Relationships

The divine plan of salvation does not consign human creatures to a state of mere passivity or of lesser status in relation to their Creator, because their relationship to God, whom Jesus Christ reveals to us and in whom He freely makes us sharers by the working of the Holy Spirit, is that of a child to its parent: the very relationship that Jesus lives with the Father.

Freedom mysteriously tends to betray the openness to truth and human goodness, and too often it prefers evil and being selfishly closed off, raising itself to the status of a divinity that creates good and evil

 The church cannot grow within peoples where relevant churches do not exist. Forty percent of the individuals in the world live within peoples with no church. They are no more spiritually “lost” than your cousin who has never gone to church, but unlike your cousin, there is no church made up of people like themselves with whom they can fellowship. Such people live in groups that we refer to as being “unreached.” Their entire people has not yet been effectively reached with the gospel.

We can confidently speak of closure to this unreached peoples mission. There were an estimated 17,000 unreached peoples in 1976. Today there are only an estimated 8,000 unreached (unimax) peoples, and a dynamic global movement is now in full swing that is committed to seeing Christ worshipped and obeyed within every one of them.

In 2 Timothy, the apostle gives to Timothy some last words before the apostle’s subsequent martyrdom. in chapter 3, Paul warns Timothy that in the “last days” times will be “difficult.”

The next generation will continue to grapple with some of the most difficult issues our culture has ever seen, and they must know that the Bible speaks to all of those issues. We make a grave error when we attempt to
explain the hard questions of life by saying “because the Bible says so.” instead, we should explain the
way that God’s Word is relevant to the lives of young people.

The problem of nominalism is far more difficult in nature than are the daily interruptions to our work flow. this is an ancient quagmire, as Christ’s own parables shows. it is not a challenge faced only by unfaithful or sub par pastors and churches. It is a burden that every shepherd and every assembly will bear at some point and in some fashion.

Another factor, such as my dealings with Muslims, and middle-easterners in general, they are event-oriented people. it’s not about “quality time” for them; it’s about the quantity of time you spend with them. this is difficult for most of us to understand because we lead busy lives that leave little time for friendship.

Our youth group is discussing Relationship Evangelism.  However proclamation is also about sharing of the
good news, and the pyramid cannot exist without it. Religious conversations are never difficult to get into with a Muslim, but they can be difficult to end without starting a debate.