Food For Thought: Getting Back In The Swing Edition
Every week here at Pursuing Glory I try to bring together the best posts I’ve found that will equip the end-times church to operate in her God-ordained destiny. These are the best blogs, articles, books and other resources related to our purpose here at this site. Feel free to visit, comment, and make use of the resources found at each site.
This week marks the return of me to blogging after letting that part of my life slide for a few weeks. I’ve had a chance to hang out with some of the coolest people who aren’t part of our house church recently. However that time spent has taken me away from writing, so I’m going to try and get back in the swing of things. This post represents the best posts from the last few weeks. Enjoy!
I think that Jesus is most frequently the part of community that we leave out when we begin to discect a Christian community. Alan writes about Jesus’ centrality in a way that makes his whole discussions on the elements of a church more palatable than most similar discussions.
Two Vital Needs of Every Disciple
One of the things that gets left out of most discussions about discipleship is the necessity of being able to make other disciples. Here Ray writes about the paradox of following Jesus and leading others into following Him.
Change the Atmosphere, Change the Culture
One of the shifts that I’ve seen help people move from a static church mindset into a movement mindset is discovering the spirit of multiplication that the apostles walked in. Here J.D. talks about how that happens with a group people who currently have no vision for reproducing churches.
One of the common misconceptions in the body of Christ is that house churches in the third world are effective because persecution happening around them fuels evangelism and discipleship. Actually persecution causes the church to return to her organic roots and when she does that, she spreads quickly and naturally.
With the house church movement in the United States as new as it is, little has been written about what mature house church networks look like. This post has an incredible visual that says volumes about how a network of house churches can function interdependently.
Photo Credit: Design Probes – Food for Thought by centralasian.
Notes From The Margins: Temptations
Every blog post in my “Notes from the Margins” series is an ongoing attempt to process the truth I’m finding in the Bible as I go. You’re welcome to join me by dialoguing, asking questions, or doing your own “Notes from the Margins” post on your blog. There are a few rules that you can read here.
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.'” And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve,’” (Luke 4:1-8).
One of the things that I love about Jesus being a man is that He was tempted in every way just like we were. That means that there isn’t any temptation you face that Jesus didn’t have to face in some way. Not all of those ways are recorded, but I guarantee he faced everything you faced and more. He was tempted to the extreme. That’s why reading the account of where he was actually tempted can be so helpful as we look to Jesus as our example of how to overcome temptations.
Today as part of my reading for our 2&3, I came across the account of Jesus’ temptation in Luke 4 again. Here’s what struck me as I read it this morning: Satan was offering something to Jesus that was already promised to Him (Psalm 2:7-8). He wasn’t just offering to make Jesus the idol of all humanity. Satan was actually offering Jesus the destiny God had promised Jesus without having to go through the cross. It was destiny minus the pain.
But that got me thinking about how often we fall for the same temptations. We want to be like King David but we don’t want to be chased through the wilderness by the leader God has removed his hand from. We want the ministry of Paul minus the misunderstandings by people we love, even fellow believers. We want to walk by faith without attempting and failing like Peter did when he stepped out of the boat. We want the promise without the pain. And very frequently we forget that the pain and the suffering are the very things that God uses to prepare us for His promise in the first place.
Satan was looking for worship. Whenever we take short cuts to step into God’s promises with following God’s ways, I think we enter into a measure of worshiping Satan. But to choose the hard path that God is leading us through, all the while believing that God will still deliver on His promise? That’s true worship of the Father. It’s something we’re supposed to give only to Him. Maybe you aren’t being offered a chance to become God of all the nations today, but are you taking a short cut to something God promised in way He hasn’t provided? Today, I’m going to choose the way of God that honors Him, no matter what it costs me.
That’s today’s “Note from the Margin.” Feel free to comment, discuss, and dialogue in the comments section.
Photo Credit: April 25 Notes by Iowa_Spirit_Walker
On Sonship (Part VI)
The last few weeks we’ve been discussing the implications of sonship on our walk with Christ. If you’re interested, you can check out the previous posts in the series here:
On Sonship (Part I)
On Sonship (Part II)
On Sonship (Part III)
On Sonship (Part IV)
On Sonship (Part V)
God gives us spiritual parents.
One of the things that I love about God is how incredibly practical He is. Even though He is willing to give us Himself as a father, he knows that we were designed to live in relationship with other beings with skin. God stoops down to our level, changes us with His fathering heart, and even goes one step farther: He sends spiritual parents in our lives.
A spiritual parent is a human being who knows Christ as their Lord and is tasked with bringing you as an individual into your full sonship in God. Paul said to the Corinthians that though they had many teachers in Christ, they had one father—himself (1 Corinthians 4:15). He had become a father to the whole Corinthian church through being the first to bring the Gospel to Corinth. Paul had a special relationship because of that act that always gave him permission to speak into their messy situations. In an ideal setting, the person who led you to Jesus should be one of your primary spiritual parents. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
When a person comes to Christ, if the person that lead them to Jesus is either absent or non-existent (meaning the person came to know Jesus by simply reading the Bible, finding a tract, etc.) then a spiritual adoption must occur. When this happens, spiritually mature, well-fathered believers can and should reach out to new believers and assume the fathering role in their Christian walk. While this is not the best scenario for spiritual parenting, it will work in a pinch.
The goal of these spiritual parents is to raise these spiritual sons and daughters into their new Kingdom identity. The spiritual parent is tasked with loving with the Father’s love and being a physical representative of the Heavenly Father in the new believer’s life. Spiritual parents also will become channels of wisdom passed down from other believers (2 Timothy 2:1-2). They will also bring discipline and correction to those areas that are in need of it. Most who think they are spiritual parents believe it is done primarily through teaching. In reality, sonship is taught through life lived together, love shared, and wisdom passed on in life as situations arise. Spiritual parents are constantly “re-presenting” God as Father, so that the lies we naturally believe about God are dispelled.
It’s through this process of mirroring God the Father, teaching new sons how to experience sonship, and being a tangible fathering force that these spiritual parents reproduce spiritual sons. In the end the sons and daughters they raise will raise spiritual children of their own, because they’ve been well fathered. This process, continued for many generations of disciples, would pass on and expand the circle of family and sonship that God designed to rest on all of humanity.
God raises sons and daughters through natural parents, Himself, and spiritual parents. And now that we understand how God raises His children, we have to turn our attention to combatting the orphan mentality in us and in others. We’ll begin looking at that next week….
Photo Credit: Hug by popofatticus
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 