Gospel

Tim Keller On Sanctification

June 3, 2011, by 2 comments

Though I’ve never met him, Tim Keller is one of the most important voices in my life right now.

Our pastor often refers to him as ‘Yoda’, and I have to agree.

This stood out to me this morning:

Imagine sitting down with a sever-year-old and saying to her, “I’d like you to write me an essay on what you think it’s like to fall in love and be married.”

When you read the essay, you will say it isn’t very close to the reality. A seven-year-old can’t imagine what love and marriage will be like.

When you start to follow Jesus, you’re at least that far away. You have no idea how far you’ll have to go.

A Modern Prodigal

April 18, 2011, by 1 comment

This is the story about one of the pastors at our church and his son.

It Is Finished

April 8, 2011, by No comments yet

Matt Papa is one of the worship leaders at our church.

He just released a new single called It Is Finished.

Put on your headphones, sit back, and meditate on these lyrics:

the earth shook and trembled

the sun bowed its head

the veil of the temple was open for man

as Jesus went down in the cold of the grave

defeated the darkness when He overcame

the keys of the kingdom were placed into hands

of children and priests and of fishers of men

through all generations His will be heard

creation resounds the victorious words:

IT IS FINISHED

IT IS DONE…

I Need Your Help!

April 1, 2011, by No comments yet

One of my favorite things about our church is that we are always looking for ways to be involved with serving our community.

Events like ServeRDU are designed specifically to build intentionality into how we interact with the world and put Jesus on display.

This month, the Summit church is partnering with Pregnancy Support Services of Wake Forest through an event called 4,000 Steps.

Our small group has formed a team with the goal of raising $1,000 by the end of the month.

This is where you come in:

There’s already a slick little website setup where you can contribute to this goal. If every reader of this blog this month gave just 10 bucks, we would blow our goal out of the water!

AND if you sign up to give a repeating monthly gift, it will be doubled by an anonymous donor (and that isn’t code for me and Steph). That means that your $10 per month commitment would add up to $240 towards the goal this year!

So, please give it some thought, and when you’re ready, head on over to this link and click “support Zack”.

Thanks!

What WikiLeaks Reveals About Uzbekistan

December 13, 2010, by 1 comment

If you read this blog much, you know that I spent most of a year in Uzbekistan, and that the situation there is not a good one.

Islam Karimov is a murderous thug who rules through fear and intimidation, and millions of people suffer every day because of him.

Christians are routinely arrested and harassed, and prisoners are treated terribly.

This is an unexagerated reality for anyone who has spent any time there, yet the United States continues to maintain that they are our “partners in trade” and “partners in freedom”.

The recent wikileaks release of diplomatic cables shows that Karimov’s corruption is well-known among those who deal with him.

Check out this article where diplomats compare Karimov to a mafia thug.

Or this one, which includes a section from an actual cable:

Corruption is rampant in the GOU. Tenders and government positions can be fairly easily secured by paying the right amount of money to the appropriate individual, leading to a situation in which unqualified individuals have every incentive to engage in further corrupt activity to pay off the large debts they usually incur making down payments on the jobs.

Or this one, which begins:

The post-Soviet state of Uzbekistan is a nightmarish world of “rampant corruption”, organised crime, forced labour in the cotton fields, and torture, according to the leaked cables.

But the secret dispatches released by WikiLeaks reveal that the US tries to keep President Islam Karimov sweet because he allows a crucial US military supply line to run into Afghanistan, known as the northern distribution network (NDN).

Did you catch that? Basically, Uzbekistan is one step above North Korea, but our government says we need to be nice to them and ignore it all so that we can have a military supply line.

Sigh…

Please pray for this broken country, plagued by an evil ruler and hundreds of years of demonic oppression.

Pray for the thousands of believers who suffer daily for their courage to follow Christ.

Pray for 30,000,000 lost people with no good access to the Gospel of Christ’s saving work.

And pray for God to destroy the work of Karimov’s hands and open doors for a flood of missionaries and aid groups to come bring life to this dark place!