Gospel-Changed Minds

There used to be social pressures to go to church and then there was a live and let live period. Now we’re moving into a period where there’s a social cost. And the more there’s a social cost, the fact is that more Christians are actually shutting up and being quiet about their faith with people around them.

These “small faults” mean that large swaths of the Christian population have little influence on others for Christ. This is true because, while our faults always seem small to us due to the natural self-justification of the heart, you can be sure they don’t look so small to others.

In this new video series Tim Keller looks at each book of the Bible and finds threads of the story of the gospel.

For almost twenty years after the end of WWII church attendance surged to its highest levels in history, and Christianity seemed to be thriving in the U.S. But it was in the last 15 years that what Kuyper foresaw and what Europe experienced seems to have begun here. Church attendance began to decline across the board, especially among younger people. And the cultural institutions began to take an overtly hostile and adversarial stance toward traditional Christian faith.

In the past two years during COVID, I’ve read a number of helpful books ranging in categories from understanding culture, to Biblical and theological studies. I’d like to preview and recommend a few of them to you.

Christians must recognize that they do have things to do to prepare for renewal, but that ultimately it is God’s wise sovereignty that will determine whether and how the church is renewed. Many see a metaphor for this concept of renewal in Elijah’s confrontation with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. The prophet builds an altar, but it is only God whose fire can ignite it. Christians looking for revival, then, are “building the altar,” praying that God will use their efforts to bring a fire of revival with a movement of his Spirit.