Church Street

Church neighboring daily life.

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Church Street, Princeton
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It would be just like him

The God of the Bible looks like Jesus, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. It would be just like him to go to the cross.

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Practicing Our Scales

Imagine if our walk with Christ, representing his kingdom in the world, were as practiced and pure as Hania Rani’s fingers on the piano keys.

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Rescue

I practice the spiritual discipline of rescuing earthworms on paved surfaces. It's a reminder to me that I can pause what I'm doing, get a little dirty, and help. Also, that I've been given the responsibility to care.

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Your Roots Are Showing

The life that I bring to the world can only be found in my attachment to Christ. His presence with me is essential.

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Connection

I live in a U.S. county with traffic problems. It's a peninsula, and what's not swamp land has been developed. Building new roads is difficult and expensive. Making things worse, roads that could connect don't.

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Kingdom Rick Shafer Kingdom Rick Shafer

Witnesses

Telling our story of life with God.

What was it like to live through 2020? Someday that question will be asked just like some of us have asked about the Great Wars and the Great Depression. We will have lots of stories to tell. And our lives will tell a story too. We are all being changed by the patterns of this year.

The same is true of our life with God. When Jesus says we will be his witnesses (Acts 1:8), he means people will learn about him through our own story. With our lips, we tell of our relationship with him. And with our life, we show how we are being changed by the patterns of his kingdom.

“When they saw the boldness of Peter and John and found out that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were astonished and took note of the fact that these men had been with Jesus.”
— Acts 4:13
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Kingdom Rick Shafer Kingdom Rick Shafer

Can you see it?

Become skillful at discerning the patterns of opposing kingdoms.

All those side-by-side pictures on social media. How fast can you find what's different? For us who are "in the world but not of it", difference-seeing is an important skill.

What's of God's kingdom? And what's of the world?

Jesus shows us what God's kingdom is like (Parables, the Sermon on the Mount, the Great Commandment, the Great Commission, his own life). The Apostle Paul does too (1 Corinthians 13 and Galatians 5, for example). They draw the contrast so we will do the same in our own time and place. Can you see it?

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Forming Rick Shafer Forming Rick Shafer

Yoked

The freedom and joy of ‘life with God’ rather than ‘life for God’.

“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
— Matthew 11:28-30

It's Jesus' invitation to religious people. A life 'for God' is burdensome and exhausting. Here Jesus invites us to live life 'with God'. Yoked to Jesus, we learn by observation and participation. And we never have to wonder if we've done enough. Our souls are refreshed by being with Jesus in the moment, every moment.

The world is refreshed, too, when we bring Jesus and our synced-up lives into every place we go. Or maybe it's best to say Jesus brings us along where he's already at work.

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