Califoregon Living

This was a book recommended to me by some of my Thursday homeschool group friends.  It was an excellent re-enforcement  after reading "Crazy Love."

Here are my points of impact that I had from this book:

-We need prayer.  Like roses need water, we need a conncection to God that sustains, guides and makes us into something beautiful.

-Amos 5: 21-24 synopsis: Amos tell the people of God to stop with all their songs and worship and feasts and festivals, and take care of the poor.

-Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants to do.

-Prayer and action must go together.

The Lord’s Prayer

-Make the Lord’s prayer a model for daily life.

-Luke 11:1 "Lord, teach us to pray."  The Lord’s prayer is a prayer of community and reconciliation.  It begins with "our".  "Our Father"- the Son is calling out to the Father.

-We are created to love and be loved.

-John 17 is Jesus’ longest prayer.

-Our Father in Heaven – The prayer begins with a transcendent God beyond the boundaries of this world.

-For the disciples, "father" was not just a person,  but a social construct of authority, power, and sustainer of life.

-Jesus introduced the intimate name, "Abba" ("Daddy").  We cannot keep God at a safe distance as "King" or "Lord".

Matthew 23:9 –  "Do not call anyone on earth "Father", for you have one Father, and He is in heaven.

-Jesus told the disciples to not bring anything with them. This was a vision of interdependence, trusting that God would provide for them. The disciples would enter a town and stay in homes. If not, they would move on. This made clear that the church was not only to practice hospitality, but to be dependent on hospitality too.

-The new family of our Father….Family members who are starving and homeless, dying of AIDS and living in the midst of war.

Hallowed Be Your Name, Your Kingdom Come

-“Hallowed be your name” is to as that the God who comes near to us would make us into a community that could be called holy.

-to believe that we have been made part of the people called Israel.

-Jesus came to do what Israel could not do on their own- to live a life worthy of God’s name.

-”Hallowed be your name” is a prayer that God would teach us to live a new way of life.

–Forgetting ourselves, we become the sort of joyful people who hallow God’s name by how we live with one another.

-Look into the Biblical concept of Jubilee. Jubilee is the redistribution of that which had been unjustly hoarded.

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” – We are asking God for Jubilee.

Those who have been trained to trust God for provision are the only people who will ever believe that Jubilee is a good idea; otherwise, it looks like losing everything you have worked hard to earn.

-But if we never earn anything – if everything is a gift- then is begins to make sense that God would want to redistribute gifts as a guard against injustice in a broken and sinful world.

Our Daily Bread

–Paul scolds the young church for desecrating the table of the Lord
(1 Cor. 11) Some came hungry, while others were stuffed.

-We cannot pray “our Father” together on Sunday and deny bread to our brothers and sisters on Monday.

-Charities become the brokers for our compassion toward the poor.

-What would it look like to re-imagine our offerings as God intended them to be – instruments of a redistributive economy.

-Missionaries of charity Prayer: “Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow men throughout the world, who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them today, though our hands, their daily bread and through our understanding live, give peace and joy. Amen.

-Relational tithe – www.relationaltithe.com

-The kingdom that we beg God to send “on earth as it is in heaven” is a kingdom of generosity.

-Deuteronomy 15:11: “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward those of your people who are poor and needy in your land.”Lead Us Not Into Temptation

-The moment we are no longer tempted by the “pots of meat” the empire offers, we should be concerned – for if we can’t feel the temptation, we have probably given into it.

–If the tempter can’t steal our soul, he can keep us busy that pulls us away from community, reconciliation and living.

 -Mother Theresa: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love. It is not how much you do but how much love you put into doing it.”

Deliver Us From Evil

–We are taught to pray that we be kept from pain. Suffering is the inevitable plight of Christians who are disturbed by the discomfort of their neighbors. The way of the cross is not a way of safety and comfort.

-Matt 10:28: “We should not fear those things that can destroy the body, but we are to fear that which can destroy the soul.”

-While the ghettos mat have their share of violence and crime, the posh suburbs are home to more demonic forces – numbness, complacency, and comfort.

-Saying “amen”, we commit ourselves to be the instruments that enact God’s kingdom on earth.Love and Unity for the Sake of the World

 -The greatest challenge is maintaining the distinctiveness of God’s kingdom, which is so radically nonconforming to the patterns of this world.

-When we buy into the politics of this world, we cannot see how prayer makes a difference in us our in our enemies.

-John 17 is a prayer that helps us see how God means to introduce a new kingdom into the world.

-Jesus’ heart:

For us to experience eternal life before death

To be set apart from the patterns of the world

To be one as God is one

-Living in community allows us to know people well enough to see the work they have to do to meet their basic needs.

-Loving in community often looks like choosing to do someone’s dirty work for them. That’s the community of Jesus. We are not just about praying for the messy needs of the world in comfortable places that insulate us from suffering. We are about getting on our knees and getting our hands dirty in that mess, breaking a sweat working in the gutters of this world.-”Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.”

 -God has a plan to save a whole world through this peculiar people called “church”.

John 17:9- Jesus chooses not to pray for the world because he wants to save the world. The reason we are not to be of the world is so we may be for the world.

-Why we are eager to ask what we can do for the world, God is more concerned with who we are in the world.

-Christians seem to feel more allegiance to the positions of the political left or the right, than we feel to God’s people.

-Rather than share what we have in common so that no one has a need, we self-segregate into conservative and liberal congregations or race or class…