A prayer for Pentecost:
Almighty God,
on this day you opened the way of eternal life
to every race and nation
by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit:
Shed abroad this gift throughout the world
by the preaching of the Gospel,
that it may reach to the ends of the earth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Categories: prayer
“The Post Office announced that the price of a stamp is going up to 44 cents. This is getting out of control. Yeah. If there were just some other way to send written messages that were free and a million times faster. If you guys think of something, e-mail me.” Jimmy Fallon
HT: Jordan Cooper
Categories: humor
Sample chapter from Steve Addison’s book – Movements that change the World
I especially liked his background work on Patrick in Ireland. One of the better books that I have read relating to this is:
Categories: Books · theology Tuesday
a quote from a fiction book a friend gave to me a few years back…
“A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought – the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider.”
from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Categories: Books · quotes · sermons · theology Tuesday
a couple of things today…
new artist (for me). Good friends of ours (Dan & Heather from MN) – just turned us onto Neko Case. Wow, love her voice.
Love the song – ‘In California’, but could not find it on youtube.
Here is her on Letterman singing ‘This Tornado Loves You’
Also, Coldplay’s new album — free download.
Most of the songs, you probably have heard before – but these are all live from their concerts.
Categories: music Monday
Lewis was once asked, “Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?”
His answer was as follows:
“That’s a question which I cannot answer. My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.
If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.
I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”
God in the Dock, pp. 61-62.
Categories: Kingdom / Church · quotes
According to the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a man who knew a bit about the art and craft of preaching, MP3 sermons are no match for your pastor’s pulpit. He said:
“There is a unity between preacher and hearers and there is a transaction backwards and forwards. That, to me, is true preaching. And that is where you see the essential difference between listening to preaching in a church and listening to a sermon on the television or on the radio. You cannot listen to true preaching in detachment and you must never be in a position where you can turn it off.” (Banner of Truth Magazine, Feb 1990)
HT: Miscellanies
When Tony Campolo was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, his wife was a stay-at-home mom. At faculty functions, she’d invariably get asked what she did and she’d say she was a full-time mom. The reaction was always the same. She felt patronized by the intelligentsia so she redefined her role.
One night at one of the events someone asked her what she did and she said, “I am socializing two Homo Sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teleologically prescribed utopia inherent in the eschaton.”
She paused a moment and then asked, “And what is it that you do?”
HT: Mark Batterson
Categories: family
I probably could have simply linked to this article, but I wanted to add just a thought to this.
A blog I read – DashHouse is going through an old book by Jack Miller entitled, ‘A Heart of a Servant Leader’.
Here is a quote that was shared today:
“Essentially I need to confess to God that I have a deep-seated need to protect and control my life and ministry. Once I acknowledge that hard, painful fact to Him, grace seems to stream into my life. Somehow the Father delights in honesty. Usually when my anxieties dominate and will not go away, I need to face the truth that my devotion is not being given to God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, but to myself.
But His cleansing through the blood of the perfect Lamb has been so powerful and freeing for both you and me. So let’s not be afraid to confess and forsake our ugliest sin and rely on the Spirit enabling us to put on Christ’s love for others. (p.66)”
I can so relate to that. I want desperately to control & protect (mostly control though) — my life & my ministry. The tighter I control, the more ‘peace’ I think I will have. Then I find out again & again, it actually does exactly the opposite & robs me of my peace, & robs me of my joy.
So today, I am trying to be brutally honest with God and admit my obsessiveness with control in my life. (Michelle actually teases me that I am borderline OCD. She might be right).
Today is the day that the Lord has made (whatever today holds, and whatever is staring me in the face today), & today I will rejoice (& let go of my insistence upon control) & be glad in it today! (Ps. 118)
a new friend that I met at Fuller — Robert Howe, who is with IV @ Virginia Tech told me about a book – ‘Sidewalks in the Kingdom’. It is on my reading list. Here is what Robert wrote about the book, & urban life, and also ends with a quote from the book:
Sidewalks in the Kingdom articulates my intuitions about the value of urban life while calling Christians to begin seeing ourselves as “city people” as we anticipate our eternal home – not in a garden or clouds in the sky – but in a city, the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). Author and pastor Eric Jacobsen traces a biblical theology of the city and then draws out contemporary implications from the perspective of an urban planner. While recognizing negative elements usually associated with urban areas (crime, poverty, etc.), Jacobsen chooses to see the city’s redemptive potential.
“So much of our Christian literature seems to be focused on the question of whether and how we can save our cities. It seems to me that we need to adjust this approach and begin to look for ways that our cities can save us. I mean save here not in the sense of salvation from sin – only Christ can do that – but rather save our souls from the damaging effects of uglification, standardization, privatization, and mass consumerism that have fueled this historically unprecedented appetite for sprawl in this country.”
Categories: theology
