This isn’t normal?

So, we’ve done this crazy thing and moved 2200 miles away from our friends and fam­ily, sim­ply because we felt God call­ing us to, and he must have some­thing to do out here, right? It con­tin­ues to be an incred­i­ble les­son in liv­ing by faith, wait­ing on the Lord, and look­ing for him every­where. I get the ques­tion a lot, “So what brought you to Sacra­mento?” It’s pretty funny the look on peo­ples’ faces when we try and explain–most seem to think it’s pretty strange, stu­pid, or weird.

On helping the poor

Last Fri­day, our team of vil­lagers (Noah, Haviy­lah, Joy, Amy and Noah) who have been in Nakuru, Kenya for the past 6 weeks finally came back home. They’ve been out there vis­it­ing and min­is­ter­ing to the Lake­view Vil­lage Church, which you can read more about on their blogs.

I’ve been think­ing about what it means to min­is­ter to the poor, and what true help looks like.

It seems like phil­an­thropy is the new fad lately. Every­where you look someone’s rais­ing money for the poor, vis­it­ing third world coun­tries, etc. Famous peo­ple use their social clout to help sup­port charities.

The importance of talking

Dur­ing a recent bible study, we were read­ing through Eph­esians 4. I really love this pas­sage because of the prac­ti­cal steps it gives to build up the Body of Christ. I thought I’d write a sort of com­men­tary on the pas­sage, which I think goes along with Shammah’s excel­lent post on exhor­ta­tion.

And He gave some as apos­tles, and some as prophets, and some as evan­ge­lists, and some as pas­tors and teach­ers, for the equip­ping of the saints for the work of ser­vice, to the build­ing up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowl­edge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the mea­sure of the stature which belongs to the full­ness of Christ.

Who Really Goes to Hell?

You should read this book:

Who Really Goes to Hell? The Gospel You’ve Never Heard

After liv­ing alongside–and being friends with–Shammah for about fif­teen years now, David Rudel’s book feel very famil­iar. Not that I’ve heard it all before, but just in the way that he writes, and how he’s so good at bring­ing sim­ple clar­ity to things most peo­ple either don’t think of, or just turn a blind eye to.

Only skin deep

Any belief in Jesus Christ—however small—is far bet­ter than any amount of belief about him.
George Mac­Don­ald

I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a brother the other night, in which he told me he was hav­ing a hard time with some things he was see­ing about another brother. The issues were about things such as how the pos­ses­sions he had seemed exces­sive, he seemed stand­off­ish, he didn’t seem will­ing to open his home up to this other brother, etc.

Tearing apart the roof

Photo by Sean Venn

I’ve been think­ing some lately about the story of the mir­a­cle Jesus per­formed in Luke 5:17–26:

One day He was teach­ing; and there were some Phar­isees and teach­ers of the law sit­ting there, who had come from every vil­lage of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to per­form healing.