Honoring Christ In Human Rights-Day 6
Fasting & Feasting Pt. 1 The original mandate given to Adam by God, was to multiply, cultivate the world, and produce. Unfortunately, our world today is driven by consumption. We consume food, drink, programs, services, and most of all, people. The church, though it should be a glowing example of production and human flourishing, often turns into the same program-riddled machine that eats and wears people out as...
Honoring Christ In Human Rights-Day 5
A City on a Hill Light is a very common metaphor in the Bible. Light and dark are often used to contrast knowledge and ignorance. The world is “in the dark” about God, but Christians “turn on the lights.” John 8:12 records Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Jesus being “the light,” made himself visible. His full glory had been hidden...
Honoring Christ In Human Rights-Day 4
Back into a Family and a Household Paul refers to the church as the household of God. He literally sees Christ’s people as closer than family—we are a home. Consider the manner in which Paul speaks to, and about those in the church: “… we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our...
Honoring Christ In Human Rights-Day 2
Everyone has the Same Story In John 13, in the wake of Jesus washing the disciples feet, predicting his coming betrayal, and foretelling of Peter’s coming unfaithfulness and three denials, the disciples were feeling pretty insecure, to say the least. In John 14:1, Jesus comforts his disciples and encourages them to “not let their hearts be troubled.” What is most interesting about Jesus’ encouragement in this passage of John’s Gospel...
Honoring Christ In Toil And Suffering- Day 3
Over at MakeJesusCulture.com Aaron Keyes spoke about sorrow and how you work through that in a team in order to walk through hard issues together as you create: how living life among and with one another actually girds up a household of creatives that they may live out a fuller, Christlike resilience in the teeth of suffering. In the background, while he spoke hung the great wave of Kanagawa. The wave creates a great piece of chaos...
Honoring Christ In Toil And Suffering- Day 2
Over at MakeJesusCulture.com we had Latiphah Alattis talk about songwriting, but in the midst of it she grew very honest about her father’s funeral. Her father died young, all things considered, and she was a younger woman when it happened. As a Christian songwriter, the despair really sang pretty deep into her melancholy spirit and festered there. Meanwhile, the parishioners and fellow citizens all passed her by ignorant of the...
Honoring Christ In Toil And Suffering- Day 1
At MakeJesusCulture.com we had several speakers talk on toil and suffering in their work. One of them was Harrison Hollingsworth, the New York City ballet conductor and bassoonist who leads worshippers at Redeemer Presbyterian Downtown. His main talk revolved around how meaningless our toil is without relationships – particularly relationship with the father of heavenly lights. And this of course applies to all made things, whether...
Honoring Christ In Our Singing-Day 6
TARGET IN SINGING We’ve considered our singing through the use of these words; total, text and tone, and now we must add one more perspective to the list—our target. Target with 1 – 2 – 3 Mike Cosper in his book Rhythms of Grace offers some helpful insight to our conversation here in what he calls “1-2-3 Worship.” He says that our singing should have three audiences or targets: God, each other, and...