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A few weeks ago, a local strip club made headlines by staging a counter-protest in front of a church. The church had been protesting the strip club’s presence in less than tactful ways for the past four years, and the club owner and workers couldn’t stand it anymore.

I dismissed the story as yet another example of two groups yelling at each other in lieu of finding a real solution. A few days ago, however, I noticed a XXXChurch post by Sherri Brown of JC’s Girls and Anny Donewald of Eve’s Angels. They’d gotten wind of the fruitless protests and counter-protests and felt called to go and share the Gospel with the women from the strip club. Sherri, Anny and crew managed to lead a few of the girls from the strip club to Christ. Afterwards they were invited to speak at the church and the service ended with the church members and strippers hugging, crying and asking for forgiveness.

Here’s an excerpt from a their journal entries which were published on the XXXChurch blog:

We went into the club and were blessed by flowers & cards from the girls!!! We had such a wonderful night with them. God spoke into us and then we spoke into them. It was so not us, which made it very supernatural. Two of the precious girls gave their lives to the Lord and a few rededicated their relationship with Him!!! Yea God!!! We just LOVE these beautiful girls with ALL of our hearts and pray a special blessing on them and their families. [...]

As the church left the building, they became Jesus in Flesh and the Love of the Father poured out all over these girls as they began to Love them, hug them, and seek forgiveness from them!!! Our Sweet Lola was broken and afraid to trust the church. Pastor Bill Hugged her and held her and promised with all his heart he was not gonna fail her. He prayed for her and it was AMAZING!! I saw my beautiful Lola Smile from ear to ear for the very first time!!!

Up to this point, it’s a fantastic story of God’s love intervening in a seemingly deadlocked situation.

However, yesterday a report was published in a local newspaper that makes me wonder if much has changed. The pastor of the church sat down with the owner of the club and asked him to close his business. Unsurprisingly, the owner said, “No.” So, the church is going to start protesting again, which in turn will lead to the strip club counter-protesting. Here’s the meaty part of that story from the Coshocton Tribune:

Dunfee says he would have accepted nothing less from George than an offer to shut down his business.

The pastor says church members will continue to gather outside the club on weekend nights, as they’ve done for years.

He says he expects George and women from the club will keep up the Sunday protests they began several weeks ago at the church in Warsaw.

Clearly, this situation is complicated. It’s hard to really know what’s going on based on a few blog posts and newspaper articles. But looking in on it from afar, I can’t help but think that the church would be better off focusing on ministering to the girls rather than protesting. The protests aren’t getting either side anywhere. The club owner has little incentive to close his club in accordance with moral standards he doesn’t agree with.

They’re returned to how things were rather than moving forward from the spiritually healthy events that transpired almost a week ago.

What do you think about this story? How would you respond if you were a part of the church in this situation? Do you think the church is in the right to continually protest the club?

Share your thoughts!

Saul’s conversion to Christianity is one of those Biblical stories that I really wish the Bible expanded upon. How long was it before the Christian community fully embraced Paul as a fellow believer? How did Paul’s former peers react? The conversion account in Acts 9 gives us some interesting details, but it would be interesting to hear more about the Paul’s sinner-turned-saint process played out.

Anabel Gillham must share this curiosity about Paul’s conversion story, because in this devotional from Lifetime Guarantee Ministries, Anabel asks an intriguing question about the circumstances of his spiritual rebirth: did Paul know what he was getting into?

I wonder if Saul’s excitement kept him from grasping all that Ananias said to him? If you had been struck blind and then someone had come and touched you and the blindness left—you really wouldn’t want to listen to someone preaching to you—you’d want to jump and pump hands and hug everyone around you! You would have been lifted out of the deep darkness of despondency into the glorious light of rejoicing!

If he did hear, I know he must have been shocked: “This man, Saul, is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel!” How wonderful! How exciting! What an awesome task the Lord had just given to him—Saul! He was going to accomplish great and mighty things, which the Lord would bring about. He would have a nationwide ministry! He would appear before kings!

But wait. Ananais wasn’t through. He was saying something else–in a different tone of voice and his face was ashen: “I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.”

Paul was destined to be a great hero of the faith, doing mighty works and great feats of evangelism in God’s name. But his initial invitation to the faith is shockingly blunt about what Paul’s choice will mean for him: suffering.

The Bible makes it clear that the spiritual blessings of service to Christ are often intertwined with suffering and trials experienced for His sake. Are you at a bleak point in your life, feeling very far from the victory that Christ promises us? Take comfort in the story of Paul, whose triumph in Christ was won alongside great difficulty.

Depending on when you ask me there’s a good chance I’d call myself a runner. There are times when I wear the label proudly, but there are times when it’s been months since I’ve accelerated beyond a brisk walk. Catch me then and you’ll get an extensive and meandering litany of excuses.

Running, like most physical activity, is habit based. For the most part, the more regularly you work out, the more you want to do it. After all, staying in shape is much easier than getting into shape.

The devotional over at Our Daily Bread today is about our spiritual routines. Just as we can get into healthy physical activities like running, we can get into healthy spiritual routines like setting aside time to pray or praise God:

Summer can also be a dangerous time of breaking good habits. Certain routines are good. They increase our efficiency and ensure that important things get done. After all, we need to have fixed times and places for certain things or the world would be chaotic. Creation is designed to operate on schedule, and, as part of it, so are we. We need food and sleep at regular intervals.

We sometimes hear legitimate warnings about allowing routines to turn into ruts. But the Bible indicates that having set times for certain things is good. David indicated that morning was the right time for him to praise God and ask for His direction (Ps. 5:3; 143:8). And Daniel prayed three times a day, and not even the threat of death made him change his routine (Dan. 6:10).

While enjoying carefree days, we must not become careless about spending time with God. Savoring spiritual sustenance is a routine for all seasons.

Read the entire devotional at odb.org.

Where in your daily routine does time with God fall? If you don’t have a habit of praying to God at a certain time, how might you develop one?

Today’s devotional, from ACTS International’s Daily Encounter, asks what we might learn from a peculiar animal and its cautious nature:

I have read that the African impala can jump more than ten feet high and cover a distance of thirty feet. So why can impalas be held captive in a zoo behind a wall that is only three feet high?

It’s because this magnificent animal will not jump if it can’t see where its feet are going to fall–and beyond the zoo wall it cannot see.

Richard Innes sees a parallel between the impala’s behavior and the Biblical attitude described in Proverbs 4:23-27, which cautions believers not to stray beyond the boundaries of God’s law. When we trust God to provide for our spiritual needs, there is no need—and it can actually be dangerous—to strike out into uncharted spiritual territory.

Unlike the impala, human beings find it extremely difficult to refrain from pushing or stepping over the boundaries put in place around us. What do you do each day to ensure that you “Do not swerve to the right or the left” and “take only ways that are firm”?

Do you feel distant from God?

Chances are good that feeling of distance didn’t develop overnight. When we drift away from God, it’s a slow and steady process. It might happen over a period of months or years, but all of the sudden we realize that we’ve been pushing God away rather than running towards Him. The devotional today from Strength for the Journey describes how we fall into this pattern and also gives us great advice for avoiding it in the future:

Satan’s opening volley was not a blistering attack on God; it was a simply a question that he wanted Eve to think about. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1). Actually, God had said that she could eat of every tree but one. But Satan twisted the facts to suit his purposes and to lead Eve’s mind to the conclusion that God was not the generous God she had known Him to be, but rather a stingy, restrictive, joy killer. Once she had let her heart drift to the wrong conclusion, it was easy for her to believe Satan’s lie that God just wanted to keep her from being as knowledgeable as He is and that the threat of them dying was just God’s way of scaring them into compliance with His stingy ways.

Satan still sets us adrift by planting doubt about God’s Word and spinning the facts to his own evil advantage.

Once we begin to suspect God instead of trusting Him, we inevitably drift away from Him. So, beware! Your life is full of scenarios where Satan can put his deceitful twist on your experiences. He is the spin-doctor of hell, and as Jesus said, “When [Satan] lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Read the rest of the devotional at RBC.org.

Have you recently found yourself becoming distant with God? What’s stopping you from moving back towards Him?

Do you think that you are beautiful?

Despite our pride, our lusts, our anger and disobedience, God sees us as beautiful. To be honest, I have a hard time with this aspect of God’s nature. In some ways, to me it’d make more sense to me if God wasn’t able to look past our sins.

The devotional below comes from Today. It focuses on Matthew 6:25-34 in which Jesus tells us about God’s care for the plants of the field. Jesus reminds us that if God is showering this much attention on flowers, He’s spending far more energy thinking about us, the “crown of his creation:”

In today’s verses Jesus points to the magnificence of flowers: “Not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” So if this is how God shows care for a flower, how much more does our Father in heaven care for us humans, the crown of his creation? As we might examine the beauty and intricacies of a flower, this is how God looks at us! We do not have to worry about meeting some artificial or worldly standard of beauty. We are all precious in God’s sight.

In addition, because God provides so beautifully for us all, we can bloom where we are planted. Some flowers last just a short time; others, like the petunias in my garden, bloom until the first frost of autumn arrives. God, who has created each of us as unique individuals and redeemed us through the blood of his Son, enables us to show forth his love, compassion, glory, and life. Some of us may have a short time, and others may have a much longer time to bloom. But we all can display the beauty of God’s love and care because God himself sustains us.

Read the rest of the devotional at thisistoday.net.

Do you find it hard to grasp that God thinks you’re beautiful? How have you seen God care for you recently?

Missionaries are some of my favorite people. Their lives are so often defined by astonishing personal sacrifices coupled with testimonies of God’s goodness and blessing.

Our devotional today is from Words of Hope and tells the story of Gladys Aylward, a missionary who followed God’s call even after she had been rejected by missionary society:

Gladys Aylward was an English parlor maid when she met Jesus. Transformed, she dreamed of going to another country to share the life she had found in him. Applying to the China Inland Mission, she failed their entrance requirements. Undeterred, she bought a train ticket and set out across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. She settled in a remote province of China. Joining another missionary, they opened an inn for muleteers. As the men enjoyed good food and a warm bed, they also were entertained. The women told stories of Jesus.

Later, officials commissioned Gladys to help abolish the custom of foot-binding, giving her access to Chinese homes and undreamed-of opportunities to spread the gospel. She eventually became involved in prison reform and established orphanages, leper treatment centers, and churches. She served the Chinese people until her death in 1970. This was the testimony of this humble servant: “My heart is full of praise that one so insignificant, uneducated, and ordinary in every way could be used to his glory for the blessing of his people in poor persecuted China.”

Read the rest of the devotional at woh.org

Is there anything about Gladys that particularly stands out to you? What would it take for you to just go without following the “official” missionary plan?

According to Wonder of Creation we have two kinds of responsibilities on this earth: material-creational and spiritual-relational. The first set is based on the opening chapters of Genesis and mainly cover our responsibility to exercise dominion. The second are rooted in our relationship with Christ, we are to worship our Creator and Savior and invite others to do the same.

The author of this devotional argues that neither set of responsibilities is more important than the other. In fact, they are so intertwined that they cannot be Biblically separated:

Inherent in these fundamental responsibilities, of course, would be using our God-given creativity to live and work wisely, to obtain life-essential food and water from the earth in a sustainable manner, to shelter and clothe ourselves, to marry, to bear, protect, and provide for children, and to honor and be grateful to the Creator who made it all possible. Note that these material-creational responsibilities were given to all people, not just to Christians. They are the fundamental tasks of being human.

Christians hold in addition to these duties the belief that we also have spiritual-relational responsibilities. Among them are worshiping and loving our Creator who is also our Savior (Jesus), being light and salt in a dark and decaying culture, doing good and not evil, being merciful, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, and sharing the “good news” (the Gospel) with fallen, sinful man. These are all done, however, in the context of our fundamental material-creational responsibilities—because if such basic human duties are neglected, the earth is abused and people suffer and die.

My conviction is that when Christians say it is more important to “share the Gospel of Jesus Christ” than to care for the creation (the environment) that Jesus Christ made, holds together, died in part to redeem, and will one day restore, reunite, and reconcile fully to God (Colossians 1:15-20), we are making a meaningless distinction. They are equally important aspects of a Christian’s day-to-day existence.

Further, we must realize that if we don’t first attend to our material-creational responsibilities we will not survive to attend to our spiritual-relational ones. That’s why we should care about the ecological damage created by the Gulf oil spill. Christians who call caring for the creation “nature worship” (as several did in commenting on the CT article) are wrong and are biblically confused.

Read the rest of the post at wonderofcreation.org.

Would you agree that the care of creation cannot be separated from our Christian responsibilities?

Whose fault is it when we sin?

We’re all familiar with the old saying “the Devil made me do it!”, but I don’t think most of us would take that excuse very seriously if we heard it from somebody who’s done wrong. But it does raise interesting questions: what exactly is Satan’s relationship to sin? Are there situations in which the Devil actually could make us sin against our will?

Our Daily Bread tackles the question and lays out the Christian understanding of Satan and his role in tempting us to sin:

The devil tempts believers, but he doesn’t make us sin. James tells us that God isn’t to blame either: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone” (James 1:13). He is good and holy.

So who is to blame for our sin? James says, “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed” (v.14). Just as a fisherman uses bait to lure his prey, so our own evil, unchecked desires lead to giving in to temptation and sin.

When we disobey God by sinning, let’s not shift the blame or justify our actions with the faulty “the devil made me do it” theology.

Our sin is our own; the devil may tempt us toward sin, but we’re the ones who make the final decision to obey or disobey God. I’ve always found this Christian understanding to be simultaneously sobering and comforting: on the one hand, we can’t wiggle out of the responsibility for our sins by blaming the devil; but on the other, we can rest assured that the devil has no power to make us disobey God.

What do you think? Has anyone ever tried the “Satan made me do it!” line on you, and how did you react?

In John 3, we read about a pharisee named Nicodemus having a conversation with Jesus about his connection to God. Nicodemus has seen what Jesus has done and concluded Jesus must be acting on God’s behalf.

Nicodemus quickly finds himself in a position of confusion. Jesus has turned the conversation to the pharisee’s need to be “born again.” As Jill Carattini puts in in this devotional from Slice of Infinity, Nicodemus’ reply of “How can this be?” is stated as “one reaching for light to see dim outlines of a picture before him.” He is no longer a confidant leader of Israel, rather he is a man searching for the truth.

Nicodemus’ questions often mirror our own. When we first feel the pull of Christ on our hearts we can find ourselves overwhelmed with the enormity of His vision for humanity. His divinity we can understand immediately. It is his offer of salvation that we initially find incomprehensible.

Here’s an excerpt from Carattini’s devotional “Of Mystery and Semantics:”

Nicodemus replied as many of us reply on a journey of faith, belief, doubt, and confusion—as one reaching for light to see dim outlines of a picture before him. “How can this be?” he asked, and the conversation that followed showed a man not asking hypothetically but actually, as one really longing to understand the logistics of rebirth. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the obscurity of darkness and found himself confronted by a conversation about flesh and spirit and light. “[W]hoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” (3:21).

G.K. Chesterton once said that it is important for the landlady who is considering a lodger to know his income, but it is more important to know his philosophy. Likewise, for the general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s worldview. “[T]he question” writes Chesterton, “is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects them.”(1) The big picture is always the most important picture. And when the picture is God, God outgrows every frame through which our eyes begin to see the divine. In a manner reminiscent of the exchange between Aslan and Lucy, God as noun, verb, and all always moves beyond the God we imagine.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “You’re bigger.”

“I am not,” said the great lion. “But every year you grow; you will find me bigger.”

Read the rest of the devotional over at rzim.org.

Do you ever feel like confused about the Gospel like Nicodemus was?