Category Archives: spiritual questions/musings/wonderings

thinking about my talk in the morning…

Colossians 1:9-10 ESV And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, [10] so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Colossians 1:28-29 ESV Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. [29] For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

2 Peter 1:3-8 ESV [3] His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, [4] by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. [5] For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, [6] and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, [7] and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. [8] For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 4:11-16 ESV [11] And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, [12] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, [13] until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, [14] so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. [15] Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, [16] from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

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men’s renewal gathering

we gathered in the Matrak mountains in a village in northern Hungary, 6 of us, I cooked Hungarian, Laci cooked Italian, we ate, practiced silence, heard Psalms read aloud, shared the Lord’s supper, burned wood as Laci kept us busy keeping the wood stoves going, we discussed our lives and what God was urging us toward… it was a blessed time indeed… Laci the paparazzi took this while I was listening to an answer to a question…

who is asking you hard questions?

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Silence

About now, up in the mountains of northern Hungary, a few men have gathered, we have shared a meal together, we have received instructions on silence and listening for God and are now practicing that silence. Later, we will gather and share what God has said in faith that God does still indeed still speak, indeed, He does.

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slow train

about now, I will be heading up into the mountains of northern Hungary with a few guys for some scripture, fellowship, silence, contemplation, conversation and challenges to hear and follow God… for the next few days posts and tweets will be coming from the wonder of  Wordpress pre-scheduling and TweetDeck’s ability to schedule tweets… love what we can do with tech these days…

yesterday I tweeted this: “thinkin bout how the slowness of trains in the Balkans could make us think about slowing down and listening to the rhythm of our own tracks”…

what are your rhythms?

do you slow down enough to hear yourself?

do you stop with regularity to be able to hear God?

how long does it take you to let the noise of life fade away so you can hear your own heart? your spouse’s? God’s?

SLOW that train down… accomplishment can wait…

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Windows to Heaven

I once read that icons of the Orthodox tradition should not be thought of as paintings, but as windows to heaven… they shed an illumination of the Holy for our ears to behold. Last week in Belgrade at Saint Sava’s church…

I prayerfully pondered several icons… in a series of posts today and tomorrow, I give you some windows into heaven.

Oh, it was not on purpose… but, my now-deceased Canon did not grab the clearest of images due to lack of mono-pod, inability to do settings for various reasons, etc… BUT, I kinda like the softness that the bit of a blurred effect gives, kinda like we’re looking through a glass that is smudged… get it?

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asking questions

Recently I sat with a couple who are planting churches in a place where churches are neither strong nor easily found. They are using a set methodology which makes sense to me but I will not discuss here… What I want to do in this post is to do a bit of contextualizing (how’s that for a word?)… I want to use the questions in my work (you know: riding trains, drinking coffee and asking questions…

1. What are you thankful for today?

2. What are you struggling with lately? -or- What is causing stress in your life?

3. [after reading a text] What does this story teach me about who God is?

4. What does this story teach me about what humanity is really like?

5. What will I do differently in my life as a result of this story?

6. What should we do together to obey this message from God?

7. Who could you share this story with?

Now, I sat and took notes from my friends, and then another friend from another city typed them up after we talked about the ways that these questions could help us and others in knowing God and living life better for Him. I have made some further modifications to some of my scribbling of the questions to make them shorter and am seeking to make them clearer.

What are ways you would further edit these questions?

Please note that these questions are designed to be used in conjunction with reading passages of Scripture in a small group setting. Can you see how they could be helpful to you in understanding God and life a little better? But I can also see how these questions could be used in a lot of other ways to pull understanding of God out of lots of things (General Revelation does exist).

I’m excited about how these simple questions can help create an ethos of making disciples… What do you think?

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