Elijah Abanto > Recent Status Updates

"When you default to thinking of prayer as an abstract activity, a 'thing to do', the tendency is to focus on the prayer as an activity--which makes it boring. Instead, focus on the one to whom you are praying. Reminding yourself who you are coming before is a great help against distraction, and changes the prayer" (p. 20).

"Jesus is the Lord; Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. But our Lord and God prays. In fact, he's always praying. When full of joy, he'd pray; when agonizing, he'd pray. When making major decisions like appointing apostles, he'd spend a good bit of time in prayer. His prayer inspired his disciples to ask, 'Lord, teach us to pray' (Lk. 11:1)" (page 11).

Michael Reeves on page 5: "Your prayer life reveals how much you really want communion with God and how much you really depend on him."

Chapter Six: “Judas in the Church: The Borderland of Hospitality” | “Make no mistake: it is a million times safer to include unbelieving neighbors and people who have not claimed the blood of Jesus or citizenship of the church [in hospitality] than to let a potential Judas run loose in the church. Atheists do far less harm than hypocrites.”

Chapter Five: “Learning how to practice mercy in a world that values covetousness, achievement, and acquisition takes some training, both in learning the new and unlearning the useless. We live in a world that is in great need of the Jesus paradox, of contagious grace.”

Chapter Four | “Jesus dines with sinners so that he can get close enough to touch us, so that he can participate in the intimacy of table fellowship as a helper and a healer. Jesus comes to change us, to transform us, so that after we have dined with Jesus, we want Jesus more than the sin that beckons our fidelity.”

Chapter Four: “God Never Gets the Address Wrong: The Providence of Hospitality” | Rosaria Butterfield, looking back to her troubled childhood, asks, “Did I have Christian neighbors, neighbors who might have helped?”

Chapter 5 | “We blessed in the same confidence that we pray, knowing that God is faithful to His Word and delight to act in response to the faith of his people.”

Chapter 4 | “Spiritual leaders in the home and the church should be encouraged to bless those they are called to lead.”

Chapter Three: “Our Post-Christian World” | “Christian hospitality brings together the mystery of union with Christ and the fellowship of the saints to gather in close the stranger in the outcast and the chronically lonely.”

Chapter Two: The Jesus Paradox: “We believe that Christians are called to live as the family of God and to draw strangers in neighbors in, with food and bended knee, beseeching God‘s grace to pour out on those who do not yet know the Lord, and to encourage and uplift and fuel those who do. We lock arms together because we must. Christians are not lone strangers.”

Chapter One: “Priceless: The Merit of Hospitality” | “Where else but a Christian home should neighbors go in times of unprecedented crisis? Where else is it safe to be vulnerable, scared, lost, hopeless?”

December 24 | “Who is Jesus? He is God’s final revelation to us. In him, we see the full radiance of God‘s glory. Jesus not only created the world, but he is the one who holds it together by his infinite power. Jesus is the only one who has the power to purify us from sin. There never is, and will be, anyone like him.”

December 23 | “Lord, even now I bow before the throne of Jesus. Even now I confess that he is Lord, master and ruler of all things, king of the universe. And yet what humility he has displayed! What tender love to stoop so low, even to die on behalf of me and all his chosen people. May I display that same sort of humility in all that I do.”

December 22 | “The purpose of Scripture is to point you to the one who carries fallen humanity’s hope so that you will embrace your need of him, put your trust in him, and receive the greatest gift ever given: life in his name.”

December 21 | "The entire biblical story it's about a God who gives his creatures what they do not know they need, what they often do not want, and what they could never earn or do for themselves-- but which they cannot live without."

December 20 | “All of history had been marching to this moment. A sin-broken world had been longing for this one to come. Fully man and fully God, Jesus would do what we could never do for ourselves: make a way in his life and death for us to be recognized by God. Stop today for a moment and take in the glory.”

December 19 | “The great line that divides humanity is not political, economic, social, or ethnic. No, the great fault line is Jesus… The cross of Jesus either is your hope in this life and the one to come, or it represents the death of a man you do not love and do not need. There is no neutrality in the shadow of the cross.”

December 18 | “We sing today—and we will sing for all of eternity— songs of the grace of Jesus.”

December 17 | “It is vital to understand that God‘s kingdom is an upside-down kingdom, where the path to greatness is via humble service. Because of the greatness of Jesus‘s service, we have hope in this life and the one to come.”

December 16 | “Jesus is eternal Son of the father who came to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Chapter Fifteen: “Farther Up, Farther In” on the new heavens and new earth | (Jewel the Unicorn) “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we love the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”

Chapter Fourteen: “Night Falls on Narnia.” All worlds will come to their end, including ours. Only these will remain: God, and everything he wills to be in his joyful presence.

December 15 | “You can bank on and build your life upon the promises of God. He has the power, willingness, and authority to do everything he has promised to do.”

Chapter Thirteen: “How the Dwarfs Refused to be Taken In.” To those who believe in the Lord Jesus, heaven will be pure joy; but to those who don’t, there will only be darkness.

December 14 | "The entire biblical story marches toward the coming of the Son of man."

Chapter Twelve: “Through the Stable Door.” Just when we think that all hope is lost, the Lord will step in and bring victory to his people.

December 13 | “It is a good thing that our lives are controlled not by failed human shepherds, but by the Good Shepherd, who will never fail.”

Chapter Eleven: “The Pace Quickens.” Even in a precarious situation, the right thing to do is always to fight for what is right and good.

December 12 | “God is not like you. He reigns in glorious majesty over everything and everyone he has created. His zeal for his own glory is the hope of the universe. It is in living for his glory that we are rescued from our bondage to our own glory, a glory that will never satisfy our hearts.”