Pinebrooke Posts

    Today is Pentecost Sunday, a watershed day in the life of the Church.  The water of life flows in a completely different direction from before the coming of the Spirit to live in us to now, the season of the Spirit.  Life was measured by obedience to the Law of Moses and now it is measured by growth and consistency in walking in cadence of the Holy Spirit.  Historically, so much of the churches focus has been on the event of Pentecost, yet Jesus focused on the on-going role of the Spirit for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    The teaching, revealing, empowering work of the Spirit makes all the difference in our lives.  The empowerment of the Spirit in essence is for the person we are to become.  Jesus’ concern for the disciples was always about the kind of persons they were to become because as a different way was being shaped in them a different expression of life would come to characterize their lives.  The immersion in the Spirit is what engendered a radical way of life.

    In light of our forefathers in the way, truth, and life of Jesus are we in any way a replica of that radical life?  Pentecost was a radical day!  A day that would be a day for the message of the kingdom of God.  Is that true of our lives?  Is the way that we are both an insight into the work of the Spirit as well as a replica of what the Spirit came for?  Or do we view this day as a day in the past that carries little weight in the present?  That would be a tragedy of tragedies!  Or as Paul was inclined to say, “miserable of miseries.” 

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     One of the central themes in our life in relationship with God is faith.  I’ve been reading about Job’s faith in Dallas Willard’s text, Life Without Lack.  As I have been reading, George Mueller of Bristol has come to mind.  He is my hero in living out the Lord’s Prayer.  I have been especially impacted with how he remained faithful to “… give us this day our daily bread.”  And yet when his daughter took seriously ill his comment was that it was to test his faith in God at a deeper level.

      So, the story of Job was like that.  It was to test his faith in God at a deeper level.  Like most he had had a faith that was simple and linear.  If you are religiously good, God would bless you.  He knew a lot of that blessing in his life.  If things went “south”, then there was a problem in what you were doing.  Linear thinking is like that.  It is unprepared for the mystery of heaven’s conversations and intentions.

      When we make the mistake of thinking that all of reality is visible and understandable, we have a problem in our thinking.  Our thinking is always at issue.  Job didn’t know what he didn’t know.  He didn’t know about the conversation taking place in the heavenlies.  Maybe he would have come to the end of himself sooner if he did, but it isn’t God’s way to always inform us of what is going on.  The point was for Job to come to the place that Dallas calls the “faith of sufficiency.”  The destination of faith is trust when we place our full weight on God.  That is the point of the Job’s life story.

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I’m being confronted with terminology that I am somewhat unfamiliar with.  As I have been writing a paper for a class I am taking, maybe it would be more accurate to say, “it is taking me.”  Anyway, the terminology that I have been less familiar with as it references our attitude toward God’s work within us is the notion of generosity.  I know what the biblical value of generosity is, it includes a sense of sacrifice.  In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian Church, he appealed to them to sow generously and that included varying degrees of sacrifice.

Ultimately the question put before me is, am I generous toward God?  The context is about much more than money.  The question I have been dealing with is, “am I generous with my life in both pursuit of and receptivity toward God?”  In my more familiar verbiage, “do I want all that He has for me, and do I hold back anything?”  Do I put any limits on my relationship with Him trying to maintain control?  Are there any limits I put on my efforts in pursuit of Him?

In 2 Corinthians 8 Paul describes the generosity of the Macedonian churches essentially saying that they put no limits on their generosity.  They found great joy in their generosity.  Generosity was not limited by what they had, but what they were willing to give.  When I think about what God has been willing to be give to me, why would there be any limits on my generosity toward Him?  It is a very convicting consideration.   

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     It is my perspective that if we are to develop a relationship with God, we need to learn to know Him in our experience with Him, just as we would if we have any other relationship.  I confess that that the relationship I grew up with was simply to know the truths about God so that a relationship with God was primarily a cognitive encounter.  Yet, so much of the scriptures are written by or about characters that knew Him in their experience.  So much of the Psalms are written to reveal the dynamic in David’s experienced relationship with Yahweh.

     I wonder if that is the obstacle in our faith.  Do we have so little impact on our day to day living because the truth of God has not been our experience?  Are we any different than our neighbors?  We face the same kind of human (earthly) circumstances, but do we respond to them differently.  It seems that if we are indeed the light of Christ on earth and that is part of our purpose, what evidence is there that we are indeed the light.

     I think the progression of our growth in Him requires that we learn to face ourselves in truth.  Are we being transformed in any genuine way.  Do I respond to the challenges that face me any differently than my neighbor.  The challenge is whether the substance of who I am on the inside is any different because I say that I have a relationship with Christ.  After all the scripture tells me that I am “predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ” in this life.  We need to ask those around us, “do you see the light of Christ in me,” how do you see that. 

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Weekly Blog

              My afterglow following Easter has been to consider, “How Then Shall We Live.”  There is a great pull to simply fall back into line with “what needs to get done” but what if we were to resist that and consider what Paul called, “heaven’s realities” in Colossians 3?  I admit, I have been watching the seasons and episodes of The Chosen and I’ve been struck with the fact that Jesus work was in the midst of the hustle and bustle of His day, but he did His kingdom work anyway.  It wasn’t always easy for his followers to keep their focus.

              I think that is one of the realities of kingdom of God living.  We have to accept the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, but it is critical that we are not shaped by it.  In fact, it is essential that we find out how God would have us live apart from it.  It doesn’t have to distract us if we know how to immerse ourselves in what matters most.  I used to use the illustration of the submarine.  How a submarine operates depends on what it is filled with.  Whatever it is filled with determines what it does.  So it is with us.

              If the Person and the Presence of God is what fills me, then I am able to live in a “centered” way.  The weight of Presence is capable of steering the course of my living.  Do you carry that kind of Weight, do I carry that Weight?  Not talking about physical pounds, but are you a Weighty person?  Am I a Weighty person.  Substance is meant to outweigh form just as character is meant to outweigh talent.  Everything about Jesus was substance and character.

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Weekly Blog

              The process leading up to significant biblical events like Christmas and Easter can easily capture our attention with both Advent and Lent, but what about afterward?  I wonder if these crescendos dissipate too easily.  What is profitable to celebrate and then move on without a meaningful afterglow?  In the lectionary there is at least the intent to stay with the message for a number of weeks.  What if we were to hold the significance of Jesus’ story with us intentionally for some time?

              Just think about the past week.  What if we were to hold our visual image of Jesus astride a donkey’s foal for a while.  Let the lesson of that vignette reside in our minds and hearts.  What if we were to hold the Upper Room with a last Passover meal, the first celebration of holy communion, and foot washing kept in our frontals.  What if the movement of the Passion stayed with us?  How might it shape our minds and hearts.  And then Easter.

              Use your imagination, had you been at the tomb what might you have felt?  What difference would it make if your whole way of thinking were changed?  Is it possible for us to carry a truth that was first experienced long ago in a continuing, even fresh way?  I suspect that we suffer from forgetting what we know.  I’m reminded at how Solomon treated wisdom, he often kept saying to keep the truth “on your frontals.”  Don’t let transforming truths escape your everyday living.

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                I’ve been giving thought to foundations upon which we build our lives.  As we make space to listen to the pain and thinking that guides our day, it seems like the foundations have to be recalibrated.  I’m wondering if each new generation needs to revisit the foundations that set the disciples of Jesus apart from those who are simply Jesus admirers.  What does it mean for us to “love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your mind?”

                I’ve been rereading the work of A. W. Tozer, solid disciple of Jesus in the middle of the 20^th century, The Knowledge of the Holy.  What stands out is that we are almost completely ignorant of who God is and how God works in our day.  The renewal that is needed in the church it seems is to restore the truth of God as our foundation.  Rather than our shaping God in our own image, it behooves us to let God shape us in His image.

                For all the desire in recent days to make the gospel of Christ relevant in our cultural milieu, it seems that our calling instead is to call the common culture to the gospel of Christ.  I am struck with Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “Enter though the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  In these days of an ever increasing volume it seems that Jesus calmly calls us to just live the gospel and our Father will rejoice.

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Weekly Blog

               I have given some thought this week to forgiveness.  As we pray the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, forgiveness of trespasses, debts, or sins (depending on the translation and the location of the Lord’s Prayer) seems to be central to kingdom of God living.  Knowing that our culture no longer recognizes personal sin as a reality, though evil is attended to as long as it is seen as “out there” away from “in here” we are left with tolerance.  Tolerance requires nothing from us.

               In the words of N.T. Wright, “forgiveness is richer and higher and harder and more shocking than we usually think!”  When it comes to personal experience forgiveness requires more from us.  We are required to see ourselves in truth understanding our own sin and then not hold the “other” more accountable than we hold ourselves.  It is true that wrong is wrong, but sometimes our expectations of others is misplaced.  Sometimes we expect of others what God alone can do.

               In our common culture forgiveness itself is other offensive and to forgive becomes a point of contention, but is the way the kingdom of God will always be in earth’s fallenness.  When Jesus warned his disciples that they will be hated because he was hated we often forget that.  For some reason we have never owned that as part of our spiritual heritage.  Consequently, we have often failed to live out our identity in Christ.  If we could remember what Jesus said and just lived that out, we could come to understand better that we are “strangers and aliens in a foreign land.”

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Weekly Blog

               I have given some thought this week to forgiveness.  As we pray the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, forgiveness of trespasses, debts, or sins (depending on the translation and the location of the Lord’s Prayer) seems to be central to kingdom of God living.  Knowing that our culture no longer recognizes personal sin as a reality, though evil is attended to as long as it is seen as “out there” away from “in here” we are left with tolerance.  Tolerance requires nothing from us.

               In the words of N.T. Wright, “forgiveness is richer and higher and harder and more shocking than we usually think!”  When it comes to personal experience forgiveness requires more from us.  We are required to see ourselves in truth understanding our own sin and then not hold the “other” more accountable than we hold ourselves.  It is true that wrong is wrong, but sometimes our expectations of others is misplaced.  Sometimes we expect of others what God alone can do.

               In our common culture forgiveness itself is other offensive and to forgive becomes a point of contention, but is the way the kingdom of God will always be in earth’s fallenness.  When Jesus warned his disciples that they will be hated because he was hated we often forget that.  For some reason we have never owned that as part of our spiritual heritage.  Consequently, we have often failed to live out our identity in Christ.  If we could remember what Jesus said and just lived that out, we could come to understand better that we are “strangers and aliens in a foreign land.”

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Weekly Blog

                I’ve been reflecting on Annotation #6 in the Ignatian Exercises this week and I think it is relevant for all aspects of spiritual growth.  When evaluating the readiness of someone who has indicated a desire to be led through the Ignatian Exercises the standard is; are they open, generous, and courageous.  The synonym that is common within the Navigator Ministry is faithful, available, and teachable.  I have often found that people don’t change unless they are hungry.  These would all be good indications that someone is hungry.

                Unless in crisis of some kind most don’t live in the realm of openness, generosity, and courage.  The problem with crises is that they can be resolved more quickly than what is needed for actual growth.  I wonder also about age.  Do most young people have the hunger of openness, generosity, and courage necessary to face their lives in truth and want more from God and more with God?  Too much of one’s identity is tied up with possessions, position, and opinion.

                Richard Rohr has written to the effect that real growth is a second half of life thing.  It is true that with reflection, realization (experience), and restoration (appetite) change and growth has a chance.  Change itself is not the answer as there are many who make changes that are morally deficient, but with the Way, Truth, and Life of Jesus as the standard, but enriching genuine growth can take place.  When the God of the Bible is our point of reference, there is hope that is good hope.

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Weekly Blog

                Even during the intentional season of Lent the ordinary battle presents itself to us – distracting noise.  No wonder one of the first disciplines in the disciples’ life was the practice of solitude and silence.  It is hard to imagine that in the first century A.D. believers had to deal with it, but when the Desert Fathers and Mothers of second and third centuries headed to the desert to escape the church, they were escaping the worldliness and noise that kept them from hearing the Word of God.

                What must the Lord bring about to get my full attention?  Maybe we need to learn to “read” our circumstances as tools to get our full attention.  I remind us that God is not a competitor and usually speaks in a still, small voice.  Is there empty space in my life in which I can hear Him?  In the practices of Lent, namely, prayer, repentance, and giving am I making space for Him?

                We need to remember in the midst of the noise, God is personal and He wants our relationship with Him to be personal.  In any healthy growing relationship communication, personal communication is what makes the relationship personal.  If He is not personally communicating with us our relationship is hardly personal.  If I am not actively communicating with Him, then our relationship is not personal.  The life we have been given in Jesus is personal in every way.

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Weekly Blog

                Here we are at the beginning of the season in the life of the Church called, Lent.  It is a season of preparation, preparation for the sincerest of celebrations, the celebration of Resurrection Sunday.  To get to the joyous celebration of the resurrection of our Redeemer and Restorer, it behooves us to walk carefully and soberly through the days of sorrow and sadness that sin requires of us.

                It is so ugly that sin ruined the beauty that God created in the First Garden that made Gethsemane necessary, but that is the nature of sin – to create suffering.  If we join Jesus in the journey, we know that there is an ominous nature to life that requires that we not flippantly race to Easter unscathed.  For the Resurrection to maintain its substance we have to come to grips with reality.

                That which is real is that in light of living in the Light of Christ we have before us an excessive self-referenced orientation that minimizes the forsakenness that Jesus built up to endure for our sakes.  This is a season meant to bring us to the end of ourselves and to bring us to a heart-felt love for the One who loves us most.  These days are days of stunning love!

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Weekly Blog

              The Bible is replete with episodes of God’s people communicating with God directly and honestly.  I wonder if we tend to miss that and not understand that this is what it looks like to be honest or people of the heart.  The truth is God is omniscient and He knows things as they are.  If we find ourselves reluctant to “tell it like it is” because we want to see ourselves a particular way, it is an example of self-deception.  As my good friend, Luther, is frequent to say, “It no use kidding ourselves.”

              God makes a distinction between honesty and dishonesty.  “With their mouths they praise me, but their hearts are far from me.”  As followers of Jesus are we not called to be the people of the heart?  Without our hearts engaged we are simply people of façade.  Maybe it is a matter of self-protection or worse that we think that we can have a relationship with God with only part of us.

              I suspect that many of us were taught that discipleship was essentially a matter of learning biblical theology and practicing evangelism.  On the other hand consider the disciples experience with Jesus which was a holistic encounter 24/7.  No wonder that Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  Does this not include our whole life, whole experience, relationship with Jesus?  It behooves us then to live honestly with Him because He is always honest with us.

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Weekly Blog

              Numerous stories in the scriptures reveal the nature of godly characteristics.  I think that is intentional on God’s part so that reality is beyond concept.  I’ve noticed that the Old Testament is rich with stories that reveal the characteristics of godliness.  If we are serious about becoming people after God’s own heart, we need the examples of character lived out.  We can learn in the classroom, but we only come to know as godliness is lived out in the laboratory of life.

              I’ve been dealing with commitment at the beginning of Ruth’s story this week.  It is a normal process for any characteristic to be tested and tempered.  The circumstances of life are both the arena for expression as well as the testing environment.  Circumstances reveal what is real and what is false.  It is always easy to perceive ourselves inaccurately.  Self-perception is almost always distorted.

              It is the grace of God that we are not faced with everything about ourselves all at once.  Living life, a day at a time is sufficient to be faced with the truth about ourselves an eye dropper drop at a time.  Life lived well is lived with a growing knowledge of the ways of the kingdom of God.  Not knowledge about, but knowledge of.

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Weekly Blog

              Perseverance, what does that godly characteristic look like in your life?  From time to time that is part of God’s agenda with us.  I suspect it is what is often the purpose behind suffering in our lives.  I don’t think we learn perseverance apart from it.  Obviously, there are many levels of suffering from mild struggles as in frustration with ourselves to actual physical and emotional suffering.  Sometimes we bring suffering onto ourselves through our expectations that are not met and at other times we experience suffering through the losses in our lives.

              According to the scripture writers suffering leads to perseverance and perseverance leads to hope (Jas. 1:1-2).  There is so many connections in the development of our character that includes “hard” that leads to “good.”  Left to ourselves we would always choose comfort and convenience leaving ourselves shallow and weak.  The weakness that the scriptures offer us is always humility and actually meekness or strength under control.

              As life becomes foreign to the apprentice of Jesus, we have the challenge of holding firm which will require perseverance.  If we hold out for the ways of the kingdom of God, we will always experience “push back” from our dark world.  Simply stated, perseverance is necessary if we are to remain faithful which is to remain loyal to our God.        

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Weekly Blog

              What does a new year offer us?  Some would say, “nothing new!”  But, in the spirit of the Advent Season that we have just completed there is so much more in the shadow of the Almighty.  If we keep the Savior in view, we are offered genuine hope, peace, joy, and love.  If we keep our eyes fixed on Him, we will have so much that our neighbor is not possessing.  We have the substance of an amazing ambassadorship.  We are meant to carry the way of the invisible within us.

              In a new year, we carry an invisible reality within our hearts, minds, and souls.  When Jesus entered our lives, we were remade to be different and then sent back into the darkness of a sin immersed world to be its light.  So, a new year offers us a new opportunity to shine with the light of Christ.  We should be able to be identified by the light of Christ shining through us.

              This is the feedback that we need to offer each other as a source of accountability.  We need to feedback observations from time to time to keep our light in focus.  Plus, we need to encourage one another as a means to build up one another.  That is part of our regular work within the community.  The challenge is always before us and in light of a new year, a fresh commitment to build up one another is on the agenda.

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Weekly Blog

              The ultimate night in the Holy Season has arrived – Christmas!  Is it a celebration of good news for you?  For many it is an event to get passed instead of a moment of new beginnings.  I’ve given much thought that in the divine announcement the angel said, “a Savior has been born unto you.”  What is it for the Savior to be born unto each of us?  I think the point is he is there and where am I to him.  Like most things in the first Advent, it is here and where are you in relationship to what God has given?

              This is an invitational season.  The invitation is an invitation to hope once again.  It invites us to embrace peace once again, embracing the wholeness of life that the Savior came to offer.  We are invited to rejoice in the gift of a Savior.  The love that we are drawn into is a first-time love.  For the first time agape love was revealed on earth.  This was to be a new kind of love, an unconditional love for the other.

              Frankly, the sentiments of the Christmas holiday celebration fall so far short of what is being offered to us in the Christmas Story.  This is one of those times that the original cannot be improved upon.  The announcement was a revolutionary moment in history.  And if we take the message seriously it remains a revolutionary message for all time, “a Savior has been born unto you.”  To everyone who will believe.

Weekly Blog

                There is truth that has been revealed to us in the scriptures and most of it we forget because it hasn’t been shaped and formed in us.  I’ve been thinking about God’s ways that Moses learned of as he walked with Yahweh, experiencing fellowship with Him day by day.  David draws our attention to that fact when he wrote, “Moses knew the ways of God, Israel knew the deeds of God (Psalm 103:7).”  That has led me to reflect on something that the Lord said in Isaiah’s prophecy, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”

                The fact is we get completely “bent out of shape” as we discover the reality of that truth unless we can remember it on a practical basis.  Ultimately, the issue is to learn to live in submission to God.  To not live that way creates our own stress.  When we struggle with wanting to get God to fulfill our wills, we are in an endless drama that God has nothing to do with.

                We can throw our hands up in frustration or we can seek to learn to know Him and how He works in our lives over the times of our lives.  Moses lived a very practical life with God, and he was conscious of what God’s ways had been with him.  God’s character is the same for everyone, but His ways are often very personal.  Think about it!  What have God’s ways been with you over the last 50 or whatever years?   

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Weekly Blog

                God’s ways are predictably unpredictable.  His character isn’t, as it stays the same, but what is often a mystery to us is that we often are at a loss because we don’t know His will.  Our tendency is to take our will or how we think and project it onto God.  It is hard for us to grasp that He alone gets to define the terms under which He is operating.

                Our temptation is to think that He should operate under the ways of heaven while we still live on earth.  His ways are redemptive and restorative and reconciling, but still in accordance with His will.  The key for us is to grow in intimacy with Him.  He always allows His created ones to choose His will or their will.  There is always more for us to learn in seeking Him.

                The ways of the Kingdom of Heaven are our calling.  It behooves us as the hands and feet of the Holy One to devote ourselves as the servants of His ways.  As we learn His ways as we come to know Him more intimately, we have the opportunity every day to live the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven among humankind.  That is how we live out the prayer Jesus gave His disciples.  

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Weekly Blog

                The human ego can turn on a dime.  If our lives are built on an identity that is temporal, wealth, power, position, and all self-referenced living, all that needs to cause it to come crashing down is a change in our circumstances.  No matter how good it feels that it is, when a problem arises that we cannot control the response goes directly to an extreme.

                The scriptures are replete with examples of characters that crashed because one or more of the big three fell apart: wealth, power, prestige.  That is why Jesus’ teaching was so difficult for so many to comprehend.  When he tells us that we can gain the whole world and lose our soul, maybe the confusion was that his audiences didn’t really understand or recognize their souls.

                It sounds simple, but if we are rooted and grounded in Christ, the ego is set aside to its proper role and not the fallen notion that it normally takes.  Our rooted and grounded experience is the impotence to focus our well-being on that which does not change and is not destroyed by circumstances.

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Weekly Blog

                Every episode of life is full of opportunity.  The opportunity is to reveal the ways of the kingdom of God as it resides within our hearts and minds.  As an example, there is a great difference between someone who can behave in a loving way from time to time and someone who is a loving person.  The one is a situational choice and the other is the natural way of living.

                The work of God is the transformation of the person so that in whatever circumstance there is the consistency of one’s way of being.  It seems as though our modern approach to discipleship has been satisfied with expressions of behavior.  Historically from the beginning of the Christ-life the emphasis has be on the transformation of the heart of persons.

                Paul describes it in Colossians 3 this way, “Since you have been raised to new life in Christ, think about the realities of heaven where Christ is seated in the place of honor at the right hand of God.”  The point is that we have been raised to a new life, a new way of being in Christ.  From day one it has been about being transformed into a new way of being.  May we not settle for anything less.

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Weekly Blog

                God gives us stories and incidences to teach us about His ways with us – the people of God.  These stories are gifts for us, and He wants us to open the gifts and enjoy the contents of those gifts.  We are unwise if we do not learn from these gifts what God is like, because learning what He is like adds to the reality of our experience with Him.

                We add these stories to teach us the dynamics of our theological structure.  The encounters in history provide the skeleton that the muscles, organs, and skin of our faith and knowledge of God are supported by.  That is part of how our faith becomes a “living faith.”

                We add the revelation of God in the Scriptures as the backbone of what we come to know of His relationship with us by faith.  In the times that we lack faith, these biblical stories of God with us can lift us up from doubt to belief.  When God has met this character in this way, He can meet me in a similar way.  Then faith is built.

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Weekly Blog

                Looking for the fingerprints of God in our life story is time well spent.  When we reflect on what God has done when we were not looking for Him can be a great encouragement that He has always been there, and He has always been at work.  Where we are today is simply another stop on the journey to where He is taking us.

                I’ve been freshly made aware of something that God told us through Paul’s letter to the Roman Church when he said, “You have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.”   Whatever is going on in our lives has a reason, to conform us to the image of Christ.  Our conversion story is only the beginning of the journey.

                The circumstance of life is simply the setting for God to be at work in us to conform us to the image of Christ.  Circumstances are just circumstances.  The issue before us is always how do we respond to the circumstance; I think that is the substance of what God is interested in most.  He is about the work of shaping and forming our hearts so that we become like Jesus in our hearts.  When our hearts are changed, we live differently.  

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Weekly Blog

                I am almost embarrassed to say what the Lord has been saying to me this morning.  There is a connection with James 4:17, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”  I’ve been reflecting on the “theory” of the Lord’s Prayer and realizing that it was given to us as the way to live.  I have been thinking about the things that I “trust” in that are usual, but transitory. 

                I have been rebuked by the Word as though I had thought that I didn’t need to live the way that Jesus instructed, but simply that I “ought” to live that way.  How foolish of me that I would treat what Jesus said as “theory” and not reality.

                One of the many ways that we(I) have been deceived is to think that Jesus’ teaching is a suggested way of life.  Those in history who have taken the Word seriously have much to teach us.  In particular this summer, I have been confronted with “The Stories of Great Christians” and George Muller in particular.  His commitment to the Lord’s Prayer is deeply convicting.   

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Weekly Blog

                We are truly indebted to those who have gone before us in our faith.  As they have lived out the gospel of Christ, they have drawn attention to the many shades of Jesus’ way, truth, and life.  No one lived every color of the spectrum of the gospel perfectly, but each of the great Christians can enrich our spiritual lives.

                Every apprentice of Jesus lived in a particular time and circumstance, and they faced the world, the flesh, and the devil in their own time.  As Jesus took root in their lives and they apprehended the Word of God, the path before them reflects the light of Christ.

                Since Eden darkness has pervaded the human experience.  As someone has said, the saints of God are to be punching holes in the darkness with the light of Christ.  Each life story has been given to us as an inspiration and inspiration, faith and faith, hope.  Therefore, we need to know our world-changing ancestry and its help in our own journeys of faith.

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Weekly Blog

              We learn through our own experiences, but do you learn through other’s as well.  I know we don’t learn with the same dynamic as our own encounters, but isn’t it wisdom to learn from others as well as at least learn the revealed truth through the Scriptures?  This week I am learning through John Wesley’s story, and it draws me back to the Scriptures.

              He was actually a very wise man, and you can go online and discover at least 35 of his quotes that are gathered there.  When we expose ourselves to wisdom whether in the Scriptures or through a servant of Christ, I think it behooves us to read, absorb, and apply truth when it comes to us, especially in the easy way of someone else’s experience.

              I had a wise professor say that in his estimate if we read and absorbed and applied one Proverb a day (there are 31 chapters of Proverbs) we would do well to learn wisdom.  If one thing is missing in ordinary life it must certainly be wisdom.

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Weekly Blog

                In Surprised by Joy we are gifted with a sacred narrative of one of the 20^th centuries “Greatest Christians.”  What is the story of your journey to faith in Jesus Christ?  Can you look back and see the hand that was wooing you to a new life?  One of the gifts that C. S. Lewis gives us is that however the “moment” occurred, life was meant then to change forever.  It seems to me that we often celebrate the moment more than we celebrate the life that follows.

                One thing that Lewis does for us is that in his fiction he revisits the past and its impact on us in light of the journey that God has called us to.  A journey that shapes our experiences with Jesus as we move into fresh encounters of joy.  Joy is the term that C.S. Lewis uses to describe the arrival.  And as he is quoted as saying, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”  Added to the depth of that observation, Dallas Willard is quoted as saying, “God is the most joyful Person in the universe.”

                Why have we so often lost our way in this world of chaos and suffering?  God is fully aware of all the chaos and suffering – that isn’t anything new to him.  Yet, He is by nature joyful and if we are truly in Him and He is us, why would we let the chaos and suffering rob us of joy.  Joy is a matter of seeing things through the eyes of the Divine.  Maybe it is time we move onto that!

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Weekly Blog

                “What God gets out of my life is not what I accomplish; it’s the person that I become.”  The wisdom of Dallas Willard turns the way of this world on its ear.  The difference between a self-referenced life and a Christ-referenced life is a universe apart.  I am challenged by Paul’s comments to the young church in Colossae when he said, “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven….  Think about these things of heaven, not the things of earth.  For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.”   

                As followers of Jesus, we are called to think differently, what is important, what to invest in, and what to live for.  Our identities are meant to be rooted differently than our neighbor.  Dallas also helped us with the notion of reality.  God is real and life in Christ is what is real.  When the scriptures tell us that we are “strangers and aliens in a foreign land” it is telling us that we are meant to be transformed in our minds and hearts and called to be “different” than the culture in which we have been born.

                Summer is a time of growth.  Maybe this is a summer in which you grow more deeply in your experience with God.  Our whole salvation has been to lift us up into a realm of real encounter with the God who loves us most.  Summer is also a time to rest, so maybe your rest is simply to slow down so that you take in God’s loving presence and make empty space to hear His voice which usually comes as a whisper.

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Weekly Blog

                “The way of God’s kingdom…which is the best way in the world, is accompanied with the most difficulties.”  Thus, spoken in the words of John Winthrop, first Governor of the Puritan colony in Salem, MA.  I’ve given considerable thought to our founding fathers in this present season of celebration.  Winthrop’s arrival to the shores of Massachusetts was some 10 years after the arrival of the Pilgrim sojourners at Plymouth.

                In the midst of the variant notions regarding the founding influences that we are immersed in today, it takes a courageous posture to look at the facts once again.  In the pre-1620 world of adventure and exploration, the investors from Europe funded the voyages for economic gain, but both the Pilgrims and the Puritans risked their lives and their fortunes for the single purpose of religious freedom.

                The intent from both Pilgrims in Holland and England and the Puritans from England was to establish a world built on the “way of God’s kingdom life.”  Though both endeavors have since been swallowed up by the greed and flesh of unredeemed man, the original pursuit was entirely valid.  It is my conviction that their intention ought yet to be the intention of the church of Jesus Christ wherever it exists.  I stand humbled by their grace and hope.

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