Author Archives: Kim Reisman

Scripture Focus:

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s judgment. For since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God – all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God. (Romans 5:6-11, NLT)

The First Step on the Journey

We’re continuing to reflect on the nature of our faith by exploring where we are on our spiritual journey and how our relationship with God has unfolded in our lives. We have discovered the point of departure in our divine-human relationship – that inner conflict between the good selves we were created to be and the allure of evil around us. Moving forward from that point involves realizing that we don’t have to resolve that conflict alone. In fact, if left to our own devices, we can’t resolve that conflict. Our internal battle is not one we can win on our own power. Knowing God’s law and understanding God’s teachings, only serve to make us aware of how incapable we are to keep them.

The good news is that we don’t have to fight this battle alone The very God who desires to be in relationship with us is the God who makes that relationship possible by providing the resolution to our inner conflict – Jesus Christ, who through his death and resurrection conquered the power of evil in the world. Scripture is completely clear about this: Evil has been overcome. Our hope, as we follow Jesus is not just hearing that message but experiencing that victory ourselves. It is grasping that God’s grace is more powerful than our sin. It is in recognizing that our relationship with God is one of friendship. By becoming human in Jesus, fully living, sacrificially dying, and triumphantly rising for us, God has made us his friends.

Experiencing God’s grace and restoring our friendship with God begins when we recognize our sinfulness, earnestly repent, and accept the forgiveness God offers us through Jesus Christ. This grace is the redemptive, healing, recreating love of God. It is a gift that we receive not because we deserve it or have earned it, but because God freely gives it. It is a radical love for us, a love that is more powerful than sin, that reconciles our relationship, and makes us “right” with God. When we accept that grace, God wipes the slate of our lives clean, and empowered by God’s love, we can take the first steps to move forward on our spiritual journey.

Over these past few months, we have reflected on the importance of Scripture as a crucial way to connect to God’s movement in our lives as we follow Jesus and our spiritual journey unfolds. We have discovered that the inner conflict that lies at the heart of being human is only our point of departure, not our final destination. As you fast and pray this month, my prayer is that you would remember taking that first step of your spiritual journey. That as you continue to follow, you would become more and more aware of God’s grace and God’s ongoing desire for you to be his friend.

If you can’t recall taking that first step, I pray that you would recognize that God desires you to begin moving toward the good self God created you to be. That you would come to understand that Jesus Christ is the only means of resolving our inner conflict between good and evil. And that you would experience God’s grace in all it fullness, calling you to become a friend of God. 

Scripture focus:

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. (Ephesians 1:1-3, The Message)

Our Point of Departure

As we have seen during our walk together this year, self-examination is an important part of following Jesus. This month marks the halfway mark of 2022, so it seems appropriate to step back for a moment and reflect on how our relationship with God has unfolded thus far. Where are we on our spiritual journey? The best way to begin that kind of reflection is at the beginning, at our point of departure.

Our experience often confirms what we learn from Scripture about the relationship between God and human beings. It’s a relationship of covenant making and keeping on God’s part and covenant making and breaking on our part. The good news is that God created each of us as one whole, good self. God desires to be in a relationship with us and again and again makes covenants with us to seal that relationship. And because God wants this relationship to be free, instead of coerced, manipulated, or forced, God gives us an independent will and grants us the freedom to choose.

The sad news is that somewhere along the way, something happened to that good, whole self, and to our relationship with God. Our wholeness became fragmented and our relationships with God and one another became estranged. We used our God-given freedom to choose in unhealthy ways and became supremely vulnerable and responsive to the power of evil.

This lack of wholeness and estrangement is a huge predicament. The good selves we were created to be are in a constant battle against the evil that lies all around us. Paul described it this way:

No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway.

(Romans 7:18-19, NLT)

Two things lie within each of us – the desire to follow the good and an intense receptiveness to the appeal of the evil that surrounds us. This inner conflict is our point of departure. It is where we begin as we reflect on our relationship with God.

Many of us are uncomfortable talking about this inner struggle but identifying it shouldn’t discourage us. It’s simply an objectively observable aspect of being human.

I have always been fascinated by physics. I don’t understand very much of it to be sure, but I still find it amazing. Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of physics. It’s one of those objectively observable aspects of our universe. I don’t have to know why gravity exists and I don’t have understand every detail about how it works. But I do need recognize that it exists. If I refuse to do that, I will never be able to completely grasp physics. But once I recognize the objective fact of gravity, I can begin to grow my understanding of it and deepen my comprehension of physics.

It is the same with the inner conflict between the good selves we were created to be and our receptiveness to the evil that surrounds us. Once we recognize it exists, we can begin the journey of deepening our relationship with God and following Jesus more closely.

But that isn’t the whole story! Even as we comprehend the objective fact of our inner struggle, we also remember that we belong to God, who created each of us as one good, whole self, and who has been seeking to be in relationship with us ever since.

As I was growing up, my parents would repeat this word to me over and over – you are a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God. That’s good news! Each of us is a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God. God freely chose to create us, we belong to him, and he wants us to realize that.

God wants us to understand that even as we experience this internal struggle, we have been given the freedom to choose. We can move toward God and the good selves we were created to be, or we can live in greater sync with the evil that surrounds us. This is an empowering experience! We don’t have to remain at the beginning. Our situation of inner conflict is our point of departure, but it is not our destination. We don’t have to yield to our inner responsiveness to evil. Instead, we can choose – every day – to deepen our relationship with God and allow him to move us closer to becoming the good selves he created us to be.

As you fast and pray this month, take stock of where you are on your spiritual journey. What role has the conflict between the good self God created us to be and our receptiveness to evil played in your spiritual journey thus far? At this midpoint in 2022, I pray that you would be aware of the ways in which good and evil pull at you as you make choices. And I pray that you would recognize that this inner battle is not your destination, but only a point of departure for you as God shapes you more and more into the good self he created you to be.

Rev. Dr. Kim Reisman
Executive Director
World Methodist Evangelism

As a connection point for the worldwide Methodist Wesleyan family, World Methodist Evangelism enables our global partners to support one another for a stronger witness to the transformative love of God in Jesus Christ. In the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, WME is standing in the gap for ministry to refugees. WME’s ministry, Connect419 provides a channel for funding to support the work of our partners in Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, and Czech Republic. To date we have received over $35,000. These funds have gone to provide housing and other needs for refugees who have fled Ukraine, along with specific help for orphans. We have also been able to provide medical, food, and others supplies for those remaining in Ukraine.

Though we have strong partners in Slovakia and Czech Republic, our strongest partnership is with the United Methodist Church in Romania where significant work is being done in collaboration with the United Methodist Church in Ukraine. You can follow much of the work by visiting the Light from Light UMC – Sibiu Romania Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/lightfromlightumc/

If you would like to support this important work, please visit the World Methodist Evangelism website. https://worldmethodist.org/donate/ukraine/

Pastor Cristian Istrate greets Ukrainian children at Light from Light UMC in Sibiu, Romania

Church members from Ukraine and Romania meet at the border to deliver medical and other supplies.

Medical and other supplies are delivered from Romania to the Ukraine border.

Sitting on the Stone

This month begins our journey to Jerusalem and our celebration of the resurrection – the heart of the good news! Jesus has risen from the dead, overcome evil, and given us eternal life!

And yet, this good news comes amidst a lot of difficult news. War in Ukraine, genocide in Myanmar, illness, death, injustice, oppression, poverty, hunger – the list goes on. That’s why it’s important not to rush too quickly to the good news that comes at the end of the story. We grow in our faith when we sit for just a bit with the difficulty that came first.

Mark tells us about that difficulty in chapter 15, verses 42-47. For Jews, Sabbath begins when the sun goes down on Friday and by time Jesus died on the cross it was getting late, so his friends wanted to get him buried before sunset. If they couldn’t do it by the time the Sabbath began, his body would be left out in the open until Sun and who knows what would have happened to it.

The problem was that there wasn’t enough time for the women to prepare Jesus’ body. There was only enough time to get him down from the cross, wrap him in some cloth, get him into the cave and roll a huge stone across the entrance. So that’s what they did and as the light faded, they went home to honor the Sabbath, praying, pondering, wondering, and waiting for the Sabbath to end so the women could return to prepare the body properly for burial.

Let that scene sink in for a moment. Jesus’ body laid quickly in a cave. A huge stone rolled in front of the opening. No one could get in. No one could get out.

That’s exactly what the women were talking about as they walked to the tomb early Sunday morning carrying burial spices. What were they going to do about the stone? They knew it was too big for them to manage. They knew that if they couldn’t do something about the stone, they wouldn’t be able to reach Jesus. (Mark 16.1-3)

That’s quite an intense concept – that something could be so huge that it could block us from getting to Jesus. But that’s the way it was that morning – a huge stone stood in the way of these women and the person they’d committed their lives to, their Lord Jesus. If something amazing didn’t happen with the stone, they wouldn’t be able to reach Jesus, end of story.

Now thankfully that’s not the end of the story – but again, our faith is deepened when we don’t rush too quickly to the end.

Life is full of stones. With the pandemic still impacting so many parts of our world, it’s easy to feel like a gigantic stone has been blocking everyone’s path for the past two years. But even in good times there’s still pain, suffering, guilt, shame, secrets. There are stones in the good times and there are even more in the bad times.

I remember being in Africa a few years ago and we were in a jeep driving down a dirt road. We crested a hill and there was a huge elephant standing in the middle of the road. Our driver came to a quick stop, and it was clear the elephant wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon. So he turned the jeep around with the simple explanation – elephant roadblock.

Roadblocks. Things that keep us from moving forward on our spiritual journey. Stones that keep us on one side and Jesus on the other.

What are the stones in your life right now? What might be blocking you from experiencing God’s love and mercy and forgiveness in all its fullness? Are there things that are keeping you on one side and Jesus on the other? Are there things that are keeping you on one side and someone you love on the other? Are you like the women who went to the tomb that morning – if you can’t do something about that stone, you won’t be able to reach the one you love?

It’s hard work to identify stones and face them. It requires us to get honest, which is always hard. But that is what opens us to the power of God’s Holy Spirit. When we are honest about the stones in our lives, the Holy Spirit will always show up.

And that’s when the whole thing is turned into good news.

When women arrive at tomb to their amazement the stone had already been moved. The huge stone that they had worried over, the huge boulder they knew they would never be able to move on their own, it was no longer blocking their way. It had been moved. Matthew says that not only had the stone been rolled aside, but an angel sat on it.

We all have stones that need to be moved but are too big for us to move on our own. As you pray and fast this month work to identify those stones but do that work trusting that you don’t have to move the stones on your own. The truth is that none of us can move them on our own. But the good news is that we don’t have to.

God has power to move every stone. And God doesn’t just move them, angels sit on them.

That is the good news we will be celebrating in a few weeks. Nothing can separate us from love of God in Jesus Christ. Nothing. There is no stone too big, no guilt too great, no shame too strong, no struggle too overwhelming. NOTHING. God moves every stone and angels sit on them.

The Word of God

Scripture focus: I run the way of your commandments, for you enlarge my understanding. (Psalm 119:32, NRSV)

We have begun 2022 with two understandings about Scripture. It’s God’s path and God’s breath. This month I want to offer a third understanding about Scripture. It’s God’s Word. I realize describing Scripture as the Word of God can make some of us uncomfortable because in certain contexts it can sound narrow and limiting. We’re uncomfortable because we assume that Scripture is meant to be constraining. Sadly, that’s a mistaken assumption that can often result in our missing the transformative experiences God desires for our lives.

Scripture was never meant to be constraining. It was meant to be life-giving. God has chosen to communicate with us for our benefit. That means that Scripture has the power to expand our perspective and move us beyond our current ideological mindsets. That’s what the Psalmist realizes in our Scripture focus for this month. When we make God’s Word part of our daily lives, our understanding increases.

God’s Word is a life-enlarging word, a word that moves us beyond the limits of our own point of view. Saying the Bible confines us is like saying that God’s Word is smaller than our word. Such a statement is a prime example of human pride and arrogance. Ashleigh Brilliant, a humorist of the 1970’s wrote, “all I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.” That idea is at the heart of viewing God’s word as limiting – an exaggerated sense of our own importance. How can it be that a human word, a human perception, could be larger than God’s word, the very word that when uttered brought all of creation into being? I can imagine God’s response to us when we assert such an overconfident idea. It would probably be like the one Job received:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? … But of course you know all this! For you were born before it was all created, and you are so very experienced! (Job 38:4-7, 21, NLT)

That our word could be more expansive than God’s Word sounds strange because it’s a misunderstanding. It is our word that is narrow and limiting. Bringing ourselves into alignment with God’s Word opens our perspective and widens our understanding. That was my experience viewing the painting Shore Talk and then reading Luke 5 that I described last month. Recognizing the Holy Spirit flowing through Scripture enabled me to be receptive to God’s movement in my life in a new and different way, even as the Bible itself and the story in it remained unchanged.

Understanding the Bible as God’s powerful Word reinforces that receptivity. When we dispel an exaggerated sense of our own importance and become conscious of the limits of our own word, the narrowness of our own perspective, capabilities, and discernment, that’s when we’re able to approach Scripture with a sense of awe and wonder. That’s when we become keenly aware of the expansiveness of God’s Word and its ability to open us to new and deeper levels of faith and understanding.

Scripture is God’s path; it’s God’s breath, and now we see it’s God’ word. We are beginning the year with this focus because it is important to see the intimate relationship between God’s self-communication and our following the Jesus way. Our God is not some abstract notion. Our God is not a disinterested observer, a deity who created but then stepped back simply to watch as the drama unfolded. Our God is a God who is intensely connected to all creation. A God who chose to reveal God’s self through the divine drama of human history, culminating in God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. And our God is a God who continues to reveal God’s self through Scripture, the dynamic, interactive, God-breathed Word of God through which each of us can find our path.

Earlier this year, Dave Smith appeared on the WME podcast, Real Faith ~ Real World. Dave is a wonderful bible teacher who understands the power of the God-breathed Word of God. In the podcast episode The Bible: Source of the Transformed Life he gave us a wonderful reminder, “The early church actually believed that if you were around baptized believers that preached the Word, read the Scriptures and obeyed them, and prayed, you would be around God himself.”

Then Dave asked a great question for us, especially as we dedicate ourselves to prayer and fasting. What would happen if we actually began to apply Scripture to our lives and live like little Jesus’s all over the place? I agree with Dave – I think we would see a movement of God like we haven’t seen in a long time.

This month, I pray that we will all be open to God’s continued self-communication through Scripture. That we would recognize it as the God-breathed Word of God and apply it to our lives to find our path. And through our obedience, a movement of God would be released like we have never seen before.

Scripture Focus:

God, teach me lessons for living so I can stay the course. Give me insight so I can do what you tell me – my whole life one long, obedient response. Guide me down the road of your commandments; I love traveling this freeway! Give me a bent for your words of wisdom, and not for piling up loot. Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets, invigorate me on the pilgrim way. Affirm your promises to me – promises made to all who fear you. (Psalm 119:33-38, The Message)

The Breath of God

Our Scripture for this month is meaningful to me because it reminds me of the present-tense quality of the Bible. The psalmist desires to be immersed in God’s word, to understand God’s teaching, to make “my whole life one long, obedient response” (v34, The Message). This isn’t a desire for some future time. And it isn’t a reflection on an earlier time of insight. It’s a present-tense desire, a desire that right now, in this moment, God’s word would permeate the psalmist’s entire being. This present-tense experience is what I think of when I think of Scripture as being God-breathed. When we unite our voice with that of the psalmist, we are not simply reciting an ancient prayer; we are praying in the present-tense – teach me, give me insight, guide me…NOW.

The God-breathed nature of Scripture, it’s present-tense quality, becomes real for me over and over again as I read and reread the Bible. I become aware that Scripture is alive with the breath of God each time I read a familiar passage and come away with a slightly different understanding, one that fits my need at that particular moment.

My sister is an artist and last year she painted a scene from a story in Luke 5 called Shore Talk. It’s one of my favorites of her paintings and seeing it prompted me to revisit that story once again. A crowd had gathered around Jesus while he was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret. There were fishermen who were nearby washing their nets after a night of fishing. Jesus saw their empty boats and decided to use them for his purposes:

He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. (Luke 5:3-7, NRSV)

This has always been a favorite story of mine. Aspects of it have been very meaningful for me over the years. Jesus’ request that Simon move into “deeper water” has always been a challenging word for me. Simon’s obedience in letting down the nets even though he was tired and didn’t think his effort would bear any fruit has been a source of encouragement. This time, however, as I read the story those things didn’t jump out as they have in the past. In fact, as I read and reflected, nothing really hit me at all.

Then I realized that Shore Talk wasn’t painted during a typical season, and I wasn’t reflecting in normal circumstances. So, I began to read again and when I did, the passage began to come alive. I could feel God’s breath as it moved toward me from the page. I read what happened when Simon obeyed: “They caught so many fish their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners…to come and help them.”

My need in that moment was in front of me. 2020 was unbelievably difficult, but we met the challenges as best we could and prayed that 2021 would be easier. It wasn’t. As I read the story a second time, I was confronted with how alone I felt in my responsibility to lead WME in the middle of a global pandemic, and how heavy the burden was to guide others amidst suffering and spiritual questioning. But on the heels of that recognition was an even more important one: I was not alone. I had partners that I could signal for help. The breath of God awakened in me the need to reach out for support during those difficult days – and the need to make that support more readily available to others.

The Bible contains all the clues we need to negotiate our journey of faith. It’s our map and holds the very breath of God. I encourage you to open yourself to experiencing God breathing through Scripture. Open yourself to experiencing the dynamic, vibrant, “right now” quality of God’s Word. And as you fast and pray this month, I will be praying as well, that you would be aware of the movement of God’s Spirit breathing through the Word, and allow its power to touch you in the uniqueness of every situation in your life.