- While there are either/or scenarios throughout Scripture, the Christian life is also an invitation to a both/and existence.
- The more I study Jesus, the more I realize he is inviting us to life off the paved road of tamed religiosity and into something greater, more adventurous, and more uncertain than I had previously imagined.
- The Church is to be a species of its own kind, confounding both left and right, and finding its identity from the center of God’s life.
- While two of the most powerful forces in the world are shame and fear, there are two forces even more powerful than these: love and hope.
- Living the sacred overlap is seldom about fixing problems and almost entirely about living in the tension.
- The mandorla life requires that we be fluent in the language of the kingdom and also language of the culture at the same time. We are called to be bilingual.
- The last thing I want to do is be a part of managing the decline of the Western church over the next several decades.
- To be peculiar is to be, quite literally, uncategorizable.
- Anyone who tries to please everyone is asking for trouble. The evidence of a life of sacred overlap is learning to expect that people will be intensely angry at times.
- Faith and doubt may be strange bedmates, but they certainly share the same king-sized mattress.
- Jesus’ intent is to create little pockets of heaven where people can be in God’s presence, but he does it out here in the middle of the world, in the middle of sin and death.
- If we get our evangelism wrong, we will most certainly get our discipleship wrong, too. If evangelism is just a check-the-box insurance policy paid for with the simple verbalization of a brief prayer, then calling those same people to costly, lifelong obedience in Christ in the days ahead will be nearly impossible task.
- Joy is one of the primary colors in God’s kingdom.
- As seriously as we take following Jesus, we can’t take ourselves too seriously.
- I came to a startling realization: Jesus hardly ever discipled people one-on-one.
- Most of us are educated well beyond our level of obedience.
- When I read about Facebook feuds, hear politicians dehumanizing other people in their speeches, or learn of parents brawling on the sidelines of their kids’ soccer games, I sometimes wonder if maybe we’re flirting with the extinction of civility.
- Unity is finding commonality in the midst of our differences.
- While Christians can (and should) be involved in political issues, we must be careful not to officially identify the church with either political party.
- Faithfully pursuing Jesus requires attention, intention, and tension. Our attention must be squarely on Jesus and his kingdom. Our intention is to work to seek, submit to, and bring the kingdom to earth as we live. And our tension is found when we live with that rubber band mentality, stretched but not to the point of snapping.
