on the walk

My friend and former pastor, who now pastors a church near Atlanta has a quirky blog that radiates his charm and love for people. A while back he wrote about becoming a praying church. I stumbled on the post tonight while looking through his blog archives. (I am in bed sick so why not.)

He comments on the first four chapters of Acts and notices that as the people confronted the reality of their call they turned to prayer. Here are some snippets.

After I got back, I read the first four chapters of Acts (for the umpteenth time) and it struck me that within the first chapter that the earliest disciples were placed in a spot that I describe as the tension between “the enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called.” Continue Reading »

I have spend some time thinking about where to start. Jesus direct reaching on Prayer is most prominent in Matthew and Luke. My first impulse was to start with Matthew 6. But as I thought about it I realized I wanted to watch Jesus pray first. The disciples (including but not limited to the twelve) came to Jesus to be taught by him because they had watched Jesus pray and knew that something was different. I wonder if perhaps I will be more ready to hear what Jesus has to teach me if I watch him pray first. Continue Reading »

It is easy to assume that we know why Jesus came to earth. It is easy to assume that we understand his mission.

Sometimes we are right but often we are not.  This matters because the church is called to continue to the work and ministry of Christ.  So if we are going to know what the church is supposed to be doing, we must first know what Jesus was doing. Unfortunately we often get this backwards.  We look at what the church is doing and assume that was what Jesus was doing.

To avoid this we must constantly return to the gospels and examine with fresh eyes the ministry of Christ.  If you want to pursue this line of questioning, I would recommend that you take a look as Mark Roberts post about the Mission of God and Christ. I don’t always agree with every word he says, but he is always thoughtful.

Check it out.

on the walk

-Ethan

I have a terrible prayer life.

On an unrelated note, I was talking with a 13 year old kid about a year ago about Ultimate (the sport played with a Frisbee). I saw that he had received a new disc as a present and that packaged with the disc was a DVD about the rules and techniques of ultimate Frisbee. Continue Reading »

This will be my final reflection on last Sunday’s sermon. If you are interested, you can check out past sermon reflections here. Don’t forget that if you missed it, you can get the sermon here.

This one is the least academic and is mainly about how the sermon connected with stuff that is going on in my life. Continue Reading »

I love it when it happens. Sometimes it happens regularly. In other seasons it won’t happen for a while. The last big one I had came 7 months ago, but I think that I am on the verge of a bunch more during my upcoming Romans class.

I love it when I am reading the bible and I realize that I have consistently and unthinkingly misunderstood a biblical text. I don’t just meant that the text has taken on new meaning and significance in my life. I mean that I used to think that the text meant one thing and then I realize that I was wrong and it means something else. I also love it when I get to help someone else have this same experience. Continue Reading »

One of the few blogs I read that is consistently edifying and prolific is the Jesus Creed blog by Scott McKnight. His current series on developing trends in gospel studies is a good example of his excellent grasp of current scholarship and the needs of the church. Take a look if you want. Here is a category link and from there you can see the specific posts.

on the walk

-Ethan

We had a sermon on Jephthah today. That takes guts. I have at least two reflections that I want to share. The second is about my response to the sermon. This was one of those times that the sermon connected with startling accuracy to the stuff in my life. I was moved and inspired and challenged and even a bit bruised by the sermon. But I want to process that side a bit more before a share. The first reflection I have to share is actually Continue Reading »

Ethan Magness to readers, greetings.

I wrote a couple of days ago about the power and usefulness of genre studies. This post will make more sense if you read that one, so you may want to check it out. You can find it here or look in the list of recent posts for “i love genre studies.”

I certainly don’t have time to talk about all the implication of genre studies. That is just as well since most of the time the real power comes out when you are ready to study a particular text. Continue Reading »

“Now our children grow up prisoners, All their lives radio listeners”

This is how the classic R.E.M. song, Out of Time, ends. I just reread the lyrics, I was surprised how well I remembered the song. One of the wonderful things my wife gave me was an introduction to the music of R.E.M. Despite the PG-13 lyrics the song was a compelling description of a culture imprisoned by its addiction to the media culture. (They got the radio part wrong, but their message is more general.)

This song came back to me when I read this post at the blog Out of Ur: Thus Saith the Radio. I resonate completely with this story. Continue Reading »