Monastics…
“Towns and cities were developing and offered a new challenge to the church. Traditional expressions of faith were failing to cope with worldliness and the growth of population. Many clergymen recognized the need to bring a new form of spirituality to the people…” Robert G. Clouse
Where do we go from here? It would be easy to point the finger at past generations and current models of church and place blame. But where does that get us? Nowhere, in my opinion. The Lord has been challenging me to draw closer to Him. He has shared with me that in some ways my life will begin to look different (I’m sure how much different it can get… trust me, I’m pretty peculiar).
He has led to the monks to study how these transitions plays out. What I’ve noticed most is that monks were willing to sacrifice worldly pleasures to strengthen their relationship with the Lord.
At one point I thought that monks and contemplatives were just blindly doing works trying to earn God’s favor. That may be true in some cases, but God is calling me to build my relationship with Him so that unneeded worldly pleasures will become unattractive and will need to be cut from my life.
My gifting in the body of Christ is to be a voice of reason to it. If the first quote in this blog entry is true, then we are in serious need of some reforming. Communication devices have saturated the earth, social connectivity is at it’s highest, religion is most prevalent, while communion with God has been pushed even further from the world’s agenda.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen at this point. I will tell you this, I’m doing experiments now to try and see where God wants us to go. Keep posted as this topic will be a consistent theme of this blog.
Military Chaplain Repents ~ A Must Read
Click here for entire Article.
Here’s an excerpt to wet your appetite:
“Zabelka: I am old now. Soon I will go to meet my God. When the invitation came to join this peace pilgrimage, I felt that God had offered me “a great grace,” as we used to say. So, I accepted.
Q: What do you mean, God has offered you “a great grace” by an invitation to join a peace walk?
Zabelka: I do not mean to quibble about words but I did not experience the invitation as a request to join a peace walk. The invitation entered into my soul as “pilgrimage” not “walk.” A pilgrimage is a journey one undertakes to holy places for holy reasons.
Q: But what holy places are you going to visit in Japan? My understanding was that you were going to Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
Zabelka: Calvary, the place where Christ suffered and died at the hands of the civil and religious politicians of His day, is the holiest shrine in Christianity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are Calvaries. For here, Christ in the bodies of the “least” was again tortured and put to death hundreds of thousands of times over by exactly the same dark and deceitful spirit of organized lovelessness that roamed Jerusalem two thousand years ago.
Q: But Calvary is where Christ suffered. He did not suffer in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Zabelka: God, Christ, lives in every human being. Our Lord tells us that what is done to the “least” is in fact now done to Him (Mt 25). I believe that! That is the only kind of God that I could adore and love, a God who lives in human history and suffers with people. I could only fear a god that sat as a depersonalized king above the anguish of humanity. This is part of what the Incarnation is all about. Christ suffers and dies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Therefore to condone or support war is to condone or support the call to “Crucify Him.” To kill in war is, in fact, to be a “Christ-killer.” I’m sorry I can say nothing else – if Calvary is a holy place, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are holy places.”
“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
1 Cor. 9:25-27
25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that willnot last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.
26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.
27No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave…
