New deli same Bologna

I just read this great story on lark. Funny stuff.

from my reading

I won't bore you with the details of what brought me to this but one guy had a great post on what "emerging" is starting to look like but it had lots of pottytalk so i won't send you there. He did have a link to here and i liked what it says.

A definition of alternative worship
by Steve Collins 2005

What:

• Christians reinventing faith expression for themselves within their own cultural settings
• a response to postmodern Western society and cultural change
• faith expression within culture not in a parallel 'Christian' culture
• reconsideration of all inherited church forms and structures, including recent modernising ones
• rediscovery of ancient and alternative Christian traditions as resources for the present and future
• paradigm shift from centralised into networked forms of church

I especially like the one in bold. I crave Faith in culture. I have grown wearly and lonely and i feel un-fulfilled sometimes when i get myself lost in the Christian Culture. I love the body of Christ, i just don't think we were meant to live in a gated community. I love to see faith expression within the culture. It's just hard from where i sit.

What moves you?

On sunday we talked about our need to get rid of doubt in order to move forward in our walk of faith. The idea is not complicated - that when God paints for you a picture of a better land, but you doubt it's existance or your ability to enter into it, that land becomes, for all intensive purposes, unexessable to you.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I have doubts. I can't deny it. My time with God often yields visions of grandure that my doubts skew untill they appear to be a mislabelled post from someone elses wonder working God. They are not, but still they sit in my inbox for weeks and months all the while marked "urgent" or "time sensitive" while I doubt they could really be for me.

The problem with doubt is not how they make you feel, it is what they make you do. I'd like to say that i spend my days walking by faith but if the truth were known, i wonder how many steps a actually muster each day. It seems that things other than faith move me sometimes.

There may actually be a long list of things that move me in faiths stead. Things like doubt yes, but also things like fear, and prehaps the desire for comfort.

I'm going to burn this story in my mind so that i can be so moved.

Acts 20:18-35

something to be said

There's something to be said for boldness in your pursuit of God. Not boldness based on your worth or value though God sees you as profoundly valuable, but boldness in the sense that you will not be turned back or disuaded from your pursuit. Not by doubt, not byfear, and not by impatience.

Personal Life: Longing After God

Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me
now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your
sight....
--Exodus 33:13

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon
feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him,
they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in
season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all
the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew
God as an argument for knowing Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray
thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way,
that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight;" and from
there he rose to make the daring request, "I beseech thee, show me
thy glory." God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and
the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn
procession made all His glory pass before him. The Pursuit of
God, 15.

"Does anyone today know anything about that heat of desire after
You, God? I'm not reading or hearing much that comes close, though
thankfully there are a few exceptions. Restore to us today this
deep longing, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen."

(taken from liturature ministries international daily tozer devotion)

50 Days of Faith

Well, we started the new year at church with a series called 50 Days of Faith. From day one through day 8 we are looking at our expectations and our imaginations. Learning how to look for the promises of God and go for it. Already this series is helping to renew within me vision for what God wants to do in and through me. It is always a little scary to invite God to speak to you about his plans becasue God sees bigger things than we do. That can be intimidating but fear and doubt will not deter this year.

For those of you following along. Here is a tool that can help you articulate the vision that God has been painting in your imagination.

stay tuned.