Blessed Are The Peacemakers

  The Stewardship of Women and the Nature of Authority I've found myself returning to a question that seems to surface repeatedly throughout scripture, history and even our own day. What happens when God gives His people authority? At first, it seems like an odd question. We usually concern ourselves with what authority has been given, who possesses it and how it ought to be exercised. But the longer I sit with the scriptures, the more I wonder if God is asking a different question altogether. The greater question may not be whether we can exercise authority but whether we can refrain from exercising authority He has not given. That may be one of the central lessons. Again and again, the Lord entrusts His people with stewardships. Parents receive stewardships. Elders receive stewardships. Judges receive stewardships. Women receive stewardships. Communities receive stewardships. Rarely does He assign the whole burden to one person or one office. Instead, responsibiliti...

The Cost of Letting Desire Be Corrected Part 2 of 2 It’s one thing to talk about pure desire in the abstract. It’s another to recognize it, or its absence, in the press of real life. Most of us don’t discover the true state of our desire in moments of peace, but in moments of friction. Desire is easiest to describe when no one opposes us. It’s hardest to hide when the truth costs us something. In Part 1, we saw that truth, God’s love and our desires can remain pure. But purity isn't preserved in theory . Its tested, corrected and revealed in ordinary pressures: challenge, misunderstanding, being wrong, disappointment, community. This is where desire meets reality. And this is where it is corrected. Desire Is Revealed and Corrected in Friction, Not Comfort We usually think we know our desires until conflict, contradiction, delay or humiliation exposes them. God often uses discomfort to reveal mixtu...

  What Remains Pure The Only Things That Cannot Be Corrupted There’s something in us that keeps trying to build things that can’t be corrupted. We form communities. We organize structures and systems. Begin movements. And underneath it, there’s a hope that if we do it right, if we’re careful enough, sincere enough, principled enough, it might hold. That this time , it might stay clean. But over time, something always shifts. We may have the best of intentions. But anything shaped by human hands is also shaped by human desire. Which raises a question that’s a bit harder to answer than it seems: What (if anything) can actually remain pure? This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In this one we'll explore what cannot be corrupted. In Part 2, we will move into the harder question, what it actually looks like in real life to let desire be corrected. Denver answeres the question with remarkable clarity: “In the ‘Sunstone Conference,’ I w...