Francis Chan spoke during the Tuesday evening session of Passion 201

2 and focused on taking the word of God literally and seriously. Below are a few of the thoughts from his message. I did my best to capture the essence of his point. What was your reaction? I’d love to hear below.

The Talk

• I want to beg you to rea

  d this book (the Bible) for yourself! Go home and read it and ask, “What does it say?” You get so many messages all day long, you need the Word of God. You have to be consumed by the Word. “What would Jesus have done?” Let that be your thinking. Let that be your mind.

• The greatest thing that could happen would be for you to leave here convinced of this book. What is in it really happened.
• People will lie to you, even people who sit in church services. They will tell you what you want to hear and how to become like them. Unless you are in the Bible readin

  g it for yourself, you will not know how to tell who is lying to you.

• • Story about Jehovah Witness conversation.
• • God listens to me, how do you explain this?
• • “I am a human being just like you who read the Bible. I read it, read it, read it!”

• • • When you want to know the truth and come to the Bible with a clean heart, God will speak to you. You don’t have to listen to somebody else.

• How do you know if I tell you the truth? How do you know if any of the other speakers on the platform tell the truth? Do you know the Bible well enough to tell?
• 1 Kings 13:15 and following – This is a crazy story. A prophet was tricked. He was lied to. He had already heard from the Lord. And yet he doesn’t follow through with what God said and a lion eats him.
• There is a deception.
• 1 Kings 22. The king is asking the prophets what God has said. All the prophets say the same thing and he asks if there is anybody else. One guy stands up and tells the truth and says the other 400 are lying.
• Do we have the courage to do that? To stand out and point out the lies? Can you do that?
• The Bible says to examine their doctrine and examine their lives. Does that person remind you of Jesus? Look at what their life is producing.
• 2 Timothy 4:1-4 – Paul charges Timothy to preach the word, even when people turn away to find somebody saying something they want to hear.
• In our day, you can find a book that gives you the OK to live however you want to. You can find some verse and twist it to make it support whatever life you want to live. Why? We fight for whatever we desire.
• (Instead of trying to justify our lives, how about we just believe the Bible?)
• I believe the Bible simply and literally.
• I’m sure there were some people in Noah’s day that thought that there wasn’t going to be any literal flood. They thought, “Well of course, our lives are flooding…”
• We try to beautify everything and make it cute. Like the ark was cute! I doubt your parents painted people drowning when they painted Noah’s ark on your wall when you were a kid! Yet that’s what literally happened.
• (Instead of explaining it away, take it literally.)
• I think about passages like, “When you give a feast invite the poor….” The question is not, “What does that mean in the greek?” I think it means, “When you have a feast invite the poor.” It is plain and clear.
• That is literal. It is not in your heart. It is literal.
• Illustration: We took this literally and planned to do this. I got giddy. I began to think, “God, is this the way you feel about me?” That’s what God does. He just shows his grace. He get’s giddy, excited about inviting us to the feast.
• Here’s the word of God. Let’s just do what it says.
• Do you take the Word of God literally?
• Do you believe God commanded you to go and make disciples? Do you think, “I’m going to go and make disciples?”
• The solution to human trafficking is making disciples.
• Some of the people you go to school with will become the victims of human trafficking and some of them will become the culprits of human trafficking.
• 1 Samuel 13. The Philistines are coming to fight with Israel. The nation of Israel starts hiding.
• in 1 Samuel 14, Jonathan says, “Let’s go!” He heads to where the Philistines are. Jonathan and his armor bearer kill some of the enemy and a roar rises up. Saul hears and joins in the battle. One guy stood up while others were hiding.
• We need some people who take the Word of God seriously.
• I believe there are Jonathan’s in the room. While other people are hiding, there are some who want to do something. If God can raise people from the dead, he can do anything today!
• “God, we want to see you! We want to see you do something great in our lifetime!”

About Francis

Francis is the best-selling author of Crazy Love, Forgotten God and Erasing Hell (releasing July 2011). He is also the founding pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA, and Eternity Bible College. Francis lives in Northern California with his wife, Lisa, and their children. Website: http://www.francischan.org/

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