bible and theology on Activities

What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...

In contrast (and contradiction) to cultural mindlessness (that can hardly be underestimated!): The Sabbath and its observance may cultivate a theological mindfulness. . . . How so? The Sabbath sanctif...

Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.

The Christian life is not a life dripping with personal satisfaction or one of basking in feeling “positive.” It isn’t a life baptized in stimulation or excitement. It definitely isn’t a life of conse...

The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it...

God—Father, Son and Spirit; You are a God of compassion and love. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we’ve known Your love, and experienced Your care and provision. Repeatedly You’ve answered our ...

Wake up! Get out of bed! Feel the sunlight on your face! Feel God’s bright glory has risen for you. But the earth is dark. Everywhere we look there is selfishness sin, greed, death, destruction. You ...

Do you want to increase your hunger for the Lord? Try weaning yourself from the world’s diet-be prepared for some withdrawal symptoms when you turn off the radio and the TV and eliminate unnecessary a...

Leader: "Now concerning spiritual gifts," brothers and sisters, "there are varieties of gifts," People: "But the same Spirit;" Leader: "And there are varieties o...

“Act” is a good word. Baptism and Communion are like mini-dramas. And we are not just in the audience; we are part of the cast. We do not look on from afar, merely learning information. We participate...

A 2014 study by Wendy Wood found that approximately 40% of people’s daily activities are performed out of habit. According to Wood, “an important characteristic of a habit is that it’s automatic…We fi...

The missionary activities of the church are the circulation of its blood, which would lose its vital power if it never flowed to the extremities.

When do you schedule the “fun” activities on your short-term mission trips? JULY 2018 When I was in youth ministry planning mission trips, we often scheduled a short sightseeing adventure for the end...

In other words, how “missional” you are is largely determined by the extent to which your people model the life, activities, and words of Jesus.”

As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...

I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a Protestant pastor, you approach All Saints’ Day with a little unease. After all, because Protestant churches tend not to have a special class of canonized exemplars ...

How much do churches remember the real and active role of the Holy Spirit? Do ministers rely on the Lord's guidance in their everyday operations? Francis and Edith Schaeffer conclude no, not at al...

God, you come to us and meet us in the strangest ways: sometimes in the stillness at the eye of the storm or in the midnight of our lives; sometimes in the raging whirlwind or in the high noon of our ...

A House for All People Every summer my church hosts a week-long summer camp where children experience the beauty and majesty of the Lord. The first year we sent our daughter to it, she loved it and l...

My friend Marci once said a wedding can be the worst possible way to begin a marriage. By the time a bride arrives at the altar, she is mad at her mother, her in-laws, and her husband-to-be. It seems ...

Mythology by its nature seeks to explain how the world works and how it came to work that way, and therefore includes a culture’s “theory of origins.” We sometimes label certain literature as “myth” b...

In comparison to other societies, Americans and other North Atlantic peoples are naturalistic. Non-Western peoples are frequently concerned about the activities of supernatural beings . . . The wide-r...

No writer has had a greater impact on my understanding of cultural identity than Dr. Beverly Tatum. …When introducing cultural identity (or racial identity, a term she uses synonymously), Tatum tells...

When my two daughters, Hannah and Nancy, were about two or three years old, I noticed how they imitated and reflected my wife and me. They cooked, fed and disciplined their play animals and dolls just...

While I was sitting at a stoplight a few blocks from my [Emerson’s] home in Minneapolis, reflecting on the recent rash of drive-by shootings in the area, three African-American teens clad in the urban...

In her excellent book on following Jesus in the suburbs, Ashley Hales describes one of the ways in which our discipleship has been influenced by modern secular trends such as the desire for self-actua...

God's Voice Speaking through the Frustration My first conscious experience of hearing the voice of Jesus occurred when I was a college student. It grew out of a period of genuine frustration. Bec...

Did you know that the first group of people to use clocks were Christian monks? Monks desired the ability to pray around a rigorous and exact prayer schedule. Benedict of Nursia, the great architect o...

In any polarized situation, the overriding human tendency is to draw a line with oneself and one’s allies on the good side and the opposing party on the wicked side, with very little attempt made by e...

In I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me , John Ortberg uses an interesting analogy for an aspect of our relationships. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner announced the Starshot Initiati...