In the early 13th century as Francis of Assisi began to gather followers around him and then, having establishing his order with the pope, Francis sent out his monks with these words, “Preach the gospel everywhere, and when necessary use words.” 800 years later we can only imagine what was in his mind, but this […]
Overcoming our Lack of Love for Christ’s church “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” Paul sets forth in this statement from 1 Corinthians 12:13 a guiding principle for how we are called to be the […]
41, 000 Christian denominations and organizations in the world!! That figure is from The Center for the Study of Global Christianity. When I looked this figure up two years ago, the number was 37,000. Clearly the church has splintered off and again and again, way beyond what the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century might […]
What if all Christians were to love one another? What if all the splintered Lutherans loved each other: the Missouri Synod people and the Evangelicals? the Presbyterian Church in the USA people loved the Orthodox Presbyterians and the other more conservative Presbyterians loved each other? the United Methodist people loved the African Methodist Episcopal […]
The most important part of the listed sayings about love that I posted last week is the consistency of love. Either we are partially loving, loving some of the people around us and manipulating everyone in the guise of love, OR we are totally loving everyone in our lives, no exceptions. Love is […]
Love is an openness to, a curiosity about, to desire to know better, to be connected to, to know in depth—a positive expectancy towards the object of love. Love is not assumptions and expectations about who someone else is. Love is allowing another to be who they are. Love is not manipulative or forcing […]
As we grow into the relationship with Christ, Love’s light shines brightly in the bright and dark corners of our psyche, illuminating both our “good deeds” and our shadowy feelings about and actions towards other people. Our judgment, condemnation and fear of other people have to go, if we are ever to feel Love’s presence […]
It’s a funny thing about loving ourselves: it sounds like such a simple thing to do–to turn the eyes of love on ourselves. But love is more demanding than that. We cannot love ourselves and continue the behaviors that come between us and God. Shortly after I surrendered my life to Christ, I was […]