Discipleship is not about techniques and gimmicks. It doesn’t happen HotPocket-quick. It is about being formed in a way of life over the course of time, and with a deep immersion into the practices of the Christian faith. We’ll find transformation in that process, too, and it will reveal within us something we’d never dream of otherwise.
I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity, the Three in One and One in Three – the space-maker who is the source of my freedom, the one who empowers me to defy the forces that seek to restrict me to unbending characterizations or rigid roles.
Live differently. Live in contrast to the lies of the world. Live in contrast to the false teachings and the false teachers. Let your truthful life point at the truth you know and the truth you teach.
Jesus left His disciples. Jesus said, “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20). It wasn’t much long after that He was taken up into the air. He leaves. What is the most common question or statement made by a person in crisis? Where is God in this? Some days I look around and it is easy to fall into the idea that Jesus isn’t involved in some of these situations. Sometimes it is tough to see Jesus. Is He here? Is He truly with us?
Spirituality equals life. Humor equals a slice of life. Each works best when operating at the same time within the same life.
And so his last words become our legacy. What I have done for you, he says, you must now do for others. It is finished, but it is never finished.
“You can do anything you put your mind to” does not take seriously the problem of sin and our inability to save ourselves. A key conviction of historical Christian orthodoxy is that we are not enough. We cannot ever be the source of our own salvation. Putting your mind to being a better person, from the Christian perspective will fail every time. It is pure works righteousness.
The Trinity is, in my experience, the ultimate collector’s plate. A gilded, limited edition Charles and Diana Wedding commemorative. Purely for admiring. Never for serious use … This is a problem … Because we love what we use. Can we really love the beauty of the Trinity if we never talk about it?
The road that leads into the Kingdom of Heaven runs through fire and axes and water. That road invites us to separate the Kingdom of Self from the Kingdom of God – to let go of things that have no Kingdom value and clear a road for Jesus to come in.
Wesley leads us to the heart of Lent and to the heart of every day of seeking the fullness of life in Christ: such a longing to please our Lord that we want the Holy Spirit to check us at the first sense of pride, wrong desire, or the wandering will — anything, that is, that might “quench the kindling fire.”
The Holy Spirit awakens the total reserve of human nature. It hones our energies and capacities, empowering us to fulfill our God-appointed mission in life.
The protest that is needed in a violent, fragmented and fragile world is the formation of communities of character, where the reality of grace and the possibility of holiness are taught and lived, where individual rights are tempered by membership in the body of diverse gifts.
