Fall Study - Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes

A couple quick thoughts: 1) Jesus gives Peter absurd advice on fishing which yields the catch of the century. Jesus literally won the "fish lottery," as Bailey puts it, but does not choose at all to reap the benefits of the worldly wealth of the catch. This is a powerful example to Peter, who also leaves behind all of this wealth to follow Jesus. What a powerful display of the surpassing worth of Jesus' ministry. 2) I love the Dietrich Bonhoeffer line that Bailey threw around a couple times when talking about Jesus' encounter with the Blind man and Zacchaeus: "The grace of God, mediated through Jesus, is free but not cheap."  Wow! Freely given, freely received, LIFE CHANGING grace. Kyle R

As one of the last lines of Chapter 11, Bailey writes, "Peter realizes the inadequacy of his own values and priorities." And right after this, he chooses to follow Jesus. Today was my first day back on an advanced Med Surg unit. Having not practiced hard nursing skills for a few months, I entered the day with so many insecurities of not knowing enough or forgetting the procedures I have already learned, and feeling unable to adequately care for someone. My immediate, almost instinctive reaction, was to just go for it, taking full responsibility of my patient and her total care for the day. To my surprise, I was able to recognize the medications and their purposes and precautions, to assess her status and implement new interventions, and indicate risk factors for her. Also, to my surprise, as I felt more competent in my nursing skills, I noticed just what Peter did, that my value of knowledge and priority of knowing these skills felt inadequate and unsatisfying. For the ...

Hit me with Your Jams Brother -- Redeeming Space and Time with Lively Rhythms of Relational Ministry -- Lovin' How Bailey Captures Christ's Lovin'! “The biblical understanding of matter begins with the story of creation. God created matter and it was good not evil. Yes, matter provided the stimulus for disobedience and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden.”  – I love how Bailey ties the actions of Jesus to the broad context of the fall and Christ’s redemption of space and time. “He addressed that whole person rather than mentally decapitating his listeners with a head trip. This inner connectedness of body and spirit is brilliantly exhibited in the call of Peter recorded in Luke 5: 1-11. First is the text with its rhetorical structure (figure 11.1).” – The emphasis on connecting with a person as foundational to discipleship reminds of our 1 st training module in the Staff Ultra Packet – “Sonshine Specialized Camping Ministries is a relational ministry  Wh...

Chapter 11 - the call of Peter kicks bass! I absolutely love the dialogue  recorded and not recorded between Jesus and Peter.  I enjoyed the meta narrative of catching fish, fish dying, catching people, people dying to self (I added this to Bailey's chapter - for some reason he didn't mention it) people receiving new life!  Bailey writes, "At the same time, Jesus is fishing from a fisherman's boat.  That is- he is engaged in catching people and as he does so he bestows new life.  Peter uses that boat to catch fish and in the process they die." I am reminded and affirmed that all the "stuff" I have been given can be used to catch people and bestow new life to them and myself....or bestow death......to them and myself!  Ouch.  Fun side note about Peter's calling... he sits and listens to Jesus' teaching and then post miracle turns his life over to Jesus (Ok, I know- oversimplification of the text)  What did Jesus teach about that day??...

Our family is going through a program that World Vision calls the MATHEW 25 CHALLENGE. I just heard about it yesterday.  I guess our church is sort of a “pilot program” for a future broad scale launch.  I wanted to share the program with you for two reasons: #1 - Since you are the current and future leaders of God’s church I think you might benefit from seeing how larger institutions right at this moment are seeking to inform and inspire folks on a broad level to compassion for the broken and malnourished. #2 – Their use of technology to facilitate the process is intriguing – To launch daily reminders of each challenge and to see a video explaining the rationale for the challenge, you text M25 to 44888.  They then ask you what day you want to start the process.  The challenges are super simple.   For our family this week the challenges are as follows: Monday – Skip lunch and eat rice and beans for dinner.  “I was hungry.” Tuesda...

Bailey wrote at the end of the chapter on daily bread that the Lord’s prayer could be reiterated as: “Deliver us, O Lord, from the fear of not having enough to eat. Give us bread for today and with it give us confidence that tomorrow we will have enough” Kyle hit on this point a bit. When I am not in touch with the will of God, I begin to pray for my daily cake . My thoughts become centered around the next thing that will satisfy me. What if God doesn't really know my desires...? Ouch. Questions like that only surface when my desires are a bit out of whack...i.e. comfort and stability over obedience. I see this in my life as I start thinking about what is coming next. My anxieties are that God won’t provide work for me. Or that the work I get will be bland and pointless. I don’t know what’s coming next year and that doesn’t need to be an anxiety. Jesus gives us confidence that we don’t need to worry about tomorrow, this summer (as Steve was saying) or this next year. ...

As the days grow short and nights grow long this time of year, summer 2017 fades into 2018.  This phase of our calendar always highlights for me Sonshine’s dependence on God’s favor/sovereignty.  That being said, I found myself easily transported to Bailey’s camel journey through the Sahara.  Sonshine’s Sahara consists of many mysteries like: Will the bananas and boats survive another season? Will the RJW bring enough scholarship “bread” to feed the hungry? Will there be harvesters (staff) for the wheat? Will there be stewards and winemakers (admin) to bleed Christ’s cup to those called from highways and byways to His table?  Will we have clients? Will Bridge and Paradise partner with us again? Will the inflatables inflate? Will the trannies transmit?  Will the carbs combust and pistons pump?  These quotes from Bailey’s story about “Uncle Zaki” offer for me fantastic perspective to this particular (uncertain) season of Sonshine’s calendar -- Quote 1...

This book is awesome! Playing catch-up a bit, I am amazed by the attention to detail and immense wisdom that Bailey has. In this section in particular, the first chapter quickly caught a hold of me. Over summer, I read Fifty-Seven Words that Change the World by good ol' DJ with the Shasta driver team. That book illuminated crazy epiphanies just like these found in this chapter. It really is astonishing how 57 words really did shift the entire world... A few notes: (Let my words be few) First off, great early 2000s Matt Redman song! Secondly, I think that one of my biggest pitfalls is over-complicating everything! Somehow, we as humans have fallen so far into the pit of great knowledge that we have to make things complicated in order to enjoy their challenges. I was just recently talking to my roommate about how some scholars preach to tell you how much they know instead of focusing on knowing the person of Jesus. The cool thing about our God is that he loves the simple! Th...

Here's a list of some thoughts! God, my Father: I love that Bailey spent time looking the significance and meaning of Father and how it was used in this context. God having attributes that could be classified as those of a Father can put him in a box of our human understanding. Looking to Jesus in the way he describes God gives us insight to see that our God is much more than a father in the sense that we know. DJ's sermon series, The Parables of Jesus is playing in my head. After looking at the culturally defiant acts of the father of this story to run to the son and kiss the son and escort the son back into the city, DJ proposes that the "parable of the prodigal son/sons" should rather be called the "parable of the prodigal Father." This  scandalous love  displayed by the Father in this story (and that we see in many times throughout the bible) is, I think, one of the attributes we recognize when praying through the Lord's prayer. Also, can't ...

"Jesus invites the listener to step into a world where words are few and powerful." I really enjoyed the reminder of these 4 chapters.  It reminded me of listening to my kids pray.  Their prayers, which are super short and 100% the heart of a child, convict and humble me every time. A discipline of mine (as all admin know) is to pray every time we (I) get in the car and begin driving.  It always humors me that at the beginning of summer, admin-car-prayer-time can last from the docks all the way into town.  By the end of summer, admin-car-prayer-time is done by the time we hit 8 Mile Rd!  Are we less focused as a team by the end of summer or more?  Are we more aware of our needs or less?  I love getting to the breaking point physically, emotionally, and mentally where the only prayer that falls out of my mouth is, "Lord, come do whatever you want......I'm so tired!" While typing this, I think the Spirit is revealing to me that,  "Lord, come d...

A bit of a delayed response from last week’s reading: I appreciated Bailey’s expansion on the sixth beatitude, “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In the context of Jewish law, a lot of emphasis was placed on external purity as well as internal purity. The sixth beatitude solely specifies internal purity – the pure in heart, having to do one motive, one will. This made me think of the sinful woman in Luke 7 who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and her hair. In this moment, she was pure in heart. Her one will was to worship Jesus and to offer all she had to him. She wasn’t obsessed with making herself pure (externally or internally), but in giving her life to the only one who could make her pure. Laser focus on Jesus is a pure heart! Not perfection. That’s a much-needed reminder for me all the time! Loving the reading! Mirm

"The wine of God," as water is named by desert tribesmen in the Middle East.  pg 77. Man, I read that line and immediately was taken away in my mind.  I pictured myself stumbling through the "desert" of the day, refusing the "magic elixir" of the world, but at the same time not stopping to sip-chug the wine of God.  In my mind, I come to a point of daily exhaustion.......  surrounded by nothing but dry sand, I see ahead in the distance a figure of a man and a well.  I manage to make it there only to discover Jesus has been waiting for me.  "He asks me for a drink......and John 4 is played out in my head.  Jesus corrects my bad thinking through the truth of this paragraph:  Hunger and thirst are powerful images used to describe the strong urge lodged in the hearts of the bless-ed for righteousness.  Righteousness does not refer to an abstract ethical ideal, but to claims of a relationship!!!!  That is why........ GOD, NOT COMMUNITY, S...