Relationships and Community on Religious Experience

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A Savior Who Was a Spitter

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:21–23, Exodus 3:7–10, Isaiah 55:10–11, John 9:1–7 , Acts 10:34–35 , Psalm 19:3–4

Some time ago, I read about the work of a Wycliffe Bible translator in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. When the opening chapters of Genesis were first translated into the native language, the at...

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Caring For Them is What We’re on this Earth For

Author

Thomas G. Long

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Scripture

Isaiah 1:17, Colossians 3:12, Romans 12:10, Proverbs 31:8-9, Galatians 6:2, Matthew 25:40, James 1:27

In this beautiful illustration from Tom Long’s well-known preaching guide, The Witness of Preaching , a pastor shares a true story of what valuing human life can look like when God’s Kingdom takes ro...

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Author

Michael Horton

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American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for t...

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Author

Mike Cosper

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The need for affirmation is spiritual, and the behavior it inspires is religious. The longing for acceptance is at the core of human experience and it shadows all of human history.

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Bullied By Christian Leaders

Author

Bill Gaultiere

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 27:27-31, Luke 23:34-35, Luke 6:27-28

Have you ever been bullied by a group? Or felt ganged up on? Maybe it wasn’t intended by them, but you felt abused? I have. So have some of the pastors and influencers we help. So has Jesus… Lord J...

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Eating With Sinners

Author

David Schuringa

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 7:36-50, Romans 5:8, John 4:7-26, Matthew 11:19, Luke 19:5-10, Mark 2:15-17

Why did it disturb the religious leaders that Jesus ate with “sinners”? To eat with someone is an important symbol of fellowship. And in those days, the Jews had a rule: one is not to have such fellow...

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A New Direction for Family Discipleship

Author

Brian Dembowczyk

Keywords

If the Prof is 10 min late... I was in my freshman year in college, and Statistics was the final class before Thanksgiving break. When the professor was ten minutes late, I and several others got up ...

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The Shock-Value of Attending American MegaChurches for Third-World Missionary Kids

Author

Neil Cole

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 16:7, Amos 5:21-24 , Isaiah 1:11-17, John 4:21-24, Matthew 18:20, Psalm 95:6-7

A missionary family who has started organic churches in some of the most dangerous fields in the world once returned to the states for furlough. On the first Sunday back, they visited a large Baptist ...

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Author

Andrew M. Davis

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But what seems to happen in our lived practice of worship is that we don’t simply enjoy the stimulation; we expect it from God. We don’t just value “positive” emotions, but in our lived experience and...

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We need a Different Kind of Testimony

Author

Emily P. Freeman

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 4:1-16, 1 Samuel 16:6-13, Jonah 3:4 , Luke 15:25-32, Philippians 3:4-9, Psalm 103:8-12

In her book, Grace for the Good Girl , Emily P. Freeman charts her early years growing up in the church believing in grace but living according to the rules of perfection. One thing that would, a...

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The Two Pilgrims

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Tolstoy’s tale "The Two Pilgrims" describes two Russians on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, eager to attend the solemn Easter festivities. One pilgrim was so focused on reaching the destination t...

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Grace & Guilt

Author

Paul Tournier

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:1-24, Isaiah 6:1-8, Genesis 50:15-21, John 8:1-11, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 51:1-17

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

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Waking People up to Christ

Author

Bruce Larson

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:8-9, Jonah 4:1-11, Numbers 22:21-34, Matthew 9:10-13, Mark 2:23-28, Psalm 19:12-14

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

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Author

William Temple

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Your religion is what you do with your solitude

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The Wake-Up Call

Author

Marva J. Dawn

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For most of us, it’s a personal experience of poverty that helps us transcend our often narrow experience of the world. In this excerpt from theologian Marva J. Dawn, the former Regent College profess...

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Author

RM Harrington

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Men box God into the contents of personal experiences, and then seek to define his attributes by this limited exposure to eternity.

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Author

Thomas Merton

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The Body of Christ

Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet s...

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Author

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

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There is nothing that more tends to strengthen the faith of the young believer than to hear the veteran Christian, covered with scars from the battle, testifying that the service of his Master is a ha...

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Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.

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Turning from Conflict to Conversion

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Jonah 1:4, Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 18:21-35, Psalm 34:8, Romans 8:28

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

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The True Test of Faith

Author

Brennan Manning

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 16:7, Micah 6:8, Proverbs 22:2 , James 2:1-4, Luke 14:12-14 , Psalm 146:3-7

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

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Author

Norman Wirzba

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When eating becomes a spiritual exercise, it isn’t simply that people will have occasions to become more attentive to each other and the world. They will also have the opportunity to see, receive, and...

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Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

Religion says, "I obey; therefore I am accepted." Christianity says, "I’m accepted, therefore I obey."

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Has Religion been a Force for Evil in Human History

Author

Francis S. Collins

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:7-10, Isaiah 58:6-10, Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 23:27-28 , James 1:26-27, Psalm 146:7-9

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

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Repentance: A Mental Revolution

Author

Lesslie Newbigin

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:6-9 , Jonah 3:1-10, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Mark 1:14-15, Romans 12:2, Psalm 51:10-12

Lesslie Newbigin, the great missiologist and missionary, shares a powerful analogy of repentance from his days serving as a missionary in India. I remember once visiting a village in the Madras di...

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The Church Losing its Place as the Center of Attention

Author

Tim Wu

Keywords

The Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention; and through its daily and weekly offices, as well as its sometimes-central role in education, that is exactly what i...

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True Relating is Born of Solitude

Author

Sue Monk Kidd

Keywords

I sit in a bright-lit June meadow at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. It is early afternoon, and I have been here since morning in what can only be described as an uneasy sol...

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Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours... it is precisely through ...

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Love in Action

Author

Dawn Pick Benson

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:34-40, John 13:14-15, 1 John 3:17-18, James 2:15-16, James 2:15-16, 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

When I was growing up, my dad was a farmer, not a Christian. He had little interest in faith, having been told by his father that the Bible was a fairy tale. But then a local pastor took an interest i...

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Would Christianity Make My Life Smaller?

Author

Mark Labberton

Keywords

The Kingdom of God

Scripture

Psalm 16:11, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Peter 1:8-9, Galatians 5:22-23, Romans 14:17

When I was considering the possibility of embracing Christian faith as a young college student, what I feared most was that it would make my life smaller rather than larger—less love, less joy, less c...

relationships and community on Religious Experience

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