Kelli Sorg

“To believe that God can reach us and bless us in the ordinary junctures of daily life is the stuff of prayer.”
― Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

“Paracletic language is the language of the Holy Spirit, a language of relationship and intimacy, a way of speaking and listening that gets the words of Jesus inside us so that they become us. It is not new information. It is not explanation. It is God’s word on our side, within us, working out the details in the circumstances of our lives.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ

“action. We must discover the patterns, customs, and even the habits around which they organize their lives. If we look at them and see only our own reflection, we do not know them. If we look at them and see only an “other,” an object of our scrutiny, we do not know them. Only when we know who they are with us can we claim really to know them. An exegetical process introduces us to the text. It provides some crucial biographical information, and it even discloses some of the text’s secrets. It is up to the preacher, then, to bring the life of the congregation into the text’s presence, to dwell there long and prayerfully, and to discern the reality of this text as it is with us. This is eventful. Something happens between text and people: a claim is made, a voice is heard, a textual will is exerted, and the sermon will be a bearing witness to this event. As the final step in the exegetical process, the preacher throws the first cord across the gap between text and sermon by describing the text’s claim upon the hearers, including the preacher. We are ready to move on to the creation of the sermon itself only when we can finish the following sentence: “In relation”
― Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching

“Trying harder doesn’t do it. Enter the Spirit. God provides his Spirit to live the life of God in us, and we are reoriented around the center that holds. When we leave church, dismissed by the benediction, we are far less likely to be intimidated by the “rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ