Inspiration (Eng.)

Christelijke Quotes

The mark of true, godly leadership is not power and privilege, but humble service. God gives us strength to follow Jesus example and to lead His way. ~David McCasland (Mark 10:35-45) *Photo by keyseeker at morguefile.com.

Now, while we cannot project ourselves backward through time and walk again in Galilee with Christ and His disciples, we can by faith actually experience "the substance of things hoped for"; we can have every sufficient "evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, KJV); we can taste "the powers of the coming age" (6:5); we can "know" and "comprehend"; we can have the inner witness, the spiritual illumination that brings out the typography of the kingdom of God as clearly as any earthly landscape is revealed by the rising sun. Then every word will be like a sharp, clear shadow thrown by the objects on the terrain, not to stand in place of reality, but to outline it and set it in relief. A word is valid only when it refers to some reality in the mind of the user. It must submit to definition as used by the speaker. Its dictionary meaning cannot save it from semantic fraud. It must have a real meaning in its limited context at a given time. By this test an alarmingly great amount of our religious talk is phonetic breath, no more.

Randy Alcorn's Blog

The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis
No writer has had greater impact on me than C. S. Lewis. I find both his fiction and nonfiction to be penetrating and life-shaping. That’s one of the reasons I’m excited to be speaking at this year’s Desiring God National Conference, “The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis,” in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 27-29. My topic is “C.S. Lewis on Heaven and the New Earth: God’s Eternal Remedy to the Problem of Evil and Suffering.”

John Piper will be giving two plenary messages, and there will be other main sessions from Phil Ryken, Douglas Wilson, Kevin Vanhoozer and me. On Friday, there will be breakout sessions from Lyle Dorsett, Colin Duriez, Joe Rigney, and N.D. Wilson. There will also be a variety of 10-minute short monologues in the exhibit hall related to Lewis. In the words of DG’s David Mathis, “Our hope is this will be the next best thing to visiting Narnia yourself.”

In this 2-minute video, John Piper shares more:

I’m honored to be sharing at the Desiring God conference, which Nanci and I think of as the best we’ve ever participated in (we’ve been to two other DG conferences).

Raised in a nonchristian home, I came to Christ as a teenager. My first Lewis books were The Problem of Pain, then the Space trilogy, then Mere Christianity. By the time I’d been a believer for two years, Lewis’s fingerprints were all over me.

It was Lewis who convinced me that the same person could write good nonfiction and fiction, and emboldened me to try. Those who read my books know how often I quote him. Lewis’s mentorship and impact on my own life, and indirectly on my ministry, has been profound, and I’m grateful to God for him.

As I shared in part 1 and part 2 of an extended blog about Lewis, I learned long ago what he knew, that an author can become a friend, someone you can rejoin at will and pick up right where you left off. In that sense, Lewis has been my friend now for over forty years. I’m looking forward to the conference not just as a speaker, but also as an eager listener.

If you’re interested in attending this year’s conference, Desiring God is offering a super early-bird rate of $125 when you register by June 1. Learn more and register on the event page.

Related Resources

Spurgeon

The Greatest Joy Of Heaven

Some think of heaven as this and some as that. Fellowship with believers of all ages is the great desire of some; others long for paradise as a place of increased knowledge, to know even as they are known; and a third rejoice in it chiefly as a haven of rest. There are are grounds for each of these forms of desire, but concerning heaven this is the believer’s chief thought, that he will be with God, and that God will be for ever his joy and bliss. No sins will hide the brightness of Jehovah’s glory from our eyes, no doubts disturb the deep calm of our enjoyment of Jehovah’s love when once we fully enter upon our portion. We shall be for ever with the Lord, and nothing more or better can be imagined. God is our heaven. Whom have I in heaven but thee? Draw, then, ever a clear distinction between the things that are seen, which are not your portion, and the things which are not seen, which are your true heritage; between the temporal and fleeting joys which amuse us by the way, and the abiding and eternal felicity which will satisfy us at the end. Allow nothing to rival the chief good in your judgment or your affections, but cry evermore, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee.” From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "God Our Portion And His Word Our Treasure," delivered September 2, 1877. Image by Misserion on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Desiring God

God’s Mercy in Messed Up Families

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find an example of what we would call a “healthy family” in the Bible? It’s a lot easier to find families with a lot of sin and a lot of pain than to find families with a lot of harmony. For example, here’s just a sampling from Genesis: The first recorded husband and wife calamitously disobey God (Genesis 3). Their firstborn commits fratricide (Genesis 4:8). Sarah’s grief over infertility moves her to give her servant, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine to bear a surrogate child (Genesis 16). When it happens, Sarah abuses Hagar...

C.S. Lewis

Are You Attached to God?

Lewis to Joyce Pearce in Collected Letters Volume 2, July 20, 1943: It is to me inconceivable that Nature as we see it is either what God intended or merely evil: it looks like a good thing spoiled.The doctrine of the Fall... is the only satisfactory explanation. Evil begins, in a universe were all was good, from free will, which was permitted because it makes possible the greatest good of all. The corruption of the first sinner consists not in choosing some evil thing... but in preferring a lesser good (himself) before a greater (God).The Fall is, in fact, Pride.The possibility of this wrong preference is inherent in the very fact of having, or being, a self at all. But though freedom is real it is not infinite. Every choice reduces a little ones freedom to choose the next time. There therefore comes a time when the creature is fully built, irrevocably attached to either God or to itself.This irrevocableness is what we call Heaven or Hell.Every conscious agent is finally committed in the long run: i.e. it rises above freedom into willed, but henceforth unalterable, union with God, or else sinks below freedom into the black fire of self-imprisonment.That is why the universe (as even the physicists now admit) has a real history, a fifth act with a finale in which the good characters 'live happily ever after' and the bad ones are cast out.At least that is how I see it.Yours sincerely,C. S. Lewis

The Resurgence

Resurgence roundup, 5/24/13

Sail through the flood of information with our weekly Resurgence Roundups. Each Friday, we will share a list of articles across ministry tribes that our team has found helpful with the hope of serving you well. Sterrett, Stetzer, and Storms on Oklahoma This week a deadly tornado ripped through the town of Moore, Oklahoma. Here are three articles we read this week that we found helpful in reflecting upon the goodness of God in the midst of suffering: “Oklahoma tornadoes: Where was God?” by Dave Sterrett (Washington Post) “We still cry out to God when tragedy strikes,” by Ed Stetzer (USA Today) “Tornadoes, tsunamis, and...

Creation Moments

One Foot and a Sail
Today's Creation Moment 24-05-2013 07:00

It was about 50 years ago that Chinese immigrants to the United States brought some freshwater clams with them. It is known that today the clam is found in at least 35 states. That's an amazing amount of territory to cover in only 50 years for a creature that only has one foot. read more

Christelijke Quotes

Randy Alcorn's Blog

Spurgeon

Desiring God

C.S. Lewis

The Resurgence

Creation Moments

ToonFever

After Eden