Comment highlights for week of February 20, 2011

Posted by Alan Knox on Feb 26, 2011 in comment highlights | 3 comments

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I want to highlight some of the comments that have been left on my blog posts during the past week. Hopefully, this will give more visibility to some of the reasons that I love blogging – dialog and interaction.

For example, Tim left this comment on my post “Embracing and idea“:

Yes, it is very easy to embrace an idea but not the reality. It is very easy to embrace the idea of Jesus and His kingdom but very challenging to embrace Jesus in deed by obeying His commands. The deceiver knows this subtle swap so he helps us set up structures to aid us in moving towards embracing ideas and largely ignoring substance. “Many will come in that day saying “Lord, Lord, did not we …. in your name… depart from me I never knew you.”

Craig, from “Jeph and Craig’s Podversations“, left this comment on my post “Isn’t life ministry?” (By the way, in leaving this comment, Craig voiced the desires and concerns of many people who have contacted me.):

I am in a very similar situation as Wayne. I have a few months left in “ministry” so that i can pursue ministry. I realized a few years ago that ministry is a lifestyle, not an occupation. I’m currently pursuing other employment which I’m finding is quite difficult once you have gone to school for ministry. It doesn’t translate well into much else in our culture. I have faith that God will lead me into my next “ministry” soon enough.

Fred, from “On the Journey“, left a comment on my post “Messy Meetings” describing some of the messiness he has been facing lately:

At first, some of the parties involved were trying to deal with their hurt themselves, or not seeing how they hurt others. I’ve tried to be a peacemaker and emphasize that reconciliation was vital to the health of our body, but it didn’t look like things were moving that way. Things seem to have turned around the last few days. We were all together this morning, and there seems to be at least the beginnings of real reconciliation.

Randi from “Seeds in my Heart” also left a very good comment on the same post. Here is a small part of her comment:

Because we are human, WE can have moments where we don’t “like” each other and don’t “like” the situation we are in or “like” how things are going…. but God doesn’t have those moments because He is not bound by time. He sees His whole child, every moment of their life, beginning to end – good and bad… He is patient and He is sovereign. Our frustration is never His frustration. He knows the story and our detours don’t frustrate His work as Potter.

I actually think it’s beautiful to God when our messiness plays ‘out’ instead of only in. He has to see messiness ALL the time – because He sees our thoughts. We don’t even have any clue the messiness He sees. So if we’re worried about messiness – I guess we ought to figure out what we’re so stressed about. we all know the messy-ness is in – we should be so thankful when it comes “out” because we know authenticity is finally there!

There were also several good comments on my post “Apostles or Elders?” I will highlight this comment written by Mark from “Called Out In Kansas,” but if you haven’t read all the comments, I think it would be very beneficial:

I agree that the functions of an apostle can not be consigned to a pastor/teacher. However I disagree with Bartlett that apostleship is dead. Actually, in practice that gift would SEEM dead, thanks to the improper emphasis on pastoral gifts. In reality I believe the lack of that function on the body is one reason that the body of Christ is so weak, immature and anemic. If Christ gave 4 (or 5) gifts for the maturing of the body, why are not all of them active? One place in the NT states the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, but we do not see that today.