I was glad to contribute this post to my denomination’s blog for young ministers this week.
http://under40.us/why-the-world-needs-66-million-christians-to-get-angry/
What Am I Called to Do? (Part 4): It’s All About Passion
To learn how passions are integrated into the entire notion of call, click the map.
Frederick Beuchner famously said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I’ll explain in some later posts that Beuchner was missing a key component of assessing the tools that God has given you to respond to the world’s need. But his insight that our passions are central to understanding God’s call on our life is still really crucial.
How N.T. Wright Saved My Faith: A Call for Theological Complexity
After a couple of years of diving into the depths of theology, it had become clear that the “Sunday school faith” I had absorbed from my local congregation would not be enough to answer my difficult questions. At the same time, the deeply liberal theology of my college professors projected a God that was too weak and too far from the Jesus of Scripture for me to accept. Was I going to have to choose between being faithful to the God that I loved and having intellectual integrity?
What Am I Called to Do? (Part3): Discovering What You Were Made to Do
I explained in an earlier post, that God’s specific calling on a person’s life is always a smaller piece of God’s overarching call to witness to God’s coming Kingdom. But how do you discover your little piece of the big mission?
What Am I Called to Do? (Part 2): God’s Will Is Not A Secret
In my last post I suggested that most conversations about Christian calling carry a nasty little assumption. When I hear people talk about calling, it often sounds like they are suggesting that God has one specific career that they are supposed to do, one person to marry, one college to attend, and so on. It sounds like the goal is to figure out God’s one specific thing for your life. Miss it and you might miss God’s best for you. I think this notion of God’s calling is wrong for most people.
What Am I Called to Do? (Part 1): Understanding Christian Calling
High school and college students are constantly asked the question:“What are you going to do with your life?” If you are part of a Christian community then the question is asked a little differently: “What is God calling you to do?” I’ve increasingly come to believe that the question doesn’t go away no matter your age.
Words of Grace for Inadequate Christians
I can only speak for myself, but I feel grossly inadequate to the task of living the Christian life most of the time. I’m challenged by preaching and Scripture
to believe that God demands a strong pursuit of the calling to discipleship. Most of the time I fall short. I suppose that is why I have no problem thinking of the practice of confession sacramentally.
[Read more…]
Dr. Jeremiah Gibbs 