Elevate Student Ministries

By: Hannah Masters

So yesterday at church pastor Tani told us about a girl who made a drawing that spoke of an image from God… and asked everyone for an image or drawing from Him. so this is what I saw…

There was a black horse and a white horse. The white horse had been travelling for a while in this dark, evil place, where everything was made from shadows. The black horse approached the white one and taunted and mocked him, saying things like, “This is my home, you don’t belong here. You’ll sink into the darkness. You make no difference here, you should just leave!” But the white horse stood strong. He insisted that his rider was coming, and he would wipe out all of the shadows. But the black horse carried on as well, and said that his own rider- who was stronger and ruled over the land- would come and chase him out of here.

“My rider is coming,” the white horse said gently.

Although the black horse constantly made fun of him and told him that he was weak and worthless, the dark towers and trees surrounding the two suddenly began to crumble and fall. And up in their place rose sparkling white palaces and gardens and trees, and Jesus came and mounted the white horse. Still, the black horse pleaded, “My rider will come!” But Jesus said that the dark horse’s rider has already been defeated.

At that, the black horse ran away in fear as everything he knew vanished.

The white horse endured, and his rider did just as he said he would. He stood firm in spite of the darkness surrounding him, and believed that he would come even if everything around him said it didn’t. We may feel like a white horse, trapped in a world we don’t belong in and waiting for something we can’t see… I know I do lately. But I know my Rider is coming. And I trust and will wait for Him no matter what anyone says.

THIS POST was taken, with permission, from the Foursquare Gateway Nextgen Blog, our Foursquare District NextGen site. 

Written by: Shawn Shoup

Since the Garden of Eden, there has been a problem. Sin separates us from God. And disconnected from our Source, our spirits wither away and die—unless something very powerful happens.

In George Romero’s classic — much imitated and often spoofed — 1968 horror film, Night of the Living Dead, people rise up out of their graves and walk like, well, zombies as they slowly, haltingly stagger around in search of human flesh. By today’s standards, the movie is kind of low-tech and goofy. But the image of those decaying zombies walking through the streets with their arms stretched out in front of them is one that’s hard to shake.

I wonder if Romero ever read this passage from Ephesians about the spiritual nature of human beings without Christ:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:1-2, NASB)

Dead people walking. That’s what Paul said we were. The “prince of the power of the air” is Satan, who rules our planet to the extent that God lets him. The picture here, then, is that people without Christ are the walking dead, ruled by the fallen angel Satan and his demons. What a spooky image! And we’ve all been there:

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. (2:3)

Like those zombies, walking mindlessly in search of human flesh, people without Christ are controlled by their “cravings.” Before Christ, we longed for sinful things. We were driven to satisfy our way, to get what we wanted in every area of life.

And like those zombies, we were doomed. By the end of the horror movie that is life on earth without God, we were sure to be tossed into the supernatural fires of hell—not to cease to exist, but for our empty souls to live forever in torment.

But then a hero came to save us. To wake us up. To bring us to spiritual life.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (2:4-7)

God didn’t send this hero after the zombies all got together and decided they’d really rather be alive than dead. There’s was no zombie petition drive to get God to rescue us from continually chasing our sinful desires right into the gates of hell. As zombies, we would never have asked for such a thing. We were dead.

So God sent the hero before we knew we needed one. And this hero was different. He was like us—a human with a soul and emotions and thoughts—but he wasn’t born a zombie. He was spiritually alive, because he didn’t inherit the zombie disease, sin. He never sinned, so he never died spiritually.

That’s why he could pay the price for the sin that all of us zombies—the walking dead—had earned. He became the object of God’s wrath in our place. That’s why the only way to be freed from this zombie existence is to trust in Jesus:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. (2:8-9)

We can’t earn our way to being alive. As zombies, there’s no way for us to try really hard to be less evil than the other zombies. “I ate half as much human flesh as all the other zombies; surely God will be impressed and make me alive!”

No matter what you’ve heard from other religions about the supernatural world, it doesn’t work that way. Good workscan’t save us. We have to be made alive by God through trusting in Jesus. He has to do it for us, because we could never do it for ourselves. Zombies just don’t spring to life by themselves.

But the moment a believer trusts in Jesus, everything changes. He or she suddenly becomes alive in Christ. We’re not dead anymore. Our zombie days are behind us. Like Jesus when he was on earth, we’re alive. Alive!

Featuring an excerpt from… [Matlock, Mark (2010-09-21). Don't Buy the Lie (invert). Zondervan.]
There’s so much more good content inside. We’ve only scratched the surface with these five posts.
Purchase the book and read the rest (in digital or hard copy) here.

THIS POST was taken, with permission, from the Foursquare Gateway Nextgen Blog, our Foursquare District NextGen site. 

Written by: Shawn Shoup

This is part 3 in the “Don’t Buy the Lie” series of posts on the supernatural… view the series introduction here. Read part two, “Lies from the Dark Side,” here.

What do we do with all of the spiritual ideas in our culture today? What about mind readers and psychics? How should we think about different culture’s spiritism and reincarnation or even ghosts and communicating with the dead?

We’ve got to do two things with these and any other ideas about the supernatural that come our way. First, we’ve got to pass them through a discernment filter—listening, learning, and comparing the situation with Scripture.

But we also have to remember that Satan’s number one weapon in a Christian’s life is deception. His plan, working through our culture and through his demons, is to confuse and mislead believers and unbelievers alike about the reality of the supernatural world.

Every supernatural experience or idea we come across has one of four possible explanations:

1. Spiritual activity from God - events involving actual angels or godly intervention
2. Supernatural activity from Satan/demons - events in this category would include actual demonic possession or satanic/demonic influence
3. Hoax
4. Unexplained natural phenomena – we may mistake a natural experience for something supernatural… a person could believe that lights in the sky are from a UFO when, in fact, they are generated by an airplane or other human-created aircraft.

Satan loves to get skeptics to reject the reality of God (and himself) just as much as he loves to get those too eager to believe in the supernatural wrongly fascinated with lies about reincarnation, talking to the dead, and helpful spirit guides. Our goal is to find the truth in God, not just to reject everything in the supernatural world.

Thinking Trap #1: Not Balancing Mind with Emotions

The death of a loved one may be the most emotional experience in life. Even Christians who carry the hope of meeting that person again in heaven often carry the intense pain of loss for many years. The pain and longing can be amplified when some key issue in the relationship remains unresolved. Supposed spiritists and psychics have been exploiting those emotions to take advantage of people for thousands of years.

“I feel someone coming through. He’s very assertive. He really wants you to know something. Is there a…an “R” in your family?”

A woman gasps. “Richard? Richard was my uncle! My father’s brother.”

“Yes.Yes, I’m getting that. R is very strong. He wants you to know something about your dad. I’m getting something about the chest area or…Is there something about the chest?”

“My dad died of heart disease.” 

“Yes, that’s it. That’s it. And there’s more. Something about a…a car or a truck…”

“I don’t know. Hmmm. Well, my dad did give me a car for my sixteenth birthday.”  …and so on…

The woman is crying now, and she’s convinced that a spiritually gifted psychic has just given her a message from her family from beyond the grave. It’s very moving for her. If you read that exchange carefully, though, you’ll see that the psychic didn’t really know anything about the woman’s life that she didn’t tell him. I personally know highly skilled illusionists that can convince entire audiences of their psychic abilities using similar fishing and reflecting techniques. It’s not that hard.

Why do so many people buy it? Why do people believe the psychic is really delivering messages from the afterlife? Emotion. When it comes to the areas where our feelings are deepest, humans are very vulnerable creatures. If I show up to a psychic hoping to hear from my dead mother, I’m already emotional. If you can give me just enough convincing-sounding comments from her that I assume you could never have known, I’m likely to believe she’s speaking through you. And I’m likely to pay you for more information.

What is it about our emotions that can prevent our minds from working well? The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). But that doesn’t mean our emotions are evil. They’re just very powerful; we need to learn to control our emotions instead of letting them run away with us.

“Above all else,” says Proverbs, “guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (4:23).

Guarding our hearts means being aware that our emotions may lead us away from truth and from God’s best direction for us. That’s why the first step in guarding our hearts is to fill them with God’s truth—learning to trust God instead of the way that “feels” best to us.

Psalm 37 reminds us that when the law of God is in our hearts, our feet will not slip (37:31). And Proverbs urges, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

So avoiding the thinking trap of letting our emotions rule our minds comes down to trusting God’s Word, even when our emotions tell us to believe something else.

Featuring excerpts from… [Matlock, Mark (2010-09-21). Don't Buy the Lie (invert). Zondervan.]
Purchase the book (in digital or hard copy) here. We’ll look at some more thinking traps this week and next… stay tuned.