Brenda L Crouch

Survivor, Thriver & lover of Jesus! M-Min. Wife, Mom, Mimi, TV Host- Inside Voice, Author - FIGHT FORWARD

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Every choice we make either polishes the image of God in us or further obscures it. Cruelty does not only injure the one it strikes. It deforms the cruel. Lies do not only deceive the hearer. They warp the liar. Contempt does not only wound its object. It further corrupts the heart of the one who carries it. The image cannot be erased, but it can be buried so deep beneath the rubble of our own choices that those who look at us no longer see it. The work of grace is excavation.

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@markchironna Powerful and sobering!! 🔥

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@markchironna Once again, your timely words give a name to something familiar bringing confirmation to things I’ve merely sensed. Thank you for casting light where the waters are murky. Lord give us discernment over distracting entrapments & the wisdom of Christ’s silence toward accusation.

[Brent Beshore @BrentBeshore]

https://t.co/y9vSEqKkBT

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@richvillodas Happy Birthday! Your ministry and work have impacted me for the better. God Bless you as the future unfolds on every level.

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

This is profound truth. Take your time to grasp its impact!

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

When human beings encounter devastating suffering, the eruption of lament, doubt, and even accusation toward God is not the failure of faith. It is one of faith's most ancient and biblically attested expressions. The Psalter is saturated with it. Job embodies it. Jeremiah voices it without apology. The cry of dereliction from the cross itself places this kind of anguish at the very center of the Incarnation.

The orthodox doctrine of kenosis insists that the Son of God entered fully into the conditions of human vulnerability, including forsakenness, grief, and the experience of divine absence. There is no wound of the human soul that stands outside the reach of what Christ bore. To suggest otherwise is not a defense of Christology; it is a diminishment of it.

To rush toward assertions of divine purpose, divine testing, or the need to simply embrace faith in the face of acute grief is to replicate the error of Job's comforters. It is theology deployed as a silencing mechanism rather than as genuine pastoral wisdom. The tradition has never granted any human observer the authority to identify the specific divine intention behind another person's suffering.

What the Christian tradition actually offers in these moments is not explanation but accompaniment, not resolution but presence, and not the suppression of lament but its consecration. Honest anguish before God, when it remains addressed to God rather than simply turned away from God, is itself a form of faith. The duration of the darkness does not disqualify the sufferer. It is part of the transit.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

In "On The Incarnation", Athanasius opens by making a simple but explosive observation regarding, in his terms, "the apparent degradation of the Logos". Essentially, in dealing with the Incarnation, he begins with Christ crucified, not with the Virgin's womb. Every religion in the ancient world assumed that if God showed up, you would know it by the glory: power, majesty, and overwhelming presence. What you would not expect is a criminal's execution.

That is exactly what bothered everyone. The Greeks thought it was absurd. The Jews thought it was disqualifying. Both were saying the same thing: a God who dies on a cross is no God at all. Athanasius says they have it exactly backwards. The cross is not where God's power breaks down. It is where God's power shows up most completely, because only God could choose that freely. No one chooses crucifixion. The Logos did.

This means the way you find God is not by climbing higher into more refined and spiritual territory. It is by following the Word downward, into the most human, the most broken, the most shameful place imaginable. God does not meet us at our best. He meets us at the bottom.

What Athanasius wants his readers to grasp is that the One who went down into that death is the same One who made everything in the first place. So when he comes into the world to rescue it, he is not a stranger intervening in someone else's project. He is the maker coming back for what is his, at enormous personal cost, to do again what he has always done, which is bring life out of nothing.

The cross does not contradict who God is. It reveals it.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Not every place of resistance in your life is evidence that something has gone wrong. Some of the most faithful lives in Scripture were marked by difficulty, not ease. The presence of friction is not proof of failure. Sometimes it is the cost of walking in truth.

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@markchironna A good reminder!

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@markchironna I lament for what the “desert” represents to westerners who are consumed with acquiring power and possessions. True formation doesn’t come w/out pain and crushing. It develops slowly-generationally. It makes us aliens in our own homes. Beginners walking in Cruciform tension.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

There is a difference between conviction and stimulation. Conviction deepens over time and survives scrutiny. Stimulation demands constant reinforcement. When the feeling must be fed to stay alive, it is not truth that is being sustained.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Listening is not a strategy. It is a moral act. To listen is to acknowledge the other as more than an obstacle. Without listening, communication collapses into parallel monologues that never meet.

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@KSPrior Beautiful! ♥️

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

As preachers, we don’t have to manufacture immediacy. The living God has already entered the drama and carries the mission Himself. And in this, von Balthasar helps us remember something we often forget. God is not waiting for us to ignite the moment. He is the central actor in the story of redemption, moving long before we step into the pulpit. Our task isn’t to force urgency or orchestrate impact. Our task is to stand inside the movement God has already begun, to bear witness to the One who is already calling, already working, already drawing His people. The weight is His. The nearness is His. We preach from participation, not performance.

[Rich Villodas @richvillodas]

Peacekeeping leads to false peace.
Peacemaking leads to true peace.

Peacemaking is often an act of disruption while seeking to resist disconnection.

Those who live in this way are called children of God.

#Advent

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@LunaticFriend2 Oh my, that’s unfortunate! The ornament is lovely. Paul & I are wishing you a beautiful Christmas season from Rome.

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

So beautifully expressed and so relevant to the ministry of Christ!

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

When compassion is born in a life, it does not come from sentiment. It rises from having carried one’s own sorrow without running from it. A person who has faced their wounds without turning bitter learns how to sit with the wounds of others without fear. They no longer need quick fixes or tidy answers. They know what it takes to stay present when everything in the room feels fragile. That is compassion shaped by truth.

[Rich Villodas @richvillodas]

What God does in us as we wait is often much more important than what we are waiting for.

#Advent

[Brenda L Crouch @BrendaLCrouch]

@KSPrior @madamspeaker As a survivor of these abuses who once had to fight to protect my child, I am sickened by this report and haunted by how legalistic complementarianism abandoned me when I needed the Church most. These systems aren’t just being exposed—they’re crumbling.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Gratitude transforms how we relate. It interrupts the instinct to judge and compare. It allows us to see each other’s dignity instead of fault lines. A thankful person becomes a steadying presence, creating room for others to be human, to grow, to falter, and to rise again. Communities shaped by this posture grow healthier.