brianrushing.net

I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection:
    (1) the world and
    (2) the Christian tradition.

I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

I also found this projecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike: the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself.

The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world — it had evidently been meant to go there — and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me.
–G. K. Chesterton

Have you had the experience of Chesterton where your understanding of God has helped you make better sense of the world and how to live in it yet not be of it?

Some see miracles as an implausible suspension of the laws of the physical universe. As signs, though, they serve just the opposite function. Death, decay, entropy, and destruction are the true suspensions of God’s laws; miracles are the early glimpses of restoration. In the words Jurgen Moltmann, “Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly ‘natural’ things in a world that is unnatural, demonized and wounded.”
–Philip Yancey

Amen.
May we all strive to be more like Jesus – the only normal One who ever walked the world!

…it is often the case, as all the saints know, that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is greatest, when the cross is heaviest.
–J. I. Packer

The testimony of martyrs who sang, testified, and had joy at the moment of their deaths are examples of this truth. The persecution of Christians continues to occur all over the world today. Some are even giving their physical lives for the sake of the gospel. Stop and take a moment to pray for those who are being persecuted for their faith – ask the Father that they would stand strong and find deep fellowship with God through their experience.

And pray that God would continue to help you experience great joy even when the cross is heavy in your life.

Luther said, “Let us not be anxious, the gospel does not need our help; it is sufficiently strong of itself!”

It is the Spirit’s role to convict of sin and convince the seeker of God‘s truth. Our task is to share the story of Christ and to ask the Spirit of God to make the message of faith credible and knowable. Yes, we take their questions seriously and answer them as best we can. We work hard to relate the gospel to the cultural context of our hearers. We want to make the Christian position intellectually viable to searching persons. But to refrain from sharing the most glorious news ever announced to humanity because we might be asked a question that stumps us is a tragedy.
–Rebecca Pippert

Are you willing to be obedient in fulfilling your role to share the story of Christ – and His impact on your life?

But what kind of person was he? According to all the data we have, he was a sage, a wise man, a trustable teacher. That is, he was neither deceiver nor deceived; neither an immoral, selfish, lying conniver nor a sincere but naive, out-of-touch, insane idiot. He made an almost unbelievable claim: He was God. But he was a believable person. To those who met him, this was the fundamental challenge: They had either to believe his almost unbelievable claim or disbelieve his very believable person.
–Peter Kreeft

Have you investigated the claims and character of Jesus?
Have you found out that He is exactly who He said He was?
And if He is who He claimed to be – Lord of all – will you serve Him well today?