Wright: rival eschatology

And of course the reason the Enlightenment has taught us to trash our own history, to say that Christianity is part of the problem, is that it has a rival eschatology to promote.  It couldn't all Christianity to claim that world history turned its great corner when Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again, because it wanted to claim that world history turned it's corner in Europe in the eighteenth century.  "All that went before", it says, "is superstition and mumbo-jumbo,  We have now seen the great light, and our modern science, technology, philosophy and politics have ushered in the new order of the ages."  

How God Became King, p163

Chan: you can only pray for love

But no matter what we did, there was no way that we could "make" any two young people fall in love with each other. Eventually, Rochelle fell in love all by herself. She's now married, and the couple is expecting a baby.

The same idea is at work here—you can't make anyone fall in love with Jesus, either. When it comes to Jesus and people, you can only make the introduction.

I can only tell them that God, the Creator of the world, the only God that matters, loves them deeply. More than any other human being could. God loves you so much that he gave his son to die on a cross for you. It doesn't matter how messed up you are, how much you've rebelled against him, or even how indifferent you might be to matters of the cross; God still loves you deeply. Who does this? Who chooses to die in place of someone else? What an amazing God this is!

Yes, I can make this introduction, but nothing will happen until the Holy Spirit supernaturally gives a person the ability to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. He enables people to know something they can't know. You understand God's love in your inner being. Oh, how God loves us! And for people to understand this love, it comes only through prayer.

Prayer is the first and greatest work that we do.

Francis Chan, Leadership

Peterson: long stretches after planting

The person...who looks for quick results in the seed planting of well-doing will be disappointed.  If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it will do me little good to go out and plant potatoes tonight.  There are long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting and reaping.  During the stretches of waiting there is cultivating and wedding and nurturing and planting still other seeds.

Eugene Peterson, Travelling Light, quoted in The Contemplative Pastor, p3.

Wright: gospels and trains

...just because we find that the train will take us from Coventry to Birmingham doesn't mean that  that is all the train is doing.  It may well be going all the way from Southampton to Edinburgh or from London to Glasgow.  The question we have to face about the gospels is the question of where they are coming from and where they are going, not simply the various things we can use them for along the way.

How God became King, p52

Wright: liberal portraits

It has become commonplace to point out that these liberal portraits of Jesus have an uncomfortable habit of resembling the artists who sketching them - or at least the artists as they would like to imagine themselves.

NT Wright How God Became King, p28

Welch: 2 things

There are two things you should know about fear or worry.

First, like any strong emotion, it wants to be the boss.  It claims to tell us how life really is. and it won’t be easily persuaded otherwise.  If my experience of fear says that there is danger and you say there isn’t, my fear wins...It tenaciously holds on to its self-protecting agenda...

Second, when fear escalates, it wants relief and it wants it now.  Fear is impatient...It will alight on a promising treatment, give it a few seconds, then flit to something else without ever returning.  Fear has tried God and God didn’t work.  To reconsider God goes against fear’s manic style...

...Why highlight this?  Because one of the first steps in combating fear and worry is to slow down.  “Be still” (Ps.46:10)

Running Scared, p62-63

Self-fulfilling feelings....?

Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates.  Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work towards their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigour.  Mac's resignation seemed to paralyse him, and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped.  Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness were becoming self-fulfilling.

Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, p 148

Welch: some possible messages from worry

You have purposes in your anxieties...

...One message is obvious:  If I imagine the worst, I will be more prepared for it. Worry is looking for control.  It is still irrational because worry will not prepare us for anything, but at least it has its reasons.

...Going one step further to track this message back to its origins, there is an entire worldview implicit in some worry.  It cries out about an ultimate aloneness.  There is no one who can really help.  No one can rescue.  No one is really looking out for you...

...we can find a selfish bent to our lives. If that is true, it is likely even our worry reflects some self-centredness : worry puts the focus on me.  

Running Scared, p53