Absurd Living

I read a portion today from a work of Henri Nouwen called Spiritual Direction that struck my fancy since I have written on this:
Being formed in God’s likeness involves the struggle to move from absurd living to obedient listening. The word absurd contains the word surdus, which means “deaf”. Absurd living is a way of [...]

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Eucharist: Painted Portrait or Photograph

I was watching a movie set in WWII a while back. An American soldier, after arriving in Berlin broke into a German home, unknowing to him, of a Nazi officer who was off serving in the war. The GI picked up off a nearby table a photograph of the Nazi officer in his uniform. The [...]

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Partakers of the Divine Nature

Here are the notes and content of the sermon I gave 1/4/09 in the Sunday AM service in pdf format. The content covers further detail and additional thoughts not in this mornings presentation.
Partakers of the Divine Nature
Click link to download – you will need adobe acrobat reader.
Comments and questions are welcome.

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Which Jesus?

The truth of God’s Word is being lost in a labyrinth of new spirituality, pseudo spirituality and inter spirituality. I shouldn’t say lost God’s Word because it is still there, but the passion and relevancy it once held in the life of the church is becoming lost.
Matthew 24:4-5
And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take [...]

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Biblical Contemplation

There is a lot of confusion about Biblical Contemplation. Some are tossing the baby out with the bath water.
This teaching, of mine, is from taken from Psalm 119:9-16 and was given on a Sunday morning in early 2007 after I learned about a movement known as the Emergent Church and the concern we were heading [...]

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Sweet Bitterness

Introduction to the Devout Life Pt1 Ch8:
How to Effect This Second Purification
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 8
I do admit that sometimes blogging these walks gets heavy for me. The conviction of my own short-comings sometimes is magnified and extremely overwhelming. Because of that it is easy for me to not feel ready to post on a given [...]

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Bilbo’s Lament

Introduction to the Devout Life Pt1 Ch7:
The Second Purification from All Sinful Affections
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah7
How the affections of things we know have hold of us! We acknowledge the defeat of bondage, the weight of conviction and pain of God’s correction yet we still long after and desire earnestly the deceitful pleasures of this Hell bound [...]

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Rejoicing in Hell

Introduction to the Devout Life Pt1 Ch6:
The First Purification, Mainly From Mortal Sin
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 6

“Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the [...]

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Rushing into Spiritual Peril

Introduction to the Devout Life Pt1 Ch5: The First Step Must Be Purifying the Soul
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 5
The people of God sometimes rush into spiritual peril, but not for lack of instruction, direction or warning for God has made that clear. They run into spiritual peril refusing instruction to prevent sin, refusing correction to repent [...]

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Need of a Guide

Introduction to the Devout Life Pt1 Ch4: The Need of a Guide
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah4
Heb 12:1 “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set [...]

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