“If I understand the teaching of the New Testament on this matter, I understand the role of the Christian as that of being neither a conservative nor an anarchist, but a subversive agent… We do not spend enough of our energies training undercover agents.” — Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p82 (via newbigin)
(via ayjay)
“Church shopping is the spiritual equivalent of speed dating; me-focused and loaded with unfair expectations outside of relationship.”
Caesar Kalinowski
via @CaesarKal
“True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity; it is simply true humanity released from bondage to sin and renewed by the Holy Spirit. This is given to us as we grasp by faith the full content of Christ’s redemptive work: freedom from the guilt and power of sin, and newness of life through the indwelling and outpouring of his Spirit.” —
Richard Lovelace
Dynamics of Spiritual Life
“Individual growth toward love and wisdom is slow. A community’s growth is even slower. Members of a community have to be great friends of time.” — Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (1979)
(Source: wesleyhill, via germerian)
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Came across a great site this morning in my interweb ramblings: Screenshots of Despair.
One particular post (see above) got me thinking about my tendency to romanticize community and to desire for it to work a particular way, to look like this other community, to embody these traits, etc. Frankly put, this is usually sin. When I am discontent with the community God is forming, I force my expectations on him and, in seemingly holy and reverent prayer, ask him to change the people to suit my vison. In doing this, I am asking the God of Heaven and Earth to bow to my idol of community. What a twisted, sick disruption of reality!
Bonhoeffer reflected on this once:
“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is like to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams…Every human wish dream that is injected into Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself…
God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered common life with them…[So] we thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather than God for what He does give us daily…
When the morning mist of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.”
Sources:
http://screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com/post/20076052021/via-cabgfx
http://www.sendrdu.com/2012/01/dont-let-your-vision-ruin-your-church-plant/
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back— Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” — Goethe
“There’s no such thing as “independently wealthy” at the King’s table.” — @john_starke
“Ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.” —
Thomas Merton
My Argument with the Gestapo
From Alan Hirsch’s facebook post