One of my favorite movies of all time is The Shawshank Redemption, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. From that comes one of my favorite quotes, near the end of the film:
Andy Dufresne: “And remember, hope is a good thing. Maybe even the best of things, and good things never die.”
Change. It’s never easy, is it?
Children grow up … jobs end … finances take a dip … parents grow older … people come and go.
How comforting it is to know that we indeed serve a God who never changes! What constant security that one piece of simple theology delivers into an otherwise unstable and vacillating life pattern!
My good buddy Phil Robertson has drawn the ire of a bunch of Jesus-bashing, liberal lug nuts after he petitioned the Lord during a NASCAR invocation to put a “Jesus man in the White House.”
April 9 was a monumental day as 100,000 believers gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for 15 hours of worship and prayer to celebrate Azusa Now, the 110th year anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival in 1906, the catalytic movement of the Holy Spirit that resulted in more than 600 million Pentecostals and charismatics today.
Last week, a guy named “Jake” asked me to pray for him after I taught at a ministry school in a northeastern state. He is only 22—and he wants to serve Jesus with all his heart. But he struggles daily because he has experienced a level of sexual bondage that was probably not even possible a few decades ago.
It may be a generalization to say the church today has three generational expressions, but I think we can work with it. You can walk into most churches and recognize quickly what generation it falls into.
