Happy April fools everyone! Here is your minimum dose of the top3 three I’ve read or thought about this week. Enjoy your weekend!

1

Or as the church traditionally put it, there are three kinds of martyrdom— red martyrdom, by blood; green martyrdom, by the exercise of the spiritual disciplines of abstinence, such as fasting; and white martyrdom, by abandoning everything for the love of God. Discipleship therefore means a “white funeral,” the funeral of our own independence.

The Call by Os Guinness

A description of discipleship as the funeral of our own independence. Wow…

2

What’s boring doesn’t get attention and what’s exciting doesn’t drive results. Most people are so focused on optics they forget that it’s the repetition of the boring basics that makes a difference.

Farnham Street Blog

I like shiny new things. I have not hidden that fact from you if you read this blog or listen to my sermons regularly. This quote was a good reminder and an addition to my prayer list.

Lord, help me to not exchange the boring for the exciting. Help me to not chase optics over real change. Amen.

3

“in those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

Martin Luther King Jr. from Letter from Birmingham Jail

The church needs to do more than report society’s temperature. It needs to
be the place that turns up the heat or turns down the air conditioning. Jesus said in Revelation to be hot or cold. He did not say simply just reflect the society around you.

It is a fine line we walk. Being counter-cultural without being ‘against’ people. Living with conviction and not condemnation might be a good way to say it.
Do you change the spiritual temperature in a room you walk into or do you acclimate to it? What spirit accompanies me when I enter a place? Charity? Truth?

I pray that, for me, is the case.