A True Story from Nepal

In 2001, Sook carried his wife, Shanti, on his back in a basket over the hills of Nepal. His wife couldn’t walk, and Sook had exhausted every known option in search of a cure for her illness. But on this day their hope had been renewed, and his loving gaze detected a new look on her face.

     “Go see the Christians,” a medicine man had advised them. “I’ve heard that they pray for desperate people and that their prayers often work!” So they went—the last anxious act of a desperate couple.

     While Sook and his wife visited the Christians, they prayed for them and shared stories of the one true God and his power to heal. They even told the couple that everyone could be healed of their sins against God simply by trusting in the person and work of Jesus.

At the end of the day, Sook and his wife started the long journey home—both feeling strengthened by the Christians’ words.

     As they rested during the trip, Sook noticed that Shanti had begun to move! He reached for her, but she stopped him. In amazement, she told him that she was beginning to feel some strength, so much so that she wanted to try to walk. Miraculously, she could. They had not even made it back to their village, and the prayers of the Christians were already being answered. 

    Sook and Shanti joyfully agreed: “This Christian God is real! We must return, hear more about Jesus and follow him.”

This reading first appeared in the College Devotional Bible which I served as General Editor. Reprinted here with permission of Zondervan.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/93563935@N00/9314993/

Giveaway: College Devotional Bible

Can you believe that school will be starting soon? In honor of back to school shopping, I'm giving away 5 copies of the COLLEGE DEVOTIONAL BIBLE.

This Bible contains a  year's worth of devotions written for college students who care about their faith.

Sign up here.

#12--Choose Hope (From THE BIBLE: 50 Ways it Can Change Your Life)

Jesus was in Perea when he received word that Lazarus, one of his close friends, was sick. (Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, two of Jesus’ most devoted followers.) Rather than rush to Bethany to be with Lazarus, Jesus tarried in Perea for two more days. And then he began his journey. 

By the time Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus was dead. His body had been in the tomb for four days. Mary and Martha were understandably beside themselves with grief. 

“Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ . . . Jesus then said, ‘I am the one who raises the dead to life! Everyone who has faith in me will live, even if they die’ ” (John 11:21, 25). 

Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, but Mary and Martha didn’t. Their grief was real. Their emotions were raw. Jesus wasn’t upset by their reaction—he’d cried too—but he wanted to help them through their pain to get to something better: hope. 

That journey from devastation to hope can be plotted by boiling Jesus’ words down to these three words: Believe in me. 

• Don’t give grief and pain the final word. Believe in me. 
• Don’t let your world come crashing down around you. Believe in me. 
• Don’t give up. Believe in me. 

All it takes is one tragedy—one unexpected loss—to drive home the point that we are practically powerless to control or prevent the things that happen to us. The one area we can control, however, is how we will respond. We can choose devastation and surrender—or we can choose hope and perseverance. 

To choose hope and perseverance is not to brush aside our grief. It is to address our pain head-on and to work through our feelings (with the assistance of a professional counselor, if necessary). To choose hope is to believe that happiness and joy are attainable again, despite what our grief tells us.  

To choose hope is to take Jesus at his word when he says, Believe in me. I am more powerful than your pain. I will carry you through. I will heal your heart. 

The above article is from THE BIBLE: 50 WAYS IT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. This special edition magazine is available for sale at Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes and Noble, and wherever newspapers are sold.

Refuse to Hold A Grudge

“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:18)

This verse from Leviticus shows us that from the very beginning, God did not want his people seeking revenge or holding grudges. Even way back then, God was instructing his followers to love their neighbors as themselves.

     And still today, God’s people should not seek revenge. God’s people should be motivated by love and should strive to glorify God with every thought they think and every action they take. The idea of revenge cannot mesh with love or with glorifying God.

     Revenge is a sin, and just like any other sin, Christians must work to avoid it. We need to avoid the temptation of revenge. We need to pray for strength to avoid this sin. And if we do make a mistake and think vengeful thoughts or actually take revenge on someone, we need to repent and turn away from this sinful behavior.

     A vengeful attitude will only separate you from God. And it will do nothing for you.

Dear God, please help us to not seek revenge or hold grudges against people. Please help us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. Please help us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.

 This devotion was written for Once a Day: At the Table Family Devotional. This is a family-oriented devotional book written by my writing team & me. Reprinted with permission of Zondervan.

What Does It Mean That the Bible Is “God-Breathed”?

In 2009 I worked with Lee Strobel on the Case for Christ Study Bible. I recently came across one of the articles we included in that Bible and thought it was worth posting. Here's the excerpt from an article that appears at Amos 7.

Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’” Amos 7:14–15

What Does It Mean That the Bible Is “God-Breathed”?

Amos makes it clear that he was minding his business, shepherding livestock and caring for sycamore-fig trees, when God called him as a prophet. Just as his calling was divinely inspired, so too is the record of his life. The Bible says that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). So what do Christians believe was the process by which God created the Bible?

Professor Daniel B. Wallace, one of the foremost scholars of New Testament Greek, fields this question by saying, “We aren’t given a lot regarding the process of inspiration, but we know the Bible wasn’t dictated by God. Look at the Old Testament: Isaiah has a huge vocabulary and is often considered the Shakespeare of the Hebrew prophets, while Amos was a simple farmer with a much more modest vocabulary. Yet both books were inspired. Obviously, this doesn’t mean verbal dictation. God wasn’t looking for stenographers but holy men to write his book.”

Some clues about the inspiration of Scripture are apparent when Matthew quotes the Old Testament, saying, “This was spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (Matthew 2:15, author’s paraphrase). “By the Lord” suggests God is the ultimate agent of that prophecy. “Through the prophet” suggests an intermediate agent who also uses his personality. That means the prophet was not taking dictation from God; instead, God was communicating through visions, dreams and so forth, and the prophet was putting it in his own words.

When Christians say the Bible is inspired, they mean it is both the Word of God and the words of men. Founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, Lewis Sperry Chafer, puts it well: “Without violating the authors’ personalities, they wrote with their own feelings, literary abilities, and concerns. But in the end, God could say, That’s exactly what I wanted to have written.”

 Dr. Wallace says, “Remarkably, the New Testament writers didn’t even know they were writing Scripture, so obviously God’s work was behind the scenes. In the end, I think this is a greater miracle than a Bible coming down from heaven on golden tablets, because the books of the Bible are a collective product that men embraced as their own while ultimately—and often only much later—recognizing that there was another author behind the scenes. It wasn’t until one of the final books of the New Testament was written that Peter uses the word Scripture in referring to Paul’s letters” (see 2 Peter 3:16).

The above article is taken from the Case for Christ Study Bible published by Zondervan. Used by permission.

Giveaway: 50 Ways the Bible Can Change Your Life

UPDATE: Nov 29, 2013.

Giveaway is no longer available.

Final copies may be available for purchase here.

Or find it at Amazon here:
Amazon.com

UPDATE: Aug 9, 2013. NOTE: The giveaway is over! 

UPDATE: July 29, 2013. NOTE: This giveaway has ended. I'll give away 3 more copies the week of Aug 4. Click the link now to sign up for the current giveaway and then check back after Aug 4 for a chance to win your own copy of THE BIBLE: 50 WAYS...
---

ORIGINAL POST
For months I've been sharing many of the ways the Bible can change your life. My writing team and I have collected 50 of those tips and put them into a magazine that is for sale wherever you can find Cosmo, People, Time, and YM. Check out the magazine aisle at your local CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and your local grocery store. 

You can also sign up for this week's drawing. I'll be giving away a free copy to FIVE different winners. Sign up at: http://www.bit.ly/Bible50Ways

Sample pages from THE BIBLE: 50 WAYS IT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. (Click on each image to enlarge).

 Sign up for the giveaway here: http://www.bit.ly/Bible50Ways