3 sizes are represented here
Here is a picture I took while having a breakfast meeting at Wildflower in Mesa. The first time I went there I asked for a small drink and was given the cup on the right. The next week I ordered a medium drink and received the cup on the right. I was confused. Today I ordered a large drink and received the cup on the left. Does that make sense to anyone else?
“A spiritual stronghold is a mindset, impregnated with hopelessness, which causes us to accept as unchangeable, that which we know to be contrary to the will of God.” Wolfgang Simson
One of my close friends on staff recently sent me this quote as we were discussing some of the depressing realities of the world today. My normal reaction is to accept things as they are but what this quote illustrates is that we should never accept something in our world that we know to be contrary to the will of God as an unchanging reality. We must always focus on what God desires to be done even if the current reality looks daunting from our perspective.
What has God given you a passion about but you think it can’t be done? What is that current reality in the world that produces hopelessness in you? Have you accepted it as unchangeable? When despair leads to acceptance we’ve given up on seeing God’s Kingdom in action.
Chapter 9 of Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy is titled, “A Curriculum for Christlikeness,” and as you might imagine it is a meaty one. This is the chapter that many of the people in our TOAG program from Central are asked to read. This is part of my ongoing series of posts about the book. Here are a few of the big ideas that stood out to me.
“So as Jesus’ current assistants in his ongoing program, one important way of characterizing our work of ‘training disciples to do everything I told you’ is ‘bringing them to actually believe all the things they have already heard.’”
Your value system or your belief system? Months ago, I read a blog by Donald Miller where he posed the argument that our faith is largely determined by our personality. The more I’ve thought about that the more I think it’s true.
It goes even deeper than that. We often create our value system and then pick a belief system to support it. This can be on a large scale, like deciding to be an atheist because you don’t WANT to follow God, or more specifically when, as a Christian, you pick certain parts of the Bible you choose to disagree with because it benefits you in some way.
I’m sitting outside as I write this enjoying a fire in my backyard fireplace. I’m a bit of a pyro and for fun I thought I’d try and build a fire on top of a phone-book (seriously, they are still giving those things out?). In attempting this, I learned that starting a fire on top of a phone-book is not nearly as easy or exciting as you might think.
I had to give this fire much more TLC than normal and in the process I realized there are essentially three elements to building a good fire:
Building a raging fire needs these three ingredients (assuming you aren’t using “cheater” methods like gasoline). All three play radically different parts. The firestarter cannot sustain itself for long but is quick to light. The kindling lights farely quick and will burn for a bit. The heavier logs take awhile to light but can sustain the flame for the longest amount of time. The quickest way to a healthy, natural fire is to strategically incorporate all three.
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