Screenings, according to collisionmovie.com the official website, are only available in New York and Los Angeles unless you will be attending the September 2009 Desiring God National Conference where Wilson will be offering lectures on John Calvin’s 500th anniversary celebration and hosting a private screening for conference attenders.

This will be no doubt a riveting documentary filled with humor and scholarship. Information concerning this film including biographical information, dates/times, and previews can be seen HERE.

Movie Trailer

13 Min. Preview

Of these men is pastor and author John Piper. Piper is the author of a series of biographical shorts entitled, The Swans Are Not Silent.  These brief reads are great for those who don’t have time to for the full sketch of an unabridged biography. These particular biographies seek to hit the highlights of the individuals life as perceived by the author.

Piper can at times wright with a more calvinistic slant that some would not prefer theologically but, overall I think that most would find this series challenging and encouraging as Piper uses his pastoral sensitivity to lead the reader into a greater vision of God through his expose of these unique heroes of the faith.

This new publication, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ makes book five in the series. This particular biography inquires into the life of William Tyndale, Adinoram Judson and finally John Paton.

Get these books and be challenged!

“well, we have plenty of our own needs here that need to be taken care of, we need to worry about our own people first”

This way of thinking has troubled me ever since I began my journey following Jesus. The question is… where do we draw the line concerning mercy missions?  The answer… there is no line. 

This post is to thank and encourage those at Mt. Zion where I serve and beyond to continually live war-time lifestyles in order to display the Kingdom of God to the nations in a tangible way.

John Newton, July 24, 1725 – December 21, 1807, was an Englishman, Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace.

All this I had known and was still yet to be impressed nor deeply moved by the person, John Newton. Amazing Grace, a great hymn of the faith, to which I agree fully with theologically but, still no overwhelming admiration for this particular man.

Then today I read an account of John Newton.  Not a list of accomplishments or book of deeds but rather something more powerful.  I read a report of what other people, those of his peers, said about him, some friends, some enemies, and some who the former were irresistibly drawn into relationship with him because of his deep abiding gentleness.

When I read the report of what others had said concerning Newton I was arrested by the thought that it matters very little in the area of what you accomplish in this life if you are not in the least bit resolved to do it with gentleness.  How often we work and strive for purposes that our Lord Jesus commands and yet leaving the fundamentals of humility and gentleness aside therefore render our efforts worthless and without credibility in the end.

Here are a few things Newton said or that were said about him that led to some hopeful transformation in my own heart.

“If our zeal is embittered by expressions of anger, invective, or scorn, we may think we are doing service to the cause of truth, when in reality we shall only bring it into discredit.”

-Newton

“Few things will tend to make you more tender than to be much in the presence of suffering a death.  My course of study, Newton said, like that of a surgeon, has principally consisted in the walking the hospital.”

“I am a friend of Peace; and being deeply convinced that no one can profitably understand the great truths and doctrines of the gospel any farther than he is taught of God, I have not a wish to obtrude my own tenets upon others, in a way of controversy; yet I do not think myself bound to conceal them”

- Newton

These are the words that rolled off the lips of Jesus as he spoke to those who had gathered on the beach to hear what he would have to say. Employing a parable Jesus describes to his listeners how vulnerable and seemingly insignificant the beginnings of his Kingdom would be.  A mustard seed beginning for the Kingdom.  A slow progressive means to a glorious unobstructed end is the way that Jesus described the way in which his Kingdom agenda would operate.  

One of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Christ is that it would be one that would continuously grow along side other empires of this world unnoticed until eventually it would be found overtaking them in cataclysmic proportion.

The incredible hope of this Kingdom is found in the way it slowly overtakes its enemies belonging to rival empires that succeed in living autonomous from God and enlists them to live and operate within the global movement set in place by Jesus as he came sowing seeds into mens heart and preaching the arrival of his Kingdom.

As we find ourself becoming a part of this Kingdom being driven with the same desires of Jesus, (mercy, justice, and peace) it should become increasingly difficult to maintain allegiance to any empire but one, namely Jesus’ Kingdom the one whose is hidden yet so obviously plain.