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February 25 - March 27, 2024
The goal of knowledge is wisdom. The goal of wisdom is to lead a life that is pleasing to God.
While our material standard of living has soared over the last century, our moral/spiritual/relational standard of living has plummeted.
Today, men are consumed by desires to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like. Where do these desires come from?
Men today are worn-out. Many who chased their dreams have lost their families. Too many children have grown up with an absentee father.
why has the moral fabric of our nation gone threadbare? America was founded by men who sought spiritual freedom to worship God. Where are the descendants of these men?
The most lasting satisfaction of life is in our relationships, so why are we trading them in for careers with companies that will drop us like hot potatoes
democracy in which everyone’s opinion is afforded equal weight, regardless of substance or merit.
Our problem may be more what our unconscious minds are exposed to than how our conscious minds operate.
The vast communication industry realized long ago the resistance to advertising which develops at the conscious level. However, there is little, if any, resistance encountered at the unconscious level, to which marketing appeals are now directed.3
Men who pursue the Madison Avenue lifestyle — and to some extent we all do — find it either unobtainable, unable to be maintained, or not worth maintaining at all.
as Solomon wrote, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).
Anxiety is the natural by-product of chasing the beautiful, wrinkle-free life.
Not only do we have the tension of not reaching the lifestyle we set as our goal, but we also have the pressure of the debt we accumulated trying to get there.
But every balance sheet has two sides, and the other side of this balance sheet is relationships.
When we choose the rat race, fracture lines soon appear in our relationships, and crumbling is not far behind. Unfortunately, all too often, in pursuit of the good life, men leave a trail of broken relationships.
After all is considered, the number one shortcoming of man is that we tend to lead unexamined lives.
Each of us has a worldview. For most of us, our worldview results more from where we were born, who our parents were, and what schools we attended than a careful examination of issues.
These two worldviews, secular and Christian, are on a collision course. They inevitably produce opposite results.
The choice between a Christian worldview and a secular worldview is a choice between God’s race and the rat race.
Christians are in a minority, we are often proselytized by the majority message of consumerism and materialism that is trying to convert us to a secular lifestyle. That’s right — the disciples of the other worldview work just as hard as Christians do to make converts!
In other words, many of us are Christians in our spirit but secular in our practice. We have become a generation of cultural Christians.
The Christian’s openness comes from his search for truth and absolutes. The secularist’s openness exists because he makes up the truth in his own “best thinking” and has no absolutes.
We can know much, but if we do not use our knowledge to elevate ourselves — our mind, our soul, our spirit — to the highest level of moral good we can attain, then we are poor stewards of that knowledge. And we become Christians in captivity, held captive by the secular worldview, “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.”
A whole new generation of Christians has come up believing that it is possible to “accept” Christ without forsaking the world.
the majority of people have adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence.
Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren.
Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity — a life made up of things, things, and more things — a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance.
If religion is such a big part of our lives, why isn’t it making more of an impact on our society?
“A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.”
Cultural Christianity means pursuing the God we want instead of the God who is.
To what extent do you think these three values — personal peace, affluence, and cultural Christianity — describe your own life? What has been the result of this adaptive, cultural religion?
people now associate themselves with religion has produced two kinds of Christians: biblical Christians and cultural Christians.
The parable of the sower reveals four groups of hearers of the Word of God.
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5).
Biblical Christians don’t live by their own ideas, but by penetrating, understanding, and applying the Word of God.
Biblical Christian — a genuine faith (obedience) • Cultural Christian Type “C” — a counterfeit faith (not genuine faith) Type “D” — a defeated faith (no power)
If you take a pot of boiling water and toss a frog in, the frog will immediately feel the heat and leap out of the pot. But if you start with a pot of cold water, put the frog in it, and slowly turn up the heat, the frog won’t notice the change in temperature and won’t leap out — he’ll be cooked.
The question for us all should be: Is there any marginal difference between the way I live and the way the broken, hurting world lives? Does my life offer hope or disillusionment?
Are you lukewarm, slowly being cooked — like the frog? If your answer is yes, then you have been living the life of a cultural Christian.
The cultural Christian lives by his own ideas and the ideas of others.
The biblical Christian lives by the Word of God and the counsel of the Holy Spirit.
there is a difference between wrestling with a Scripture to understand the truth of it, to penetrate it, and to grasp its full depth and meaning versus wrestling with it to decide whether or not you think it’s true.
The first wrestling is seeking the terms of surrender. The second wrestling is a contest of our will against the will of God
The man who has been living as a cultural Christian can change by examining the influences on his life and the values he has adopted.
The man in the mirror will never change until he is willing to see himself as he really is and to commit to know God as He really is.
The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.
How we each answer the questions “Who am I?” and “Why do I exist?” determines how we pursue our significance.
Authentic, lasting significance is hid with Christ.
A man’s ultimate desire is for immortality. “He has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Many people satisfy their need to be significant without Christ. The difference in the quality and durability of that significance, however, is monumental.
