Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Dallas Willard (2014-02-01) from his book, Renovation of the Heart: PuttingOn the Character of Christ (p. 46). NavPress. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Now we should have a clue to the reality of our majesty from knowing that God sent his only Son to earth to buy us back by his death but that also shows the potential of our vanity.  We killed him because he wanted to be the god of our life and we did too and still do.  What would happen if we really realized our potential? Dallas quotes C. S. Lewis who says, “To remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as th

A thought by Ken Blanchard & Morton Shaevitz (2015-02-02) from their book, Refire! Don't Retire: Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life (Kindle Locations 308-309). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Have you found that there are some people that know how to rob you of joy?   I’m mean you want to walk away fast when you see them coming.   But what about looking at them in a new way.   And this thought is a good way to do that.   Take some time and do what you can to search for that pearl of good that is in them.   Yes they have that shell like the oyster that is not beautiful and when you see it you want to throw it away but what about that pearl that is inside it.   It takes some time but when you break it open you see that which is of great value inside them. That’s what Jesus does with each one of us.   Oh yes he sees the outside but he also sees the great potential for good that is insi

A thought by Dallas Willard (2014-02-01) from his book, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 16). NavPress. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) I’m even getting a greater awareness of that even with my being a retired Pastor.   I jokingly say to people, “I used to be paid to be good, now I’m good for nothing.”   But the reality is I am good because of what God is doing inside of me.   And in another sense, and I will be less than good and even bad because of what I am doing inside of me.   The key is, who is in control inside of me and who is God in my life, Him or me. Dallas continues, “Within are our thoughts, feelings, intentions— and their deeper sources, whatever those may be. The life we live out in our moments, hours, days, and years wells up from a hidden depth. What is in our ‘heart’ matters more than anything else for who we become and what becomes of us. ‘You’re here in my arms,’ the old song says,

A thought by Dallas Willard (2014-02-01) from his book, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 15). NavPress. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Jesus’ disciples of his time here on earth had trouble in understanding this.   They keep looking for him to lead a revolution that would defeat their physical enemies but that wasn’t his purpose then and it isn’t now.   But it is understandable that we too have problems with what type of revolution he wants to lead even today. As Dallas says, “It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, bel

A thought by Dallas Willard (2014-02-01) from his book, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 13). NavPress. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) God has given us the freedom of choice.   I am free to choose what I eat, how much I exercise but I am not free from the consequences of those choices.   Our choices have consequences whether for good of for bad.   And our choices come from how our heart has been cultivated.   Dallas says, “Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them, which come from our ‘spiritual’ side. A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying ‘Why?’” So our response

A thought by Dallas Willard (2014-02-01) from his book, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 24). NavPress. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Wow, that doesn’t seem to make sense does it?   But Dallas says, “It is love itself —not loving behavior, or even the wish or intent to love— that has the power to ‘always protect, always trust, always hope, put up with anything, and never quit’” (1 Corinthians 13: 7-8, PAR). He goes on to say, “But taking love itself— God’s kind of love— into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first. And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselves and others. Indeed it will be, according to the promise, ‘a well of water springing up to eternal life’ (John 4: 14) — not an additional burden to carry through life, as ‘acting lovingly’

A thought by Philip Yancey (2014-10-21) from his book, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News ? (p. 263). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) This is a thought by Eugene Peterson in his introduction to the book of James and share here by Philip Yancey.   And he continues, “They are, rather, places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced and dealt with.” I was a pastor of churches that were hospitals.   A place where hurting people came to be healed, emotionally, relationally, physically and spiritually.   And the truth is we were not “model communities of good behavior.”   We were for the most part a mess but we were people who knew that God loved us and that each other loved each other and accepted each other.   That to me is what the church is.   As Philip says, “We must always remember that we bear the news of that lofty good as humble pilgrims, not as haughty power brokers. Somehow Chri