The refining fire made known in Jesus is not targeting “morality” issues, but our hatreds, hostilities and inhospitableness.
The refining fire made known in Jesus is not targeting “morality” issues, but our hatreds, hostilities and inhospitableness.
Good gossip, listening in love to each other’s stories and seeking the presence of God, helps us to build connection and community and to grow in love.
En Cristo somos uno con toda la carne y la sangre, y por lo tanto nuestra lucha no es contra ningunas personas, sino contra los espíritus y los principados y los potestades que dividirían a la gente y les harían enemigos.
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.
Love is our purpose; we are not abandoned, not fearful, judgemental or self-righteous, for we are made in the image of God, who is gentle and wise, witty and loving, generous, forgiving, compassionate and kind.
The glory of God is most fully revealed in Jesus’s willingness to suffer death at the hands of the law.
We are prepared to sacrifice and kill in the name of our God, but God is willing to be sacrificed and be killed to save us, even when we were enemies.
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.
Expecting God to always appear as an exalted triumphant victor blinds us to the reality of God’s glory which is made known in suffering, self-sacrificial love.
Jesus calls us to model a pattern of love and generous inclusion, and to avoid the demonic temptations of exclusion and pride.
What would happen if violence were met with bread, with blankets, with hospitals, with forgiveness of debts?
Christ is present to us in love, unity and reconciliation, and thus these are essential to our worship.
Faith is a gift created in us as Jesus shows us that the pathway of courageous love and self-sacrifice is not impossible to walk.
Understanding God as a relational trinity can guide us into the deep loving relationships with God and one another for which we were created.
We are to witness to this incredible, unbelievable, but very real truth: that in God’s reality, love crosses every divide, even the chasm of death.
God’s refining work is done not through judgement and punishment, but through the transforming power of love.
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.
The stories of Moses, Elijah and Jesus on various mountain tops reveals a process of God’s self-revelation as the one who loves us and suffers for us.
The “things” we so readily put our trust in, or find our identity in, will all fall, and only God’s love and care for us will remain.
God is always reaching out to those who we have cast off as nobodies, treating them as beloved somebodies, and calling us to follow in doing the same.