The practice of the love of God

"My sole occupation is love.
All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love. There is nothing better, or more necessary, than love." - John of the Cross
Thanks Graham Hill for the quote

on the day of Mandela's death

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” —Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela 

The defining feature of our generation

The defining feature of our generation is not technology, medicine, invention or discovery. The defining feature of our generation is choice, and we are woefully unprepared for it.
Peter Drucker

19th Century Christianity

It was fatal for the evangelical Church and for Christianity in the 19th Century that theology in the last analysis had nothing more to offer than the “human” the “religious”, mystery and its noncommital “statements”, leaving the faithful to whatever impressions and influences from outside proved strongest.

- Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century

(Thanks, David Bunce for this quote.)

Believing in the Church

The Church is an object of faith. In the Apostles' Creed we pray: "I believe in God, the Father ... in Jesus Christ, his only Son - in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." We must believe in the Church! The Apostles' Creed does not say that the Church is an organization that helps us to believe in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, we are called to believe in the Church with the same faith we believe in God.

Often it seems harder to believe in the Church than to believe in God. But whenever we separate our belief in God from our belief in the Church, we become unbelievers. God has given us the Church as the place where God becomes God-with-us.

The success of failures

 Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success - C.F. Kettering.

good friends

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
George Eliot

C.S. Lewis nails it

"He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand." C.S. Lewis, Screwtape letters. Once again Lewis nails it.

Christ's victory

The signs of Christ's victory are all around us. They can be seen in the conversions that take place daily, in the healing of lives and homes, in the faithful and sacrificial service of millions of Christians, in the renewing of old churches and the planting of new ones, the groth of trust and confidence, the thoughtful engagement with the world. There are indeed setbacks and failures, but Christ is building his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. . . . The time will soon dawn when Christ's victory will finally be revealed and the power of darkness will have had its day - Nigel Wright

Bonhoeffer quotes

It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.  

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.  

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

the end of Theology

Paul L. Holmer, The Grammar of Faith (San Francisco, 1978), 17-23. “If theology is like a grammar, and certainly it is, then it follows that learning theology is not an end in itself . . . be it the creeds, the words of scripture, the words of Jesus, we most note that like grammar and logic, their aim is not that we repeat the words. Theology must be absorbed, and when it is, the hearer is supposed to be godly.”

death (& life)

'The life of a Christian man is nothing but a readiness to die and a remembrance of death' - Latimer

comfort - the Lord's a shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil; for you are with me;
your rod and your staff
- they comfort me....
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.
Psalm 23 NRSV

leaving . . .

Lao Tzu, archivist at the imperial library in China, wrote that ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’

Listening to the preacher

Erasmus: “I see how simple people, who hang open-mouthed on the lips of the preacher, yearn for food for the soul, eager to learn how they can go home better people” – just like today!

Shame

Brene Brown speaks of shame as 'the fear of disconnection'. It's certainly there at its core. She speaks, further, of blame as 'a way to discharge pain and discomfort'. Interesting!

Rain and suffering

Andy Percey's new book, When Rain Falls Like Lead, is being launched this weekend. It's a very moving account of suffering and knowing the presence of Jesus. For those who suffer it is reassurance of the love of a gracious God; for those who are not presently suffering it's a reminder to keep away from trite and pretentious sentiments! Well worth a read!

worship

King of glory, King of peace,
I will love you;
and that love may never cease,
I will move you

Let all the world in every corner sing,
'My God and King!'

George Herbert

worth a read!

Scott McKnight on Brian Harris, the Tortoise Usually Wins - see this blog!
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/06/05/a-more-common-kind-of-leader/

Faith

Faith is 'a living, daring confidence in God's grace' - Martin Luther

salvific care

'May the souls so dearly purchased by the blood of our Lord not perish by our carelessness' - John Calvin (CO 46.301)

attributing miracles to God

'You may attribute miracles to God, but not nonsense' - C.S. Lewis

fig leaves!

The thing that keeps God out of our lives is not our sin. It is our compulsion to pretend, to cover up our nakedness with fig leaves, to climb sycamore trees to see without being seen - Pete Greig

Calvin's rules of prayer

# that we be disposed in mind and heart as befits those who enter conversation with God
# that in our petitions we ever sense our own insufficiency, and earnestly pondering how we need all that we seek, join with this prayer an earnest - nay, burning - desire to attain it
# that anyone who stands before God to pray, in his humility giving glory to God, abandon all thought of his own glory
# cast down and overcome by true humility, we should nonetheless be encouraged to pray by a sure hope that our prayer will be answered
John Calvin, Institutes 3.20

These make sense today as they did in the 16th century - and may stand as a corrctive to our sometimes sloppy attitude towards God and our spiritual discipline of prayer.

God and our prayer

'The power of prayer depends almost entirely upon our apprehension of who it is with whom we speak' - Andrew Murray.

dark & light

'We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light' - Plato

the truth

'The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it' - George Orwell

One foot raised . . .

We ought to learn to have one foot raised to take our departure when it pleases God - John Calvin. I like the image!

The Lord's willingness

See, the Lord's hand is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear - Isaiah 59.1-2. Puts the responsibility where it belongs. And, the willingness, too!

Church and religious experience

Reid's law of religious evasion: 'We structure our churches and maintain them so as to shield us from God and to protect us from genuine religious experience.' He also comments: 'The adult members of churches today do not raise serious religious questions for fear of revealing their doubts or being thought of as strange. There is an implicit conspiracy of slience on religious matters in churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree.' There is a lot of truth in this comment!

Rely on grace

God forgives but people remember. That is why we have to rely on God's grace and not people's memory! Mike Pilavachi. Life and Scripture assures us that this is true!

new catalogue out

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the Lord's intimacy

"The crooked man is an abomination to the Lord, but he is intimate with the upright" - Proverbs 3.32

corpses

'The analogy may be strong and extreme; but it is well to be reminded that a number of corpses put together will not produce a resurrection' - Gwyn Walters

His rule

We discover the effectiveness of his rule with us precisely in the details of day-to-day existence. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy - great challenge to my Christian walk. A book worth reading!

perfection

The first thing is always what God wills as Creator; but—even apart from our sin—it is not the last. For he wills to lead the creation out beyond itself, into the perfecting of all things. God does not preserve the world simply in order to preserve it, but in order that he may perfect it. Emil Brunner

the danger of self rejection

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

prayer

We have a great new book by David Cohen, Why O Lord? (9781842277546: published in March) about praying in difficult circumstances. Have a look at the following article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9953128/Britons-still-believe-in-prayer-and-young-lead-the-way-poll-suggests.html

Justification

He justifies not partially, but freely, so that the sinner can appear in the heavens as if clothed with the purity of Christ - Calvin, Institutes 3.11.11, Yeah, that's it!

The Holy Spirit

He would have us not rest in outward masks, but depend solely on the internal power of the Holy Spirit - John Calvin, Comm. 1 Cor. 4.20

church, again . . .

'Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them. A church can never be reduced to a place where goods and services are exchanged. It must never be a place where a person is labeled. It can never be a place where gossip is perpetuated. Before anything else, it is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus' name. A place where dignity is conferred' - Eugene Peterson, The Pastor, 40.

Petersen on large churches

Eugene Peterson shares in his book, "The Pastor: A Memoir" (p.133), a letter he wrote to someone who abandoned a study group he was in for a pastorate in a large congregation (the quote is only a portion of the letter):

"I certainly understand the appeal and feel it frequently myself. But I am also suspicious of the appeal and believe that gratifying it is destructive both to the gospel and the pastoral vocation. It is the kind of thing America specializes in, and one of the consequences is that American religion and the pastoral vocation are in a shabby state.

It is also the kind of thing for which we have abundant documentation through twenty centuries now, of debilitating both congregation ad pastor. In general terms, it is the devil’s temptation to Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple. Every time the church’s leaders depersonalize even a little, the worshipping/loving community, the gospel is weakened. And size is the great depersonalizer. Kierkegaard’s criticism is still cogent: “the more people, the less truth.”

The only way the Christian life is brought to maturity is through intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening. And the pastor is in a key position to nurture such maturity. It is true that these things can take place in the context of large congregations, but only by strenuously going against the grain. Largeness is an impediment, not a help."
I took this from Graham Hill's Facebook - thanks, Graham.

Comfort zone

What if my comfort zone is simply the sphere of my gifting? Does God still want me out of it?

Costly grace

'Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.' Bonhoeffer wrote this in 1937, yet we seem to have learned very little.

'Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth . . . Cheap grace means justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. . . . Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a [person] must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son' from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Church-community

The church-community is thus able to bear the sins that none of its members can bear alone: it is able to bear more than all of its members combined. As such, it is a spiritual reality that is more than the sum of all the individuals. Not all the individuals, but the church-community as a whole in Christ is the 'body of Christ'; it is Christ existing as church-community. It bears the sins by receiving forgiveness through the word and seeing its sins wiped out on the cross. It is by the word alone, but in doing so it has the Spirit. It is the bearer of the word, its steward and its instrument. It has authority, provided it has faith in the authority of the word; it can take the sins of individuals upon itself, if it builds itself upon the word of the cross, and knows itself reconciled and justified in the cross of Jesus. It has itself died and risen with Christ, and is now the nova creatura (new creation) in Christ. It is not merely a means to an end but also an end in itself. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, 190. This is community!

Repentance

Repentance means being open to the strangeness of resurrection and to the free and boundless initiative of faith - Karl Barth. That's a very positive definition, and a helpful one, I think.

I am only one

'I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do' Helen Keller

righteousness in God

'It becomes evident that we are looking for a righteousness without God, that we are looking, in truth, for a god without God and against God. . . . It is clear that such a god is not god' - Karl Barth writing at the beginning of the last century. How many theologians does it take to encourage us today to seek righteousness only in God?