Word of Life Church Podcast

Waiting on God is an acknowledgement that we are not in charge of our own spiritual formation. Through healthy practices of spiritual formation we regularly present ourselves before God. What happens there will happen in God’s own time or Godspeed.

If we see Jesus in Isaiah's prophecy of a king whose reign causes the lion to lie down with the lamb—and we do!—it means that we cannot reduce Jesus to the “personal savior” of our “private soul.” Jesus may indeed personally save our soul, but he’s also the righteous king who brings justice to the poor and challenges the systems of oppression presided over by the principalities and powers.

“How can we live in the midst of a world marked by fear, hatred, and violence, and not be destroyed by it?”“To live in the world without belonging to the world summarizes the essence of the spiritual life.”“Our true house is not the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides.”“Through the spiritual life we gradually move from the house of fear to the house of love.”(Henri Nouwen, Behold the Beauty of the Lord.)

Under the inspiration of the Spirit of the Lord Isaiah re-imagined the world…A world where swords become plowshares and spears become pruning hooks.A world where weapons of war becomes instruments of agriculture.A world where people seek to make the world a garden and not a battleground.A world where tanks are turned into tractors and missile silos become grain silos.

The kingdom of God does not come by the sword, it comes by the cross.The kingdom of God does not come by killing, it comes by dying.The kingdom of God does not come with vengeance, it comes with forgiveness.If it comes by the sword (by some dude on a horse), it’s not the kingdom of God.If it comes by killing (the way of Cain), it’s not the kingdom of God.If it comes with vengeance (the way of the Beast), it’s not the kingdom of God.By the way of the cross…By self-sacrifice, by co-suffering love, and by radical forgiveness…Is how the kingdom of God comes.And it comes no other way.If we lose sight of this, we will be blind to the kingdom of God. And if we’re blind to the kingdom of God, we will mistake something else as the kingdom of God.

"By his wounds you are healed." This is a deep and holy mystery, but it lies at the heart of what happened at the cross. Jesus took a world of suffering and sorrow into himself, so that we could be healed. When we lay our wounds upon the wounds of Christ it does not multiply woundedness, it initiates healing.

To follow Jesus and the way he taught, especially when living in a military-economic superpower, is to be radically counter-cultural. The ways and values of superpowers are the very opposite of the ways and values commanded by Jesus. To live out the Sermon on the Mount in the context of empire will cause you to be viewed as a freak -- a Jesus freak. The Jesus way, when truly lived, has always been viewed with suspicion by people in power. As the Apostle Paul said to the Roman governor, "I admit that I follow the Way which they call a cult."

Whatever it means for the world to be saved, God does not do it through the conventional means of power (politics, weapons, wars), but though the unconventional means of utter powerlessness—through the crucifixion of a Galilean Jew. Thus the kind of power Christians are to aspire to is cruciform in nature

On the 35th Anniversary of Word of Life Church, Pastor Brian tells the story walking the Camino de Santiago during his Sabbatical.

We have told ourselves that some scars last a lifetime and some wounds may never heal, but the story of scripture tells an entirely other truth. God is working throughout history, the present, and the future to make all things new and set all things right. How might this bring hope, healing, and redemption to our own lives? And as we experience this new creation work, what are we called to do with it?