If I am going to be a Jesus-follower, I need to be intentional about relating with Jesus, interacting with Him through my day to day experience. What makes this hard is that the conversation seems one-sided. I do not hear Him speak, I only ‘sense’ His direction or guidance of wisdom. It’s a thought or feeling inside of me that seems to be from Him. But how do I confirm this? How do I know its not just my own thoughts and feelings, or Satan misleading me?

The best answer I can come up with is His example. I look to the gospels especially for insight into how Jesus operated. Though it doesn’t answer all of my questions, it does help shape my general thinking and behaviour, and gives me enough to go on when I do not have all the answers I need or want. Continue reading ‘Jesus-shaped living’ »

Lord, I need to be honest. Reading 2 Samuel is not proving to be inspiring for my faith. It is actually causing me to struggle with how I view the bible. It also challenges how I think about God. That’s not a bad thing, struggling and being challenged can be a good thing. But I am having a hard time reconciling what I see and hear in You, and what I see in the old testament especially.

For the longest time I have read the bible with the assumption, ‘when in doubt, give God the benefit of the doubt’. In other words, if something seems wrong in what I read, there must be something I do not understand, and therefore if I knew all the facts, it would make more sense. The assumption is that You are good, so if something in the bible makes You look not good, the problem is in my thinking or ignorance, not in You.

I will continue to do this, Lord. But I just wanted to be honest and say that I am having doubts again. If I were not a christian and I picked up this book, I would be shocked at what I read. There is some twisted stuff in here, also stuff about You. Claims are made for God, about God, that make me cringe. Again, this is mostly from the old testament. I would much rather spend time reading the gospels, than reading the old testament.

Oh well, I press on. Somehow, You want to teach me something here. Thank You for helping me find some glimpses of good in the hard passages. And thank You for letting me be born now, in this time and place. I am not sure I could handle living in the old testament times.

By Shane Claiborne, published in Esquire. Tell me what you think….

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Shane

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn’s Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn’t quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don’t know Jesus. Continue reading ‘confession and invitation’ »

The story of Chuck, the homeless man who collects treasures in his shopping cart, continues. Here is the next part of the story. Each week I will add a new chapter to the story, with the hope that we can become treasure-seekers like him. Please note, this is told as if it is a true story, but it is not!

I saw the homeless man a few days later, and this time I had some time to chat with him.

‘Hey, remember me? We talked about your treasures a few days ago.’

‘I remember’, he said, smiling. Continue reading ‘Chuck’s story (Part 2)’ »

Last Sunday I began the story of Chuck, the homeless man who collects treasures in his shopping cart. Below is part 1 of this story. Each week I will add a new chapter to the story, with the hope that we can become treasure-seekers like him.

I saw him downtown pushing a grocery cart loaded with stuff, junk really. I wasn’t going to say anything to him, but as I passed by, he looked at me and asked, ‘Scuse me sir, do you have the time?’

I noticed then that he was adjusting the time on a clock in his hands. ‘Its 3:30’, I answered, seeing the time on the town hall clock tower down the street. That’s all I was going to say, but what he said next caught my attention.

‘Thanks sir. I want to remember the exact moment God gave me the time of day’, and he set the clock to 3:30.

Intrigued, though still hesitant to talk with him, I asked, ‘ah, how did He do that?’

And so began a conversation I’ll never forget. Continue reading ‘Chuck’s story (Part 1)’ »

This morning I talked about 2 Samuel 7, and the theme that I attempted to unfold was: WHEN GOD SAYS NO, HE HAS SOMETHING BIGGER, BETTER IN MIND.
Anyway, I just so happened to check out a Rob Bell dvd called ‘Kickball’, and I think he says it better.
So if you missed the message this morning, or want to hear it from a different perspective, watch this.

Although I am not Lutheran, this is funny because it sounds somewhat familiar.

By Adrian Plass

When I became a Christian I said, Lord, now fill me in,
Tell me what I’ll suffer in this world of shame and sin.
He said, Your body may be killed, and left to rot and stink,
Do you still want to follow me? I said, Amen! – I think.
I think Amen, Amen I think, I think I say Amen,
I’m not completely sure, can you just run through that again?
You say my body may be killed and left to rot and stink,
Well, yes, that sounds teriffic, Lord, I say Amen – I think. Continue reading ‘Amen???’ »

For those interested in knowing where I am, you can check the link here.
Though I am not really a church planter, these nice church planting people let me into their club for the week. Of course, you have to be a certain kind of person to be a real church planter; I could probably not survive the boot camp.
But this is where my desire to do church in a completely different kind of way can be stoked.