reflectionsofachristone

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Flames and faithfulness

‘As believers today appropriate this account they must remember that the miracle in Daniel 3 is a token and not a blueprint, that is, it is a sample of the way Christ preserves his people but not a guarantee of his dramatic deliverance in every case. Still Christ’s flock are strangely comforted here. Christ did not keep them out of the furnace but found them in it. He does not always shield you from all distresses and dangers, but it is in the loneliness, in the betrayal, in the loss that the Fourth Man comes and walks with you. He has the knack of both exposing you to, yet keeping you through, waters and rivers and fire (cf. Isa 43.2-3) - and operating rooms and funeral parlours and an empty house. The Fourth Man can always find his people.’

Dale Ralph Davis

[On Daniel 3, in which three of God’s people refuse to worship a gold statue set up by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, and are thrown into a burning fiery furnace for it - only to be rescued from death by a mysterious fourth figure who is seen walking in the fire with them.]

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While the Bible agrees industriousness or the lack of it is an irreplaceable part of why you are successful or not (Proverbs 6:9-11;10:4), it is never the main reason.... If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God...  Therefore, just men and women see their money as belonging in some ways to the entire human community around them, while the unjust or unrighteous see their money as strictly theirs and no one else's...  If a person has grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn't live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn't care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn't understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.

Tim Keller, Generous Justice

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The key to all Christian service is prayer. However good a friend we are, however faithful and thorough our studies are and however wise our advice is, we cannot produce fruit in someone's life that will last for eternity by our own efforts. It is God's work to bring people to new life in Christ and it is God's work to continue that good work until the last day.

Sophie De Witt, One-to-one: A Discipleship Handbook

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God became human so that humans could become human.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (via blakebaggott)

I love this too. A beautiful play off all the Church Fathers on theosis since what it means to be like God, is to become fully human :)

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Every social institution is both inherently good, as God’s creation, and also corrupt, because they are always tending towards power and control and the lust to dominate. The solution to evil in the political order isn’t to smash political systems. If you have an out-of-tune guitar, you can’t fix that problem by smashing the guitar. It takes a much more delicate and patient process of tuning. Social and political conditions call for both love and compassion, because we look at them, as we look at any other if God’s creatures, as something that is good and noble, and yet so tragically flaws and malfunctioning that you can barely distinguish the good from the evil.

Ben Myers paraphrasing Augustine on RN (via naminganimals)

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"We are not interested in knowing more but in becoming more." Eugene Peterson, reflecting on his approach to reading Scripture. Or as a friend of mine put it, "we aren't so much about information as we are about formation." Are we reading for the sake of knowledge, or are we (as Peterson also put it) "reading in order to live?" *The quote is by Peterson, but everything else in this photo is my creation.

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How do you respond to the ills and injustices in the world? From the global issues we've seen on the news this week to those much more personal and in-your-face, how does one move from sadness, grief and frustration to actually doing something about it? My philosophy: roll up your sleeves. I can't solve all the problems in my own little patch of turf - let alone anything on a global scale - but I what I can do is roll up my sleeves and get skin in the game. I'm willing to get paint caked all over my hands because my few splotches might just help create a masterpiece.

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Stoked for this album, and this song! It is based on The Apostles' Creed which is around 1600 years old! The Creed has been used by the church - virtually all denominations - as a statement of faith and a way of unifying the church throughout history. When I sing this song, I am reminded that these words have been proclaimed and sung for over 1600 years, across continents and civilisations. It reminds me of the bigness of our faith, the bigness of our God and the wondrous movement that is his church - that with all our problems, disagreements and brokenness we are united in Jesus Christ. This I believe!

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Sometimes our greatest moments of clarity come not through deep introspection but through conversation with others. We have a penny drop moment.

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Do yourself a favour and read this. 

May your heart be stirred. 

If you knew Beth then you would realise it is even more wonderful to see what God is working in and through her life. 

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What an encouragement you are, brother!

I hope you still think so, anon.

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Hey Grant, I read your Eugene Peterson quote about the sacred-secular divide. How far do you think the non-separation of the sacred and the secular goes?

Hi! I think I ought to be nominated for a slowest-reply-in-history-award, if there is such a thing. My apologies! I think the quote you're referring to is this one (for the benefit of others): 

“We use the same words in talking to one another that we use when we talk to God: same nouns and verbs, same adverbs and adjectives, same conjunctions and interjections, same prepositions and pronouns.

There is no “Holy Ghost” language used for matters of God and salvation and then a separate secular language for buying cabbages and cars. “Give us this day our daily bread” and “pass the potatoes” come out of the same language pool…. God does not compartmentalize our lives into religious and secular. Why do we?”

I like what Peterson says here because I don't think Scripture divides the world into sacred and secular in the way that many do today. As I understand it, this was a product of Greek philosophy. It also has links to Gnosticism - the idea that the physical is bad/undesirable while the ethereal/spiritual/intangible is good/desirable. 

We have seen the effects of this way of thinking play out in modern history. It's why many Christians don't care for the environment one iota. It's why you hear Christians talk about 'souls' instead of people. It's why many are obsessed with the end times and the idea of a rapture - because they just want to get out of here! 

I'm not convinced that God sees it this way. The strongest evidence I would put forward is the incarnation: the Word became flesh. God became flesh. Jesus ate, drank, talked, listened, and did all the 'earthy' stuff. Far from shunning the physical, he validated it. And he didn't seem to divide sacred and secular when he was here, either. 

I now realise that you may have been asking with politics and government in mind. Perhaps wondering about the separation of church and state, religion and politics? 

My view on this has evolved a fair bit in the last couple of years. Firstly, I think that as humans we make all our decisions based on the way we think the world is and ought to be. That is to say, we all act based on our worldview. If we are to live consistent lives, I don't think we can help it. Some worldviews are shaped by religion, some are not. But we all make decisions based on what we believe about what is, and what should be.

I am fortunate to live in a democratic society where there is a diversity of ideas and worldviews, and I believe that people should be free to put forward ideas and policies founded in their respective worldviews and then let the democratic process decide whether the population thinks it is a good policy. I don't think ideas and policies should be discounted simply because they are founded on a religious worldview, but neither do I believe that people with religious worldviews should expect that everyone else shares their view or agrees that their religion is a good thing. That is the nature of democracy. 

I hope this answers your question, otherwise I have just written a rather lengthy explanation that no-one is interested in!

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There is not much that is 'smaller' than a word - but few things are more powerful.

Mark Strom, Lead With Wisdom

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If you are a youngish, emerging leader you have been formed in a high encouragement environment.

Because of changes in parenting and education you have most likely been surrounded by voices which have told you how great you are. You have grown up during the age of ‘self esteem’. In which those...

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Wisdom is reading and living the patterns of life well.

Mark Strom, Lead With Wisdom