Posts from May 2019
101 Small Ways to Share the Gospel
“Of all the things that are difficult in the life of a Christian, talking to someone else about the Gospel is probably one of the hardest. For most of us, we’re content to sit in our little church pews and sing some songs, while resisting the constant temptations that life tends to throw at us tends to take up the majority of our willpower. Evangelism? That’s only for super Christians. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to be that difficult. One of…
The Everyday Relevance of Eternal Life
“Knowing your journey ends in a feast of untainted, cloudless, eternal joy completely reframes how you experience the passing pleasures of this life. These pleasures are appetisers. It’s their job to whet our appetites, not satisfy them. That means we can savour sweet gifts while we have them in solidarity with the banquet to come. They are foretastes of glory divine.” Read more…
Getting a Life
“One of my personal strategies for sticking with Jesus is to periodically remind myself of how lame Plan B is. Jesus is offering Life. Not life as maximized choice. But Life. That is, Spirit-lead life, the life of the age to come, life in fellowship with Father, Son and Spirit, a life of proleptic participation in the new creation with the community of the forgiven and in mission in the world: the kind of life that is truly life, even…
Why I Don’t See Tithing as the Pinnacle of Christian Virtue, OR as Something Legalistic
“What I always say to people is that if you take the standard of 10 percent and say God required it of the poorest people in Old Testament Israel, and now that we’re under the grace of Jesus and have the indwelling Holy Spirit and live in this incredibly affluent culture, do you think He would expect less of us? Does God still have expectations of New Testament people? Clearly He does. In fact, Jesus’ message is, “You have heard that…
On Greying Toward Glory
“I have always been uncomfortable with my own gaze and yet curious for it nonetheless. Aren’t we all? Our own gaze, for males and females alike, tells the truth about who we are. It is, perhaps, the only time we can’t lie to ourselves or believe the lies we tell ourselves about who we are or wish we were or want to become. We can stand there and list a series of affirmations about ourselves or we can tell the…