Finding My Place of Total Dependence upon God
Here’s what people I respect are saying about Jesus Untangled: Crucifying our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb. My review is posted here.
And from Greg Boyd, author of The Myth of a Christian Nation, who wrote the Foreword to Jesus Untangled:
A Review of Jesus Untangled: Crucifying our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb
Keith Giles, Author
Published by Quoir, January 2017
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble on January 20, 2017
(Recommendation: it is more helpful to the promotion of a book if purchases occur on the day of release, rather than through “pre-order”. Please do not use the “pre-order” feature on Amazon.com.)
All humor aside, this is one of the most important books for believers I have ever read. However, I have found it difficult to write this “review” because I wouldn’t have been “ready” for the content just a few short years ago. I am not the same person—not the same “Christian”—I once was. Yet, I remember so well the “way I was”… I understand all too well why many people might not be ready to read Jesus Untangled. [Read more…]
Disclaimer: This is not a “teaching”. This is an “opinion”. Yeah…a “rant”, if you like. But it’s offered in love.
God, being a “relational” entity, created us so that we need one another. As I read believers’ blogs these days, I’m struck by the variations in style, doctrine, authoritative “voice” and expression of humility. Some bloggers just write to share their thoughts. Others demonstrate a divine teaching gift that is clearly sourced in the Spirit. Still others, seemingly, write from a position of belief that they have all the right answers—and they are appointed to set everyone else straight! [Read more…]
While this book has been around awhile (orig. publication 2009, revised 2011), it should remain “timely” for quite some time to come for anyone interested in the church as a “missionary movement”. Steve Addison has packed this very quick read with a lot of descriptive history of movements that were successful in spreading the gospel. [It’s a good thing this book does read quickly—I found it very hard to put it down.] He aptly distinguishes the movements that succeeded beyond merely spreading the gospel and bore fruit for successive generations by “making disciples”. [Read more…]
Only a few pages into this book, the thought struck: Leonard Sweet is a Renaissance Man for this generation! His breathtaking mastery of multi-disciplinary knowledge, powers of observation, and analytical skill in assessing the traits, tendencies and trends of this culture have been brought to bear in this newly released volume. Sweet has done his research and waded deeply into the waters of change—a “Gutenberger” immigrating from a tribe of Enlightenment-influenced navel-gazers into a country populated by relational, tech-savvy “Googlers”. [Read more…]
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| photo by hoyasmeg | via PhotoRee |
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. __Luke 22:20 (NIV)
On the eve of the Passover feast, Christ, the Lamb of God, shared a last supper with His disciples. One of them would betray Him. Before dawn, the others would desert Him and one of them—Peter, the Rock—would deny Him. [Read more…]
What is preventing the Gospel from spreading in Western Christendom like it did in the first century—and like it did in China when the Cultural Revolution virtually shut down the institutional church by taking control of it? What is stopping a contagious Jesus movement today? We proclaim that the Gospel has not lost its power, and yet… [Read more…]
To abandon all, to strip one’s self of all, in order to seek and follow Jesus Christ naked to Bethlehem where He was born, naked to the hall where He was scourged, and naked to Calvary where He died on the cross, is so great a mystery that neither the thing nor the knowledge of it, is given to any but through faith in the Son of God. __John Wesley
For more than half a century I’ve lived in a “church culture”. For the first four decades it was a Methodist culture that, before my eyes, seemed to fulfill Wesley’s foreboding:
I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out. __John Wesley
Where did all the power go—not just in the Methodists—but in the entire Protestant church in the West? The power is only available to those who follow Christ, even to Calvary. The power belongs to those who “die” and rise with Christ to walk in New Covenant resurrection life, spreading a New Covenant Kingdom! I’m convinced the Western Church has lost its power because it’s following the wrong leaders, cluttered with errant Old Testament (and wrongly interpreted New Covenant) teachings, splintered into too many factions—each of which is focused more on self-preservation than on the Lord Jesus Christ. [Read more…]
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| photo by RobW_ | via PhotoRee |
When I was in my teens, I was what might be called a “Jesus Freak”. I loved to read my Bible and talk to other teens about the Lord. I wanted all my friends to have the joy Christ had given me. I read the Book of Acts and yearned to see the Gospel being lived out in the world around me like those early Christians lived it. I saw so many things in the modern church that didn’t seem to fit what I saw in the New Testament. [Read more…]
First published as a Facebook Note on Friday, February 8, 2011, this seems like a timely review to open my new blog…just in time for Easter!
It approaches—the moment for which my soul yearned through the dark time of winter! It approaches—the day that returns annually to mark the most important event in the history of humanity! And with its approach, the Spirit would have us grasp with finality and victory the indisputable fact that the Day we herald is not a mere Day, but the very portal of ETERNITY! It is NOT coming…it has ARRIVED! Finally, I know, it has been MY day, all along! [Read more…]
Journal from Zarephath 