Looking at the Big Picture - English & Romanian

Here are updated versions of the handouts and powerpoints for my teaching titled "Looking at the Big Picture". I will add audio, slide cast and video of the teaching I did at Calvary Chapel Bucharest on October 31, 2010 at a later date when I have time to work on them.

The Big Picture PowerPoints - English 


The Big Picture Handout - English A4

The Big Picture Handout - English Letter

    

Imaginea de Ansamblu PowerPoints

Imaginea de Ansamblu Notite

Why is the Gospel Important?

Here are the notes from my teaching on Sunday, September 26 at Lifegate Bible, a home church hosted by dear friends of mine in Bozeman. I adapted the teaching from the first session of my gospel workshop so that it included questions throughout and also added some material from the second session as well at the beginning so we would start by looking at some basics on what the gospel is. 

     Why is the gospel important? - Bozeman

Here is a link to an excellent article I read today that looks at why we should become fluent with the gospel.

     Gospel Fluency

Looking at the Big Picture - PowerPoints and Notes

Here are links to the powerpoints I used when I taught at Calvary Kaleo in Brawley, California on Sunday, September 12, Calvary Chapel Bozeman on Wednesday, September 22, Calvary Chapel Boise on Wednesday, September 29 and Christ Community Fellowship in Walla Walla, Washington on Sunday, October 3 plus the notes I made that include what was on the powerpoints plus some extra stuff I said. The title of my teaching was "Looking at the Big Picture". I updated the powerpoints on Monday, October 4.

     PowerPoints - 4MB

     Notes

Here is a link to download a 34 page handout I wrote on the gospel. It includes lots of Bible verses.

     The Gospel in Detail

Here is a link to download a 20 page article I wrote that explains the gospel by answering three questions.

     Three Questions About Jesus

Here is a link to videos of a 10 week teaching series I did on the gospel. They are in English with Romanian translation.

     Evanghelia (The Gospel)

If you are on Facebook check out the christlinks page. Here I put the best articles and blog posts that I find on the gospel.

Inception - A Christian Review

I came across a good review of the movie "Inception" titled Dreaming Unawares that looks at the movie from a Christian perspective.  I would recommend you check out. Here is a quote from it that I really like.

In many ways we all exist within a Limbo of our own making. We construct our own private dream-worlds simply in the act of choosing which news stories to read, sheltering from the reality of death and pain, and of our own smallness. We build the boundaries of our personal universe in deciding morality, meaning and truth for ourselves. But these are fragile fantasies. Intoxicating though such 'freedom' might seem at first, experience turns it sour because somewhere deep inside such a way of living rings false. And, like a still-spinning top catching the corner of the eye - or like the prick of a guilty conscience - hints of a greater reality intrude.

'It wasn't so bad at first,' Cobb says of his time in Limbo. 'Feeling like gods. But in the end, none of it was real. It became impossible for me to live like that.' The Bible says that we, like Mal locking her totem away in a safe, have wilfully exiled ourselves from the truth about reality. Our rejection of God's reality for self-centred worlds of our own making has resulted in our alienation from him and from his design for our lives. Without him, we are dreaming unawares, spending our days building sandcastles on an imagined shore. 'We lost sight of what was real,' and as a result we no longer truly know who we are or what we are living for. 

The Apostles - The Cost of Discipleship

Jesus Storybook Bible Project Update

Those of you who have read previous newsletters of mine know that I had to start a business here in Romania in order to continue living here and in my latest newsletter I shared that I was trying to get the rights from Zondervan to translate and publish The Jesus Storybook Bible here in Romania for my business Evangel Media. 

I received a reply back from my inquiry informing me that Zondervan has licensed all language rights to Lion Hudson Publishers of the UK. So today I emailed them and await their reply.

This would really be a great book to have here in Romania so please keep this project in your prayers. Thanks.

Gospel Quote - Pursuing Holiness or Pursuing Christ

I came across the following quote on Jared Wilson's blog The Gospel-Driven Church in a post titled What About Being Holy? It is encouraging and comforting to know that our eternal destiny does not rest on what we do but rather on what Jesus did. It's all about Jesus so our life should be all about Him as well.

Christ is my righteousness. Christ is my holiness. Therefore, becoming holy is not primarily a matter of pursuing holiness but primarily a matter of pursuing Christ. Rather, becoming holy is a matter of receiving his pursuit of me. And any righteousness I pursue that doesn't have Jesus in the crosshairs of my effort -- or, again rather, having myself in the crosshairs of his effort -- is self-righteousness.