Can’t you hear Jesus saying to all the baptized, down through the hallway of time, “Welcome to the beautiful struggle. Welcome to the joyful rebellion. Don’t be surprised if the world hates you. I have come to bring a sword, not to be nice. They killed me because of...
If there was something called “soulful excellence,” what would it look like? Seems like Paul is trying to describe just that in his very first letter to a church. Here’s what he said: Faith is work. No apologies. And unique works flow from...
Jesus wasn’t meek and mild. You don’t publicly execute meek and mild people. You crucify people who confront the system. Life with Jesus then and now is 50 percent comfort and 50 percent confrontation. If Jesus’ words and example...
Jesus remarked he had, “…nowhere to lay his head.” There’s a haunting sadness in that phrase. He said it after being turned away by two villages. He said it to warn his friends that following him would lead to nowhere for them. Recently we’ve seen images of...
Where are you in relationship to Jesus? If you drew a diagram, where would you be? Beside him? Behind him? There was a soldier who placed himself under Jesus’ authority. Though not a follower of Jesus, he understood power and authority; superior and...
Boasting in God isn’t pounding a drum on the issues of the day. It’s not parroting religious talking points. Boasting in God comes naturally as a climax to working God’s program and finding God to be a creative genius. That’s what Paul means when he says,...
“Fire” is what the eye witnesses said. Before the fire, they looked to Jesus for everything. After the fire, they were partners in telling God’s deeds of power; in accomplishing God’s works of power. They were “of fire.” Fire makes all the difference. Not...
The Apostle Paul had a disturbing way of following Jesus. There was that time he broke the labor laws of his day and stopped the exploitation of an enslaved girl. There was that time he sang and prayed his way out of jail, stopped his former jailer from...
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost...
There’s a proportional relationship between the size of the God that lives in our imagination and the size of the Pharaohs we defy! Small idea of God… small resolve to defy even the smallest of pharaohs. Big imagining of God… great resolve to defy even...
