I’m reading an excellent book at the moment, “Thinking. Loving. Doing.”, which is a “call to holistic Christianity“, with contributions from a fantastic range of writers and thinkers including Francis Chan, Al Mohler, Rick Warren and John Piper. I’ll be reviewing it soon on this blog, but I was particularly struck by a lengthy quote from one of the grandfathers of modern Evangelicalism, Billy Graham:
“The most important issue we face today is the same the church has faced in every century: Will we reach our world for Christ? In other words, will we give priority to Christ’s command to go into all the world and preach the gospel? Or will we turn increasingly inward, caught up in our own internal affairs or controversies, or simply becoming more and more comfortable with the status quo? Will we become inner-directed or outer-directed? The central successes of our time aren’t economic or political or social, important as these are. The central issues of our time are moral and spiritual in nature, and our calling is to declare Christ’s forgiveness and hope and transforming power to a world that does not know him or follow him. May we never forget this”
Taken from this article from Christianity Today.
This barely needs comment – Billy Graham is one of the giants of evangelicalism, and he nails it. We need to proclaim and declare Christ’s forgiveness and hope and transforming power. And, I believe, we need to be aware of that power to transform us in our own lives, so that we might be forgiving, hopefully, and transformative of the world around us.
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