The Slave Is Our Brother – A Call To The Poor
O come, O come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel.That mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel, shall come to thee, O Israel. O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above your deep and dreamless sleep,the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting Light, the hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee tonight. Truly He taught us to love one another, his law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of...
Read MoreThe Christmas Gift of Presence
But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves. These are the God-begotten, not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. John 1:12–14 The Message So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of...
Read MoreWe All Need Deliverance
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil . . . For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:2–3, 6 Everybody needs deliverance from something. Everybody. The world needs deliverance; we see it...
Read MoreA Conspiracy of Hope
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. Romans 4:18–21 Hoping against hope in hope that the God of hope would figure out a way to make...
Read MoreIs The World Spinning Out Of Control?
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Matthew 6:25-27 Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper or even your phone and it is easy to begin to think that the world seems to be spinning out of control. In the wake of recent world events,...
Read MoreIntentionally In Tune
For it came about that when Solomon was old, his heart was turned away to other gods by his wives; and his heart was no longer true to the Lord his God as the heart of his father David had been. 1 Kings 11:4 I sometimes think with all of our theological training and reading and thinking about what the Bible might be saying to us, that we make things way more complicated than God intended them to be. All the study and parsing is nice, good and helpful, but maybe the message of God is so much simpler. It goes something like this: If your focus is on God and not yourself you will be fine; but,...
Read MoreSomething New — will you see it?
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18–19 If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. 2 Corinthians 5:17–19 Sometimes I hear someone say something like “Christians are New Testament...
Read MoreGrounding, Calling & Sending = LIFE
After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them . . . As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them. Joshua 1:1–2, 5–6 Why ground your lives in the narrative of God? Because it is only in this grounding that our story can have the fullness that God...
Read MoreWater in a Parched and Desperate Land
Jesus said: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:14–17 God heard the cry of his people when they were oppressed in Egypt. He saw their misery in their enslavement. And so called Moses and sent him to free his people. With a mighty...
Read MoreYour Call From God
“So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey . . . . And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus 3:8–10 Everybody wants to have a life of meaning. I think we all know internally that we were created for something more than what we are doing currently. The fact that we believe that we were created for...
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