We are often afraid to face what must be faced in order to enter the new world God has promised, but God continues to promise an abundance of blessings when we overcome our fears and obey.
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Sermons on Liberation
Until our eyes are opened to discern the dog-domination and pig-powers that oppress us from within our culture, we will continue to be trampled underfoot by them
Every coin you are holding already belongs to God: every bitterness, every hurt, every disappointment. Do not hold a single one back.
Jesus wants to lift us beyond the deadening conformity that seeks to silence us and confine us to a stunted life.
We have been adopted as the children of a king who does not withhold his love until we comply, who does not ask us to sing for our supper, who does not use us or abuse us, but longs to bind up our wounds.
Despite our often minimal vision for ourselves, and our feeling of not being important to God, Jesus Christ is committed to bringing us to the fullness of life and wholeness.
It is only in light of the resurrection that we can comprehend the sin and death that we are being liberated from.
When we approach God’s way of life and the Sabbath not as punishment, but as gift, the experience becomes a chance to rest from work and from striving; and to allow space for God through contemplation and re-creation and play.
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.
Jesus urges us to take stock, to recognise the sicknesses which warp us and the demons which colonise our hearts and our minds, to renounce them so that we become free to minister to one another, and to proclaim the good news in our words and our lives.
There are many stories in the Bible that can appear to portray God as involved in terrorist acts, but Jesus invites us to read them in new ways.
What would happen if violence were met with bread, with blankets, with hospitals, with forgiveness of debts?
Jesus breaks down the barriers that divide us into pure and impure and removes the cause for the fear that marginalises people.
Unquestioning allegiances to family and nation keep us bound to satanic systems, but Jesus binds the satan and breaks us free to be the new family of God.
The Holy Spirit is poured out on us so that the liberating presence of Christ may be with us all everywhere, freeing us from fear to live and speak boldly of the new life we have tasted.
In Christ we are set free from all that would oppress us in order that we might be free to live in gracious and life-giving service of God and others.
Jesus overcomes the demonic powers which colonise our religious structures and thinking and which rob us of our freedom, integrity and life.
We we allow God’s word to work in us, it lifts the burden of oppressive teaching from us.
True greatness comes in devoting ourselves to recognising and liberating the greatness in others, and that will often come at the cost of misunderstanding, sniping and rejection.
God is doing and saying far more than we can see or hear, but God is always ready to penetrate the presumptions and complacencies that are closing our eyes and ears.