Thought Exercise on The Weak

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The Strong & the Weak

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Every other religion and philosophy says you have to do something to connect to God; but Christianity says no, Jesus Christ came to do for you what you couldn’t do for yourself. Every other religion s...

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When the Humble and Powerless become our Teachers

Author

Rachel Clark

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 18:3-4, 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, James 2:5, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Luke 18:17

Henri Nouwen is a well-loved writer and theologian who taught for decades at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, but he left behind the academy to serve among the disabled popula...

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God loves to use those that the world deems

Author

Ben Lansing and D. J.Marotta

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Scripture

Exodus 4:1–5, Judges 6:14–16, 1 Samuel 17:40–50, Luke 9:12–17, 1 Corinthians 1:27–29, Psalm 8:2

God loves to use those that the world deems too small, too weak, too insignificant to make a difference. As Francis Schaeffer wrote: Consider the mighty ways in which God used a dead stick of woo...

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The Way God Enjoys Getting Things Done

Author

Joni Eareckson Tada

Keywords

Weakness

Years ago, when I took that fateful dive into shallow water and broke my neck, never did I think that God was honing me for leadership. All I could do was retch at the thought of sitting down for the ...

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I’ll Sleep in Heaven

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

The need for rest is greatly misunderstood by so many Christians in today’s world. I cannot count how many times I have heard a well – intended Christian leader say, “I’ll sleep when I get to heaven.”...

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The Church Does Exist Not Outside of Me

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

Keywords

And here’s a further complication: the church is not an entity outside of me. I do not stand on the outside looking in. I am as much part of the church as (in the words of Paul) a hand is a part of a ...

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No Weaknesses?

Author

Gary Thomas

Keywords

Marriage

Scripture

James 3:2

One summer I spoke at a church in Pennsylvania, and a young woman came up to me afterward. She and her boyfriend were talking about marriage. She asked my advice, and we discussed her boyfriend’s stre...

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Nakedness is a Funny Thing

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:25, Genesis 3:7-11, Isaiah 47:3, Revelation 3:18

In his excellent book, Strong & Weak , Andy Crouch discusses the unique phenomenon of nakedness, something, as he will argue, no other species really experiences. “Nakedness” has, for good reas...

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I Made You

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Society still has its share of fifth sparrows: indistinct souls who feel dispensable, disposable, worth less than a penny. They drive carpools and work in cubicles. Some sleep beneath cardboard on the...

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Building on a Solid Foundation

Author

A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

Keywords

Building an antifragile faith takes time. It can’t be rushed. Consider this: It takes (on average) around twelve to eighteen months to construct a new single-family home in America. This process incl...

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The Problem with Apologetics

Author

Joshua Chatraw and Jack Carson

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:2, James 2:19-20, 1 Corinthians 8:1-2, Ecclesiastes 1:18, 1 Corinthians 2:5, Philippians 3:10, Matthew 7:21, 24-27, James 1:22

The Oxford scholar and apologist C. S. Lewis... once closed a lecture to a group of apologists like this: I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologis...

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When Faith Grew but Evangelism Failed

Author

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 1:16, Colossians 4:5-6, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 Corinthians 4:10

I can remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday. I (Doug) was standing out in the middle of the green grass of the quad on campus, singing as loudly as I could. Twenty of my Christian friends an...

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Remembering who we are and whose we are

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 8:1, Genesis 19:29, Exodus 2:24, Exodus 6:5, Exodus 13:3, Exodus 32:13, Leviticus 26:42-45, Deuteronomy 4:10, Deuteronomy 8:2, 18, Judges 3:7, Psalm 78:11, 1 Samuel 1:11, 19, Psalm 63:6, Psalm 74:2, Psalm 77:11, Psalm 78:35, 42, Psalm 105:42, Psalm 106:45, Psalm 111:5, Psalm 119:52, 55, Psalm 143:5, Isaiah 44:21, Isaiah 57:11, Jeremiah 14:21, Jeremiah 51:50, Jonah 2:7, Mark 14:72, Matthew 26:75, Luke 22:61, Luke 22:19, Matthew 27:33-55, Mark 15:22-41, Luke 23:33-49, John 19:16-30, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Philippians 2:8, Hebrews 12:2

God remembers Noah. God remembers Abram. God remembers Lot. God remembers the Israelites. The Israelites, in the book of Judges, do not remember God—this was their problem. God remembers Hannah. The P...

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Mental Health Today

Author

Alan Noble

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:1-18, Job 3:6-7, Lamentations 3:17-26, Matthew 26:36-46, 2 Corinthians 1:3-11, Psalm 42:5-11

We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...

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Now What?

Author

Gary A. Haugen

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 25:29-34, Isaiah 55:1-3, Ecclesiastes 2:1-11, Luke 14:16-24, Philippians 3:7-14, Psalm 16:11

Indeed, there comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where a voice inside us simply asks, Now what? After we have been introduced to Jesus and have found peace with God through...

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The Themes of Epiphany

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 60:1-6 , Numbers 24:17 , 2 Kings 5:1-19 , Matthew 2:1-12 , John 1:29-34, Psalm 72:10-11

Serious attention paid to the themes of the season following the Feast of the Epiphany, in particular, can be a strong antidote to a weak Christology. To be sure, all of the church calendar is formed ...

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Holding on for Dear Life

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

There is the story Dan Mazzeo tells about his father, “Pop,” a first-generation Italian American who was struggling with metastatic liver and lung cancer. When doctors gave him less than a year, Pop b...

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Taking Selfishness Seriously

Author

Richard Lui

Keywords

In 1976, Richard Dawkins claimed in his bestselling book The Selfish Gene that we can’t expect humans to be anything but selfish: “We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to prese...

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Wolves, Sheep, and Sheepdogs*

Author

Daniel G. Amen

Keywords

Sheep

In his book On Combat, Lieutenant Dave Grossman talks about people being in one of three categories on a bell-shaped curve: wolves, sheep, or sheepdogs. Most people fall into the category of being she...

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The Journey of Reconciliation is Grounded in the Practice of Lament

Author

Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice

Keywords

The first language of the church in a deeply broken world is not strategy, but prayer. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in a call to see and encounter the rupture of this world so truthfully ...

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No Such Thing as Atheism

Author

David Foster Wallace

Keywords

Atheism

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

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Shame is Wrong, Or Is it?

Author

E. Randolph Richards and Richard James

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 13:17, 1 Corinthians 6:5, 1 Corinthians 1:27

It’s wrong to shame someone!” the student asserted, with clear pain in her eyes. Just to be clear, I hadn’t done anything, but she seemed to be talking about some personal experience. “Is it always wr...

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Taking a Deeper Look at Shaming

Author

E. Randolph Richards and Richard James

Keywords

Shame

Scripture

Luke 13:17, 1 Corinthians 6:5, 1 Corinthians 1:27

It’s wrong to shame someone!” the student asserted, with clear pain in her eyes. Just to be clear, I hadn’t done anything, but she seemed to be talking about some personal experience. “Is it always wr...

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Enduring Our Sinful Behavior

Author

Carolyn Mahaney

Keywords

In her book, Feminine Appeal , Carolyn Mahaney pontificates on the relationship between God’s providence and the guilt we often experience as parents who often fall short in our parenting: We can ...

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A Remote Village

Author

Timothy Jennings

Keywords

Scripture

1 John 4:9-10, Romans 8:3, Colossians 1:19-20, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Isaiah 53:4-5, Hebrews 2:14

Imagine a remote village in Africa. No modern Westerner has ever set foot there. The natives live off the land, using the same ancient methods and tools as their forefathers used for the last thousand...

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What We Must Go Through

Author

Marlena Graves

Keywords

Before God can divulge our God-given identities in our desert-of-the soul wilderness experiences, there is something we need to know: he requires that we be brutally honest with ourselves and with him...

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Grace from the Beginning

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

Keywords

Scripture

John 6:44, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:5

It’s remarkable that when the Father declares at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” Jesus hasn’t yet done much of anything that many would find impressive. He hasn’...

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WALL-E and Work

Author

Tom Nelson

Keywords

The animated movie WALL-E is a cute story of a curious robot whose job is to clean up a trashed earth. While humans once inhabited the earth, we soon discover they have been evacuated from earth with ...

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We all Worship Something

Author

David Foster Wallace

Keywords

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

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The First Word of Grace Spoken Over Us

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

Keywords

Baptism is the first word of grace spoken over us by the church. In my tradition, Anglicanism, we baptize infants. Before they cognitively understand the story of Christ, before they can affirm a cree...

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