Who is the Joshua in your life? Who is the person that you can support in their faith development, or their experience of ministry? Who can you invite to join you as you journey in faith? This may seem like a tall task, but in truth, it doesn’t have to be.
Listen More, Do Less: An Advent Rhythm
The season of Advent, with its slowness and simplicity, calls us to a radical action of stepping away from the noise so that we can be attentive to a deeper voice. We turn away from the jingles so that we can hear the words of the of one who created us and comes to us in love and grace.
Listening to Jethro
God doesn’t want you to live your spiritual life in private exhaustion. Like Moses, you may tell yourself that “it all rests on me”, or that “I’m the only one who can do this”, but that is simply not true. The truth is, a reluctance to allow anyone to come along side you will, eventually, work against your spiritual vitality. It will leave you spiritually depleted and exhausted.
Responding to Rejection
Why do we give such credence to one negative comment rather than a plethora of encouraging statements? Logically we know this shouldn't be the case. We know we should rest in encouragement and love rather than in negativity. But we can’t always guard against rejecting comments, and when they come, they shake us in the deepest part of our soul.
A Blog about Prayer….part deux
If prayer occurs amidst an ordinary and distraction-laden life, then the apt question is, “How might we include these distractions into our prayers? Rather than treating each interruption as something that rips us away from Jesus, how might we embrace these distractions, even transform them, as tools for our devotion?
A Blog about Prayer
If we think this that prayer can only occur when all is quiet, we inevitably find ourselves viewing every hiccup or distraction as a negation or prayer. And once prayer is negated by interruption, it’s easily abandoned. We end up reserving prayer for those special times when no one is around, and all is silent.
God Bless the Incompetent
Ministry isn’t about competency or prowess; it’s not about maximizing our endeavors or achieving some ever-increasing public recognition. In the life of faith, we never rise above our own frailty. In fact, the places where we feel foolish, weak turned-around, or less-than, may be where God’s blessings are most fully revealed.
Ministry in the Ordinary
Serving God can be boring. There I said it. This is something that all who are involved in ministry know, but rarely articulate. The boring reality of ministry seems to betray the high hopes with which we accepted our callings. After all, we began our work for God with visions of entering the work of the Spirit, of growing the church, and transforming the world. And yet as time goes on, we find that much of our walk with God is uninteresting. Ministry involves ordinary events like mowing the lawn, baking a cake, or attending yet another budget-related meeting.
Crafted and Called.
Moses had spent years defining himself by the lack of external validation. Everything he went through told him that he was not useable by God; that was his identity. But the answer of our identity is never one we must create; it is one we receive. Moses was so busy describing how he saw himself, that he failed to hear how God viewed him.
Ministry and Midwifery
What was God up to before you stepped onto the scene? How did God’s hand impact your life before you were even aware of it? More importantly, who were the people whom God used to bring you to where you are today?
Reverend Kyle Norman 