Worldview and Perspective on Turning People Away From Jesus

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Philippians 2:3-4, Galatians 2:20, James 1:19-20, Romans 12:3, Proverbs 15:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Matthew 11:28

Arguments won’t change people. Simply giving away kindness won’t either. Only Jesus has the power to change people, and it will be harder for them to see Jesus if their view of Him is blocked by our b...

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Author

Max Lucado

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Genesis 3:1-7, Exodus 14:10-31, Jeremiah 29:11, Psalm 23:1-6 , John 10:10-11 , Romans 8:31-39

The most insidious deception in human history is the lie that says, “God is against you.”

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Two Ways to Reject Jesus as Savior

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Timothy Keller

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Hebrews 4:16, Luke 18:9-14, James 4:6, 1 John 4:10, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 3:23-24

…there are two ways to fail to let Jesus be your Savior. One is by being too proud, having a superiority complex—not to accept his challenge [to accept what the gospel says about our unworthiness]. Bu...

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A Post-Christian America?

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Phillip Yancey

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The United States is undergoing a marked change in its attitude toward religion, and Christians here face new challenges. When a blogger named Marc Yoder wrote about “10 Surprising Reasons Our Kids Le...

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Why We are Reluctant to Share the Gospel

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Proverbs 29:25, Acts 4:13, John 15:18-19, 2 Timothy 1:7-8, Colossians 4:5-6, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 1:16

Why is it so intimidating to talk about Jesus in contemporary western culture? One obvious reason might lie in the ubiquitous negative portrayals of Christians in mainstream media. Sam Chan makes this...

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The Good News Isn’t Sounding Good to Some

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Isaiah 53:3, Jeremiah 20:7-10, 1 Kings 22:8-28, John 15:18-19 , Acts 5:40-42, Psalm 37:1-2

In Vanishing Grace , Philip Yancey examines the growing negative perceptions of evangelicals. Although the book was written in 2014, these dynamics have only intensified in the era of MAGA and Ch...

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Negative Attitudes About Christians

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Western Culture

I’ve asked strangers and casual acquaintances, “Why do Christians stir up such negative feelings?” Some bring up past atrocities, such as the widespread belief that the church executed eight or nine m...

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The Real Scandal of Jesus’s Ministry

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Hans Küng

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Matthew 25:35-40, John 8:1-11, Luke 19:1-10, John 4:1-26, John 8:10-11, Luke 19:10

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . ...

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Alexander MacLaren

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Luke 18:9-14

That which of all things unfits man for the reception of Christ as a Savior, is not gross profligacy and outward, vehement transgression, but it is self-complacency, fatal self-righteousness and self-...

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The Gospel and the Other: Preaching in an Age of "Us vs. Them"

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Andrew DeCort

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Luke 10:25-37

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

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N.T. Wright on the Possibility of Hell

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N. T. Wright

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It seems to me… that if it is possible … for human beings to choose to live more and more out of tune with the divine intention, to reflect the image of God less and less, there is nothing to stop the...

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Great and gracious God, we have run

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Mark Brewer

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Great and gracious God, we have run after things and others instead of coming home to You. We have lived as though we were the centers of our universe. We have avoided the harder issues in life so o...

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Our gracious God, you repeatedly move

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Laura B. Murray

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Our gracious God, you repeatedly move towards us, even when we pull away. You are not deterred by our rejection of you nor our running from you. Your love is persistent. We confess our distrust of you...

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Leader: The word of the Lord to the

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Jacob Traeger

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Matthew 13:14-15, Matthew 11:4-6, Psalm 51:17, Hebrews 3:15, Isaiah 6:9-10

Leader: The word of the Lord to the prophet Isaiah says: You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with the...

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But He’d Be Wrong!

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John M. Perkins

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Reporters Alex Alston and James Dickerson tell a sad story about a church that sought to integrate its ranks: The Mississippi Delta was in a tizzy over rumors that blacks might show up at white church...

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Inspired by Jonah 3:1-5; 10

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Scott B. Bullock

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Jonah 3:1-5, Jonah 3:10

Father, we thank you that you are a God who provides second chances. You called us to go and we ran. We ran as far from your presence as possible. You pursued us in our abandonment of your call. Like ...

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Never Give up

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James Boice

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Matthew 13:, Exodus 14:21-31, Daniel 3:13-30 , 1 Kings 18:20-40, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 23:

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

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Mountains: 2, John 4:7-26

Author

Allen Thompson

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John 4:7-26, 1 Corinthians 2:12, 1 Peter 12:12-23, John 6:1-15, Galatians 4:21-31, Psalm 42:7, Psalm 121:null

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains. There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously. Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

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An Attempted Refutation of the Gospel

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N. T. Wright

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Mark 16:15-16, Philippians 1:6, Acts 16:31, John 1:12-13, Ephesians 2:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 1:16

[In the middle of the twentieth century a] young Russian communist went to a meeting one night where he heard a Christian expounding his faith. The communist was angry. How could anyone still believe ...

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Are Churches Like Zoos?

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Mark Batterson

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A decade ago I spent an unforgettable week in the Galapagos Islands. This archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador hasn’t changed much since Charles Darwin sailed there on the HMS Beagle in Dec...

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Adapted from Revelation 3:15-22

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Dustin Ray

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Revelation 3:15-22

Pastor: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you...

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N. T. Wright

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The New Testament insists that we put Jesus at the centre of the picture and work outwards from there.

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The Dueling Fish

Author

Jeff Myers

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One of my friends developed a PowerPoint presentation with a set of “dueling fish” images to illustrate this point. In the first image, a believer puts a Jesus fish on his car. Then his atheist neighb...

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The Death of Christendom

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Tod E. Bolsinger

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In one generation, the place of Christianity within culture dramatically shifted as we experienced what theologians and sociologists of religion call the “death of Christendom.” Christendom isn’t Chri...

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Author

Os Guinness

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Anti-Intellectualism

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering th...

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When the Minister is the Skeptic

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James Bryan Smith

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2 Timothy 3:5, 2 Timothy 4:3-4, Titus 1:16, Galatians 1:8, Jeremiah 2:13

I grew up as a Christmas and Easter Methodist. Our family called ourselves Christians, but it was not an important part of our lives. I found church boring. When I turned eighteen, something happened ...

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Distraction is the Greatest Threat to Churches

Author

Andrew Sullivan

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1 Kings 19:11-13, Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 , Isaiah 30:15, Luke 10:38-42 , Mark 1:35 , Psalm 46:10

The journalist Andrew Sullivan has some strong words of advice for the modern church, If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, p...

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Tear it out!

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Bryan Chapell

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Dr. William Evans, who pastored College Church from 1906–1909, was an unusually accomplished man. He had the entire King James Version of the Bible memorized as well as the New Testament of the Americ...

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The Unfulfilled Atheist

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Brian Loritts

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Some years ago, I was approached by a young man in our church who described himself as an “unfulfilled atheist.” He wanted to know why he should consider Christianity. I responded to him by asking him...

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Author

D. A. Carson

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People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromis...

worldview and perspective on Turning People Away from Jesus

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