You should watch this teaching by Rob Bell. It’s pretty awesome.
Direct link to video at Youtube
This the is the first part, and you can find the next part after each part plays.
I love the part where he talks about Jesus calling the fishermen to follow him; it’s an awesome picture of how God wants to use the base and the despised to build His Kingdom.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.