Weekly insights from Chuck Colson and great saints of the past and present

Christian awakenings and revivals have been a powerful force for moral and cultural renewal. Do we need an awakening in our day?

“When you look at the history of these Christian awakenings and movements, you find one common denominator running through all of them. They did what they did not because it was some noble cause for society or because they believed in some social gospel or because they wanted political influence. They acted because they believed, as God’s holy people, that they were called both to end systemic evil and reform cultural attitudes.”
-Chuck Colson, The Faith

“As for the Christians…[t]hey have the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ himself engraven on their hearts, and these they observe, looking for the resurrection from the dead and the world to come. They commit neither adultery nor fornication; nor do they bear false witness, the do not deny a deposit, nor covet other men’s goods: they honour father and mother, and love their neighbors; they give right judgement; and they do not worship idols in the form of man. They do not unto other that which they would not have done unto themselves. They comfort such as wrong them, and make friends of them; they labour to do good to their enemies…”
-Aristeides, Apology

“For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by country, or by speech, or by dress…They live in countries of their own, but simply as sojourners; they share the life of the citizens, they endure the lot of foreigners; every foreign land is to them a fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign land. They marry like the rest of the world, they breed children, but they do not cast their offspring adrift. They have a common table, but yet not common. They exist in the flesh, but they live not after the flesh. They spend their existence upon earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, and in their own lives they surpass the laws. They love all men, and are persecuted by all.”
-Anonymous, Epistle to Diognetus

“In the same manner, their fathers accused Jesus by saying that he called himself king. The former, however, even though they had a kind of charge that was, on the surface, likely to deceive because the one charged was living, how could these latter hide their lying when they were saying that they, the apostles, were proclaiming Jesus a king, who, according to these accusers, was dead? That is, unless he was alive but was not visible. Concerning such a one, the kings of the earth never had need to fear, unless they should see him when entirely visible. But, as it seems from their proclamation of the truth, they knew that even though he was not visible, he was still truly king, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
-Ammonius, Catena on Acts

“Radical Christians will be iconoclasts intent on bringing down the secular towers of Babel, which often wear a religious label. Such Christians will be considered spiritual and even social revolutionaries, for they will be conspicuous in their refusal to pay obeisance to the false gods that enthrall a secularized culture.”
-Donald G. Bloesch, Crumbling Foundations

“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”
-Acts 17:6, 7

For more insight to this subject, get the book, The Good Life, by Charles Colson, from our online store.

Or read the article, “Christ for Culture,” by T. M. Moore.