As the country opens up after a year + of shutdown due to COVID-19, let us not forget the lessons that we have learned from this year of pandemic and just jump back into our lives as they were before it arrived in March 2020. Let us take a deep breath and remember what this […]
“You have searched me, Lord,/and you know me” are the beginning lines of Psalm 139 with David explaining how much God knows him, and all his ways, all that he is going to say and do. He continues, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” There is nowhere […]
When we live in the truth, as Jesus taught us [John 8:32], the truth will set us free, free from the rules of the culture, our own self-image, from all the “shoulds” of our lives. We don’t realize how enslaved we are to all the world’s ways, until we begin to follow the Indwelling Spirit […]
Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, so that we could go to heaven. But what if that was not the only or, in essence, His primary mission? What if His primary mission was to teach us how to live on this earth amongst all our fellow human beings as servants […]
Nothing is to stand between us and God—not our own ego needs, not our cultural standards of behavior, not our family’s ideas about the choices we should make during our lifetimes, or how we should think. Nothing, if we believe in God and all his covenants and promises to us that the Bible […]
5.17.21 The most important part of our journey in Christ is to be able to identity God’s voice as He speaks to us in our minds. This is so difficult, because our own interior voices are so loud and persistent that they can easily drown out God’s “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). And even […]
Over the last eight weeks I have been doing a series of blog posts on each of the Beatitudes. Today I just want to think through what living the Beatitudes, this core teaching of Jesus’s, means. In this series I have relied on Jim Forest’s image of the Beatitudes as a ladder.[1] He describes our […]
Blessed are the Persecuted (Matthew 10-12), those who stand up to criticism, to denial, to violence, to imprisonment, to total rejection, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This Beatitude is a high bar for us humans, but fortunately, we have many saints who were martyrs in the history of our church who will show […]
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. To be a peacemaker, first of all, means that we have to be at peace. We have to be able to clearly rest in God’s peace, in the “peace that surpasses all understanding [that] will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”[Philippians […]
Over the last few weeks I’ve written about the Beatitudes each as a rung on the ladder[1] which takes us up to the highest expression of human beings in their love of God. Today, we’re looking at the sixth Beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart. It would be easy for us to think that […]