bible and theology from luke 9

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes that the biblical ideal is not so much that we need to deny the self as to decenter the self: To see the self in truth, as an integral member of a comm...

This prayer can be voiced by a single speaker or responsively by a single speaker (light print) and group (bold). Jesus, you summon and send us You give us authority over all that is unholy and de...

God of all times and places, we confess that we try to limit our exposure to you. We try to limit your presence to a tidy little box, safely tucked away where we can pull you out as needed. We try to ...

Gracious God, we desire to follow when you call. We long to live according to the ways of Jesus, yet we find ourselves stumbling. Forgive us for the times we have ignored your call to follow you in th...

Lord Jesus Christ, you are loving and merciful. Forgive us for being so captivated by Christmas that we forget that you, the little baby in the manger, grew up as the Lord over all creation. It is som...

Merciful Jesus Give us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety in order to take up the cross of opportunity and justice Too often we fail to do this Merciful Jesus Give us courage to d...

[The] earliest name for Christianity was the Way, suggesting that it was not a set of doctrines to master but a path to travel. Suggesting that each step was a deepening of the familiar and a discover...

From what is common in all these expressions, we can extract the dictionary definition of sacrifice: “the surrender of something of value for the sake of something else.” That is a good definition, bu...

New Testament theology is ‘inherently self-involving as it summons the reader to believe, confess, obey, and understand the entirety of one’s existence—both her or his thinking and willing—in light of...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel focuses on what life is like with...

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market… Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system…. Chea...

The Gospel is not about choosing to follow advice, it’s about being called to follow a King. Not just someone with the power and authority to tell you what needs to be done—but someone with the power ...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel focuses on the language associate...

In her book, Invitations from God, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun shares a great analogy of the difficulty of faithful discipleship: it’s not always easy to follow: Recently I had to follow another car to a ...

Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own (Stu’s) sermons, as I was trying to help the congregation make a paradigm shift from the church as a building, to the people of God: ...

The renowned scholar and musician Albert Schweitzer’s life was turned upside down one summer morning in 1896 while reading his Bible. He came upon Matthew 16:25: “For whosoever will save his life shal...

Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, anti-gay, anti-choice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and th...

All who are called to salvation are called to discipleship, no exceptions, no excuses!

Entering the kingdom is just like this: it’s a thing of great joy and great cost. The cost is clear, but nothing is compared with what is being gained.

The seeking of the kingdom of God is the chief business of the Christian life.

Jesus has many who love the kingdom of God, but few who bear a cross. He has many who desire His comfort, but few who desire His suffering. All want to rejoice with him, but few are willing to suffer ...