Your parents aren't the enemy. Your spouse isn't the enemy. That man who abused you isn't even the enemy. You and I all have only one enemy, and his name is Satan. He would like you focus your attention and aggression on everyone else. But he is our only enemy, and every single one of us is a victim of his violence and deceit. When we understand this we can begin to dismantle our walls and extend grace and forgiveness and mercy to everyone else who has been victimized.
Read MoreGoogle is estimated to have something like 30 million hard drives across their entire operation globally. That means, by statistical analysis, that Google can expect a hard drive to fail once every 6 seconds. Which is about how often we screw up as well.
Read MoreDuring my travels, what I discovered is that what's appropriate to wear in any given context differs widely from culture to culture. Dissonance occurs when what you feel is appropriate differs with what someone else feels is appropriate. Rather than acknowledge that we are experiencing cultural dissonance, we tend to project our own cultural values upon others, and use that as the basis for our judgement. Rather than accept the judgements our mind makes up, God invites us to have our minds constantly renewed.
Read MoreWhile God has every right to punish us, he instead took the punishment upon his own self, scandalizing himself with the love that he has shown us. Why would he do this? Because our eternal purpose is to be loved by God. Since God has loved us, we can now reflect that to our children. Consequently, fully engaged intimacy with our children is the single most effective method of behavioural correction we will ever find. We can provide no better preparation for a life of loving God, than by setting this stage of intentional, loving, un-discipline. What our children need is to be honoured by us, to be served by us, to be 100% engaged by us.
Read MoreKing David enjoys status higher than a lot of Christendom and Judaism's other heroes and figureheads. Even Jesus is called the Son of David. I've been thinking recently how much this exposes flaws in modern Western Christianity. Somehow, King David managed to be the only person in the Scriptures that God said was a man after his own heart. Countless books have been written about David, or following the model of David, or otherwise encouraging a Davidian element in our lives. Obviously he is venerated and held in hugely high regard. And yet, we know that in a moment of passionate love for his God, he ran naked and nude down the main street of town. We also know that in a moment of passionate lust, he raped a man's wife and then murdered her husband. Rock on!
Read MoreI look forward to the day when people, en masse, realise that they don’t need to (and can’t) do anything to earn God’s favour, and start to simply live with Christ (rather than for Christ). This is from Wayne Jacobson’s book – He Loves Me – via my good friend Dallas. The emphasis is mine. As you...
Read MoreIt’s become my conviction that fundamentally we are not supposed to follow the Ten Commandments. I mentioned this in my post about The Shack… the perspective that I fundamentally follow Christ, and he may lead me where he wills. I want to dig into that a bit here, because I think choosing to follow the [...]
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