Sign intext • context • soul
What might it look like to follow Jesus with heart, mind & soul?
Courses
8 courses · 139 sessions
Themes
Can faith and reason belong together?
Before choosing between faith and reason, ask what each word includes. Alister and Bill examine the questions, assumptions, and commitments within inquiry, offering different approaches to a conversation that simple oppositions can obscure.
3 passagesWhat shapes the person we become?
Follow desire from the shopping aisle to the formation of character. Graham asks what purchases promise beyond usefulness; Dallas distinguishes wanting from goodness, then describes practices that address the sources of our habitual responses.
3 passagesHow do we learn to trust?
Suspicion may expose manipulation, but it cannot supply every relationship a life needs. Move from Graham's critique of pervasive distrust to Dallas's concern for reliable knowledge, then to Luther's understanding of personally receiving grace.
3 passagesInsights
All insightsWe haven't got there yet; one day we will grasp truth in its fullness but we don't at the moment.
Graham The Provocative Church
For Graham, Christian hope gives us a destination without pretending we have already arrived. That leaves room for both conviction and humility.
Read in contextWe haven't got there yet; one day we will grasp truth in its fullness but we don't at the moment.
Graham The Provocative Church
For Graham, Christian hope gives us a destination without pretending we have already arrived. That leaves room for both conviction and humility.
Read in contextSome people need to hear about the beauty of the gospel.
Bill Apologetics
Bill recalls how music drew him towards faith. He places beauty alongside argument as a way of inviting people into the Christian story.
Read in contextI'm going to be raised both body and soul, and my glorification will not be complete until that resurrected body joins my soul; and as the complete person I was meant to be, sinless, I'll be more real than I ever was.
Bill Apologetics
Bill describes resurrection as the fulfilment of embodied life, not an escape from it.
Read in contextYou have to go to a deeper level of the self than controlling your actions.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas asks what produces our behaviour. Lasting change reaches into the heart, mind, and feelings rather than stopping at outward restraint.
Read in contextOur actions do not come from nowhere; they come from somewhere.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas challenges the idea that a failure is wholly separate from who we are. The work of formation includes attending to what gave rise to it.
Read in contextThat there is something that happens when you and I give that changes our lives.
Rick Generosity
Rick reflects on Jesus' teaching that giving brings greater happiness than receiving. Generosity shapes the giver as well as helping the recipient.
Read in contextGod provides us with variety, freedom, choice.
Graham Spiritual Formation
Graham warns against answering consumerism with a refusal to enjoy life. He reads the gifts of creation as things to receive with gratitude.
Read in contextThis life which ends in failure is in fact, says Paul, the key moment of history.
Graham Spiritual Formation
Graham is speaking of Jesus' crucifixion and its public humiliation. Paul's message locates God's decisive action in what looked like defeat.
Read in contextAppreciating the beauty of the natural order is a very significant stimulus to discover and appreciate the greater beauty of God the Creator.
Alister Faith & Science
Alister is explaining Jonathan Edwards' vision of nature: the beauty of creation can awaken attention to its Creator.
Read in contextGod wants us to think well.
Ken Stewardship
Ken includes the mind and body in stewardship. Reading and reflecting on Scripture belong, for him, to the care of our capacity to think.
Read in contextJoy and grace and giving; they're just intertwined.
Randy Stewardship
Randy describes generosity as a response to grace, not merely a way to raise funds. He recalls the joy he hears in people's accounts of giving.
Read in contextSo grace does not make you passive, but it also doesn't allow you to be proud.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas distinguishes effort from earning: discipleship involves practice, but its results are never grounds for self-reliance.
Read in contextAnd because of that, Christian communities ought to be places where people can learn how to hope again.
Graham The Provocative Church
The hope Graham describes grows from faith in God and a vision of people brought together in harmony under Christ.
Read in contextPlus, imagination nurtures our soul.
Bill Apologetics
Bill is defending literature, film, and proper entertainment as nourishment, not simply distraction from ordinary life.
Read in contextPrayer is talking to God about what we are doing together.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas contrasts prayer as sustained participation with God with a transaction that guarantees an immediate result.
Read in contextA discipline is something in your power that you do, in order to enable you to do what you cannot do by direct effort.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
In learning to follow Jesus, Dallas proposes practices that address the causes of failure rather than merely trying harder.
Read in contextLove, agape, is the steady intention of my will toward another person's highest good.
Ken Stewardship
Answering Pavi's question about stewarding relationships, Ken distinguishes the choice to serve from the presence of affectionate feelings.
Read in contextI never see Jesus in a hurry to do the will of God.
Ken Stewardship
Ken connects inner solitude with wise use of time: calm is not an excuse to avoid responsibility.
Read in contextIf the world is God's, not ours, it affects the way we behave towards it and behave within it.
Alister Faith & Science
Alister argues that seeing nature as creation changes its value and calls us to love and tend it.
Read in contextHow does God change us? He changes us by not making change a condition of friendship.
Graham The Provocative Church
Graham draws on Zacchaeus to question friendships entered solely to change someone; acceptance creates the setting for change.
Read in contextPower, for Paul, is not about domination; it's not about the ability to get what you want. It is about the power, the ability to love.
Graham Spiritual Formation
Reading 1 Corinthians in light of the cross, Graham describes power as surrendering one's rights for another's good.
Read in contextWhat was grace becomes entitlement.
Ken Stewardship
Ken warns how quickly gratitude fades when a gift becomes something we assume we are owed.
Read in contextStewardship is about how do I handle a hundred percent, not simply the ten percent or fifteen or twenty percent that I choose to put directly back in to God's kingdom.
Andy Generosity
Andy asks churches to teach people how to handle all their resources, not only motivate them to give.
Read in contextCharacter is to a large degree what you do without thinking. But it also in some degree has to do with what you do after you think.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas describes discipleship as the formation of habitual action, involving both the body and deliberate choice.
Read in contextThis person disagrees with me but I love them still and I will serve them, and who knows what will come of that.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas asks church leaders to keep loving people who do not share their plans for discipleship, without turning difference into conflict.
Read in contextFaith is not something we contribute to our salvation. It is simply the means by which we receive it.
Graham Spiritual Formation
Graham is explaining Luther's understanding of faith as receptiveness to a gift, not another work that earns salvation.
Read in contextYes, some suspicion is good. We don't want to be credulous people who believe everything we're told, but trust is vital for human life.
Graham The Provocative Church
Graham tests the limits of pervasive suspicion: society depends on trust without requiring us to believe everything.
Read in contextI would say there's no area that's taboo for critical inquiry.
Bill Apologetics
Answering a question about biblical criticism, Bill distinguishes humble inquiry in love for God from criticism driven by self-importance.
Read in contextBut I am saying that there is no hierarchy of calls in God's plan.
Bill Apologetics
Bill affirms pastoral and missionary work while rejecting the idea that other faithful vocations are less important to God.
Read in contextThe natural sciences, including Darwinism, is capable of being interpreted in atheist, theist, and agnostic ways, while demanding and necessitating none of these.
Alister Faith & Science
Alister is evaluating religious interpretations of evolution, distinguishing scientific accounts from the worldviews attached to them.
Read in contextIn other words the interpretation is so widely accepted that it is no longer seen simply as an interpretation of the Bible, but rather what the Bible is actually saying.
Alister Faith & Science
Alister cautions that repeating an established interpretation can make its interpretive character disappear from view.
Read in contextThe idea that when we deal with other people we treat them as people who have value and dignity and worth in themselves - not as mere means to another end.
David Faith & Science
David explains a principle associated with Kant, while noting its older roots, and applies it to the treatment of patients.
Read in contextAnd counting your blessings enables you to know that God has actually provided. And that knowledge then helps you look at the future without anxiety.
Dallas The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas presents celebration as a discipline: enjoying things in memory of the good God has done.
Read in contextIf your family's expenditures for the year were to be printed in the church newsletter, what would embarrass you the most?
Andy Generosity
Andy directs this challenge to church leaders, asking whether their own financial practices support what they teach.
Read in contextWe essentially consume and we say we like it or don't like it.
Gordon Culture
In a discussion that acknowledges ordinary consumption, Gordon challenges Christians to question and create culture, not merely approve or reject its products.
Read in context