It’s so easy to be a critic! So easy to be smugly superior to people who misunderstand what kind of Messiah Jesus is. Yes, the people get it wrong as Jesus enter Jerusalem to cheers and praise. Yes, the miracle of Lazarus coming back to life sends their imaginations and hopes spinning in all the wrong directions.
But this should elicit our empathy. This should stir compassion in us, not contempt. If it does not, perhaps it’s because pride tells us that we wouldn’t have gotten things so wrong. (Hindsight almost always breeds this kind of false confidence.) If it does not move our hearts perhaps it’s because we fail to see their captivity and their yearning to be free.
Our model is Jesus, whose response in Luke 19:41-42 is to break down in tears at the plight of the people.
Not What Anyone Expects
March 25, 2018 • Graeme Sellers
Upside Down Kingdom
December 30, 2018 • Dirk Duhlstine
God says: 1. If you want to be great… be a servant 2. To find yourself…you must die to yourself 3. To get back at your enemy…you should love him 4. To become rich… give money away God's kingdom is an upside down kingdom! When we clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love…which is clothing ourselves with the person and nature of http://christ...we’re clothing ourselves for battle.
Words Create Worlds
December 23, 2018 • Graeme Sellers
Our words create worlds. The words we speak shape and create world we live in. Words have always created worlds. It’s true. How was our world made? Words. Ten times in the creation account of Genesis 1 we read this: “And God said…” Their impact is captured in Genesis 2:1 “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” Gen. 1:28 reports that we are made in God’s image, so why should it surprise us that our words have creative power as well? God would urge us to listen to ourselves, to pay attention to the words we speak and the worlds they create.
What's the Point?
December 16, 2018 • Graeme Sellers
What’s the point of this – the Sunday morning church gathering that is, for many of us, a regular part of our lives? What if the point isn’t what we think it is, or is more than we imagined it is? God isn’t afraid of honest inquiry or the fierce conversation, and the answers to this question may surprise and delight us!