Biblical narrative is the most astounding drama engaging God and humanity. This drama goes far beyond a dispassionate or detached recounting or a merely experiential endeavor. God’s story is closer to the way things really are, than any notion of story told from the point of clinical neutral observation or heightened spiritual experience. We find ourselves as Christians on the global and local stage of the working out of the drama by actualizing it in our own lives.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Our churches, organizations, works, and associations exist to bring praise to God and to join in his work of mission and renewal. The chilling predictions that Christianity in the West is in serious trouble may turn out to be a timely warning. We are in need of a revived sense of purpose – what are we doing? for the poor, for the hungry, for the lost, in our neighborhood, city, or on the other side of the world? Thinking right thoughts is not enough. Saying the right things is insufficient. God calls us to action in serving others, showing hospitality, and sharing generously. May our thoughts, words, and actions be saturated with grace and the love of Christ as we humbly serve him.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Being in community with God and each other is a joy and a privilege. In seeking to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way, the apostle Paul urged us to have a deep unity amongst ourselves as we follow Christ, so that we might glorify God with one heart and voice. To accept one another then, just as Christ has accepted us, will ultimately be pleasing God. As we are bound together in our various callings, let’s continue to focus on our purpose to serve God wherever we are and in whatever we’re doing. It’s all too easy to lose our way as we face threats and are exposed to the fears of a world spinning off into chaos. God is faithful; therefore do not be faint of heart.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
When we are facing troubled times, the apostle Peter reminds us as aliens and exiles to live in a way that is pleasing to God. We are to love one another with tender hearts and humble minds. Above all, in 1 Peter 4:8-9 he proclaims, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
As we work together doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way, let’s participate in reversing the flow of the cultural force of using others as a means to an end. People are not a means to an end. They are human beings precious to God and therefore are to be respected, nurtured, and loved.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Christ is Lord of all of life now and together we are part of God’s unfolding drama of His mission to humanity and the world. May God help us to be living in the light of the return of Christ as it relates to present expectation and action towards social, political, and ethical change, for we await a redeemer who will renew all things. Therefore, in the apostle Paul’s terms, we are not to be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might discern God’s will and offer ourselves as living sacrifices in doing it.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
To be living on the borders – the edges, brings a variety of questions to mind. Here’s a couple for you. Where are Christians to situate themselves in a culture gone mad with consumerism? The folly of “shopping” tears into the very fabric of who we are and seeks to assure us that everything will be okay. Shop to your hearts delight. Our hope, as some would have it, is in the eternal gift of consumption. Why, we’re even mediatized to consume each other. Do you find there’s a problem with the mission of consumerism and do you see this vision having an impact on the church?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Jesus tells his disciples in John 14:1, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Today, make it a point to affirm your belief in God and Jesus. May your hearts not be troubled.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
When cycles of fear and doubt surge in and through us, we need to try to be aware that we’re not alone. God and others are with us and share in what we’re working through. Thinking it’s only us will alienate us and make us have a sense of isolation and disconnection from everyone else. True, those close to us may not have a clue, and I know that’s hard. In these circumstances, however, it is crucial to recognize and remember that we’re also part of a non-geographical global community of believers, many of whom do understand us and share our plight as we long for renewal, practice hope, and search for God.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
In Proverbs 13:10-14. By insolence the heedless make strife, but wisdom is with those who take advice. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire of goodness fulfilled is a tree of life. The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life so that one might avoid the snares of death.
Our communities are to be trees of life. Living trees that have roots in Scripture; trunks of solid Christian teaching, apologetics, prayer, mission, innovative cultural insights, and hospitality; branches that stretch out in symmetrical, yet diverse directions; and leaves that flourish because of their dependence on being connected to the rest of the tree, while at the same time bringing nourishment and contributing something vital so that the tree remains strong and living.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13 scream out, but so often it seems to deaf ears. Let's change that. Listen, hear, and act: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Jesus gives us some powerful words in Luke 6. “But I tell you who listen: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Fear rolls over us like the pounding waves of the sea. This powerful emotion paralyses, blinds, controls, and in other ways disables us from being able to love God and others. Overcoming fear will lead us away from a self–centered life and turn us towards the foot of the cross of Christ, which will give us a new vision of ourselves, others, and the true meaning of love.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Giving up power, control, and portraying ourselves to be better than we are is a heavy task. These tendencies are so ingrained in us, and to a large extent identify who we are. The deep need to replace them with love, compassion and grace is all too evident. Where do we start? Seeking to follow in the footsteps of Christ is a beginning. And we are called to make efforts to go against these tendencies through learning new ways of living, of being spiritual people, which promotes transformation in ourselves and our communities.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Christ died at a particular point in history, but since the resurrection on Easter Sunday he lives forever. The crucified and risen One brought about the new exodus, solving both the problem of Israel’s failure to be a light to the nations and our bondage to sin and death, by opening the way to redeemed life.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Lord, help us to give up not praying. As with many addictions that we put false hope in – even though we tend to know that it is false hope and we can’t quit and return to it again and again, not praying is tough to stop doing. We ask that we would be released to pray more frequently and fervently. Amen.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
In a startling passage in Revelation 1:8 using the Greek alphabet, God now refers to himself with its first and last letters. He is the beginning and the end. No power is greater than his. In spite of the difficult circumstances and devastating persecution, the Almighty himself professes his ultimate sovereign control of the end of history. This magnificent and reassuring title, Alpha and Omega, occurs ten times in the New Testament, and four of these references are in the Apocalypse.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Christians are facing two dangers: becoming as entirely ambiguous, or as exhaustively certain as anyone else on matters of knowledge. When it comes to knowledge, we too often tend to embrace the perspective of total ambiguity or complete certainty, in exchange for good and sufficient knowledge, which is truly spiritual.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Informed by the script of Scripture of a new reality brought by Christ we’re called to live imaginatively engaged lives. Rather than having media and contemporary culture imagine for us what life is to be like, let’s imagine being an other and walking in their shoes so that we might serve them better. Acting with compassion, interest and love should be trademarks that identify Christians, as we imaginatively seek to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Serving God and other require living and empowered imagination.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
The death of Christ is not the end of God’s story. God’s rule is manifested in the resurrection. Christ was raised from the dead and is now present with God and interceding on behalf of his people. In much popular theology/spirituality today, the resurrection of Christ is reduced to the experience of Christ being raised in one’s heart.
Not only does such a perspective undervalue the map of Scripture and downplay a real theological referent for the heart, it leads back to the false referent of ME—a form of dying spirituality. When there is no personal external referent for spirituality, notably the Infinite God, everything rests on ME and my experience or feeling of Christ being raised. Such a ME emphasis results in a naturalistic, human-istic referent stripped of any godly supernatural reality and power.
If Christ is merely raised in our hearts, our faith is in vain and we have lost our view of the origin and ultimate source of spirituality, which first belongs to Father, Son and Spirit, before it becomes our own.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
