Living in Exile
Living In Exile: “Resurrection”
Defeat is swallowed up in victory, death is swallowed up in life; the gates of the realm of the dead (hades) will not prevail against God’s assembled people because Jesus has ob...
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Living In Exile: “Homecoming”
How does God come to us? Not in wrath, not in raw power, but lowly riding on the colt of a donkey. The king comes but with peace not war in his hands. This is why the gates are ...
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Living In Exile: “Glimpsing Glory”
C. S. Lewis talks about a mistake we all make; we glimpse something in a sunset, for example, or a piece of music and it reminds us of a longing, so we try to ‘get back into it’...
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Living in Exile: “Cost of Discipleship”
There is something fundamentally challenging in the Christian gospel: those who want to be saved must die. Any attempt to avoid this central truth is merely religion that cannot...
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Living in Exile: “Securing the Church”
Churches like Northview can feel very fragile; there’s budgets, volunteers, time constraints, and personality conflicts to navigate. Not to mention the sidelining done by the cu...
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Living in Exile: “Rendezvous”
The wilderness can be a terrifying place. Whether it is wind and waves, hunger and temptation, or loneliness and rejection the place of exile is unsettling. In that place God’s ...
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Living In Exile: “Multiplying Gifts”
The eyes of the flesh or the eyes of the kingdom; with which set of eyes will we look at life and ministry? Its an essential question to ask and answer as we live in our place o...
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Living In Exile: “The New Family”
Families have been the backbone of human history. It has been by having children that we’ve carried on and have had a future. However, in the kingdom of God, the natural family ...
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Living In Exile: “Least in the Kingdom”
Jesus is a new moment of salvation in God’s history with his creation. As a result those who enter through him enjoy a greater privilege. This grace is truly awe-inspiring!
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Living In Exile: “Dangerous Dining”
Our work, at its heart, is invitational. And, as Jesus reminds his opponents, the kingdom is coming to those who have typically been excluded from entry. While this grace refuse...
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Living In Exile: “Defeating Satan On His Turf”
When we do our work of kingdom witness to our neighbours we have an enemy that is working to disrupt that work. Belief in the devil is at an all time low, but there is a kingdom...
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Living In Exile: “Preparing For Ministry”
In this scene we have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all acting and moving. This is the moment of Jesus’s baptism and the preparation for his ministry. He receives his...
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Living In Exile: “Preaching Fire”
When the moment of God’s rescue arrives it is never just a rescue from our dire circumstance. No matter what our situation is, when God moves he moves to change us. The metaphor...
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Living In Exile: “A New Beginning”
Certain details seem very familiar: Joseph, a dream, and salvation, but other parts are strangely different: a pregnant virgin and a human saviour who is “God with us.” Sometime...
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Seeing the Future
Being in exile can be an extremely distressing way to live and hard to keep going—swimming against the stream. In order to keep swimming it is essential to know the future and b...
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Sorting Out the Lines
In the place of exile it can be easy to get caught up in either/or thinking which keeps everything polarized. That way we are always getting caught up in both cultural or religi...
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Honestly Serving the Other
It can be very tempting when we realize our place of powerlessness to become afraid. We know that fear causes us to react in a variety of ways such as flight/flight or freeze/ap...
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Strange, Stranger, Strangest
When we find ourselves as strangers in a strange place we can be called on, and be tempted to, conform to the majority host culture. However, it is by remaining strange that we ...
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We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
Christians, once upon a time, we in the centre of power for our culture. However, now we have been moved to the margins and our voice has become weak. This is what Scripture ref...
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