Jeffrey B > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 3

All the water in all the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside. Nor can all the trouble in the world harm us unless it gets within us. That is the promise of the psalm: "GOD guards you from every evil."

The danger of Christian discipleship is that we have two religions: a glorious, Sunday gospel that sets us free from the world; and an everyday religion that we make do with during the week.

Chapter 2

The first step toward God is a step away from the lies of the world. It is a renunciation of the lies we have been told about ourselves and our neighbors and our universe.

Every Christian has some variation on this immigrant plot to tell.
My whole life lived camping among quarreling neighbors." But we don't have to live there any longer. Repentance, the first word in Christian immigration, sets us to lit

Chapter 1

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

For recognizing and resisting the stream of the world's ways there are two biblical designations for people of faith that are extremely useful: disciple and pilgrim

Yes, God our Father-our generous Father—will provide us with the "hors d'oeuvres of Eden" even in times of intense madness. "You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies" (Psalm 23:5 NLT). If we can recognize these moments as gifts to sustain our hearts—if we can hold them with an open hand-they can support us, even bring healing.
The trick is to not make them the focus of our life.