Blog

• transformation

Early tomorrow morning, I will leave for the Pepperdine Bible Lectures in Malibu, California. This is a four-day conference in which over two thousand people descend on the university campus for in-depth classes and workshops, reconnection with old friends and the opportunity to meet someone for the first time you feel like you have known your entire life.
If you plan to be in the area, or know someone else who will be at Pepperdine this week, please stop by our booth in the Sandbar! I would love to see you, hug your neck, and maybe even grab a cup of coffee and catch up.
One of the things I most enjoy about the Pepperdine Bible Lectures is being surrounded by other people passionate about knowing Christ and making Him known.
This year, as a part of the Spanish program at Pepperdine, on Friday, I will have the privilege of sharing three classes for the women. The overall Lectures theme is Spiritual Rhythms: Scrolls for a Robust Salvation. My three classes are entitled: Spiritual Rhythms of Relationships in Ruth; Spiritual Rhythms of Wisdom in Ecclesiastes; and Spiritual Rhythms through Difficult Times in Esther.
Thanks to the Texas International Bible Institute, these classes will be live-streamed through Zoom. Women from Venezuela, Colombia, and other locations are already signed up to attend the classes remotely.
Our blog theme for the month of May is transformation and community, especially when those two occur in tandem. An excellent reflection of transformation in community is through Lectureships, like this week at Pepperdine, or later this month at the Baxter Institute in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where I will also be speaking. I hope to see many of you at these two excellent opportunities for community and transformation.
Thank you for your prayers for these and other events! May God bless you this month as we reflect on the transformation found in community.

• Jesus

My favorite story of Jesus is the way in which He touched the life of the woman who had suffered from an issue of blood. He healed her because He saw her—not her illness, not her uncleanliness, but rather her value in the kingdom.
Jesus did this often. He saw people in ways that no one else could or would. His own disciples chastised Him when he invited the little children to come to Him. They didn’t understand why He was talking with a Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.
Yet people were drawn to the Living Water with a thirst to be seen for who they truly were, warts and all.
The marginalized were recognized for the first time. The downtrodden were lifted up. Because Jesus offers redemption, not condemnation. He invites us to repentance instead of rejection.
Who else would be proud to have Rahab, the prostitute, and Ruth, the Moabite, in his genealogy?
I am not going to get into any sort of feminist debate or promote any sort of egalitarian ideals. However, I want us to highlight and appreciate how Jesus saw and treated women.

Read more …