Mein Wort Jesus Christus

Willow-Creek-Bewegung: Wie Gemeinden wieder wachsen können
In Deutschland schrumpfen viele Gemeinden. Ist diese Entwicklung aufzuhalten? Und wie kann es gelingen, dass Gemeinden wieder wachsen? Zu diesen Fragen hat sich sich der Gründer und Hauptpastor der international bekannten "Willow-Creek"-Gemeinde in South Barrington bei Chicago (US-Bundesstaat Illinois), Bill Hybels, in einem Interview mit der Evangelischen Nachrichtenagentur "idea" geäußert. mehr...

Expertenbericht: Antisemitismus mitten unter uns

Bei 20 Prozent der deutschen Bevölkerung haben Experten antisemitische Tendenzen festgestellt. Am Montag stellten Wissenschaftler und Politiker aller Fraktionen einen "Antisemitismus-Bericht" vor. Demnach ist Judenfeindlichkeit in der Bundesrepublik nach wie vor an der Tagesordnung, besonders unter Rechtsextremisten.
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"Die Pforten der Hölle waren offen"

Christen und Juden haben in Berlin gemeinsam der Wannseekonferenz vor 70 Jahren gedacht. Am 20. Januar 1942 hatten führende Nationalsozialisten am Großen Wannsee den Holocaust geplant, das Datum gilt als Startschuss des organisierten Judenmordes. Die ehemalige Bundestagspräsidentin Rita Süssmuth rief Deutsche und Juden am Freitag dazu auf, "Pioniere des Friedens" zu sein.
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Erlösung durch Christus als Antwort
Ist das schlechte Gewissen in unserer Gesellschaft mittlerweile der Normalzustand? Und was ist eigentlich aus dem guten geworden? Mit dieser Frage beschäftigt sich der Journalist Richard Kämmerlings in einem Beitrag in der heutigen Ausgabe der Tageszeitung "Die Welt". Aus seiner Sicht bietet die Erlösung durch Jesus Christus eine geeignete Antwort auf eine ständig moralisierende Gesellschaft.

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Website encourages youth action to support persecuted church

New Year and new website to help more young people engage with the message of the persecuted church.

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Religious freedom petition to be handed to North Korean embassy

A petition calling for religious freedom is to be presented to the North Korean embassy in London later this month.

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German Christians mark 70th anniversary of ‘Final Solution’ conference

A delegation of 70 German pastors and ministry leaders are in Jerusalem this week to...

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A code of conduct for Europe’s evangelicals

A new code of conduct has been published to help Christians in Europe engage confidently but respectfully in the public...

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Ist das ein Gott der Liebe?
Das war mir bisher noch nicht begegnet …

Kann ein Gott der Liebe das zulassen? Gedanken nach einem Rundgang in einem Heim mit behinderten Kindern.

Ich habe schon viel Not gesehen und gehört, aber das war mir bisher noch nicht begegnet: Menschen, meist Kinder, mit unvorstellbaren Behinderungen. Mein Begleiter führte mich durch die verschiedenen Räume des Pflegeheims. «Über hundert Personen werden bei uns betreut», erzählte er mir. «Bei dem einen steht die geistige Behinderung im Vordergrund, andere sind stärker körperlich behindert.»

«Jesus liebt dich!?» – ich erschrak

Etwa vierzig Kinder konnten nur mit einer Sonde ernährt werden, andere mussten durch Kanülenatmen. Ein Raum nach dem anderen wurde geöffnet. Ein Mädchen, das ohne Augen geboren wurde, versuchte tastend herauszufinden, wer das Zimmer betreten hatte. Ein anderes sass zusammengekrümmt auf dem Boden und reagierte kaum. Es wurde jahrelang von der Mutter in einem dunklen Verschlag gefangen gehalten. Jedes Kind hatte seine Geschichte. Da fällt mein Blick auf einen Spruch an der Wand. «Jesus liebt dich!» steht da. Fast bin ich erschrocken. Mein Blick wandert hin und her. Hier die kranken Kinder, dort der Spruch von der Liebe Jesu – lässt sich das überhaupt zusammenbringen?

Lange denke ich darüber nach. Ich stelle mir Jesus vor. Wo war er, als er über diese Erde ging? War er den kranken und leidenden Menschen nicht näher als den anderen? Ob das nicht auch für diese Kinder gilt? Ob Jesus ihnen nicht besonders nahe ist? Wieder und wieder muss ich sie ansehen. Hinter jedem kranken Körper und jedem kranken Geist verbirgt sich eine Person, die so wertvoll ist, dass Jesus sein Leben für sie hergab.

Und dann sah ich ...

Und plötzlich rückt die Zukunft Gottes in meinen Blick: « ... Dann sah ich einen neuen Himmel und eine neue Erde. Gott wird alle Tränen abwischen. Es wird keinen Tod mehr geben und keine Traurigkeit, keine Klage und keine Quälerei mehr. Was einmal war, ist für immer vorbei.» (Die Bibel, Offenbarung, Kapitel 21, Vers 4)
Allmählich begreife ich, was das heisst: eine lebendige Hoffnung. Was wäre diese Welt ohne den neuen Himmel und die neue Erde? Wie sollte ich von der Liebe Gottes predigen, wenn es nicht auch die Zukunft Gottes gäbe? Und langsam beginne ich, froh zu werden. Ich freue mich über Jesus, der uns weder träumen noch resignieren lässt. Er ruft uns auf, Boten seiner Liebe und damit Wegweiser zu einer neuen Welt zu sein.

Selten habe ich Menschen so empfänglich für Liebe gefunden wie hier. Selbst die Kinder, die fast nicht zu leben schienen, reagierten deutlich, wenn man sie streichelte oder mit ihnen sprach. Ihre Augen begannen zu strahlen und spiegelten etwas wider von der Sehnsucht nach der Liebe und Geborgenheit Gottes.

Quelle: Textlive

John Starke
Just How Family-Centered Is the Bible?

There's enough circulating in the media today to discourage Christians about the future of marriage and family. In a recent Atlantic article, "All the Single Ladies," Kate Bolick suggests we stop thinking of "traditional marriage" as society's highest ideal. Divorce is no longer the "new" normal, it's just normal. In the 1980s and 90s, the term "turn-key kids" was meant to represent a sad reality for children. Now the term has been largely retired because of its regularity.

These cultural developments have led evangelicals to become more family-centered, both for our own sake and also for the sake of our neighbors. Promise Keepers encouraged men to love their wives. John Piper and Wayne Grudem edited a scholarly and pastoral---in my opinion, definitive---book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, arguing for a complementarian understanding of the home and local church. The name Focus on the Family speaks for itself.

But with every response, there's always the danger of over-correction. It's not that I think some evangelicals have become too conservative or too traditional. I worry that they've simply adopted traditional cultural and societal norms, instead of biblical norms.

Zechariah and Mary

The two birth announcements in the Gospel of Luke to Zechariah and Mary reveal how a society's "traditional" family values may not line up with God's.

Zechariah, the priest married to a barren woman, and Mary both heard miraculous announcements about impending childbirth. Yet while Zechariah responded with skepticism and doubt, Mary responded with faith and wonder. So why would Zechariah, a priest, doubt an angel of the Lord? He knew the story of Abraham and Sarah, so the idea of an older, barren woman giving birth wouldn't be ridiculous to him.

But consider Zechariah and Elizabeth's situation. Some of you may know the pain of not being able to have children. It's the feeling of 10, 20, even 30 years deeply desiring children with hopes unfulfilled. Zechariah and Elizabeth also suffered shame. Luke 1:24-25 reveals Elizabeth's heart. She said, "Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people."

By reproach she meant the shame that comes from known barrenness. Maybe some of you have experienced this reproach from more conservative societies, where family is held in such a high regard. If you're nearing your 40s with no children and maybe not even married, you start to receive questions like, "When are you going to get yourself a husband?" "When are we going to start seeing some little ones around here?" You hear the whispers. Every baby shower brings guilt and shame.

Zechariah and Elizabeth also dealt with questions about whether they did something wrong to deserve barrenness. Was there some hidden sin? Worse, Zechariah was a religious leader, a priest! Can you imagine how this public shame undermined his position, his authority?

So for Zechariah, pain and sorrow turned to shame and disgrace. He held on tightly to the cultural idol of family. This idol filled his heart so that there was no room for the truth of God's promise, even if he heard it from an angel. The good news of a coming son did not inspire joy but unbelief. It's too late. We're too old.

Two Common Errors

Reading about Zechariah and Elizabeth while studying our own age, we discern two errors common to societies when it comes to family.

First, a society can value personal independence and autonomy to such a degree that family and children become burdens. What God has provided for our joy and human flourishing, we regard as a killjoy, draining personal resources that we'd rather use to advance our own dreams, ambitions, and plans.

But there's another wrong view. A society can make the family the most important thing. It can become an idol, something that fundamentally defines us. We regard anyone who never marries or cannot have children as somehow subhuman. They must have done something wrong to upset God.

By contrast, the Bible actually teaches a radically subversive message about the family. God, we often discover, is the cause of barrenness in women. Stories of family dynamics rarely flatter. You'll never find a Leave it to Beaver household in the Bible. Rather, we see constant distress, rivalry, and jealousy. Usually this dynamic doesn't result from undervaluing children. No, we see it when children become the most important thing! Not only that, Jesus also has some deeply alarming things to say about the family, sounding almost cold and uncaring---see Mark 3:31-35 and Luke 14:26.

And finally, it's difficult to make family the most central thing for Christians when the two most prominent figures in the New Testament, Jesus and the apostle Paul, were both single. Actually, Christianity made singleness a legitimate way of life for the first time in any culture or religion.

Christ and the Church

Before you thumb your noses at traditional values on marriage and family, remember this: When God wanted to paint a picture of his great love for he church and cost of his death, he cited marriage between a husband and wife. God in Jesus Christ is the faithful and sacrificial husband for his bride, the church.

In fact, the Bible often describes our spiritual union with one another and God using the language of family. Through the cross of Jesus Christ, we see that God is no distant judge, but a Father; Jesus is not only a friend of sinners, but our brother; we share not only a common belief system, but we also live in community as brothers and sisters.

While the family cannot be so important that it invades the space in our heart that only God should occupy, we see that even from Creation, God designed marriage and family to result in a maturing society. Zechariah, however, warns us not to make family the ultimate thing. He turned it into a false god, leaving no room for the truth of the real God.

Not so with Mary! She responded with wonder and faith, saying, "Let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). She, too, had dreams and hopes for family. She was even betrothed. You don't think she daydreamed of what her family might be like? We know from John 8 that Mary's pregnancy out of wedlock was public knowledge. Many believed that Jesus was born from "sexual immorality." So Mary endured the whispers, stares, and brooked smiles. A virgin birth was hardly family-centered in that traditional society. Might we have whispered and wondered about her, too?

Christians should have strong convictions about marriage and family. But their convictions should come from the Bible, not simply the norms of traditional societies.

Source: http://thegospelcoalition.org

Willkommen lieber Besucher auf meiner Glaubensseite

Ich freue mich, dass Sie auch der Christengemeinschaft angehören.

Mein christliches Interesse bezieht sich auf:
weiter...

Welcome dear visitors at my faith side .

I am pleased that you also belong to the Christian community .
My Christian interest obtains himself:

1. the interpretation of the biblical word using the Bible
2. the orientation of the life of one's own according to Jesus Christ
3. the distribution of the word God and the proclamation of the "glad message Jesus Christ"


In this meaning became I be pleased to be allowed to enter into contact with you also.
Write to me.