"Regeneration" is a biblical word for conversion, which emphasizes God's ability to generate new life where human logic says no life is possible. We may think of Abraham and Sarah, ages 100 and 90 respectively, to whom God promised their very own son (Gen. 17:15-17).The fulfillment of that promise was no more difficult than the spiritual regeneration of men and women. Jesus borrowed the metaphor when he told Nicodemus that all people must be "born again" or "born from above" (John 3:3). This is a necessity in the very nature of things, since all things reproduce after their own kind. What … [Read more...]
REVOLUTIONARY POWER – 1
A gracEmail subscriber requests some discussion here about "revolutionary" people, power and purpose, the titles of my classes at the March 2009 Tulsa International Soul-Winning Workshop. * * * We have considered what it means to be revolutionary people. For starters, it means being God's agents, gospel carriers whose character and lives are more important than their marketing skills or their ability to persuade others. Revolutionary power does not refer to our skill at "selling" Jesus. All human power combined cannot produce the spiritual regeneration of even one small person. That result … [Read more...]
REVOLUTIONARY POWER – 2
A gracEmail subscriber requests some discussion here about "revolutionary" people, power and purpose, the titles of my classes at the March 2009 Tulsa International Soul-Winning Workshop. The power that turns hearts to God is not human in origin but divine. George Atkins' 1819 song restated biblical truth in its request: "Will you pray with all your power, while we try to preach the Word? All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down." People who under-rate the power also usually understate the result. If nothing happens in "conversion" besides a change of intellectual content, … [Read more...]
REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE – 4
A gracEmail subscriber requests some discussion here about "revolutionary" people, power and purpose, the titles of my classes at the March 2009 Tulsa International Soul-Winning Workshop. * * * As God's agents, believers are called to live seriously and reverently in this world, making decisions and carrying them out in the energy that God supplies. As they do this, both individually and as a community of faith, their unselfish and well-ordered lives become attractively obedient -- to God and to their fellow earthlings. Knowing that they are agents of God and not independent contractors, … [Read more...]
GOD’S ‘POEMS’ (2)
April/May 1997 -- Yesterday we noted Paul's use of the Greek word poema (from which we get "poem") to describe God's workmanship in Creation (Rom. 1:20) and in his New Creation in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10). I described the divine handiwork in Creation, which we experienced recently in California. It aawed us into silence and then elicited outbursts of adoration. God's "poem" in his New Creation awed us as well these past eight days. For four days at Pepperdine, we joined an estimated 5,000 believers who packed the Fieldhouse twice each day to worship God in song and to enjoy soul-stirring … [Read more...]