Centreville Presbyterian Church
Rather than leading us away from fear, we have a God who gives us the strength to walk through it.
Acts 8:1-8 ESV
Screwtape Letters
As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty…. Now it may surprise you to learn that in God’s efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.
It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-- creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because he has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.
God’s kingdom ministry can…
1.Use anyone
Acts 8:1 ESV
Acts 8:4 ESV
Meditations on the Psalms
It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he or she is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with
God’s kingdom ministry can…
1.Use anyone
2. Use anything
Acts 8:1-3 ESV
To Change the World
The desire to change the hearts and minds of the ordinary man ignores the central role of institutions in transmitting culture. It is mistaken because it is not just institutions that matter, but institutions at the cultural “center” rather than the “periphery” - so that an op-ed in the New York Times is of vastly greater importance than one in the Sacramento Bee. It is mistaken, perhaps most of all, in its egalitarian assumption that the hearts and minds of ordinary people matter - in fact, cultural change is almost always driven by change among a small élite who occupy powerful positions in those culturally central institutions.
God’s kingdom ministry can…
1.Use anyone
2. Use anything
3.Overcome any obstacle
Acts 8:5-8 ESV
Acts 8:17 ESV
Acts 8:12 ESV