SCRIPTURE: Mark 16:1-8 “You are looking for Jesus… He is not here!” (Mark 16:6) If you were looking for Jesus, where would you look? In church, in heaven, in a historical account, nowhere, He never existed, or He’s dead and gone? The women would naturally look for Jesus’ body in the tomb, after all He died, He…
If God is with us… (Part 3)
(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. 3. When we see God in everything, we discover that there are truly no wasted moments in life. God can be known in all aspects…
Charged with the grandeur of God
SCRIPTURE: Psalm 65 “The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.” Can you feel the awe, the mystery, the depth of wonder and beauty within every thing? A stone, a firefly, a lightning bolt, a shimmering lake, an eye, a loving embrace,…
If God is with us… (Part 2)
(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. 2. The small would become great in the presence of God. We would realize that there are no trivial things in the sight of God….
If God is with us… (Part 1)
(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…
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…