Prayer - Carlo Furlan, Acts 18 & 2 Cor. 1:8

Intimacy -
close and warm,
rough and awkward -
tightly bound.
A personal God.
Not a guarantee for
easy living
or the absence of pain
but 
a close-hugging presence,
always there.

Encouraging words
spoken into the darkness
can sustain us -
if only we can hear them 
through our lamentations.

Despair happens.
Overwhelming circumstances 
happen.
Death happens.
Yet we continue
to hope
and pray
and ask for prayer.

Prayer is a mystery,
waves of words
washing the shore
again and again
with no apparent result
at times.
Yet the God who has power
to raise the dead
can hear us
when we call.
So I will call
and hope
and
be 
encouraged.

Dynamic Word - Tim Knipp, Acts 18

Into a whirlwind of
loose living,
spiritual blindness
and
licentious lechery,
Paul set up camp.
Day by day
he toiled with words,
reasoning
and challenging,
teaching the story
of Christ crucified.
In synagogues
and on street corners,
he spoke
and cajoled -
unwilling to be silenced
because
God's word was an
active, living fire
burning through him
and into their lives.

That dynamic word
continues to speak
today
directly and personally
to you and I.

"Bothered by the Lost," Kellie Gamble; Praxis series (Acts 17:16-34)

In Athens then
and here and now,
the spiritual world
seethes
and
titillates -
the curious
taste-test
at a buffet of options.
Intellectual debates
champion
various ideas.
Some earnestly seek truth
and others joust
and spar
with words to simply
show off their
academic status.

"The called"
are bothered
by the lost,
groping in the dark.
Each idol
falsely chosen
burdens the heart.
One who is called
steps into the
river of culture,
polluted though it may be,
speaks to the
misplaced desires
and
affirms the intent.

Knowing the culture,
reading their books,
listening to their questions -
those spoken
and tacit -
must come first.

Look for connections
and intersections -
touch points
that can lead to
the sharing of Truth
in big
and little
doses.

Some truth is hard to swallow
and to speak,
but must be spoken.
Words are seeds to sow,
some will shrivel
and some
take root.

Essential as Air; Praxis series - Tim Knipp (Acts 16)

Truth -
essential
as air.

It resonates with
the successful,
upright Lydia
who needs freedom
from the illusion
of self-sufficiency.
Her open heart recieves.
She breathes.

It obsesses the slave girl
possessed by a spirit,
coiled like a snake
around her heart.
She needs freedom
inside and out -
a breaking of locks.
Imperfect Peter
unleashes power
that shatters
her shackles
in the name of Christ.

It touched the stolid jailer,
over-muscled,
disciplined,
with a heart of stained
steel.
The jailer needs his
expectations 
overturned,
his charred past
washed clean.
 He reaches hands,
fingernails gummed with
his victim's blood,
to grasp salvation,
then tenderly nurses
wounds
with those same
hands.

Truth.
Essental as air
to each
and
all.

Tim Knipp - PRAXIS

Lydia, high end successful fashionista. Self-made and self sufficient meets her sufficiency.

Just Jesus, Carlo Furlan - Praxis series (Acts 15)

Confrontation swirls -
words sharpened
and hurled -
yet reason prevails...
momentarily.

Flesh cutting advocates
are not sadistic monsters,
but well-intentioned
believers
who appreciate
the parameters of the Law.

Yet Peter descibes a new law,
a new way:
beauty will rise from ashes.

Don't make it difficult
for people who are
turning to God.

We are so good
at adding conditions
and clauses
to Grace,
yet
we would be the first
to complain
if handed a sixty pound
backpack at the door. (Matt. 23:4)

What sort of welcome 
is this?
What reflection
does this show
of God's heart?

Is this a club
that only the well-bathed,
well-behaved
and monochromatic 
may attend?

Would Jesus be welcomed
in such a place?

Life - full life -
is what He offers,
not a life of dry regulations
and a backpack
overloaded with
guilt
and do's 
and don't's.

Just Jesus 
plus nothing
equals Grace.

Tim Knipp - PRAXIS

In the middle of my mess, I am not alone. He is with me. He takes my hand and rescues me.