New Life'n

How does God choose?

Five people go to heaven.  Five people go to hell.  How did they get there?  Pyromaniacs has one way of thinking about it...

Out of ten people that God created, all of them willfully chose sin and rebellion against God. They chose sin. They chose death. They chose judgment. Hell is their free choice. They willfully sin and therefore they willfully go to the place where sinners go.

Unconditional election is where God says, "I am going to over-rule the decisions of five of them and in my grace I am going to change their hearts and their natures so that they will turn to me in repentance and cling to me in faith." The other five God leaves to the consequences of their own choices which were freely made. In no case does God violate the free volition of any of them. All ten get what they want. In the case of five of them, God simply changed their nature and their wants. Five get justice. The other five get grace, their just judgment being poured out upon Christ as their Substitute.

God did not choose among innocents which ones he would save and which ones he would damn. God chose among the guilty which ones he would save and the rest he left to just (righteous) condemnation.

Oh, if only everything automatically became portable when carried...

What it looks like

Anabel Gillham says it's not just another Christian cliche or gimmick:

Failure was not an option. He had resigned his job, sold our home and moved all of us, including the dog, to Stillwater, OK. But, as he tells the story, "By lunch break on the first day of testing I was numb with the pain of knowing that I was failing. Lord, I’ve written for four hours and it’s no use. I’m not losing by a last-second field goal; I’m decimated. I can’t do it.” The Lord did not give Bill comforting words like He gave me...

It must be a pretty big deal

There are 89 chapters in the 4 Gospels of the Bible.

4 of those chapters cover the first 30 years of Jesus' life.

85 of the chapters cover the last 3 years.

30 of the chapters--about 1/3 of everything in the Gospels--cover the last 8 days of His life, and His resurrection.  It would take less than 2 hours to read those 30 chapters.  They are:
          --Matthew 21-28
          --Mark 11-16
          --Luke 19-24
          --John 12-21

Can you take it or leave it?

If you can, you'll walk off and leave it everytime.  At least that's what Vance Havner said--you can hear him explain it for yourself (takes about 3 minutes).

Not in Nemo's league

World Mag doesn't like the new Ice Age cartoon:

"There's a certain other animation house in town that likely would not stoop so low, and, for that, parents should be grateful."

Were you one?

Congress is working on ideas to deal with the millions of illegal aliens in America.  It's controversial, complicated and hard to think about. Here's one man's thoughts on what God may be thinking about it...

But a Christian's basic posture must be to show mercy to aliens. Just trace the terms alien and stranger through the Bible, and remind yourself how consistently one-sided God's instructions are on the subject.

Yet the basis for this welcome is never some mushy-minded, mealy-mouthed, softheaded, be-a-doormat-for-everybody way of thinking. The basis instead is a starkly theological premise... "You shall not oppress a sojourner," God says bluntly in Exodus 23:9. "You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners..."

He knows how easily we dismiss from our minds that we too were once aliens, and how quickly we assume that we are instead the landed aristocracy.

Is it wrong to set conditions on that welcome? No, it's almost certainly important to do so. And...one appropriate condition would be to require immigrants to learn English. But let's package that restriction along with the establishment of classes in English at hundreds, and even thousands, of our churches.

What if evangelical Christians were known as those who were in the forefront of efforts to turn illegals into legals, not in a sneaky or surreptitious way, but in a constructive manner that demonstrates creative and gospel-driven thinking?

What's called for, more than anything, is a different tone. And it's hard to think of a tone more helpful, more creative, more constructive, more tenderhearted, than the voice that says: "Don't be harsh with these aliens. Whenever you're tempted that way, just remember that you too used to be one yourself."