“We’ve got this weird compartmentalization thing that happens, where you don’t think God sees all that you are or that if he could or somehow knew who you were going to be he wouldn’t have gone to the cross. Listen, God knew you were going to be messy. Christ knew you were going to be messy. God knows that you’re going to screw up often. He knows that you’re going to be drawn to things that are wicked.

That’s what the cross is all about! That’s the whole point of the cross! Is that you’re gonna fail and you’re going to stumble and you’re going to feel dirty. You’re going to feel awkward. The whole point of the cross of Christ is that they’ll be this mighty picture of His love and pursuit of you despite you. The Cross is necessary because of you but it’s also the picture we have of just how far God is willing to go because he loves you.” — Matt Chandler

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Video Credit: Dennis Lazau

Even though we worry and fret so much, such needless anxiety will avail us nothing. We only plague and trouble ourselves and make matters all the worse. God wants us to look on him as our God and Father in Christ, to call upon him in every time of need and to be confident that he will provide for us.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Circling Kairos

At Grassroots Church one of the avenues we use to grow as disciples (students) of Jesus Christ is through Blocs. (Blocs are a group of people gathered together for a common purpose.) One of the first things we studied at our Bloc was the The Circle with its genesis being a kairos moment.

On paper The Circle looks like the diagram below. There are two sections with three steps within each one. The line moving left to right is your life path and X is your kairos moment. When the kairos moment occurs you can ignore it and let life continue as normal, or you can enter The Circle and explore the kairos moment in more depth.

Kairos Circle

What is a kairos moment?

A kairos moment is an event that happens in your life, good or bad, that is significant to you. This may be a new job, getting fired, getting married, a break-up, an argument, etc. In their book, Building a Discipling Culture, Mike Breen and Steve Cockram define a kairos moment as: 

A kairos moment is when the eternal God breaks into your circumstances with an event that gathers some loose ends of your life and knots them together in his hands. (Breen, 64)

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The futility of finding a risk-free place to stand has paralyzed many of us. I have tasted this in my own pastoral leadership. There are decisions to be made, but I can’t see which is best. There are so many unknowns. The temptation is to run away — if not physically, emotionally. Just think about something else. Put it off. Procrastinate. Hope the problem goes away. But it doesn’t. And our paralysis is serving no one. The paralyzing fear of making a decision serves no one. It is cowardly. Risk is the only way forward.
John Piper, Risk Is Right, Pg. 20
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Romans 8:26, 27 ESV

Welcome To The New Blog

Welcome to the new gregramer.com. I am hope you like the new site and all she has to offer. I am excited to be able to post various forms of media in a unique and convenient way my previous blogging service did not offer.

As you can tell there are no posts from my previous site on here — yet. I am in the process of remedying this. I don’t plan on bringing every post I have done in recent years over, however I do plan on bringing over some of my, and hopefully some your, favorite posts to the new site.

Stay tuned.

Greg

If we truly believe that God is alive, good, and at work in our lives, that changes our attitudes and actions. Hope helps us get out of bed in the morning, seek the Lord in prayer, and face whatever the day may bring. But sometimes we use hope in a sinful way, convinced that our desired identity will come in the future rather than living in the identity that is already a present reality.
Mark Driscoll, Who Do You Think You Are, P. 11