Blind-Spots About God’s Character Will Create Character Deficits In Our Lives...
Writing about a deficient understanding about God’s holiness among modern Christians, Drew Dyck describes how that deficiency is not only apparent in a lack of understanding, but is also apparent in a...
View ArticleA Temple Doesn’t Have To Do Anything; A Temple Just Is (via Drew Dyck)
I get a bit drained of life reading and watching various church leader types providing hot-takes on a pandemic as a once in a life-time opportunity to lead, lead, lead, and do, do, do. For all the...
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The Two Commands Of John The Baptist That Point The Way Home (via Henri Nouwen)
In a time marked by anxiety, Following Jesus (a collection of talks by the late Henri Nouwen) bids us find our home, our security and belonging, with Jesus. In an early chapter he marks out the...
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If Following Were Imitating Then There Could Never Be A Community (via Henri...
Discipleship is following someone to be instructed by how faith leads them to uniquely live out their calling in Jesus, so that you can by faith uniquely live out your calling in Jesus. The goal is not...
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Following Jesus Means To Live Our Lives In Companionship With The One Who...
The Jesus who calls us follow him, is also the Jesus who is with us always, is the Jesus who walks alongside us, is the Jesus who calls us his friends. The same Jesus counsels us that we will have...
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Taking Up Your Cross – Living With The Courage To Acknowledge Your Pain (via...
Disciples of Jesus are called to follow him, taking up our cross. Because the freedom and desire to follow Jesus flow from Jesus’ own unique and unrepeatable bearing of his cross on our behalf, his...
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The Love That Enables Us To Go To Places We Would Rather Not Go (via Henri...
A tendency is to run away from pain, and to think that wisdom is learning to recognise pain in order that we might escape it sooner and more effectively. The wisdom that we learn at the foot of the...
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Following Jesus Is Not Following A Sentimental Memory Of Someone We Hardly...
There is always the temptation for a disciple of Jesus to frame our life from the perspective ‘If only Jesus were here,’ or ‘How do Jesus’ teaching and actions from two thousand years ago guide my...
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Allowing The Future To Grow By Living In The Now By The Presence Of The Holy...
2020 is a year which is being consciously experienced as a season of deferred or cancelled plans. This does not mean that our lives are on hold, waiting for a return to normal before we can start our...
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Christian Discipleship Amid The Longevity Revolution (via Will Willimon)
Twenty years or more ago I talked with a Christian lady who mentioned that Psalm 90’s poetical expression ‘The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but...
View ArticleBecoming An Old Soul Christian (via Jared Wilson)
Growing older amplifies the reality that change is inescapable and control is something of an illusion. For disciples of Jesus it bids us recognise the difference between death and dying; that Jesus...
View ArticleGospel + Safety + Time – A Formula For A Church Where Anyone Can Grow (via...
This isn’t the first time that Ray Ortlund’s expression for Christian discipleship has been shared here; but he’s posted it again recently, so why not? Listening to conversations about how churches can...
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God Is With Us As We Go Into Life’s Last Age, Transforming Our Fate Into Our...
Will Willimon borrows from Shakespeare’s King Lear as a profound illustration of the wreckage of old age lived as a season where responsibility is relinquished but control remains tightly grasped. The...
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Learning To Affirm The Lives God Gives Us In The Face Of Regret That God...
If ageing is not to become an accrual of regrets about loss and unrealised ambitions, present life needs careful nurture about our attitudes to relationships and goals. From Will Willimon: I believe...
View ArticleNostalgia Should Keep Disciples Of Jesus Moving Forward, Not Backward (via...
It’s been disconcerting observing Christians who twelve months ago were critiquing the cultural norms as being impediments to Christian witness praying for those cultural norms to be restored in the...
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Finding A Way To Live Life Well Without Denying Suffering And Death As...
It is counter-productive for disciples of Jesus to buy into our society’s capacity to alleviate physical or psychological suffering to the extent that we also accept its preoccupation with the concept...
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The Day The Church Visible Gathers With The Church Eternal And Looks Forward...
I’ve adopted a statement in my funerals for church members that they “have departed from the church visible and joined the church eternal”. Last Sunday some churches observe a day named All Saints Day,...
View ArticleThe Power At Work When We Mean The Creed (via Garry Williams at Evangelicals...
When Christians state the Apostles Creed when they gather. It is a simple act of will to say the words. It is a supernatural event when we mean the words. It is a distinction worth reflecting upon; if...
View ArticleThe Christian Life Embraces Both What We’re Saved From And What We’re Saved...
Disciples of Jesus are a saved people; disciples of Jesus are a reconciled people. Our lives express thankfulness for forgiveness, but also can’t help but bring healing and reconciliation to...
View ArticleWhat To Do On The Worst Day Of Your Life (via Connor B Gwin)
I know a few folk who are having some bad days. Time will tell if they’re the worst days of their lives. I would hope they’d be spared too many that are worse. This poem from Connor Gwin resonates with...
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