Loving, Learning, and Leading

It all begins with Pain "The paradox indeed is that the beginning of healing is in the solidarity with the pain... the wanting to alleviate pain without sharing it is like wanting to save a child from a burning house without the risk of being hurt." Henri Nouwen, from his book Reaching out: Three movements of the Spiritual life. The core questions of life, ministry, mission, and even hope center around how we deal with pain: our pains, the pains of others, our culture's pain, even humanity's pain. How we deal, or in many instances, refuse to deal with these pains paints a picture of our vitality and what it truly means to live. I have shared many times with many people that God began to deal with me several years ago about this concept of wanting to extinguish pain without actually entering into to it. I had always grown up with the concept as a healthy understanding of healing and service. However, as I desire to follow the ultimate healer more closely, I ...

How would Jesus Drive? Today, I spent one hour and fifteen minutes driving my children to school this morning due to difficult winter weather in Rochester, NY. When you are sitting in traffic, you have time to think of a whole bunch of things, most which have no significance. I began to think about the WWJD slogan that was revitalized in the past decade. I was thinking about how would Jesus drive. As a human incarnation of the Godhead, He would, of course, drive perfectly. However, I was asking myself "what does perfect driving look like". Afterall, its not just limited to the right speeds, and obeying traffic laws, but the intent and motivations would also be in line with the purposes of God. So, I was thinking that perfect driving would also be related to the destination and the purposes of that destination. In other words, if God is love and Jesus is a incarnation of God, made flesh, driving would be a means to love. So if the destination itself was to do somet...

Spiritual Boredom Today, I began a new sermon series for my wonderful Church family ( www.christcommunityfellowship.org ). Its based upon the experience of so many Christians today who have a boring faith. Now, I am not saying the the Christian Faith is boring, but I do feel that the experience of the average American Christian has become stale, predictable, and frankly, boring. We have a difficult time getting people to come to all kinds of church functions for a whole host of reasons. People are busy, too tired, unsure of the value, etc. However, the one thing that affects our desire is in the experience itself. What if the Bible study, the prayer gathering, or the service project is just not stimulating? What if it really does not stimulate the mind, encourage the heart, and empower my hands. Jesus stated explicitly in John 10:10 that he came to give us an abundant life. He came so that we would learn what it meant to truly live and what it means to be fully alive. Our exp...