Skip to main content

Where Faith Begins


"The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creations. Not to make people with better morals, but to create a community of . . . men and women . . . who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friends, is what it really means to be a Christian. Our religion never begins with what we do for God. It always starts with what God has done for us, the great and wondrous things that God dreamed of and achieved for us in Christ Jesus."    - From The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning:

Life. Christianity. Faith. They're all about Him, the One who loved you enough to suffer the penalty that should have been yours, who endured separation from His Father on your behalf, then conquered death and daily calls out your name so that you can live in Him, free from the law, under His great grace - where life and faith begin.

Comments

  1. He really did this for us! Wow! Thank you for the reminder.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

As A Child

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 Become like little children? Really? Children are definitely cute and innocent, but that pretty much covers the positive qualities. On the negative side, however, the list is quite a bit lengthier: demanding, dependent, self-centered, messy, often smelly, expensive, and embarrassingly honest. So why? WHY in the world would Jesus tell us to become like little children? WHY in the world would He want that? What was He thinking?! Well, He was a thirty-something year-old bachelor. Maybe He didn't really know what He was talking about when He said that. I mean, if we come to Him like little children, it's pretty much guaranteed to be messy. We're likely to be crabby, cranky. We might be downright angry. Prayer-ADD is hard to control on a good day. If we're not on top of it, if we don't have our list in front of us to focus our thoughts, we...

From The Very First Time

From the very first time I knew My love for you Would be a lasting love It is not a common affection My devotion to you Will span my lifetime It will not fail Your scent alone Lures me now As it lured me then I breathe deeply Of your sweet And tantalizing aroma Should I take in your fragrance Every moment of all my days yet to come I would not tire of it I run my fingers down the length Of your smooth dark loveliness There is no blemish No flaw in you I taste I cannot help myself I must My tongue lingers Could heaven be any sweeter? Oh yes From the very first time I knew Mon chocolat sucre Yes I knew My sweet chocolate My love for you will be a lasting love

How Do You Wait?

The barren one is now in her sixth month.  Not one promise from God is empty of power  for nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1: 37 The Passion Translation I've never thought that much about Elizabeth. Gabriel speaks here to Mary - the mother-to-be of none other than GOD Himself! Who has a thought to spare for this side character in THE story of divine visitation? God come to earth. Wow. Talk about a headline for the New York Times! Why does Gabriel even mention Elizabeth? I don't know, but I'm glad he did.  I read these verses with a different perspective this morning.  "The barren one." Elizabeth is now past childbearing years. It's not a secret. Everyone in her community knows she's barren (it's obvious). The life part of her life is over. There is no hope for her to have her dream - a life like her friends have. She's different from her family, her neighbors. In a time when children are everything, she has nothing.  And now it's too late...