This Sun­day we con­sider Con­tent­ment.  One help­ful writer in this regard is Richard Fos­ter, who wrote the now clas­sic Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, and fol­lowed that book with a detailed treat­ment of one spe­cific dis­ci­pline enti­tled,  Free­dom of Sim­plic­ity.  What fol­lows is a link to read an excerpt from the book, which has ben­e­fited quite a few folks in seek­ing first the kingdom.

Free­dom of Simplicity

“The Michael Ram­sey Prize is intended for the­o­log­i­cal writ­ing which, by fresh­ness and orig­i­nal­ity, some­how changes the the­o­log­i­cal land­scape, and also serves the needs of the Church …  ”  We are glad to see con­fir­ma­tion of our high rec­om­men­da­tion of David Bent­ley Hart’s book,  Athe­ist Delu­sions, by its win­ning the 2011 Michael Ram­sey Prize last month.

Michael Ram­sey Prize 2011 (click to view)

So what if I don’t have time this sum­mer to read the artis­tic and engag­ing Athe­ist Delu­sions? (Which you may recall is actu­ally a book set­ting our civ­i­liza­tion in the con­text of its his­tor­i­cal roots–doing the home­work of trac­ing what is owed to the trans­form­ing influ­ence of Chris­tian­ity.)  You can get the gist of the book by the short sum­mary below by C Bur­rell.  Note the four ways men­tioned of how Chris­tian­ity trans­formed society.

Hart: Athe­ist Delu­sions (click to read)

Jesus prayed for the One­ness of His fol­low­ers.  Here is a poster I put together to illus­trate the mutual rela­tion­al­ity of discipleship.

Here is a well done chart from the Abide in Christ site with a highly plau­si­ble sequence of Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion appearances.

Res­ur­rec­tion Appear­ances in Sequence (click to view)

RBC Min­istries out of Grand Rapids MI has pro­duced a well done doc­u­men­tary on the Res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus called, “10 Rea­sons to Believe in the Res­ur­rec­tion.”  It is part of their Chris­t­ian Courses on line and is offered in three seg­ments.   Please check it out and be encour­aged in qual­ity his­tor­i­cal rea­son­ing and bib­li­cal faith.  LH

10 Rea­sons to Believe in the Res­ur­rec­tion Lessons 1–4 (Click to view)

10 Rea­sons to Believe in the Res­ur­rec­tion Lessons 5 — 7 (Click to view)

10 Rea­sons to Believe in the Res­ur­rec­tion Lessons 8 — 10 (Click to view)

RBC Min­istries Website

Here are two slides from the Sun­day mes­sage on Romans 6 and walk­ing with Jesus in sanctification–being set apart unto Christ­like­ness. Lance

I recently found a delight­ful dia­gram that charts out where folks come out on their views of God.  It is by Cameron Blair who min­is­ters with the Fel­low­ship for Evan­ge­lism in the Visual Arts (FEVA) down in Australia.

Fel­low­ship for Evan­ge­lism in the Visual Arts (link)

The chart is offered here with Cameron’s permission.

What’s your World­view? (click to view)

Please find below a list of Scrip­tures to con­tem­plate regard­ing who we are in Christ.  These can be under­stand­ably inspir­ing while also unpre­dictably encour­ag­ing.  Some believ­ers report sea­sons when they read these every day.

Who Am I? Scrip­tures on Chris­t­ian Identity

Who Am I? Scrip­tures on Chris­t­ian Identity

There are some won­der­ful resources from folks work­ing to artic­u­late the many rea­sons Chris­tians believe what they believe.  Check out the var­i­ous web­sites men­tioned here.

A Rea­son­able Faith: Top 25 Apolo­get­ics Web­sites (click to read)

Read­ings avail­able for audi­to­rium class:  “The Chris­t­ian Rev­o­lu­tion:  A His­tory of Christ’s Trans­for­ma­tion of Human­ity”  under Cat­e­gories of Con­tents Sec­tion to the right …  Start from the bot­tom 2nd page and work up to get all material.