We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Corrective Love
Kathy Escobar posted the other day about providing “corrective experiences” to those who have been hurt in the past. How many of us have approached Christians with our wounds and have been offered more of the same instead of the love and acceptance we’re longing for? How beautiful it would be if the church could become a place where we could reveal ourselves in all of our messy realness and receive the gift of a love that counters what we might expect. Let’s commit to being that for one another and for those who tip-toe into our places of worship.
From Kathy’s blog post:
it gets me all fired up about what could be if we focused less on programming and more on relationship. less on theological correctness and more on practice. less on the surface and more on the deep places of our hearts.
yeah, my dream is that the body of Christ was widely known as an army of healers, people who…
blow minds and hearts away with Jesus’ radical love and acceptance.
spark some freaky feeling inside hurting people where they go “huh, that’s weird, i thought christians were judgmental”
ignite a flicker of a flame inside that says “maybe God does love me”
restore dignity where it’s been stripped.
build worth and value where it’s been destroyed.
are safe and healthy and embody what so many of us didn’t get in our broken families.
may we play our small part in creating corrective experiences where others feel God’s love, hope, mercy, dignity, justice, and heart for them through us–his flawed but willing ambassadors this side of heaven.
Category: General
Tags: Growth, healing, Kathy Escobar, Kingdom Living, Love, safety
Related Reading
The Kingdom of God (Part 2)
The Church is called to be nothing less than “the body of Christ,” a sort of corporate extension of Jesus’ incarnate body. We are called to replicate who Jesus was by manifesting who Jesus is. And this is how we expand the dome in which God is king—the Kingdom of God. By definition, therefore, the…
Sermon Clip: Tough To Love
Learning how to love the people in our life that we find challenging to deal with is often very difficult. This week in Heart Smart Greg Boyd looks at some biblical examples and instructions on how to love our enemies in the same way we love our friends. Full Sermon Here: http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/tough-to-love
Jesus Said a Lot of Weird Stuff. What If He Actually Meant it?
Our friend Shane Claiborne has a way with words (and deeds). In this article from a few years ago (sent to us by a reader: thanks Jason!) he asks the question, What if Jesus meant all that stuff? How would the rest of the world see us if we actually did what Jesus did? From the…
Where is Human Free Will in the Bible?
The Bible is emphatic on its teaching that humans possess free will and are capable of originating evil. Notice, for example, that in the very first chapter of the Bible God commands humans to be fruitful and exercise dominion over the animal kingdom and the earth (Gen. 1:26). The fact that God must command us…
How Should We Respond to Bullies?
Greg answers a question from parents as to how their child should respond to a bully.
A Cross-Like Church
When God’s church loves like God loves—which means valuing the other at cost to self—it will puzzle those outside the church. While such love might cause the religious to rail with outrage, it will cause the searching and the hungry to ask, “how can people love like this?” In God’s plan, this puzzle is what…