Transformed Mind

"It is not the thing we spend the most time on that moulds us most; the greatest element is the thing that exerts most power." - Oswald Chambers Chambers here is talking about the Atonement of Christ. That what Jesus did on the cross is the single most powerful thing in the history of humanity and that event should be the driving force in our lives.   I think of St. Paul who spent a great portion of his life studying, learning, and growing to become this great Jewish teacher, to be the absolute best. As he says, "If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless." All of this time and energy trying to prove himself, trying to be someone, something. His passion was there, his dedication was there, but as Thomas Merton state...

"For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers." - Galatians 1:11-14    Pretty amazing stuff. Paul didn't have to confer with others about the gospel, he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. He experienced truth incarnate, the word of God made flesh, and forever changed. How about you, what's your story of transformation if any? Paul here before being blindsided by the risen Jesus thought he was on the right track in life. He tried to literally destroy the church. Just look at Acts where Stephen is stoned to death... "Then they cast him out ...

Listen to full sermon here (Scroll down to …from Restless to Fulfilled)  http://journeyqueens.com/podcasts/overwhelmed/ So here we now come, to the meat of Paul’s prayer, and what does he pray for, he prays, “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Just like Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive, because in all seriousness we are all dead in our sin without Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross, so like that, he did not come from heaven to make our external circumstances; jobs, relationships, health, perfect, but to change us from the inside out, to completely gut our inner being, to utterly destroy that selfish ‘meism.’ I don’t need a better job, more stuff, a better wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, or the like; I need a new me. I need God, according to his vast, immeasurable, unend...

As Paul writes this letter to the church in Ephesus, things are not going well in that metropolis of trade and shipping. The church there is experiencing fear AND hostility. Culturally, Ephesus was a strong city that had many marks of a bustling metropolis of the ancient world. Its harbor provided shipping and trading opportunities and its former claim to fame, the Temple of Artemis, still provided opportunity for local artisans to profit by making idols, little silver and wood statues. Paul’s teaching about Jesus though turned people from and against idol worship and therefore deprived these artisans from their source of income. In the Book of Acts one of these artisans, Demetrius, states,  Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. So things are bleak as persecution persists against the ...

  So true story, I was writing this sermon, typing away on my MacBook Air on a long flight. I had my Logos Bible Software open on Ephesians 3 reading what some of the commentaries said, looking at different translations, and just trying to immerse myself in what the Apostle Paul was saying. And then… splash ! The flight attendant spilled an entire glass of water on me AND my laptop. The keyboard was soaked as well as my shirt and pants. The laptop immediately shut down. Frustrating right, when things don’t turn out the way we expect or a curve ball is thrown out of nowhere, like a glass of water falling on you. And I know for a fact I’m not  alone when it comes to being overwhelmed, stressed out, and stuck. Even among fellow Christians there is this sense of dissatisfaction,even fear; fear of the future, the unknown. There’s ISIS, the Zika Virus, politicians, racial strife, and the list goes on. Even if these  things didn’t exist I thi...

This past winter I spent 10 weeks at Bellevue Hospital Center in NYC as a chaplain. It. Was. Awesome. I had the chance to minister to a very diverse group of people, I mean, on Bellevue's own website it says that it's, "a microcosm of the Third World – a hospital for the undocumented, impoverished and disfranchised" ( Bellevue CPE ). I was assigned the prison floor where inmates from Rikers Island would come to have medical/surgical procedures done, Medical ICU, Coronary Care Unit, Rehabilitation, Adult Psych, and when on-call Adult and Pediatric ER.  To be honest I really didn’t know what to expect coming into CPE. I had spoken with a couple of other Army chaplains that have been through at least one unit and they absolutely loved it. Well, maybe love is too strong of a word, lets just say that they learned a lot from the experience and told me that if I ever got the chance to do it, to jump on the opportunity. They said it was very introspective and there’s ...

“Everywhere things are troubling and uneasy - wars and rumours of war: perhaps not the final hour but certainly times most evil. Nevertheless, the Apostle again and again bids us "Rejoice." Nature herself bids us to do so, the very face of the earth being now renewed, after its own manner, at the start of Spring. I believe the men of this age think too much about the state of nations and the situation of the world…We are not kings, we are not senators. Let us beware lest, while we torture ourselves in vain about the state of Europe, we neglect either Verona or Oxford. In the poor man who knocks at my door, in my ailing mother, in the young man who seeks my advice, the Lord Himself is present: therefore let us wash His feet." This was a quote from famed author of The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Mere Christianity, and of course the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis. Though in this quote he was reflecting about the state of the world in 1947, Lewis had also fough...