[NOTE #1: PLEASE BE SURE TO CHECK OUT today’s broadcast of "Truth That Transforms," (in Orlando, 5 p.m., ch. 55.1). It presents the second of a new two-part video entitled, Can America Survive the Coming Economic Earthquake? It will help you understand why the present economic course of our nation is clearly immoral and needs for the leaders of the Church to speak up about NOW! Again, in Orlando, if you miss today's broadcast, please tune into a re-broadcast Monday, 7 p.m., ch. 52.2)]
[NOTE #2: On April 21st, we saw the Home-going of Chuck Colson, someone I have long considered a modern day prophet who challenged the Body of Christ to be more than passive spectators in these critical days of history. He is one of the handfuls of Christian leaders I MOST hope to meet in Heaven one day to personally thank. While the mainstream media has hardly mentioned the REAL legacy his life has led, there have been dozens of articles written in tribute to him since his passing. The following are just a few, with the link to the Colson Center revealing the most. You will note that he was the author of almost all of the commentaries at Breakpoint.org that I've passed on to you. I hope that you will sign up for future articles from that site as I am confident they will continue his fine analysis of the critical issues of our day.]
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Chuck's Gift to Us - 'Loving God'
By: Eric Metaxas|Published: April 24, 2012. Breakpoint.org
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19256
...By now you’ve surely heard that Chuck Colson went to be with the Lord on Saturday afternoon. Those of us who knew him are sad, thankful, and hopeful: sad that he is gone; thankful to have known him; and hopeful that we will be reunited with him one day. Please continue to keep the Colson family and Prison Fellowship [his primary ministry] in your prayers.
Chuck’s passing, as you'd expect, has been covered in the press. Some of the coverage was pretty good, but none of it does justice to what my friend Rod Dreher rightly called “one of the great American public lives of the 20th century.” So with your permission, I would like to spend some time re-acquainting you — or perhaps acquainting you for the first time — with the things that made Chuck Colson’s life so great.
A good place to start is with what, for me at least, is Chuck’s best book, Loving God. Other books may have better demonstrated Chuck’s intelligence and analytical skills, but none of them matched Loving God when it came to answering the question “How Now Shall We Live?”
“Loving God” was Chuck’s response to our culture’s increasing preoccupation with the Self. He saw people whose pursuit of celebrity, materialism, and success had not made them happy but, instead, “self-absorbed, frightened, and hollow.”
Their response to the failure was not repentance but to becoming even more preoccupied with the self. Even worse, the Church had bought into this same value system instead of showing a way out of the dead end of self-preoccupation.
That way out required replacing self-absorption with the love of God. That of course requires understanding what it means to love God. And for Chuck, the answer lay in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes.” Loving God requires viewing our faith as a “living Person for whom we are willing to lay down our lives.” A “vibrant strong faith” is not “just knowledge but knowledge acted upon.” It is “not just belief but belief lived out.” Real faith, which is the cure to self-absorption and the way out of the prison we construct for ourselves, consists of “believing and act obediently regardless of circumstances or contrary evidence.”
I’ll never forget reading Loving God after I became a Christian. I had never read or heard anything quite like it. This is the stuff of transformed lives; this is the stuff of which a world turned upside down is made. The thing is, Loving God is even more timely today than it was in 1983. It scarcely seems possible but our culture is even more preoccupied with the Self than it was thirty years ago. A survey of college students found that today’s student score significantly higher on the Narcissistic Personality Disorder than those of thirty years ago. At the same time, they are less likely to be happy.
Chuck’s message to the Church — that faith is inseparable from obedience and faithfulness — is every bit as essential today as when he wrote Loving God thirty years ago. It is part of his gift to us — a gift I will be telling you about over these next few weeks and one that I pray you will claim for yourself.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION
Born Again by Chuck Colson | Hendrickson Publishers | 2008
Loving God by Chuck Colson | Zondervan | 1997
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Life Sentence - Chuck Colson Never Left Prison
By: Eric Metaxas|Published: April 25, 2012
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19266
"...Apart from Watergate, Chuck is best-known for his ministry to prisoners. But to say that Chuck ministered to prisoners is to miss the point almost entirely. The seven months Chuck spent in prison changed the way Chuck saw the world and his role in it. It placed prisoners and their families at the heart of Chuck’s concerns and priorities..."
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Recalling Our Roots - Prison Fellowship and the Colson CenterBy: Jim Liske|Published: April 26, 2012
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19274
"...Chuck’s three final efforts to rouse the church — the Manhattan Declaration (http://manhattandeclaration.org/home.aspx),the Doing the Right Thing series (http://www.doingtherightthing.com/dtrt-home on ethics),and the Breaking the Spiral of Silence conference(http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/talking-points/17444-breaking-the-spiral-of-silence) — were typical Chuck Colson. His optimism was boundless. He knew that God is sovereign. Because he himself — the former White House hatchet man — had been transformed by Jesus, he knew that every man, woman, and child made in God’s image could be as well..."
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Recalling Our Roots -Prison Fellowship and the Colson CenterBy: Jim Liske|Breakpoint.com: April 26, 2012
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19274
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Remembering Charles Colson, a Man Transformed - The real story of how "Nixon's hatchet man" ended up in, out, and back in prison (and the White House), shaping a movement in the process. by Jonathan Aitken - 4/21/2012 (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/aprilweb-only/charles-colson-aitken.html)------------------------------------------------------------------
For[MANY] More Articles about the Life of Chuck Colson, go to: ColsonCenter.org (http://www.colsoncenter.org/topnews/entry/44/19245)
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Thank You, Chuck; The Next ChapterBy: John Stonestreet| Breakpoint.orgApril 20, 2012 http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19240
"...Of course, what set Chuck’s life apart was that it was not his own. It had been bought, by Christ, and returned to Chuck, redeemed. You know once in a sermon, Dietrich Bonheoffer said, 'Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.' What transformed Chuck’s life is now what transforms his death. I’m reminded of what C. S. Lewis wrote to close the Narnia adventures. I think it applies here: 'now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.'...
Suggested Reading - >How Now Shall I Live? - Chuck Colson & Nancy Pearcey | Tyndale | 1999
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