Our mission statement at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church is pretty simple: Changed by God to make a difference for God. We Christians can do that in many ways, most importantly in the context of our daily lives.

From Christianity Today online.

And Christians should be invested in local politics for several reasons. Most importantly, we can live out our call to love neighbor by paying attention to the work of local governing authorities and making sure that they are [pursuing] the common good. Second, the smaller the unit of government, the more significant our individual contributions become. A few concerned activists can attend a school board or city council meeting and help influence the decision-making.

This interview of political scientist, Amy Black, gets it exactly right, I think, and serves as an example of how God can use politics to allow his changed people to reflect God’s glory in the world.

Read and reflect on it all. Is God calling you to do this work as part of your discipleship?

A thought-provoking article from Mr. Litfin. What do you think?

From Christianity Today online.

What’s going on here? Could it be that our delight in the security of our standing before God—that is, that all who have “put on” Christ (Gal. 3:27) stand fully accepted in him—has blinded us to a different issue: the acceptability of ourworship offerings? It would be the cheapest of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” to suppose that because we are secure in Christ, whatever we bring to God in worship, however inferior or mediocre, pleases him (Eph. 5:10).

Not just anything will do when we come before God. He is still honored by what is holy, what is our best, what is sacrificial. The kingdom to which we have come, says the writer to the Hebrews, requires us to “offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe,” because “our ‘God is a consuming fire'” (Heb. 12:28–29, emphasis added). A blasé, casual attitude toward worship may indicate that we have failed to grasp this important point, a sign of our being more conformed to this world” than so transformed in our minds that by testing we are able to discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2, emphasis added).

Read it all.

Another excellent piece from Mr. Galli. Check it out.

From Christianity Today online:

I find it interesting that when we conservatives defend the “authority of the Bible” or “biblical values,” we usually are trying to get other Christians to submit to some doctrine (like the Virgin Birth or substitutionary atonement) or some ethic (like forbidding extra-marital sex or R-rated movies). We use the Bible as leverage to get others to submit.

Let me be clear. I believe in the Virgin Birth, in substitutionary atonement, that sex should be reserved for marriage between a man and a woman, and so forth. I’m on board with the classic orthodox doctrines and ethics because I believe they are taught by or inferred from the Bible, which I recognize as divinely inspired revelation.

But I don’t believe the Bible is fundamentally a moral power tool. The Bible is not a law book as much as it is a gift book, not so much about living right as about being right with God because of what he has done for us in Jesus Christ.

To be sure, the Bible is in part given for “reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” But the goal is not to get people to toe the line but, as Paul puts it, that we all “may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, ESV). It seems to me that if such instruction is to lead to “good work,” it will need to be grounded in the forgiveness of God, in the gracious death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only then will our work be grounded in love, and only then will it will produce the fruit of the Spirit. Otherwise the instruction will turn into mere law.

Read the whole thing.