Mission Matters Blog
World Missions: The latest blog posts from ALL the Highfields Contributors ...
Love and fear... revisited
Some new thoughts on an old theme...
Huw Williams | 13:38, Wednesday 15 May 2013 | Turin, Italy
I've written about love and fear before, but these two themes seem to keep re-emerging in my life and ministry so I am determined to explore them a bit further.
no-one ... is neutral in terms of their response to Jesus
Take last Sunday's sermon for example; it struck me when studying Luke 8:26-39 how no-one in this account is neutral in terms of their response to Jesus. Everyone in this passage is moving in one direction or another in relation to him - they are either pulling back from Jesus in fear, or being drawn to him in love. The demonic powers possessing Legion repeatedly beg Jesus for mercy in their terror - a powerful indication that although this is a power contest, in reality it is no contest at all. Legion himself meets Jesus in a state of fear that he has come to torture him. Even the locals who come to investigate the day's events pull back from Jesus and ask him to leave, out of fear (v35, 37).
Only the man they once called Legion actually changes direction, the result of his meeting from Jesus is total transformation - the man who once cringed in terror at Jesus' feet and begged for mercy (v28), now sits in the same place in loving devotion (v35).
they are either drawn to Jesus or they want to push him away
Everyone in the passage is moving - they are either drawn to Jesus or they want to push him away, their heart responses are motivated by love or by fear. The challenge is obvious, yet deeply searching and requiring profound reflection. What is my heart response to the person of Jesus? Am I a Legion who may at one time have fallen back from him in fear and begged him not to harm me, but am now drawn to him in love and begging to stay close to him? Or am I one of the locals who look right over the beautiful, personal miracle of love which Jesus has done, and see only power, reasons to be scared and to push him away?
---o0o---
ALL the Mission Blog posts from the Highfields Contributors:
- Love and fear... revisited
- Some new thoughts on an old theme...
- Not just for pastors
- Some thoughts on my book of the year so far...
- Calm in the storm
- Reflecting on preparing a sermon...
- Synthesis
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- Rejoicing in the change of season...
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- A conversation with a sinking feeling...
- Happy Birthday, Kitty
- Kitty celebrated her first birthday on Wednesday.
- No interruption
- Some distractions are welcome, even on the busiest of days.
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- Reporting
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- The issue of the heart
- I keep learning these little lessons in seeing what's there...
- Rediscovering discovery... again
- What do you do with those 'harder' books of the Bible?
- Rediscovering discovery
- Our 'retreat week' last week didn't quite go according to plan...
- Daily miracles
- Reflections on half-term week.
- Transformation
- When the snow finally arrives...
- A Better God
- You never know who you might get chatting to around here...
- Almost Persuaded?
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- Andy Stanley's 'Principle of the Path' is an excellent read as you look ahead to the rest of 2013.
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- The strange gift of time...
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- Why is that true repentance is so elusive?
- Only 355 days until next Christmas
- Celebrating Christmas in Torino...
- Why the manger?
- Some reflections for some of the "why's" of Christmas...
- Hey Joe
- Life can get messy sometimes...
- Cowper in Italy
- A little home comfort...
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- ...but then again, it sure helps sometimes.
- Glad To Be Back
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- Let the Nations be Glad!
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- Autumn in Torino...
- Some thoughts on Prayer
- We can sometimes ignore some features of even the best-known passages of the Bible.
- Back to Africa
- Highfields' Associate Pastor Phil Jenkins reflects on this summer's trip to Namibia, the country where he used to work.
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- Some thoughts on Elgar, Shakespeare and contemporary culture...
- Changed lives
- Just what exactly does it take to change a life?
- Call and response
- We were excited to hear that both the International Church of Torino and Highfields seemed to coincide with looking at the book of Titus.
- The importance of journeys
- Thoughts on the importance of not standing still.
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- Seeing the heart of God in the love of His people.
- Focusing the eyes
- A little reflection on babies and studying the book of Ruth.
- On routines, on 4am alarm calls, and other things...
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- A Welshman in Torino...
- So how did a Welshman in Italy celebrate a Grand Slam last Saturday?
- In an airport lounge...
- I write this in an airport departure lounge, and I am surrounded by life in miniature.
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- Some thoughts on Twitter, technology and tolerance.
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- Yesterday I took a little walk down our road but a big step into another world
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- Koinonia!
- Greek scholars will recognise the word. The rest of us just say “fellowship“!
- On 'Eugene Onegin'...
- So what’s been playing on my CD player recently?
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- More snow yesterday and now it seems the big freeze has come.
- Concerning Hobbits
- If you know me well, you’ll be aware that I’m a bit of a Tolkien nut. I’m not one of those Tolkien nuts who is learning to speak Elvish, but in relative terms, I’m a big fan.
- In Halls of Splendour
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- Morning Prayer Meeting
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- The Shortest Day...
- One of my usual Christmas rituals I shall miss the most this year will be Carols from King’s
- What Christmas means to... Valerio
- In our Christmas guest service last Sunday, I asked Valerio, one of the young men in our church, if he would share a quick two or three minutes with the congregation on the subject of "What Christmas means to me."
- Sunday mornings
- Sunday mornings can feel a little hectic. When you meet in a school every Sunday, there's always setting up to be done,
- And the earth was without form...
- We stare into a mass of grey, as thick and as impenetrable as the clouds which have been casting rain upon the city, in such unrelenting fashion, for the past five days.
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- There’s a guy who stands on the corner of Piazza Statuto and plays a saxophone.
- Far from a monologue...
- We wrapped up our sermon series in Philippians this last Sunday with the last verses of the epistle.
- On Coffee....
- In the move to Torino, there are some things that have taken some adjusting to. The coffee isn’t one of them.
- Practising and Preaching
- I've had one of those weeks. You know, one of those weeks where all things seem to conspire to tell you how bad you are at everything.
- On words....
- So I've been thinking a bit about words. Actually I've been thinking a lot about words.
- ...I wanted to live deliberately...
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- City Life
- “Look at that street! Can you believe we live in this city?” said Alison the other evening as we walked home. And she had a good point.
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- Gustav Mahler and the Apostle...
- One of the things I knew would miss most in our move was, of course, making music.
- The Great Outdoors...
- The other evening, we returned to our apartment after a busy day, to discover that our street had been transformed into the scene of a party!
- Send/Receive
- I click this button on my computer dozens of times every day. Just to confirm that no earth-shatteringly important emails have come in during the last five minutes.
- Priorities in Mission?
- I’ve been re-reading David Hesselgrave’s book “Paradigms in Conflict” as preparation for the mission module we run this term on our Network ministry training course.
- Spiritual Nuggets from Cape Town 2010
- Lausanne One-Liners:
- Lausanne Hears From The Suffering Church
- Yesterday was wet and stormy in Cape Town so my planned trip to Robin Island was not possible - there were no boats sailing due to the weather.
- Incredible encounters in Cape Town
- Lausanne 2010 in Cape Town has begun. For me it started on the plane between Doha and Jo'burg. My seat was next to two women and I could see they had a Cape Town 2010 information sheet.
- The Third Lausanne Congress
- On Friday this week I leave the UK for South Africa to attend the third Lausanne Congress on world evangelization.
