1 John 3;2-3 Scripture song

Stephen Altrogge has posted another helpful (and free) Scripture song. This one's from 1 John 3:2-3.

Do Hard Things

Alex and Brett Harris are two teenagers who are trying to radically change the world for Jesus. They operate from their site The Rebelution, and they just released their first book, Do Hard Things. It's #5 on Amazon right now.

It's supposed to be fantastic. Here's what some people are saying:

This book is a refreshing wake up call to our generation. We CAN do hard things; and give ourselves to something huge for the Kingdom of God!

-Leeland Mooring, Grammy-nominated recording artist, 19

I read countless books but this is one of the most unique, defining and important ones I've ever seen. It is paradigm-shifting, revolutionary, liberating and hope-instilling. While I'd love for every teenager to read Do Hard Things, I'm just as eager for every parent, church leader and educator to read it.

-Randy Alcorn, best-selling author of Heaven and The Treasure Principle

For too long our expectations of teens, and their expectations of themselves, have been far too low. In Do Hard Things Alex and Brett Harris rebel against low expectations and encourage their peers to meet the challenge of doing tough things for God's sake and for God's glory.

I wish I could have read this book when I was a teen. I'm glad that my children will have the opportunity. I pray it will stir them and stir a whole generation of young people, to use their teen years to do the hard things God calls them to do.

-Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, blogger (challies.com)

Is Horton pro-life?

"A person's a person, no matter how small." - Horton Hears a Who!

I've neither read the book nor seen the movie, but apparently some pro-lifers feel that the above mantra enunciates the pro-life position in a simple, clear way. Could it be that God has put inklings of His truth in Dr. Seuss' mind, even though Dr. Seuss may have been neither Christian nor pro-life*? I think so...


*I don't know whether or not Dr. Seuss was a Christian or pro-life.

The wrath of God, the death of Christ

Last night I gave a message about a terrifying subject: the wrath of God. But its aim was to show (among other things)

• how terrifying God's wrath is
• how great is what Jesus accomplished on the cross!
• how thankful we should be for Jesus' death
• how we should fear God
  
• the dreadful fate of those who do not trust Jesus
• how urgent it is for them to come to Jesus
• how compassionate we should be toward them
  
• how we should hate our sin, which God hates and which Jesus died for
  

At the beginning of my talk, I made a blanket statement about how the sermons and books of John Piper have deeply influenced me and this talk (and how I got permission to "copy" him as long as I acknowledged it at the appropriate spots).

Well, here of John Piper's works that I "copied" last night:

"God's Wrath: 'Vengeance Is Mine, I will Repay,' Says the Lord"
I got most of my points about God's wrath from here.

The Passion of Jesus Christ
This is the book that I was giving away last night. The author put the book online so people can read it for free.

I remember walking around on my college campus reading the short, two-page first chapter of this book. It blew me away when I saw the mercy and justice of God in the cross like this. I began to see God as bigger and scarier and more beautiful than I had before. (By the way, this chapter greatly influenced my song "Screaming," which I performed last night.)

Submit your Panel Night questions!

On March 28 we'll have Panel Night with our four lovely sponsors! We'll be answering (or, at least, trying to answer) questions you have about God, life, the Bible, school, death, friends, girls, etc.

If you have a question that you want us to address at Panel Night, please either leave it as a comment here, email it to one of the sponsors, or give it to us in some other way (e.g. a secret note written in invisible ink, Morse Code, etc. :) ).

Please get the questions in by March 21 so that your sponsors have time to find good answers! You can still ask questions after March 21, but we'll prioritize questions that we get earlier.

Update March 15:
If you don't want other people to see your question, you can't submit it here on the blog (you need a Google account to leave a comment, so you can't leave anonymous comments). In that case, you could tell the question to one of the sponsors in person, give it to us as a note, email it to us, etc.

My email address is MichaelTungmanChen [at] yahoo.com.

Favorite Winter Outing 2008 memories

We just got back from Winter Outing 2008 last night, and those of you who missed it really missed out! We learned about God's love for us and had a lot of fun together. And I came away from the retreat thinking, "Wow, I love my kids!"

Some of my favorite memories:

• The "Daddy"/TIGS adults-as-family inside joke (and the awkwardness that came when parents came to pick up their kids).
• The two historic Byron-going-down the snow slide moments with me and Vince, respectively. Hmm, maybe I should post that on YouTube... :)
  
• "Apples to Apples": I never knew Chicken McNuggets could be so "magical"! :)
• Grossing Cliff out with my synergistic, vitamin-filled orange juice/Honey Nut Cheerios combination. Arica's ingenious suggestion for making "orange chicken." (Maybe I can try that on the next outing. :) )
  
• Connie's adventures with a roll of duct tape.
  
• Teaching others about how God used the awkwardness and loneliness of my middle school years and worked His good designs through it. Teaching about God's powerful, wise love from the last part of Romans 8.

Do you have other favorite memories? Feel free to post them in the comments!

Ebony and Ivory

Back at the beginning of the year, my sister and I were walking around Old Sacramento, and all of a sudden, I saw this shop and immediately thought of Chris and Gideon (because of the song they love to sing, not because it says, "International Beauty Palace" or "Beautiful Hands & Feet" :) ).

I told my sister we had to stop and take a picture. So Chris and Gideon, these are for you. :) Pretty funny! :)