The Tulip Driven Life

UPDATE 2/2015: I did not intend to cause confusion or frustration for some who have noted that there are multiple pastors/evangelists with the name of David Wood. At this point, I would like this blog post to simply be read as a critique of a real sermon  by a minister. Who it was exactly is not the important thing. If you are going to hear a David Wood preach and you have read this blog post, you will probably be able to tell if that is the David Wood or not. But I would not want to harm the ministries of any other David Wood's who are preaching the truth. Original Post: I want to demonstrate with this post how someone can come in who is truly a Christian, truly loves the Lord, sound like he is preaching the true gospel, but on closer inspection, simply is not preaching the true gospel. I watched this sermon on the church’s website where the preacher, David Wood, preached. In it he says many true and helpful things. The problem is, his purpose in this sermon was to help p...

Until we begin to understand the true gospel again and from there start preaching it unashamedly in all its truth and glory, souls will not be saved and we will have people walking around thinking they are Christians who have no idea of the holiness of God and Jesus Christ. Many of you are probably unaware that we are slaves to sin before we are saved. So enslaved to your own sinful, fleshly desires that you cannot do a single thing that pleases God (Romans 8:8). You would not even have trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior unless God had given you faith as a gift (Eph. 2:8-10) and had chosen you for salvation "through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thess. 2:13-14). Your faith and repentance are gifts of God- in other words, you would be an unbeliever unless God gave you the desire to believe. Let that sink in- it will move you to tears over your own...

Ah yes, the great challenge to connote deep meaning concisely as possible. At least this may force me to use bigger words. Today's thought of the day is about engaging in culture. Perhaps another way to express it is this- should Christians strive to separate from the culture of unbelievers, or Christianize the culture of unbelievers? For instance, rap music. All I ever heard from rap music lyrically was debauched. Sin, sin sin, sin, and more sin. Sometimes it was very heinous sin too, like raping someone's mother, or murdering someone just because you don't like them all that much. That lead me, and many other Christians I think, to come to the conclusion, "Rap music is bad, there is no such thing as holy hip hop; anyone who tries to be a Christian and rap is going to bed with with world's music. Rap music, by its very sound and nature, appeals to the sinful flesh." In other words, rap, and probably rock music too, has often been viewed as sinful. Jus...

Thoughts of the Day: With schoolwork and so many other commitments, the amount of detailed blog entries I will have time to do, or at least the amount of detailed, researched, agonized over, Scripture saturated, prayer filled blogs that I should be devoting my time to will be few and far between for the foreseeable future. For instance, I have an Ethics paper due at midnight, and I have yet to begin reading the chapter on it! 17 credit hours online keeps you busy, especially when what you really want to be studying is the Bible and theology. I feel like I have worn myself out a bit posting so much stuff, reading so much stuff, watching so much stuff. At the same time, I still want to be able to write something on a regular basis for my blog. This could work  out- my blogs will be shorter, so more people might actually read them :D Daily, or at least every other day, I am going to write a brief entry entitled “Thoughts of the Day.” I will try not to go over three or four 5-sent...