I received an e-mail from a pastor in Tennessee a few days ago posing this question: A church member asked me to recommend a biography on John Wesley, and I didn’t know what to suggest. Wondering if you could suggest something? That’s not an infrequent request to get for a seminary professor who teaches Methodist history. When I get an
I was thirty-two years old when a woman took my advice on how to die. Sitting in her low living room banked with windows that overlooked butterfly-laden bushes, I watched her shallow breaths. She had lost strength and energy: her frame seemed diminished, as if her soul were clinging to her body by mere tendrils. While disease sapped her vitality,
The weight of Christian worship history testifies that the Sunday service is primarily a gathering of, and for, the faithful. This is not to say that we shouldn’t consider how our worship services can best speak in the language of our local contexts. It isn’t to say that we shouldn’t consider if our gatherings are marked with radical hospitality and
Wesley knew how to be abased and how to abound. He intended, as did his brother John, to live all of life under God’s hand, whatever the circumstances of any given day.
Though it may seem to be the most difficult to define of the three, Wesley insists on including spirit with doctrine and discipline because right doctrine (belief) and right discipline (practice) are not enough in themselves.
There is a phrase in Wesleyan theology that holds the key to understanding most everything about present salvation. The phrase is “holiness of heart and life.” This is one of those terms that seems simple at first glance and yet is packed with meaning on multiple levels. It’s also a term worth exploring, and I want to explore it here.
I have heard numerous people in various ecclesial and academic contexts use this reformulation as if it were the direct equivalent of the original. What I have not heard, however, is much in the way of critical reflection upon such usage. “Stay in love with God” is perhaps easier to say (and memorize) and sounds more modern than the rather
For six years I lived among live oak trees on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, weekly, I drove down Highway 90 between Bay St. Louis and Ocean Springs, Mississippi – the “beach road” as we natives call it, where there were hundreds if not thousands of live oak trees that are massive in
We Methodists don’t “believe” in backsliding, as some have accused us, but we’re honest enough to confess a fact when it stares us in the face, and we’re sensitive enough to our spiritual condition that we can tell the difference.
We Christians are to “sit down on the bottom rung of the ladder of sanctity and yell for Jesus Christ.” When we do, he will come. He will come to nurture and change us.
Leave this quiet time in peace, knowing that it is not your job to restore your own soul, and that you never leave the Shepherd’s presence.
When we are teachable, we come with simple, trusting hearts, ready to gain insight from another.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17 provides the thesis of
As clergy, we preach, we teach, we pray, we visit the sick, and we know the word, but how does this apply to ourselves?
Thank God for the blessings of your day. Ask God for guidance as you live the rest of your day. And leave this quiet time in peace knowing you never leave the Shepherd’s presence.
In the book of John, beginning at chapter 13, there is an interesting shift in how Jesus deals with the people he calls “friend.” First, he does this radical thing where he gets down on his knees and washes their feet. He wants to serve them and model for them what humility in the context of friendship looks like. With
But the Word comes nevertheless, not in an earthquake or fire or rushing wind, but in this man, Jesus the Christ. And he offers himself to us; eat from me, drink from me.
There’s an overwhelming amount of beauty and awe in the world – from midday eclipses to bounding monkeys in jungles to the perfect curl of newborn baby toes. At some point, though, we all encounter suffering. Sometimes it appears as physical pain; sometimes it’s in the form of prolonged waiting; sometimes it’s mental or emotional distress. Sometimes suffering occurs through our
There is something mystical about the way people will drive hours to serve perfect strangers a hot meal, muck out their flooded home, or repair a hole in the roof.
He is at work in you and me, gifting, equipping, empowering, and shaping us to work alongside him in accomplishing the work he is doing.
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