Faith-&-Worldview

From Simon Guillebaud’s January 3rd message at Holy Trinity Brompton on the subject Be A Living Sacrifice: Live Urgently Give Unreservedly Be Transformed Radically #Pondering

– In keeping with the sense of calmness from this morning, the homily at church today was a reflection on peace, with a key theme being how it is under-girded by a sense of implicit trust. This triggered a recollection of a message Bruce Ware gave many years ago at a New Attitude Conference where he likened trusting God to sitting on a three-legged stool, the three-legs in this case being a recognition that God is all powerful, all wise and all-loving, having our best interests at heart (summarized here). ...

--- Yesterday was a seventh consecutive day of having managed to start my day with a time of quiet contemplation using the devotional I’ve chosen to use for the year. The reading, from 1 Corinthians 9:27 with its imagery of war with the body got me thinking of all the other metaphors faith (at least in the Christian sense) is described by. A few readily came to mind; an athlete, a soldier, a farmer and a steward of resources. I suspect there are more, if one chose to delve deeper, but all these seemed to support the narrative of focus and discipline on one hand, and reward on the other. ...

[ Source] Three chance occurrences over the space of the last month have done a lot more to unsettle me than anything else in the year so far. Not in a bad way by any chance, but in an ask-myself-hard-questions way. Of the myriad of questions bobbing around in my mind, ones that relate to authenticity, passion and faith and how these can be melded into a coherent practice have come to the fore, inspired by how the people in question are doing life in their real worlds, leaving marks in ways I can only aspire to at this stage. ...

I have been (re) reading Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace, the central idea of which is that the church has gone the way of the world in dealing with people who are different; with judgement and disdain rather than grace. For a book from 1997, it does not by any means feel dated, somehow remaining current not least for the issues it tackles; issued which defined the late Nineties but still continue to define our current epoch than anything else - homosexuality and the moral failings of people in leadership, temporal and spiritual. ...

.. A deep work (what happens in you is greater than what happens to you, and is deeper than the workings of the circumstances and situations that frame our daily life), a quick work (God takes a long time to do something quick - as long as it takes for us to turn away from what ever else we look to for help on to Him) and a lasting work (what happens through you is meant to outlast you, and true success is measured by how much it empowers the next generation to extend the work that we do). Or so says the phenomenal Joel A’Bell whom I stumbled on in today’s Hillsong London pitstop.. ...

[ Source] One day you wake up with a sense of hunger, as though someone - or something - dredged the innards of your soul and all you want to do is talk to Him. The tug is so strong – and insistent – that you think nothing of kneeling on the cold, hard floor and pouring out your heart. It seems to work because by the time you’re done, you feel light headed and ready, ready to take on the world, bad guys, ghouls and all. ...

For O, who bailed too soon… --- In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Francis Chan at Passion 2013: Do you believe….That God is looking at you regardless of what you’ve done going ‘I’ll buy you back? I know you’re faithless but I never stop being Faithful, pursuing you, loving you… And as long as it is still called today, as long as you’re still breathing, right now you’ve got a chance. I’ll buy you back right now. I’ll take you back… You just lay it at the cross. ...

Somehow, my increasingly regular Friday evening/night conversations with Mlle.M had an interesting segue. We had been catching up on weekend plans at the time I believe when we somehow got into the dodgy waters of traditional gender roles, and how they are expressed in modern (Nigerian) marriages and relationships. [The overwhelming feedback I get from the women I talk to is the Nigerian man out there at the moment, irrespective of how learned he is, is one who expects a certain domestication in his women, often with a big dollop of subservience. My experience doesn’t fit that narrative though.] ...