“Everything Matters” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 28
Everything Matters – Lenten Season 2018 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those […]
Desert Warrior Ministries
A Burden of Glory
Tag: Suffering
“Suffering and Glory” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 26
Suffering and Glory – Lenten Season 2018 “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and […]
“No Condemnation” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 23
No Condemnation – Lenten Season 2018 “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of […]
“The Good Fight” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 22
The Good Fight – Lenten Season 2018 “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a […]
“Spiritual Sacrifices” – The Holiness Project – Day 7
Spiritual Sacrifices – Lenten Season 2021 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies […]
“The Plan” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 1
Jesus did not use parables to teach them about the cross, he spoke plainly. It was his life that would be the lesson, his experience that would be their teacher. The Way of the Cross is always so. It is clear and plain and needs no fancy words. It is a path which we must walk, not endlessly discuss. It is the dust of the road on the way to Jerusalem that is the aroma of real life. The question is…and always has been…will we follow?
“The Road to Jerusalem” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 50
When my daughter was 12 years old, she was full of curiosity. And she would ask very good questions too. But she didn’t always like the answers.
“Why is God hiding?” she would ask. “Why doesn’t he protect me from hurting myself. Doesn´t he love me?” “If God loves the whole world, why doesn’t he just get rid of hell and let everyone go to heaven?” Those were the good questions.
But she had other questions as well. “Who was Cain’s wife?” “Who created God?” and “What is heaven like?” Obviously, we had a lot of talks together coming home from school, walking in the park, sitting in my office.
“Hanna’s Secret” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 46
Do you remember the book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne that they also made a movie out of? It was really popular for a while and promoted what they called The Law of Attraction which claims that thinking positively about something can make it appear in your life. A dubious idea at best. It was clothed with some religious language (ask, believe, and receive) and fits well into the Prosperity Gospel that has swept through the American churches in recent years. It sold 20 million copies at least and was translated into more than 50 languages. Rhonda Byrne certainly attracted a lot of money and fame into her life.
Seeking Jerusalem – Day 45 "The Helper"
Frederick Buechner, in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, tells us that the world of the gospel is “a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily every after….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still” (quoted in The Sacred Romance p. 46).
The Holiness Project – Day 8 "Spiritual Sin"
We have been talking about the Sanctification Gap, that chasm between the holiness and perfect love of God as seen in His justice and mercy on the one hand, and the depths of our sin, our selfishness, our inability to love ourselves, much less God or anyone else on the other. That Sanctification Gap continues even after we have been justified by grace through the blood of Jesus Christ. In fact, precisely because it is a substitution, that it isn’t our righteousness, the gap exists because we are not made immediately perfect in love. Our Sanctification is progressive. But that gap between our Justification and our Sanctification also creates a credibility gap, both in our own eyes as well as in the eyes of other people. And so it should. It is a necessary part of our situation as Christians.
Bert Amsing – Author
