The first chapter of "Porn Again Christian" is available now—here. Please tell all of the guys you know about this.

When all of the chapters are on the site, the complete book will be available as a free pdf.

Lecrae has a brand new album out today called Rebel. The title track is inspired by a sermon given at Mars Hill Church by Pastor Mark. You can download it for free here. The Reach records guys have been part of several Resurgence and Mars Hill events, they have a heart to live missional lives for Jesus, and are reaching the hip hop culture.

3 Questions with Lecrae

What was your inspiration for your new album—"Rebel"?

The inspiration for the album was largely realizing my own need for a biblical worldview. As I would navigate through arts, economics, politics, media, and culture as a whole I'd wrestle with a dichotomy between sacred and secular all the time. I'd either embrace aspects of secularism or the other extreme be very separatist in my views. I began read and listen to stuff by D.A. Carson, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and Francis Schaeffer, and taking another look at Genesis, Daniel, and Romans and I found a better grid to see the world through.

Over time I've worked to see Urban culture through a biblical lens and it's really helped. So I wanted to share with the listener the need to take a stand for Christ in culture yet still be a blessing and cultivator for the culture.

What songs are you most excited about?

I'm really excited about "Change". The song deals with the endless search for "happiness" on earth. The futility of chasing power, pleasure, and possessions.

Also "Don't Waste Your Life". Very self explanatory. Dr. John Piper's ministry has greatly influenced myself and my crew so we crafted a hip hop song unpacking the life not used for God's glory.

Umm lastly I'd say "Got Paper". In urban culture especially hip hop culture, prosperity is constantly paraded as a badge of authentic masculinity, worth, and power. The prosperity gospel is also prevalent, so I wanted to address that in a song as well.

What ideas do you hope that people will come away with after listening to "Rebel"?

I really hope we can stir people toward going against the sinful stream of ideals, values, and lifestyles. I want the christian to be challenged in seeing that the fall of humanity has not thwarted God's intention for us. But since we are now corrupted by sin, we need to renew our mind. We still reflect God's image only now through a murkier lens, so it's important we learn to rebel by taking a stand for Jesus, and yet rebel by being a blessing to the unsaved and sinful culture. Non-believing listeners I pray will be attracted to the quality of the music and creativity, and prayerfully be challenged to look at God's holiness, repent, and turn to Jesus.

Get the Album on iTunes.

"In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful." 2 Samuel 11:1-2

Neglected Responsibility

In this passage we see that David has neglected his responsibility to go out to battle, has sent others to fight, stays home, sleeps until evening, finally gets up, and starts looking at a naked woman that is not his wife! Most of us know where the story goes from here, the plot and the resulting pain to himself and others is all too familiar to us as we look around at our families, churches and the broader culture in which we live.

The only real difference between David and too many of us in our modern age is that we do not have to stand at a distance on a rooftop, squinting to try and get a better view of the naked woman’s body. It gets streamed directly into our offices, bedrooms, and laptops in high definition. Thanks to advances in recent technology, it is even available on our cell phones to be seen on demand at any moment or location. So thousands of years later, we men are still suffering from the same progression of events as David did in 2nd Samuel.

The problem starts earlier in the story

While it would be easy to blame our situation on the ubiquity of pornography in this age of technology, I believe the problem starts earlier in the story. Long before David stares at Bathsheeba, long before he has Uriah killed, long before all the terrible consequences have played out in David’s life and that of his family, something much more sinister had taken place. Somewhere along the way he lost sight of the mission that he had been given by God himself. He was the king of Israel and he was supposed to be at war fighting the forces of evil and expanding the kingdom! Yet he chose to stay home.

The lie: you're not here to fight

Unfortunately, most men in the church today have made the same decision. Even worse, many churches today actually tell men that they are not here to fight. And so we stay home and our stories become eerily similar to that of David. But the truth is that just like David, we have a mission from God to fight! We have a mission from God to continue the work of rescuing his people from captivity, we have an enemy who opposes us that is described as “a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour’, and at stake are the very souls of people for eternity! There is no greater struggle that we could be involved in.

We are here to fight!

When Paul tells Timothy to “fight the good fight”, he does not say “live like you are in a fight”. It is not a metaphor that Paul is using; he is telling Timothy something very real and very specific. We are here to fight, and we are to fight “good”!

God will win.

Our lives share another very important element with the story of David's failure, God was winning even though David chose to stay home! It says that Israel “destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah”. With or without David, God was winning. It is the same today; with or without us, God is winning. So where is God active and winning battles today?

One area that stands out is Mixed Martial Arts (Ultimate Fighting). I do not believe it is coincidental that while the church is struggling to attract young men, God is raising up men who are committed to him in the one area that everyone agrees young men (actually men of all ages) are drawn to. Fighting. Fighters such as Matt Lindland, Trevor Prangley, Ken Shamrock, Matt Horwich, Matt and Mark Hughes, Pat Miletich, and many more of the most popular people in the sport are all committed Christian men who have chosen to speak openly about their faith in Jesus Christ.

What I will be doing with this blog.

This means that most men in the church today need to get off their blessed assurance and follow God into battle! To that end, I will be using this blog in the future to help train men in the biblical fight principles that Paul outlines in his epistles and we will be using real fighters and real fighting to help illustrate these. But first, I want to talk about the young men in this country who are conspicuously absent from our churches and how we can follow God into the battle for these men's souls.

We can assume that Jesus practiced regular times of meditation since He was known as a brilliant teacher with amazing insight and often spent time alone with God the Father. Personally, I wonder if Jesus spent His forty days alone in the wilderness preceding His temptation by Satan meditating on Deuteronomy; He responds to Satan’s temptations by quoting from Deuteronomy, which was obviously at the forefront of His mind.

Meditation has also been a common practice of all branches of Christianity throughout the history of the church. For example, the Puritans were masters at meditation. The lengthy Puritan sermons normally only explored a verse or two of Scripture but did so in a deep and thorough way in an effort to help people learn to meditate deeply on Scripture for themselves. Some Puritan pastors even said that they were more interested in how much Scripture their people understood and obeyed than how much Scripture their people read. They were not discouraging Scripture reading, but acknowledging that sometimes people read too much too fast and remember and apply too little. Slowing down to meditate can be beneficial.

Practically, there are some steps that can be helpful for Christian meditation:

1. Pray for the Holy Spirit to teach you Scripture, convict you of sin, and give you a heart to lovingly obey Jesus.
2. Memorize a word, verse, phrase, chapter, or scene of Scripture that bites you.
3. Write it out in your own words, seeking to grasp the full meaning of what is said.
4. Ask yourself what is revealed about God.
5. Repent of any sin that the Holy Spirit convicts you of.
6. Pray for anyone or anything that the Holy Spirit brings to mind.
7. Determine what God would have you to do in obedience to His Word.

Summary

Meditation is not complicated or mysterious. It can be done anywhere at any time by anyone with a heart to know God better and become more like Jesus. The result is that God the Holy Spirit will honor our time and make the written Word become for us a living Word that transforms our hearts, minds, and lives.

Jesus is King and Lord over the whole world. One of the most powerful illustrations of this comes from the 19th chapter of Revelation. For our first Death by Love Contest we are inviting everyone to draw a picture of Jesus from the description in Revelation 19. You can watch this video clip for inspiration.

Instructions

1. "Draw an awesome picture of Jesus from Rev 19." From Andy Cimbala (State College, PA)
2. Post it to the Death by Love Facebook group picture section. (Below the video)
3. The top three will get a book, and then we'll randomly draw at least two submissions for free copies of Death by Love.

Revelation 19:11-16

"Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords." Revelation 19:11-16