on the walk

Micheal Spencer from Jesus Shaped Spirituality offer this fantastic PDF from Tim Keller.

I suggest you print it out and take a quiet moment to read it and praise God.  I also suggest you hold me to that same goal.

Here is the PDF.

on the walk

-Ethan

I will need to read it again to process this powerful post about embodying today that kingdom that God is bringing.  Having just preached on Jesus as the messenger of God’s kingdom and the new king, I was excited by this post.

on the walk

-Ethan

Greetings,

I commented on the recent novel The Shack a few posts back.  My thoughts weren’t systematic and were bit tentative.  Ben Witherington weighs in with a few carefully and calmly raised concerns.  If you have read the book you may appreciate his thoughts.  He is a bit more confident on a few points than I am but I appreciate his careful reading.

on the walk

-Ethan

My friend Alex Lozada reccomended I check this out.  It is beautiful.

The parable of the brick wall. 

Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

on the walk

-Ethan

My wife and I have been working lately to help our kids find the joy in trying new things.  Some of this has meant taking appropriate risks(water slides and roller coasters).  Some times it has meant trusting their parents when we tell them they can do something.  [Do you trust your daddy?  “Yes” Then go jump off the diving board and swim across the pool to me.]

But some of it has been just helping learn to embrace things that are new.  Like many of us, their default reaction to a new food or a new experience is often, “I don’t like that.”  In those cases we often get to reply, “How do you know, you haven’t tried it.”  To help us with this very important teaching task, we have a slogan for this summer, “Live the adventure.”

Recently on our vacation the boys and I were wandering in the woods.  Evan began asking, “Daddy do you know how to get there?”  Not Exactly.

“Do you have a map?”  Nope.

“Will we be okay?” Yes.

“How do you know?”

I stopped and finally turned to him and said, “Evan what’s our motto?”

He replied “Live the adventure.”  We yelled it together a few times to build up our courage and then we forged ahead.

This slogan has been helpful for our boys and it has been challenging for me.

I too need to live the adventure.

Prodigal Jon (Author of Stuff Christians Like) has this challenging quote in a recent post on his new blog.

“You can gain experience, if you are careful to avoid empty redundancy. Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience – twenty times.”

I don’t want a life like that.

I want to Live the Adventure

on the walk

-Ethan

I recently discovered a blog that is one of the funniest places I have ever been. But since this blog isn’t usually about funny, I haven’t linked to it. But this blog is also occasionally powerfully and profound.

Here is a recent post on the importance of letting our scars be ugly. I will quote best paragraph but you can follow this link for the whole thing.

Here is the best part:

Have you ever thought about what type of party the father threw the prodigal son in Luke 15?

I didn’t until last night. I didn’t see the implications for you and me until I thought about shining my own scars. But you know what the prodigal son gets when he comes home? A welcome home party. The father doesn’t throw him a “you never left” party. He doesn’t call the servants excitedly to get things ready for the “everything is fine” party. Not at all, he makes a point of saying, “Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

He says that twice. Once to the servants and once to the older brother. The father got it. The reason to celebrate was not that things were perfect. It was that the son had been lost, voluntarily so, and was now found. He had been willingly dead by leaving but was now alive. The fact that he had blown it, the fact that the son had broken his life was not a source of shame, it was a cause to celebrate. The gross of being lost and dead was part of what made the reality of being found and alive so bright and true and undeniable.

Amen and Amen,

on the walk

-Ethan

Ps. Once you are there, be sure to hang around and explore the funny.

Check out these strong reflections from Micheal Spencer.

Are we putting up unnecessary obstacles to the welcome of Jesus to all people however weary and heavy laden?

on the walk

-Ethan

I don’t think about this issue very often, but I am today. I was discussing an upcoming program with colleague and I mentioned that I wanted it to be around tables because I wanted the conversation to be psychologically more important than the lecture components.  That got me thinking about what our architecture says about our theology.  Do we meet in spaces that imply with value relationships of listening?  Do our spaces communicate value of song, or speech, or service?

These thoughts were reinforced by the thoughts of DAn Kimball reflecting on the new building they are using that has pews.  For him that is a new reality. He comments a it ont eh histroy of pews but mainly he notices that pews say something about what we believe about worship about God and about the purpose of gathering each week.  Whether you agree with his conclusions or not it is probably worth asking.  Does my architecture says what I want it to say?

Here is Dan Kimball reflecting on pews.

on the walk

-Ethan

I was a guest in a small rural church on Sunday. It was a service very different from what I normally experience. I disagree with some of the theology that was practiced and taught. Nevertheless, Christ was proclaimed as Lord and Savior and I was glad to be there. They handled the recent celebration of a national holiday with care and restraint. In the pastoral prayer, we were directed to God and to place our trust and allegiance in the King and in no other kingdom.

I began to ponder how to pray, when the pastoral pray turned to pray for “our soldiers.” Continue Reading »

John Stackhouse has two posts gathering background reading on the recent movie “Expelled.” In the first post, the meat is in the comments, as his readers provide a wide spectrum of possible sources for further reading. In the second he gives his analysis of what he was offered. His top recommendation you can go find for yourself on his blog. It is a detailed and fine analysis of the Expelled movie that is sympathetic but still careful and critical. But his second choice I will serve to you on a platter.

If you are at all intrigued by the conversations surrounding the “Intelligent Design” community I recommend this fine article by Loren Haarmsa.

I leave for vacation soon so posting may be spotty for a week or so.

on the walk

-Ethan