Category: Wesleyan Accent
Talbot Davis ~ Laughing Doubt
August 9, 2014
Is anything too supernatural? Too mystical? Too great for God to do? Nope. Is it too hard for him to bend the laws of nature? Nope. He wrote them. You know what? You, too, have continual reminders in your life of not underestimating God. We have those reminders, items large and small, global and personal, to urge us not to underestimate God. To celebrate the ways in which he has the last laugh.
Kimberly Reisman ~ Holding Yourself in Readiness
August 7, 2014
It’s not easy to hold yourself in readiness. You have to be alert, your entire body engaged and prepared to move. You have to be focused, intent on watching for the necessary sign. You have to be willing to act, following the signal the moment it arrives.
Tammie Grimm ~ Discipleship: Who’s It For Anyway?
August 6, 2014
The truth is this: every Christian – regardless of our stage in faith – is in need of discipleship! And here is another important thing: I am not just referring to an 8-week class or a long term study. Discipleship, attending to your relationship with God, is more than a class – it is a way of life!
Ken Loyer ~ Sanctification Reconsidered
August 4, 2014
The conclusions reached in God’s Love through the Spirit, particularly concerning an understanding of love both within God’s own life and in Christian participation in God by grace, challenge the claim that Western theology suffers from a pneumatological deficiency, and represent a significant contribution to the study of Aquinas and of Wesley, to ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Methodists (and Protestants more broadly), and to the retrieval and development of a genuinely constructive pneumatology.
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ The Vast Sufferer
July 31, 2014
If you don’t face your own suffering, how will you ever find rest? Real, true rest for the mind and spirit? To face your own suffering is to come uncomfortably close to Christ in Gethsemene: does the idea of Christ, the suffering servant, comfort or trouble you? The fully divine, fully human being sweating drops of blood from anguish…
Carolyn Moore ~ God Is Enough
July 26, 2014
He is saying that those who get it will be the ones who realize we’re nothing by ourselves that what we want most from life won’t happen if we think we have to do it ourselves. It will happen when we let the One Who Is Enough serve us as Lord, and Messiah, and Friend.
Maxie Dunnam ~ Repent But Do Not Whimper
July 23, 2014
The setting is ripe for revival. And the essential response to that possibility is for God’s people not to whimper. Acknowledge our sin, and repent, yes, but not whimper. Could it be that we are mistakenly centered on institutional unity, when a prior issue is crying for attention: unity in the Gospel. We can have institutional unity without revival, but we can’t have revival without Gospel unity that will come through repentance and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew Sigler ~ Knowing What We Have: A Look at the Methodist Liturgical Heritage
July 17, 2014
If it is true that many are gravitating to more historically resonant forms of worship, Methodists should know the resources within their own liturgical history…The forms of Methodist worship, when embraced with “heart, mind, soul and strength,” allow for reverent spontaneity and holy emotion. The use of liturgical forms, for Wesley, actually led to freedom in worship—a fact quickly lost on his American descendants.
Philip Tallon ~ Could Jesus Save Aliens? Why Answering Silly Questions is Serious Business in Youth Ministry
July 16, 2014
Talking about aliens was a great opportunity to teach students about the Wesleyan understanding of scripture, to delve into the logic of the two natures in Christology, and to unpack how Christians connect incarnation to salvation. I got to show the student I cared about his question, and maybe helped him learn a bit more about Christian theology.
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Imagining Glory
July 10, 2014
Imagining glory keeps us human. To glimpse glory is to receive grace, the kind that results in plain, sunburned lips uttering “truly this was the Son of God!” To glimpse glory is to receive grace, the kind that cauterizes and compels.