Year by Year

Posted on May 9, 2011 by russellmckinney

As the story in 1 Samuel chapter 1 begins, a woman named Hannah is barren. She has a husband, Elkanah, who loves her very much, but she cannot give him children. Perhaps that is why he has a second wife. Her name is Peninnah, and she and Elkanah do have children. But as is typical in Old Testament stories in which the man has more than one wife, there is jealousy and rivalry between the wives. Because Peninnah knows that Elkanah loves Hannah more than her, she takes great delight in verbally abusing Hannah concerning Hannah’s barrenness. 1 Samuel 1:6 says of Hannah:

And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. (N.K.J.V.)

Peninnah’s cruel taunts are even thrown around during the family’s annual trips to Shiloh to worship and offer sacrifices at the Tabernacle, Israel’s central place of worship in those days. 1 Samuel 1:7 says:

So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat. (N.K.J.V.)_

Please notice those three words: year by year. How many years did Hannah endure the vicious taunting of Penninah? We can’t say for sure. All we know is that God didn’t come riding in with the calvary and fix the problem overnight. He let things go on for years!

This brings me to the core message of this post. How long have you been waiting for God to do that certain something? How long have you been waiting for Him to grant that specific request? How long have you been waiting for Him to deal with that one problem? If you can truthfully answer, “For years,” you are in the good company of Hannah.

The difference between you and her is that you know how her story turned out. God did eventually open her womb and grant her Samuel, who would grow up to become one of Israel’s greatest leaders. But as for the end of your story, well, right not that’s still in doubt (at least in your way of looking at things). Understand this, though: All those years of what you might classify as silence or inactivity on God’s part are no indication, in and of themselves, that He isn’t still going to do what you’ve asked Him to do. Remember the words of Psalm 27:14:

Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord! (N.K.J.V.)

Posted in Disappointment, Encouragement, Faith, God's Love, God's Timing, God's Provision, God's Will, Impatience, Needs, Patience, Perseverance, Prayer, Prayer Requests, Problems, Trusting In God, Waiting | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Foolish Man & His Diamond

Posted on May 5, 2011 by russellmckinney

A wealthy man sold all his possessions for cash and bought an incredibly expensive diamond. Then he put the diamond in his pocket and took a voyage from England to America. On the deck of the ship, he pulled out the diamond and began flipping it in his hand. Some of his fellow passengers warned him not to be so careless with something so valuable, but he took great delight in seeing how much they worried over his actions. So, to increase that worrying, he walked to the ship’s railing and started flipping the diamond there. It was there that, during one flip, the ship lurched forward unexpectedly and the diamond went down into the sea.

True story? I’d be shocked if it was. No one would be so foolish, right? But the fact is that millions of individuals around the world act even more foolishly every day as they take the ultimate gamble with the ultimate prize: their soul. What I mean is, they walk around literally one breath out of Hell.

Oh, there I went and used that inconvenient word, didn’t I? In this modern era, we aren’t supposed to say, “Hell” unless it is for the purposes of profanity or explaining where despicable people such as Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden go in the afterlife. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the Bible is still God’s written word, and it still teaches that the souls of all those who die without Christ as Savior go to Hell.

The New Testament’s Greek word for this place is Hades, and in Luke 16:19-31 Jesus describes Hades as a place of torment, flame, separation, remembrance, and regret. In Matthew 13:42, He calls it “the furnace of fire” and says that it produces “wailing” and “gnashing of teeth.” Obviously, Jesus didn’t shy away from letting people know just how gruesome Hell is.

You say, “Okay, Russell, I’ll go along with you that Hell exists and that the souls of certain people go there in the afterlife, but God only sends murderers, terrorists, pedophiles, rapists, and all the other ‘worst of the worst’ there, right?” Well, that certainly sounds logical and reasonable to our modern mindsets, but it simply isn’t correct theology. There are so many verses that I could cite here, but I’ll just use a few (all from the N.K.J.V.) from the third chapter of the gospel of John:

Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:16-18)

He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)

And so, you see, the only way for you to escape the horrors of Hell is to place your belief in Jesus as your personal Savior. Such believing involves you turning from your sins and turning to Jesus, the divine Son of God who died on the cross as the eternal payment for all your sins. Anything less than you placing saving belief in Him is just you continuing to flip up the priceless diamond of your soul as you stand next to the ship’s railing of the afterlife. But why be so foolish? Jesus, the one who said, “…the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37), stands ready to save you right now.

Posted in Belief, Coming Judgment, Death, Eternity, God's Wrath, God's Judgment, Hell, Salvation | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy Birthday, Mom

Posted on May 4, 2011 by russellmckinney

Today is my mother’s birthday, and I’d like to use this post to recall just one of the many fond memories that I have of her. Please understand that I could also speak of innumerable meals prepared, loads of laundry done, beds made, appointments kept, trips to church, Christmas and birthday presents, and whatever else it took to get me raised. But writing about all that would take the rest of my life and turn into an encyclopedia set. So, instead, I’ll just run with this one memory.

Back in the day, at my middle school, shorts were still pretty taboo. There was no written rule against wearing them, but everybody usually wore pants no matter how hot it was. Of course, I realize that things are different now in that my two sons wear shorts to school half the year. But this was the late 1970s and I’m simply telling you how it was.

Anyway, one spring day I decided, for whatever reason, to become a trendsetter and boldly wear a pair of shorts to school. Even as I write these words, I can’t explain to you what possessed me to step out of the herd. Call it a temporary lapse of sanity. So, off to school I went, wearing a nice pair of shorts, no doubt showing legs white enough to blind someone.

But once I arrived at school and began to mix and mingle, it didn’t take me long to realize that I had made a major mistake. My fellow classmates weren’t brutal, but a few little remarks were certainly made. Mainly, however, my embarrassment came from within, a fact that didn’t make the pain any less real. Needless to say, after a couple of hours, I was ready to go find some pants.

This is where my mother comes into the story. Fortunately for me, she worked in the Clerk of Courts office right up the street from the school. So, I went down to the school office, called her, and told her to come get me. I didn’t know how she would respond, but I was very grateful when she picked me up within minutes. She took me home, where I changed into a pair of my favorite jeans. Then she took me back to school, where I had a much better afternoon than morning.

I don’t know why, but as I thought about today being her birthday, that experience came to my mind. It was just one of those deals for which a parent never hears, “Thank you,” but the kid never forgets the love and kindness. So, as a birthday present to you mom, I say a long overdue, “Thank you,” not just for bailing me out that day but also for the countless other acts of loving kindness over my forty-four years on this earth. I know that this coming Sunday is Mother’s Day, and that’s the day normally set aside for talk such as this, but I thought you might enjoy this as a birthday present. I love you, and never doubt that I do remember all the good stuff.

Posted in Children, Doing Good, Dress and Appearance, Motherhood, Parenting, Personal, Thankfulness, Youth | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

My One Word For Osama bin Laden

Posted on May 2, 2011 by russellmckinney

Last night brought the news that every American has longed to hear for almost a decade: Osama bin Laden has been killed. Countless words will be written today about the story, and numerous questions will be raised. How could the world’s most wanted terrorist be living just an hour away from the capital of Pakistan, a country to which the U.S.A. has given millions of dollars in aid? Why was bin Laden’s body given a secretive burial at sea? Will this finally put an end to all the speculation that President Obama is a closet Muslim? Don’t ask me. To use a line from the President, such answers are above my pay grade.

Rather than me try to write the first, middle, and last word on the story of bin Laden’s death, I just want to focus on a simple one: hypocrisy. Whatever else you might call bin Laden (and that could surely make for a long list), call him a world-class hypocrite. I mean, think about it, here was a so-called “leader” who thought nothing of expecting his “troops” to live in hiding in deserts, caves, mountain fortresses, dingy apartments, and such, but he himself spent his time holed up in a grandiose (by Pakistan standards), three-storied, fortress home. While his men went for extended periods of time without seeing their families, he was caught with his youngest wife and one of his sons at his side. And you can bet he wasn’t living on cold beans and saltine crackers, either. As a Reuters news story put it, “It was a far cry from the popular notion of bin Laden hiding in some mountain cave on the rugged and inaccessible Afghan-Pakistan border…”

So, in the end, it seems that the mad zealot bin Laden proved himself to be just as susceptible to the life of ease and comfort as the average American he claimed to despise. Ironic? Yes, you could say that, but I’m going with hypocritical. Listen, it’s easy to sit back in your comfortable home, out of harm’s way, and dispatch orders for your men to happily die for the great cause. In that sense, bin Laden wasn’t one bit different from seemingly countless kings, czars, dictators, and rulers who came before him. I mean, if you are going to attempt world domination, at least get out of the house every now and then and mingle among your faithful! Personally, I don’t think that’s asking too much of a guy who claimed that the ultimate way to leave this world and set yourself up in the afterlife was to become a martyr.

Posted in Current Events, Hypocrisy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Me & My Bird

Posted on April 29, 2011 by russellmckinney

At our house, we’ve been dealing with an interesting problem for the past couple of days. Well, “interesting” is one word for it. “Annoying” would be another. “Maddening” would perhaps be best. A certain bird has been pecking away at two of our bedroom windows. This morning it woke me and Tonya up at first light. Our son, Royce, has the bedroom right next to ours, and the first thing he said when he got up was, “Something was trying to get in my window!”

It was yesterday, around lunch, when I first noticed the bird. It kept heaving itself into my bedroom window. When it wasn’t doing that, it was incessantly pecking away at that window. At first, I worried that the poor little thing would hurt itself. As the day wore on, though, I worried that it was going to crack the window. But along about dawn this morning, I just wanted the thing to ram into the window one last time and die.

So, after Tonya and the boys headed off to school, I turned my full attention to what had now officially become “a bird problem.” (Think Bill Murray going up against that gopher in the movie Caddyshack.) My first attempt involved me walking outside and seeing if there was any way that I could catch the thing. You know, maybe I could throw an old sheet over it, get it on the ground, keep it loosely trapped in that sheet, drive it a few hundred miles away, and then release it so that it could torment some other family in that area. But the bird was having none of it. I barely got within ten yards of it before it flew off to safety. Of course, as soon as I got back in the house, it returned to the window and started up again. So much for plan #1.

Next, I tried running hard at the window from the inside while the bird was pecking away at it. That did create the scare I was hoping for, but the bird just moved down to Royce’s window and started pecking away at that window. So then I ran at that window. That got the bird to fly off to a tree in my neighbor’s yard. Unfortunately, however, the bird didn’t stay there long. Just a few minutes later it was right back at my window, back on the job. That ended plan #2.

At this point, I decided to seek some professional help. I went to the internet and did a google search on “how to keep a bird from pecking at a window.” Of course, I had to begin by working through the old superstitious nonsense about such a bird meaning that someone in the house is going to die soon. Supposedly, the bird is actually the soul of a deceased loved one who has come back to escort another soul into the afterlife. Yeah, right, and I’m the Easter bunny. The only way that bird was going to be associated with a death in our home was if I fell off a ladder and broke my neck while trying to deal with it. Clearly, more research was in order.

In the end, I was somewhat surprised to learn that birds pecking at windows is a common problem, especially during this time of year. What the bird is actually doing is protecting its nesting territory from a rival bird. When it sees its reflection in the window, it thinks it’s seeing another bird from its species, and it deals with that by aggressively attacking that other bird. I guess it’s a price we pay for keeping our windows relatively clean.

Okay, so how do you stop a bird from attacking its reflection? The popular answer was to get some pictures of a cat and tape those pictures on the outside of the windows the bird visits. So, I printed out some pictures of cats and taped those pictures to the windows. As I was doing that, I kept thinking what a wonderful environmentalist I was. I mean, you have to be a true animal lover to go to such extremes not to harm a bird, even if it does require scaring the thing to death by way of a cat picture. But, alas, my little friend paid absolutely no attention to those cat pictures. It just parked itself on the ledge right beside one and started hammering away again at my window. So much for plan #3. Evidently, I should have gone to a taxidermist and rented a stuffed mountain lion.

At this point, I transitioned from being Bill Murray in Caddyshack to being Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation. I went down into the basement, gathered up a bunch of box lids, found our step-ladder, and headed outside to basically “board up” the windows. It wasn’t until I was literally up on the step-ladder that I figured out that I had miscalculated the number of lids I would need to do the job. So, to make the best of a bad situation, I decided to cover just the bottom halves of my window and Royce’s window. Since the bird had been fixating only on those bottom halves, I thought that might do the trick.

Well, guess what happened: The bird literally hopped up onto the top of one of the box lids and started pecking away at the upper half of my window. I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this bird from hell or what?” Whereas I had originally thought it was the dumbest creature on earth, I now began to see a sinister brilliance to it.

But, of course, by now I wasn’t going to be outdone. Things had gotten way too personal. So, I went back downstairs, found some more box lids, climbed back up the step-ladder, and boarded up every inch of those windows. And I have to say that the effort finally did produce peace in the house. At last the bird was beaten, beaten that is until a gust of wind blew down two of the box lids and left one corner of my window exposed. Sure enough, not long afterward, the bird was sitting on the ledge, slamming away at that one corner. Plan #4 had proved temporarily successful but needed a bit of tweaking.

Now it was time to bring out the heavy artillery, the one thing that no home project can be completed without: duct tape. I grabbed a roll, went back up the step-ladder, and taped the troublesome box lids to the side of the house. And that, at least for now, seems to have driven the final nail in the coffin of the epic struggle between me and the bird. Yes, the side of our house now looks like a bunch of lunatics live here, but at least we are lunatics who can sleep in on Saturday morning. How long will those box lids have to remain in our windows? I have no idea. It will probably involve the life span of that bird.

Okay, so now I come to the spiritual application of all this. Are you ready? It is two-fold and it goes like this: Like that bird, some people devote their entire lives to attacking themselves, and such people make life very, very hard not just for themselves but for others. Now, could it be that you can find yourself somewhere in that two-fold application? Maybe you are the bird who is constantly hurting yourself with your foolish behavior. Or, maybe you are me, the person who is having to deal with the fallout of someone who makes a habit of harming himself or herself. Whichever role you might be playing, believe me when I say that it is not a pleasant one. And here’s one other thought on the subject: God doesn’t intend for any of us to live life through boarded up windows.

Posted in Choices, Disobedience, Influence, Personal, Rebellion, Sin | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Young Man and His Condition

Posted on April 28, 2011 by russellmckinney

A young man went to the doctor and said, “Doc, sometimes I get headaches, my eyes burn, and I can’t get my breath.” After an examination, the doctor said, “My diagnosis is that your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. I expect you to eventually become completely unconscious and lapse into a coma. Sadly, there is no surgery or medication that can help your condition. Therefore, I suggest that you quit your job and spend what few days you have left enjoying yourself.”

Naturally, the young man was devastated by that diagnosis, but he decided to take the doctor’s advice and make the best of the days he had left. So he quit his job, withdrew all his savings from the bank, and booked himself for a flight around the world. That trip would require him to purchase a new wardrobe.

The day before he was to leave, the young man went into a men’s shop to buy the new clothes. As he was being fitted for his shirts, the salesman asked him, “What size do you wear?” “15 neck and 33 sleeves,” was the answer. Doubting that claim, the salesman slipped a tape measure around the young man’s neck and said, “Looks to me like you wear a 16.” “No,” said the young man, “I wear a 15, always have.” To that the salesman replied, “Okay, I’ll sell you 15’s but they’ll be too tight, and that will cause headaches, burning eyes, and shortness of breath.”

The moral of the story is that sometimes our stubborn refusal to make an appropriate change creates unnecessary pain and difficulty for us. The old line has now been used so much that it has become a cliche, but it still rings true: “It is a form of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results.”

So tell me, where does this post find you? Are you beating your head against the same wall day after day and expecting that wall to eventually fall? Are you plugging in “1 + 1” each week and anxiously awaiting the time the total comes back “3”? Pardon me for saying it, but maybe it’s time you changed your shirt size. Why don’t you talk to God and ask Him if there are any changes (little ones or big ones) that He wants you to make? And if He burdens you to make one, do it promptly. After all, life is hard enough without you making it harder than it has to be.

Posted in Change, Choices, Decisions, God's Will | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Test of Prosperity

Posted on April 26, 2011 by russellmckinney

Quick, name the toughest test to pass spiritually. Did you say, “Disease”? Did you say, “The death of a loved one”? Did you say, “Troubles?” Did you say, “Disappointment”? Well, there’s no doubt that none of those tests are spiritual gimmes, but would you believe that for many people the correct answer would be, “Prosperity”?

King David was such a person. When he was a young man, he was enough of a spiritual wonder that God Himself rated him as a man after God’s own heart. David was most likely still in his teens when he was anointed by the prophet Samuel as the king of Israel. Not long afterward he brought comfort to the demon-tormented Saul, the sitting king, by playing soothing music on the harp. Then came the day when he famously slew the Philistine giant, Goliath. David was on a spiritual roll!

Unfortunately, however, David killing Goliath caused King Saul to become insanely jealous of him, and that began a period of many years wherein Saul tried to kill David. Those were hard years for David, years which saw him and his band of followers living in constant hiding from Saul and his troops. Was David’s behavior perfect and above reproach during those years? No, not by a long shot. But was he always God’s man, a man whose basic spiritual center was right? Yes. And David remained that way all the way up through those years on the run, Saul’s death, David’s ascendency to the throne of Judah (the southern part of Israel), and his ascendency to the throne of all Israel seven years later.

What happened next? Oh, the story keeps getting better. As king of the land, David unified Israel’s fiercely independent twelve tribes and led Israel’s army in the conquering of Jerusalem. Then he expanded Jerusalem and built it into his capital city. A major part of that was him bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. We can truthfully say that, during those days, David’s decisions were spot on. Additionally, his army was unbeatable, all the people loved him, and God was pouring out His favor upon him. God even made a covenant with him that David’s royal line would be established forever.

You see, after all those years of struggling to formally claim his anointing as king and make the nation of Israel the greatest and most godly nation on earth, David had now “arrived.” His life was just as he wanted it to be. Overall, he had remained true to God during all his troubles and now he was living in a season of major prosperity.

Tragically, though, the next story from David’s life is the one about him having a one-night-stand with Bathsheba, the wife of one of David’s most loyal soldiers, Uriah. That one-night-stand resulted in Bathsheba getting pregnant and David then indirectly having Uriah killed and hastily marrying her to prevent a royal scandal. You see, David emphatically failed the test of prosperity.

Noted pastor Chuck Swindoll has said, “When testing comes we get purified, but when prosperity comes we get vulnerable.” How true. So tell me, is your life looking pretty good these days? Are you enjoying more ease, comfort, and worldly blessing than you have ever known? Would you call it a season of prosperity for you? Then you’d better put in extra effort to stay on top of your game spiritually. If you don’t, you might just go the way of David by forgetting the Lord in the midst of all that prosperity!

Posted in Adultery, Backsliding, Choices, Contentment, Decisions, Desires, Disobedience, Faithfulness, God's Provision, Greed, Lust, Personal Holiness, Prosperity, Sex, Sin, Temptation, Trials, Trusting In God | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wilted Roses

Posted on April 25, 2011 by russellmckinney

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a little story about a Sunday School teacher’s efforts to win one of her young students to Christ. I doubt that the story actually happened, but maybe it did. Even if it didn’t, it still makes an important point. Here’s the story.

When young Mary’s Sunday School teacher talked to her about becoming a Christian, Mary answered, “No, I don’t want to become a Christian right now.” The teacher asked, “Is there something that is preventing you from doing it right now?” Mary said, “It’s because I’m still young and want to have a good time. When I get old and settled down in life, then I’ll become a Christian.”

Several days later, Mary received a box of roses from the teacher. Mary opened the box excitedly, but her excitement soon turned to disappointment when she found that the roses were all wilted. Attempting to lift them from the box, she watched as most of their petals fell off and remained in the box.

As she stood there looking at all those dead roses, Mary became angry. She thought, “My teacher shouldn’t be sending me old, wilted roses.” Later on, however, she decided to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt by believing that the flowers had been ordered several days earlier and were supposed to have been delivered promptly. There must have been a mix up with the florist.

But that afternoon the teacher came to Mary’s house and asked her, “Did you receive the roses I sent you today?” Somewhat astonished, Mary replied, “Oh, then you did send them today. Why did you send me old, wilted roses?” The teacher said, “I did it because I thought that was the kind of gift you like.” Mary asked, “What made you think such a thing?” “Because,” said the teacher, “when I asked you to believe in Jesus as your Savior you said you would wait until you were old.”

Mary was silent for a moment but then her face lightened. She said, “Oh, I get it now. It’s wrong for me to wait until I’m old and wilted to give myself to Jesus. I should believe in Him as Savior right now and devote the rest of my life to living for Him.” “Yes,” said the teacher, “that’s the lesson I was trying to teach you by sending you those flowers.” And right then and there Mary did believe in Jesus as her personal Savior and spent the rest of her life serving Him.

Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, “I have no pleasure in them.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1, N.K.J.V.)

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Be Sure to Get All the Message

Posted on April 22, 2011 by russellmckinney

But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” (Matthew 28:5-6, N.K.J.V.)

Before the invention of electric telegraph machines and Morse code, messages were sent long distance by means of semaphoring. England’s version of semaphoring involved signalmen using coded visual imagery to spell out messages (letter by letter, word by word) to sentries who sat with telescopes in hand atop high buildings. The sentries would then relay the messages to those who were awaiting the information.

As one often-told story has it, in the wake of the great Battle of Waterloo in which Napoleon’s French troops took on the English troops of The Duke of Wellington, a signalman on board an English ship semaphored the first word, “Wellington,” to a sentry who was sitting atop England’s Winchester Cathedral. Then the signalman sent the next word, “defeated,” just before an eerie fog settled upon the whole area, The fog was so thick that the sentry atop Winchester Cathedral couldn’t even see the ship, let alone any visual signals being sent from it. And so, as the fog continued to disrupt communications for the next few hours, the message “Wellington defeated” spread throughout England like wildfire. That, of course, was terrible news for the nation.

At some point, however, the fog lifted just as suddenly as it had appeared, and the signalman was able to finish sending his message. And what was the entirety of the message? It was: “Wellington defeated the enemy.” With that news, England’s gloom was turned to joy.

Okay, so is this famous old story true? I have no idea. All I know for sure is that it makes for a powerful illustration in relation to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Symbolically speaking, we might say that when the dead body of Jesus was laid in that tomb after His crucifixion, a fog settled upon the land, and that fog prevented the rest of the message from being heard.

Ah, but on the third day, the fog lifted as Jesus arose victorious from the grave. That’s why, every Easter Sunday (and, really, every Sunday), we Christians celebrate the lifting of the fog and the completion of the message. Needless to say, we must never leave Christ’s body hanging dead on the cross or decomposing in the tomb, and we must always make sure that the world hears ALL the message.

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Christ’s Resurrection: Study the Facts, I Dare You

Posted on April 21, 2011 by russellmckinney

A group of lawyers once met in England to discuss the Biblical accounts of Christ’s resurrection. They were curious as to whether or not there was sufficient information regarding the resurrection to make a case that would hold up in an English court of law. When they had finished their research, they published the results of their investigation. Their conclusion was that Christ’s resurrection was nothing less than one of the most well-established facts of history!

Along the same lines, noted Christian apologist Josh McDowell came to Christ by way of some of Christian friends in college challenging him to intellectually examine the claims of Jesus. In his book, Christianity: Hoax or History?, he writes:

Finally, I accepted their challenge. I did it out of pride, to refute them. But I didn’t know there were facts. I didn’t know there was evidence that a person could evaluate.

The point I’m making is that you becoming a Christian doesn’t require you to check your brains at the door. You don’t have to believe in Santa’s flying reindeer in order to also believe that Christ rose from the dead. One is fantasy, the other is history. If you doubt the historical veracity of the resurrection, I challenge you to dive into the same serious, academic study into which those lawyers and Josh McDowell dove. I mean, after all, if the claims about Christ can’t stand up to a little honest scrutiny, they aren’t worth much anyway.

But what you’ll find is that they can stand up to such scrutiny, and that simple fact will bring you face to face with a risen Savior. At that point, the decision will be yours. Will you make Him the Lord of your life or will you reject Him? Even if you do reject Him, you won’t be able to change the fact that He really was who He said He was, and He really arose just as He said He would.

Posted in Belief, Christ's Resurrection, Easter, Salvation | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment