Posts

Featured Post

Welcome to the Forest Parish

-
Image
​A Place of Hearth, Home, and Holy Ground ​ Dear friends in Christ, ​Welcome to this clearing in the woods. Just as the forest offers shelter to all and the hearth provides warmth to the weary, I hope this space serves as a sanctuary for your spirit. ​There are many voices in the world, but here is the rhythm of my own heart and ministry—a way of life rooted in the ancient soil of the Gospel and the quiet light of the home fire. ​The Three Great Trees: A Foundation of Faith ​In my journey, three truths stand like ancient oaks, providing shelter and strength: ​ The Living Word: Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh. Apart from Him, the true God cannot be fully known. In Jesus, we see the face of a God who is Love, and whose Gospel is the path of Peace. ​ The Gift of Grace: Salvation is found by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone. Like the rain that falls on the forest floor, grace is a gift—unearned, refreshing, and life-giving. ​ T...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bible Verses for Lent

-
Image
Used with kind permission from Included by Grace
Post a Comment
Read more

Following the Prince of Peace

-
Image
  A Christian Witness Against War What Christians through the centuries have said about violence, the sword, and the way of Jesus — from the Early Church Fathers to Spurgeon, Moody, Bonhoeffer, and beyond. Resource compiled from christian pacifism blog This post gathers the Christian witness against war from across two thousand years of church history. It is not primarily a political argument. It is a spiritual one. The question it asks is simply this: what does faithfulness to Jesus look like when the drums of war begin to beat? What have faithful men and women said — not just in our time, but throughout the centuries? Their answers are worth hearing. ✦ ✦ ✦ The Early Church: "A Christian Must Not Kill, Ever" Before Constantine, before the church was entangled with empire, Christians held a remarkably consistent position on violence. The earliest believers understood, from the teaching of Jesus himself, that their warfare was not of this world. Their testimony is striking in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Sell Your Cloak and Buy a Gun?"

-
Image
  ✦ Reading Scripture as it was written — not as we wish it to be Scripture & Interpretation Why context still matters when Christians reach for Luke 22:36 Every few months, the debate flares up again about guns and weapons. Even in countries that generally don't have a high level gun issue. Someone, almost always identifying as a Christian, drops Luke 22:36 like a trump card:   "Jesus told his disciples to buy swords. He would want you armed today." It's a compelling sound bite. It's also a textbook case of reading a verse while ignoring everything around it. Don't get me wrong we all do it sometimes. But, in cases like this it is profoundly dangerous. The Scene Jesus and his disciples are on their way to the Mount of Olives — just hours before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. The atmosphere is charged with foreboding. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, Jesus tells them that Scripture is about to be fulfilled in him: he will be numbered among the transgressor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Charles Spurgeon: On War and Christians

-
Image
  ✦ ✦ ✦ "Long Have I Held That War Is an Enormous Crime " The Forgotten Voice of Spurgeon Against the Unrighteousness of War Compiled from the Sermons & Addresses of C. H. Spurgeon · Charles Haddon Spurgeon — the "Prince of Preachers," whose sermons filled the Metropolitan Tabernacle week after week with thousands of listeners and whose printed words reached millions across the Victorian world — held a view on war and Christians that modern conservative, fundamentalist, and evangelical readers would find startling. He was, in the most direct and unambiguous terms, opposed to war. Not cautiously skeptical of it. Not quietly troubled by it. Opposed to it — on Christian grounds, from the pulpit, in print, again and again across the breadth of his ministry. Laurence M. Vance, who has studied Spurgeon's writings on the subject at length, has noted that "Spurgeon considered the spirit of war to be absolutely foreign to the spirit of Christianity" and tha...
Post a Comment
Read more

What the Church Always Knew: Two Thousand Years of Christian Voices Against War

-
Image
My nine-year-old son Ezra was talking today about the Greek gods — Zeus, Ares, Loki and the rest — and how they were famous for killing people, even each other. Gods of power. Gods of war. Gods who took what they wanted and destroyed what stood in their way. Then he stopped and said something that I haven't been able to shake: Jesus was different. He chose to die for love instead of kill for it. Nine years old. Isaiah wrote that "a little child shall lead them," and I think he was onto something. Because in one quiet observation, Ezra put his finger on what makes Christ unlike every other figure in the history of religion. The gods of every empire have always looked like the empires that worshipped them — powerful, armed, triumphant in battle. Jesus looked like a man on a cross, forgiving the people who put him there. That difference is not incidental. It is the whole point. And it turns out that an enormous number of Christians — across two thousand years, from the earli...
Post a Comment
Read more