- Oh, how we love MATTHEW

Blessed Are the Merciful

Monday, November 12, 2007

Quotations to stir heart and mind.
Compiled by Richard A. Kauffman | posted 10/15/2007 08:52AM

"BLESSED are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."
Matthew 5:7
Related articles and links

AT FIRST GLANCE, such statements seem to suggest that the process of showing mercy begins with us. That, however, is not the case. It is God who is merciful and gracious, first of all … , and the people of God are who they are because they have received God's mercy. …
Richard B. Gardner, Matthew

THE TWO TERMS [grace and mercy] are frequently synonymous, but where there is a distinction between the two, it appears that grace is a loving response when love is undeserved, and mercy is a loving response prompted by the misery and helplessness of the one on whom the love is to be showered. Grace answers to the undeserving; mercy answers to the miserable.
D. A. Carson, The Sermon on the Mount

ALL WHO STRIVE to root their lives in forgiveness seek to listen rather than to convince, to understand rather than to impose themselves.
Brother Roger of Taizé, Glimmers of Happiness

A CHRIST-LESS world is a callous world, and mercy was never a characteristic of pagan life.
William Barclay, The Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer for Everyman

IF THEY HAVE any money, [the merciful] don't give till it hurts—they give till it's gone.
Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount

INVITING the marginalized to the table not only made them equals; it made Jesus their "friend." … The Pharisees viewed this behavior as subversive to their conviction of what Israel needed for true social ordering; Jesus saw it as a manifestation of a new way of holiness based on mercy.
Michael H. Crosby, Spirituality of the Beatitudes

GOD WANTS us to be merciful with ourselves. And besides, our sorrows are not our own. He takes them on himself, into his heart.
Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest

[THE MERCIFUL] will be found consorting with publicans and sinners, careless of the shame they incur thereby. In order that they may be merciful, they cast away the most priceless treasure of human life, their personal dignity and honor.
For the only honor and dignity they know is their Lord's own mercy, to which alone they owe their very lives.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

THERE ARE no "good people," and the best of us say so the most clearly. Saints agree they are sinners; only sinners think they are saints. Only fools demand justice, for where would we be if we got it? No, mercy is our only hope from God, and our neighbors' only hope from us as well.
Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

Quotations to stir heart and mind.
Compiled by Richard A. Kauffman | posted 11/12/2007 09:04AM

BLESSED are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Matthew 5:8
Related articles and links

MAKE EVERY EFFORT to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
Hebrews 12:14

WHO IS PURE OF HEART? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil—and by their own virtues too.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship

NOW when [people] attempt to live a double life spiritually, that is, to appear pure on the outside but are not pure in the heart, they are anything but blessed. Their conflicting loyalties make them wretched, confused, tense. And having to keep their eyes on two masters at once makes them cross-eyed, and their vision is so blurred that neither image is clear.
Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount

OPPOSING PURITY of heart is lust of any kind—for wealth, for recognition, for vengeance, for sexual access to others—whether indulged through action or imagination.
Jim Forest, The Ladder of the Beatitudes

A PURE WILL loves God with the whole heart and soul and mind. It is "fanatical"—the greatest insult the modern mind can conceive, and the greatest compliment God can give. It is also the greatest compliment a lover can give: "I love you with my whole heart and soul. My love is not divided. You have no rival."
Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue

THERE IS an interaction between seeing and being. The kind of person you are affects the kind of world that you see. … And conversely, what you see affects what you are.
Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes

INDEED, what would one search for when one has God before one's eyes? Or what would satisfy one who would not be satisfied with God? Yes, we wish to see God. Who does not have this desire? We strive to see God. We are on fire with the desire of seeing God.
Augustine, Sermon

THE PURE IN HEART are blessed because they will see God. Although this will not be ultimately true until the new heaven and earth, yet it is also true even now. Our perception of God and his ways, as well as our fellowship with him, depends on our purity of heart. The visio Dei—what an incentive to purity.
D. A. Carson, The Sermon on the Mount

TO SEE GOD in terms of the Beatitude's promise is to be able to stand before him, accepted into his presence at the Last Judgment.
Robert A. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

[Christianity Today magazine] [A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction]
September 25, 2007 Send to printer | Close window

The following article is located at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/october/9.42.html

Home > 2005 > October Christianity Today, October, 2005
The Making of the Christian
Richard J. Foster and Dallas Willard on the difference between discipleship and spiritual formation.
Interview by Agnieszka Tennant | posted 9/25/2007 09:28PM

Prayer. The Word of God. Spiritual gifts. The sacraments. Social justice. Pursuit of holiness. Christian disciplines. These are the rivers of Christian tradition that flow into the interdenominational sea of small groups called Renovaré. It's impossible to say how many of these spiritual formation groups function worldwide, because the group's leaders say that "it would be a failure" if they counted them. They're not into numbers and organizational growth charts.

But it's likely you've heard of them anyway.

The founder of Renovaré is Richard J. Foster, Quaker author of Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, a classic named by CT as one of the top ten books of the 20th century. Another luminary at Renovaré is Dallas Willard, a Southern Baptist, professor of philosophy at the University of South California in Los Angeles, and author of The Divine Conspiracy: Recovering Our Hidden Life in God, which was CT's Book of the Year in 1999.

The two men recently collaborated on The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible (HarperSanFrancisco), which they edited with The Message's Eugene Peterson and Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann.

Foster and Willard sat down with CT associate editor Agnieszka Tennant for a rare interview at a Renovaré conference in Denver to explain the difference between spiritual formation and its imitations.

What do you mean when you use the phrase spiritual formation?

Willard: Spiritual formation is character formation. Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education; it's just a matter of which one you get.

Spiritual formation in a Christian tradition answers a specific human question: What kind of person am I going to be? It is the process of establishing the character of Christ in the person. That's all it is. You are taking on the character of Christ in a process of discipleship to him under the direction of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It isn't anything new, because Christians have been in this business forever. They haven't always called it spiritual formation, but the term itself goes way back.

Is spiritual formation the same as discipleship?

Willard:Discipleship as a term has lost its content, and this is one reason why it has been moved aside. I've tried to redeem the idea of discipleship, and I think it can be done; you have to get it out of the contemporary mode.

There are really three gospels that are heard in our society. One is forgiveness of sins. Another is being faithful to your church: If you take care of your church, it will take care of you. Sometimes it's called discipleship, but it's really churchmanship. And another gospel is the social one—Jesus is in favor of liberation, and we should be devoted to that. All of those contain important elements of truth. You can't dismiss any of them. But to make them central and say that's what discipleship is just robs discipleship of its connection with transformation of character.

What does this misunderstanding of discipleship look like?

Willard: In our country, on the theological right, discipleship came to mean training people to win souls. And on the left, it came to mean social action—protesting, serving soup lines, doing social deeds. Both of them left out character formation.

Isn't character formation very much a part of many Christian schools and institutions?

Willard: What sometimes goes on in all sorts of Christian institutions is not formation of people in the character of Christ; it's teaching of outward conformity. You don't get in trouble for not having the character of Christ, but you do if you don't obey the laws.

It is so important to understand that character formation is not behavior modification. Lots of people misunderstand it and put it in the category of Alcoholics Anonymous. But in spiritual formation, we're not talking about behavior modification.

Foster: I think what Dallas is referring to is that many Christian institutions have a system by which you find out whether you're in or out. Sometimes it's rules; sometimes it's a certain belief system.

You just look sometimes at what they produce in terms of solid families and marriages. Do they really love their enemies? If that's the case, great. If it's about the number of verses you can memorize or the answers you give to a certain set of questions, while you're full of bitterness or pride—that's not spiritual formation.

Pride is one of the socially acceptable sins in some corners of the evangelical culture. It's just straight-out ego gratification—how important I am; whether my name gets on the building or on the tv program or in the magazine article.

So how do we cultivate humility?

Foster: We can't get humility by trying to get humility. But we can't assume there's nothing to do and just wait for God to pour humility on our heads. No, no! Take disciplines, like service, like Benedict's rule. His 12 steps into humility almost all deal with service to God and to others. That produces a perspective in life that works a grace of humility in us.

How does Jesus address spiritual formation?

Willard: Jesus teaches it, but often his teaching gets identified with general moralisms, like turning the other cheek and so on. You don't actually find much instruction on how to do that. So we've come to a place where we just assume we're not actually going to do it. Some time ago, I was in Belfast, a place where your enemy may have lived across the street and may have killed your child. I was talking to ministers and church leaders about Jesus' teachings on loving our enemies. A gracious man stood up and said, "When we talk about loving your enemy here, it means something. And we're not sure that you can do that."

I asked, "Are any of your churches teaching people how to love your enemy?" There was a moment of silence. No one was.

That's a question we all should ask ourselves: Do you know of a church where they actually teach you how to love your enemies, how to bless those who curse you? This is extremely radical material because it goes to the sources of behavior.

At this conference, I heard some panelists criticize megachurches. I wonder what your take is on seeker-oriented congregations.

Willard: What they do well is establish a public presence that draws many people under the sound of the gospel. They are led by wonderful people who are under the call of God to do the work they're doing.

In many seeker-sensitive churches, the focus is on getting people to confess Christ as a basis for going to heaven when they die. I don't want to diminish the importance of that, because you're going to be dead a lot longer than you're alive, so you ought to be ready for that.

But it is possible to lose sight of character transformation as a serious element for the people you're bringing in. We need to do both of those things.

Foster: The problem today is that evangelism has reached the point of diminishing returns. I talk with people and they say, "What am I to be converted to? I look at Christians and statistically they aren't any different." You want to be able to point to people who are really different.

Willard: … and people who are running a bank or a school, or functioning in government, maybe even in the military. What we need is more examples of people who actually have character that is Christlike. Isaiah brought up this problem of people whose lips are "near me" but their heart is "hard toward me"; Jesus also talked about it. Spiritual formation is for developing a heart that is one with God—whether you're in a lush hotel suite or down on the street. The business of the church is to bring that about.

A heart that is one with God— sounds like a tall order.

Willard: We're not talking about perfection; we're talking about doing a lot better. Forget about perfection. We're just talking about learning to do the things that Jesus is favorable toward and doing it out of a heart that has been changed into his.

You two have been friends for a long time. Tell me how you glimpsed the character of Christ being formed in each other.

Foster: In the early '70s, Dallas and I were members of a small group of men who met every week. We became aware that Dallas, who was driving this old beat-up Volkswagen, needed tires. So we decided to buy a set of tires for him without telling him.

We went up to his home with these four tires. We're feeling very righteous about this. I'm thinking, Oh, isn't this wonderful. He'll gush over this. What was I doing? I was thinking of how I'm going to put him into my debt. When we presented these four tires, he said, "Oh, thank you very much. I needed those." That was it. He hadn't said anything else. Not any sense of, "Oh, I'll pay you back." That reaction set me free from this game of tit-for-tat, "I scratch your back; you scratch my back."

Willard: For his part, Richard has a discipline of simplicity. It comes out of his tradition as a Quaker. It is so deeply rooted and so pervasive. It's one reason things go so well in conferences: He does not put on. The Quaker writer George Fox—a mentor for both of us—talked about taking people off of men and putting them onto Christ. That's what you see in Richard. He doesn't care to be noticed, and, despite his notoriety, he can actually pay attention to people.

In what context do Renovaré spiritual formation groups usually function?

Foster: They're sometimes organized by churches. Sometimes there will be people at our conferences who will find each other and begin to meet together. Sometimes they go to the same church; sometimes they don't. Some group members don't go to any church. It doesn't matter.

So you don't stress the importance of being connected to the local church?

Foster: We bless the organized church structures and their meetings. But if there are 10,000 others that meet outside of these ecclesiastical structures, that's wonderful too. The kingdom of God moves forward in lots and lots of ways.

Willard: One of the limitations of the megachurch is that it cannot be mega enough. You cannot take all the people to church.

But if we're really concerned about reaching the world for Christ, we have to bring the church—which is the people of God—to permeate society. You can't tie it to a building. That's where we started. We went to buildings, but it was about community. It was Christ coming upon preexisting community and redeeming it where it was.

The current interest in spiritual formation is part fad and part timeless. How much staying power do you think it has?

Foster: We don't know yet whether people are going to take this seriously enough to where it really sinks down into the deep habit structures of life. You can't hope to accomplish in 40 days what it takes 40 years to do. There has to be a willingness for barren day after barren day after barren day, a willingness for new forms of worship, new forms of living.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Part two:

Foster and Willard on the Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible
Related Elsewhere:

More information about Renovare, including an invitation to sign its covenant, as well as further readings, is available from their website.

The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

CT reviews of Willard's and Foster's books include:

In His Steps | How to Become an Apprentice of Jesus. A review of The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. (1999)

Celebration of Traditions | Richard Foster wants Christians to be renewed by encountering the church's "living streams." A review of Streams of Living Water by Richard Foster. (May 24, 1999)

More on spiritual formation includes:

Christian History Corner
Got Your 'Spiritual Director' Yet? | The roots of a resurgent practice, plus 14 books for further study. (May 20, 2003)

Three Temptations of Spiritual Formation | When seeking to be shaped by Christ, It is all too easy to veer from a fully Christian approach. (Dec. 13, 2002)

Making Space for God | What spiritual direction is, and why evangelicals are increasingly attracted to it. An interview with Holy Invitations author Jeannette Bakke. (April 25, 2001)

Dallas Willard is author of a: Gray Matter and the Soul | What is the difference between the brain and the soul? (Nov. 15, 2002)

© 2007 Christianity Today International

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NEXT SOTM - 14 Aug 2007

Friday, August 10, 2007

Hey to all,

We will have a next SOTM on this coming Tuesday, at 4 pm at The Deck (Arts Canteen - the new one) in NUS. Hope that it will be alright for everyone.

We will be covering the first passage in Matthew 6 - Giving to the Needy.

cya around

Ren Kang

penned by Ren Kang @ 8:16 PM 1 comments

Insights on Lust

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

"Any person can, with a few exceptions, determine a country's success toward technological sophistication and modernization simply by looking at the amount of pornography the country's people are exposed to."

"Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate onto the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who has grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?" - C.S. Lewis

"Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." - G.K. Chesterson

"The church in its prudery has silenced a powerful rumour of transcendence that could point to the Creator and originator of human sexuality, who invested in it far more meaning than most modern people can imagine. We have desacralized it, in effect, by suppression and denial, and along the way our clumsy attempts at repression helped empower a false infinite. Sexual power lives on, but few see in that power a pointer to the One who designed it." - Philip Yancey

CHEW ON THAT.

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NEXT BS MEETING

Thursday, June 21, 2007

I guess it is not updated for quite some time.

Time: Monday 7pm
Venue: Esplanade Library (more information can call Huimin or Ryan)

Topic study: Lust and Divorce

That's all for now.

penned by Ren Kang @ 10:34 PM 0 comments

Matt 5:17-20

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Hello! Still in Malaysia... anyway... well Huimin already publicly ask me to contribute something... and i also promised i'll post something... so here's some things you all can consider for Matt 5:17-20. I know you all already gone past that... but still... take some time to ponder these questions...

1) Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill. In what ways did He fulfill the law? In the first place, what is the Law for and what does it entail? I think this is an important question that we have to think through as it will affect how we live our lives, being under the New Covenant. (Notice also that it doesn't just refer to "the Law", but "the Law or the Prophets".)

2) When will the Law pass away? Why will it pass away? Why doesn't it pass away with the institution of the New Covenant? What does "all is accomplished" refer to?

3) v19 seems to indicate that there is something called "least" and "great" in the kingdom of heaven. (winks at RK). What does this mean?

4) v19 also seems to indicate that you can annul these commandments, and still be in the kingdom of heaven. What does this tell us of salvation? Is this a license to sin? I'm not saying that status should be our motivation, but do we want to be called "great" in the kingdom of heaven? If yes, what should be our rightful response?

5) What is the "righteousness of the scribes and pharisees"? It says clearly here that they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Does this contradict v19? What kind of righteousness are we supposed to have then?

6) Finally, are these 4 verses (17-20) isolated verses, or can they be meaningfully linked back with what we have discussed earlier from vv 3-16? If yes, how? Can you observe a similar thread running through the whole Bible (OT and NT)?

Hee ok i guess that's all for now... keep seeking the truth in love, and in finding, love the truth more!

Guo Yi

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