2 Scriptures for Anxious Christians — Trillia Newbell

From “Fighting Anxiety with Faith”

How to Meditate on Scripture — Richard Chin

From “How I Study My Bible”

How Can I Know God’s Will for My Life? — Kevin DeYoung

From “Discerning God’s Will”

Next Steps: Three Tracks

The Next Steps videos will be broken up into three tracks: Goers, Senders, and All of Us. These categories are designed to help you quickly navigate which resource might be most useful for you.

The three tracks: Goers, Senders, and All of Us.

Goers

• Dangers in Missions Today (Part 1): Church Planting Movements
  Books Buser
• Dangers in Missions Today (Part 2): Insider Movements
  Matt Bennett
• The Dilemma of Student Debt
  Luke Womack (The Go Fund)
• My Experience as a Twenty-Something in South Asia
  Mandy W.
• Preparing to be an Effective Missionary
  Matt Redelings
• Campus Ministry Overseas
  Nisin Matthews

Senders

• Influencing the Nations from the U.S.
  Andrew Caudill
• Excelling at your Job
  Andrew Nichols
• How to Think About Stewarding Money in a Materialistic Age
  Jamie Dunlop
• Partnering with Indigenous Pastors
  Matt Schmucker

All of Us

• Help for Discouraged Christians
  Dane Ortlund
• Singleness, Dating, and Marriage
  Cyndi and Scott Logsdon
• How to Feed Your Affections for Christ
  Donald Whitney
• Pursuing Holiness and Fighting Sin
  Jonathan Morgan
• Discerning God’s Will
  Kevin DeYoung
• How I Study My Bible
  Richard Chin
• Cultivating Humility
  Rachel Ware
• Loving Jesus by Loving His Church
  Ryan Robertson
• Fighting Anxiety with Faith
  Trillia Newbell

These Next Step videos will be available to all CROSS20 registrants. Register now if you don’t want to miss it.
You can also learn more about CROSS20 or learn about hosting a watch party.

The post Breakouts from CROSS20 — Previews appeared first on CROSS CON.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus instructs his disciples, “Give us each day our daily bread.” He’s teaching them that God is their provider and they are to ask him to provide what they hunger and long for.

We must pray like this on a daily basis: “God, we have a hunger for food and only you can provide for that hunger. We have a thirst for water; only you can provide for that thirst. We have a longing for air every moment; only you can provide that air.” We usually don’t even think about these things, but they are vital to our lives. When they are taken away from us, we immediately begin to long for them. We have all kinds of hungers, desires, thirsts, and longings in our lives for things like peace, love, intimacy, meaning, or purpose. Jesus is telling us to go to God and say, “Only you can provide these things for me.”

Now let’s be honest, this whole request seems really strange in our culture. We don’t often ask God to give us bread today. Few of us reading this are worried that we may not have anything to eat today. So, why would we request bread from God when most, if not all of us, need less food, not more? Why do we ask for daily bread? Because Jesus was saying, “You need to pray because prayer will guard you against thinking that you can provide bread for yourself on your own, apart from God.” Prayer will be the hedge of protection to keep you from thinking that you can provide what you need or that the things of this world can provide for all of your hungers. Only God can provide what you need.

“Prayer will guard you against thinking that you can provide bread for yourself on your own, apart from God.”

I’m convinced when I look at my own life, and I look at the trends within western Christianity, that one of the reasons we are so flippant and casual with prayer is because we actually believe that we can do this thing on our own and we can sustain our lives on our own. We have bought into the materialism that’s sold to us, which says that we don’t need God, we just need our things. We believe that we can make it without God because we have all of our things. But Jesus says that the core of prayer is realizing that you have a Father in heaven who desires to give every good and perfect gift to you. You need him, not bread, water, air, or any of these things that you hunger and long for. Prayer brings us back to this realization: you need God and he will provide those things for you.

In our culture, we must ask God to deliver us from self-sustaining Christian lives. You can’t sustain yourself; that goes against the whole point of Christianity. Only God sustains us. We’re only satisfied by God, and he gives us that which nothing else in this world can. No matter how big our house is, no matter how nice our car is, no matter how great our job or our salary is, no matter how great our possessions are, only God can satisfy us. We don’t need things, we need God.

I’m guessing none of us has asked God today, “Give me my daily bread.” Maybe so few of us pray this way because we think that we can do it on our own — but we can’t. We don’t have it on our own. We can’t do this thing without him. He alone is our provider. So we go to him, saying, “Give us the core needs. I need you to provide these things for me.”

Learn more about the Lord’s Prayer: At CROSS20, David Platt, Trip Lee, John Piper, and others will unpack the counter-cultural message of the Lord’s Prayer. Join us via livestream, December 29–30, 2020.
Learn more and sign-up today.

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a sermon preached on July 15, 2007.

The post How praying for daily bread will destroy your pride appeared first on CROSS CON.

Inviting a friend to CROSS20 is easy:

• Brainstorm a list of 5-10 Christian friends (from your church, school, campus ministry, workplace, or somewhere else)
• Send them a text message or DM right now: “I’m watching the CROSS livestream on December 29 and 30 at __________ [include the location you’ll be watching from — your church, your house, etc.]. You should watch with me. Registration is just $10. Check out CROSS20.com”
• Follow-up with your friends in a few days to see if they’ve registered.

Thanks for inviting your friends to CROSS20. We can’t wait to open God’s Word with you this December.

The post A Message from David Platt — Make the Most of CROSS20 appeared first on CROSS CON.

Watch this video to learn more about the plight of the Uyghur people and to join us in prayer:

Chinese Oppression of the Uyghur Muslims

• Between one and three million Uyghurs have been shipped to “re-education” camps.
• Since 2018, sources have been reporting that these re-education camps have led to forced labor.
• Uyghur parents are subject to forced sterilization.
• Sources are now reporting that Uyghur children are being killed in cruel acts of forced abortion and infanticide.

Our Prayer for the Uyghur People

There are over 11.8 million Uyghurs living in China. Only 0.1% of these Uyghurs have professed faith in Christ, classifying the Uyghurs as an unreached people group. We pray for unreached peoples because we believe that Christ is worthy of praise from “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. In compassion, we grieve the injustice committed against the Uyghur people. In hope, we pray that workers would be sent to the Uyghurs to tell of the life-changing good news of Jesus Christ.

“The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”

Luke 10:2

The post The Chinese Government is oppressing this people group. We’re praying for them. appeared first on CROSS CON.

John Stam’s Final Words

When the Stams were captured by their persecutors, John was able to write a letter to his missions agency, informing them of the situation: “All our possessions and stores are in their hands, but we praise God for peace in our hearts.” Despite their dire situation, John’s letter was filled with God-centered hope.

The letter ends with a desperate prayer based on Philippians 1:20:

“The Lord bless and guide you and as for us, may God be glorified, whether by life or by death.”

John Stam

John and Betty Stam laid down their lives for the most loving cause in the universe: making the name of Jesus known in every corner of the world. This is a cause worth giving our lives for. Some will lay down their lives to go to the nations — a path that may end in martyrdom. Some will lay down their lives to send to the nations — a life of self-denial, generous giving, and urgent prayer. But everyone has a part to play in God’s grand, glorious, gracious, global plan.

To learn more about God’s plan for the world, join us for the CROSS20 livestream. We’re not urging you to come to this conference to make life easy for you; we’re urging you to come to make your life count. Click here to learn more and register now.

The post John Piper: “The Mission Will Not Be Finished Without Martyrs” appeared first on CROSS CON.