Love Deeply

Love Deeply

Here’s an excerpt from The Inner Voice of Love by one of my favorite authors and thinkers, Henri Nouwen. “Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply.  You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause.  When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken.  But that should not hold you back from loving deeply.  The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful.  It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant.  Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice.  You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds. The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper.  When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you.  They will become part of your self and thus gradually build a community within you. Those you have deeply loved become part of you.  The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community.  The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers...
When Only Death Satisfies

When Only Death Satisfies

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” — Jesus (Matthew 7:12) Jesus sums up Scripture in what is known as the “Golden Rule“.  Treat others the way that you yourself would want to be treated.  Sounds easy enough.  However the reality is that most people won’t treat you the way that they would want to be treated.  When that happens it pretty much always results in hurts, disappointments, and pain, which inevitably leads to bitterness, anger, offense, and unforgiveness.  In a broken world full of broken people, things just seem to get more broken.  It’s sin begetting more sin. One of the greatest areas of struggle in my own life these past couple years has been in the area of forgiveness.  Couple years back I was completely blindsided and betrayed by the ones I loved and trusted most.  I’ve never experienced such hurt in my life before.  In a moment it felt like everything was taken away.  Yet to make matters worse, I was completely abandoned by community.  Not just any community, but a community of Christians, and not just any Christians, but a Christian community of leaders and pastors.  Never would I have imagined that I would be treated the way I was by them.  So when I needed others most, I was left alone to deal with what had just happened.  Forgiving the ones who had hurt me would be tough already, but when I saw that they were welcomed and even celebrated by this community as if they did nothing...
Interview with Dr. Rob Reimer

Interview with Dr. Rob Reimer

No one’s faith grows in isolation.  Everyone needs community as well as pioneers, fathers, and mothers in the faith who have paved the way.  They are the ones whose stories shape ours.  One of those people in my life is Dr. Rob Reimer.  He currently serves as the lead pastor of South Shore Community Church right outside of Boston, MA.  He also teaches at Alliance Theological Seminary for both the M.Div program as well as the Doctorate program.  And that’s where I first met him when I took one of his classes, and since then he has made a tremendous impact in my life.  Last weekend I had the great honor and privilege of sitting down with him and interviewing him about revival. His life has been an excellent example to so many of what it means to live in the light and pursue after intimacy with God.  He is someone I consider to be a true revivalist and an authentic teacher of the faith.  Everything he teaches on and shares about comes straight from his own journey with Jesus.  He speaks with authority because he has walked through everything himself.  Just being around him stirs my soul for more of God.  So when I sat down with him for the podcast, it was no different. The first question I asked him was how he defined revival, and he said it was the restoration and renewal of all things back to the way that God intended before sin entered the world.  That means that when revival comes, the sick are healed, the oppressed are set free, the lost are found, the demonized...