Preaching Is Easy Quotes

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow. Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today, but oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world--in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift form God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational.

The great preacher and founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley (1703-1791), was once approached by a man who came to him in the grip of unbelief. "All is dark; my thoughts are lost," the man said to Wesley, "but I hear that you preach to a great number of people every night and morning. Pray, what would you do with them? Whither would you lead them? What religion do you preach? What is it good for?" Wesley gave this answer to those questions: You ask, what would I do with them? I would make them virtuous and happy, easy in themselves, and useful to others. Whither would I lead them? To heaven, to God the judge, the lover of all, and to Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant. What religion do I preach? The religion of love. The law of kindness brought to light by the gospel. What is this good for? To make all who receive it enjoy God and themselves, to make them like God, lovers of all, contented in their lives, and crying out at their death, in calm assurance, "O grave where is thy victory! Thanks be to God, who giveth me victory, through my Lord Jesus Christ.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of effort, labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not the the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

I often wonder if the role of the clergy in this age is not to dispense information or guard the prestige of their authority, but rather to go first, to volunteer the truth about their sins, their dreams, their failures, and their fears in order to free others to do the same. Such an approach may repel the masses looking for easy answers from flawless leaders, but I think it might make more disciples of Jesus, and I think it might make healthier, happier pastors. There is a difference, after all, between preaching success and preaching resurrection. Our path is the muddier one.

We try so hard as Christians. We think such long thoughts, manipulate such long words, and both listen to and preach such long sermons. Each one of us somewhere, somehow, has known, if only for a moment or so, something of what it is to feel the shattering love of God, and once that has happened, we can never rest easy again for trying somehow to set that love forth not only in words, myriads of words, but in our lives themselves.

Preaching morals is as easy as giving reasons for morals is difficult

It is not easy to make the best of both worlds when one of the worlds is preaching a Class War, and the other vigorously practising it. — Shaw's Preface

Your University professors are bound to preach optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their theories.

It's easy to preach forgiveness when your name is not on the manifest

God loves Port William as it is... Why else should He want it to be better than it is? All my life I had heard preachers quoting John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish by have everlasting life." They would preach on the second part of the verse, to show the easiness of being saved ("only believe"). Where I hung now was the first part. If God loved the world even before the event at Bethlehem, that meant He loved it as it was, with all its faults. That would be Hell itself, in part. He would be like a father with a wayward child, whom He can't help and can't forget. But it would be even worse than that, for He would also know the wayward child and the course of its waywardness and its suffering. That His love contains all the world does not show that the world does not matter, or that He and we do not suffer it unto death; it shows that the world is Hell only in part. But His love can contain it only by compassion and mercy, which, if not Hell entirely, would be at least a crucifixion.

It is no longer necessary to preach sonorously of the sinful and deleterious effect of liquor on the human mind and body; the essential evil is recognised scientifically, and only the sophistry of conscious immorality remains to be combated. Brewers and distillers still strive clumsily to delude the public by the transparent misstatements of their advertisements, and periodicals of easy conscience still permit these advertisements to disgrace their pages; but the end of such pernicious pretension is not remote. The drinker of yesterday flaunted his voice before all without shame; the average drinker of today must needs resort to excuses.

O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.

As I preach to my congregation every Sunday when it comes to staying afloat financially and living within your means, there is nothing easy about easy payments. Learn to say the words “I can’t afford it.” —Kirbyjon Caldwell

We are spiritual children of God the Father. We preach it. We sing it. But do we really understand it? Sometimes it’s easy to tell others they are loved, but not so easy to believe it of ourselves — not because we don’t think God loves His children, but because we may feel undeserving of His love. The adversary loves to remind us who we are not. Not pretty. Not smart. Not strong. But God would not have sacrificed His Son to save us if we aren’t worth saving.

Because this is an urban church in a downtown neighborhood, it is not so easy to avoid the presence of the poor. We see them. I wonder if that is not part of our vocation, to see the poor, to be the Lord's eyes - because the Lord sees the poor, and he loves the poor, and he sends his people to serve the poor. That is a message that pervades the Scriptures from end to end. There is something seriously out of balance in American Christianity. I am personally opposed to abortion, but there is nothing explicit in the Bible about abortion. There is nothing explicit in the Bible about prayer in the public schools; there is nothing explicit in the Bible about the American flag or the right to have a gun. There are, however, thousands of explicit words in the Bible about justice and compassion for the poor. There are thousands of words in the Bible about defending those who are defenseless.

Animal Farm is a warning to every reader. Beware the utopia; beware the perfect solution and the easy slogan; beware those who claim to know what is best for you; beware bombast and dogma; beware the death of doubt; beware those who do not practice what they preach. Beware the chosen. Beware the one and only true path.

A kiss for a blow is always best, though it’s not very easy to give it sometimes,” said her mother, with the air of one who had learned the difference between preaching and practicing.

Nothing is more common, easy, or agreeable to corrupt nature than to preach a multitude of the precious truths of Christ in a broken and disjointed manner without ever preaching the gospel of Christ.

It is actually not easy to preach grace because when you preach grace, you make nothing of man and everything of Jesus. And man does not like that. Man likes to think that he has fasted 40 days and 40 nights to get the anointing. He wants to be able to say, “I paid the price for spiritual power.” Hey, my friend, Jesus paid the price already. It is not about your fasting. It is all about the work of Jesus Christ!

He had expected that traditionally Republican Vermont would give him too drearily easy a task in preaching Trowbridge. What he found was a dismaying preference for the theoretically Democratic Buzz Windrip. And that preference, Doremus perceived, wasn’t even a pathetic trust in Windrip’s promises of Utopian bliss for everyone in general. It was a trust in increased cash for the voter himself, and for his family, very much in particular.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their marks Made everything from toy guns that sparks To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much Is really sacred. While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the President of the United States Sometimes must have To stand naked. An' though the rules of the road have been lodged It's only people's games that you got to dodge And it's alright, Ma, I can make it. Advertising signs that con you Into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you. Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing, Ma, to live up to. For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despite their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something They invest in. While some on principles baptized To strict party platforms ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say God Bless him. While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he's in. Old lady judges, watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn't talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony. While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer's pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon them naturally Life sometimes Must get lonely. And if my thought-dreams could been seen They'd probably put my head in a guillotine But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security.

Dear New Orleans, What a big, beautiful mess you are. A giant flashing yellow light—proceed with caution, but proceed. Not overly ambitious, you have a strong identity, and don’t look outside yourself for intrigue, evolution, or monikers of progress. Proud of who you are, you know your flavor, it’s your very own, and if people want to come taste it, you welcome them without solicitation. Your hours trickle by, Tuesdays and Saturdays more similar than anywhere else. Your seasons slide into one another. You’re the Big Easy…home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where a libation greets you on a Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night. Home of the front porch, not the back. This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it. Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch. Private properties hospitably trespass on each other and lend across borders where a 9:00 A.M. alarm clock is church bells, sirens, and a slow-moving eight-buck-an-hour carpenter nailing a windowpane two doors down. You don’t sweat details or misdemeanors, and since everybody’s getting away with something anyway, the rest just wanna be on the winning side. And if you can swing the swindle, good for you, because you love to gamble and rules are made to be broken, so don’t preach about them, abide. Peddlin worship and litigation, where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the livin? You’re a right-brain city. Don’t show up wearing your morals on your sleeve ’less you wanna get your arm burned. The humidity suppresses most reason so if you’re crossing a one-way street, it’s best to look both ways. Mother Nature rules, the natural law capital “Q” Queen reigns supreme, a science to the animals, an overbearing and inconsiderate bitch to us bipeds. But you forgive her, and quickly, cus you know any disdain with her wrath will reap more: bad luck, voodoo, karma. So you roll with it, meander rather, slowly forward, takin it all in stride, never sweating the details. Your art is in your overgrowth. Mother Nature wears the crown around here, her royalty rules, and unlike in England, she has both influence and power. You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure. Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty and the murder rate, all of it, just how it is and how it turned out. Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix. —June 7, 2013, New Orleans, La.

Preaching to the masses, although necessary, will never suffice in the work of preparing leaders for evangelism. Nor can occasional prayer meetings and training classes for Christian workers do this job. Building men and women is not that easy. It requires constant personal attention, much like a father gives to his children. This is something that no organization or class can ever do. Children are not raised by proxy. The example of Jesus would teach us that it can be done only by persons staying close to those whom they seek to lead.

...magazines devoted to the religion of success appear as Makers of America. They mean just about that when they preach evolution, progress, prosperity, being constructive, the American way of doing things. It is easy to laugh, but, in fact, they are using a very great pattern of human endeavor. For one thing it adopts an impersonal criterion; for another it adopts an earthly criterion; for a third it is habituating men to think quantitatively. To be sure the idea confuses excellence with size, happiness with speed, and human nature with contraption. Yet the same motives are at work which have ever actuated any moral code, or ever will. The desire fir the biggest, the fastest, the highest, or if you are a maker of wristwatches or microscopes the smallest; the love in short of the superlative and the "peerless," is in essence and possibility a noble passion.

Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or the government. Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators. Hope does not mean that the nation’s ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope. Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope sees in our enemy our own face. Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey. The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. Those addicted to power, blinded by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics. Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing. I cannot promise you fine weather or an easy time. I cannot pretend that being handcuffed is pleasant. If we resist and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

Dad’s church required so little of me. It was easy to be a Christian. The only affirmative teachings I remember drawing from church were that I shouldn’t cheat on my wife and that I shouldn’t be afraid to preach the gospel to others. So I planned a life of monogamy and tried to convert other people, even my seventh-grade science teacher, who was Muslim.

This is an age-old fantasy. I remember reading a quote from the apologist Edward John Carnell in Ian Murray’s biography of the Welsh preacher David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. During the formative years of Fuller Theological Seminary, Carnell said regarding evangelicalism, “We need prestige desperately.” Christians have worked hard to position themselves in places of power within the culture. They seek influence academically, politically, economically, athletically, socially, theatrically, religiously, and every other way, in hopes of gaining mass media exposure. But then when they get that exposure—sometimes through mass media, sometimes in a very broad-minded church environment—they present a reinvented designer pop gospel that subtly removes all of the offense of the gospel and beckons people into the kingdom along an easy path. They do away with all that hard-to-believe stuff about self-sacrifice, hating your family, and so forth. The illusion is that we can preach our message more effectively from lofty perches of cultural power and influence, and once we’ve got everybody’s attention, we can lead more people to Christ by taking out the sting of the gospel and nurturing a user-friendly message. But to get to these lofty perches, “Christian” public figures water down and compromise the truth; then, to stay up there, they cave in to pressure to perpetuate false teaching so their audience will stay loyal.

Excellent ministers cannot be those who yearn for earthly applause. Neither can they be lovers of earthly comfort. The life of ministry is not a life of leisure. No ministry of any value comes without pain. I often encounter young men headed for the ministry who are looking for a church without problems, a ministry without challenges, a congregation that will make life easy. There is no such place for the faithful preacher of the Word. The notion that ministry can be both effective and painless is a lie. You will encounter hardship if you preach the unadulterated Word. And when adversity strikes, you have two choices. You can endure and remain steadfast, or you can compromise. The faithful minister holds the line for the truth. You cannot do that and escape suffering (2 Tim. 3:12).

We have never made an effort to understand what is greatness in man and how to recognize it,” said another Wynand editorial. “We have come to hold, in a kind of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let’s stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thought? But these are a man’s supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all.

The New Englander is half-mad. His idea of a good time is to preach sermons 51 weeks of the year, and destroy buildings on the 52nd. Besides, he lacks the refinement that can only come from wielding absolute power over a servile class.' 'The Southerner's religion is corrupt; his morals are lax; his plantations are cruel; his women are easy. His life is (shudder) deeply tempting.' 'Non-Pennsylvanians are all obsessed.' 'Hey, I'm Jewish. Where can I go but Rhode Island?' Any chance of uniting all of these? Not in 1765!

He would expose, remorselessly, those hypocrites and cynics who publicly denied the catastrophe of climate change while secretly short-selling that very same position and hedging all their bets; the millionaires and billionaires who preached self-reliance while accepting vast handouts in the form of subsidies and easy credit, and who bemoaned red tape while building contractual fortresses to shield their capital from their ex-wives; the tax-dodging economic parasites who treated state treasuries like casinos and dismantled welfare programmes out of spite, who secured immensely lucrative state contracts through illegitimate back channels and grubby, endlessly revolving doors, who eroded civil standards, who demolished social norms, and whose obscene fortunes had been made, in every case, on the back of institutions built with public funding, enriched by public patronage, and rightfully belonging to the public, most notably, the fucking Internet; the confirmed sociopaths who were literally vampiric with their regular transfusions of younger, healthier blood; the cancerous polluters who consumed more, and burned more, and wasted more than half the world’s population put together; the crypto-fascist dirty tricksters who pretended to be populists while defrauding and despising the people, who lied with impunity, who stole with impunity, who murdered with impunity, who invented scapegoats, who incited suicides, who encouraged violence and provoked unrest, and who then retreated into a private sphere of luxury so well insulated from the lives of ordinary people, and so well defended against them, that it basically amounted to a form of secession.

Steve Jobs was famous for what observers called his “reality distortion field.” Part motivational tactic, part sheer drive and ambition, this field made him notoriously dismissive of phrases such as “It can’t be done” or “We need more time.” Having learned early in life that reality was falsely hemmed in by rules and compromises that people had been taught as children, Jobs had a much more aggressive idea of what was or wasn’t possible. To him, when you factored in vision and work ethic, much of life was malleable. For instance, in the design stages for a new mouse for an early Apple product, Jobs had high expectations. He wanted it to move fluidly in any direction—a new development for any mouse at that time—but a lead engineer was told by one of his designers that this would be commercially impossible. What Jobs wanted wasn’t realistic and wouldn’t work. The next day, the lead engineer arrived at work to find that Steve Jobs had fired the employee who’d said that. When the replacement came in, his first words were: “I can build the mouse.” This was Jobs’s view of reality at work. Malleable, adamant, self-confident. Not in the delusional sense, but for the purposes of accomplishing something. He knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment. But a high aim could, if things went right, create something extraordinary. He was Napoleon shouting to his soldiers: “There shall be no Alps!” For most of us, such confidence does not come easy. It’s understandable. So many people in our lives have preached the need to be realistic or conservative or worse—to not rock the boat. This is an enormous disadvantage when it comes to trying big things. Because though our doubts (and self-doubts) feel real, they have very little bearing on what is and isn’t possible. Our

E-9 This is not a easy subject to speak on. I could think of many things that were easier to speak on. But, brother, if somebody don't stand out in this sinful, adulternous day that we live in and call the colors, what's going to happen? Somebody has got to speak the thing. Somebody's got to place it before the people. Perhaps Ezra didn't want to do it. But it was in his heart. And when you see a servant of God get so sincere till he's on his face with his hands in the air, praying to God, and blushing because the iniquity of the people, then you're going to see a revival start. A man cannot lay in the Presence of God, a church cannot stay in the Presence of God under repentance unless the Holy Spirit comes down and gives unction and power to start a move of God in there among those people. Just got to be. Show me a man. Show me another Calvin, Knox, Finney, Sankey, or any of those who feels the burden of the people, that'll lay on their face and cry and pray before God. Send us a John Smith of the Baptist Church again, who prayed all night for the iniquity of the people until his eyes would be swelled shut the next morning from weeping, till his wife would lead him to the table and feed him his breakfast out of a spoon. Show me a John Wesley again, a firebrand snatched from the fire. I'll show you a revival. ( "A Blushing Prophet" Preached on Sunday evening, 25th November 1956 at the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A - See Paragraph E -9 ).

There was great indignation at home when she told her story that evening. Her mother said it was a shame, but told her she had done right. Beth declared she wouldn't go to the fair at all, and Jo demanded why she didn't take all her pretty things and leave those mean people to get on without her. "Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it. they will feel that more than angry speeches and huffy actions, won't they, Marmee?" "That's the right spirit, my dear. A kiss for a blow is always best, though it's not very easy to give it sometimes," said her mother, with the air of one who had learned the difference between preaching and practicing.

Take pride in your choices, not your gifts. ... This is something that's super-important for young people to understand, and for parents to preach to young people. It's really easy for a talented young person to take pride in their gifts: "I'm really athletic," or "I'm really smart," or "I'm really good at math." That's fine. You should celebrate your gifts. You should be happy. But you can't be proud of them ... What you can be proud of is your choices. How did you decide to use your gifts? Did you study hard? Did you work hard? Did you practice? The people who excel combine gifts and hard work, and the hard work part is a choice. You get to decide that. And that is something that when you're looking back on your life, you will be very proud of.

Then he took him by the hand, and led him into a very large parlor full of dust, as if it had never been swept. The Interpreter called to a man and told him to sweep. The man grabbed a broom and swept and in so doing stirred a thick cloud of dust into the air. The dust grew so dense it almost choked Christian. The Interpreter then spoke to a woman who stood nearby. “Bring some water here and sprinkle the room.” The woman did as she was told and the entire room was easily swept and cleaned. Christian asked, “What does this mean?” The Interpreter answered, “This parlor is the heart of a man who was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the gospel. The dust is his sin and inward corruption which has defiled the whole man. The one who began to sweep at first is the law, but she who brought water and sprinkled it is the gospel. Interpreter shows Christian the room full of dust “Now while you saw the room fill with the great cloud of dust when first swept, the dust flew about in such a way that the room could not be cleansed and its dust almost choked you. This is to show you that the law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, does in fact arouse it. (So that without the law I lived for some time; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. – Rom. 7:9) It also gives it greater strength (The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. – 1 Cor. 15:56), and causes sin to flourish in the soul (Moreover the law entered that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. – Rom. 5:20), for even as the law uncovers sin and forbids it, it does not provide the power to subdue it. “In the same way, the woman you saw sprinkle the room with water which made it easy to clean – this is to show you that when the gospel comes with its sweet and precious influences and indwells the heart, just like the dust settled by sprinkling the floor with water, sin is also vanquished and subdued and the soul made clean, through faith. Consequently, the soul becomes a suitable place for the King of Glory to inhabit.” (Now to him that is able to confirm you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was concealed from times eternal but now is made manifest, and by the writings of the prophets, by the commandment of God eternal, declared unto all the Gentiles, that they might hear and obey by faith. – Rom. 16:25, 26)

The Japanese word seiki is also a way of pointing to this vitality of presence. Carl Whitaker hinted at it when he said therapy was as good as the goodness of the therapist. Though his words are easy to misunderstand, they imply a truth: “I found seiki at the heart of most healing traditions.” Keeney is referring to his decade-long journey around the world, studying with the most accomplished healers in southern Africa, Latin America, South Asia, among the aborigines of Australia, and to many other far-flung places that hold ancient practices. He finds it more than a little amusing that in the culture of therapy we are so obsessed with things that matter so little to others around the world. “I have learned that one’s model or protocols matter not at all and that evidence-based therapy is a gambler’s way of pulling the authority card. If you have seiki, or a powerful life force, then any model will come to life. Without it, the session will be dead and incapable of transformation.” Keeney finds it challenging, if not frustrating, to try to explain this idea to those who don’t speak this language. “I guess if you have seiki or n/om, you feel what I am talking about; if you don’t, no words will matter. The extent to which you feel, smell, taste, hear, and see this vitality is a measure of how much mastery there is in your practice and everyday life.” We believe it is an illusion that master therapists truly understand what therapy is all about and how it works. The reality is that the process has many different dimensions and nuances that we never really grasp. There are aspects that appear both mysterious and magical.

It is easy to say that Baldwin’s main message was racial equality. Surely the topic flows through his work more than it ebbs. Yet one makes a grave mistake in pigeonholing James Baldwin’s worldview so narrowly, for throughout this miscellany, though racial topics and racial politics are often the touchstone, his true themes are more in line with the early church fathers, with Erasmus of Rotterdam, with the great Western philosophers, with theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and James Cone. And though it is too broad—if not useless—to say his true topic is humanity, it is useful to see how, no matter his topic, how often his writing finds some ur-morality upon which to rest, how he always sees matters through a lens of decency, how he writes with his heart as well as with his head. Baldwin left the pulpit at sixteen, but he never stopped preaching.

Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union, so much kept and so far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel and to the course they were in before.

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flintyhearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that "pure and undefiled religion" which is from above, and which is "first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation - a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, "Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting…. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.

AUGUSTINE. (Ep. 199, 46.) But that this preaching the Gospel of the kingdom in all the world was accomplished by the Apostles, we have not any certain evidence, to prove. There are numberless barbarous nations in Africa, among whom the Gospel is not even yet preached, as it is easy to learn from the prisoners who are brought from thence. But it cannot be said that these have no part in the promise of God. For God promised with an oath not the Romans only, but all nations to the seed of Abraham. But in whatever nation there is yet no Church established, it must needs be that there should be one, not that all the people should believe; for how then should that be fulfilled, Ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake, unless there be in all nations those who hate and those; who are hated? That preaching therefore was not accomplished by the Apostles, while as yet there were nations among whom it had not begun to be fulfilled. The words of the Apostle also, Their sound hath gone out into all the world, though expressed as of time past, are meant to apply to something future, not yet completed; as the Prophet, whose words he quotes, said that the Gospel bore fruit and grew in the whole world (Ps. 19:4.), to shew thereby to what extent its growth should come. If then we know not when it shall be that the whole world shall be filled with the Gospel, undoubtedly we know not when the end shall be; but it shall not be before such time.

Many people approach Tolstoy with mixed feelings. They love the artist in him and are intensely bored by the preacher; but at the same time it is rather difficult to separate Tolstoy the preacher from Tolstoy the artist—it is the same deep slow voice, the same robust shoulder pushing up a cloud of visions or a load of ideas. What one would like to do, would be to kick the glorified soapbox from under his sandalled feet and then lock him up in a stone house on a desert island with gallons of ink and reams of paper—far away from the things, ethical and pedagogical, that diverted his attention from observing the way the dark hair curled above Anna's white neck. But the thing cannot be done : Tolstoy is homogeneous, is one, and the struggle which, especially in the later years, went on between the man who gloated over the beauty of black earth, white flesh, blue snow, green fields, purple thunderclouds, and the man who maintained that fiction is sinful and art immoral—this struggle was still confined within the same man. Whether painting or preaching, Tolstoy was striving, in spite of all obstacles, to get at the truth. As the author of Anna Karenin, he used one method of discovering truth; in his sermons, he used another; but somehow, no matter how subtle his art was and no matter how dull some of his other attitudes were, truth which he was ponderously groping for or magically finding just around the corner, was always the same truth — this truth was he and this he was an art. What troubles one, is merely that he did not always recognize his own self when confronted with truth. I like the story of his picking up a book one dreary day in his old age, many years after he had stopped writing novels, and starting to read in the middle, and getting interested and very much pleased, and then looking at the title—and seeing: Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy. What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina—not truth but the inner light of truth. When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels? Essential truth, istina, is one of the few words in the Russian language that cannot be rhymed. It has no verbal mate, no verbal associations, it stands alone and aloof, with only a vague suggestion of the root "to stand" in the dark brilliancy of its immemorial rock. Most Russian writers have been tremendously interested in Truth's exact whereabouts and essential properties. To Pushkin it was of marble under a noble sun ; Dostoevski, a much inferior artist, saw it as a thing of blood and tears and hysterical and topical politics and sweat; and Chekhov kept a quizzical eye upon it, while seemingly engrossed in the hazy scenery all around. Tolstoy marched straight at it, head bent and fists clenched, and found the place where the cross had once stood, or found—the image of his own self.

the rivalry between the big and little states almost tore the convention apart. Their dispute was over whether the legislative branch should be proportioned by population or by equal votes per state. Finally, Franklin arose to make a motion on behalf of a compromise that would have a House proportioned by population and a Senate with equal votes per state. “When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint,” he said. “In like manner here, both sides must part with some of their demands.” His point was crucial for understanding the art of true political leadership: Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies. The toughest part of political leadership, however, is knowing when to compromise and when to stand firm on principle. There is no easy formula for figuring that out, and Franklin got it wrong at times. At the Constitutional Convention, he went along with a compromise that soon haunted him: permitting the continuation of slavery. But he was wise enough to try to rectify such mistakes. After the Constitutional Convention, he became the president of a society for the abolition of slavery. He realized that humility required tolerance for other people’s values, which at times required compromise; however, it was important to be uncompromising in opposing those who refused to show tolerance for others. During his lifetime, Benjamin Franklin donated to the building fund of each and every church built in Philadelphia. And at one point, when a new hall was being built to accommodate itinerate preachers, Franklin wrote the fund-raising document and urged citizens to be tolerant enough so “that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” And on his deathbed, he was the largest individual contributor to the building fund for Mikveh Israel, the first synagogue in Philadelphia.

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty. If there are laws for the age of maturity, there ought to be laws for infancy, teaching obedience to others. [...] Public education, therefore, under regulations prescribed by the government, and under magistrates established by the Sovereign, is one of the fundamental rules of popular or legitimate government. If children are brought up in common in the bosom of equality; if they are imbued with the laws of the State and the precepts of the general will; if they are taught to respect these above all things; if they are surrounded by examples and objects which constantly remind them of the tender mother who nourishes them, of the love she bears them, of the inestimable benefits they receive from her, and of the return they owe her, we cannot doubt that they will learn to cherish one another mutually as brothers, to will nothing contrary to the will of society, to substitute the actions of men and citizens for the futile and vain babbling of sophists, and to become in time defenders and fathers of the country of which they will have been so long the children. I shall say nothing of the Magistrates destined to preside over such an education, which is certainly the most important business of the State. It is easy to see that if such marks of public confidence were conferred on slight grounds, if this sublime function were not, for those who have worthily discharged all other offices, the reward of labour, the pleasant and honourable repose of old age, and the crown of all honours, the whole enterprise would be useless and the education void of success. For wherever the lesson is not supported by authority, and the precept by example, all instruction is fruitless; and virtue itself loses its credit in the mouth of one who does not practise it. But let illustrious warriors, bent under the weight of their laurels, preach courage: let upright Magistrates, grown white in the purple and on the bench teach justice. Such teachers as these would thus get themselves virtuous successors, and transmit from age to age, to generations to come, the experience and talents of rulers, the courage and virtue of citizens, and common emulation in all to live and die for their country.

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to despair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and venturous, they were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, “I do not ask how you are, or say how I am; it is certain we shall all go; so ’tis no matter who is sick or who is sound;” and so they ran desperately into any place or any company. As it brought the people into publick company, so it was surprizing how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They enquired no more into who, they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and crowded together, as if their lives were of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they shewed in coming, and the earnestness and affection they shewed in their attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be their last. Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away all manner of prejudice or of scruple about the person who they found in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had courage enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few years before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act of Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty of accepting their assistance; so that many of those who they called silenced ministers had their mouths opened on the occasion and preached publickly to the people. Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much kept and far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.

THE MEANS OF GOSPEL RENEWAL While the ultimate source of a revival is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit ordinarily uses several “instrumental,” or penultimate, means to produce revival. EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER To kindle every revival, the Holy Spirit initially uses what Jonathan Edwards called “extraordinary prayer” — united, persistent, and kingdom centered. Sometimes it begins with a single person or a small group of people praying for God’s glory in the community. What is important is not the number of people praying but the nature of the praying. C. John Miller makes a helpful and perceptive distinction between “maintenance” and “frontline” prayer meetings.1 Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and focused on physical needs inside the church. In contrast, the three basic traits of frontline prayer are these: 1. A request for grace to confess sins and to humble ourselves 2. A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church and the reaching of the lost 3. A yearning to know God, to see his face, to glimpse his glory These distinctions are unavoidably powerful. If you pay attention at a prayer meeting, you can tell quite clearly whether these traits are present. In the biblical prayers for revival in Exodus 33; Nehemiah 1; and Acts 4, the three elements of frontline prayer are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that after the disciples were threatened by the religious authorities, they asked not for protection for themselves and their families but only for boldness to keep preaching! Some kind of extraordinary prayer beyond the normal services and patterns of prayer is always involved.

Not everyone within Amnesty agreed that they should be campaigning on our behalf. I learnt later that the subject of whether or not the group should support us became quite a hot topic internally. The counter-argument was that, although we had committed no crimes ourselves, the ideology that we preached advocated a gross invasion of human rights: once our version of ‘the Khilafah’ was formed, we advocated an aggressive policy of foreign invasion and expansion, the death penalty for apostates, ‘rebels’ and homosexuals, and a forced dress code for women. Thieves would be punished by having their hands cut off, and adulterous women would be stoned to death. Why should Amnesty campaign for our human rights, when, given the opportunity, we would deprive others of theirs? There’s no easy answer to this question. What if, prior to coming to power, Adolf Hitler had been detained for his not yet violent beliefs in National Socialism?

Paints a vivid picture of Jesus’ groundbreaking lessons . . . An impressively concise portrayal of Jesus as a moral philosopher [and] social reformer, just as one might study the teachings of the Buddha or the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. . . . Thorough and erudite . . . written in an almost conversationally informal style.” —Kirkus Reviews “Thoughtful and well researched, Nordstrom’s book is a welcome perspective on Jesus. [Fountain of Change] documents Jesus’s progressive stances on politics, theology, and women’s rights [and] impart a great deal of practical wisdom allowing for [the] intrinsic meaning to be gleaned by any reader. . . . Nordstrom has a knack for language. Well-crafted, alluring prose . . . Short, concise chapters keep the text clipping along nicely.” —Foreword Reviews “An extraordinary read from cover to cover and very highly recommended . . . Informed and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, inspired and inspiring . . . Will prove to be of immense interest for non-Christian readers . . . An enduringly popular addition to church, seminary, community, and academic library Christian History collections.” —Midwest Book Review “Well-written, enjoyable, and informative . . . like a conversation with an intelligent friend . . . Here, we see Jesus not as a god, but as a man who preached love and acceptance. . . . Easy to understand exegesis, commentary, and reflections on Jesus’ public ministry.” —BlueInk

It is one thing to hear truth, and agree with it. Many have come to believe these things simply because they are attracted to a system which is logically consistent. Or perhaps they are repelled by the shallowness of so much of our preaching and teaching today. Or they are the studious type, and like to read books by the Puritans.” Martin went on. “But it is quite another thing to be given a vision of the glory of God and to be, like Job, undone by it.

Psalm 121 says: I lift my eyes up to the mountain; where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, maker of Heaven, creator of the Earth. Good person to have on side, I always figure. Now, some of you will say, hey, I don’t need this Christian stuff. And I hear you. But it is easy to be cynical when all is going your way. Remember that. But to have faith…that is much harder and takes much more courage. Robin Knox-Johnston, the round-the-world sailor, said: ‘There is no such thing as an atheist in the Southern Ocean.’ What that says to me is unless you know what it is like to be truly afraid and have no one around to help you, then don’t preach to me your atheism. And, wow, it takes a proud man to say he never needs any sort of help or encouragement. I sure need it. But don’t worry. Believing quietly doesn’t mean you have to be all religious. I am not. And guess what…nor was Jesus! In fact, if you read about him, ¹ he was totally fun, ridiculously free, crazily wild, loved a party and always hung out with the non-religious folk. The only people he ever got angry with were the ultra-religious types! Instead, finding a faith should help you to be freer, more full of life, more filled with joy, peace and love than you would ever imagine. And those qualities, in abundance, will only make you stronger and more capable of living a wild and adventurous life.

I therefore question the widespread view that Prozac and other drugs in its class are overprescribed. It's easy for those who did well in the cortical lottery to preach about the importance of hard work and the unnaturalness of chemical shortcuts. But for those who, through no fault of their own, ended up on the negative half of the affective style spectrum, Prozac is a way to compensate for the unfairness of the cortical lottery.

As to Mr. Tennant, he says, “In private converse with him I found him to be a man of considerable parts and learning; free, gentle, condescending; and from his own various experience, reading the most noted writers on experimental divinity, as well as the Scriptures, and conversing with many who had been awakened by his ministry in New Jersey, where he then lived; he seemed to have as deep an acquaintance with the experimental part of religion as any I have conversed with, and his preaching was as searching and rousing as ever I heard. He seemed to have no regard to please the eyes of his hearers with agreeable gestures, nor their ears with delivery, nor their fancy with language; but to aim directly at their hearts and consciences, to lay open their ruinous delusions, show them their numerous, secret, hypocritical shifts in religion, and drive them out of every deceitful refuge, wherein they made themselves easy with a form of godliness without the power.” [Christian History, Vol. 2, p. 384-387.]

And, in a larger sense, Graham was soon vindicated. Within just a few months, he received invitations to preach in the nations that were then known as Czechoslovakia and East Germany - trips that would turn out to be genuine crusades in countries desperate for Christian ministry. It had not been easy to watch, but Graham had wedged his foot in the door. And he would help kick it wide open over the next few years. p. 275

Americans,” Kuzis spat. “You have it so easy, and then you come to us and preach that we should act as you act. But we’re not holding aces.” “Like I said, Kuzis, you haven’t seen my hand.” “I don’t need to.” “Let me tell you something,” Lance said, “not that it will do you much good now, but the difference between you and me isn’t that I was dealt four aces, and you weren’t.” “What is it then?” “It’s that I play like I was dealt four aces.” Kuzis let out a hollow laugh. “Oh, I see. You’re just bluffing your way to victory then.” “I’m saying, it isn’t the same as a card game, Kuzis. You’re only dealt one hand in life. One hand. And that’s the hand you play.

Reconciliation is not a magic word that we can trot out whenever we need healing or inspiration. Deep down, I think we know this is true, because our efforts to partake of an easy reconciliation have proved fruitless in the world. Too often, our discussions of race are emotional but not strategic, our outreach work remains paternalistic, and our ethnic celebrations fetishize people of color. Many champions of racial justice in the Church has stopped using the term altogether, because it has been so watered down from its original potency. In their book Radical Reconciliation, Curtiss DeYoung and Allan Boesak unpack why this happens. They write, "reconciliation is revolutionary, that is, oriented to structural change." Which means, reconciliation can never be apolitical. Reconciliation chooses sides, and the side is always justice. This is why white American churches remain so far from experiencing anything resembling reconciliation. The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse. And so, rather than seeking reconciliation, they stage moments of racial harmony that don't challenge the status quo. They organize worship services where the choir of two racially different churches sing together, where a pastor of a different race preaches a couple times a year, where they celebrate MLK but don't acknowledge current racial injustices. Acts like these can create beautiful moments of harmony and goodwill, but since they don't change the underlying power structure of the organization, it would be misleading to call them acts of reconciliation. Even worse, when they're not paired with greater change, diversity efforts can have the opposite of their intended effect. They keep the church feeling good, innocent, maybe even progressive, allt he while preserving the roots of injustice.

Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come. It is very easy to say, “Hate nobody, resist not evil,” but we know what that kind of thing generally means in practice. When the eyes of society are turned towards us, we may make a show of non-resistance, but in our hearts it is canker all the time. We feel the utter want of the calm of non-resistance; we feel that it would be better for us to resist. If you desire wealth, and know at the same time that the whole world regards him who aims at wealth as a very wicked man, you, perhaps, will not dare to plunge into the struggle for wealth, yet your mind will be running day and night after money. This is hypocrisy and will serve no purpose. Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered   and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. These ideas of serenity and renunciation have been preached for thousands of years; everybody has heard of them from childhood, and yet we see very few in the world who have really reached that stage. I do not know if I have seen twenty persons in my life who are really calm and non-resisting, and I have travelled over half the world.

I don't want to give up on him. "No! All you need is to love someone, it's not always easy, but if you really love them, you'll fight for them. Alisha was silent. She knew her best friend was right, but she was reluctant to admit it. "Hey, I heard it somewhere... love isn't always perfect, it's not a fairy tale, it's not easy." "Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together, holding on and never letting go," Kelvis smiled sweetly as he spoke. Love is an hour, a minute, a second. It is to realize that it is worth spending. "Oh! I was preached like that." Alisha giggled softly

One of the dangers against which I warn aspiring preachers in our seminary is that of preaching against all the sins with which no one in their congregation struggles. It is relatively easy to warn the heterosexuals about the dangers of homosexuality, the teetotaler about the snare of alcoholism, the politically conservative about the hazards of liberalism, the rigidly orthodox about the perils of false teaching. All

When you go out to die on the cross you bid good-by—you're not going back! If we would preach more of this and stop trying to make the Christian life so easy it's contemptible we would have more converts that would last. Get a man converted who knows that if he joins Jesus Christ he's finished, and that while he's going to come up and live anew, as far as this world's concerned he's not going back—then you have a real Christian indeed. The

Let’s drill down on just one of these examples, Jesus as the “true Jonah.” At the end of Mark 4 we see Jesus stilling the storm, and his rebuke: “Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40). It would be easy to preach this in an inadvertently moralistic way. We could just draw out the lesson that we need to work on our faith and trust God when things get bad. That would ultimately be merely a how-to sermon—how to have faith and hold on in storms. It wouldn’t show us the gospel very clearly.

One more thing that stands in the middle of the road of easy-believism is the truth of the sovereignty of God. Years ago, I used to hear people say, “Don’t ever preach the doctrine of the sovereignty of God when you have nonbelievers in the audience.” People literally warned me against that. But here is another offensive bit of news for the unbeliever: God is sovereign, and you are not. You are not the captain of your soul or the master of your fate. You do not hold your destiny in your own hand. According to 1 Corinthians 1:24, those who believe are those whom God calls and sovereignly draws. God calls them because He has chosen them (v. 27), eklegomi, picked them out for Himself. The word appears again in verse 28. How could anybody get saved under those terms? You’ve got nothing left! You’re absolutely stripped of everything. Verse 30: “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” So, if it’s all God’s doing anyway, why would I tamper with the message? Why would I try to manipulate the results? Verse 31: “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.” My friend R. C. Sproul has said that “God’s favorite doctrine is sovereignty, and if you were God, it would be yours too.” A wonderful sentiment like that helps offset the sick feeling I get when I hear contemporary evangelicals attack the sovereignty of God. His elective purpose is salvation, because if God isn’t saving people, they won’t be saved. This is a hard truth that many prominent evangelicals deny, stealing glory from God and overestimating the ability of the spiritually dead!

THE DREADFUL DOCTRINE One more thing that stands in the middle of the road of easy-believism is the truth of the sovereignty of God. Years ago, I used to hear people say, “Don’t ever preach the doctrine of the sovereignty of God when you have nonbelievers in the audience.” People literally warned me against that. But here is another offensive bit of news for the unbeliever: God is sovereign, and you are not. You are not the captain of your soul or the master of your fate. You do not hold your destiny in your own hand. According to 1 Corinthians 1:24, those who believe are those whom God calls and sovereignly draws. God calls them because He has chosen them (v. 27), eklegomi, picked them out for Himself. The word appears again in verse 28. How could anybody get saved under those terms? You’ve got nothing left! You’re absolutely stripped of everything. Verse 30: “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” So, if it’s all God’s doing anyway, why would I tamper with the message? Why would I try to manipulate the results? Verse 31: “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.” My friend R. C. Sproul has said that “God’s favorite doctrine is sovereignty, and if you were God, it would be yours too.” A wonderful sentiment like that helps offset the sick feeling I get when I hear contemporary evangelicals attack the sovereignty of God. His elective purpose is salvation, because if God isn’t saving people, they won’t be saved. This is a hard truth that many prominent evangelicals deny, stealing glory from God and overestimating the ability of the spiritually dead!

We could learn a lot from the philosophy of Shaolin. Their belief that the ego must be transcended in order to focus on reality is an essential lesson that applies to all of humanity. We could also benefit greatly from their philosophy of independence, individualism and self-reliance. Instead of depending on governments and corporations, we should depend on our environment, our compassionate human interaction, and ourselves. To do this, we must practice what we preach. It is easy to speak of ways to heal the world, but to actually act accordingly is much more difficult.

Traditionally, the needs of ethnically diverse consumers had been met by smaller companies—the equivalent, in movie terms, of independent filmmakers. In the seventies, Shindana introduced two Barbie-like fashion dolls: Malaika, taller and stouter than Barbie; and Career Girl Wanda, about three-quarters as tall as Barbie and as proportionately svelte. But in 1991, when Mattel brought out its "Shani" line—three Barbie-sized African-American dolls available with mahogany, tawny, or beige complexions— there could be no doubt that "politically correct" was profitable. "For six years, I had been preaching these demographics—showing pie charts of black kids under ten representing eighteen percent of the under-ten population and Hispanic kids representing sixteen percent—and nobody was interested," said Yla Eason, an African-American graduate of Harvard Business School who in 1985 founded Olmec Corporation, which makes dolls and action figures of color. "But when Mattel came out with those same demographics and said, 'Ethnically correct is the way,' it legitimatized our business." Some say that the toy industry's idea of "ethnically correct" doesn't go far enough, however. Ann duCille, chairman of the African-American Studies Program and an associate professor of English at Wesleyan University, is a severe critic. After studying representations of race in fashion dolls for over a year, she feels that the dolls reflect a sort of "easy pluralism." "I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I'd rather see no black dolls than see something like Shani or Black Barbie," she told me, "but I would hope for something more—which is not about to happen." Nor is she wholly enamored of Imani and Melenik, Olmec's equivalent of Barbie and Ken. "Supposedly these are dolls for black kids to play with that look like them, when in fact they don't look like them. That's a problematic statement, of course, because there's no 'generic black kid.' But those dolls look too like Barbie for me. They have the same body type, the same long, straight hair—and I think it sends a problematic message to kids. It's about marketing, about business—so don't try to pass it off as being about the welfare of black children." Lisa Jones, an African-American writer who chronicled the introduction of Mattel's Shani dolls for the Village Voice, is less harsh. Too old to have played with Christie—Barbie's black friend, born in 1968—Jones recalls as a child having expressed annoyance with her white classmates by ripping the heads and arms off her two white Barbie dolls. Any fashion doll of color, she thinks, would have been better for her than those blondes. "Having been a little girl who grew up without the images," she told me, "I realize that however they fail to reach the Utopian mark, they're still useful.

Preachers who depend on salaries from preaching have not been known to stand true to the undiluted message of Christ's gospel, those who have dared to represent Jesus strictly will iether rescind from being in man's payroll or resign by the compelling of their paymaster with persecution. Compromise is easy when men pays for the services of God

Pastor Bob’s breakthrough twenty years earlier had been the discovery that while Americans were hungry for spiritual nourishment, they wanted it bland and easy to digest—the religious equivalent of fast food. All that New Testament stuff about self-sacrifice and forgiveness puzzled them mightily. So Pastor Bob preached the Christian virtues of feeling good, relieving stress, getting rich, and hiring abundant deadly force to protect the good people from the bad.

What’s going on, man?” he asked. “I have to get that house finished.” “Mel getting impatient?” “No. Mel’s got another one cooking.” “Oh?” “She’s pregnant again, Preach.” “Oh! Wow, that’s great, man!” he said, sticking out his hand. “Thanks. But just so you’re warned, she’s not too thrilled yet. Watch your step.” “Oh? Why not?” “David’s still a baby, and she feels like she just finished being pregnant. Plus she’s moody, she’s exhausted, she’s puking and she thinks I did it to her on purpose.” “Ohhh,” he said. “Okay. But you? You okay?” “Hey.” He grinned. “I’m great. I’d have five more. But I wouldn’t live to tell about it.” “This ever make you feel… You know. Old?” “Oh hell, no. Every time I get her pregnant, I feel about ten years younger. And if you tell her I said that, we’re both gonna die.” “Okay then, we go easy with Mel. But hey. Good for you, man.” *

To make easy things seem hard is easy, but to make hard things easy is the office of a great preacher”.

Being positive all the time is such a catchy idea, and it’s easy to preach. I guess that’s why it is popular. But life reveals itself in successions of up’s and down’s and if you plan to be positive all the time you will definitely fail.

Here are eight tips for writing effective cover letters.   Address the cover letter to a specific person, ensuring the correct name, title, company, and address. This shows respect for the person you are sending the résumé to. “To Whom It May Concern” salutations should be used only if you can’t determine the name of the hiring person or the company (for instance, when responding to a blind ad). If you were referred by someone, be sure this is included in the first sentence of the cover letter: “Jennifer Wells suggested I contact you in regard to an accounts receivable position you have open …” It’s an attention grabber. If asked to include salary history or requirements, you must address this or risk being disqualified. Provide a healthy range, such as “Over the past five years I have earned between $35,000 and $48,000. However, I am open to any reasonable offer consistent with my ability to produce results and meet your performance expectations.” If asked for salary requirements, use the same strategy: “I am aware that the salary range for a loss prevention manager in the Houston area averages between $75,000 and $110,000. Given my experience and, most importantly, my ability to make significant contributions to your company, I would hope to be on the upper end of this scale.” If you are sending the résumé out electronically, the cover letter can be inserted as the e-mail itself; just attach your résumé. If you prefer that your cover letter is the first page of the attachment, that’s fine. But the general guideline is not to attach multiple files. Make it easy on the hiring manager and send only one attachment or file to open (unless you have a good reason to do otherwise). Do not rehash what is on the résumé. This is disrespectful of the reader’s time. If you have done a good job with your résumé, you want the cover letter to quickly entice the hiring manager to read your résumé. Cover letters should not be preachy. Sales managers know that sales are the heartbeat of any company; you don’t have to lecture them on this. Nurse supervisors know the importance of compassionate patient care; you don’t have to tell them what they already know. Keep the letter short and concise. The cover letter is not the place to preach or teach. It’s the place to invite recipients to read your résumé! Finally, the four most important words on the cover letter are “I respect your time.” The following cover letter is a sample template to use in these challenging and troubled times. Notice the first four words of the second paragraph.

reason, guerrilla marketing preaches fervent follow-up —continually staying in touch with customers—and listening to them.

His preaching isn’t one of concepts, but of experience, and the messages are often those that have been passed down through tradition rather than studied in God’s Word. For many preachers, Bible study is something to add on to an already busy week, and reading the Bible in German isn’t easy if one never learned the language.

Ministry sounds intimidating until you develop a realistic view of what ministry is really about. Maybe you’re not gifted to preach sermons, start a rehabilitation clinic, or lead a marriage retreat. But do you know people who struggle with sin? Do you know people who are carrying burdens? If so, then your first steps toward ministry are easy: help them.

Following the story line becomes easy when one realizes that the book of Acts is structured on a cyclic principle in which a common pattern keeps getting repeated: (1) Christian leaders arise and preach the gospel; (2) listeners are converted and added to the church; (3) opponents (often Jewish but sometimes Gentile) begin to persecute the Christian leaders; and (4) God intervenes to rescue the leaders or otherwise protect the church. While this pattern is most obvious in the first half of the book, it extends in modified form to the journeys of Paul, whose repeated buffetings are followed by the expansion of the church.

March 14 Obedience His servants ye are to whom ye obey. Romans 6:16 The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated because I have yielded. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame for it because at a point away back I yielded myself to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him. Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: “I must have it at once,” whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind, once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bond-slave to that thing. There is no release in human power at all, but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the dominating power, viz., the Lord Jesus Christ. “He hath anointed Me . . . to preach deliverance to the captives.” We find this out in the most ridiculously small ways—“Oh, I can give that habit up when I like.” You cannot, you will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you yielded to it willingly. It is easy to sing—“He will break every fetter,” and at the same time be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. Yielding to Jesus will break every form of slavery in any human life.

(from chapter 29, "Write in a Book What You See') "The phrase that gave us focus was 'a long obedience in the same direction.' (Nietzsche) ...Early on in my reading I came upon this sentence: 'The essential thing in heaven and earth is...that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run something that has made life worth living.' That struck me as a text I could live with. I saw myself assigned to give witness to the sheer liveability of the Christian life that everything in scripture and Jesus was here to be lived. In the mess of work and sin, of families and neighborhoods, my task was to pray and give direction and encourage that lived quality of the gospel - patiently, locally, and personally. Patiently: I would stay with those people; there are no quick or easy ways to do this. Locally: I would embrace the conditions of this place - economics, weather, culture, schools, whatever - so that there would be nothing abstract or piously idealized about what I was doing. Personally: I would know them, know their names, know their homes, know their families, know their work - but I would not pry. I would not treat them as a cause or a project. I would treat them with dignity. Preaching, of course, is part of it, teaching is part of it, administering a congregation as a community of faith is part of it. But the overall context of my particular assignment in the pastoral vocation, as much as I am able to do it, is to see to it that these men and women in my congregation become aware of the possibilities and the promise of living out in personal and local detail what is involved in following Jesus, and be companion to them as we do it together.

Doubtless these desperate and dark struggles are to be called superstition when viewed by the side of true religion ; and it is easy enough to speak of them as superstition, when we have been informed of the gracious and joyful result in which the scheme of Divine Governance issues. But it is man’s truest and best religion, before the Gospel shines on him. If our race be in a fallen and depraved state, what ought our religion to be but anxiety and remorse till God comfort us? Surely to be in gloom— -to view ourselves with horror — to look about to the right hand and to the left for means of safety — to catch at everything, yet trust in nothing— to do all we can, and try to do more than all — and, after all, to wait in miserable suspense, naked and shivering, among the trees of the garden, for the hour of His coming, and meanwhile to fancy sounds of woe in every wind stirring the leaves about us — in a word, to be superstitious — is nature’s best offering, her most acceptable service, her most mature and enlarged wisdom, in the presence of a holy and offended God .

The preaching of Peter and Paul and all the witnesses of the risen Jesus says that two basic things are demanded of us. First: we must acknowledge our own share in what the cross is and represents; we must learn to see ourselves as caught up in a world where the innocent are scapegoated and killed and where we are all unwilling, to a greater or lesser degree, to face unwelcome truths about ourselves. We must learn to see that we cannot by our own wisdom and strength cut ourselves loose from the tangle of injustice, resentment, fear and prejudice that traps the human family in conflict and misery. And second: we must learn to trust that love and justice are not defeated by our failure; that God has provided from his own strength and resourcefulness a way to freedom, once we have become able to recognize in the face of the suffering Jesus his own divine promise of mercy and life. The resurrection is the manifesting to the world of the triumph of a love that uses no coercion or manipulation but is simply itself – an indestructible love. The challenge of Easter is to believe that God is not defeated by the most extreme rejection imaginable. Good news? Emphatically yes. But not easy news. To recognize God in the crucified Jesus alters so much: it alters what we think about God, and it alters where we look for God in the human world. It suggests uncomfortably that God is likeliest to be found among those we have, like the religious and political establishment of Jesus’ day, dismissed or shut out; it suggests that our models of success and failure have to be turned upside down; it suggests that our eternal future is bound up with whether we are able to turn to those we have hurt and seek forgiveness. And so much else. Put like that, it is not surprising that the gospel and the cross could provoke fear and an unwillingness to allow such thoughts to become part of the current of public discussion. And perhaps it is not surprising either that we who call ourselves Christians may secretly be happier treating the cross just as a ‘religious symbol’ than letting ourselves be shaken and unmade and remade by it.

The best preachers, like the best filmmakers, make preaching look easy. The reason it looks easy when they are delivering the sermon is because of all the hard work that went into it behind the scenes.

To those who preach morals — I do not wish to promote any morality, but to those who do I give this advice: If you wish to deprive the best things and states of all honor and worth, then go on talking about them as you have been doing. Place them at the head of your morality and talk from morning to night of the happiness of virtue, the composure of the soul, of justice and immanent retribution The way you are going about it, all these good things will eventually have popularity and the clamor of the streets on their side; but at the same time all the gold that was on them will have been worn off by so much handling, and all the gold inside will have turned to lead Truly, you are masters of alchemy in reverse: the devaluation of what is most valuable. Why don’t you make the experiment of trying another prescription to keep from attaining the opposite of your goal as you have done hitherto? Deny these good things, withdraw the mob’s acclaim from them as well as their easy currency; make them once again concealed secrets of solitary souls; say that morality is something forbidden That way you might win over for these things the kind of people who alone matter: I mean those who are heroic. But to that end there has to be a quality that inspires fear and not, as hitherto, nausea Hasn’t the time come to say of morality what Master Eckhart said: “I ask God to rid me of God.

Just because someone does something well doesn’t mean it’s easy for them,” I said. “Elsa’s sermons are researched and very carefully written. They are not first-draft productions. And the same goes for Doris’s.” “I know, I know.” Jennie scrunched up her face. “They’re the great older women of color in the association: they’ve both preached the big important sermons at General Assembly. Everyone knows they’re amazing.” “And that’s a bad thing?” “No. But there are also young people who have new and

Just because someone does something well doesn’t mean it’s easy for them,” I said. “Elsa’s sermons are researched and very carefully written. They are not first-draft productions. And the same goes for Doris’s.” “I know, I know.” Jennie scrunched up her face. “They’re the great older women of color in the association: they’ve both preached the big important sermons at General Assembly. Everyone knows they’re amazing.” “And that’s a bad thing?” “No. But there are also young people who have new and important ways of seeing and saying things. They maybe aren’t as experienced as these great older women—and I know, it’s unbelievable that big famous ministers like Elsa and Doris are even interested in us, but to me they’re a little, I don’t know, been there, done that.

Chess is easy if you think ahead, the further out the better. You have to weigh the strengths you have. Decide what pieces can be sacrificed. Choose what pieces need to be protected. But the key, Scott preached, if playing against any skilled opponent, was the fake. You had to convince them that you were moving down one path—maybe a dumb path, an innocent path—while you skillfully tiptoed through your true plan, the one that would lead them straight to checkmate.

St. Francis of Assisi once said: “Our only job is to preach the Gospel wherever we go and only when necessary, use words.” He understood that it is easy to argue about words but the presence of peace is the greatest teacher in the world.

To study the history of the Christian church down through the ages, it is easy to see that she lived on the character of God alone. Unlike religions that have come and gone throughout the centuries, Christianity surpasses them all, especially in this one area: magnifying the character of God. Religion is all about work and gaining God’s approval. History shows us that this is impossible. Christianity is all about worshiping God, celebrating and delighting in the amazing character of God. No other religion has risen as high as Christianity in its relationship to God. Everything about Christianity is focused on God. The church has preached God, prayed to God, declared God among the nations, honored God, and elevated God in every generation. When the church is acting like the church, God is being exalted among the nations.

The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today but, oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world—in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift from God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational.2

Too much “evangelistic preaching”.... comes out as “a God without wrath bringing men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross - The Evangelism Mandate, David Larsen pg. 35

Etymologically, paroikia (a compound word from para and oikos) literally means “next to” or “alongside of the house” and, in a technical sense, meant a group of resident aliens. This sense of “parish” carried a theological context into the life of the Early Church and meant a “Christian society of strangers or aliens whose true state or citizenship is in heaven.” So whether one’s flock consists of fifty people in a church which can financially sustain a priest or if it is merely a few people in a living room whose priest must find secular employment, it is a parish. This original meaning of parish also implies the kind of evangelism that accompanies the call of a true parish priest. A parish is a geographical distinction rather than a member-oriented distinction. A priest’s duties do not pertain only to the people who fill the pews of his church on a Sunday morning. He is a priest to everyone who fills the houses in the “cure” where God as placed him. This ministry might not look like choir rehearsals, rector’s meetings, midweek “extreme” youth nights, or Saturday weddings. Instead, it looks like helping a battered wife find shelter from her abusive husband, discretely paying a poor neighbor’s heating oil bill when their tank runs empty in the middle of a bitter snow storm, providing an extra set of hands to a farmer who needs to get all of his freshly-baled hay in the barn before it rains that night, taking food from his own pantry or freezer to help feed a neighbor’s family, or offering his home for emergency foster care. This kind of “parochial” ministry was best modeled by the old Russian staretzi (holy men) who found every opportunity to incarnate the hands and feet of Christ to the communities where they lived. Perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer caught a glimpse of the true nature of parish life through his introduction of the “Parson” in the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Note how the issues of sacrifice, humility, and community mentioned above characterize this Parson’s cure even when opportunities were available for “greater” things: "There was a good man of religion, a poor Parson, but rich in holy thought and deed. He was also a learned man, a clerk, and would faithfully preach Christ’s gospel and devoutly instruct his parishioners. He was benign, wonderfully diligent, and patient in adversity, as he was often tested. He was loath to excommunicate for unpaid tithes, but rather would give to his poor parishioners out of the church alms and also of his own substance; in little he found sufficiency. His parish was wide and the houses far apart, but not even for thunder or rain did he neglect to visit the farthest, great or small, in sickness or misfortune, going on foot, a staff in his hand… He would not farm out his benefice, nor leave his sheep stuck fast in the mire, while he ran to London to St. Paul’s, to get an easy appointment as a chantry-priest, or to be retained by some guild, but dwelled at home and guarded his fold well, so that the wolf would not make it miscarry… There was nowhere a better priest than he. He looked for no pomp and reverence, nor yet was his conscience too particular; but the teaching of Christ and his apostles he taught, and first he followed it himself." As we can see, the distinction between the work of worship and the work of ministry becomes clear. We worship God via the Eucharist. We serve God via our ministry to others. Large congregations make it possible for clergy and congregation to worship anonymously (even with strangers) while often omitting ministry altogether. No wonder Satan wants to discredit house churches and make them “odd things”! Thus, while the actual house church may only boast a membership in the single digits, the house church parish is much larger—perhaps into the hundreds as is the case with my own—and the overall ministry is more like that of Christ’s own—feeding, healing, forgiving, engaging in all the cycles of community life, whether the people attend

It’s about the love walk. Its easy to preach it. It’s another thing to live it. -Jeremy Steng-

Sometime you can do everything right and still lose. It’s all a journey. You do your best, and then you have to let it go. Lots of people preach that, but come crunch time—oops, not so easy to do.

the Church has no room for men who see the priesthood as a privileged caste; or an easy job; or an escape from the world; or a safe harbor for their personal confusions; or an avenue for their ambition. Rather, God calls and the Church needs heroes: priests who love God more than themselves; who seek God’s glory more than their own; who want to lead by serving others; who have a mercy and humility born of a knowledge of their own sins; who have the courage to preach the truth even in the face of contempt; who have a hunger for winning souls; priests who are faithful to the Church and her teachings; who are obedient to their vocation as Jesus Christ was obedient to his; who stand in persona Christi – modeling the person of Christ to their people.

Religious leaders preach to the poor and downtrodden and enslaved, telling them that they deserve the kingdom of heaven—basically, an open “fuck you” to the corrupt elites of the day. It’s a message that’s easy to get behind. Today, appealing to the hopeless is easier than ever before. All you need is a social media account: start posting extreme and crazy shit, and let the algorithm do the rest. The crazier and more extreme your posts, the more attention you’ll garner, and the more the hopeless will flock to you like flies to cow shit. It’s not hard at all.

He is God, and if our suffering brings him the most glory, let it be. Easy to preach, difficult to live.

Sackcloth (Jonah 3:5). Sackcloth was rough material worn to indicate mourning. It was designed to be uncomfortable. Jonah’s refusal to go (Jonah 1:3; 4:2). As Jonah indicated (chap. 4), he did not want to go because the sequence of events was entirely predictable. He knew that the Assyrians would respond with their appeasement techniques and superficial repentance to his judgment message, but that God would be gracious and relent. He was angry about this easy grace. Object lesson (Jonah 4:5–8). God put Jonah in Nineveh’s shoes. Just as Nineveh faced an impending disaster, Jonah faced an impending weather situation. The Ninevites tried to protect themselves with repentance and Jonah tried to protect himself with his hut. Both were inadequate. God provided extra protection for Jonah through a plant. Then God did to Jonah what Jonah wanted him to do to Nineveh—removed his protection. Jonah was not happy about losing God’s gracious compassion when it was he, not the Ninevites, who had received it. This is how God made the point that his compassion is given as an act of grace. Once that is understood, we realize that if we overestimate the Ninevite response, we minimize the element of God’s compassion. The whole point is that God responds with compassion to even the smallest steps in the right direction. Background Information Nineveh. In the mid-eighth century BC, when Jonah lived (2 Kings 14:25), Nineveh was a major city in the Assyrian province of Nineveh. At this time the kingdom of Assyria was fragmented with provinces acting as almost independent entities. The city was about two and a half miles in circumference, about the same size as Jerusalem. About fifty years later (700 BC), Sennacherib made Nineveh the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, bringing it to prominence in the ancient world. King of Nineveh. One would generally expect the text to refer to the king of Assyria. We would not expect a king of Nineveh, but we would also not expect the king of Assyria to be in Nineveh, because Assyria was fragmented and Nineveh was a province, not the capital. More likely, the ruler of the province would legitimately have been identified with the Hebrew word translated “king.” Mistakes to Avoid Many mistakes are made when teaching the story of Jonah. The inclination is to make Jonah a missionary who brought a message of hope that was followed by a great conversion among the people of Nineveh. But a prophet was not a missionary preaching good news of hope. Jonah did not have a missionary calling, message, or attitude. His message was only one of judgment. The story is also not about salvation or going to heaven. Eternal life in heaven is not set forth in the Old Testament. Therefore, we cannot use the story of Jonah as one to tell our friends about Jesus or about leading people to salvation. When teaching about Jonah’s reluctance to go to Nineveh, we ought not to conclude that his reason was political resentment or prejudice. Furthermore, though it is certainly true that if God is intent on a person doing something or going somewhere, his plan will be irresistible, but the point of the story isn’t that we cannot run from God. God did not allow Jonah to escape the commission, but that does not mean that God will always act in the same way. Focusing on such things detracts from the very important theological message that the book offers: God responds with compassion to small steps in the right direction. God wants people to be responsive to him. New Testament

When I look back upon my own Christian experience, or at the church of Christ as a whole, I am amazed at how little humility is seen as the distinguishing feature of discipleship. In our preaching and in our living, in our daily interaction in our families and in our social life, as well as fellowship with other Christians, how easy it is to see that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue, the root from which grace can grow and the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Jesus. The fact that it is possible for anyone to say of those who claim to seek holiness that the profession has not been accompanied with increasing humility, is a loud call to all earnest Christians, whatever truth there be in the charge, to prove that meekness and lowliness of heart are the chief marks by which they who follow the Lamb of God are to be known.

The piece would be a searing indictment of the super-rich. He would expose, remorselessly, those hypocrites and cynics who publicly denied the catastrophe of climate change while secretly short-selling that very same position and hedging all their bets; the millionaires and billionaires who preached self-reliance while accepting vast handouts in the form of subsidies and easy credit, and who bemoaned red tape while building contractual fortresses to shield their capital from their ex-wives; the tax-dodging economic parasites who treated state treasuries like casinos and dismantled welfare programmes out of spite, who secured immensely lucrative state contracts through illegitimate back channels and grubby, endlessly revolving doors, who eroded civil standards, who demolished social norms, and whose obscene fortunes had been made, in every case, on the back of institutions built with public funding, enriched by public patronage, and rightfully belonging to the public, most notably, the fucking Internet; the confirmed sociopaths who were literally vampiric with their regular transfusions of younger, healthier blood; the cancerous polluters who consumed more, and burned more, and wasted more than half the world’s population put together; the crypto-fascist dirty tricksters who pretended to be populists while defrauding and despising the people, who lied with impunity, who stole with impunity, who murdered with impunity, who invented scapegoats, who incited suicides, who encouraged violence and provoked unrest, and who then retreated into a private sphere of luxury so well insulated from the lives of ordinary people, and so well defended against them, that it basically amounted to a form of secession.

I’m on a tear,” I say. “If you think there’s a gas pocket, I can just hop down and handscan it. Easy. No dilldally.” They’ll preach caution. As if caution has ever helped them. We haven’t won a Laurel in ages.