Christians are to be known for what they celebrate and affirm and encourage rather than what they are against.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Romans (Page 2)
Recognising what sort of sacrifices we are called to make and what sort of sacrifices we are called to refrain from making is crucial to faithfully following the way of Jesus.
Our deepest thirst will never be satisfied by cautious morality and religious compliance, but it will be abundantly quenched when we drink deeply of the living water of joyous intimacy that Jesus pours out freely.
Discerning the will of God is a skill that needs work if you want to develop it, whether as a community together or as individuals.
The self-giving love of the Trinity, contrasted with the experience of a toxic love triangle, calls us to a new non-possessive love that always seeks the glory and delight of the other.
Jesus calls us to turn away from pathways of judgement and condemnation and to follow him on the harder path of love and new life.
Christ is present to us in love, unity and reconciliation, and thus these are essential to our worship.
God and religion misunderstood can be the cause of hostility, division and violence, but the God made known to us in Jesus is a God of grace who generously gives us life, freedom and reconciliation.
God gives us the love we thirst for, even while we are still fighting against God, and in doing so, God sets the pattern for us to follow that will bring freedom to the world.
When God is understood through the revelation of Jesus and his pattern of relating, then we discover ourselves invited into generous and gracious solidarity with all creation.
The life-changing implications of the resurrection can be just as bewildering and impossible to get our heads around as the resurrection itself.
God saves us by changing our hearts, but one of the great temptations for the church is to try to turn that back into a system of exclusion and control.
Are we, individually and together, focused on the things that we can be doing, that will enable us to embrace and nurture the growth of Christ’s values, withstanding opposition to them?
We have to choose between being squeezed into the world’s mould or re-moulded from within by God.
Staying true to the disciplines of ordinary faithfulness is part of our calling as we follow the way of Jesus Christ; and engaging in them eases our burdens considerably.
Social labels and divisions keep us parched and thirsting for intimacy and community, but Jesus seeks to break through them and give us the living water of love and acceptance.
Hope is the melody of the future – Faith dances to it today
Jesus commits himself to the path of redemptive suffering in preference to either fight or flight, and he calls us to follow him in that commitment.
The once and for all sacrifice of Christ and our living sacrifice of ourselves are becoming one sacrifice as we and Christ become one.
In Baptism, Christ has united us with himself in his death to sin and his resurrection to radically new life.