July 7th, 2010, 7:30 am
For hundreds of years, Christians have quietly repeated fragments of Scripture or short prayers throughout the day to remain present to God. As the Russian Christian writer Anthony Bloom put it, “God is never absent . . . We complain that He does not make Himself present to us for the few minutes we reserve for Him, but what about the twenty-three-and-a-half hours during which God may be knocking at our door and we answer ‘I am busy, I am sorry’ or when we do not answer at all because we do not hear the knock . . . we are a great deal more absent than He ever is.” Having a simple refrain to call upon during the day helps us maintain connection to Christ and tunes the heart to hear him knocking at its door.
In the Crowded Mind: Learning to Pray Without Ceasing By Cameron Lawrence
From the article at InTouch.org
April 20th, 2010, 7:57 am
I was thinking about adoption this morning. How, as Christians, those who acknowledge and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, that we have been adopted by the Heavenly Father; that is, God.
The Bible spans approximately 4,000 years of human history and God's interaction with mankind. We have a written account of God's character which remains consistent from one book to another while being written from the perspective of 40 people that penned 66 books that make up the Bible as we have it today.
"4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. 6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba,[a] Father." 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir." — Galatians 4:4-7 (NIV)
We have a Heavenly Father that has adopted us as sons and daughters through the final payment for our sins through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. We have a God that has taken the time, over thousands of years, to get through to mankind; to tell us that He wants a relationship with us.
Don't you think that a God pursuing you and making every effort to get through to you is worth responding to?
Please don't spend all your time waiting for God to "call your phone", so to speak. He already has. He's just waiting for you to respond.
If you just need to respond more often, read your Bible, pray and get involved in a local Bible-studying church.
Just respond.
February 22nd, 2010, 2:25 pm
When furthering convergence of real life with online data something has to give. People will cut back on something. Commenting, for one, has become too noisy on blogs, in my opinion. People will trim the fat and time involved in managing comments which typically are negative or distract entirely from the information presented.
I don't believe that ALL commenting is bad. I just see that more people are seeing how time-consuming it is to manage and need to cut back on offering that as a communication method on their website.