Chi Alpha @ Stanford

The Apos­tles’ Creed: I Believe In God The Father
Length: 45:23
Size: 25 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Glen Davis — 4/28/2004

“I believe in God the Father almighty…”

So begins the Apos­tles’ Creed–one of the ear­li­est expres­sions of the Chris­t­ian faith.

How likely is it that such a being exists–one to whom the labels “father” and “almighty” can equally apply?

In this mes­sage, the ancient and the mod­ern blend as we bring Bayesian analy­sis to bear on this clas­sic for­mu­la­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith.

Yup–that’s right. Bayesian analy­sis. We’re talk­ing about cal­cu­lat­ing the prob­a­bil­ity of God.

If you’d like to play along, we’ve put together an Excel spread­sheet so you can twid­dle with the data and cre­ate your own analy­sis of the like­li­hood of God’s existence.

I should men­tion that this talk was inspired by Stephen Unwin’s book The Prob­a­bil­ity of God. If you’d like to learn more, you can read an excel­lent inter­view with the author on BlogCritics.

After back-to-back guest speak­ers, Glen hops back in the sad­dle tonight with a mes­sage about “A New Life of Freedom.”

Don’t miss it! 8pm in 300–300.

UPDATE: Easter party pho­tos are now online

Hey everyone–Paula and I are hav­ing an Easter party at our place this Sun­day at 5pm. We’ll have pizza, easter eggs, and lots of candy!

Just in case you were won­der­ing, we will not be whip­ping the Easter bunny.

I uploaded some new pho­tos from last night’s meeting.

You’re look­ing good, as always!

What Is Faith?
Length: 44:22
Size: 15 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Curt Har­low, from the Chi Alpha National Lead­er­ship Team — 4/6/2004

Sum­mary:
Faith is not emo­tion­al­ism, ratio­nal­ism, or hyper con­fi­dence. Faith is trust, and every­one has it. The ques­tion is: who do you trust?

Liv­ing A Life of Pur­pose
Length: 37:02
Size: 13 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Den­nis Gay­lor — 3/30/2004

The national direc­tor of Chi Alpha showed up at our meet­ing and spoke!

A Moment Ever­last­ing
Length: 24:28
Size: 8 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Glen Davis — 3/2/2004

Sum­mary:
I tried some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in this mes­sage and had two scrip­tures (2 Corinthi­ans 5:10 and Matthew 12:36) pro­jected up behind me the entire time and I did not directly quote them. Inci­den­tally, a few parts of this mes­sage are visual–I strike a stat­uesque pose for a moment and then begin talk­ing about the statue.

Pre­lude to the Pas­sion
Length: 31:18
Size: 9 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Glen Davis — 2/24/2004

Sum­mary:
Mel Gibson’s movie The Pas­sion of the Christ will con­fuse a lot of peo­ple, so this is an attempt to explain what Christ’s death accom­plished. It’s pretty impor­tant that you look at the note and fol­low along with this–I cite a lot of scrip­tures in rapid suc­ces­sion with­out always giv­ing the reference.

NOTES

Jesus Died to Express Love
16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. (1 John 3:16, NIV)

13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13, NIV)

7Very rarely will any­one die for a right­eous man, though for a good man some­one might pos­si­bly dare to die. 8But God demon­strates his own love for us in this: While we were still sin­ners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:7–8, NIV)

Jesus Died to Pur­chase Us
7He is so rich in kind­ness that he pur­chased our free­dom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are for­given. (Eph­esians 1:7, NLT)

5For there is one God and one medi­a­tor between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6who gave him­self as a ran­som for all men–the tes­ti­mony given in its proper time. (1 Tim 2:5–6, NIV)

You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. There­fore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthi­ans 6:19b-20, NIV)

Jesus Died to Defeat Satan
13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncir­cum­ci­sion of your sin­ful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He for­gave us all our sins, 14having can­celed the writ­ten code, with its reg­u­la­tions, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nail­ing it to the cross. 15And hav­ing dis­armed the pow­ers and author­i­ties, he made a pub­lic spec­ta­cle of them, tri­umph­ing over them by the cross. (Colos­sians 3:13–15, NIV)

Jesus Died to Be a Sac­ri­fice
Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us as a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. (Eph­esians 5:2b, NIV)

But if any­body does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense–Jesus Christ, the Right­eous One. 2He is the aton­ing sac­ri­fice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1st John 2:1b-2, NIV)

Jesus Died to Rec­on­cile Us to God
Since we have now been jus­ti­fied by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God’s ene­mies, we were rec­on­ciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, hav­ing been rec­on­ciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:9–10, NIV)

17Therefore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who rec­on­ciled us to him­self through Christ and gave us the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion: 19that God was rec­on­cil­ing the world to him­self in Christ, not count­ing men’s sins against them. And he has com­mit­ted to us the mes­sage of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. 20We are there­fore Christ’s ambas­sadors, as though God were mak­ing his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be rec­on­ciled to God. (2 Corinthi­ans 5:17–20, NIV)

19For God was pleased to have all his full­ness dwell in [Christ], 20and through him to rec­on­cile to him­self all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by mak­ing peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

21Once you were alien­ated from God and were ene­mies in your minds because of your evil behav­ior. 22But now he has rec­on­ciled you by Christ’s phys­i­cal body through death to present you holy in his sight, with­out blem­ish and free from accusation.

Jesus Died to Give Us Life
For Christ’s love com­pels us, because we are con­vinced that one died for all, and there­fore all died. 2 Corinthi­ans 5:14 (NIV)

10And by that will, we have been made holy through the sac­ri­fice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10, NIV)

9For God decided to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us. 10He died for us so that we can live with him for­ever, whether we are dead or alive at the time of his return. (1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:9–10, NLT)

9It is God who saved us and chose us to live a holy life. He did this not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan long before the world began–to show his love and kind­ness to us through Christ Jesus. 10And now he has made all of this plain to us by the com­ing of Christ Jesus, our Sav­ior, who broke the power of death and showed us the way to ever­last­ing life through the Good News. (2 Tim­o­thy 1:9–10, NLT)

23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eter­nal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23, NIV)

“The Fruit of the Spirit; The Weeds of the Flesh“
Length: 20:26
Size: 5.8 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Glen Davis — 2/17/2004

Sum­mary:
Most peo­ple plan to become good by not being bad. That’s as silly as weed­ing a plot of grass and hop­ing to get oranges. Remov­ing weeds is impor­tant, but it doesn’t mat­ter if fruit is not also being planted and cultivated.

Note: I trimmed off the Q & A ses­sion at the end due to embar­rass­ing com­ments .

“Don’t Be Deriv­a­tive — Inte­grate!“
Length: 22:44
Size: 1.43 MB
For­mat: WMA
Speaker: Glen Davis — 2/10/2004
Sum­mary:
Integrity is the frame­work within which char­ac­ter grows. Integrity has three com­po­nents:
1) Telling The Truth
2) Keep­ing Our Word
3) Prac­tic­ing What We Preach

Note: I trimmed off the Q & A ses­sion at the end due to poor sound quality.