There is a need to rediscover the very nature of the church as the continuation of the presence of God in the world. Reclaiming the incarnate nature of the church will shift us away from the business model of the church and help us focus on the church as the continuation of God’s vision for...Read More
I urge us all to stop looking at ourselves for the nourishment of our own spirituality and turn to the church and its worship to disclose God’s embrace and thus nourish our spirituality. The church, by its very existence, is the life of God’s embrace, and worship, when properly understood, is the continual experience of...Read More
The current crisis of the church is that many define it out of the world’s narrative. In recent years the church has become a business, with Jesus as the commodity to be marketed and advertised. . . . While [this approach] has resulted in numbers, it struggles to form depth. . . . Churches formed...Read More
When we situate spirituality in ourselves and not God’s divine embrace, we feel responsible to nourish our own spirituality. . . . When we situate spirituality in God’s embrace, the church and its worship are seen as sources that nourish the spiritual life, not by what the church and its worship demand of us but...Read More
We are not spiritual because we practice the disciplines or use pious words but because we are united to Jesus who has restored our union with God. So our goal is never to become spiritual but to live out the spirituality we have in Jesus through the choices that spring forth from continually living in...Read More
Christ is the embodied story of God, the one in whom God became human and showed us what humanity was intended to be. The faithful life is the life that seeks to live the Jesus way. The vow of fidelity means you can count on me to be Jesus to you. And when I fail,...Read More
Rebellion against God has always taken the form of self-love and self-interest. . . . When we live in the pattern of self-interest, very little thought is given to living in the pattern of death and resurrection. The self-love of narcissism is one of the greatest problems we face today. -Robert E. Webber, The Divine...Read More
Here is the deep rhythm of the spiritual life: a baptism into death to sin and resurrection to a new life made possible only by the divine embrace of God, who in his incarnation became one of us to take into himself the curse of sin and death on the hard wood of the cross...Read More
Baptism reveals the daily pattern of the spiritual life. . . . Our day-to-day, moment by moment experience of life in all the spiritual expressions of the embodied life . . . is not something we do as a matter of course. Baptism is instead a life-changing covenant, a call to live deeply into the...Read More
Jesus chose by his own will to embody God’s original intent for humanity. . . . The ancient church affirmed that Jesus, by the complete and constant surrendering of his human will reversed our fallen human will, achieved union with God for us all, and left us an example to follow. . . . Because...Read More
Spiritual passion is not “get me out of this world” but “let me throw myself into life,” swimming daily in the baptismal waters, passionately choosing to be the person God created me to be, emulating the display of perfect humanity, the embodiment of God in Jesus. -Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate...Read More
The spiritual life, this marriage we have with God, is an embodied union with God and with his vision for the world revealed to us in Jesus by the Spirit. Our spiritual life, then, is not just a feeling, an idea, or a spiritual romance. No! It is an embodiment of God’s vision for humanity...Read More
Since God has already accepted us in Christ, who lifted our humanity up into his, and by the Spirit has done everything necessary to make us acceptable to God, the spiritual life is a freedom to participate in God, not a duty. In Jesus we are born again to become fully human, to be what...Read More
As Christians we have been baptized, immersed, drenched, and soaked in Jesus in the re-creating waters of baptism and signed and rubbed in the sweet smell of the oil of the Holy Spirit. So by the two hands of God, the very hands that recovered and restored God’s original creative purpose for the world, we...Read More
Jesus is both the subject and object of the spiritual life. As subject, he has attained the spiritual life for us, that is, he alone reestablishes the unity between God and man, that unity which Adam lost. As object, we look to him to see what a human being united to God looks like. ....Read More
