Grace Blogs

Our weather alert radio starts beeping around lunchtime every Wednesday. If I happen to be home at that time, I ignore it: I know it’s just a weekly test of the system. “This is only a test,” it says. On the other hand, if the red light comes on during a thunderstorm and it starts sounding the alarm, saying, “This is not a test,” I might find myself wishing it were a test instead of the real thing.

But put yourself in school with a teacher saying, “this will be on

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Al Mohler provides a review this week of the new documentary “American Teen” which was released in a limited number of theaters back in July. The film purports to be a look at what goes on among teenagers in a typical American high school, in this case in Warsaw, Indiana.

It seems to follow the cultural party-line that adolescence is a period where misbehavior is just to be expected. Mohler puts it this way:

Over the past several decades, adolescent psychologists have supplied the concept of the identity crisis as the therapeutic framework for expecting teenagers to misbehave. American Teen follows in this tradition. The general idea is that adolescent Sturm und Drang is just to

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In segment one of this series we examined the marks of a God-owned Church. Since then we have been seeing how every Christian is gifted by the Holy Spirit to display the character and priorities of Jesus Christ in a particular way to strengthen His Church. Today we will look at the gifts of miracles, healings, and helping. MP3 download.

 

 audio [40:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Disclaimer: I didn’t realize that Hugh was going to blog regarding Mr. Bentley. Although I thought about not posting, I realize that we took very different angles in our approach to the subject. While Hugh’s post is much prettier than mine (oh’ he is so good!), I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night! (just kidding, but it’s all I got!)

If you have been hanging around Grace for the last few months, you have certainly been exposed to the teaching we have been moving through regarding developing discernment when it comes to spiritual gifting. As part of this development, we actually assigned a church-wide project using the actions of Todd Bentley and the “Lakeland …

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Todd Bentley, the preacher at the center of the so-called “Lakeland Revival,” is separating from his wife.

J. Lee Grady of Charisma magazine writes:

I’m sad. I’m disappointed. And I’m angry. Here are few of my many, many questions about this fiasco:

Why did so many people flock to Lakeland from around the world to rally behind an evangelist who had serious credibility issues from the beginning?

To put it bluntly, we’re just plain gullible.

From the first week of the Lakeland revival, many discerning Christians raised questions about Bentley’s beliefs and practices. They felt uneasy when he said he talked to

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Now where did my clothes go…?

Dustin Wax at the Stepcase Lifehack blog writes that his partner is going around asking people this question to fulfill an assignment for her psychology class:

I think there’s a resistance to answering a question like this honestly. Sure, being put on the spot and asked one of the most profound questions humanity has managed to come up with is probably not exactly conducive to thoughtful responses, either, but I doubt she’d get much better responses if she gave them a week to think

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I found myself another Batman-inspired conversation yesterday… it was about this quote from Batman Begins:

It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.

Agree or disagree? How does this question relate to the Gospel?

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Yesterday I indulged in a little one-sided provocation to get some conversation going. Taking Justin Taylor’s callout to two blogs that commented on The Dark Knight as a starting point, I basically asked for commentary on the commentary. I don’t think I ever explicitly agreed with the commentary (I didn’t intend to), though it certainly provides some food for thought about the way we consume entertainment.

But I confess that I had an agenda:

1. I wanted show the value of asking questions to make people think and start (and sustain) a conversation.

2. I wanted to stimulate Gospel-centered thinking about something that will come up in conversation (the latest Hollywood blockbuster) so that we can

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Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - …

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How’s that for a headline? (Update: Be sure to read on to the next post.)

Krista and I went to see The Dark Knight on Saturday. It was an impressive film; we really enjoyed it on a number of levels—the production values were exceptional, Heath Ledger’s performance was amazing, and the characterizations and plot offered plenty of food for thought. (BTW, is Batman really Bruce Wayne, or is Bruce Wayne really Batman?)

But to tell you the truth, by Sunday morning I had pretty much moved on.

Then, this morning, I read this commentary by Ray Ortlund:

Visually stimulating. Technologically impressive.

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