….My reflections on a high-demand cultic church….
Last week, for some reason, a phrase from the song “A Debtor to Mercy Alone” kept running through my head. It was from the last verse, “…Yet I to the end shall endure…” So what hymn should we sing yesterday in church but that one, and I noticed the context of that phrase in the song as a whole, i.e. […]
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Last week a baby hummingbird fell from it’s nest into our patio. Although he can’t fly properly yet, he has fluttered up into a small tree, where he cheeps urgently every twenty minutes or so, and soon the mother appears to feed him. All day long. It’s amazing to remember that God is aware of […]
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We watched “The Stepford Wives” Saturday night. Definitely reminiscent of wifedom in the Ass’y. Easter Sunday music, “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, brought to mind another verse in Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” And then it all came flooding back to me – clutching that verse like a […]
Read MoreJoe Sperling posted a meditation today on the Assembly bulletin board. What he says it so true, it deserves a larger audience. (In case you’re an Assemblyite who can’t hear the phrase “The Lord” without a shudder, try reading this and substituting the name “Jesus”.) “For I am the Lord, I change not,” (Mal. 3:6). […]
Read MoreTime Magazine today has an article on “6 Ways to Handle Stress”. We…have a lot of misconceptions about who gets stressed out and why. Twenty years ago, psychologists almost exclusively blamed job stress on high workloads or lack of control on the job. More recent studies, says Christina Maslach, a pioneer in burnout research at […]
Read MoreToday I discovered Scot McKnight’s blog, Jesus Creed, and promptly posted the link. I may regret this as I read more of him, but I was impressed with the entries on the first page. To give you a few tasty tidbits: On Faith and Doubt – “I don’t think doubts are dissolved so much as […]
Read MoreSomeone returning recently from Wellspring Retreat sees that the Assembly produced intensity addiction. Insightful revelation! No wonder life often seems insipid now–no more great work of God, no more pressure to pray exalted prayers for it. No more frantic rushing around to get to worship, no more top-volume singing. No more seminar highs, no more […]
Read MoreWhen I was in high school my mother (who was known as SisterMayo in the Assembly), developed a library for Fountain Avenue Baptist Church in Los Angeles. She and I had a great time discovering Christian books that were new to us. I read They Found the Secret by Raymond Edman, president of Wheaton College. […]
Read MoreYesterday, August 2, was my 47th spiritual birthday. How far have I come toward the “first and greatest commandment”? You shall love the Lord your Godwith all your mind and understanding,and with all your heartand with your entire beingand with all your strength. These words shall be uppermostIn your own minds and hearts.
Read MoreThis quote from Mohatma Ghandi popped up in something I was reading this week: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Prior to the discussion of what forgiveness is (is it letting the perpetator off the hook, or not?)there is the question, who is able to forgive? Ghandi says only […]
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It’s fitting that this first blog post should be about C. S. Lewis. He was one of my earliest Christian mentors, years before the Assembly, and he was the one who helped me most afterward. There is a birthday card from Danny stuck in my copy of Mere Christianity as a bookmark, dated 1993. Lewis […]
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A Geftakys Assembly Blog 