Recently the Parable of the Wedding Banquet was read in a worship service (Mt.22:1-14). It speaks of a king preparing a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited but they didn't come. He sends some more servants but due to business they still refused to come.. Then the ones that weren't busy abused and killed the servants. Enraged the king had the murderers and their city destroyed after which he sent out more servants and invited everyone both good and…

It's not complicated. It's really very simple when you think about it. It has to do with the most overlooked theme in John's Gospel, the uniqueness of Jesus. No one before or since has ever, is, or will be the same as the Lord Jesus. He is unique to His Father who is unique to Him and the Holy Spirit in turn just as unique to each of them. He is unique as One God being the only God there is revealing Himself in three persons in the most unique relationship ever given to mankind. And as…

Gospel of John---Introduction

John 4 Shedding the Old, Receiving the New

“Knowing Christ and Making Him Known” is the mission of All Souls. The core meaning here is wrapped up in the word 'know.' The usual secular meaning is limited to intellectual knowledge. However, to know as a disciple of Jesus is much broader. It has a threefold dimension. It involves the whole person---mind, heart and spirit---the image of God in us.

First, to know Christ involves the mind. That…

Outline for Tuesday Bible Study

The Gospel of John

A common theme in 1:1-4:54 is the idea of newness. In Jesus something new happened. Actually newness is the theme of the whole Gospel not only in John but in the '-New-' Testament as well. It is a change in perspective. There has been a shift, a replacement of the old with the new, a new revelation from the physical to the spiritual, from Law to heart, from institution to relationship, from 12 tribes (bloodline) to 12 disciples…

I remember in school the warning from fellow students about certain teachers, “Boy, if you're not obedient to their rules you will suffer.” And a coach saying with that stern look on his face, “Obedience rules on this team.” Obedience seems to carry a negative 'You better...' tone when you hear the word. It's an attitude word. That's what we need to probe.

When we are talking attitude it is necessary to include obedience. It is one thing to be obedient. It is another to have it as an…

Attitude is how we measure the heart. Attitude spells out where we are as we relate to others. The question for disciples of Jesus is “What is my attitude as I start my day?” This is a subject that needs attention because so much of our relational experience has been influenced by what we have depended on from our world conditioning as we adjust to others. And therein lies the problem, dependency. Upon what do we depend as we move from one person to another, one circumstance to another and…

Life is a series of encounters, events and happenings. Each of us is central in what we experience in them. We process them, log them in our memory and use them as focal points in our development. Each presented its good or bad effect. Each one was a learning. But regardless, as disciples of Jesus, we can hold them in the light of His image and determine how they affect us for the glory of self or the glory of God. He is the scale we use to weigh life in all its perspectives. He is the…

Knowing the Lord is risen, knowing the Lord has taken residence in our heart and knowing His call to us to share Him, whatever blocks those realities is what we rend. Rending is a spiritual exercise. It is tearing away the garments we have been given by the world to cover our insecurities. It is burning them in the fire of the Holy Spirit. It is receiving the clothes of belief, trust and faith. They are our real clothes, lasting clothes, clothes that cannot be torn, taken or teased away from…

I heard a great analogy in a brief remark made by a worshiper interviewed as he was leaving a church service. He went to church to hear the sermons because each one offered a new tool for his toolbox. It continues that theme of thinking spiritually again. If we can offer the Holy Spirit's insights, the ones He gives us as we encounter every next moment, then we are penetrating the world's negative atmosphere. We are offering spiritual tools to build, to correct, to open the heart to a free…

You'll see this is the same as my letter but I wanted to record it in the blog as well.

Reviewing My Pacemaker and Why I Never Stop Learning

The ongoing lesson in my pacemaker experience is this: I was created to think spiritually but when physical circumstances overtake me my mind is consumed with me and my body's needs. We are so conditioned by the world to seeing everything in a secular perspective (personal opinion and past trial and error experience) that the unseen, the…

Marriage, family, friendship, profession, church, strangers, clubs, citizenship, travel, vacation and being alone pretty much cover most everything we are involved in that demand relational exchange from day to day. The risen Lord wants us to experience Him working in each. God's Word speaks to each of them and they are the arena in which we practice His freedom. They are the exacting daily structures Scripture directs us to experience looking forward.

You can subdivide each of them…

The mindset of 'looking forward' is the way of Jesus, His way and really the only way when you get right down to it. 'Looking forward' is the way of freedom as he defines it by His life, death and Resurrection. His entire mission was always one of freeing us from what the world, the flesh and the devil were doing to imprison us, look beyond the self to Him and what we could become when we let Him lead the way.

OK, so what are the world-flesh-devil's 'prison bars' that keep us from…

We, each of us, you and I, are history, His story, Jesus' story, in the making. This is our purpose written in His blood shed for us on the Cross and delivered to us personally in His Resurrection. His Cross and Resurrection prove we were and are intended to be His image and likeness not only in this world but in His forever Kingdom. He is the focus and being the focus means we follow Him with our mind, heart and spirit ready to make Him known in every next moment, every next event and every…

Born. In the secular world the use of that word is widely distributed. There are born winners and losers. There are those who are considered born to be musicians, painters, athletes and professionals of all kinds. Then, of course, born again. Even there, it's secular use is to talk about the revival or change of a career. Someone who has found a hobby or a job they can't wait to get to will say, “I was born for this.” Think about yourself in this world. What were you born to…

Get Real! That's the call coming from those who can sense something false is going on in another person. Get a grip! That's another phrase that gets the same point across. Then there's always “Get a life!” That tops off the other two.

The first, 'Get real!' is a call to be honest. The second, 'Get a grip!' is a challenge to start trusting. The third, 'Get a life!' is a final charge to shuck all your past attempts at controlling your life, drop all pretense and take a totally different…

“Make a name for yourself” is the world's demand. James Baldwin from his ethnic perspective wrote a book entitled “Nobody Knows My Name.” Andy Warhol thought it would be good for everybody to have their “fifteen minutes of fame.” William Saroyan wrote a one act play “Hello Out There” depicting a young man alone in a jail cell wondering how he got there. It seems that one of the most underlying human fears is being ultimately anonymous. Anonymity is seen as being alone, having no recognition,…

Easter 33 The Resurrection; Getting a Handle on Attitude

You know, when you talk about attitude, as we just did in the last section, one thing leads to another and you have to pursue it. Especially when you might hear someone say, “Boy, does that person have an attitude.” It has come to be used negatively. Perfectly good words can have a double meaning. Think about words like passion, love, desire, birth, life, death, man, woman, marriage, sexuality and who really is able to define…

Since we have talked about mission it's really necessary to recognize what affects the way we undertake our mission. It's our attitude. Attitude is a reflection of the heart. It is comprised of the invisible conclusions about who we are, who other people are and the way we choose to exhibit those conclusions. The problem too is that our conclusions are usually reinforced with emotions. And people pick those up fairly quickly. So we need to look at the roots of our attitude. Where they begin…

Having made the point that the Resurrection of Jesus changed the course of history it should be clear that it was not something to make us look back but to know that it is our future He had in mind. But not only while we are in this world but for when we reach His eternal present where there is no past or future. This is the reason for the constant repetition of the phrase 'every next moment.' It is so easy for us to look back and wish for the comfortable things in our past reminiscing about…

Heb.11:1 “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”

This is a heart-filled quote that comes as a summary of all that has gone in the ten chapters before in a letter to Hebrew Christians. It is not just a statement about faith in general but a very specific follow-up to the one unique faith that is a gift to us and that is the faith of Jesus, the faith with which Jesus went to the Cross. This Epistle is built around the faith of Jesus and makes a…