You accuse me of eating with sinners. You are absolutely right. That is precisely what I do. But as a matter of fact I not only sit down and eat with sinners, I rush down the road, shower them with kisses and drag them in that I might eat with them. It is much worse than you imagined!
- Kenneth Bailey, Jacob & The Prodigal
K. Bailey Paraphrasing Jesus Responding to the Pharisees
September 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Explain or Change?
September 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything – they have changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.
- E. Stanley Jones
God Doesn’t Want Beautiful Grapes, But Great Wine
July 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Our Lord’s teaching is always anti-self-realization. His purpose is not the development of man; His purpose is to make a man exactly like Himself, and the characteristic of the Son of God is self-expenditure. If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain, but what He pours through us that counts.It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes, but that He squeezes the sweetness out of us.
- Oswald Chambers
Do I Look Like Christ?
July 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Christians haven’t always looked like Jesus. Perhaps the greatest barrier to Christ has been Christians who pronounce Jesus so loudly with their lips and deny Him so loudly with their lives.
- Shane Claiborne, Jesus For President
Love Not Only Occasionally, But Forever
July 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one can love occasionally, even the wicked can.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Love Is The Beginning, Middle, and End
June 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God. Love is the beginning, ove is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only, Jesus ever.’ When you know what God has done for you, the power and the tyranny of sin is gone and the radiant, unspeakable emancipation of the indwelling Christ has come.
- Oswald Chambers
You Are Our Brothers!
June 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Say to those that hate and curse you, You are our brothers!
- Theophilus of Antioch
Love Through The Layer of Mud
June 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Jesus gained the power to love harlots, bullies, and ruffians… he was able to do this only because he saw through the filth and crust of degeneration, because his eye caught the divine original which is hidden in every way–in every man!… Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that really did not belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him and from which he would free him and bring him back to his real self. Jesus was able to love men because he loved them right through the layer of mud.
- Helmut Thielicke
