Our Last Summer Reading: Athanasius On The Incarnation

As our first summer reading was from C. S. Lewis' preface to Athanasius' On The Incarnation, it seems fitting that our last summer reading be from that same tome.

In this reading, Athanasius (297-373) explains why Jesus had to become one of us.

So who is this Athanasius? He is the man who first listed the 27 books of the New Testament as the official list of the canon. He is the man who was exiled at least five (possibly seven) times for theological disputes about the divinity of Christ (he said Jesus was God and the emperor disagreed). He is the man who, more than anyone else, represents the finest pastoral devotion and theological scholarship of the ancient church fathers.

You can find this reading in the Devotional Classics book from pages 339-342. It's also available online - it's chapter 3 sections 11-14.

And you can revisit that first reading to remind yourself why we engaged in this "reading old stuff" project in the first place.

Remarkable Testimony from Delta College Chi Alpha

This may be outside your comfort zone and is certainly very rambly, but I think you should read it. This is from Matt Gonzales, a Chi Alpha leader at Delta College in Stockton, CA. The editing I have done to the email is breaking it into paragraphs

Hey what's up. Yes we are seeing an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on campus.Within the last year we have see tumor,cancer, knees, eyes healed. It started with the baseball coach getting healed from the tumor and the word has spread like wild fire so we are getting alot of people on and off campus asking us and our students to pray. Within the last two weeks we have had three different cases of deaf ears opening. A young lady name Justine was born with 95% deafness in one ear and 45% in the other. We prayed for her and we asked her what was going on she asked why were we yelling at her and then said she felt fire on her ears and it felt like worms were crawling out of her ears. Praise God!

Last Wednesday was the biggest out poring and it is still going on. We had a lady come to our prayer table and she was totally blind. She had a walking cane and bumped into the chair while she was asking question. I began to ask her how long was she blind. She told me two and half years. She had got glaucoma in her eyes and it took her eye sight completely. The week before she came in contact with one of our students because she wanted a bible for the blind. Well I looked at her and told her straight out God is going to heal you right now! She said she did not think that God could heal her. Immediately the presence of God filled our prayer tent, it was so thick I could hardly stand. I asked her if she wanted to be heal. She was not sure but then said yes. We sat her down and began to pray. The Holy Spirit impressed on my heart to pour water in her eyes. I asked if we could and Becky said yes. We did and ended the prayer. She opened her eyes and it was light began to fill her eyes and they turned totally blue!

She screamed "I can see" and started to scream louder and jumping up and down in the quad that happen to be filled with a couple hundred students that were looking to she what happen. So I jumped on our P.A. system and began to preach and we shared her testimony.

Curt it was like the book of acts, People began to stand and clap, others were amazed while others mocked us and were yelling that it was an hoaks. We had five people get saved and another six miracles broke out! We had teachers coming to the table asking for prayer. I felt like on was on a mission trip but it was the middle of campus. Since last Wednesday we have seen seven students commit their live to Christ, one who has just recently got filled with the Holy Spirit, and the testimony is spreading like wild fire and we are getting calls and my space messaged from students asking for prayer and telling us how it has touched them and they know that they are not right with God and want us to pray for them. It's crazy! Praise God! Praise God! Keep us in prayer!

I called Matt to confirm the details and he was able to give solid answers
to my questions (for example, "Yes, one of our students went to high school
with the deaf girl and says that this was a lifelong condition").

Our Ninth Reading: John Wesley on Tendencies To Beware Of

John Wesley (1703-1791) turned the church world of his day upside down and launched a new breed of Christians who took the Bible seriously and did their best to abide by it.

One of his lesser-known accomplishments is that he and his brother Charles started a college ministry at Oxford called "the Holy Club", which doesn't make Chi Alpha sound like such a bad name.

To be a member of the Holy Club, students had to

• get up very early in the morning


• have a solid prayer life


• journal daily


• fast twice a week


• visit prisoners in the local jail


• get together with other members in the evenings to read the Greek New Testament and discuss the classics

You can read more about the Holy Club here.

And here's the kicker - later in his life Wesley confessed that he wasn't a Christian at that point!

This time around we're reading an excerpt from his famous A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (page 258 in the Devotional Classics book). If you view the online version, scroll down to section 25 question 32 and read through question 37.