Be who Jesus intended

“You cannot become who Jesus intended if you do not do what he intended you to do.”

--Alan Hirsch

Be a Virus

We can talk about things, but unless we are carriers we can’t actually give to others.  (We can talk about the flu, but unless you are a carrier you can’t give to others.  Same for prayer, faith, spirit, etc.)

--David Blackwell

Consider the Asparagus

Asparagus takes 7 years to grow (looks like it’s dying for first 6.5 years) then it grows an inch a day.

Steve Sjogren

Death before life

“The UMC has got another 10 or 15 years of dying before we see it turn around if we do the right things today.”

--Adam Hamilton

Singleness of Purpose

CB: Dogs are really kind of peculiar... all they ever think about is eating... I call it a lack of depth.
Snoopy: I prefer to think of it as singleness of purpose!

Peanuts

Yeast Thoughts

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 13:33 (NRSV)
Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

Yeast makes bread rise because of the bubbles of gas that it produces. When the yeast is mixed throughout the dough, the bread rises and has the proper rough and airy texture. But if all of the yeast is lumped together in one small part of the dough, the bread won't rise evenly and will have big, empty holes in it. Even so, the church — the people of the Kingdom — must be intimately involved in life, in the world, in the flour of humanity. When we have clustered ourselves together, fearfully barricaded behind sanctuary walls, we have created great, empty holes in God's world that are filled with nothing but hot air. But if we who call ourselves yeast are willing to become so involved in the pain, the despair, and the laughter of life that our main concern becomes enabling people to grow into all that they can be — then God's bread will become perfect in quality, with yeast permeating every part of the dough. Being involved with life — intimately mixed through and through it — sounds dangerous. Yeast dies in the oven, having lost itself to the creation of something new. May we also be willing to lose ourselves. 

by Mike Hodge

Idealism and the Search for Meaning

Victor Frankl lecture

Confront Truth with Truth

Jesus' mind was in more than one respect the mind of a poet.  Now poets rarely qualify their statements.  The poet sees a truth about life and affirms it simply and boldly.  But few if any truths stand alone; no truth is the whole truth.  And when we move from the realm of insight into the realm of action, we must confront truth with truth and hope to attain to wisdom.

The Interpreter's Bible (Luke/John) p 204; Talking about Ask, Seek, Knock teaching

Note--Not sure I 100% agree that no truth is the whole truth, but I do like the imagery of confronting truth with truth as a way of talking about the difficult passages of scripture.

The Window Through Which We Look

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood
The next morning while they were eating breakfast,
The young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
'That laundry is not very clean,' she said.
'She doesn't know how to wash correctly.
Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.'

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry,
The young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean
wash on the line and said to her husband:

'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly.
I wonder who taught her this.'

The husband said,'I got up early this morning and
Cleaned our windows.'
And so it is with life.
What we see when watching others
Depends on the window through which we look

--Anonymous

Holy Goose

My brother has spent a lot of time studying the Celts and their missionary journeys. He lit up with recognition as we talked and said: “Do you know were the phrase a wild goose chase comes from?” The phrase symbolized, for me, a useless, futile exercise that produced nothing. I wasn’t prepared for the explanation he shared. The Celts had a name for the Holy Spirit - an Geadh-Glas which means the wild goose.  By this they meant that the Spirit of God can’t be put in a neat box, confined to a vision and values statement or tamed within a strategic plan. The wild goose is unpredictable (like the wind). Taking seriously this sense of God, Celtic missionaries went on wild goose chases entering the spaces, towns, hamlets, and villages of 7th century England in the conviction that the wild goose was out there ahead of them. They were open to being surprised by the wild goose, prayerfully asking what God was doing and joining there by naming the name of Jesus, dwelling among people and opening the great story of God’s love and grace.

Alan Roxburgh 

Communal life

Communal life is again being recognized by Christans today as the grace that it is, as the extraordinary, the “roses and lilies” of Christian life.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p21

Body of Christ

Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the incarnation, on the Cross, and in his resurrection. We belong to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures call us the Body of Christ.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p24

disillusionment

Just as surely as god desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.


…

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will no his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my boether becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that on Word and Deed which really binds us together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mist of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p 27, 28-29

Human love, spirit love

Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual loves lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjections, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word. Human love breeds hothouse flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God’s good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p37

To whom the morning belongs

The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p41

Proper reading of the scriptures is not a technical exercise that can be learned; it is something that grows or diminishes according to one’s own spiritual frame of mind. The crude, ponderous rendition of the Bible by many a Christian grown old in experience often far surpasses the most highly polished reading of a minister.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p56-57

New Song

The new song is sung first in the heart. Otherwise it cannot be sung at all.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p58

Our bread

The table fellowship of Christians implies obligation. It is our daily bread that we eat, not my own. We share our bread. Thus we are firmly bound to one another not only in the Spirit but in our whole physical being. The one bread that is given to our fellowship links us together in a firm covenant. Now none dares go hungry as long as another has bread, and he who breaks this fellowship of the physical life also breaks the fellowship of the Spirit.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p68

Speak surely

None speaketh surely but he that would gladly keep silence if he might.


Thomas a Kempis

Listen, speak

We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p99

Seek God, not happiness

“Seek God, not happiness”—this is the fundamental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p84

Interrupted by God

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p99

God alone

God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p107

Closed Doors

A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.


Antonio Prochia

Four royal sons were questioning what specialty they should master. They said to one antoerh, “let us search the earth and learn a special science.” So they decided, and after they had agreed on a place where they would meet again, the four brothers started off, each in a different direction. Time went by, and the brothers met again at an appointed meeting place, and they asked one another what they had learned. “I have mastered a sciences,” said the first, “which makes it possible for me, if I have nothing but a pieces of bone of some creature, to create straightaway the flesh that goes with it.” “I,” said the second, “know how to grow that creatures’ skin and hair if there is flesh on its bones.” The third said, “I am able to create its limbs if I have the flesh, the skin and the hair.” “And I,” concluded the fourth, “know how to give life to that creature if its form is complete with limbs.”


Thereupon the four brothers went into the jungle to find a piece of bone so that they could demonstrate their specialties. As fate would have it, the bone they found was a lion’s, but they did not know that and picked up the bone. One added flesh to the bone, the second grew hid and hair, the third completed it with matching limbs, and the fourth gave the lion life. Shaking its heavy mane, the ferocious beast arose with its menacing mouth, sharp teeth, and merciless claws and jumped on his creators. He killed them all and vanished contentedly into the jungle.

Tales of Ancient India

Conversion and Revolution

I am increasingly convinced that conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p19

Commpassionate Christianity

Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that men feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty that the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends’ eyes and our hatred I their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For the compassionate man nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p41

People of prayer

The Christian leader must be in the future what he has always had to be in the past: a man of prayer, a man who has to pray, and who has to pray always.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p47

Being presence

Nobody can offer leadership to anyone unless he makes his presence known—that is, unless he steps forward out of the anonymity and apathy of his milieu and makes the possibility of fellowship visible.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p65

Eyes full of expectation

A Christian leader is not a leader because he announces a new idea and tries to convince others of its worth; he is a leader because he faces the world with eyes full of expectation, with the expertise to take away the veil that covers its hidden potential.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p75

Community

Community arises where the sharing of pain takes place, not as a stifling form of self-complaint, but as a recognition of God’s saving promises.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p94

Announcement!

But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer: “The master is coming—not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.”


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p95

800 Pacos

There's a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read: Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father. On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Bits & Pieces, October 15, 1992, p. 13.

Andre Gide describes the time when he observed a moth being reborn from its chrysalis during a classroom lecture. He was filled with wonder, awe, joy at this metamorphosis, this resurrection. Enthusiastically, he showed it to his professor who replied with a note of disapproval, “What! Did you know that a chrysalis is the envelope of a butterfly? Every butterfly you see has come out of a chrysalis. It’s perfectly nature.” Disillusioned, Gide wrote, “Yes, indeed, I know my natural history as well, perhaps better than he…But because it was natural could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature! From that day I took a dislike to him and a loathing to his lessons.”


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 73

If we love creation...

Of this much we can be sure: if we love the creation, we will learn from it.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 74

Freedom from Anxiety

Freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitude. If what we have we receive as a gift, and if what we have is to be cared from by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will posses freedom from anxiety. This is the inward reality of simplicity. However, if what we have we believe we have gotten, and if what we have we believe we must hold onto, and if what we have is not available to others, then we will live in anxiety.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p88

Cross-life

The most radical social teaching of Jesus was his total reversal of the contemporary notion of greatness. Leadership is found in becoming the servant of all. Power is discovered in submission. The foremost symbol of this radical servanthood is the cross. “He [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). But note this: Christ not only died a “cross-death,” he lived a “cross-life”. The way of the cross, the way of a suffering servant was essential to his ministry. Jesus lived the cross-life in submission to all human beings. He was the servant of all. He flatly rejected the cultural givens of position and power when he said, “You are not to be called rabbi….Neither be called masters…” (Matthew 23:8-10). Jesus shattered the customs of his day when he lived out the cross-life by taking women seriously and by being willing to meet with children. He lived the cross-life when he took a towel and washed the feet of is disciples. This Jesus who easily could have called down a legion of angels to his aid chose instead the cross-death of Calvary. Jesus’ life was the cross-life of submission and service. Jesus’ death ewas the cross-death of conquest by suffering.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 115-116

As Thou Wilt

As thou wilt; what thou wilt; when thou wilt.


Thomas a Kempis

Greatest and Least

Whenever there is trouble over who is the greatest, there is trouble over who is least. That is the crux of the matter for us isn’t it? Most of us know we will never be the greatest; just don’t let us be the least.


Gathered at the Passover feast, the disciples were keenly aware that someone needed to wash the others’ feet. The problem was that the only people who washed feet were the least. So there they sat, feet caked with dirt. It was such a sore point that they were not even going to talk about it. No one wanted to be considered the least. The Jesus took a towel and a basin and redefined greatness.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 126

True Service

True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service. Where a difference is noted, the true servant is often drawn to the small service, not out of false modesty, but because he genuinely sees it as the more important task. He indiscriminately welcomes all opportunities to serve.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p128

Service of Common Courtesy

There is the service of common courtesy. Such deeds o f compassion have fallen on hard times in our day. But we must never despise the rituals of relationship that are in every culture. It is one of the few ways left in modern society to acknowledge the value of one another. We are “to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all men” (Titus 3:2).


Missionaries understand the value of courtesy. They would not dare to blunder into some village demanding to be heard without first going through the appropriate rituals of introduction and acquaintanceship. Yet we feel we can violate these rituals in our own culture and still be received and heard. And we wonder why no one will listen.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p137

A Morning Prayer

Begin the day by praying, “Lord Jesus, as it would please you bring me someone today whom I can serve.”


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p140

Confession

Although I had read in the Bible about the ministry of confession in the Christian brotherhood [family], I had never experienced it until I was pasturing my first church. I did not take the difficult step of laying bare my inner life to another out of any deep burden or sense of sin. I did not feel there was anything wrong in the least—except one thing. I longed for more power to do the work of God. I felt inadequate to deal with many of the desperate needs that confronted me. There had to be more spiritual resources than I was experiencing (and I’d had all the Holy spirit experiences you’re supposed to have; you name them, I’d had them!) “Lord,” I prayed, “is there more you want to bring into my life? I want to be conquered and ruled by you. If there is anything blocking the flow of your power, reveal it to me.” He did. Not by an audible voice or even through any human voice, but simply by a growing impression that perhaps something in my past was impeding the flow of his life. So devised a plan. I divided my life into three periods: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. On the first day I came before God in prayer and meditation, pencil and paper in hand. Inviting him to reveal to me anything during my childhood that needed either forgiveness or healing or both, I waited in absolute silence for some ten minutes. Anything about my childhood that surfaced to my conscious mind, I wrote down. I made no attempt to analyze the items or put any value judgment on them. My assurance was that God would reveal anything that needed healing touch. Having finished, I put the pencil and paper down for the day. The next day I went through the same exercise for my adolescent years, and the third day for my adult years.


Paper in hand, I then went to a dear brother in Christ. I had made arrangements with him a week ahead so he understood the purpose of our meeting. Slowly, sometimes painfully, I read my sheet, adding only those comments necessary to make the sin clear. When I had finished, I began to return the paper to my briefcase. Wisely, my counselor/confessor gently stopped my hand and took the sheet of paper. Without a word he took a wastebasket, and, as I watched, he tore the paper into hundreds of tiny pieces and dropped them into it. That powerful, nonverbal expression of forgiveness was followed by a simple absolution. My sins, I knew, were as far away as the east is from the west.

Next, my friend, with the laying on of hands, prayed a prayer of healing for all the sorrows and hurts of the past. The power of that prayer lives with me today.

I cannot say I experienced any dramatic feelings. I did not. In fact, the entire experience was an act of sheer obedience with no compelling feelings in the least. But I am convinced that it set me free in ways I had not known before. It seemed that I was released to explore what were for me new and uncharted regions of the Spirit. Following that event, I began to move into several of the Disciplines described in this book that I had never experienced before. Was there a causal connection? I do not know, and frankly I do not care. It is enough to have obeyed the inner prompting from above.

There was one interesting sidelight. The exposure of my humanity evidently sparked a freedom in my counselor/friend, for directly following his prayer for me, he was able to express a deep and troubling sin that he had been unable to confess until then. Freedom begets freedom.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p149-150

Spirit touches spirit

We can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p158-159

Go!

So go, even if you don’t feel like it. God, even if worship has been discouraging and dry before. Go, praying. Go, expecting. Go, looking for God to do a new and living work among you.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p172-173

Unity in the Spirit

A classic and dramatic illustration [of spirit-given unity] occurred in 1758. John Woolman and others had pricked the conscience of the Society of Friends over their involvement int eh demonic institution of slavery. As Philadelphia Yearly Meeting gathered for its business meetins that year, the slavery issue was a mojor agenda item. A great deal with at stake and the issue was hotly debated. John Woolman, with head bowed and tears in his eyes, sat through the various sessions in complete silence. Finally, after hours of agonizing prayer he rose and spoek. “my mind is led to consider the purity of the divin Being and the justice of His judgment, and herein my sould is covered with arfulness…Many slaves on this continent are oppressed and their cries have entered into the ears of the Most High…It is not a time for delay.” Firmly and tenderly Woolman dealt with the problems of the “private interests of some person” and the “friendships which do not stand upon ummutable foundation.” With prophetic boldness he warned the Yearly Meeting that if it failed to do its “duty in firmness and constancy” then “God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in the matter.”


The entire Yearly Meeitng melted into a spirit of unity as a result of the compassionate witness. They responded as one voice to remove slavery from their midst. John Greenleaf Whittier states that those sessions “must ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations int eh history of the Christian Church.”

That untied decision is particularly impressive when we realize that the Society of Friends was the only body that asked slaveholding members to reimburse their slaves for their time in bondage. It is also striking to realize that under the prompting of the Spirit, Quakers had voluntarily done something that not only of the antislavery revolutionary leaders—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry—was willing to do. So influential was the united decision of 1758 that by the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence Quakers had completely freed themselves from the institution o slavery.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p183-184

Prayer in Schools

A friend of mine who teaches emotionally handicapped children decided Godwanted him to pray for them. Of course, he did not tell the children what he was doing; he simply did it. When one of the children would crawl under his desk and assume a fetal position, my teacher friend would take the child in his arms and pray silently that the resurrected Christ would heal the hurt and self-hate within the boy. So as not to embarrass him, the teacher would walk around the room continuing his regular duties while he prayed. After a while the child would relax and was soon back at his desk. Sometimes my friend would ask the boy if he ever remembered what it felt like to win a race. If the boy said yes, he would encourage him to picgture himself crossing the finish line with all his friends cheering him on and loving him. In that way the child was able to cooperate in the prayer project as well as reinforce his own self-acceptance. (Is it not ironic that people will be deeply concerned over the issue of prayer in public schools but will seldom utilize the opportunity to pray for schoolchildren in this way, against which there can be no law!) By the end of the school year, every child but two was able to return to a regular classroom. Coincidence? Perhaps, but as Archbishop William Temple notes, the coincidences occur much more frequently when he prays.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p42-43

I was once called to a home to pray for a seriously ill baby girl. Her four-year-old brother was I the room, and so I told him I needed his help to pray for his baby sister. He was delighted, and so was I since I know that children can often pray with unusual effectiveness. He climbed up into the chair beside me. “Let’s play a little game,” I said. “Since we know that Jesus is always with us, let’s imagine that he is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to center our attention on him. When we see him, we start thinking more about his love that how sick Julie is. He smiles, gets up and comes over to us. Then, let’s both put our hands on Julie, and when we do, Jesus will put his hands on top of ours. We’ll watch the light from Jesus flow into your little sister and make her well. Let’s watch the healing power of Christ fight with bad germs until they are all gone. Okay?” Seriously, the little on nodded. Together we prayed in this childlike way and then thanked the Lord that what we had prayed was the way it was going to be. Now, I do not know exactly what happed, now how it was accomplished, but I do know that the next morning Julie with perfectly well.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p41-42

Deep People

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p1

Change Thyself

Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.


Leo Tolstoy

In Contemporary society, our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, crowds.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p15

Risky Business

Once [the Isrealites] leaned a little about God, they realized that being in his presence was risky business and told Moses so: “you speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.” (Ex 20:19). In this way they could maintain religious respectability without the attendant risks.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p17

What Joy it is!

Only to sit and think of God,
    Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the name.
   Earth has no higher bliss

Frederick W. Faber

 

Us and God

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel’s fatal mistakes was their insistence upon having a human king rather than resting in the theocratic rule of God over them. We can detect a note of sadness in the word of the Lord, “They have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam 8:7). The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p24

Christianity in Our Time

[A person] who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time.


Thomas Merton

To Pray is...

To pray is to change.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p33

Diet & Fitness Books of the Bible.

BY LAURENCE HUGHES (Found Here)



- - - -



Cross Training



Pontius Pilates



Low-Impact Ecclesiastes



Antiochcidents



Psweatin' to the Psalms



The All-You-Can-Eat Loaves-and-Fishes Diet



The AbsSolution



Power Walking on Water



Good Fat, Bad Fat, Jehoshaphat



The Flat Belly of the Whale Diet



Fit for Life Everlasting



Pillar-of-Salt-Free Cooking



YOU on a Diet of Worms



Take and Eat This, Not That



The Resurrection Regimen: Three Days to a Transmogrified You

Money for bread

A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII, was called by adoring New Yorkers 'the Little Flower' because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.




Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor." the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson." LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions--ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant." So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.



Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp 91-2.

How God treats repentant sinners

When Billy Graham was driving through a small southern town, he was stopped by a policeman and charged with speeding. Graham admitted his quilt, but was told by the officer that he would have to appear in court.

The judge asked, "Guilty, or not guilty?" When Graham pleaded guilty, the judge replied, "That'll be ten dollars -- a dollar for every mile you went over the limit."

Suddenly the judge recognized the famous minister. "You have violated the law," he said. "The fine must be paid--but I am going to pay it for you." He took a ten dollar bill from his own wallet, attached it to the ticket, and then took Graham out and bought him a steak dinner! "That," said Billy Graham, "is how God treats repentant sinners!"

Progress Magazine, December 14, 1992.

Better Story

"Do in life what makes for a better story."

--Craig Warren's facebook status (anonymous) 

A Surprising God

I just love it when God ends up being much better than my beliefs about God.

--Paul Carpenter's Facebook Status

Every age and every generation

Every age has its own exodus.  --Shane Claiborne

And every generation needs a new Moses.  --John M. Perkins

--Follow Me to Freedom p 43

Hope for peace

In the year 2000, Tommy Tarrants and I traveled together to Amman, Jordan, to speak at an international meeting on peace. So there we were: Tommy, a former Ku Klux Klansman, and myself, a black from Mississippi, standing next to a lineup of Nobel Prize winners for peace and reconciliation. The kind of Jordan was there with his delegates too. He said, “When a black man from Mississippi and a white Ku Klux Klansman can become friends, there is hope for the Jews and Arabs.” That was wonderful. But hope has to be in Jesus Christ! The reconciliation came because that Ku Klux Klansman met Jesus Christ and because that black boy from Mississippi met Jesus Christ. It was His death on the cross that pulled this white supremacist and me together. Only because Jesus reconciled us could we stand side by side on a platform next to the king of Jordan as a symbol of hope for peace in the Middle East.


--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 42

God switches sides

"We are all tempted with the counterfeit power our hands can wield and the sense that we are invincible because God is on our side.  That's precisely when God starts to switch sides.

--Shane Claiborne in Follow Me to Freedom p 41

God has called you for this moment

There has to come a time in your pilgrimage when you become conscious that God put you in a specific place, for a specific time and He’s leading you. It’s fearful. It’s painful. It’s too big for you. Moses experienced all of these things. But, like him, you must feel that quiet sense of serenity that God has called you for this moment. It is humbling.


I don’t talk about this much, but I knew my time had come when almost a hundred men would come at night and protect my house. It was Mississippi in the mid-1960’s, and the civil rights movement was already going. Those men would say, “You go to bed. We’ll protect these kids. You are here to do what we can’t do, and it’s our task to protect you.” That’s when I knew that God had called me. These men were so noble. They loved me so dearly. They were old men, and they had been dreaming and longing for someone to come and lead them. I respected them so much that I was afraid of them.

--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 39

Everything he had been trained to do...

One of the most popular preachers I’ve heard in a long time was an astronaut named Scott Carpenter. In February 1962, Carpenter became the second American to orbit Earth. Upon reentry, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned, and he had to manually take control of his mercury-Atlas 7 rocket. It was one of the most successful on the early NASA missions. Carpenter is a humble guy, but to hear him tell the story is to hear a powerful message on courage. He says, all he did on that flight was everything that he had been taught to do. And though he maneuvered the spacecraft with precision, he felt it (and his own life) might be lost. Finally he brought Mercury-Atlas 7 in for a slash landing—several hundred miles off course, but safe.


--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 28

[Note—what struck me is that he did what he was trained to do. When all else fails and you don’t know what to do, you do the obvious. Greatest commandments—love God, love neighbor. You seek God in prayer, fasting, worship. You find a way to serve and love people in the name of Christ.]

Give it away

...Just goes to prove that the best way to take away money's power is to give it away.  Keep doing that, and eventually it won't be worth much.  Meaning will be left to relationships and friendships and the sense of community.

--Shane Claiborne in Follow Me to Freedom p 37

Why Not?

In the stage play Back to Methuselah, George Bernard Shaw wrote, "You see things; and you say, 'Why?'  But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'

I knew it

One day, before an important meeting with some important people who had come to Jackson to see me, my wife, Vera Mae, came over with Varah [my granddaughter] and her bicycle, which had two flats. Varah softly asked, “Grandpa, will you fix my bike?” I’m thinking, I ain’t got time. “Will you fix my bike?” I thought about it a few seconds, looked into her eyes that were calling out to me and then said, “Sure. The people here to meet me can wait. I’m going to do this right now.”


I got my pump going and fixed her flat. Itonly took me a few minutes. Iput her on her bike and pushed her. I had taught her how to ride the bike. I had put her first training wheelson and was with her the first time she ever went without them. There was no way I could leaver herwith two flats. When she learned to swim, I was in the swimming pool and taught her. She thinks her granddaddy can do everything. (Don’t tell her otherwise!) And when I fixed her flats, I said, “You know, you’re the most important person in my life right now.” With her little smile, she said, “I knew it, but I wouldn’t say it.”

Oh, man! She knew it! What if I had blown the chance to affirm her? Children (and grandchildren) need to know they are important.

--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 28

Tell Me Why

One spring, in the early 1980’s, the great American folk preacher and storyteller Tex Evans was to preach one Sunday at a Methodist church in Maryland. The special occasion was the tow hundredth anniversary of the day when Methodism’s apostle to America, Francis Asbury, crossed the nearby river on horseback to preach to the gathered townspeople and plant a new Methodist church. Before the service, several men strolled with Tex the fifty yards to the river that Asbury and his horse once crossed. One man reported, “The rains had been heavy that spring. The river was swollen and raging; it was perilous to cross it. Do you want us to tell you how Asbury and his horse came across the river?” Tex reflected and said, “No. I want you to tell me why he crossed it!”


The men could not tell him. They had no idea, no clue. Evans scrapped his planned address, scribbled some notes on a card, and in his sermon explained to the people what is in Christianity’s good news and in the experience of truth and power that would compel someone to bring the good news, at personal risk, to people. The pathology that Evans discovered in a church in Maryland was not an isolated problem. Most churches in North America and Europe, and many churches on all of the other continents, are afflicted with amnesia. They no longer remember who they are; they have forgotten their main business. As Paul Little once observed, “Most churches are not fishers of men; they are keepers of the aquarium!”

--George G. Hunter III in The Apostolic Congregation p 29

On Social Justice: Taking charity to the next level

“Beyond the United States, on all inhabited continents, some churches that have been reaching pre-Christian people are discovering that Christians are called to be kingdom people who work to change communities and nations. Churches that for years have dispensed medicine to sick children now also work for clean water and sanitation so there will be fewer sick children. Churches that have ministered to AIDS patients and their families now also work for the laws and lifestyle changes that will prevent many people form ever contracting AIDS. Churches that have helped poor people are now also digging wells; starting schools; pioneering cottage industries; advocating for roads, electricity and jobs; and engaging in other interventions to help abjectly poor people reach the lowest step on the economic ladder. A recent global study demonstrates that many Pentecostal churches in the branch of Christianity long considered the least socially prophetic are now socially engaged and are changing communities.”

--George G. Hunter III in The Apostolic Congregation p 35

Through the grapvine...

"Jesus gave us a powerful symbol in John 15 for this relationship of participating in the work of God. The image is that of a grapevine. The thick, long vine grows along the ground or attaches itself by tendrils to another tree or a frame. From the vine, little branches shoot out, intertwining as they climb. From these branches the clusters of grapes come forth. A cultivated grapevine may grow very long and high, with many bunches of fruit hanging down.

The grapevines had long been a symbol for Israel, God’s people. Commentator Ray Summers notes that on the temple in Jerusalem, a huge grapevine was carved into the stone of the entrance. Its trunk rose higher than a person and its branches spread out farther above, adorned with rich gold leaves and bunches of gilded grapes. Moreover, during the brief time of Israel’s revolt against Rome, the coins minted bore the grapevine as the symbol of the nation. The grapevine served as an image of hope that the people could be something fruitful for their God.

But in reality, the grapevine became a reminder of failure. The Hebrew prophets often employed this figure of speech in terms of judgment (see Isaiah 5:1-10): Israel, the vine that had not produced the fruit God expected. Instead of choice fruit, wild grapes had sprung forth worthless either for wine or food. God’s people, by their own efforts, could not fulfill their task in the world.

Jesus, however, employed the symbol in a new way. Summers suggests that the conversation recorded in John 15, on the night before the crucifixion, may have taken place near the Temple, under the light of the Passover moon, with its beams shining upon the engraved vine on the temple entrance. Here Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5). This understanding is crucial. Jesus took Israel’s place. He stood in for God’s people as the one who is expected to produce the fruit of obedience, worship, and faithfulness. In effect, Jesus said, “I am that vine on the Temple. I have come to be the source, the very plant that produces fruit for God. Now you are the branches that grown from me, the vine. You are the tiny shoots that come forth and in due season bear the grapes. So stay connected to me.”

Jesus’ image was stunningly obvious. Branches don’t try to live apart from the vine. They are just there, effortlessly letting the vine produce its life through them, resulting in a harvest of grapes. No branch leaps off the tree. No branch tries to do anything. Branches simply remain, held by the vine, yielding fruit. We are to do the same. Not remaining in the vine has predictable consequences: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. …Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). Cut off from the vine, the branches might as well be thrown away. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.

…What are we supposed to do in the world for God? We begin by abiding in the vine. Moment by moment as life happens around us, we say, “Jesus, produce your life in me. I will go where ou send me. I offer my life in your service to those around me—not because I am even able to be available to you but because you have grafted me into the vine. You produce fruit through me.” Living reliance on the vine makes radical availability possible.

…This reliance runs counter to our usual thinking. We chastise ourselves: I must do more for God. It seems impossible that doing nothing for God of our own will accomplishes far more. It feels as if we’ll just be sitting around singing while the world dies. But as we begin to abide in the vine, inviting Jesus to produce his life in us and getting ourselves out of the way, our lives will become fruitful beyond imagination.

--Companions in Christ pp191-192, 194