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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jamin Goggin
Our focus on youth reveals how little concern we have for wisdom, which comes from decades of faithfulness.
They didn’t hesitate to name the way from below when they saw it, but they didn’t gloat over this either.
Jean Vanier—one of the people we interviewed for the first edition of this book, a man we named as a sage in the way of Jesus—had been a serial sexual abuser.
Three particular forms of prayer are critical in responding faithfully to stories of toxic and abusive power: lament, imprecation, and intercession.
In imprecation we plead with, call upon, and long for God’s justice and judgment in the face of injustice, wickedness, and the horror of evil.
In intercession, we cry out to God on behalf of others.
our response is, “I would never do something like that,” then we have missed an opportunity to contemplate and confess our own sins,
we cannot simply ask if someone believes in the incarnation, we have to look and see if Christ’s descent forms their view of ministry, leadership, and success.
According to Jesus, one way to test the spirits is to listen carefully to how a person speaks: “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks”
The heart of a person is the kind of thing that spills over, leaks out, and exposes itself, and it does so in and through speech. People cannot help it. What we say and how we say it is a clear window into our heart.
Great list of verses on speech
For James,
Great positive examples
faithfulness that is little, simple, and hidden.
To participate in God’s work to reform the church requires that we commit ourselves to relational vulnerability in the body of Christ.
By committing ourselves to simple practices like loving others in their failure and frailty and confessing our sins to one another, we are powerfully embodying the way from above in the church.
People seeking power in the flesh also lose interest in these communities quickly because there is no evil power to advance and control.
A rejection of the church is a rejection of Jesus’ way.1 Christ made this known: His way of power continues to pour forth in this world by the Spirit through the church.
When we come to think that the Christian life is about our own development rather than about our calling in Christ as a family of God, we inevitably confuse the church for a secular entity.
The church was first known as the people of the Way (Acts 9:2). The “Way” these people embraced was the way of Jesus—the way of power in weakness for the sake of love.
Jesus looked forward to his upcoming death as a retelling of the exodus story of freedom from slavery into life with God.
We are now in a different sort of wilderness—led out of the world and into the kingdom of Christ—awaiting the promised land that will come when Christ returns.
Christ God has triumphed over us, and in him we are now paraded before a watching world. We are caught in the victory parade of Christ, celebrating his defeat of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Paul’s first response is not to correct this person’s ignorance (and it is ignorance), because Paul recognizes that the man’s conscience has been tuned to his false belief.
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:7–8). In the wilderness, we discover that we, too, learn obedience through suffering,
“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed”
The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call
Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God
Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our
“God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us.”
We assume the church is powerless, so we turn to entities outside of the church and then seek to Christianize them to give them eternal significance.
The idea that weakness could be a good, let alone an accepted reality, is antithetical to our vision for happiness, health, and success.
Paul believes that apostolic life consists not only in telling people about the dying and rising of the Messiah, but also in going through the process oneself.”
Paul and Silas “refused to exploit their Roman citizenship,”
In Acts 16 we see Paul and Silas “willingly suffered the humiliation of flogging and imprisonment at the hands of Roman magistrates”
“narcissism,” claiming that it is the “shame-based fear of being ordinary.”
“What the demons have, then, is knowledge without love, and, as a result, they are so puffed up, so proud, that they have made every effort to get for themselves the divine honors and religious service that they know full well is due only to the true God.
