Oakland Raider’s quarterback and Fresno State alum, Derek Carr, returned back home for his Altar Conference, an event that the official website states “is a weekend of dynamic worship and powerful teaching, provoking believers of all backgrounds into a lifestyle of radical pursuit and relentless devotion to Christ.”
I grew up in a Muslim home in Palestine. My father was a dentist, politician, community leader, and civil rights activist. My mother was a Liberal Arts professor who taught poetry and Arabic language in An Najah University.
When I was a young girl in Palestine, I grew up embracing the three Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
A few days before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, my husband left to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. As the Hurricane approached and in the days before it, my phone was ringing like crazy with weather warnings and cautions to leave South Padre Island. With my experience from growing up in a war zone, I quickly began to think about the safety of my children, and my husband and I thought it would be best for us to leave the island for safety.
Last year, while researching for my novel The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles, I got moved and excited by what I was learning about the two revivals that play a part in my story. And as I added that knowledge to what I had taken from a revival I witnessed, I sensed the solution to a mystery.
There is a certain brand of "Christianity" I have seen which makes me very, very sad. It's a mind-set held by some within certain church circles that is about as contrary to the mind-set of Christ as one can come. It's a mentality that basically says, without going so far as to use these words, "Jesus loves everyone, but he loves me most." Another way of referring to it is to call it what it is: sheer racism.
When Jesus’ disciples, the men who travelled together with him for three years to learn under his tutelage, asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them a very interesting model prayer. It’s one that has been prayed by many throughout the centuries, though I fear that many pray the words without really grasping what they mean.
Father's Day is a hard day for many people. It's a day set aside to honor fathers, but the reality is that many of us don't feel like honoring our fathers. Why? Because many of us have not been given a very good image of fatherhood. For many, the term “father” refers to a man who abandoned us when we were small. For others, it brings to mind an angry man who beat us or a perverse one who abused us.
The Grand Weaver, by Ravi Zacharias, is a very well written book on Christian spiritual growth. Ravi Zacharias has his own international weekly radio program and is president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. He and his wife live in Atlanta Georgia.<
