Giv Me Jesus

Summit Ministries is a Christian worldview conference, 12 days, 72 hours of World Class Lectures from a Christian point-of-view on many topics from the economy, to Islam, to same sex marriage to abortion. It's all packed into two very short, very exciting weeks.I heard about Summit from my older siblings who had gone before, and I had wanted to go for years. I knew a lot about what would happen and the structure of the conference, what I did not realize was the incredible impact it would have on my life. On the first night, Trent, my small group leader, asked what I hoped to get out of my time at Summit. I said that I was looking for a time of Spiritual refreshing and recharging since I had felt that my faith had grown somewhat stagnant; I had no idea how it would end up happening. Summit CO Session 6, 2014 - Highlight Film Ideas Have... : " The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed. " - C.S. Lewis We...

      It is no secret that our culture focuses on the individual, the me. Society encourages an egotistical approach to life. We are expected to view ourselves as the only individuals who are of any real value. Other people are really only a means to whatever end we view as the most beneficial to us at any given moment. We pass up opportunities to help people simply because it is not convenient, or it does not seem to present any immediate reward for us. Friends, this should not be so!        The church is called to be the hands and feet of Christ, reaching out, helping, supporting, caring for and loving others. All too often, however, we fall into the trap of singularity. We know that we are supposed to help them, but the feeling of individuality within us often convinces us that it is not worth our time or effort to help. What is worse, we have even, in some ways, conditioned our minds to not even notice the needs of tho...

Last week, I had a very eye opening experience. For my whole life, I  have been taught about what it means to be a christian. I have taken the worldview classes and I have gone to the apologetics seminars, but it was tonight, in the futility of my mind, and the blank that I drew that brought me to a very real conclusion. My College Ethics class was discussing the topic of absolute versus relative truth or morality. In a class of twenty or more students, I was the only one who believed that there was an absolute standard of truth, morality and ethical beliefs. The professor did not seem convinced that I could really be a full-blown absolutist. He proceeded to present a scenario that he clearly thought would stump me. However, thanks to previous study and the exact same scenario being presented to me in an online debate. He thought he had put me in a no win scenario, but I broke it and forced him to concede. he said, "Well Tim, you are indeed an absolutist. I can simply encourag...

“For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Hebrews 9:24-28 (ESV) Christmas, there is a song that says "it's the most wonderful time of the year." The hustle and bustle of Christmas is the joy of the holiday season. Gift giving and getting is the center of all attention during this month of December...

Walking in the Spirit, what does it mean and how can we do it? Well it does not mean walking in a literal sense, it is a walking of your heart with God in solitude, or as Genesis says, “…in the cool of the day…” and even when the world around you gets hectic, you can still be walking with God. The world cannot always be quiet. We need to be always praying and asking God for guidance in the slightest and most drastic areas in life, whether it’s deciding what shirt to wear or whether it’s deciding what you’re going to do to cut energy costs. Walking with God means looking to him for ALL of your needs, even if they’re not very big ones. It matters to God to have his Children talking to him about anything and everything. R. Kent Hughes used this analogy in his book ‘Disciplines of a Godly Man’ That Prayer is like a boat. We do not pull God’s will in our lives to what we want, just as a boat does not pull the shore to itself. Rather, we need to align our will with that of the Father’s, as ...

                We live in a nearsighted world. Meaning, in our human nature we only see and care about what is right in front of us. The believers need to be up front and show God to this world.                 The world has its ideas that it tries to get people to focus on. It can be any form of anything, food & drink, sports, arts & media, people, relationships, social networking.  Those things aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re used by the world to distract us from what we need to focus on.                 The biggest problem with these distractions is that they make us focus on us, not on God or others like we should. The world tells us to look inward at what we want. But God is telling us to look to Him for sustenance in our lives.        ...

Luke 19:10   " For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. " As we learn and grow we should desire to become more like Christ. Christ had a desire to see the lost get saved, and so should we. I believe that, upon conversion the first and foremost desire of the new believer should be to delve into knowing his/her God and savior on a deeper and more personal level. The second desire of the new believer should be to begin having a desire to see the lost saved. Likewise, an “older” believer should be doing the same things. Sadly, the fire that new believers get, to save the lost, dies away the longer they believe. This should not be so! The opposite should be the order of operation! The longer we believe the stronger and bigger, the desire should be within us. Now, it’s not wrong that the new believers have such a passion. The older believers may even still have the fire burning strongly inside them, but they’ve grown numb, apathetic, and tired of fu...