christian living on Abstraction

The ways Jesus goes about loving and saving the world are personal: nothing disembodied, nothing abstract, nothing impersonal. Incarnate, flesh and blood, relational, particular and local. The ways em...

Abide is an old English word for “remain,” “stay steady” and “keep your position.” What it means to abide in Christ—that is, always to be resting on him, anchored to him, fixed in him, drawing from hi...

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

Quite often the absence of immediate success is the mark of a genuine call., My Creator, My friend.

Gracious God, We build walls to protect ourselves, but it leads to isolation. We make independence the highest value, instead of complete dependence on You. Forgive us for our inability to surrender e...

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

I’m more of an aboveground type of girl, as in, I like the stuff you can see. Flowers, trees, and vegetation symbolize life, growth, and transformation. The problem with focusing on external manifesta...

Nonetheless, this singular fact, full to the bursting, remains. It is a fact grounded in infinite outpouring: Christ is in me; I am in Christ. . . . Christ in me is not some narrow, introspective, dis...

The secret to abiding in Christ is found in these verses [John 15:1-11]. Jesus wants to spend time with you more than you can imagine. Yes, TIME—your most valued commodity. He wants it—from you. He lo...

Father, as adults, we can fool ourselves into being quite self-sufficient. Yet, You have called us to be precariously dependent upon You. When we see how Jesus welcomes the little children, we can als...

Let this be thy whole Endeavour, this thy prayer, this thy desire, that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.

The last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have...

The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then di...

Philip Yancey writes of a spiritual seeker who interrupted his busy, acquisitive life to spend a few days in a monastery. “I hope your stay is a blessed one,” said the monk who showed him to his simpl...

[If] Christ is not all to you he is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part Savior of men. If he be something he must be everything, and if he be not everything he is nothing to yo...

No fewer than eight times in this passage [John 15:1-11] He tells His disciples, “Abide in Me.” “Remain with Me.” “Settle down into a relationship with Me.” “Let it be normal and natural that we would...

True humility means total dependence on God for everything.

N.T. Wright takes some time in his book, How God Became King , to connect the idea of the logos (the eternal Word), with the idea of “dwelling,” or abiding in God’s presence: The Word became flesh ...

Dallas Willard gave a series of lectures on the kingdom of God. In one, he discussed the popularity of the phrase, “The truth will set you free” by putting it in its proper kingdom context: The whole...

Living by grace inspires a growing consciousness that I am what I am in the sight of Jesus and nothing more.

While written well over a century ago, this excerpt (from the great Princeton theologian) B.B. Warfield’s sermon “imitating the Incarnation continues to inspire the kind of life Christ calls us to: ...

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most freque...

The strong bond that unites the vine and the branches has to do with the sap that flows through them. Jesus does not here use the word “sap,” but nonetheless gives a lengthy excursus on love in a way ...

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.

If I fear to hold another to the highest goal because it is so much easier to avoid doing so, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

He invites us to leave our burdensome ways of heavy labor—especially the “religious” ones—and step into the yoke of training with him. This is a way of gentleness and lowliness, a way of soul rest. It...

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.

A rabbi’s followers, known as his talmidim in Hebrew, went everywhere with him, not just to hang on his every word and learn theology from him. They followed him everywhere so that they could mimic wh...

When we listen to and follow Jesus, who lived in continual dependence on his Father, we become convinced of our poverty as men and women. We realize our absolute neediness. We are all beggars. Father ...