A Theme

As this year began I searched out a theme for me personally this year...what is God saying to me?...What is He speaking into my life?

Freedom

That's it for me. It's freedom. Time after time as I've met with my spiritual director this theme has come up. It's come up as I've tried to work through a number of things in life and ministry. Freedom.

So my question for you is this: what does God want to speak to you?

It's funny that we think of God speaking something to us and then it being over and done with. What if God speaks to us and then works with us on what He speaks? So each day we work out what He has spoken. Those who get frustrated that they don't feel God or hear God may perhaps experience this frustration because God has spoken to them...now it's time to wrestle with what He's said...sit with it...let those words shape and form who we are.

I'm being shaped by "Freedom." How 'bout you?

Anticipating Easter

Easter is the time in the Christian year to celebrate the hope we have through faith in Christ. In Easter we can truly say that the powers and authorities of this world have NO power and authority over us.

I've been struck in recent conversations by the hopelessness of followers of Jesus as they digest the dismal news of our day. They see the economy collapsing. They hear of all the conflicts of the world and the uncertainty of our times. They worry about what the future will bring.

Isn't this the time we are to have hope? When all the powers of the world seem to fail, aren't we about a Kingdom that stands in the midst of the smaller ones failing? I realize it rattles our security...or sense of security, but then shouldn't we be examining exactly where we find our security?

Easter says to us that the powers of this world don't have the power. We identify with Paul's hope. They can beat him, lock him up in chains, and try to silence him, but they cannot take away his hope. The powers cannot take away our hope. No matter how much the choices of the powers (our government, bailouts, jobs, etc) effect our lives because of the resurrection of Jesus we have hope.

N.T. Wright writes the following in Surprised By Hope:

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"Who, after all , was it who didn't want the dead to be raised? Not simply the intellectually timid. It was, and is, those in power, the social and intellectual tyrants and bullies; the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated the tyrant's last weapon, death itself.

Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world."

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Dear Jesus Followers:

It is now during the times of worldwide despair in the season of Easter that we remember we have a hope that is beyond the death that we are currently seeing. It is our job to be livers of this hope...proclaimers of this hope...beacons of light that scream out against the darkness that pervades the lives of the hopeless. Put not your trust in the powers of the day that are fleeting and crumbling, but put your hope in the resurrection of Jesus who gives us the power to hope in the midst of death.

Quote

"We should pray that we would become the sort of people who are safe for God to trust with miracles. We must become people who will not exploit or market or pervert the power of the Spirit. We must become people who get out of the way of God."

pg. 113 Prayer for Ordinary Radicals