Dr Paul Allen

I long and pray for revival in the church today. Yet when I look around at the state of the Western church—especially at how Christians act online, which is largely as decadent and worldly as anyone else—I struggle to imagine revival taking place. There are many reasons for our compromised witness and deteriorating spiritual health. The headwinds of secularism are real. The corrupting effects of comfort and consumerism are significant. But a big reason I’m skeptical that we’ll see revival in my generation is related to our technological environment—and how we’ve passively cowered to its conditioning. In short, we’re too distracted for revival. Of course, revival is God’s initiative. The church at its best does not guarantee revival, nor does the church at its worst preclude it. God can choose to do a mighty work even in the most wayward generations. Indeed, revival often begins in the low ebbs, when internal combustion or external persecution (or both) bring the church to its knees. Bu...

  And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. (Judg. 2:10) It seems incredible that it could happen. Only a generation after Joshua, Israel no longer knew the Lord. How is such a development possible? This is a very important question, not just for the ancient Israelites, but for us. Churches, too, have seen a sudden decline from one generation to another. How can we understand and prevent this kind of calamity? The book of Judges provides a very clear answer to our questions. Its answer does not say everything that might be said in general, but it does say specific, crucial things that we must ponder to understand both Israel’s situation and our vulnerability. To begin with, Judges shows us that Israel descended into a calamity when it moved away from living by faith in the Word of God to living by sight in the wisdom and values of the world. As we see in Judges 2–3, Israel rapidly descended into gross sin and di...

By all accounts, we seem to be the most distracted civilization in the history of the world. We are increasingly fragmented in our attention and relentlessly pulled away from many of the basics that make us human. The trouble is especially pressing for Christians . We believe that the inner person is more important than the outer, and that where we focus our minds and hearts today counts forever. The very essence of what we believe to be true about the world hangs on where we direct our attention. In such a day, it is of growing importance that we acknowledge we really can direct our attention. We are not defenseless in our chaotic surroundings. We are not animals. Our minds are on a leash we hold. You really can control your thoughts. The Holy Spirit is in the ministry of producing in us self-control. As Martin Luther so memorably said, you may not be able to keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. Set Your Mind Up One...

English: An anxious person (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Since you’re already reading this on some electronic device, I don’t need to elaborate. Lots of experts are talking about the negative effects this is having on us. Many of us feel it: the buzzing brain, the attention atrophy, the diminishing tolerance for reading, especially reading books. We’re becoming conditioned to distraction, and it’s harming our ability to listen and think carefully, to be still, to pray, and to meditate. Which means it is a spiritual danger, an evil from which we need God ’s deliverance (Matthew  6:13 ). The Causes of Distraction Distraction, at least the dangerous kind I’m referring to, is shifting our attention from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance. Our fundamental and most dangerous problem in distraction is in being distracted from God — our tendency to shift our attention orientation from the greatest Object in existence to countless lesser ones. T...