Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

What is faith according to the bible?  Faith is the expectant hope of things yet to come and the ability to rely on things we cannot tangibly hold on to.  According to Hebrews 11, “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Hebrews 11:1 (NIV) What does this mean for those of us stuck in the mire and muck of everyday life?  Very little, I think if you don’t think that you’re stuck.  It has been my experience that faith does not come to someone who thinks that life is fine and there is nothing more, until they are faced with a crisis.  Why is this?  I think the answer is dependence.  If you think all is well and there is nothing except the cards you have been dealt, you have no need to look outside your life.  And that is fine. Some people get lost in entertainment, some find some purpose like raising children or in their work.  Maybe you find purpose in being part o...

So I was thinking about how I could sum up Christianity in one word for an atheist who was inclined to hear me out.  The word is “love”.  That is nice and touchy-feely, and somewhat nauseating, but just what do I mean? For me the journey has been a long one, and promises to last for the rest of my life and possibly for eternity. But it began with giving up control. In the 12 step model, you pick a higher power.  Many people use that concept to reconnect with the God they shelved after their childhood.  Some people choose “the group” or even “a doorknob.”  The point isn’t to solve the question of if there is a god or not, the point is to give up your illusion of control. For a “person of the book” (Muslim, Christian, or Jew) we put our lives in God’s hands, in whatever way we understand him or her or it.  This is where the doorknob only gets you sober and no further. In Christianity, God in his most irreducible basic element is relationship.  He i...

I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Discernment and he touches upon the idea of God’s time (Kairos as opposed to Chronos).  In Greek, Chronos is sequential time – the minutes and seconds that make up our lives and our collective history.  Kairos is the right or opportune time for something to happen. It is a length of indeterminate time in which everything happens.  There are many sermons and websites dedicated to this distinction, so I will not break it down any more here.   But Christians often acknowledge a desire to live on God’s time.  To do this, I think we have no further to look than the ancient Jewish custom of remembrance through festivals. The Jewish calendar is full of festivals commemorating God’s interventions in their history. The seven Jewish festivals or “feasts” in the bible are Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabe...

I don’t think anyone, especially Christians, should be surprised at the pope’s remarks that entertain the validity of evolution and the big bang theory, or the church’s attempts to reach out the LGBT community, or seminaries teaching us to read the bible critically instead of just taking the words on the page in English as the will of God.  Jesus followers are doing what Jesus taught us to do: to seek out those who do not know the gospel, bring the gospel (ONLY THE GOSPEL) to them stripped of all the trappings of religion, remove the disease of man’s desire to exclude and to never miss a chance to rail against religion at every chance we get.  Jesus turned the Jewish religion on its head because he saw what was in men’s hearts – the desire to know good and evil, and its result, the desire to push one’s views of good and evil on others by excluding people from the community.  Look at how he treated the Pharisees: the entrenched religious who had a vested interest in pro...

I decided that I am not going to eat tonight.  Because the homeless guy outside the café where I am sitting might not eat tonight.  It is 8:22pm and I am hungry.  The first thing I did when I decided to do this, though I haven’t eaten much today, was to go down the street to the gas station and buy a pop and smoke a bunch of cigarettes.  So I threw them out.  When I get hungry, I smoke.  So I am not going to do that anymore tonight either. The first thing I noticed when walking back to the café was all the restaurants on this street.  All warm and inviting and filled with people who were eating and enjoying each other’s company. I noticed several people smoking along the sidewalk.  I noticed the want in my heart.  Want for food, want for companionship, want for nicotine. Back at the café I settled into a Henri Nouwen book.  He describes what it means to be Beloved. “Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear ...

You become what you behold.  Paul knew it (Col 3:2) The writer of Hebrews knew it (Heb 12:2). And Jesus knew it. When Peter walked on the water towards Jesus (Matt 14:28), it says he lost focus on Jesus, and instead began to focus on the storm around him.  As soon as he lost this focus, he began to sink. I ask myself from time to time, what my focus is.  Am I consumed with problems at work, or money, or my own inner turmoil?  Am I like Peter, so full of faith one moment, saying, if it is you, then I will walk out to meet you on the water. but then stepping out in the storm and forgetting the object of my faith?  And so I sink. I have done an experiment these past few months.  I have stopped watching TV.  Stopped reading the news.  Stopped perusing facebook and just posting a few thoughts or pics from my phone from time to time. I have switched to reading my bible and a Christian book and listening Bethel church sermons.  Alwa...

26000 children die every day from starvation or preventable illness. About 26000 children will die today, senselessly. I have seen this statistic before but yesterday I was really wrecked by it, to the point of sobbing.  I am reading a book called "Radical" on the radical love we are supposed to bring to people in need around the world.  As Christians, we are called to this.  We have a mandate to spread the gospel.  Gospel means "good news."  And I don't believe it is all about proselytizing… if proselytizing's goal is creating as many converts as we can.  No, spreading the gospel, in my opinion, is showing the love of Christ to others.  This naturally creates disciples.  And creating disciples is a slow and loving process where we care for others and God uses us, circumstance, and others that come after us to bring people into the kingdom.  Just look at Jesus… he spent most of his time discipling twelve men.  But what he did durin...