“For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
What does God want? Do you ever find yourself asking that question? Sometimes it’s a question. Sometimes it can be more of an accusation. We feel like we’re constantly running around trying to please Him and never quite managing to hit that mark. It can be pretty discouraging to feel that way for long. Fortunately, God tells us what He wants in the Scriptures. Frequently. We’ve only got to listen to what He says.
This week we finally wrapped up our series, Being Useful. In the final analysis, how can we be the most useful to Jesus? The answer is found in getting ourselves on board with His most central mission: To love one another into the kingdom of God. To find out more about this incredibly freeing truth, keep reading.
Love Like Jesus
By the time I
reached my senior year of college, I was so deep into my chemistry major there
was no turning back from that. I say
that, because by that time I had already agreed to pursue God’s call to
ministry and realized that most of what I had spent the previous three years
learning was going to gradually leak out of the back of my head from
disuse. Always a fun realization when
you still have the four hardest courses of your major yet ahead of you. Speaking of that, one of those courses was
Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry, or DINC for short. The professor for the class was Dr. John
O’Brien.
With one more week to go in our series, Being Useful, we are starting to get a lot more clarity on what the picture of a life that is useful to Jesus looks like. And what does it look like? Love. This week and next we are going to wrap up this powerful series by talking about the role love plays in the church and in the life of a follower of Jesus. Don’t miss a single part of it.
Irreducible Complexity
Some of the fiercest and most
significant debates happen in places where nobody sees them. These are often inner-disciplinary debates
among scholars on a single topic. And
the stakes for these are a lot higher than it would seem. For instance, a debate among mathematicians
about the best way to solve certain kinds of math problems may look from the
outside like a bunch of geeks arguing about esoteric philosophies that have
nothing to do with the daily lives of normal people. But, the winning side may very well have
their ideas appear in textbooks—do they even use textbooks anymore?—and
curricula for elementary students and, all of a sudden, a whole new way of
thinking about math will be planted in the culture. All of a sudden, what was once abstract
academic jargon begins to have a profound impact on the lives of regular people
who are far removed from the ivy-covered campus buildings of elite
universities. Hello: Have you tried
helping your kids with their math homework lately? Case in point.
“You have captured my heart, my sister, my bride. You have captured my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
About 15 years and two months ago, my life changed forever. The event? I got off a plane in Louisville, KY. The plan? I was going to spend the summer teaching sixth- through twelfth-graders how to listen to God’s call in their lives. Six weeks were going to be spent on the campus of Spaulding University there in Louisville, and two weeks were going to happen at Camp Windermere in southern Missouri. And while I still remember a remarkable amount from that summer, that’s not what’s on my mind this morning. What I’m talking about came a year and two months later. Today is my anniversary.
It’s vacation week! Blogs will keep appearing this week, but the audio recordings may not. Things will be back up and running like normal starting next week.
“Don’t all of us have one Father? Didn’t one God create us? Why then do we act treacherously against one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (CSB – Read the chapter)
As the prophet Malachi was offering various warnings to the people of Israel to get back on track with God, he took a minute to remind them of who they were. He reminded them of the common heritage they all shared. Although this reminder wasn’t aimed at us, the spirit behind it is still very much relevant today. It is relevant for our nation. It is relevant for the church. Let’s talk about why this morning.
The Nexus 