- The Nebula He threw into place when the angels sang and shouted for joy.
The followers of Jesus are to be different-different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships-all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian Counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.
John Stott
As a discipler of others,
I wonder, are we merely indoctrinating our children--teaching them to "Be good" without giving them a compassion for the lost?
Jesus looked out on the multitudes and felt, not scorn, not criticism, not fear but compassion.
Teaching them to be responsible and to work hard and to make sound decisions instead of pouring their lives out to bring light to a dark world?
Abraham, not knowing where he was going, obeyed God.
Are we living by works instead of celebrating the grace of a God who never judges us by our failings and then extending this very grace to the unlovely in our lives?
The Pharisees piled gult and burden on the shoulders of the jews and Jesus scathingly rebuked them.
Are we living by faith that God can do the impossible and stepping out to risk ourselves for Him or just living by what is safe, what we can provide for ourselves--
The disciples said, "We don't have enough fish and loaves." The spies in the land said, "The giants are too big for us" and they became grasshoppers in their own sight.
I wonder.....because I am looking around me at hearts and wondering if they are fully alive to who He really is..........