Apprenticed

From @PerspectivesWCM

Apologetic Quotes

10 great apologetics quotes from "The Poached Egg":

One lesson we must learn from Misquoting Jesus is that those in ministry need to close the gap between the church and the academy. We have to educate believers. Instead of trying to isolate laypeople from critical scholarship, we need to insulate them. They need to be ready for the barrage, because it is coming. The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ. Ehrman is to be thanked for giving us a wake-up call. - Dr. Daniel B. Wallace

Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance. - William Dembski

Everybody has a point of view they think is right and everybody judges at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeon-holed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too. It’s an inescapable consequence of believing in any kind of morality.
- Greg Koukl

In the face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take the question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue. - Francis Schaeffer

One of the most disastrous illusions of the internet age is that an amateur plus Google is equivalent to a scholar. A search engine offers information, more or less relevant according to the skill of the searcher. But it does not sift that information; it does not sort fact from fancy, wheat from chaff. It does not explain which facts are relevant and which are beside the point. It does not weigh the merits of competing arguments and tell the user where the balance of evidence lies. A bright amateur armed with the internet may at best be better informed than he would otherwise have been, and he may occasionally catch a real scholar in a factual error. But it will not turn him into a scholar himself. There is no such thing as effortless erudition. - Dr. Timothy McGrew

Twilight Followers

"Vampire Christians are people who want a bit of Jesus’ blood so they dodge hell but really don’t want anything to do with him. They had no vision for, or intention of, following him."

     - Dallas Willard

(Probably also read "Twilight" novels)

RIP Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard went to be with the Lord this morning. Prayers up for his family. He will be greatly missed.

Dallas Willard, a prominent philosopher on a "quiet quest to subvert nominal Christianity" (according to a 2006 CT profile), died today after losing a battle with cancer. He was 77.

HarperOne broke the news:

Beloved author of THE DIVINE CONSPIRACY and critical thought leader Dallas Willard passes. Rest in peace, Dallas. bit.ly/10blVF2

— HarperOne (@HarperOne) May 8, 2013

Prayers for Dallas Willard

Please pray for Dallas Willard, an influenecial Christian leader and one of my favorite authors. From CT

Dallas Willard has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, according to a tweet from the author's official Twitter account. Willard, who is a University of Southern California philosophy professor, is 77 years old.

Willard is well known to many Christians from his books on spiritual formation, including The Divine Conspiracy (which Christianity Today selected as Book of the Year in 1998), The Spirit of the Disciplines,Hearing God, and Renovation of the Heart.

Willard has been a provocative Christian thinker since the 1960s, when he abandoned ministry to study philosophy. Since then, he has "devoted [himself] to reestablishing the exalted place moral reasoning once held in the academy."

May the Lord be with him and his family in this time of trial. 

Hearing God: Free Audio Book

ChristianAudio.Com's free audio book of the month is Dallas Willards's Hearing God:

"God spoke to me."
"The Spirit spoke to my heart."
"God revealed the idea to me."

Being close to God means communicating with him--telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing and understanding what he is saying to us. It is this second half of our conversation with God that is so important but that can also be so difficult. How do we hear his voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What role does the Bible play? What if what God says to us is not clear?

The key, says best-selling author Dallas Willard, is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator. In this updated classic, originally published as In Search of Guidance, the author provides rich spiritual insight into how we can hear God's voice clearly and develop an intimate partnership with him in the work of his kingdom.

Did I mention that it is FREE?!

God Acting = Kingdom Come

As regards the kingdom of God? Theologians such as Ladd say that the kingdom is both present and absent, but this basically means we focus on the absent! But I didn’t come to understand the kingdom through theologians. I came to the understanding when I was a young Baptist Minister. I noticed that I spent a lot of my time trying to get people to come and hear me, and other ministers did the same. But when I looked at Jesus his problem was getting away from people! So I said there has to be something different here. So I found what every scholar will tell you, that Jesus’ message was the kingdom of God. He proclaimed it, he manifested it and he taught it. When he sent out his disciples, he didn’t send them out to teach (that’s the hard part), but to proclaim and manifest (the easy part!) It was very powerful. …

When you look at the Bible you see that the kingdom of God is God acting. It is the range of God’s effective will. When I pray ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done’ I am praying first that God’s will may be done in my own life and then around me. This is the open door for his teachings, for it is his effective will that I bless and don’t curse, that I let my yes be yes and my no be no, that I not be motivated by anger and contempt etc … (as outlined in the Sermon on the Mount). So as someone who is living in the kingdom, I am praying that this may become a true expression of who I am by inner transformation. Discipleship is learning how to do that.

Dallas Willard, Quoted at Dallas Willard on the kingdom and church growth « City of God