It's Thursday, April 17th, 2025, and this is Denison Forum's daily article podcast.

I'm Josh Miller, filling in as narrator for today's daily article written by our co-founder and CEO, Dr. Jim Denison.

Two-thirds of all U.S. adults now say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus

that is still important in their life today, marking a 12% increase in the last four years.

Barna researchers say this may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal

in the United States. In similar news, new data from the Bible Society in the UK reports that

2 million more people in Great Britain attended church in 2024, then in 2018.

Here's an especially encouraging fact.

Young adults in both countries are fueling the increase.

Perhaps this is in part the result of the anxiety and depression so many of them are feeling as they grow increasingly pessimistic about their future. The greater our challenges,

the more we recognize our need for a power greater than ourselves. But what God does, Satan corrupts.

In this case, he wants to use our frustrations and failures to turn us from our father rather than toward him. He whispers in our souls

that we are not worthy of God's favor, that our sins have cost us his best. I certainly have been a

victim of this deception over the years. In fact, I can hear his subtle doubts about grace in my heart even now.

Perhaps you can hear them in yours as well. An event on Monday Thursday exposes this lie

and invites us to consider an astounding dimension of Jesus' love for us. If Jesus could forgive Judas Iscariat, would you agree that he can

forgive anyone? Frederick Beechner writes of our Lord's arrest in the Garden of Gethsemini. There can be no

doubt in Jesus' mind what the kiss of Judas means, but it is Judas that he is blessing, and Judas that he is prepared

to go out and die for now. Judas is only the first in a procession of betrayers 2,000 years long.

If Jesus were to exclude him from his love and forgiveness, to one degree or another, he would have to exclude mankind.

Brother Jeffrey Tristam of the Society of St. John, the Evangelist in Boston, makes his point by asking,

what is there of Judas in our hearts? When have we turned away from the light and betrayed Jesus in our

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