(Borrowed from Richard J. Vincent, God In The Ordinary) If we lived in light of God’s presence we would see God in everything. Every aspect of life would be transformed. 1. The secular would become sacred in the presence of God. The distinction between one’s “spiritual life” and one’s “secular life” would evaporate completely. Everything…
Author: Norm
Where am I frustrating God?
SCRIPTURE: Nehemiah 11-13 So I gave them a warning. I called curses down on them. I beat some of them up. I pulled their hair out. I made them take an oath in God’s name. (Nehemiah 13:25) Oh my, Nehemiah, what a violent, un-Christlike response. Without justifying his behaviour, we need to get a sense of his…
Do they sense the presence of God?
“If the church doesn’t reach out to the community, people won’t come. But if people come into our churches and don’t sense the presence of God, they’re not going to return” (Ira Groff, The Soul of Tomorrow’s Church, p.13).
Going public for Jesus
SCRIPTURE: Mark 15:42-47 Joseph was a sincere Jew, a member of the religious leadership that crucified Jesus. Along with Nicodemus (John 19:38-39), another religious leader who had secretly come to Jesus (John 3), he went to give Jesus a proper burial… in his own family burial cave. This is a gutsy move, considering how vehemently the Jewish leaders…
Embracing mystery
More and more I find myself drawn to the concept of mystery. As a student of theology, my mind has attempted to comprehend God and the things of God. But by doing so, I have emptied God of everything that makes God God! The incomprehensible cannot be comprehended. So many teachings of the church –…
The law of attraction
SCRIPTURE: Mark 15:38-41 The law of attraction – or ‘like attracts like’ – helps us understand why so many women were drawn to Jesus. They were accustomed to being used, abused, treated as second-class, or less. They also had the mother’s heart, which is an image of God’s heart, sensitive to suffering and need. Jesus was…
When death dies
SCRIPTURE: Mark 15:33-37 The people do not get what is happening here. The human Jesus dies, the curse of death and hell is fulfilled. Like Jesus, we will all die, and we will all take our last breath. But more is going on here… Jesus is God in human form, dying death for us. In a…
The king of the hill!
SCRIPTURE: Mark 15:27-32 Save yourself! – this is the motto of the ‘ubermensch’, the superman. Survival of the fittest, the king of the hill, only the strongest survive, every person for themselves. So much for Jesus king of Israel, the only hill He is king of is Golgotha. Jesus defies this motto, He refuses to play…
Let all those whose hearts are honest praise Him
SCRIPTURE: Psalm 64 Do you know anyone who is evil? I don’t mean in the general sense that we’re all sinners… but someone like David describes. They make evil plans, their tongues are swords, their words are arrows, they attack the innocent, they cleverly scheme ways to bring them down, they have no fear of getting…
Make my hands stronger
SCRIPTURE: Nehemiah 6-10 All of them were trying to frighten us. They thought, “Their hands will get too weak to do the work. So it won’t be completed. But I prayed to God. I said, “Make my hands stronger.” (Nehemiah 6:9) Discouragement, distraction, deception, despair… tactics of the enemy to keep us from doing God’s work. Whenever…