If you reject the Christian faith, if you reject the Bible, if you reject Jesus, let me ask you this:

Why? REALLY...... why?

Do you have a reason? If so, have you considered your reasoning? If you've been hung-up on something you don't understand about God, Jesus, the Bible or the Christian worldview, have you pursued answers to your question(s)? If you haven't, I'd encourage you to do so.

Here's one example of what I'm talking about:

Do you reject the Christian faith because "Christians are hypocrites."? If so, I'd suggest that you reconsider this reasoning. The Bible tells us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) Have you rejected Christ because people who have talked to you about Him have judged you and said or acted like they were better than you? If you've thought, "They're no better than me!", you are correct... they aren't better than you. The Bible also says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:9) They have not attained salvation by their own doing, salvation is a free gift from God that you cannot earn. They don't "deserve" to spend eternity with God in heaven, anymore than anyone else.

Jesus dealt with this very thing in the gospels. The Pharisees were confident in their knowledge of the law, and how they had kept the law. Jesus said in Luke 11, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them." God is fully aware of hypocrisy and when Jesus came to earth, He definitely addressed the issue head-on.

So what? What's the point?

Say for instance you truly don't believe there is a God, but then... you die, and you find out there really IS a God. What do you have to say for yourself? Will you blame your disbelief on those pesky Christians who acted like they were better than you? (They shouldn't do that by the way, I'm not suggesting that they don't have a responsibility to act right.) What would God say in response to that if you did? I believe that He covered every possible angle. There are no loop-holes. If you read His Word, you will find that it's VERY clear:

Acts 4:12 (NIV)
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

There are no excuses... He has provided a way for mankind to find redemption. There is ONE way to God the Father, and that is through His son, Jesus Christ. And His Word (The Holy Bible), which tells us about that way... is being spread all over the world so that all may know that the payment for our sin has been paid by the blood of Jesus Christ.

God isn't asking you to accept the "truth" and actions of man... He is asking you to accept His truth and His actions. He sent His son Jesus to die for your sins and mine. Christianity is ultimately about Christ. He was born of a virgin, He was crucified, He died, and He rose again. Through Him, we have victory over sin and death.

So, what's your hang-up? What are you struggling to accept? What's keeping you from following Christ?

Dangerous Times

I say to you - we are living in dangerous times, not because of attacks from outside of this land, but because this land no longer knows what it believes. Until we know what we believe here, and what it is that is worth preserving, we will never know what it is that's really being attacked.
-- Ravi Zacharias

What is destroying the moral and spiritual foundation of today’s society?

Ravi Zacharias: I believe a convergence of many factors has taken place. Much of education in the 1960s came unhinged from any moral absolutes and ethical values, to wit the book Excellence Without a Soul by Harry R. Lewis. We have seen this happening the last 40 years. There have been many voices alerting us to this. But more than just a philosophy took over; a mood took over.

First, secularization generally held that religious ideas, institutions, and interpretations have lost their social significance. People liked the idea of a secular society and a secular government. But in terms of moral values and ethics, they never checked into the internal assumptions of secularization that made it wide open to almost any view on any subject. Beginning in the 1960s, the moods of secularization ultimately led to society’s loss of shame.

Next is pluralization, which sounds like a practical and worthy idea; and in many ways, it is. In pluralism you have a competing number of worldviews that are available, and no worldview is dominant. But smuggled in with pluralization was the absolutization of relativism. The only thing we could be sure of was that all moral choices were relative and there was no point of reference to right and wrong. This resulted in the death of reason.

Last is privatization, which is an accommodation to the religiously minded. If secularization and pluralization were going to hold sway, what does society do with the large number of people who are spiritually minded?

Being spiritually minded was okay as long as people kept their spiritual beliefs private and did not bring them into the public arena. The irony of this was the fact secularization — which had its assumptions on absolutes and anything of the metaphysical nature — was allowed into the public place. In fact, its very trust was to bring it into the public place. But anyone who believed in a spiritual Essence, an Ultimate Reality, and the fact there were transcendent absolutes that needed to be adhered to was told to keep those beliefs private. That ultimately paved the way for the loss of meaning.

These three moods — secularization, pluralization, and privatization — brought about loss of shame, loss of reason, and loss of meaning. How was this authoritatively pontificated in the social strain? This is when philosophy stepped in, the moralizers against morality came in, and political correctness came in. These gave society some parameters that allowed it to expel the moralizing from outside the secular realm.

As a result, everything became pragmatic. Philosophers and naturalists stepped in. In this new century, we have lost all definitions of what it means to be human, and what sexuality, life, and the home are all about. We are on the high seas, battling the storms of conflicting worldviews without a compass.

Worship

How do we regain or retain the integrity of worship? The risks we flirt with today in the Christian world, where worship has become an experience rather than a way of life, is a very very risky proposition. How do we keep worship holding it's theological integrity, and finding its existential relevance? If we do not understand how to retain its integrity and maintain relevance, we will lose one of the two in the process and the church either becomes irrelevant or loses truth in the process.
-- Ravi Zacharias

Secularization: Its Control and Power
by Ravi Zacharias

• Part 2 0f 2
• Part 1 of 2