Thursday, August 25, 2011

If You're Preaching Sunday ...

... well, we'd still go with Moses the Black. But it might also be helpful to remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. … we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death —- we give over our lives to death. …

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. ... because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die…

The call to discipleship… means both death and life… [It] sets the Christian in the middle of the daily arena against sin and the devil. Every day he encounters new temptations, and every day he must suffer anew for Jesus Christ’s sake. The wounds and scars he receives in the fray are living tokens of this participation in the cross of his Lord.


The Cost of Discipleship, quoted here.

2 comments:

Pastor Joelle said...

Gotta go with the first Moses. I'm doing the semi-continuous OT readings. People are loving it and it so easy these stories nearly preach themselves. People think they know these stories but they don't.

Father Anonymous said...

Y'know, I've been thinking about the semicontinuous series lately. Never done it, but maybe next summer.