I can't recommend highly enough two Bible-disciplines. (1) Read-pray thro all the psalms every 30 days using the BCP Psalter schedule--morning and evening. (2) Read the OT once and the NT twice every year using the M'Cheyne reading calendar. Life changing esp over the yrs.
We are in a discipleship crisis. No way to see it other than that.
The way forward is not bumper sticker Christianity, full of cheap cliches & false dichotomies.
The way forward is Spirit-wrought, uncompromising, discipleship of Jesus of Nazareth.
Most people are more directly and immediately influenced by pop culture than by theologians.
We need good theologians. But we need good cultural critics, too.
The culture is dark. The church is struggling. Young believers are anxious. That’s exactly the mix out of which all the great awakenings have sprung. We can wring our hands, or pray for a King Jesus movement!
It is unloving and (ironically) selfish to let someone continually sin against you. It is not loving: toward other (some future) victims, toward God who created you and other human beings to be loved and honored, and even toward the perpetrator who needs desperately to change.
When Jesus says, “I am building my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” he is talking about a building. But it’s not a physical building; it’s a spiritual building. And what makes up that building are the living stones—believers in Christ like you like me.
We cannot bring about the kingdom by political elections, humanitarian good works, environmental stewardship, or the cultivation of the arts. The kingdom comes when and where the King is known.
Jesus asks the lawyer 2 questions in Luke 10: What is written in the law? What do you read there?
It’s a good reminder to double check that what I’m “reading” in the Scripture is actually there and not what I want to be there.