I’m grateful for David Platt and voices like his, who are calling the church to be faithful to God’s Word and extend both the grace and truth of Jesus in the midst of an increasingly hostile culture.

If our eyes are on anyone but Jesus, we’re not going to have the stamina to put up with criticism or outright hostility. 

The answer is yes and no, and it depends on whose approval we’re seeking. 

In Galatians 1:10 Paul says, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” 

In Charles Hummel’s booklet Tyranny of the Urgent, which I read as a young Christian thirty-five years ago, he said that what is urgent is often not important, and what is important is typically not urgent.

In this third and final blog post from an interview with Os Guinness (check out part 1 and part 2), Os talks about living for the Audience of One, and the relationship between calling, markets, and morality.

With the recent allegations against actor Mel Gibson, there's been a number of responses to his situation that cry out for an eternal perspective. 

The problem with short-term rewards is not that it's wrong to receive them, but that it's wrong for them to be our primary motivation for doing the work. If we take Matthew 6 seriously, when we offer people their name on a brick for giving to a building offering we're saying "Hope you enjoy this brick, because if this is why you're giving, the brick's all the reward you're going to get."