Crossexamined.org,  Friday April 15, 2022 - Despite intense personal and political division, we all agree on one thing: something is terribly wrong with this world. Pain, suffering, injustice, and death affect us all at some point because we live in a broken world. And we live in a broken world because we are all personally broken.

Why Good Friday offers 'the best news ever' for Easter and always

Who hasn’t committed any moral wrongs? (If you claim you haven’t, you just committed a moral wrong—lying!) The truth is we are all fallen. While we hate the evil done by others, we rarely notice the evil we do. We may call our political opponents hypocrites, but we don’t even live up to our own standards much less God’s. None of us are perfect. We are all guilty of something.

It’s only when we admit our guilt can we fathom the liberating and eternal implications of Good Friday. That’s when the innocent and perfect God-man took the punishment you and I deserve on Himself so we could be forgiven of our moral wrongs and reconciled to God.

“Why do we need to be forgiven and reconciled to God?” you ask. “Can’t God just grade on a curve?”

No, because God is an infinitely just Being. If He didn’t punish moral wrongs, then He wouldn’t be the infinite standard of justice. We know this standard of justice exists because without it we couldn’t even recognize any of the injustice we complain about—anything wrong in our society or any evil that has been done to us personally. Injustice can’t exist unless justice exists, but justice can’t exist unless God exists. Without God as the moral standard every behavior would just be a matter of opinion—even murder, rape and child abuse!

Thankfully, God is also the infinite standard of love which compels Him to find a way to allow unjust people like you and me to go unpunished. He does that by punishing Jesus of Nazareth—who volunteers for the mission—in our place.

“The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His live as ransom for many,” Jesus revealed (Mk. 10:45). Just before he went to the cross, Jesus also declared that there’s no greater love than “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

On the original Good Friday 1,989 years ago, Jesus suffered and died not to turn us into nice people but forgiven people. Jesus isn’t merely a moral example like other religious leaders; Jesus is our substitute. Since we’ve already committed moral crimes, we can’t work our way to God by being a “good person”. Jesus was that perfectly good person in our place. He’s done all the work for us and offers His life for ours as a gift. When you accept His gift, you are not only forgiven but given the righteousness of Christ. You are a new creation adopted into the family of God by grace, apart from works (2 Cor. 5:17-21, Eph. 2:8).

Without grace we will each get justice. If you think about your life and every hidden thing you’ve ever done, do you really want justice from God? Justice is getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. The only way to avoid justice is to accept the grace Jesus provides by putting your trust in Him.

Accepting the sacrifice Jesus made on Good Friday liberates you from your past, present and future wrongs by making forgiveness and eternal life possible (John 3:16). That’s why Good Friday is truly “Good”. In fact, it’s the best news ever.

3 PRACTICAL STEPS TO HELP BUILD YOUR KIDS’ IMMUNITY TO ANTI-CHRISTIAN IDEAS By Alisa Childers, published at Crossexamined.org

When my daughter Dyllan was a toddler, I exercised quite regularly at the YMCA. (And by “exercised,” I mean that I read a book on the stationary bike and pedaled as slowly as possible while I enjoyed an hour of free childcare. Not gonna lie.) One day when I picked her up from the kid’s room, the childcare worker pulled out the unopened granola bar I had put in Dyllan’s bag, handed it to me, and said, “We can’t give this to her because it contains peanuts. We don’t allow anything with peanuts into the childcare area.” I admit I was a bit surprised because it wasn’t something I had given much thought to. But I quickly learned that there was almost nothing parents feared more in 2010 than the dreaded peanut.

Of course, peanut allergies are very real. In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt reported that before the mid-1990s, peanut allergies were extremely rare in American children. However, by 2008, fourteen out of every thousand kids had developed peanut allergies. No one knew why there was such a drastic increase until an authoritative study was released in 2015. It was discovered that many kids were developing peanut allergies because their parents avoided giving them peanuts. The study revealed that introducing peanut products to infants with a high risk for allergies actually reduced their chances of developing a peanut allergy by a whopping 81%. In other words, giving peanut products to infants caused their immune systems to respond and build up a tolerance.

Our kids have amazing bodies that react to bacteria, parasites—and yes, peanuts—with an immune response that teaches their system to adapt and fight off future threats to their health.

In the same way, I believe our kids have spiritual immune systems.

Several years ago, I was a participant in a study and discussion group about Christianity. This was the class that challenged my faith intellectually and I’ve told that story here. One day, the subject of Adam and Eve came up and it was asked, “Does anyone still believe they were actual people?” I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was entirely naive when it came to this subject. Even as an adult, I thought the literal existence of Adam and Eve was something all professing Christians believed in. Chalk it up to the Evangelical bubble I grew up in or the fact that most of my life happened before the invention of the internet. But the question threw me because I had no idea how to answer.

Until that moment, I didn’t even know it was a question. I had zero immunity.

This was simply one of many skeptical claims raised against historic Christianity that snowballed together to send me into a dark time of doubt. I’ve often replayed that moment in my mind and imagined a different scenario. What if I had been aware of this question from childhood? What if I had already thought it through? What if when I read the Genesis account of creation, someone had told me, “Hey, some people don’t think Adam and Eve really existed. Let’s think about what the Bible says about it, what scientific evidence shows, and what that would mean for the gospel.“

If my spiritual immune system had been strengthened in this way, hearing this question as an adult would have been no big deal. It wouldn’t have shaken my faith one bit. I would have simply engaged in that conversation intelligently, without fear or doubt.

Other than teaching our kids the basics of the Christian faith, there are many practical steps we can take to help bolster their spiritual immune systems. Here are three to start with:

​1. Read the Bible with your kids, and don’t skip the hard stuff.
By “don’t skip the hard stuff,” I certainly don’t mean you should freak your kids out right before bed by reading about the Levite hacking his concubine to pieces in Judges 19, or Samson getting his eyes gouged out in Judges 16. Obviously, there is an age-appropriate way to introduce biblical stories to our kids. What I mean by “don’t skip the hard stuff,” is that reading stories and accounts that skeptics typically challenge is a great way to inoculate our kids against their false ideas.

For example, when my daughter was about seven, we read through Genesis together. In chapter 26, we read the story of Isaac lying to the Philistines. He told them his wife Rebekah was his sister, fearing that someone might kill him in order to marry her. I said to my daughter, “Did you know that some people think this story is made up because it’s so similar to what Isaac’s dad Abraham did twice before? What do you think about that?” We had a great conversation about how it would make perfect sense for Isaac to repeat his father’s lie, because there seemed to be no major consequences for doing so. In fact, in both cases, Abraham left richer than he came. We also looked at the biblical theme of sons tending to repeat their father’s sins. After we talked, it all made sense. And now my daughter won’t be caught off-guard should she hear that skeptical claim in the future.

​A great resource to help with this is The Apologetics Study Bible. As you read through the Bible, it footnotes the verses that skeptics typically challenge, and offers intelligent and credible responses you can talk through with your kids!

​2. Expose your kids to atheism.
As a parent, it can be scary to intentionally tell your kids all the reasons why atheists reject Christianity. Based on her experience teaching apologetics to Christian parents, my friend Natasha Crain noted that many parents don’t want to risk leading their kids astray by introducing atheist arguments. But she rightly points out that all of our kids will inevitably hear these ideas. She wrote:

The only choice you have as a parent is if they’ll hear them first from you—in an environment where they’ll have your guidance readily available—or if they’ll hear them first from nonbelievers—in an environment where they’ll be processing what they hear on their own.

Brett Kunkle compares exposure to atheist ideas with teaching his kids to surf. In this video, he explains that as a parent, you wouldn’t throw your kid into the ocean to surf big waves before you teach them basics like swimming and how to handle smaller waves. 

​Getting our kids used to the “smaller waves” of atheism can be a great way to prepare them to encounter the “big waves” when they are out on their own.

3. Expose your kids to false gospels and other religions.
​Just like it’s important to expose our kids to atheist ideas, it’s equally important to expose them to counterfeit gospels—which almost always masquerade as authentic Christianity. It’s been said that the best lies contain the most truth. This is why false gospels can be so tricky to discern. . .they contain so much truth. They will often emphasize Jesus, use the right lingo, and even appeal to the Bible to back up their claims. Explaining the differences between authentic Christianity and Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the prosperity gospel, or progressive Christianity will prepare our kids to interact with their ideas and see through the deceptions they espouse.

Another important step is talking with our kids about what people of other religious faiths believe about God, Jesus, and the nature of reality. Although they agree on some points, every world religion contradicts the others at a fundamental level. Logically, they can’t all be true. This is a great opportunity to expose the contradictions and talk with our kids about why Christianity is true and best explains reality.

Who would have thought that giving a baby a tiny bit of peanut butter could potentially save his life? In the same way, giving our kids tiny bits of anti-Christian ideas and allowing them to process these questions within the safety and guidance of our care could have a lasting impact on their future spiritual lives.

Other practical resources:
For years, Brett Kunkle has offered theological training for teenagers and facilitated trips to Utah to interact with Mormons. When I interviewed him on my podcast, he reported that the impact of these trips has been tremendous in the lives of young people, motivating them to study theology and apologetics on their own. He now offers trips to the Berkeley college campus where Christian kids can share the gospel and interact with atheists and skeptics. Find out more at www.maventruth.com.

Another ministry doing great work in this area is Jonathan Morrow and Impact 360. Every summer, they offer experiences in which Christian teenagers are trained in leadership, apologetics, and theology after which they are given real-world experiences to test their knowledge. They visit Buddhist and Mormon temples, meet atheists, and more. Find out more at www.impact360institute.org and listen to Jonathan’s interview on my podcast.

If you want to be intentional about this, pick up Natasha Crain’s book Talking with Your Kids about God: 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have, and follow Natasha’s blog for more great tips. Or pick up J. Warner Wallace’s trio of kids’ books (1, 2, and 3) that explore everything from the existence of God to the truthfulness of Christianity.

Recommended resources related to the topic:
Proverbs: Making Your Paths Straight Complete 9-part Series by Frank Turek DVD and Download

So the Next Generation will Know by J. Warner Wallace (Book and Participant’s Guide)

Fearless Generation – Complete DVD Series, Complete mp4 Series (download) by Mike Adams, Frank Turek, and J. Warner Wallace

Jesus, You and the Essentials of Christianity by Frank Turek (INSTRUCTOR Study Guide), (STUDENT Study Guide), and (DVD)

Just Do The Next Thing: God is near. By Greg Laurie Published March 25, 2022

"I can do everything God asks me to do with the help of Christ who gives me the strength and power." (Philippians 4:13 TLB)

She sang a little song as she worked.

It was a made-up song, composed for that very moment in time.

All in all, it had been quite a morning for 3-year-old Liberty. She had already accomplished two things that she had never done in her whole life, brief as it was. She had made her bed and brushed her teeth. By herself. On the same day. With flying colors.

And her song went like this: "I can do hard things, I can do hard things. …"

Doing one brand-new life accomplishment would have been something to sing about on its own. But Liberty had done two. No, she hadn't run a marathon, wrestled with an alligator, swum the English Channel, or completed a problem in advanced calculus. But those weren't the challenges before her. She had faced the life obstacles immediately in her path – bed making and teeth brushing – and she had overcome them. She had learned that, with God's help and her mother's timely encouragement, she really could do "hard things."

There will be more to come, of course. As with the rest of us, she will face some very hard things in the days and years to come. There will be disappointments, hurts and tears along with the joys, privileges and happy accomplishments. Jesus himself didn't soft-pedal that reality. He said, "Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world" (John 16:33 NLT).

Many trials. Many sorrows. Hard things. You don't have to subscribe to these intrusions; they come with your membership card in the human race.

The Apostle Paul wanted his friends in Corinth to understand a little bit of what he'd been through on a recent passage through Asia. And he told it like it was: "We think you ought to know ... about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:8–9 NLT).

Hard things? It was so hard that Paul couldn't even imagine surviving the experience. This wasn't simply beyond their ability to handle; it was a thousand miles beyond their reach. When the walls closed in and the sky rolled up and death had him in a headlock, he had looked into the eyes of Luke or Timothy, given a little nod, and possibly the ghost of a smile. So this is it. The see-you-on-the-other-side moment. The end of the line.

Except it wasn't.

Somehow, against all odds and beyond all reckoning, they had come through alive and whole. Paul wanted his friends in Corinth to understand that. Why? So they might take courage as they faced their own encounters with heartbreak and pain.

The problem with our troubles is that we want to compare our hardships and difficulties with someone else's. It's really not a wise thing to do. We're like Peter who looked over his shoulder at John and said, "Lord, what about him?"

"Never mind about him," Jesus said in effect. "You just follow Me."

Miss Liberty learned that on a given day, she could deal with the life situation directly before her. There was a bed to be made, and though she had never attempted it before, her little hands could get it done. Jesus and her mother said so. There were teeth to be brushed, and even though the brush was messy and hard to hold, the thing could be accomplished. It might not seem like a notable accomplishment to you, but then again, you aren't 3 and trying it for the first time.

If God has given you something to face, something to overcome, you can do it in radical partnership with Him. It may seem implausible, maybe even impossible. But it isn't. You can do what He asks you to do. He said so.

This is a dynamic that goes all the way back to the beginning of human history. In the early chapters of Genesis, Cain became violently angry at his brother. For good reasons of His own, God had accepted Abel's offering but had rejected Cain's. In that moment, Cain had a wide-open opportunity to learn a better way, perhaps tapping into a vast reservoir of favor with God. But it was hard; his pride had been bruised, bitter anger brimmed in his soul, and he told himself he just couldn't do it. He couldn't learn a new way. He couldn't reconcile with his brother.

God himself reasoned with the young man. "Why are you angry? ... Why is your face so dark with rage? It can be bright with joy if you will do what you should! But if you refuse to obey, watch out. Sin is waiting to attack you, longing to destroy you. But you can conquer it!" (Genesis 4:6–7 TLB).

And how might our world's long, sad story have been different if the firstborn of all humankind had squared his shoulders, put his failure behind him, and chosen to do the hard thing with God's help?

What, then, is the difficulty you face today? Did it come out of nowhere?

I'm reminded of a story about a man who was sleeping in the woods under the stars when an animal jumped out of the darkness and landed on his chest. He could feel the weight of the creature on top of him. He could hear it breathing. But the night was pitch black, and he couldn't see a thing. What was it? He never found out. Instead, with a mighty heave, he hurled the intruder as far as he could and heard it scuttling away into the bushes.

What is the intruder in your campsite? It probably didn't make an appointment. It simply arrived. That's the way it is with so many difficulties in life.

The truth is, God doesn't call on us to go out looking for "hard things." Liberty had no idea that two never-before-attempted tasks waited for her when she got up on that morning. The jobs were simply there, looming in her path. By the same token, I don't have to search behind doors and look under rocks for problems, heartaches, or dilemmas. Life has plenty of those, and to spare.

God isn't calling me to do hard things, he is calling me to do the next thing. The tough choice, the uncomfortable conversation, the obvious opportunity, the scary first step into the unknown.

It might very hard, demanding so much more than I could ever give on my own. Then again, it might not be hard at all. But if God has allowed it to camp on my doorstep, he expects me to deal with it – learning hard on his strength and wisdom.

David, the young shepherd, didn't get up one morning on his father Jesse's sheep ranch and say to himself, "What a fine morning! I think I will fight a 9-foot giant today with a sling and a stone. Maybe cut off his head with a super-sized sword." No, he simply obeyed his dad by delivering cheese sandwiches to his older brothers on the front line of battle. While he was there, the blasphemous Philistine giant came lumbering up to the Israeli front lines, belching mockery and curses. And David in his heart knew that he had a part to play that day for the honor of his God.

It is the sovereign God who allows shadows to cross our paths and barriers to obstruct our way. But when they appear, the Lord Jesus himself will be there to meet us in our desperate need and to bring us through.

Little Liberty has made use of that heavenly help, picking her way across the exhilarating, ever-changing, sometimes-frightening terrain of childhood.

And sometimes, she even does it with a song.

What brings God joy By Greg Laurie, Published March 4, 2022 at 7:05pm

Ironically, people today who tell us that we need to be tolerant are very intolerant of the Gospel. In fact, I have found that the most intolerant people are those who are always telling us to be tolerant.

I've heard people say that Christians are so intolerant, but I don't think that is true at all. Actually, I think Christians are the most tolerant people of all. Of course, we unapologetically believe in absolute truth.

But usually it's intolerant people who say they don't like the fact that we believe in absolute truth, and they're tolerant of everyone except us.

What happened to their tolerance? Where's all the love?

To proclaim that Jesus Christ is the only way to God will offend some people. So why do we proclaim it? It's because the Bible clearly teaches it. This is what we as Christians call an essential, a nonnegotiable.

So when I state that as fact, it will offend some people.

However, my job, if you will, is to simply tell the truth. It would be like going to a doctor who runs a series of tests and discovers a problem. But then the doctor doesn't want to tell the patient the truth for fear of offending him or her. That doctor's job is to diagnose a problem and then prescribe a course of action.

In the same way, as a Christian I have to tell the truth about a person's condition, which, according to the Bible, is sinful. I have to tell him or her what the problem is and then offer the solution through Jesus Christ. As a result, people will be offended by that.

But what about the people who have never heard this at all? Would God send them to hell? This is an incorrect view of God, the idea that God would somehow want to send someone to hell, or at the very least, wouldn't care if someone went to hell. That is not the God of the Bible.

If we learn nothing else in the Bible, we learn that God loves humanity and longs for fellowship and friendship with us. We learn that God doesn't want any person to go to hell, and the best evidence of that is the fact that he poured out his wrath on his son, Jesus, on the cross.

No father wants his child to be harmed. Any father would gladly take that harm or pain upon himself if he could. But God loves us so much that he put his judgment on his son who had never committed a single sin. This was so we could be pardoned, so we would not have to go to hell.

God said, "I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live" (Ezekiel 33:11 NLT). And we are reminded in 2 Peter 3:9 that God "does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent" (NLT).

We will be judged according to the light we have received. In other words, we will not be held accountable for what we don't know. Now, that doesn't excuse us from all responsibility. Otherwise, we might say, "Well, ignorance is bliss."

God longs for fellowship with humanity. He longs for friendship with you. Looking back to the Garden of Eden, we see this in the very timbre of God's voice as he called out to the wayward Adam, "Where are you?"

Was God oblivious to Adam's whereabouts? Of course not. God knew exactly where he was.

For example, when my granddaughter Stella was very young, she wasn't that great at playing hide-and-seek. She would say, "Papa, find me!" while she was hiding in plain view. So I would play along to humor her.

When God was calling out to Adam, it wasn't because he didn't know where Adam was. Effectively he was saying, "Adam, where are you? Adam? I miss our times together. Adam, why did you eat the forbidden fruit? Why are you hiding from me? Adam, I want to talk with you." That is the heart of God.

If you want to see how God feels about this world, look at the trio of stories Jesus told in Luke 15. God is compared to a woman who lost a coin, a shepherd who lost a sheep, and a father who lost a son.

Each of these stories gives us a different glimpse into the heart of God.

Wherever we go, he will be there waiting. God doesn't hang out exclusively in churches. God is present everywhere. Before you were even conceived, God knew you were coming. When you were but an embryo, God had his eye on you. When you were formed in the womb of your mother, he was waiting. He has been calling you to himself.

God searches for us. He cares for us. And he wants us to know him. Do you know what really excites God? Do you know what brings joy to God? It is when a lost person comes to repentance.

Repentance doesn't only mean a change of heart; it also means a change in action. It means a change in direction, a change of both the mind and the will. It does not denote just any change, but always a change from wrong to right, from sin to righteousness.

God said, "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13 NKJV).

The fact of the matter is that God will reveal himself to the true seeker.