Tea With Hezbollah

Jeremy Jernigan —  April 4, 2012 — 5 Comments

[W]e are having Carl Meaderis come and speak at Central on April 21-22 so I wanted to familiarize myself a bit with him. To do that, I read through the book Tea With Hezbollah written by Ted Dekker along with Carl. Carl is a Christian committed to serving Muslims.

In the book they tell the story of visiting some of the world’s most influential Muslim leaders and getting to know them a bit. They frame the book in the context of Jesus’ teaching about the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). This is an interesting story to focus on given the specific encounters they write about.

There are many transcripts in the book of the actual questions and answers. They usually asked each leader what makes them laugh, and then asked them to tell a joke. This was in additional to a handful of other questions. But there was one question in particular that stood out to me:

“When was the last time you cried”?

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In Church, Reading
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You Have Too Much

Jeremy Jernigan —  March 26, 2012 — 5 Comments

Recently I was reading through Judges chapter 7 and I was reminded of how God often likes to move in our lives. Verse two lays out the situation clearly:

The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ “

If you know the story, God shrinks Gideon’s army from 32,000 men to only 300. It’s pretty obvious who deserves the credit for what happens next.

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In Bible
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If only I was “there”

Jeremy Jernigan —  March 19, 2012 — 6 Comments

We all struggle with the idea that the grass is greener somewhere else. This thinking pushes us to inactivity and complacency. If only we were “there.”

Contentment, and productivity, are found by settling in and getting our hands dirty. By pushing past the novelty phase of what we are working on and getting to the part where we start to actually get traction and momentum. But most people don’t get to this part. There isn’t any fanfare or excitement through this phase.

It’s always easier to think your silver bullet is on its way to you instead of making the hard decisions you need to today.

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In Leadership, Life
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Tribes

Jeremy Jernigan —  March 12, 2012 — 10 Comments

I recently read through Seth Godin’s book Tribes and absolutely loved it. Whenever I read his books or his blog I always feel energized to take on the world. One of his themes that stood out to me was his use of the word “faith.” While it is quite a bit different than what we are seeing in my series on faith—there is nonetheless intriguing overlap.

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In Culture, Reading
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Faith in the Book of Acts

Jeremy Jernigan —  March 8, 2012 — 5 Comments

This post is part of a series on faith in the New Testament.

Here is a look at our fifth book in the New Testament filtering through all the examples we see of the word faith. This post will exhaustively look at every example we see in the book of Acts with a brief commentary on each.

Acts 3:16

By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.

Here we have a healing attributed to a man’s faith. There is a coupling of faith and the name of Jesus in reference to the power that was displayed.

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In Bible
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