Lack Of Faith

I think the trouble with me is lack of faith. I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God's existence: but the irrational deadweight of my old sceptical habits, and the spirit of this age, and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existant address.

Student of Jesus dot Com

So You Think

In the film, Bob Proctor says, "Everything that's coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it's attracted to you by virtue of the images you're holding in your mind."

So what is a Christian to think of this?

Read about the Secret.

Feeling Down? Take Off!

This afternoon an old friend I haven't seen in several months knocked on the door. My friend, Gary, is a businessman, a Christian, and a private pilot was there. He was going to take his Cessna 310 up for a little while and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him.

Read about it In The Way

A Voice Of Hope

An introduction to A Voice Of Hope:

I think Mosaic is a conversation. Perhaps even a model. But I hope it never becomes a movement. A movement is what Christianity is supposed to be. Mosaic should never replace Jesus, should never even attempt to compete with Him, in that arena.

Visit with Lu at soundchick.blogspot.com

Pastoral Pressure

Matt Kelley writes:

As the pastor of one of the country’s largest churches, Haggard became well known all over the country. As a pastor he felt the obligation to embody the values he preached, and as a public figure he felt the pressure to maintain a carefully crafted public persona.

The problem was that this public persona was incredibly unrealistic. He was expected not only to model basic Christian values, but also to never waver in his theological positions, never have doubts, and never experience temptations. In other words, Haggard was expected to live up to a standard of perfection that nobody can live up to.

Read the rest at The Truth As Best I Know It

Gospel Of Fight Club

Chris writes:

Darby Ray author of "Deceiving the Devil" describes atonement as “the reconciling, redeeming, liberating activity of God in Christ.” I think this is a pretty succinct and broad summary of atonement, covering everything conservative substitutionary atonement through to liberation theology and many other ideas. My guess is that we have too often in the west we have overly focused on the redeeming and reconciling parts and neglected the liberating part of the triad.

At the end of his article, Chris makes some interesting comparisons between the new testament and the book, Fight Club. A Churchless Faith

MySpace Christian?

What is up with these so called "Christian" people - mostly 20 somethings, with MySpace websites.

In their "About Me" space of their MySpace, the first paragraph they write is usually about how Jesus/God is the most important thing to them, the center of their lives. And then the rest of their MySpace is dedicated to hedonistic, egotistical, soft porn, self pimping, self promotion. Really, guys and girls, if Jesus is the center of your life, why do we need to see a picture of you half naked, or need a list of your "turn ons," or a description of the kind of car you drive, or clothes you wear, or the type of friends you want, or how much money you're making, or plan to make, etc?

I feel there might be something very wrong with that.

Who Says?

Blasphemy Site 'Playing Texas Hold 'Em With Eternity'
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 05, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - More than a month after atheists launched a campaign encouraging young people to blaspheme God in an online video clip, more than 800 people have done so, and a conservative analyst said the "boneheads" behind the initiative could only be pitied.

Fighting against what he calls "the mental torture that is religion," atheist filmmaker Brian Flemming created the blasphemychallenge.com website, asking teens to commit "the ultimate sin" in return for a copy of his movie, "The God Who Wasn't There."

The "ultimate sin," in his view, is denying the Holy Spirit, based on the biblical injunction, "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark 3:29).

The site asks people to videotape themselves saying "I deny the Holy Spirit" and to post the videos on YouTube.

As of Friday, more than 875 submissions had been recorded.

Read the rest here.

Church As A Way Of Life

Quote:

Imagine if we stopped thinking of church as someplace we go, and instead lived it out as something we are. What if we focused on Relationship-Oriented Spiritual Environments (sm), where we stopped worrying about people's pew time and valued their relationship time with Christ, with their families, with people at the margins, with each other in environments that allow for life-changing spiritual conversation and growth. What if we figured out, like Best Buy, how to relate not just as a group of people occupying the same sanctuary on the same day and time, but as interrelated networks of people on a mission? Could e-mail exchanges and coffeeshop conversations have the impact of "a service?" (Many people, even church people, I think, would already say 'yes.') Can meals, or serving meals, be as sacramental as the official Meal? Can we focus on being part of God's mission rather than just putting in time?

Read it all at nuchurch.blogspot.com

On Leadership

Grace says:

"I would love to see a moratorium on the word "leader" within the church for whatever length of time it takes for us to undo the power positions of leadership that we have adopted in the church."

Take it all in at Emerging Grace

Ecstatic Awareness

More defining Transcendence
A quote:

"Someone has pointed out that "transcendent" is the adjective and "transcendence" is the noun. My definition would be as follows.

"Transcendent can be defined as - ecstatic awareness of contact with a deeper consciousness within the person, an emotion of joy, sometimes beyond rational thought and self-control, at other times a feeling that one is enveloped with a communal spirit or a religious Spirit that is larger than one's self, a Spirit that transcends one's self. Such an awareness, or consciousness, might be reaching a higher level of understanding, in touch with a new model (paradigm) of reality or a feeling of union with God. This definition also includes the idea of an image of God that is within each individual. For some, this internal God is called the Holy Spirit or an internalized Jesus...

"...Another example of transcendence occurs when one has felt at one with a particular group of people, or felt her self to be in tune with the cosmos. This feeling can happen at one level after contemplating a concept and understanding for the first time a new idea or relationship of ideas. One feels a joy and has a glimpse of some new power to comprehend the meaning of faith or the meaning of a relationship with God. This feeling might last for only a short time, until one gets involved doing something else. It is something like a mountaintop experience, seeing the layout of land features below, in a new spatial relationship and connectedness than one can see from the foot of the mountain. This feeling of joy is similar to the �JOY and WOW!� which Scott Peck described in "The Different Drum", the joy that members of an authentic community feel when they first realize that their group has reached to the level of an authentic community. The community members know each other, respect each other's differences, and can reach workable compromises on issues that will divide and polarize inauthentic or pseudo communities."

Read the rest at Religion, Transcendence, and Spirit

Vaclav Havel

A quote from Vaclav Havel

Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era. The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.

Today, this state of mind or of the human world is called postmodernism. For me, a symbol of that state is a Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with a transistor radio in his hands and an ad for Coca-Cola on the camel's back. I am not ridiculing this, nor am I shedding an intellectual tear over the commercial expansion of the West that destroys alien cultures. I see it rather as a typical expression of this multicultural era, a signal that an amalgamation of cultures is taking place. I see it as proof that something is happening, something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when everything is possible. Yes, everything is possible, because our civilization does not have its own unified style, its own spirit, its own aesthetic.

Read the whole thing at worldtrans.org

Charles Williams

Quote:

"The denial of the self has come, as is natural, to mean in general the making of the self thoroughly uncomfortable."

Dogs And Cats Sleeping Together

From an article in Scientific American

When I was a kid, I remember playing the game of opposites. You'd tell someone a word, ask them what its opposite was, and hope to catch them saying that the opposite of "dog" is "cat" or "salt" is "pepper". When you ask people for the opposite of "science", they might say "religion", but in reality the two are as much opposites as "dog" and "cat" are. They might chase each other, but they wouldn't even know what to do with their supposed adversary if they caught it. If you give them plenty of pillows to nap on, they are usually content to leave each other alone. In the right household, they might even be found playing together.

I have personally found that some of the most intense discussions I get into about science are with strong religious believers. They care. The way the world is put together matters to them. They think about it; they reflect on it. The people who don't care about physics are often people who don't care about metaphysics, and vice-versa -- they are content to go through life without dwelling on the big questions of existence. So I approach the topic with the experience that, in the right household, science and religion can be found playing together.

Loving You Loving Me

Quote:

Let’s talk about the fear for a minute. I wrote a little while ago about Guestrooms for Jesus, where I side fear and protecting your family was a lame excuse. I meant it was a lame excuse for inaction, not that protecting your family wasn’t an okay thing to do. In other words, don’t feel guilt about your desire to protect your children, I’m sure that is a God given desire in your heart. We are called to “Love our neighbors,” and I can think of no closer neighbor then family. As you’ve begun to realize though, if this is keeping you from loving other neighbors, particularly those Jesus talks specifically about, the poor, hungry and thirsty, then you probably have room to grow. I know I certainly do. So, what are some practical ideas for you to do to help those in need around you? Let’s start with your first idea.

Read the rest while Trying To follow

Molly Ivins

Mindful Mission reports on the passing of columnist Molly Ivins.

How God Provides

God continues to prove his faithfulness. When I went into this, I knew I couldn't do it alone, but because of my previous experience, I had faith that what we needed, God would provide and he has.

The reason I mention this, is that I've heard many people mention ministry ideas, but I've also heard them use the reason for not doing it that the church wouldn't fund it. With all do respect this is an excuse. If it's something God is calling you to do, you can find a way to begin whether or not a church backs you.

Read how In The Way started a homeless ministry with God's help.