Thursday, October 25th, 2012
“You intended to harm me, but GOD intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20)
In his classic book Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis wrote, “…the very moment you wake up each morning all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals.” Is this true in your life? Do you wake up every morning overwhelmed with stuff even before your feet hits the floor? Does your past regrets, present anxieties and future concerns terrify you like wild animals and paralyze you with fear? It doesn’t have to be that way.
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Wednesday, September 26th, 2012
“…So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own” (Luke 14:33)
In my brief 20 years of being an intentional follower of Jesus I have had countless conversations with people and have read many books on being a disciple. As a result, I have come to observe that the term “Christian Disciple” means a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people.
They can’t all be right, can they? Sometimes when our opinions, feelings and preferences about discipleship are shared, we end up with what we want following Jesus to look like rather than what it really is – don’t we?
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You and I are GRACED by GOD.
We are graced in the morning, graced in the noon time, graced in the evening and graced at night. We are being graced left, right and centre. We were graced in the past, are graced in the present and will be graced in the future. The truth is that we are totally ‘Graced Out.’
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JUST THE OTHER DAY I WAS having breakfast with one of my close friends. I treasure those moments in the midst of my busy summer schedule. We quickly moved from superficial talk to what was actually happening in our life, in the here and now. You know exactly what I mean. We didn’t spend too much time talking about the weather, soccer, the summer movies or the TV shows. We decided to delve right into our life and exchange our personal stories.
One story in particular that I shared caused some deep emotion to surface in me. Some of which I was aware of, some came as a surprise. After listening to me vent; my friend asked me one simple question. As I heard his words I was dumbfounded. I stared at him for some time wondering if he was really serious. I thought to myself, “I know he is validating my feelings. I know he cares for me and understands me. But, why isn’t he giving me permission to linger in them. ” We finished our breakfast and went to our work places.
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This is a guest post by Rachael Harder, Young Adults Pastor at
River of Life Church and a sociologist with the Evangelical Fellowship of
Canada (EFC). She is currently working on a ground breaking nation-wide
study on the state of young adult Christians in Canada.
I want to keep this blog brief so let me get to the point. God invites us to wrestle with Him as we seek to understand His character and He never takes offense to us. Abraham wrestled with God and we call him the Father of faith. David wrestled with God and he is called a man after God’s own heart. Jacob wrestled with God and he went on to advance God’s kingdom in unimaginable ways. Job wrestled with God and the latter half of his days were more blessed than the first. I could go on and on.
I’m convinced that God invites us to wrestle with Him and never takes offense. In fact, I’m persuaded to believe that wrestling with God is often what solidifies our faith.
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A while back, I met up with my men’s group over a nice hot meal at a Korean restaurant.
There is something about eating together that makes people more relaxed and open in conversations. In fact, the deepest, honest and most vulnerable conversations I have had were over meals.
One of the guys shared about his recent disturbing experience. He witnessed a woman being hit by a car. He said, “she did everything right. She pressed the cross walk button, looked to the left and to the right and then crossed the road. But, a speeding car hit her.” He was paralyzed by just looking at her mangled body fly right in front of his eyes because of the impact. Later, after the police arrived and got his testimony he went home in shock.
The woman was taken to a hospital with life threatening injuries (He read about it in a news article the next day). He confessed that the disturbing image of the incident continued to linger vividly in his mind.
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
From a very young age, my brother and I loved giving birth to stories.
We were progressively getting good at story telling, whether it was the one we had to make up to appease our anxious parents for coming home past our curfew hour or the ones we made up for missing school as we could not finish our homework on time. I seriously don’t know where we learned to come up with stories in such short notice.
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Thursday, April 26th, 2012
What would happen if we just took time to reflect on our life and captured it with all its laughter, tears, celebrations, tragedies, wins and failures, both in its significant moments and in the everyday mundane things?
I think it would leave us super humbled and awestruck as we begin to notice the grace of GOD at work in every facet of our life.
Thats exactly what happens to me every single time I look at my life as a whole.
To this day, my parents remind me that my life is a miracle. The story goes that as an infant I had some complications and became very ill. The doctors were puzzled with my unique case and my family was afraid that they would lose me. But, God by his grace intervened and my life was spared.
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This is a guest post by Jeff Futers, Associate Pastor of The Portico. Be sure to follow his tweets and read more of his
thoughts, ravings and more on his blog site.
As I was preparing for yet another year of Easter services this weekend, something occurred to me that I had never really noticed before.
In John’s account of the story (chapter 20), when Mary Magdelene shares the news that the body of Jesus is missing, a foot race ensues between John and Peter.
John gets to the tomb first but doesn’t go in. Arriving right on his heels is Peter. True to his sometimes impetuous form, Peter charges right in to the empty tomb, and inside he discovers the evidence. Strips of linen that had been wrapped around Jesus body…the burial cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head folded up by itself, separate from the rest.
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“Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, and in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”
- St. Patrick of Ireland (389-461)
I call this St. Patrick’s 360 degrees prayer. It is said that he was an active Christian missionary in Ireland during his time. The prayer itself is a sincere plea for “Christ” to increase and the “I”, which is the self to decrease. In other words it is a passionate prayer asking Christ to reign 360 degrees in one’s life.
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