Not My Own - Carlo Furlan (Praxis Series - Acts 20)

Money matters.
Burdened with debt
we argue over,
strive for
and
idealize
wealth.

Once accumulated,
we grasp it close,
unwilling to let
anything slip through
our sweaty
fingers.

Beware the greed
masquerading as ambition.
Beware the wolves
who slip in
between the sheep
and the shepherd.

Remember the cost
paid
for your redemption
and be satisfied
with
your bottom line
but dissatisfied
with
the hurting world. 

Gracious giving
benefits the giver
immeasurably.
No thing is mine.
"I am not my own,
but belong, 
body and soul
to my Lord,
Jesus Christ."

Money is not
worth my love
for it is an untrustworthy
suitor,
promising contentment
but
never paying up.

At the Center, Tim Knipp

All is connected
to all.
Wolves change rivers
and 
molecules dance.

God is three
in one.

Three persons,
one God.

Connections abound.
Sparks shoot
and hum across 
the universe -
love lines
connecting
the Three.
United in
compassion toward 
the broken,
anger toward sin,
and
longing for 
connection
with you and I.

At the center
of it all:
relationship.

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.