May 9, 2013

Go and Make Disciples: Remembering Jesus’ Ascension

Today is Ascension Day! Today, Christians around the world remember the final scene of Jesus’ ministry on earth: his ascension to heaven.

Ascension Day is the 40th day following Jesus’ resurrection. On this day, Jesus completed his God-given mission, charging his disciples with a task that Christians today continue to work towards: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to every creature.”

Jesus’ ascension—his physical return to heaven—is mentioned briefly in Luke 24 and Mark 16. The most complete account of Jesus’ final days on earth is found in Acts 1:

Before he was taken up, working in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus instructed the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed them that he was alive with many convincing proofs. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, speaking to them about God’s kingdom. While they were eating together, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised. He said, “This is what you heard from me: John baptized with water, but in only a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

As a result, those who had gathered together asked Jesus, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”

Jesus replied, “It isn’t for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority. Rather, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going away and as they were staring toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them. They said, “Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.” — Acts 1:1-11 (CEB)

Matthew’s account doesn’t describe Jesus’ ascension, but does contain this memorable final charge to his followers:

Jesus came near and spoke to them, “I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.” —Matthew 28:16-20 (CEB)

Some churches commemorate Ascension Day with special services or prayer vigils; others don’t. But either way, you can celebrate Christ’s ascension to heaven by dedicating yourself to obeying his final command. What are we waiting for? Go and make disciples!

Posted by Katie

May 8, 2013

Famous Mothers in the Bible: Reflecting on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is coming up! We hope you’ll take some time this weekend to pay respects to your mother—or if that isn’t possible, to somebody in your life with who embodies the grace and wisdom we associate with godly mothers.

The Bible speaks highly of mothers who raise children and guide their families in a righteous manner; in the oft-quoted Proverbs 31, the “wife of noble character” is honored by her husband and children for her virtues.

Motherhood wasn’t a requirement for godly women in Bible times—and just as today, not every woman who wanted children was granted her wish. But the mothers and matriarchs of the Bible exhibit qualities that all of us, male or female, parent or not, should strive to emulate. Here are a few of the famous mothers of the Bible, with links to their stories:

Mary, the mother of Jesus: perhaps no more famous mother exists than Mary, who at a young age learned from an angel that she would give birth to the long-awaited Messiah. Her song of praise in response, and the well-known events of Christ’s birth, are what usually spring to mind when we think of Mary. But her role as mother brought her grief as well as joy; we can only imagine what it must have been like for her to witness Jesus’ crucifixion.

Mary’s was not the only miraculous birth recorded in the New Testament. Elizabeth was a godly woman who was “righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly”—and yet she and her husband were unable to conceive a child. God answered her prayers late in her life and she gave birth to John the Baptist, but is perhaps best known for her prophetic encouragement of the young (and perhaps frightened) Mary: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

Hannah is one of the most inspiring mothers in the Bible, although her story is less well-known. Despite years of patience and prayer, she remained unable to have a child. One day “in her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the LORD, weeping bitterly”—and God answered her prayer at last. But Hannah’s character truly shone when, in gratitude to God, she dedicated her newborn son to His service. Her son would one day become one of Israel’s greatest prophets.

Sarah, the wife of Abraham, is one of the great matriarchs of the Bible—yet she didn’t become a mother until very late in life. In fact, her reaction to God’s promise that she would have a son was to laugh, as memorably recorded in Genesis 18. Nevertheless she did give birth to a son, and her lineage would include Jesus Christ himself.

There are many more famous mothers described in the Bible; many of them righteous, some not so much, but all used by God to bring about His design. This weekend, as we give thanks for the mothers in our lives, consider how you can embody the traits that define a godly mother—patience, kindheartedness, faithfulness—and consider how you can encourage the mothers in your community, young and old, as they work to meet that same standard.

Posted by Andy

May 6, 2013

“The Plan” Begins Tomorrow!

Don’t forget—our newest devotional, The Plan, begins tomorrow!

The Plan is an answer to the question Can God’s Word be trusted? Throughout a year’s worth of weekly readings, The Plan highlights God’s promises and prophecies made—and in many cases, fulfilled—within the pages of the Bible.

The Plan is unique in that it uses special color-coding to identify when prophecies first appear in the Bible. Different colors are used to mark the fulfillment of previous prophecies, or to highlight prophecies that are still being fulfilled today. It starts tomorrow, so if you haven’t already, stop by our Newsletters page to sign up!

As you know if you’ve been following our blog or social media feeds, it’s been a busy spring for us—besides The Plan, we’ve added many new free devotionals in the last month! If you missed them, our most recent additions are just newly underway; there’s still plenty of time to sign up for them:

  • Devotions by Christine Caine brings you weekly insight from evangelist and social justice worker Christine Caine, author of Undaunted. Caine has dedicated her life to ending human trafficking, and wants you to know that the same God who called her to ministry is calling you to something great as well!
  • Family devotions by Dr. James and Shirley Dobson—actually three separate devotions, each aimed at a different part of family life. Night Light for Couples is a nightly devotional for couples to read and discuss together; Night Light for Parents offers parenting insight from the Dobson family; and Family Love on Which to Build is a short daily message of inspiration for the whole family.

Sign up for any of these at our Newsletters page!

Posted by Andy

May 2, 2013

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Power of Intercessory Prayer

Today, millions of Christians in the U.S. are observing the National Day of Prayer. Many Christian churches and organizations hold prayer vigils, special prayer meetings, or other activities. Whether or not you participate in National Day of Prayer, prayer is a key part of the Christian life. No discussion of Christianity is complete without considering the power and importance of prayer.

It’s thus entirely appropriate that in his writing, the famous pastor (and martyr) Dietrich Bonhoeffer devoted a significant amount of attention to the role that prayer plays in a Christian’s everyday life. Here’s an excerpt from his devotional writing discussing the importance of intercessory prayer—that is, prayer requests that ask God to help other people.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Intercessory Prayer

A Christian community either lives by the intercessory prayers of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed. I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In intercessory prayer the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner. That is a blessed discovery for the Christian who is beginning to offer intercessory prayer for others. As far as we are concerned, there is no dislike, no personal tension, no disunity or strife that cannot be overcome by intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Questions to Consider

  • Reflect on your prayer life. Have you ever prayed for the good of anyone you were in a conflict with?
  • If so, what happened as a result of your prayer? Did it change the way you thought about that person?
  • If not, reflect in your journal as to whether or not you are ready to pray for the good of people who have hurt you or whom you dislike for any reason.

This reflection is drawn from A 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a devotional available here on Bible Gateway both online and via email. You may also find our post about prayer during Lent worthwhile as you consider the importance of prayer.

Posted by Andy

May 1, 2013

Have Bible Reading Apps Changed Your Bible Reading Habits?

It’s been some time since we’ve run a poll, so let’s remedy that. This week, we’re curious about how Bible reading apps have changed—or not changed—your Bible reading.

You’re probably familiar with the Bible Gateway app for various mobile devices (and if you haven’t tried it yet, go check it out—it’s free!). Or perhaps you use a different app or program to read the Bible digitally (we still love you, we promise!). However you do it, has the availability of a Bible app for your smartphone, tablet, Kindle, or other mobile device changed your Bible reading habits?

In the poll below, choose the option that best fits your experience.

Have Bible reading apps for mobile devices changed your Bible reading habits?

View Results

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The poll is also located on the right side of the blog. Thanks for sharing your answer; we’ll we’ll discuss the results next week!

Posted by Andy

April 30, 2013

New Devotions by Christine Caine: What Has God Called You to Do?

Evangelist and justice worker Christine Caine, author of our newest devotional.

What has God called you to do with your life? Do you know? Do you feel called to a particular vocation or activity, but don’t know where you’ll find the strength and skill to do it?

Christian Caine didn’t expect that God would call her to devote her life to fighting human trafficking! But today, evangelist and speaker Christine Caine is working hard to end modern slavery, champion social justice, and empower local churches… and the same God who called and equipped her to these tasks is ready to lead you on your own personal journey of faith.

We’ve just added a new weekly email devotional that draws inspiration from Caine’s life and ministry: Devotions by Christine Caine. In it, Caine shares down-to-earth encouragement and advice she’s learned from her experience in social justice work. Caine’s journey of faith has brought her through many trials and tribulations, and her experience is a testament to the fact that when God calls you to do something, He also empowers you with everything you need to do it victoriously.

Devotions by Christine Caine begins tomorrow (Wednesday), so visit our Newsletters page to sign up today! To learn more about Christine Caine’s remarkable ministry, visit her website or the A21 Campaign website; or see her book Undaunted: Daring to Do What Gods Calls You to Do, from which this new devotional is drawn.

Posted by Andy

April 26, 2013

New Family Devotional from Dr. Dobson: Family Love on Which to Build

Many of you have signed up for Night Light for Parents and Night Light for Couples, our two recently-added devotionals by Dr. James and Shirley Dobson. We hope you’ve found them to be a useful part of your daily routine (and if you haven’t signed up, you can still do at our Newsletters page).

However, we realize that not everybody’s schedule is the same, and no single devotional fits every family’s interests and schedule. So starting on Monday, we’re launching a new everyday family devotional from Dr. Dobson that takes a much lighter approach: Family Love on Which to Build.

Family Love on Which to Build offers short but powerful advice for the family. Almost “tweet-like” in length, each daily message comes from one of several devotional and inspirational books by well-known author and speaker Dr. James Dobson, including The Strong-willed Child, The New Dare to Discipline, Solid Answers, and more. Sent out early every morning, this devotion is perfect for a morning reading and midday reflection. The very short length of each day’s message makes it easy to fit into your busy morning routine, and works well as a discussion starter during family meals.

Family Love on Which to Build begins on Monday, April 29. You can sign up to receive it on our Newsletters page.

Posted by Katie

April 25, 2013

Religious Interest Among Young Facebook Users is Big. But Why?

Stephen Wolfram yesterday published Data Science of the Facebook World, an analysis of data from people who have allowed his website, Wolfram Alpha, access to their Facebook lives. Two charts touch on religion, and we’re not totally sure what to make of them.

The first chart is a word cloud of Facebook posts categorized as “quotes + life philosophy:”

If you can’t quite read the words, here they are:

therefore mistakes seek lemons nor
peace trust don’t freedom ourselves hearts grace
christ truth shall fear teeth strength beauty glory
life believe faith jesus it’s lies
quote wisdom joy
happiness knowledge lord others lives
god’s deny forgive religion precious greater humanity
prayer belief purpose courage darkness bible sin

Nearly all of them (except “lemons”) reflect words that Christians use when talking about their faith or when sharing quotes from the Bible. We’ll therefore use the “quotes + life philosophy” category as a proxy for religious interest–it’s not perfect, but it’s what we have.

Now let’s look at how the number of posts related to “quotes + life philosophy” (i.e., religious interest) change based on age:


Pink represents women; blue represents men. The x-axis is the age of the person posting. The y-axis indicates the popularity of posts by people of that age.

Notice the big peak around age 18 among women, a peak they don’t surpass again until age 44. By comparison, men’s religious interest remains remarkably stable from ages 18 to 40 before growing again afterward.

The interest in religion among young women is particularly striking given the recent Pew study showing 18-29-year-olds as the least-religious age group in the U.S. However, the Facebook data actually supports the Pew research–interest in religion peaks at age 18 and then drops substantially throughout women’s 20s before recovering somewhat in their 30s and 40s. Grouping everyone into the “18-29″ demographic potentially obscures religious interest among the younger members of the group.

The question this data doesn’t answer, though, is whether religious interest among women naturally drops off after age 18 or whether the current cohort of 18-year-old women represents a resurgent interest in religion that will carry over into the remainder of their lives. If Wolfram is able to follow these same women over the next few years, we’ll have our answer.

(A caveat: we’re making some pretty big inferences from two tiny charts–if “quotes + life philosophy” doesn’t actually reflect religious interest, then our conclusions are unwarranted. And even if the category does reflect religious interest, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a positive interest in religion.)

Posted by Stephen

April 23, 2013

Shakespeare and the Word

The Bard himself.

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday (or at least as near to it as anyone is able to guess). Did you know that Shakespeare’s plays are chock full of Bible references? Some are obvious, but many require very careful reading—and a thorough familiarity with the Bible—to catch.

Leland Ryken has written a thorough overview of the relationship between Shakespeare’s work and the Geneva Bible, with many examples of the types of Biblical allusions and references to watch for in Shakespeare’s work. And indeed there are a lot to keep track of:

The most frequently repeated figure on the books of the Bible to which Shakespeare refers is 42 books—eighteen from each of the Testaments and the remaining from the Apocrypha. Shakespeare’s writing contains more references to the Bible than the plays of any other Elizabethan playwright. A conservative tally of the total number of biblical references is 1200, a figure that I think could be doubled.

Numerically the book with the most references is the book of Psalms, and usually Shakespeare refers to this book as it appears in the Anglican Prayer Book. Other biblical books that are high in the number of references are Genesis, Matthew, and Job. The Bible story that appears most often—more than 25 times—is the story of Cain and Abel. There are so many references to the opening chapters of Genesis in Shakespeare’s plays that scholars make comments to the effect that Shakespeare must have had these chapters nearly memorized. Shakespeare’s allusions are sometimes generalized, as for example to characters in the Bible, but often the parallels are linguistic and specific, requiring a specialist’s knowledge.

Here’s an example of an allusion in Hamlet to the Gospels—a reference to Judas that is very appropriate given the context:

Macbeth: If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly… (Hamlet, Scene VII)

John 13:27 (Geneva Bible): Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.

(See many more Bible references in Hamlet here.)

One of the specific Bibles to which Shakespeare pointed with all these references is the Geneva Bible, which you can read on Bible Gateway. (See this earlier blog post for more about the Geneva Bible and the extensive collection of study notes accompanying it.)

Both Shakespeare’s work and the Geneva Bible were born of the truly remarkable literary and publishing environment of the 16th century, and their similar linguistic roots become very evident when you read them alongside each other. If you love Shakespeare’s plays, you may find that the Geneva Bible has a similarly appealing cadence and use of language. And if you love the Geneva Bible, it’s worth your time to take a second look at your favorite Shakespeare play with an eye for subtle references to people, places, and events in Scripture.

Posted by Andy

April 22, 2013

The Earth is the Lord’s!

Today is Earth Day, when we’re encouraged to consider our relationship to, and influence on, the environment around us. While many aspects of the environmental movement have gotten enmeshed in controversial politics, the core topic of environmental care is near and dear to Christian teaching. A careful reading of the Bible—and of the Genesis creation account in particular—shows that stewardship of God’s creation is an important part of our lives as Christ-followers.

The following reflection, from our “Discovering God’s Design” devotional, discusses the importance of “place” in the Biblical narrative, and seems particularly appropriate for Earth Day.

A Sense of Place

Time and again in the Old Testament, the spiritual health of the people of Israel and the health and well-being of their land reflect each other. God had given the Israelites their own land, a land of plenty and fruitfulness. Where is your “Canaan”? What are the unique beauties and distinctive features of the place where you live? Biology professor David S. Koetje provides insights into caring for our “place”:

“Faithfully caring for creation requires us to develop a stronger sense of place. Place relates to the distinctive features of specific landscapes, habitats, and communities. Fields, forests, deserts, and ponds are obviously unique places with distinctive features … [A] critical first step toward redeeming our fallen relationship with our lands and their inhabitants is attentiveness to the distinctive natural and cultural features of places.

“Faithfully administering our calling requires us to serve these places. The term most often used to describe our caring for creation is “stewardship”: management on behalf of a higher authority. Because a steward is subject to God, she cannot simply do as she pleases with creation. Furthermore, she cannot claim that stewardship only applies to certain areas of the Christian life, such as finances, and not to others. Stewardship applies to all our relationships within creation: land, water, and energy; ecosystems, habitats, and species; our places, our bodies, our work…”

As we focus on the importance of interrelationships and our own embeddedness within creation, how then do we serve our places? Stewardship that is place-based has five essential characteristics:

  • Being attentive to the local ecology. What species are native to the place, and what are their interrelationships? What interdependencies make these ecosystems resilient against forces that would threaten their integrity? What positive and negative effects do human actions have on this habitat?
  • Heeding the needs and knowledge of local communities. What have we learned about our community’s distinctive features and functions through our experience with it?
  • Letting local cultural values inform priorities and practices. How do locally rooted values and experiences provide insights into appropriate stewardship?
  • Cultivating precaution, caring, and conservation. How can we nurture the special features of the place? How can we encourage Sabbath rests and deter exploitation?
  • Collectively forging technologies, practices, and policies that enhance our embeddedness in places. In what ways can we cooperate to enhance the interrelationships essential to the integrity of the place? How can we promote the flourishing of all its inhabitants, human and nonhuman?

This reading is from “A Sense of Place” in the Discovering God’s Design devotional. You can receive Discovering God’s Design and other devotionals via email by signing up here.

Posted by Andy