Valley View Church

This week Christian writer Jim Denison shared how “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion.” Many prominent atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris), over the last twenty years, have claimed Christianity was dead and gone, “outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous to society.” Yet people are “unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness.” And “those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.”

Here’s the point: Christianity is not dead and gone.

This Sunday is Easter, the day of the year we most intentionally celebrate and remember Christ’s resurrection. We will be taking a break from our series on Proverbs to focus on the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The word “gospel” means “good news”, and as Tim Keller has said, the story of Jesus is not good advice, but good news first and foremost. We talk about Christ’s death and resurrection all the time, even while studying a book of the Bible in the Old Testament. But when we focus on the message of the gospel, like at Easter, one of my favorite passages that most clearly expresses the essence of this good news (and also uses the word ‘gospel’ to do so) is in 1 Corinthians 15:1-10…

This past Sunday we studied Proverbs 4, focusing on verse 23, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” This verse illustrates an important reality: what you store, or ‘keep’ in your heart is what will come out. Now the reverse is also true, as we saw with the verses surrounding 4:23, that the way you use the rest of your body is what feeds the heart. The eyes and ears are the gateways to the heart. The feet determine the direction that your eyes and ears are pointed. We need to be wise with our body because it will shape our heart, our character, and ultimately our lives. 

When was the last time you were really angry? I mean on the edge of exploding, hair standing on end, seeing-red kind of angry? Our family went to Phoenix this week to visit our oldest son who is in college there. Driving in mega-city traffic reminded me of the last time I was lose-your-mind angry. I was driving in heavy traffic back home and someone cut me off. Afterwards I had to ask myself, ‘Why?’ Why did that person cutting me off stir up so much anger? I allowed someone I’ve never met (I hope) and will probably never see again (maybe?) to ruin my otherwise pleasant afternoon drive. What was going on in my heart that I went so quickly from zero to sixty on the anger scale?

Godly Skill for Every Day Living In last week’s letter I wrote part one of some of the wisdom I learned from Dennis Rainey while serving with him in …

Working directly with Dennis Rainey was a diverse experience, full of opportunities to learn about leadership and gain wisdom. After moving into a new role, I spent some time reflecting on the wisdom-laced sayings I often heard from Dennis. This letter is a collection of the best of those sayings.

I’ve shared before that as a young man, I learned the importance of getting around people you want to be like. That’s true of friends, but it’s also true of mentors. Looking back I can see that one of the motivators was a hunger for wisdom. I was an avid consumer of knowledge, but often lacked wisdom. Knowledge is one aspect of wisdom, but wisdom is something else entirely. You may have heard the adage, “Knowledge is understanding that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in fruit salad.”

Last Sunday we wrapped up our series teaching through the book of 1 Peter. The final few verses we covered emphasize living well now to finish well tomorrow. We saw that Peter surrounded himself with faithful friends in the gospel to help him finish well, in particular Silvanus and Mark. His example serves as a reminder that we all need strong mentors, peers, and mentees. We all need people who are pouring into us, and people who are at a similar level of spiritual growth to continue to sharpen us, plus those who we are pouring into.

One of the resources I keep on hand and use often is a little booklet with a basic plan of salvation, a description of baptism, a few pages on Christian Growth, and at the end, a 12 day Bible reading plan with selected passages from the Gospels on the life of Christ. I love giving this to new Christians (along with a card we created that has the page numbers in our Church Bibles) because there’s no better way to grow than to be in God’s Word (Hebrews 4:12) and this reading plan makes it easy.

One of my dreams came true this NFL season. Well, almost, then sort of. It had to do with the Philadelphia Eagles. I’m not talking about their Super Bowl win, but what happened in their playoff game against the Packers. The camera caught one of their star wide receivers, A.J. Brown, reading a book on the side lines in between plays. I was skeptical at first, thinking it must be staged, as I didn’t know any football players that read books growing up-kidding! But once I realized it was real, I thought, “Finally! The first step toward reading becoming a sport.” Not so fast, as the sports media did not share the sentiment. Their responses were more like, “How could a truly committed player be reading on the sidelines? What? Is he bored? Is he ignoring everyone else? Doesn’t he realize there’s a game going on?” Of course people jumped to such conclusions pretty quickly without asking him.