Presby-Musings

This week we are concluding the sermon series that we've been working on for the past several weeks--a sermon series entitled, "Risen."  We've been struggling with an important question each week during this series--a question that anyone who calls themselves a follower of Christ needs to be answering on a daily basis.  Here's the question:  "Jesus is risen... now what?"  Do we celebrate Easter as a one off event, and then just go back to business as usual for the rest of the year?  Or is there something more?   What does it mean that Jesus is risen?  What does it mean for you and me? For the church?  For all of Creation? This has been at the heart of our study for the past month--a study that we're going to conclude today.   I'm actually going to go directly to our text this morning.  So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them to Acts 4:5-12.  This story is actually the continuation of the story we explored last ...

I'm not sure what has been going on lately, but all of the books that I seem to be "randomly" selecting to read all have had a similar theme: Christianity as we have known it in Western culture has missed the point of what it means to be Christian. Crazy Love:  Overwhelmed By A Relentless God by Francis Chan at first might seem an unlikely entry into the aforementioned thematic "coincidence."  After all, it purports from it's title to be about God's overwhelming and relentless love.  (Chan is the pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA, and the author of a book on the Holy Spirit called The Forgotten God , which I reviewed in this blog many moons ago.) But that's kind of the point that Chan is trying to make.  LOTS of Christian-y people give lip service to the radical love that they have received from God and are in turn supposed to share with the world.  VERY FEW people actually live the new reality of the true Jesus-Followe...