What is your purpose as a Christian?

On our annual celebration of the birth of our once-proud republic, it is also fitting to pause for a nostalgic moment in recalling the celebrated document that created our nation’s freedoms and protections.

It is difficult to value something when its worth is unknown. The adage of one child being given a toy only to leave it out in the rain to rust, never understanding the toy’s worth, while another child-made to earn the same toy-is found to take care of it, valuing its worth, is a fitting analogy. This basic truth applies to our American heritage and the continued welfare of our nation.

The most-often quoted reference in the New Testament is the Book of Psalms. The psalms are not only unexcelled for being inspirational and comforting, they are also among the richest sources of prophetic insights in the entire Bible.

As a Middle East expert, I daily see material from Arab and Islamic sources containing hair-raising threats against America, Israel and the West, as well as media reports on the details of horrendous terrorist attacks. But this item in a British newspaper may be the scariest sentence I ever read.

For many months now, we have been talking about “reflecting God’s image,” which is the purpose of our lives as Christians. In order to accomplish this purpose, God has given us His indwelling Spirit so that we can be transformed into His likeness and we can glorify Him.

II Corinthians 3:18 tells us that “we will all be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even by the Spirit of God.”

On May 23rd our Jewish friends will celebrate the Feast of Shavuot. The Book of Ruth is traditionally read on this holiday, also known as the Feast of Pentecost. For a number of reasons, this feast may have far more prophetic relevance than is commonly recognized.

It is often startling to discover how relevant the Book of Psalms is to our contemporary world today!

Continuing our series on the importance of “reflecting Christ’s image” and not our own, as Christians we must realize there are two spiritual forces or entities struggling against each other inside of us. One is called the old self, the flesh or the old man (which is the old Adamic nature); and the other is called the new self, the spirit or the new man (which is God’s Life in us).

We have just returned from one of the most encouraging trips we’ve ever taken. We spent several weeks touring Australia and New Zealand and we were overwhelmed by the response!

Most reasonably informed Christians are well aware that many of the traditions that surround the Christmas holidays have pagan origins and very little correlation with the actual events as recorded in the Bible. However, most of us are surprised when we discover that some of what we have been taught about “Easter” is not only in error, but deliberately so!

Continuing our series on “reflecting Christ’s image,” the whole point of our being “born again” (John 3:3) is so that we might, through the sanctification process, once again regain the image of God. Our purpose as Christians is to glorify and reflect the Lord, not ourselves.

The Book of Psalms is quoted in the New Testament more than any other book in Old Testament. Jesus said that the psalms spoke about Him (Luke 24:44) and they constitute irrefutable testimony to the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures.

In Hebrew, this book is called dibhere ha-yamim: the words concerning the days. The Jewish Bible regards the Old Testament as 22 books and Chronicles is counted as a single book. The Septuagint labels it Paraleipomena, Supplements (to I and II Kings). The Latin Vulgate refers to these books as Chromicon, from which we get our title, Chronicles.

As we continue our exploration of what it means to glorify God—reflecting His Image and not our own—let’s investigate what exactly an image is. The dictionary says that an image is an exact likeness of something. It’s a visible representation or reproduction of the form of a person.

As we consider instances of fulfilled prophecy, there is no more crucial example than the prophecies of the life of Jesus Christ. A central theme of the entire Biblical panorama is the actual presentation of the Coming One, the central person of all history whom the Hebrews call the Messiah:

Keith Ellison is a Muslim. He was sworn in last month to serve in the House of Representatives as a United States Congressman after being elected last November from the 5th district of Minnesota.

For a few months now we have been exploring what it means to reflect Christ—to bear His Image—in all we do. This is God’s purpose for calling us as Christians. I really believe if more of us would learn to glorify God in our actions, there would be a spiritual revival like we couldn’t believe. Everyone would want what we have!

Reading the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq reminds me of a weird experience I once had. I've never told anyone about it before, but I'm going to share it with you to show the underlying problem with the panels conclusions.