Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr. recently denounced the idea of “Christian yoga,” arguing that the origins of the practice are incompatible with Christianity.

In an episode of his podcast “The Briefing” that aired last Friday, Mohler described the origins of yoga, which hail from Hindu and Buddhist practices and philosophy.

“It is deeply based in both Hinduism and Buddhism and the traditional meditative practices that are inseparable from yoga as physical movement involve those traditional Buddhist and Hindu teachings, and it shows up not only in the word ‘Namaste,’ it shows up even in the basic philosophy of what the body is doing,” said Mohler.

“It also shows up in a distinct theological understanding of the body in motion and the body in pose. It also shows up in a deep conflict between Christianity and both Hinduism and Buddhism and yoga as a dimension of both when it comes to the purpose of the mind and how we are as Christians to exercise the mind.”

While acknowledging that there are many churches that have yoga classes, Mohler cautioned that “the mainstreaming of yoga in the United States was driven at least in part by groups such as the Transcendentalists and New Thought, and they were intentionally trying to create a spiritual practice and spirituality that would serve as a clear alternative to biblical Christianity.”

“The Bible doesn’t have a list of acceptable and unacceptable stretches, exercises, or poses, but the Bible does make very clear what is to be a Christian understanding of the relationship between the soul and the body and furthermore, what it means to meditate,” he continued.

“Christians ought to agree that if we have an understanding of yoga and its historical context and in its religious origins, then at the very least we have to understand that there really is no such thing as Christian yoga. If it’s Christian, it’s not yoga. If it’s yoga, it’s not Christian.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski

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A Vietnamese Christian jailed for almost 16 years for demanding land rights and religious freedom has been released. Yet his future remains uncertain as he battles health issues stemming from his time in prison.

According to Radio Free Asia, Y Ngun Knul was released from prison last week after spending nearly two decades in Nam Ha and Thanh Chuong prisons in Nghe An province.

He was first arrested and imprisoned on April 20, 2004, for launching protests calling for a Protestant church shut down by authorities to be reopened and for the members of his community to be allowed to live according to their traditions. Knul was initially issued an 18-year sentence which was later reduced.

“As those rights were being taken away, people were becoming upset, and so I called on everyone to take part in the protests. As a result, I was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison,” Knul said, speaking to RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

The Christian was visited by his family only four times during his time behind bars, notes RFA, and he and his family have suffered in the past decade. Knul’s family lost their house and land, and he now struggles with poor health due to years of incarceration.

“I have kidney failure and high blood pressure and had a gastrointestinal hemorrhage,” he told RFA. “Now I can eat only a bowl of rice per day because I have stomach problems that make it hard for me to breathe.”

“My foot is swelling, too, making it hard for me to move … I would like to go to a hospital for treatment, but I have no money now.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett

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Founder of Harvest Bible Chapel in greater Chicago, James MacDonald, believes his “heart is ready” for what is expected to be an unusual return to the pulpit Sunday at Calvary Chapel South Bay in Gardena, California, just over a year after he was booted from ministry at his former church.

MacDonald, who announced his March 22 return will kick-off an eight-part series at Calvary Chapel South Bay, has been chronicling a 40-day preparation process on Instagram which he says has given him confidence in his readiness.

Alluding to the ongoing upheaval of daily life caused by the new coronavirus pandemic, MacDonald revealed in an Instagram update Wednesday that he did not expect to be preaching in an empty room but he is looking forward to engaging with believers online.

“Hey, I’m thinking about you today here in California. The church building is closed, there is very few people here. The bookstore is closed. The public services are closed. The 40 days of preparation that was gonna culminate with the beginning of my series this Sunday night in Romans 8 at Calvary Chapel South Bay, it’s gonna be streamed but there’s not gonna be anybody in the room,” he said.

On his deathbed, John Wesley famously said, “Best of all…God is with us!” – a timely truth that is is powerfully relevant today. Though we could not have anticipated the seclusion of these present days, we can encounter God profoundly and personally when we are alone. So, get ready…

A post shared by James MacDonald • Jer 18:4 (@pastorjamesmacdonald) on Mar 18, 2020 at 1:30pm PDT

“The service will be live. I still have to get the message ready. Things are just so much different than what we could have ever imagined when we started on these 40 days of preparation seeking to get ready. … I feel that my heart is ready now and I’ve been doing that work. I hope you’ve been doing it too,” he continued.

MacDonald further revealed that he expects to be teaching from Romans 8 starting with verse 1 which says: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

“We’re gonna be putting out some material to let people know about this fresh teaching coming from Romans 8. Really one of the most glorious chapters in all of the Bible. And I am locked and loaded as they say, very, very excited as I share starting in Romans 8:1 a verse that is so desperately needed and so frequently misunderstood or abused,” he said. “Man I can’t wait to get into that. I can’t wait to share that. I can’t wait to preach that, and I pray that it’s gonna find fruitful soil in your heart.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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Evangelical pastor and author Max Lucado is encouraging Christians to choose faith over fear and consider what God might be telling them as the novel coronavirus continues to spread in the United States and abroad.

“We’ve never lived in a time like this. This is unprecedented,” Lucado, pastor of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, told The Christian Post. “Yet the Bible tells us that times have been bizarre before. You open your Bible and you read about pestilence, fears, dark times. The Bible is written for times like this.”

“I think this a time where we need to be feeding our faith,” he continued. “If you feed our faith, your fears will starve. If you feed your fears, your faith will starve. Our tendency is to feed our fears. We have to do intentional things to feed our faith.”

Choosing faith over fear amid the onslaught of negative headlines, The New York Times bestselling author said, begins with thought management.

“When I turn on the news this evening, I’ll hear somebody say things are getting worse. If I don’t guard myself, I’ll let that create a sense of anxiety that will fill my heart, and then I will purvey that to the world,” Lucado explained.

“We think that just because we have a thought, we have to think it. We don’t. We don’t have to receive it. There are lots of lies out there and falsehoods distributed right now, in the form of exaggeration, like, ‘We’ll never get through this’ and other overstatements. We need to guard against those things because they can suck us down.”

The Lucado Encouraging Word Bible author pointed out that in 2nd Corinthians, the Apostle Paul exhorts believers to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

“This means, we hear that thought, and then we pray: ‘I know it seems things are getting worse, but Lord, you are in control, and I’m not going to surrender to that. I give my fear to you,’” he said. “Instead of allowing anxiety into my heart, faith goes into my heart so that later, what I say is, ‘Things are tough, but I believe in a good God and He’s on the throne.’ I become one who purveys hope instead of fear.”

He encouraged every believer to ask: “‘Lord, what are you saying to me during this crisis?” God, Lucado stressed, is “talking to the world” through the global pandemic.

“I believe His message is both personal and global,” the pastor emphasized. “Some of us need to hear something individually. For example, I sensed the Lord was telling me, ‘Max, don’t depend on the economy.’ It could be that God is telling people, ‘Don’t trust entertainment for your fulfillment.’”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett

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This is Daniel Whyte III, president of Gospel Light Society International with the Whyte House Family Devotional Reading of Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening podcast. This is Episode #62.

Charles Spurgeon was a prominent English Particular Baptist preacher. He was very influential among the Christians of various denominations during his age and even today, and is commonly called the “Prince of Preachers”. After some time of alternately searching for God and running from God, he had a powerful encounter which led him to give his life to Christ. Spurgeon was only 16 when he preached his first sermon and he began publishing books shortly afterward. At the time of his death, he had preached nearly 3,600 sermons and published 49 volumes of commentaries, sayings, anecdotes, illustrations and devotions. Spurgeon said, “encouraging thoughts are like honey to the heart”, and wrote this devotional in hopes that its uplifting messages for each day of the year would bring comfort and refreshment to our walk with God. He was inspired by Isaiah 50:4 which reads, “He wakeneth morning by morning. He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned” and Psalm 63:5-6 which says, “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember Thee upon my bed, and meditate on Thee in the night watches.”

2 Samuel 18:23 reads: “But howsoever, said he, let me run. And he said unto him, Run. Then Ahimaaz ran by the way of the plain, and overran Cushi.”

Running is not everything, there is much in the way which we select: a swift foot over hill and down dale will not keep pace with a slower traveller upon level ground. How is it with my spiritual journey, am I labouring up the hill of my own works and down into the ravines of my own humiliations and resolutions, or do I run by the plain way of “Believe and live”? How blessed is it to wait upon the Lord by faith! The soul runs without weariness, and walks without fainting, in the way of believing. Christ Jesus is the way of life, and he is a plain way, a pleasant way, a way suitable for the tottering feet and feeble knees of trembling sinners: am I found in this way, or am I hunting after another track such as priestcraft or metaphysics may promise me? I read of the way of holiness, that the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein: have I been delivered from proud reason and been brought as a little child to rest in Jesus’ love and blood? If so, by God’s grace I shall outrun the strongest runner who chooses any other path. This truth I may remember to my profit in my daily cares and needs. It will be my wisest course to go at once to my God, and not to wander in a roundabout manner to this friend and that. He knows my wants and can relieve them, to whom should I repair but to himself by the direct appeal of prayer, and the plain argument of the promise. “Straightforward makes the best runner.” I will not parlay with the servants, but hasten to their master.

In reading this passage, it strikes me that if men vie with each other in common matters, and one outruns the other, I ought to be in solemn earnestness so to run that I may obtain. Lord, help me to gird up the loins of my mind, and may I press forward towards the mark for the prize of my high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

PRAY.

Thank you for listening to the Morning and Evening podcast. If you do not know the Lord as your Savior, here is how you can be saved from Hell and walk with the Lord morning and evening until you go to that wonderful place called Heaven when you die:

First, accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Second, accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”

Third, accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 18:8: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.” Also, the Bible states in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Now that is bad news, but here’s the good news. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Just believe in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead by the power of God for you so that you can live eternally with Him. Pray and ask Him to come into your heart today, and He will.

Romans 10:9 & 13 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved… For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

If you believe that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead, and you want to trust Him for your Salvation today, please pray with me this simple prayer: Holy Father God, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. I am sorry for my sins, and today I choose to turn from my sins. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. I trust Jesus Christ as my Savior and I choose to follow Him as Lord from this day forward. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen.

If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the Cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read “What To Do After You Enter Through the Door”. Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

If you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior today, please email me at [email protected] and let us know. There is some free material that we want to send you. If you have a prayer request, please e-mail that to us as well, and we will pray for you until you tell us to stop.

God loves you. We love you. And may God bless you.

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