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In talking to my various folks who are my partners in the work I am called to do, I’ve noticed that some are interested in measurable results, and others are more interested in news about relationships, and a few want to consider both. Which are you?
A. Show me results
B. Tell me about relationships
C. Both

Last week I heard a talk about “soul care.” In this talk I heard the idea of considering what I will refer to as the four quadrants of the human… They are put forth as Jesus restates the Shema in answer to the question on which commandment is the greatest…

Mark 12.29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Ok, so…

Heart

Soul

Mind

Strength

What I’m thinking about is this: what are the questions that probe us to honestly seek to understand the condition of our heart, soul, mind and strength?

I heard a guy yesterday say that it is easy to get people to believe stuff. I read another guy who said that people who are not in a community of belief can, when they experience the community, better understand belief.
These two thoughts are interesting for those who are seeking to be part of helping people believe for the first time.
But the question for me is how to help people not just believe. I want to live. In that life, I want to grow in belief and faith so that I may be used to help others understand, believe and have faith. Jesus said to some blind guys, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” When they responded in the affirmative, he said… “According to your faith…” Thus, in this context, Jesus differentiates between belief and faith. Geo. Mueller was a man of accomplishment because he knew the importance of prayer. This prayer (apparently hours per day) was faith exercising and faith building prayer. May we build our faith by exercising it through not just believing but stepping out daily in faith. What do I need to step out in faith about today? What do you?

Posted from my mobile device.

I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday and he pointed me to a post on a DC pastor’s blog about weighing need and potential. It made me remember what I posted about The Hole in Your Gospel, that we need to be realists with a view toward possibility… read on

Well, I’m planning the next trip from just after Thanksgiving to just after Epiphany… you can see my current plans here

I have lots of reading that I don some of is work, some of it fun. What I classify as ‘work’ reading is that which I should read to better prepare me for my calling. These books often find their way onto this blog and into the hands of those with whom I partner and mentor. True, the work often becomes fun, if it is what I classify as a good read and I truly enjoy reading. This book, I read because I want to, not because I should (as differentiated over and against that which one has to read if in a required course). I am reading such a book.
The Rise of Christianity by R. Stark is such a book.
I think the reason I am enjoying it so much is that he is analyzing the early church and the wealth of data and literature we have about it using modern social science methods. In this he is talking on the usual scholarship on the subject in a different way than the usual “these heathens are tools of the enemy” (they very well may be, but lots of people have done that.
The other reason I am enjoying it (much like I did The Reason for God by T. Keller, is that it is affirming that which I have thought and taught for years. (It’s nice to feel affirmed.) Like this quote:
“The basis for successful conversionist movements is growth through social networks, through a structure of direct and intimate interpersonal attachments.” (p.20)
Now this was written at the end of the last century so he was not talking about Fb. The word intimate let’s Fb out because this kind of “intimae interpersonal attachments” are done while lingering over coffee and engaging in a real conversation in which probing questions dive deeper that perhaps one wishes.
I do have three (or four) books I’m working through that I may report on here as well.
Are you allowing yourself to really engage in these probing conversations? Do you even know how?
Please contemplate this…