SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“The Scriptures are not a manual on how to live a moral life or how to organize the Church as an institution. The Scriptures are the means by which we come to know the Risen Christ, always through the working of the Holy Spirit…A Christian does not come to read the Scriptures alone and isolated, left to his or her own devices to try to come to the right conclusions that will allow him or her to do what is needed to find salvation. A Christian comes to the Scriptures with the

“Reading the Scriptures, studying the church fathers, attending worship, praying, and meditating are all good and godly things. But they are not ends in themselves. When we engage in these holy activities, our sincere and fervent goal should be to encounter the Lord Jesus Christ. We may be the most informed and even enthusiastic students of the Word. We may be devoted to the teachings of the church. We may excel in Christianity as Paul excelled in Judaism. But everything that

“To undertake this reverse orientation and remain ever true to Christ, our hearts must be committed to Christ first and foremost. In the original Greek text of verse 5, the word aplóteti (“sincerity”) connotes “singleness, simplicity, being uncompounded, pure, or even sound.” The Lord requires this of us, for “no one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and ma

“Jesus now describes the guilt of the world. He came to these people with both words (15:22) and sign-miracles (15:24), yet they remained obstinate in their unbelief, and this sin of unbelief was without excuse. Jesus was not saying that if He had not come and spoken to these people they would be sinless; rather He was saying that if He had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of the sin of rejecting Him and the Father he came to reveal. Rejecting Jesus is th

“The secular worldview says there is only this world. The here-and-now material universe is the only reality. The natural is real, there is no supernatural. The immanent is real, there is no transcendent..." (Pastor Timothy Keller) “The “modern” mindset also holds that “…as our knowledge becomes both broader and more unified, we will experience continued progress (and they have in mind not only technological progress, but also social, political, and moral progress)….In the mo

“To know and be known by another is a deep desire of the heart. This desire is implanted in us by God. He tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). This applies to all of us. God has intimate knowledge of us before we exist as we know existence, and then desires we know Him so we can be complete. This is why so many people who find their way to God and begin to know Him are filled with a joy and a fervor that often seems either irrational, o

“Only those who are mature in faith can hear and discern the promptings of the Spirit (JohnChr). Those of lesser faith are prompted more directly by words and angels.” (Orthodox Study Bible, Acts 8:29) “All of us have chosen to act against what is right and to resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit…A physical body, once it is dead, makes no response to its environment. So we who died with Christ in baptism must not respond to the promptings of sin, for we are freed from sin

“The ancient Greek word ecclesia means to be called into authentic community. It is within the Church that our personal transformation is intimately connected with the interaction we have with our fellow believers as we run side by side with them.” (Abbott Tryphon) “...we must go beyond thinking about ourselves to knowing about ourselves, that is, knowing our true-self or authentic-self in Christ. This doesn’t come from merely using our mind. We must go deeper, to that which