I don’t normally advertise events here (don’t think I’ve done so before), but I’m helping a friend who’s organizing a conference this week by Kingdom Inroads, a Christian social enterprise.
Dates: 25 Feb – 27 Feb (Thursday – Saturday)
Time : 2pm – 10pm
Venue: New Life Vineyard, 183A East Coast Road, Singapore 428889
This conference is going to deal with charismatic topics like:
Inner Healing
Deliverance
Physical Healing
Hearing God’s Voice
Writing to the Spirit and Healing
Father’s Heart
As mentioned above, the venue is at New Life Vineyard, a sponsor of Kingdom Inroads and one of two Vineyard churches in Singapore - the other being Vineyard Singapore. I’ve always loved the Vineyard church association because to me they represent a pretty balanced side of charismatic Christianity.
I’ll probably be attending one or two night sessions. More information about the event can be found here. To register or find out more about this event, you can contact Pastor Kiat Hock at (65) 8121 9557 or Pastor Lye Heng at (65) 9817 0026. The following is the detailed schedule for the three days:
I’ve been listening to a lot of Jesus Culture worship songs recently. Jesus Culture came from the youth group of Bill Johnson’s Bethel Church in Redding, California. Being into all things Bill Johnson (see here), I soon came across Jesus Culture. A lot of the songs they do are remakes (rather than original songs), but they’ve done them really well! Really good stuff!
This article by The Christian Post is kinda interesting. It’s about what John Piper preached at the recent Passion 2010 conference. He said at the conference:
God demands that we all get on our face and worship Him, admire Him, treasure Him … and count Him as the supreme value in the universe and He’s angry when we don’t.
Do we love for God to love His glory … or is our vaunted God-centeredness a cloak for self-centredness by loving a God who is man-centered?
Basically, what he’s saying above is the same things he’s been saying in some of his books. I discussed a similar quote in a previous post of mine:
[M]any people are willing to be God-centered as long as they feel that God is man-centered. It is a subtle danger. We may think we are centering our lives on God, when we are really making Him a means to self-esteem. Over against this danger I urge you to ponder the implications, brothers, that God loves His glory more than He loves us and that this is the foundation of His love for us. (John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals)
…many Christians think it is good for us to be God-centered, but don’t feel at all comfortable with God being God-centered.
What I have found in my own life, and in the life of many others, is that God’s God-centeredness is the test of whether our own God-centeredness is real: Do I rejoice in God’s unwavering commitment to uphold and display his glory—do I rejoice in God’s God-centeredness? Or am I God-centered only because deep down I believe God is man-centered, so that my supposed God-centeredness is really man-centeredness, even me-centeredness?
Does my opposition to God’s God-centeredness reveal that my supposed God-centeredness is just a cover for wanting myself at the center?
If you say in response: I thought Christ crucified for sinners and risen triumphantly was the heart of Christianity, you would be right. Paul said, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). That’s true. But the amazing thing is that it’s the intersection of God’s apparent egomania with the human condition of sin that makes the cross of Christ necessary and makes it intelligible and reveals the deepest things about God in the death of Christ.
John Piper is someone I really respect. I think I’ll have some important disagreements with him, theology-wise. However, that may just be because he’s the much better theologian and thinker :-) He’s someone I’ll definitely give a hearing to when it comes to any issue and I think more often than not, I’ll agree with him.
Regarding what he says above, I haven’t read any of Piper’s books so I won’t be as familiar as others about what he says above, which I believe is very central to most or all of his writings. What he says is definitely thought provoking. I’ll suspend my conclusions for the time being - I’ll mull over what he says - and will be keen to hear what you guys think.