Achieving vs. Receiving
It’s the most amazing discovery I’ve ever made. God is more interested in a relationship with me than I am with him. Thus, he is always at work actively keeping me in relationship with himself. Abundant living, then, is really about discovering and responding to the initiative, movements and on-going activity of God in my ...
A Thousand Surrenders
“The gospel is not as much about worthiness as it is about surrender. What God wants from us is not a million acts of virtue, but a million acts of surrender.” Ron Rolheiser If we were in control of our spirituality it would certainly be about our self-reliant ability to tweak our behavior, through gathering ...
For the Sake of Others
We close out our Intentional Series with the reminder, lest we ever forget, our transformation into the character of Christ…is for the sake of others. As we grow through transforming grace into conformity to Christ we become like him…whose life was given unconditionally for others, whose heart was given over to compassion for the poor ...
Missional Discipleship
We wrap up our "Intentional" series this Sunday with Missional Discipleship. After that we will unveil our "Intentional Journey" which put it all together and will become a “map” to our spiritual growth at Faith. For today, however, here is a sample of what’s to come on Sunday. For all of our discipleship in Christ…experiencing ...
Sighs Too Deep For Words
“Give heed to my sighing…” Psalm 5:1 Have you ever been in a place where you had no words to describe your distress and when you tried to pray – it came out as a…sigh? Prayer is not trying to strong arm God with fancy words. It’s not way to cut good deals with God ...
Unforced Joy
Is joy a choice or an fruit? Yes. How often have we heard that “joy is a choice”? Yet how often have we tried to be joyful only to discover it only lasts and long as we are trying hard to make it so. Trying to “produce” joy through verbal confession can feel manufactured and ...
Intentional Environments for Formation
This Sunday Darrel and I are tag-team preaching, continuing our “Intentional” series. In regards to being intentional in our discipleship, we’ve talked about how there are already some natural “places” of transformation already embedded in our lives and our church that become opportunities to encounter Jesus’ transforming presence. Transformation happens as we place ourselves in ...
I am Most Alive When…
What I’ve discovered about practicing the spiritual disciplines is that they are a lot like riding on the back of my husband’s motorcycle. (Stay with me here.) The reason I love riding is because all of my senses are engaged. I not only see everything around me clear and up close (even the road kill…yuk!) ...
For Want of Rest
How many times a day do you hear (or say yourself), “I am so busy…” It is the sigh of our day. We say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, as if our ability to buck up under stress is a mark of real ...
Prayer as Communion
Many of us cringe when prayer is mentioned, mostly because we are so inconsistent at it and feel guilty for not “measuring up.” (If we were honest, we’d admit how bored we are with it.) There’s so much more to prayer than we realize and perhaps starting at a new place can help us. It will take some ...
Gail Johnsen 