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We think we have “ultimate question” but we don’t
“What do I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17) We want the “ultimate answers” settled without looking right in front of us. If we’d look right in front of us we’d find the answers to our “ultimate” questions. And we’d find those “ultimate” questions less vital.
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My house shall be a house of prayer
I am sure I have posted about this before, but this insight from N.T. Wright on this passage well worth repeating! 12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house…
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The Kingdom of God and wineskins
Mark 2:22 (NIV): And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” What Jesus is doing can’t be fitted in to the existing ways of thinking and living. If people try to do that they’ll…
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Incarnation — the work of God in a weary world
I remember hearing the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the writing of his poem, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”. I was reminded of it again as I read an article by Kristen O’Neal on the subject of the poem. The entire article is well worth your time to read. These last few paragraphs are deeply meaningful to…
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We have lost imagination in ministry
I have no sense of imagination. I will miss Eugene Peterson. Peterson saw pastors moving from church to church, often in exhaustion, and identified the problem—a sense of pastor as program director for a church that often viewed the gospel as a way to success, or at least avoidance of suffering. His answer was a paradigm shift, but not the…
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The freedom found in Christ
“The fact that those freed by the divine action still live in the world does not mean that they belong to the world, as though possessed by the world and incorporated into its structure. They are indeed in themselves finite individuals, but are no longer in slavery for — through the process of dying and rising with Christ — they…
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The power of self-giving love
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45, NIV) Self-giving love is the key. This is the power set loose on the world. This is the heart of the revolution launched on Good Friday. (NT Wright, “The Day the Revolution Began”)
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The hard questions
Jesus isn’t afraid of the hard questions. We like to think we’re not afraid of the hard questions… but we don’t ask hard questions. Not like Jesus. The rich young ruler comes to Jesus in Luke 18 and asks what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus’ probing is what kept him from full commitment.
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Paying attention to the margins
Who does God receive? The ones without status. The ones society doesn’t recognize. Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him and said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom…
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Jesus will invade your “safe place”
If you think you don’t like “the Church” because of Christians… just wait until you actually meet Jesus.
Category: Gospel
