Sunday Dispatch

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Sunday Dispatch.772

“Initially, the God of the Old Testament might seem overwhelming and domineering to you, or tyrannical, or perhaps even evil, which is good. It is the first telling that God is indeed God, by sheer definition, and not some ear-tickling fairy by which one in his depravity is guaranteed to find another form of stale romanticism or love at first sight. For such a first impression as the latter would be problematic to the essence of Christianity. Therefore the Christians are right in saying that the nature of imperfect men cannot ultimately co-exist with the nature of a perfect God; and that the hope of each man is now desperately found in God's sending of Christ.”

~ Criss Jami
 
Sunday Dispatch.773


Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Listen now, all of you—take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it’s what you vomit—that’s the real pollution.”

He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.”

~ Mark 7: 14, 16, 20-23 (The Message)
 
Sunday Dispatch.776

Answers to Common Objections

Christian theologians have differed wildly over every doctrine of Christianity. If Christianity were true, this would not be the case.

There are two huge problems with this argument. First, it is primarily a theological argument. How do we know that God, if he exists, would not allow error of any kind into the church? In fact, if the letters of Paul and the other apostles are any indication, there were people in the early Christian churches who held all kinds of wrong ideas and yet were considered -by Paul and the other apostles- to be real Christians.

Second, although I would not minimize the theological differences between major theologians of history, I think it a gross exaggeration to claim that there is no core doctrinal agreement amongst them. In fact, the situation seems to be quite the opposite. Every major Christian theologian (especially those quoted most frequently by the Neoatheists) would affirm the major historic creeds of the Christian church, the deity of Christ, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of atonement, the historicity of the Resurrection, and the authority of the Bible. In fact, if I look at my own personal spiritual influences as a Christian, I find that they include men from all kinds of denominations, including Charles Spurgeon (Baptist) Tim Keller (Presbyterian), Martin Luther (Lutheran), John Calvin (Presbyterian), C.S. Lewis (Anglican), and David Martin-Lloyd Jones (Methodist). Again, I am not denying that there are areas in which these men disagree seriously.

However, it seems to me quite disingenuous for a skeptic to throw up his hands and claim that there is such disagreement that the Christian message is utterly obscure. If I could presume to speak for these men, I think they would unanimously affirm (with the apostle Paul) that the core of Christianity is and has always been "Jesus Christ and him crucified". Matters of other doctrine are important but ultimately secondary and should be faced only after we have answered the question: who is Jesus?

Short answer: although Christians certainly disagree in many areas of theology, the central message of Christianity ("Jesus died for our sins and was raised to life for our justification") has been affirmed by every Christian theologian throughout history, including those cited repeatedly by the Neoatheists.

~ Neil Shenvi
 
Sunday Dispatch.777

“It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions (namely that all are equal) is right. We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways.”

~Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
 
Sunday Dispatch.778

“Jesus, unlike the founder of any other major faith, holds out hope for ordinary human life. Our future is not an ethereal, impersonal form of consciousness. We will not float through the air, but rather will eat, embrace, sing, laugh, and dance in the kingdom of God, in degrees of power, glory, and joy that we can't at the present imagine.”

~ Timothy Keller



Sunday Dispatch.779

“Read and listen to one thinker and you become a clone; Read two and you become confused; Read ten and you get your own voice; Read a hundred and you start to become wise.”

~ Timothy Keller
 
Sunday Dispatch.780

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

~ John 6:28-52 (NIV)
 
Sunday Dispatch.782

Grieving, my soul thinks back;
these thoughts cripple, and I sink down.
Gaining hope,
I remember and wait for this thought:

How enduring is God’s loyal love;
the Eternal has inexhaustible compassion.
Here they are, every morning, new!
Your faithfulness, God, is as broad as the day.

~ Lamentations 3:20-23 (The Voice)
 
Sunday Dispatch.783

Have you ever studied Jesus's approach to talking with people? He didn't always fill the space with answers for them. Let's learn to do that with our fellow learners. Let's give them room to think and answer for themselves.

~ Charles R. Swindoll
 
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If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.

~ Vincent Van Gogh
 
Sunday Dispatch.785

Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.

~ Jacques Ellul
 
Sunday Dispatch.786


The word 'Christian' means different things to different people. To one person it means a stiff, upright, inflexible way of life, colorless and unbending. To another it means a risky, surprised-filled adventure, lived tiptoe at the edge of expectation...If we get our information from the biblical material, there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.

~ Eugene H. Peterson
 
Sunday Dispatch.787

God’s glory is on tour in the skies,
God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
Madame Day holds classes every morning,
Professor Night lectures each evening.

Their words aren’t heard,
their voices aren’t recorded,
But their silence fills the earth:
unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.

God makes a huge dome
for the sun—a superdome!
The morning sun’s a new husband
leaping from his honeymoon bed,
The daybreaking sun an athlete
racing to the tape.

That’s how God’s Word vaults across the skies
from sunrise to sunset,
Melting ice, scorching deserts,
warming hearts to faith.

The revelation of God is whole
and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear
and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right,
showing the way to joy.

The directions of God are plain
and easy on the eyes.
God’s reputation is twenty-four-carat gold,
with a lifetime guarantee.
The decisions of God are accurate
down to the nth degree.

God’s Word is better than a diamond,
better than a diamond set between emeralds.
You’ll like it better than strawberries in spring,
better than red, ripe strawberries.

There’s more: God’s Word warns us of danger
and directs us to hidden treasure.
Otherwise how will we find our way?
Or know when we play the fool?

Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
Keep me from stupid sins,
from thinking I can take over your work;
Then I can start this day sun-washed,
scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.

Psalm 19:1-14 (The Message)
 
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October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

~ Rainbow Rowell
 
Sunday Dispatch.789

Director Brian Baugh on his film ‘I’m Not Ashamed’
Selected from SFGATE, October 17,2016

When I got a call about doing a film on the life of Rachel Scott, the first victim of the Columbine shooting, I fully expected I would pass on the project. I started reading the script thinking it was going to be about some boring, sheltered, high school church girl who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was wrong.

Rachel’s life was a surprising, interesting, beautiful mess of teenage contradictions and struggles. Her faith led her to want to make a difference in the world, to be a light in her school, but she battled against her demons and temptations. She was just like me. There was a core to the story that was so accessible … so real.

However, because Rachel had a faith, the story got labeled as faith-based, and I didn’t particularly want to direct a so-called Christian film. I don’t consider movies Christian, any more than I think there are Christian bicycles, Christian hamburgers or a Christian piece of plywood.

Products and art don’t normally get described by the religion of their investors or creators, so why should films? Do we call Hugo’s “Les Misérables” a Christian play? Or Handel’s “Messiah” a Christian symphony? Or DaVinci’s “The Last Supper” a Christian painting? Does anyone label a Martin Scorsese film a Catholic film? I’ve never heard them referred to as such. To me, movies are just good, bad or somewhere in between. They either connect with an audience or they don’t.

So much to my surprise, after learning about Rachel’s life, I was willing to take the risk. She was a fascinating high school girl with a powerful story that could connect with audiences in a real way. She was a young artist who loved writing, drawing and acting. And she left behind these beautiful journals that told of her inner journey.
 
anyone who tries to claim that Handel's messiah or the painting of the last supper are not religious is either a clueless idiot or a bald-faced liar trying to manipulate clueless idiots for marketing purposes.

he's obviously not an ignoramus, so that clearly makes him an outright hypocrite. seems like just the right kinda guy to be making moralizing religious movies.
 
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Sunday Dispatch.790

God does not need our good works, but our neighbors do.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

~ Ephesians 2:7-10 (The Message)
 
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God’s love is meteoric,
his loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic,
his verdicts oceanic.
Yet in his largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a man, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks

~ Psalm 36:5-6 (The Message)
 
Sunday Dispatch.793

A cheerful disposition is good for your health;
gloom and doom leave you bone-tired.

~ Proverbs 17:22 (The Message)


Those who laugh often never grow old.

~ Benjamin Franklin
 
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To us who face a day of calm
To us in the middle of a storm
a prayer

To us who are strong in faith
To us who are weak
a prayer

To us who walk forward in your commands
To us who have fallen
a prayer

To us who are healthy
To us in sickness
a prayer

To us whose table is full
To us with only crumbs

To our Father in heaven we pray this prayer
Forgive us our sins Lord

We thank you for your many blessings
We thank you for our salvation

Thank you Lord for your love and mercy
We thank you Lord this day

May our hearts be stronger
May our faith grow
May we continue trusting and following you
May your will be done in our lives

And Lord may we praise and give thanks always

In the name of Christ
We pray this prayer
Amen
 
Sunday Dispatch.795


Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.

~ Leo Tolstoy
 
Sunday Dispatch.796

Come down to the manger, see the little stranger
Wrapped in swaddling clothes, the prince of peace
Wheels start turning, torches start burning
And the old wise men journey from the East

How a little baby boy bring the people so much joy
Son of a carpenter, Mary carried the light
This must be Christmas, must be tonight

A shepherd on a hillside, while over my flock I bide
Oh a cold winter night a band of angels sing
In a dream I heard a voice saying "fear not, come rejoice
It's the end of the beginning, praise the new born king"

I saw it with my own eyes, written up in the skies
But why a simple herdsmen such as I
And then it came to pass, he was born at last
Right below the star that shines on high

~ Robbie Robertson


 
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For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.

~ Charles Dickens
 
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Happy New Year to you, your family and friends!

I want to say thank you today for taking time to read the Sunday Dispatches every week. The purpose of the dispatches is to encourage believers in their faith and to encourage those interested in the Christian faith to investigate further.

A daily dispatch is also posted on Facebook. If interested, search for public group b o r d e r c r o s s (space letters/no caps) You can easily join or unjoin.

Again, Happy New Year!

Michael
 
Sunday Dispatch.799

We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.

~ Dennis Prager

Give thanks to God no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. (This is God’s will for all of you in Jesus the Anointed.)

~ 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (The Voice)
 
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