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Started reading
May 28, 2020
The world, though, is protean: each generation has the world to deal with in a new form.
We know that the spiritual atmosphere in which we live erodes
faith, dissipates hope and corrupts love, but it is hard to put our finger on what is wrong.
One aspect of world
harmful to Christians
the assumption that anything worthwhile can be a...
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It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest.
Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate.
There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
the tourist mindset.
For some it is a weekly jaunt to church; for others, occasional visits to special services.
“today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.”
Everyone is in a hurry.
They are impatient for results.
4 It is this “long obedience in the same direction” which the mood of the world does so much to discourage.
disciple and pilgrim. Disciple
says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master, Jesus Christ.
disciple is a learner, but not in the academic setting of a school-room, rather at the work site of a craftsman. We do not acquire info...
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Pilgrim (parepidēmos) tells us we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getti...
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Songs of Ascents.
psalms numbered 120 through 134 in the book of Psalms.
Hebrew pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem to the great...
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Jerusalem was the highest city i...
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spent much of their time ...
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ascent was not only...
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metaphor: the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward toward God, an existence that advanced from one level to a...
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Three times a year faithful Hebrews made that trip
Christians will recognize how appropriately these psalms may be sung between the times: between the time we leave the world’s environment and arrive at the Spirit’s assembly; between the time we leave sin and arrive at holiness; between the time we leave home on Sunday morning and arrive in church with the company of God’s people; between the time we leave the works of the law and arrive at justification by faith.
songs of transition,
Get God the quick way; buy instant charisma.” But other voices speak—if not more attractively,
Everyone who travels the road of faith requires assistance from time to time.
need cheering up when spirits flag; we need direction when the way is unclear.
no longer as tourists but as pilgrims,
William Faulkner. “They are not monuments, but footprints. A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’”9
Great quote
they can trust nothing they hear, depend on no one they meet.
A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.
Dont know if I agree
faith. A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace.
each other. Women are at each other’s throats. We are taught rivalry from the womb. The world is restless, always spoiling for a fight.
How we can keep on believing this after so many centuries of evidence to the contrary is difficult to comprehend, but nothing we do and nothing anyone else does to us seems to disenchant us from the spell of the lie.
Like what’s happening with the black community right now
Prayer is immediate: “Deliver me from the liars, God! They smile so sweetly but lie through their teeth.” Rescue me from the lies of advertisers who claim to know what I need and what I desire, from the lies of entertainers who promise a cheap way to joy, from the lies of politicians who pretend to instruct me in power and morality, from the lies of psychologists who offer to shape my behavior and my morals so that I will live long, happily and successfully, from the lies of religionists who “heal the wounds of this people lightly,”
The moment the word God is uttered, the world’s towering falsehood is exposed—we see the truth. The truth about me is that God made and loves me. The truth about those sitting beside me is that God made them and loves them, and each one is therefore my neighbor.
“I am sure that the bit of the road that most requires to be illuminated is the point where it forks.”
Psalm 120 is the decision to take one way over against the other.
It is the turning point marking the transition from a dreamy nostalgia for a better life to a rugged pilgrimage of discipleship in faith, from complaining about how bad things are to pursuing all things good.
The first step toward God is a step away from the lies of the world.
The usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance.
Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in
Repentance, the first word in Christian immigration, sets us on the way to traveling in the light. It is a rejection that is also an acceptance, a leaving that develops into an arriving, a no to the world that is a yes to God.
He won’t let you stumble, your Guardian God won’t fall asleep. Not on your life! Israel’s Guardian will never doze or sleep.
moment we say no to the world and yes to God, all our problems are solved,
