God is Alive in Your Nearby Movie Theater

After yesterday's post on the movie “NOAH,” it's starting to look like I'm a movie critic, but I must plug “God’s Not Dead,” (Altha and I saw it Saturday). Not a perfect film, but all in all, engaging and inspiring. The story of a college freshman who is told by his philosophy professor he will fail the class unless he denies the existence of God, or can otherwise prove that God exists, provides the backdrop for the movie’s multiple characters, each of whose commitment to follow Christ is tested, at great personal cost.

The thing that impressed me most about “God’s Not Dead” is that it communicates a significant and timely message to our prosperity-prone, easy-to-believe Christian culture: to be willing to suffer the loss of all things in order to gain Christ (Phil. 3:8). With anti-Christian sentiment escalating through pluralism, we who claim to have picked up our cross to follow Jesus are sure to be tested. Will our faith translate into power and action?  “It is a trustworthy statement: if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure [suffer], we shall also reign with him; [but] if we deny him, he also will deny us” (2 Tim. 2:11-12).