1 Corinthians 1:17-25

NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER SLIDE***

Corporate Cry: “God we need you to move in our midst to see people AWAKEN WITH HOPE, LIVE IN GRACE, and REST ON FAITH.”

GOD DELUSION

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:30-31

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 

Romans 1:16

15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…

1 Peter 3:15

22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

1 Corinthians 1:17-25

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel…

Romans 1:16

“ISN’T RELIGION OUTDATED?”

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and will be proved right. We’re [the Beatles] more popular than Jesus now—I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.”

John Lennon

Pride goes before destruction,

    and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

1 Timothy4:3-4

THE “GOSPEL” OF TECHNOLOGY

THE “GOSPEL” OF SCIENCE

One day, students in one of Albert Einstein’s classes were saying they had decided that there was no God. Einstein asked them, how much of all the knowledge in the world they had amongst themselves collectively, as a class. The students discussed it for a while and decided they had 5% of all human knowledge amongst themselves. Einstein thought that their estimate was a little generous, but he replied: “Is it possible that God exists in the 95% that you don’t know?”

THE “GOSPEL” OF PERSONAL FREEDOM

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Romans 1:21-23

THE TRUTH IS WE ARE NOT GETTING BETTER OVER TIME

The record of personal achievements and spiritual milestones he attained while still in his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood is int itself remarkable. He began devouring Puritan classics at the age of five or six years old. He was strikingly converted when he was only fifteen, began to preach regularly when he was sixteen, and took his first pastorate in a country village at just seventeen. He received a call to pastor perhaps the most prominent Baptist church in London when only nineteen years old, and by the time he reached the age of twenty, he had already preached over 600 sermons. The first biography of Suprgeon, written by an American, appeared when he was only twenty-one years old. By his mid twenties, he was pastoring the largeset church in the entire protestant world. 

Alex DiPrima

THE TRUTH IS BELIEF IN GOD IS GROWING; NOT DECLINING

Barna's latest study shows that 66% of U.S. adults now say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today. That marks a 12-point increase since 2021, when the number reached its lowest level in more than 30 years of Barna tracking.

“Undeniably, there is renewed interest in Jesus,” said David Kinnaman, CEO of Barna. “This is the clearest trend we’ve seen in more than a decade pointing to spiritual renewal.”

The growth has been especially concentrated among Gen Z and millennials. Gen Z men reported a 15-point increase in personal commitment to Jesus between 2019 and 2025. Millennial men reported a 19-point increase over the same period.

Barna Research Group

WHY?

THREE THINGS THAT WILL NEVER GO AWAY OVER TIME:

1. JESUS’ IMPACT ON THE EARTH

1. OUR LONGING FOR MORE

10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11

1. OUR NEED FOR A PERFECT SACRIFICE

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Hebrews 10:11-14