“The air we breathe and the atmosphere we inhabit as believers and followers of Jesus is grace.”

Eugene Peterson compares living in grace to swimming.  Anyone who looks at water and passes a hand through it can plainly see that it would not hold a person up.  But swimmers know that if they will simply relax on the water they find that miraculously they become buoyant.  And by repeatedly allowing their hands and feet to slice through the water in small strokes they can actually propel their bodies forward.

Grace is this way too.  It is only as we relax and allow ourselves to be buoyed by it that grace does its work of holding us up.  And we find that when we are relying on grace to carry us, our movements (which would ordinarily lead to us sinking) are met by the properties of this miraculous substance and we glide forward in the resurrection life that Jesus invites us to.  Peterson has a wonderful phrase to describe growing in grace: “acquired passivity.”

Taking a few vacation days to work on a writing project, then a week to vacate proper with the family.  Rest is good . . .

On hearing God:

“Hearing God cannot be a reliable and intelligible fact of life except when we see his speaking as one aspect of his presence with us, of his life in us.  Only our communion with God provides the appropriate context for communications between us and him.  And within those communications, guidance will be given in a manner suitable to our particular lives and circumstances.  It will fit into our life together with God in his earthly and heavenly family.  This insight helps us in learning to discern God’s voice.”

[adapted from Hearing God Through the Year by Dallas Willard]

Big thanks to YouthWorker Journal, who gave Embodying Our Faith a positive review not once but twice!  Thanks to Jeremy Milford (May issue) and Grant Gillard (March issue) for their kind words.

On Sunday I had the real joy of being with one of our church plants, both to meet with their leadership and then to teach at their worship gathering.  What a great church – young, vibrant, loving, missional.  But like so many smaller churches, they are struggling with financial sustainability. 

The previous day I was at a conference and ran into a church planter friend who is pursuing a highly incarnational model in an urban area.  They serve well and have a tangible impact in their community.  And they gather to worship, but in more of a house-church sort of way.  Similarly, one of their big questions is how to sustain this ministry financially.

On faith that God is speaking, working, acting on our behalf:

“Great faith, like great strength in general, is revealed by how easily it works.  Most of what we call a struggle of faith is really the struggle to act as if we had faith when in fact we do not.”

“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” (Luke 17:5)

[adapted from Hearing God Through the Year by Dallas Willard]