BEYOND INSECURITY, CONFIDENT CHRISTIANITY!

BEYOND INSECURITY 
CONFIDENT CHRISTIANITY!

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” – PHILIPPIANS 1:6

“I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

JESUS – MATTHEW 16:18

NOT AFRAID TO:

• Take Risks
• Take a Stand
• Give Sacrificially
• Try New Things
• Share Their Faith

“FIRSTS” IN THE BOOK OF ACTS

• The first permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Chapter 2)
• The first Christian churches (Chapters 2-4)
• The first organization of church government (Chapter 6)
• The first martyr (Chapter 7)
• The first missionary: Philip (Chapter 8)
• The first time the gospel is delivered to Gentiles (Chapter 10)
• The first use of the name Christians (Chapter 11:26)
• The first organized approach to world evangelism (Chapters 13-28)

3 GREAT SOURCES OF CONFIDENCE!

1. The  of God!

   “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd...” ACTS 2:14
   
   

2. The  of God!

   “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” ACTS 4:13
   
   

3. The  of God!

   45 “Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”

   46 “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,”

   47“praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” ACTS 2:45-47
   
   

FINAL THOUGHTS FOR DISCOURAGED CHRISTIANS

HUMAN RIGHTS

Christians headed the movements to combat human rights abuses such as infanticide, gladiatorial combat in the Roman Empire, slavery, child labor, etc.

The Christian Church led the movement to abolish the slave trade and banish slavery. Northern Christians saved runaway slaves, printed thousands of newsletters to raise awareness of the injustice of slavery and created the pressure that spread across the country to abolish slavery. The civil rights movement of the 1950’s came out of the African American Church.

HOSPITALS AND CHARITY

Christians established the first charitable medical hospitals. Almost every hospital in a downtown area has been launched by the Christian Church. Hospitals were created by Christians to care for the sick. The American Red Cross was created by Christians in 1864 by John Henry Dunant who was co-recipient of the first Nobel Prize for Peace in 1901. (REF: LUIS PALAU, GOD IS RELEVANT, NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PP. 177-178)

RELIEF WORK

Christians created the first emergency shelters for the homeless; the first homes for orphans; the first humanitarian institutions for the insane; the first ministries to victims of crime; the first outreaches to prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers; and the first societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. (REF: LUIS PALAU, GOD IS RELEVANT,NEWYORK: DOUBLEDAY,PP.177-178)

Most immigrants to America were processed through Ellis Island, where Christians fed and clothed the destitute, and ministered to the sick. The Salvation Army, formed in 1865 to reach the poor and homeless, is today one of the largest providers of relief in every disaster that occurs in the United States. The Salvation Army got there faster and fed more people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than the federal government.

WOMEN ART AND MUSIC

The dignity of women was elevated when Christ Christian faith inspired musical works by Bach,

spoke openly to women, enjoyed women’s friendship, Handel, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Mozart, and many

took time out to bless and heal them. Paul continued this when he publicly acknowledged the women who were some of the first church leaders and supporters of the faith. Christians discontinued the practice of veiling, patria potestas (father’s right to kill family members), infanticide of female babies, and assembly partitions. (REF: ALVIN SCHMIDT, HOW CHRISTIANITY CHANGED THE WORLD, P. 120)

Still today, American culture holds to the ideal of a husband sacrificially loving his wife, which was nonexistent before the dawn of Christendom.

EDUCATION

Most of the great colleges and universities in the world began as Christian colleges: Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth. The Christian Church started the first 115 universities in America. And until 1932, 168 out of the 182 colleges in the United States were founded by Christian denominations.

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Christian missionaries codified and preserved languages in much of the world, particularly for cultures that formerly had no written language. At least 1,210 languages were not written until Christian Bible translators learned the languages and devised writing for them. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, it is the same German language we know today.

Christians have led the world in literature. Christian faith motivated and inspired classic works by Augustine, John Bunyan, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pascal, Solzhenitsyn, Dickens, Milton, Defoe, Tennyson, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and many more. (REF: BEISNER, ANSWERS FOR ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS, AND OTHER THOUGHTFUL SKEPTICS, WHEATON: CROSSWAY, P. 137)

ART AND MUSIC

Christian faith inspired musical works by Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Mozart, and many others, and great works of art by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, etc. A Yale professor wrote, “The victory of Jesus Christ over the gods of Greece and Rome in the fourth century … was responsible for a massive and magnificent outpouring of creativity, that is probably, without parallel, in the entire history of art.” (REF: JAROSLAV PELIKAN, JESUS THROUGH THE CENTURIES: HIS PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF CULTURE, P. 83)

SCIENCE

Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Descartes, Newton, Kelvin, Mendel, Boyle were all devout Christians. Father Steno, a priest, is the father of modern geology. The Basilica of San Petronio was for many years the most sophisticated solar observatory in the world. Jesuits helped contribute to the development of clocks, barometers, microscopes and telescopes. They theorized about things like human flight, the moon and tides, and blood circulation. For over five centuries, no institution funded and supported the sciences more than the church.

INDIVIDUALS

How would the Church benefit you if you joined today? People who do not attend church are four times more likely to commit suicide than frequent church attenders. (REF: G.W. COMSTOCK AND K.B. PARTRIDGE, “CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND HEALTH”, JOURNAL OF CHRONIC DISEASE PP. 25:665-672)

The “importance of religion” is the single best predictor of not abusing drugs or alcohol. One survey of 14,000 youths found substance abuse varied in direct proportion to strength of religious commitment. (REF: R. B. LOCH AND R. H. HUGHES, “RELIGION AND YOUTH SUBSTANCE ABUSE”, JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND HEALTH, 24, PP. 3: 723-727)

High levels of faith boost psychological health and the ability to deal with stress, and decrease psychological distress, depression, and the negative effects of stress. (REF: LARSON, PP. 76-81)

There is also positive association between religious faith and physical health. (REF: LEVIN AND SCHILLER, “IS THERE A RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN HEALTH?” JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND HEALTH 26, PP. 1:9-35)

Male churchgoers have a 60 percent less risk of arteriosclerosis heart disease. Women churchgoers have only half the risk of dying from heart disease or emphysema. (REF: G.W. COMSTOCK AND K.B. PARTRIDGE, “CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND HEALTH”, JOURNAL OF CHRONIC DISEASE PP. 25:665-672)

Men who consider religion to be “very important” have far lower blood pressure and far reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. (REF: D. B. LARSON, ET. AL, “THE IMPACT OF RELIGION ON MEN’S BLOOD PRESSURE”, JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND HEALTH, 28, PP. 4:265-278)

Women with a strong religious faith recover from surgery far more quickly than nonbelievers. (PRESSMAN, LYONS, JANSON, AND STRAIN,: “RELIGIOUS BELIEF, DEPRESSION, AND AMBULATION STATUS”, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY, 147, PP. 6:758-760.)

A major study found that church attendance predicted marital satisfaction better than any other variable. (REF: GLENN AND WEAVER, “A MULTIVARIATE, MULTI- SURVEY STUDY OF MARITAL HAPPINESS”, JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY PP. 40-269-282)

A massive study found that “very religious women” report greater happiness and satisfaction with marital sex than either moderately religious or nonreligious women. (REF: TAVRIS AND SADD, “THE REDBOOK REPORT IN FEMALE SEXUALITY”, NEW YORK: DELACORTE PRESS, 1977)

People committed to religious faith have much higher levels of personal happiness and psychological wellbeing than atheists or agnostics. (REF: DAVID MYERS, “PURSUING HAPPINESS”, PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, JULY-AUGUST, 1993, PP. 32-38)

In a Gallup survey, people who said, “My religious faith is the most important influence in my life,” were twice as likely as others to describe themselves as

“very happy”. (REF: DAVID MYERS, “PURSUING HAPPINESS”, PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, JULY-AUGUST, 1993, PP. 32-38)