Join me at the Prayer Summit - April 5

 

 

 

Saturday, April 5

ABC-MI Prayer Summit

Come join us for a day of powerful prayer, worship, and fellowship at our First Annual Prayer Summit!

By American Baptist Churches of Michigan

Date and time

Saturday, April 5 · 10am - 12pm EDT

Location

West Highland Baptist Church

1116 South Hickory Ridge Road Milford, MI 48380

About this event

• Event lasts 2 hours

Welcome to the ABC-MI Prayer Summit! Join us at West Highland Baptist Church for a day filled with prayer, worship, and community. The people of ABC-MI churches will gather for the purpose of praying for the movement of God among & through us.

LUNCH PROVIDED

Defending Christian Morality (A Zoominar)

 

Defending Christian Morality (A Zoominar)

 

DEFENDING CHRISTIAN MORALITY    

John Piippo, PhD 

April 12, 2025

11AM - 1 PM

On Zoom. 

$5. Register HERE.

• "How can we say that Christian morality is the true morality?"
• "Your morals may be true for you, but they are not true for me?"
• "Who are you to judge others?"
• "Who are you to impose your morality on others?"
• "Isn't that just your opinion?"
• "Why believe in any moral values when they are so different?"
• "Isn't it arrogant to say your values are better than others?"
• Can't we be good without God?"

You will learn what objective moral values are, how objective moral values are properly basic beliefs, and how the existence of objective moral values proves that God exists.

Revelation 12 Sermon at Redeemer (3/30/25)

Psalm 23 In Its Original Desert Context

(I took this photo of a shepherd with
his sheep in the desert wilderness of
Israel, above the Dead Sea)

When my friend Hal Ronning (Hebrew University and the Home for Bible Translators) spoke at Redeemer on "Psalm 23 From the Perspective of the Desert," he gave us his Ps. 23 translation as understood in light of its original context.

Hal and his wife Mirja (herself a great Old Testament scholar, also teaching at Hebrew University) have lived in Jerusalem for 40 years. They are familiar with the desert terrain that Psalm 23 is situated in. Linda and I have been there, too. To me this Psalm comes alive when you realize just how barren that area is, and how rare and precious still waters and green pastures are.

I suggest that you print this out and carry it with you for a few days, using it to meditate on. When God speaks to you write it down in your journal.

Here it is!


"When the LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing!

He is able, even in dry inhospitable desert terrain with a multitude of circling confusing paths, to lead me to the right path that brings me to the rare grassy patches and by restful waters, where I can lie down completely satiated. He refreshes my soul! He does all of this for His name’s sake!

Even when I walk in a ravine with shadows bearing deathly dangers, I fear no evil, because YOU are with me. Your rod of leadership and your leaning staff - comfort me.

You prepare a banquet table in front of my enemies and you pour good oil on my head – my drinking bowl is full to the brim! Nothing but goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life and I will stay in the Lord’s dwelling place for days on end."

Halvor Ronning - Psalm 23 - Paths of righteousness

Here is my friend Hal Ronning sharing background information needed to understand Psalm 23. Hal was our tour guide when Linda and I were in Israel. What a blessing that was! Hal and his wife Mirja are great biblical scholars and head the Home for Bible Translators in Jerusalem. Hal also has been to Redeemer to speak and teach.

Non-Discursive Experiences of God

 

(Kitty Hawk, NC)

A non-discursive experience is an experience that is felt and "known" as real, but which cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language. One has such experiences, but cannot discourse about them. (On religious experiences that "I know that I know that I know" but cannot speak of, see James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues.)

I experience God in a variety of ways, many of which are non-discursive. This is how it should be, right? None of us has epistemic access to the being of God. We fail to fully understand what it's like to be all-knowing, or all-loving, or all-powerful.

The expression of a non-discursive experience is confessional and testimonial. There is a sense in which it cannot be refuted. What does this mean? Say, for example, that I now feel joy. I make the statement, “Now I feel joy.” It would be odd, in a Wittgensteinian-kind of way, for someone to say “You’re wrong.” That would be leaving the language-game I’m now playing. (Wittgensteinian “playing” is what I have here in mind.)

Consider the statement, “I felt God close to me today.” Even a philosophical materialist could not doubt that today I had some kind of numinous experience which I describe as God being with me. They could doubt that what caused my experience was “God.” I understand this. But their doubt has no effect on my experience and the interpretation of it. Their doubt does not make me a doubter, precisely because I am not a philosophical materialist. I see no reason to disbelieve my experiences because others do not have them. This relates, I think, to Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's "principle of credulity."

At this point I’m influenced by theistic philosophers Alvin Plantinga and William P. Alston. For them, belief in God is properly basic if the noetic framework of Christian theism is true. Plantinga’s work on “warranted belief” and Alston’s work on the “experiential basis of theism” is helpful here. Alston writes: 

“the relatively abstract belief that God exists is constitutive of the doxastic practice of forming particular beliefs about God's presence and activity in our lives on the basis of theistic experience.” 

For Alston, experiential support for theism is analogous to experiential support for belief in the physical world. He explains what he means by “theistic experience.” He writes:

I “mean it to range over all experiences that are taken by the experiencer to be an awareness of God (where God is thought of theistically). I impose no restrictions on its phenomenal quality. It could be a rapturous loss of conscious self-identity in the mystical unity with God; it could involve "visions and voices"; it could be an awareness of God through the experience of nature, the words of the Bible, or the interaction with other persons; it could be a background sense of the presence of God, sustaining one in one's ongoing activities. Thus the category is demarcated by what cognitive significance the subject takes it to have, rather than by any distinctive phenomenal feel.”

For Plantinga, if the noetic framework of Christian theism is true, then I can expect to experience God. God exists, has made us in his image, has placed a moral consciousness within us, has revealed himself in the creation, and desires for us to know him. Plantinga, of course, believes this noetic framework is true. As do I. One then expects experiential encounters with God. They come to us, as Alston says, like sense-experiences.

This is to argue for the rationality of theistic experiences. One can have “warrant” for the belief that such experiences are from God. But these experiences do not function as “proofs” of God’s existence.

Non-discursive experiences, and experiences in general, cannot be caught in the steel nets of literal language. “Experience” qua experience has what French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has called a “surplus of meaning.” “Words” never capture all of experience. All experiencing has a non-discursive quality. Here the relationship of words to experiencing leads to volumes of discussion in areas such as linguistic semantics and philosophy of language.

Even a sentence as seemingly simple as “I see a tree” is, phenomenally, incomplete. Consider this experience: sitting on an ocean beach watching the sun set with the person you are falling in love with. Ricoeur called such experiences “limit-experiences”; viz., experiences that arise outside the limits of thought and language. But people want to express, in words, these events. For that, Ricoeur says a “limit-language” is needed, such as metaphorical expression. So-called “literal language” cannot capture limit-experiences.

Every person has limit-experiences that are non-discursive.

Experience, not theory, breeds conviction. Theorizing either for or against God is not as convincing as the sense of the presence of God or the sense of the absence of God. This is why I keep returning to my “conversion experience.”

Among the God-experiences I consistently have are:
- A sense that God is with me
- Numinous experiences of awe and wonder (not mere “Einsteinian wonder”)
- God speaking to me
- God leading me
- God comforting me
- God’s love expressed towards me
- God’s Spirit convicting me
- God directing me
- Overwhelming experience of God
- God revealing more of himself to me

These experiences are mediated through:
-Corporate worship
-Individuals
-Solitary times of prayer
-Study of the Christian scriptures
-Observing the creation
-In difficult and testing situations

Sometimes I have experienced God in an unmediated way.

I discern and judge such things to be experiences of God because...
-I spend many hours a week praying
-I have heavily invested myself in prayer and meditation for the past 42+ years
-I saturate myself in the Christian scriptures
-I study the history of Christian spirituality
-I keep a spiritual journal and have 3000+ pages of journal entries concerning God-experiences
-I hang out with people who do all of the above
- I've taught this material in various seminaries, at conferences, in the United States & elsewhere around the world. I've gained a multi-ethnic perspective on the subject of experiencing God.

All this increases one’s diacritical ability (dia-krisis; “discernment”; lit. “to cut through”). Spiritual diacritical ability is mostly acquired. It is in direct proportion to familiarity.

The more we live in connection with God, the more familiar we will be with the presence of God. We will speak of it, and our words will fall short of expressing it, which is how it should be.



***

My books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

Richard Dawkins on Wokery, Sex, and Gender

 

 

If you don't like this, take it up with evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins. He can handle it. 

He likes to discuss. And, he knows more about genetics than you do. ( For Dawkins and theistic geneticist Francis Collins in dialogue, go here.)

Dawkins is still the world's most famous intellectual atheist. And, his book The Selfish Gene has been used in university biology classes.

Dawkins was interviewed yesterday by Piers Morgan. The full interview is here. I find it interesting.

Here's a snippet, on sex and gender.

Piers: They (woke-ists) want to de-gender and neutralise language, but they're doing it from a completely false pretext that you can somehow pretend biology doesn't exist, particularly when it comes to someone's sex. A small group of people have been successful in reshaping swathes of the way society talks and is allowed to talk.

Richard: It's bullying. We've seen the way JK Rowling has been bullied, Kathleen stock has been bullied. They've stood up to it, but it's very upsetting the way this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse to talk errant nonsense.

Piers: What's the answer?

Richard: Science. There are two sexes. You could talk about gender, if you wish and that's a subjective.

Piers: But when people say there are 100 genders?

Richard: I'm not interested in that. As as a biologist, there are two sexes and that's all there is to it.

Piers: Why have we lost that ability to actually have an open and frank debate?

Richard: There are people for whom the word discuss doesn't mean discuss, it means you've taken a position.

Again, If you don't like what Richard Dawkins is saying here, I recommend you take it up with him. I simply report this to you. 

 

A heads-up. To dialogue with Dawkins you must understand what he means by 'science' and its limits.

Remember also that Dawkins, as a scientist, despises postmodern thinking.

A Biologist Explains Why Sex Is Binary

 

 

                                                               (Green Lake, Wisconsin)

See evolutionary biologist Colin Wright's article in the Wall Street Journal - "A Biologist Explains Why Sex Is Binary."

Wright says, "In an effort to confuse the issue, gender ideologues cite rare ambiguous ‘intersex’ cases."

Wright writes, "When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary."

Sex, therefore, is not a "social construct."

See also Richard Dawkins' recent contribution on the binary nature of sex, and the subjective nature of gender. Here. 

Oh, but in today's New Orwellian Totalitarianism (N.O.T.) we're not supposed to talk about these things.

7 Rules for a Good, Clean Fight

Before I married Linda one of my pastors gave me Charlie Shedd's book Letters to Philip: On How to Treat a Woman. I read it. And then, a few years later, I read it again. Remember that, when it comes to wisdom, "old" doesn't mean "not as relevant."

Shedd's little book gave me some relationship tools I have never forgotten. For example, here are his "7 Rules for a Good, Clean Fight." 

 1. Before we begin we must both agree that the time is right.

 2. We will remember that our only battle aim 

is a deeper understanding of each other.

 3. We will check our weapons often to be sure they're not deadly.

 4. We will lower our voices instead of raising them.

 5. We will never quarrel in public nor reveal private matters.

 6. We will discuss an armistice whenever either of us calls "halt."

 7. When we have come to terms we will put it away 

until we both agree it needs more discussing.

Presence-Driven Pastors Tend, Not Run, the Garden

 

Presence-Driven Pastors Tend, Not Run, the Garden

                                                                 (Redeemer Church building, Monroe, MI)

A Presence-Driven Church is a garden, not a factory. Gardens are tended. Factories are "run."

The garden soil is the hearts of the people.

God is the seed planter.

The people are taught to abide in Christ.

They bear much fruit.

Presence-Driven Pastors tend the fruit.

In the Christ-abiding connection, God sows dreams and visions, course correction and direction, into the hearts of the people.

The Presence-Driven Pastor is not threatened by this. They separate the good from the bad. They welcome and nurture good produce, like parents caring for a newborn baby. The Presence-Driven Pastor is an expectant parent who prays for the child to be born, prepares a room for it to flourish, and celebrates its arrival.

This is Real Church, a community where everyone (not just the pastor) gets to play. Everyone becomes part of the movement. Everyone is a leader. This is anti-top-down leadership.

As Scripture tells us,

When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. (1 Corinthians 14:26)

To allow this you must let go of control. Which is hard for an Entertainment-Driven Pastor to do. (Hard for many of us, right?) These pastors control the Studio Church. The many are not as talented or as beautiful or as camera-friendly as the few. So they run the garden, rather than tend it. The people become an audience of outsiders. The Entertainment-Driven Pastor of the Consumer Church has been seduced and trafficked by the American honor-shame hierarchy.

This, Eugene Peterson writes, is a dark vocational shift. It is the "radical fall from vocational holiness to career idolatry," which "goes undetected by all but the serpent." (Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, p. 7)

***

I write more about this in my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church.