RELEVANT Magazine - More Than a Follower

RELEVANT Magazine - More Than a Follower

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REJECT APATHY: An Invitation to Action!

Last night we started to explore the prevalence of apathy in our community. Nobody is perfect. And none of us have it all together. But there is a massive difference between a life that is characterized by the lukewarm, the indifferent and the unchanged and a life that is in the process of being radically transformed. I wanted to send a brief message this afternoon to remind us all that Jesus didn’t say if you want to follow me you can do it in a lukewarm manner. He said “take up your cross and follow me.”

Because that’s exactly what He did. He took up the cross and He gave everything. And he asks us for everything. But we try to give Him less.

And if, like me, you’re absolutely fed up of giving Him just a little then I want to remind you that there’s an invitation for you to come and see me this week so that we can figure out together how we can view God for who He really is, practice and celebrate the spiritual disciplines, worship Christ with our whole lives, and start working towards being known as a community that puts its faith into action. Reject apathy – even as you read this – reject it. And take some action towards the radical transformation.

I’ve cleared my schedule. I’m waiting to hear from YOU.

You have a choice: to adjust how you live daily or to stay the same.

Prayer Request for our Man in the Pearl:

I have just received a couple of messages from David Harrison's Mom asking me to pray for David (our Man in the Pearl). Rioting has broken out in Kampala and she wanted us to pray for his safety. Her second message is copied below. Please pray for Dave and the Harrison family. "Hi! I was able to talk to David a few minutes ago, at 9:30PM Ugandan time. He is locked down at the Peace Corps training center in Wakiso, just NW of Kampala where the violence broke out. Yesterday he was picked up by a driver and the two of them made the rounds to pubs and other public places. They told shops to close and warned people to go home. Now the streets are on fire and the rioting continues. He said Sat is going to be worse. The good news is that at the training center he is sleeping great! For the first time since arriving in Uganda, he said he awoke this morning feeling refreshed and clear headed. The shower and electricity are an added bonus! We will talk to him again tomorrow. Donna"

Flag Football Tailgate Party

Gearing up for the tailgate party tonight. Already purchased the food from Costco, just need to make sure the grill is working now...

Kick off at 6:30pm and police escort from the field at 9:00pm!

Come and join us. Bring your trucks. And bring your friends. Park up on Grace field and be ready for some good grillin'. It's FREE food and drinks, flag football, and a tailgate jacuzzi.

What more can I say???

Come early to help setup. Call me on 626 335 4067 x104 if you have any questions.

Empty Broom Cloests...

The Olive is still MIA.

So too is #16.

Life in the broom closet is all too quiet.

For today...

Big plans for the week ahead though, and lots kicking off starting tomorrow. More news to follow on the service this Sunday. We will have the new t-shirts available for purchase (bring $12.50 if you want one). And we're developing some new media ahead of our APU day on Friday. We should be on all local campuses over the coming weeks. But we're starting at the APU Freshman Orientation. If you're at APU then stop by and say hello. We may even try to get Olive involved via the majesty of skype! The promise of that alone should be enough to entice.

Evolution is a Fairytale: Thursday's Thoughts...

In January 2005, two remarkable events occurred. The first was that Oxford atheist and Darwinian scientist, Richard Dawkins, was publicly asked what he believed to be true but could not prove. This was an interesting question because he is on record as saying that you should not believe anything without evidence. Now he concedes, “I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all design anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection.” He continued, “ Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.” In other words, he admits that much of what he believes, including his fundamental assumptions about the universe, are a blind leap of faith, unsupported by evidence.

The other extraordinary event was that the international doyen of philosophical atheism, Prof. Anthony Flew, now aged 81, publicly announced that he has abandoned his atheism, and had done so on the basis of scientific arguments, which now persuade him that there is a God.

So two of the most prominent atheists in their fields have made startling confessions. The scientist admits that much of his belief cannot be supported by scientific evidence, while the philosopher abandons the very atheism that made him famous, precisely because of the scientific evidence. How much intellectual fun is that?

What Dawkins cannot verify concerns the creation of the universe. What persuades Flew that there is a God is the current scientific evidence about the origins of the universe.

Come and hear more about this on Sunday night as we uncover some of the popular dialogue between creation and evolution and discover the real relationship between faith and reason. Sunday night, 6PM @ Grace Church of Glendora.

Evolution is a Fairytale: Does Science Contradict Religion?

I've been looking at some other articles this morning and one in particular drew my attention - especially in anticipation of our guest speaker this weekend. This particular aticle responded to the belief that science is the only path to objective truth and is therefore in conflict with the subjective feelings and irrational dogmas supposedly characteristic of Christianity. One thought raised by the author (Philip Vander Elst) is:

"The advance of science over the last half-century has revealed powerful new evidence that life and the universe are the product of intelligent design, especially in the fields of astrophysics and microbiology. At the cosmological level, it has become increasingly apparent that the physical laws and parameters governing our universe (e.g. the force of gravity, the energy density of empty space, the difference in mass between neutrons and protons, etc.) are so exquisitely fine-tuned to permit the emergence of life, that even the tiniest alteration in any of these laws and parameters would have catastrophic consequences. Astrophysicist, Dr Hugh Ross, for instance, has identified 148 astrophysical parameters that must be ‘just so’ for a planet to exist that can support human life, yet the odds against this happening by chance are, he calculates, many times greater than the total number of stars in the entire universe! Given such facts, even so great an astronomer and former atheist as Fred Hoyle, has written: “I do not believe that any scientists who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars.” That and other such observations from Hoyle have prompted Harvard astronomy professor, Owen Gingerich, to comment: “Fred Hoyle and I differ on lots of questions, but on this we agree: a common sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a super-intelligence.” Or to put it even more plainly, consider the verdict of Robin Collins, an American scientist with three degrees and two doctorates in mathematics, physics, and philosophy: “The extraordinary fine-tuning of the laws and constants of nature, their beauty, their discoverability, their intelligibility – all of this combines to make the God hypothesis the most reasonable choice we have. All other theories fall short.”"

Join us on Sunday night at 6pm to find out more. (Grace Church of Glendora, 1515 S. Glendora Ave, Glendora, CA 91740)