Here are two slides from the Sun­day mes­sage on Romans 6 and walk­ing with Jesus in sanctification–being set apart unto Christ­like­ness. Lance

I recently found a delight­ful dia­gram that charts out where folks come out on their views of God.  It is by Cameron Blair who min­is­ters with the Fel­low­ship for Evan­ge­lism in the Visual Arts (FEVA) down in Australia.

Fel­low­ship for Evan­ge­lism in the Visual Arts (link)

The chart is offered here with Cameron’s permission.

What’s your World­view? (click to view)

Here is a won­der­ful Time Line Chart cre­ated by Mark Barry who works with the Aus­tralian Fel­low­ship of Evan­gel­i­cal Stu­dents.  Thanks to Mark for his per­mis­sion for For­est Home to use it.

Early Church His­tory Time Line (click to view)

Please find below a list of Scrip­tures to con­tem­plate regard­ing who we are in Christ.  These can be under­stand­ably inspir­ing while also unpre­dictably encour­ag­ing.  Some believ­ers report sea­sons when they read these every day.

Who Am I? Scrip­tures on Chris­t­ian Identity

Who Am I? Scrip­tures on Chris­t­ian Identity

There are some won­der­ful resources from folks work­ing to artic­u­late the many rea­sons Chris­tians believe what they believe.  Check out the var­i­ous web­sites men­tioned here.

A Rea­son­able Faith: Top 25 Apolo­get­ics Web­sites (click to read)

For me, one of the most pro­found con­tri­bu­tions to the world is the dis­cov­ery through Christ that humans are per­sons of extreme value. What is quickly taken for granted in the broad range of west­ern dis­cus­sion is a cease­less soci­etal mantra on human rights and indi­vid­ual value.  Where did the beatific chant of indis­crim­i­nate human value come from and why should it per­sist?  As a Chris­t­ian, I have good answers to both ques­tions, based ulti­mately on human­ity as cre­ated in the image of the tri­une God–one divine being in the three per­sons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The ulti­mate Real is Being in dif­fer­ence and Being in unity.  The pro­found Chris­t­ian ground­ing of human dig­nity gives room for indi­vid­u­al­ity (unity in dif­fer­ence) as well as gen­uine com­mu­nity (unity in dif­fer­ence).  I applaud  the aspi­ra­tions and hopes of so many in the West­ern World, affirm­ing human dig­nity and world peace, but at the same time, real­ize that the tree quickly dies that is cut off from its roots of ori­gin. The bloom­ing of human rights is beau­ti­ful to be sure, but the tree does not do well apart from its native Chris­t­ian soil, much less grow­ing in the thin air of post-modern ground­less­ness.  I can say this because of empir­i­cal, red data.  The exper­i­ments of the last century’s sec­u­lar ide­olo­gies raise a cho­rus of over 100 mil­lion (big num­ber) per­sons of value who paid with their blood to feed the appetites of sec­u­lar lead­ers who still man­aged between their guz­zling to gur­gle out salutes to a higher and bet­ter human­ity.   The cup to raise for the high­est human­ism is not the winner’s tro­phy for par­a­sitic rhetoric, but the tried and true way of the chal­ice of Christ.

In sup­port of the above line of rea­son­ing, please read and eval­u­ate six pages from David Bent­ley Hart’s chap­ter enti­tled, “The Face of the Face­less.”  I was only able to scan two pages at a time, so will have to click sev­eral times to get through the six pages.

Hart 166–167 (click to read)

Hart 168 — 169 (click to read)

Hart pages 170 — 171 (click to read)

Incar­na­tion: Saved by Jesus’ Death and also His Life

“We shall be saved by His Life” (Romans 5:10)

In this sea­son of reflect­ing on the com­ing of the Eter­nal Son into the world at Beth­le­hem, we are explor­ing the pre­cious doc­trine of the Incar­na­tion.    We are con­sid­er­ing that Immanuel “God with us” means God as us– the Word becom­ing flesh and dwelling among us.   This is close­ness indeed, for God not only draws near us, but actu­ally gets “under our skin” being born the baby Jesus.  This is close­ness such that the Incar­na­tion (the Word becom­ing flesh) touches human life in a deep and trans­form­ing way.  By His union with us as God-and-Man, our Lord “lays hold of us in Him­self and acts for us from out of the inner depths of His coex­is­tence with us and our exis­tence with Him, deliv­er­ing us from the sen­tence of death upon us, and from the cor­rup­tion and perdi­tion that have over­taken us…. The whole of Christ became a curse for us, tak­ing upon Him­self our Adamic human­ity, but tri­umph­ing over the forces of evil embed­ded within our exis­tence, bring­ing His own holi­ness and obe­di­ence to bear in such a way as to con­demn sin and deliver us from its power.  It is the inner man, in his ratio­nal human soul, that man has fallen and become enslaved to sin.  It is in the mind, not just the flesh … that sin is entrenched.  This means that redemp­tion is nec­es­sar­ily closely linked to rev­e­la­tion in which the teach­ing of Jesus is to be regarded as an essen­tial part of His sav­ing work.  Christ’s life, from cra­dle to grave, in which he took on our whole human­ity, and not just his death, is to be con­sid­ered part of the aton­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.”  (Quot­ing from Thomas Tor­rance through his stu­dent Andrew Purves).  This deep work of God in the Incar­na­tion is espe­cially empha­sized in the East­ern and Ortho­dox churches this time of year.  LH

O Wis­dom, com­ing forth from the mouth of the

Most High, reach­ing from one end to the other might­ily, and sweetly order­ing all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

I can­not think unless I have been thought, 
Nor can I speak unless I have been spo­ken. 
I can­not teach except as I am taught, 
Or break the bread except as I am bro­ken. 
O Mind behind the mind through which I seek, 
O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words with which I speak,

O found­ing, unfound Wis­dom, find­ing me,

O sound­ing Song whose depth is sound­ing me,

O Mem­ory of time, remind­ing me,

My Ground of Being, always ground­ing me,

My Maker’s Bound­ing Line, defin­ing me, 
Come, hid­den Wis­dom, come with all you bring, 
Come to me now, dis­guised as everything.

Here is a med­i­ta­tion on the birth of the Lord Jesus by Lance.  The Haiku form of poetry uses sev­en­teen sound units in three phrases of 5–7-5 sounds respec­tively.  (Unable to ver­ify artist of the delight­ful water­color used as back­ground, and have enjoyed it sep­a­rately for a time.)