Support and Encouragement Needed

We need the support, encouragement and discerning help of others as we learn how to practice forgiveness in every aspect of our lives. Learning the alternative life-way of forgiveness takes time and involves hard work…. It happens as we are transformed by walking in this way of life with other people, in response to God’s active presence among us. The process of forgiveness begins as we venture forth, either on our own or through the invitation of others, to learn the steps of this beautiful, if sometimes awkward, dance. ~ L. Gregory Jones 

Cost of Obedience Vs. Cost of Disobedience

"Satan will try to convince you that obedience carries too high a price, but he will never tell you the cost of not obeying God." 
~ Henry Blackaby

Stand Firm

"God stands firm when everything else moves. Can you?" ~ Chris Tiegreen

Missed Opportunities

"How shall I feel at the judgment, if multitudes of missed opportunities pass before me full review, and all my excuses prove to be disguises of my cowardice and pride?" ~ William Edwin Sangster

Don't Hear...

Most Christians don’t hear God’s voice because they’ve already decided they are not going to do what He says. ~ A. W. Tozer

Contrary to Common Sense

"Everything Jesus taught was contrary to common sense." 
~ Oswald Chambers

Honor and Exalt

"The Spirit does not have to be begged- He comes when the Savior is honored and exalted." ~ A.W. Tozer

The Best Lies

"The best lies are slight variations of the truth." ~ Chris Tiegreen

Love Is...

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

In Need of Healing

We all stand in need of healing. We are all seeking wholeness. For most of us it is a most urgent and ever-present reality in our lives, one we may perhaps try to bury or neglect but which, if we are honest with ourselves, we find we cannot ignore. We all know also that unless we attend to our inner conflicts and contradictions, not only will we find ourselves torn apart by our inner divisions but also we shall very likely inflict wounds on those around us…. This healing of our divisions, this search for wholeness, must be an ongoing process. There is no once and for all moment when we can say that at last we are whole, the past is buried and over, the hurts forgotten, the wounds healed. Instead we find that it is to be a search that we must expect to continue throughout our lives. 
~ Esther de Waal

Hope Is Not...

Hope is not merely the optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right in the end if everyone just does as we do. Hope is the more rugged, the more muscular view that even if things don’t turn out all right and aren’t all right, we endure through and beyond the times that disappoint or threaten to destroy us. ~ Peter Gomes

Missed Opportunities

"How shall I feel at the judgment, if multitudes of missed opportunities pass before me full review, and all my excuses prove to be disguises of my cowardice and pride?" 
~ Dr. William Edwin Sangster

Comfortable in Bondage

Historical Evidence

Restorative Justice

H.A.L.T.

Resting

Resting, God takes pleasure in what has been made; God has no regrets, no need to go on to create a still better world or a creature more wonderful than the man and woman. In the day of rest, God’s free love toward humanity takes form as time shared with them. Later, God teaches [us] to share in the blessing of this day. ~ Dorothy Bass 

Everything We've Got

Silence Is Endangered

In our present culture silence is something like an endangered species…an endangered fundamental. We need it badly. Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves. We live blindly and act thoughtlessly. We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities and our planet. Can we remember our power as persons? Can we remind ourselves and others that, nurtured in silence, our awareness can lead us back to integrity and meaning? Each of us has and is a holy capability. ~ Gunilla Norris 

The Choice

We don’t have the choice of avoiding suffering and going around all these deaths. The only choice we have is between the absurd cross of meaninglessness and the cross of Christ, the death we accept apathetically as a natural end and the death we suffer as a passion…. If in the night of despair the soul does not cease loving “in the void,” then the object of its love can rightly be called “God.” 

~ Dorothee Soelle 

Hope

Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth…. Hope fill us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault 

Vulnerable

In becoming human, Jesus becomes vulnerable to the world of human beings. He becomes vulnerable not only to the human capacity to touch and celebrate, but also to the many ways in which people diminish, betray, oppress and abandon one another. Even though he is vulnerable to these, he does not allow himself to be defined by them. Instead, he breaks apart the cycles of destruction, not just for himself but also for us, thereby offering us new ways of living together. ~ L. Gregory Jones 

Spiritual Journey

Our spiritual journey requires a deepening awareness of our own shadow and light. It requires a rigorous commitment to ‘catching ourselves in the act’ of automatic, programmed responses. It requires choosing instead to respond from the place of light in us and to call forth that light in every life we touch. It requires a descent into our deepest, truest self, into the wellspring of Divine Love in us. That descent involves a thousand deaths to the ego, a constant pattern of letting go and surrendering at deeper and deeper levels. The descent often involves suffering which we do not choose—it chooses us. ~ K. Killian Noe 

Community: Deeply Known and Loved

Getting people to come is important because you can’t have community without people, but getting people to come is not the end goal. We wanted to create a community that invites people to come experience being deeply known and loved, and an experience so compelling that they become eager to go—to go free the prisoner, feed the hungry, comfort the grieving, love the addicted and mentally anguished, house the homeless and ‘stand in and close the gap’ between those who have what they need to fulfill their God-given potential and those who do not. ~ K. Killian Noe 

Vocation of Humans

The vocation of humans is to enjoy their emancipation from the power of death wrought by God’s vitality in this world. The crown of life is the freedom to live now, for all the strife and ambiguity and travail, in the imminent transcendence of death, and all of death’s threats and temptations. That is the gift of God in Christ’s Resurrection. ~ William Stringfellow 

Live as Vagrants

Many, if not most, contemporary people live as vagrants—spiritually, intellectually, geographically, morally and relationally. Vague awareness of this new reality creates much social anxiety and can potentially fuel fundamentalisms, inquisitions and culture wars…. In an age of fragmentation, it may well be the case that the vocation of congregations is to turn tourists into pilgrims—those who no longer journey aimlessly, but rather, those who journey in God and whose lives are mapped by the grace of Christian practices. ~ Diana Butler Bass 

Life Is Hard

Life is so hard for all of us, it seems impossible to be as daring and noble as Jesus was. We may desire to speak out on behalf of humanity as he did but instead find ourselves struggling with marriage, children, illness, work, the mortgage and our busy day-to-day lives. We may feel too depressed, discouraged or hopeless to try to change the world. All the more reason to follow Jesus up a mountain in search of prayerful solitude. Like him, we need to seek out mountaintop solitude and peace. We need something more than our country or television or the world can offer. Like Jesus, we need God. ~ John Dear 

Embrace Quietness

A Leader...

Sacred Ground

Prayer Is Not...

"Prayer is not a preparation for the battle; it is the battle." ~ Leonard Ravenhill

It's Not About You!

"The life you long for is not about you! It's about Christ and His example. The aim and focus is on others and the ways you can serve them in His name. It's not about finding yourself; it's about losing yourself. It's not about becoming strong; it's about coming to terms with your own weakness and finding your strength in Him. It's not about what you become; it's about what He becomes through you." ~ Frank Moore 

Symbol of Hope and Reconciliation

As a friend to sinners Jesus was not merely friendly. Being a friend to sinners meant being whipped and nailed to the Roman cross; a torture device that has now become a symbol of hope and reconciliation for us. 

~ John Comstock