Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ Daily Moment of Truth

O f all the commandments, which is the most important? asked a teacher who had been listening to Jesus.

The most important one, answered Jesus, is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:2830).

Many Christians are good at loving God in two of these wayswith all their hearts and with all their souls. That may be due, in part, to the fact that most devotional literature tends to cover those two areas.

What seems to be lacking is devotional material that addresses the third and fourth areas Jesus mentioned: loving God with all our minds and with all our strength. And because many Christians are less equipped in these areas, they often react to our increasingly secular culture with spiritual confusion, defensiveness, or compromise.

As a result, far too many believers end up being, as the apostle Paul put it, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming (Ephesians 4:14).

It doesnt have to be that way. Instead, Paul went on to explain, we need to be people who speak the truth in love, so we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ (v. 15).

It was with this visionto communicate the truth in love and in ways that would help us better love God with all our minds and strengththat my longtime ministry partner, Mark Mittelberg, and I set out to write The Case for Christ Daily Moment of Truth.

Were convinced that one of the best ways to strengthen Christians in their life with Christ is to provide daily infusions of truth to help them better understand who God is, what they should know about him, and why he can be trusted.

Beyond that, we wanted to compose these daily devotionals in a way that will not only reinforce the faith of Christians, but also make the evidence for the Christian faith accessible to spiritually curious readersincluding studentswho are interested in better assessing the case for biblical faith.

These entries draw from the facts of Scripture as well as science, history, philosophy, archaeology, experience, and other areas of learning. Ultimately we want to point you back each day to the One who said, I am... the truth (Jesus, in John 14:6, emphasis mine).

As you will see, we start each reading with a short passage from the Bible that is relevant to the topic we will explore that day. Then we address the subject, often beginning by quoting a thinker who challenges the Christian position, followed by logic and evidence that show what is true and why we can believe it. Then we end each reading with a succinct summary, under the heading Moment of Truth.

There are 180 readings. You can go through these alone or with a friend or family member. You might also want to encourage your small group or church classor your entire congregationto read these on the same schedule, so you can discuss and encourage one another on the topics you are all learning about.

Some of what you learn will be immediately applicable in your life. Other truths will naturally be stored away and come back to you later when you need them. And still more will provide information that will help you in conversations with others, enabling you to present the truth of the Christian faith confidently to people who need to know Christ.

That happened to me once when Mark and I were preparing for an open-mic question-and-answer session with hundreds of believers and their nonbelieving friends at a church in Atlanta. During our time of preparation, I sensed God was prompting me to be ready to respond to a question about the influences that mythical religions supposedly had on Christianity (challenges we discuss in the devotionals; see A Copycat Religion? and Myths About Mithras).

I gave extra focus to that issue as I preparedin fact, its almost all I thought about that afternoonand when the event started, I was ready. Then, during the two hours of questions and answers that evening, nobody asked about this topic! I went back to my hotel room that night scratching my head. I had been so confident that God had led me on this.

But then, about two weeks later, Mark and I were back in what was our home church in Chicago, where we did a similar Q&A event. After another two hours of responding to a variety of issues that the audience brought up, Mark told the group that we had time for just one more question.