While China is putting on its best face to the world for the Olympics, let’s remember that it is still illegal to teach children under eighteen how many Chinese girl gymnasts are over eighteen? about God and Jesus. It is still illegal for three or more believers to gather for religious purposes without government approval. Eighty percent of Chinese Christians are part of unregistered illegal churches. Why do they refuse to ask to be registered? Because, they respond, Jesus Christ is Lord, and they cannot allow an atheistic government to control their churches.

Some western Christian leaders have naively criticized unregistered churches, without understanding that they cannot in good conscience bow their knees to a government whose hands have long been stained by the blood of Christians.

Eternal Perspectives Randy Alcorn’s blog: An Olympic Sized Question: Do Christians in China Still Suffer Persecution?.

Peter Mead reminds us in a short post that teaching and preaching the Bible cannot half touch peoples’ lives…

When we preach, our desire is for God’s Word to truly mark the lives of those listening. We want them to learn, certainly, but more than that, we want them to be changed. We want them to apply the Scripture in their lives that they will not be hearers only, but doers also. We want them to be moved not only in their daily lives, but first and foremost in their hearts and faith. We don’t want them to get half a touch from God’s Word. We want significant life altering and inner change to occur that will flow out in real and tangible ways.

Read more about how to do that here.

John Piper discusses the Lakeland Revival and discernment:

Discernment is not created in God’s people by brokenness, humility, reverence, and repentance. It is created by biblical truth and the application of truth by the power of the Holy Spirit to our hearts and minds. When that happens, then the brokenness, humility, reverence, and repentance will have the strong fiber of the full counsel of God in them. They will be profoundly Christian and not merely religious and emotional and psychological.

Read more at Desiring God.

One of the most important things we will do at Second Presbyterian Church is disciple our children to a living, personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We live in a society that assumes that when children grow up they will jettison the family’s beliefs and values. But the Bible sees things differently. The book of Proverbs says that the childhood years have a formative influence that lasts throughout life: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).

Read more at the Reformation21 Blog.

Jedidiah Coppenger on witnessing to family, at work…:

…God intends for his people’s faithful living to stir people’s curiosity. This is why the Apostle Peter urged the churches, which he described as “strangers”, always to be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). The stark difference in their lives from their cultures was meant to lead to questions. If there wasn’t any difference between their lives and their cultures, there wouldn’t be any questions. There was. So they needed to be ready.

Where Are You From? Family, Work, And The Questions We Don’t Hear «.

That which we most delight and rejoice in—that we worship as God. For transcendent delight is an act of worship due to God alone. And this affection in its height and elevation is called glorying. That which is our delight above all things, we glory in it—and this is the prerogative which the Lord demands (1 Cor. 1:31; Jer. 9:23, 24). To rejoice more in our wisdom, strength, riches, than in the Lord—is to idolize them. To take more delight in relations, wife, or children, in outward comforts and accommodations, than in God—is to worship them, as we ought only to worship God. To take more pleasure in any way of sin, uncleanness, intemperance, earthly employments—than in the holy ways of God—than in those spiritual and heavenly services wherein we may enjoy God—is idolatry.

From the sermon Soul Idolatry Excludes Men out of Heaven by David Clarkson (1621-1686)