Reeves,’s posterous

“Images I suppose have their use or they would not have been so popular. to me however, the danger is more obvious. images of the Holy easily become holy images – sacrosanct. my idea of god is not a divine idea. it has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself.

He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme examples, it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.” CS Lewis

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” - G.K. Chesterton

“At the same time, the word of the Cross is called folly because it assumes that the vertically-impaired, the horizontally-addicted, the very people whose habits deny the presence and power of grace—especially those who are made aware of and thus grieve their idolatry—are given the grace that makes all things new. Grace makes the horizontal possible in a whole new way.” - Mark Galli

The way of the cross is often misunderstood as masochistic, especially in an age so desperately in search of pleasure. But the suffering of which Jesus spoke is not the suffering that unwell people create for themselves. Instead, it is the suffering already present in the world, which we can either identify with or ignore. If pain were not real, if it were not the lot of so many, the way of the cross would be pathological. But in our world — with its millions of hungry, homeless, and hopeless people — it pathological to live as if pain did not exist. The way of the cross means allowing that pain to carve one’s life into a channel through which the healing stream of the spirit can flow to a world in need.

— Parker J. Palmer, The Promise of Paradox

“The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.” Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Observe the condescension of this fact. This Man, who towers above all other men, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners-this Man receiveth sinners. This Man, who is no other than the eternal God, before whom angels veil their faces-this Man receiveth sinners. It needs an angel's tongue to describe such a mighty stoop of love. That any of us should be willing to seek after the lost is nothing wonderful- they are of our own race; but that he, the offended God, against whom the transgression has been committed, should take upon himself the form of a servant, and bear the sin of many, and should then be willing to receive the vilest of the vile, this is marvellous.

"This Man receiveth sinners"; not, however, that they may remain sinners, but he receives them that he may pardon their sins, justify their persons, cleanse their hearts by his purifying word, preserve their souls by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and enable them to serve him, to show forth his praise, and to have communion with him. Into his heart's love he receives sinners, takes them from the dunghill, and wears them as jewels in his crown; plucks them as brands from the burning, and preserves them as costly monuments of his mercy. None are so precious in Jesus' sight as the sinners for whom he died. When Jesus receives sinners, he has not some out-of-doors reception place, no casual ward where he charitably entertains them as men do passing beggars, but he opens the golden gates of his royal heart, and receives the sinner right into himself-yea, he admits the humble penitent into personal union and makes him a member of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. There was never such a reception as this! This fact is still most sure this evening, he is still receiving sinners: would to God sinners would receive him.

-Charles Spurgeon

This is AMAZING! ..an excerpt from Ted Haggard

When Martin Luther lamented at the end of his life that he might not be justified, he must have seen something dark in himself in relation to the Scriptures, something that we in the modern church might be overlooking.

The Scriptures say that we are to be known as followers of Christ by the evidence of our love for one another, but we’re not (see John 13:35).

The Scriptures say that we are not to boast about what we have or what we have done, but we do (see Jer. 9:23-24).

The Scriptures say that in the last days people will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money, and we are (see 2 Tim. 3:5, NKJV).

Very often we charismatics rejoice in the power of God, and rightly so. But we subject ourselves to ridicule when we boast that we are not among those “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5).

We claim that we have spiritual power and others don’t because of our openness to accept and operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

But our words fall short when our marriages don’t work, our children are wild and disobedient, and we refine the art of giving and receiving money to the point that we could qualify as the experts in greed that Peter warns about in his second letter (see 2 Pet. 2:14).

We have a credibility problem. We have some wonderful churches, but increasingly, people do not seek to be connected . . .

. . . Maybe we’re not Christians. Maybe we’re just the most popular religion of the day, using the power of persuasion, the force of our numbers, and the strength of our money to advance our ideology.

Maybe we just believe whatever makes sense to us by default, and we don’t truly—as individuals and as communities of Christians—seek to be genuine disciples and to do God’s work of caring for the fatherless and the widow of our day.

Could we be Pharisees? Our own books, television programs and prophecies should make us wonder.

I believe that we all know and love the Word, but we live in earthly vessels with a fallen nature. We feel and see the hopes of the Spirit within, but we also end up doing the very things we do not want to do.

When we preach, write, lobby, raise money, build, broadcast, threaten, sue and spin, we present conflicting images that don’t stand up very well against the tests of time and scrutiny. We are confusing the world, other Christians, and our families.

This isn’t something that can be changed with a list of practical exercises. This is something that has to be dealt with deep within us by exposing ourselves to the wisdom of the Scriptures, to one another, and to God.

< The writer of the above article excerpt is Ted Haggard. Three years after its publication, he would resign from the pastorate of his Colorado megachurch because he was cheating on his wife with a man. This is how he concludes his article: >

We have to get this right. Even though the global church is stronger than we’ve ever been, we in the American church are showing early signs of impotence. We are in a global theatre now, which means that our words, actions, investments and thoughts have greater impact. Thus, we have the opportunity to do unprecedented good, but also the dangerous ability to do unparalleled damage.

Let’s make the right choice. If you are like me, you are conflicted. I don't like this column. Granted, there is a part of me that does. But most of me likes the comforts of the church I serve, the way I travel, the way I'm treated by both the public and the body of Christ. I enjoy the political platform we Christians are given.

But at the same time, there is a dark cloud in the back of my mind woondering if God isn't stirring another Martin Luther to nail his theses to our church doors.

I would rather have us return to our foundations of integrity by the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the illumination of the Scriptures, rather than have us defending our lifestyles, edifices and power to future generations as they read history books recounting our demise because of our own hypocrisy.

We need to ensure that we are not the whitewashed tombs and snakes of our day (see Matt. 23:27, 33). We need to be sure.

<> I found this @ http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2009/08/integrity-maybe-were-not-christians.html

FROM : http://miketodd.typepad.com/waving_or_drowning/2009/08/a-wall-or-a-window.html

Geerhardus Vos:

“What the Lord expects from us at such seasons is not to abandon ourselves to unreasoning sorrow, but trustingly to look sorrow in the face, to scan its features, to search for the help and hope, which, as surely as God is our Father, must be there. In such trials there can be no comfort for us so long as we stand outside weeping.

If only we will take the courage to fix our gaze deliberately upon the stern countenance of grief, and enter unafraid into the darkest recesses of our trouble, we shall find the terror gone, because the Lord has been there before us, and, coming out again, has left the place transfigured, making of it by the grace of his resurrection a house of life, the very gate of heaven.”