Topic: Formation

Joseph models a courageous willingness to be stripped of his sense of entitlement that he might become all God wanted him to be.

While faith is a gift, blessings come to those who are prepared to wrestle with their faith.

Jesus is the door through which we pass to receive life – life in his name – a life of authenticity, a life of freedom, a life of purpose.

God’s refining work is done not through judgement and punishment, but through the transforming power of love.

Jesus calls us to model ourselves on him to embrace a new pattern of full humanity rather than just constrain the worst excesses of an old failed humanity.

The righteousness give to us in Christ, and which we grow into in our following of him, fulfils and exceeds the trajectory set by the biblical law and prophets.

Jesus doesn’t come looking for ready-made heroes, but for the small, damaged and fragile people we are, so that in the company of Jesus, we can become the giants we always dreamed of.

The Bible can be used to justify anything, but when it is approached humbly as a place of prayerful encounter with the risen Christ, it is alive with the breath of God and leads us to life.

Thanks be to God, we are in safe hands. God who has been the author, will also be the finisher of our faith.

God evaluates us only in terms of our growth to fruitfulness, expressed as Christ-like love, and such fruitfulness comes only from our interrelationship with Christ. God deals with us in whatever way will lead to further growth – sometimes that is gently, sometimes it is harshly, always it is for the same purpose.

The foundation of our faith is in a living Christ who enables us to understand the Bible, rather than in a Bible that enables us to understand a dead Christ.

As creatures made in the image of God, imitation of God is the pathway to fullness of life.