The Holy Trinity, the imago dei, and our in-Christ life all provide the necessary foundations for a biblically based community, a community rooted in an understanding that every person's greatest need is to know God.
Ken Boa launches a new series on "Corporate Spirituality," focused on our growth in faith in the context of community. Our ability to love, serve others, and edify (and be edified in) the body of Christ must overflow from our own relationship with and security in Christ.
Many people miscalculate the brevity of life and the length of eternity. They put their hope in Jesus for their eternal destiny, but they put their hope in the world for everything else. Scripture calls us to live wisely and well, not presuming upon the future or assuming we have all the time in the world.
Gratitude should be all-pervasive in the Christian life, because there's nothing we have that we didn’t receive from God. The only way we can sustain gratitude and cultivate contentment is by a daily, conscious choice.
If I were asked to explain how Christianity is unique compared to every other religion in the world, I would say it boils down to this one verse: "By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8–9).
"Trust and obey" (the fifth essential in this series) are words so simple, so basic, that their importance can easily escape us. As the primary expressions of faith, though, they’re vital to grasp.
Practicing God’s presence (the fourth essential in this series of eight) is a deeply biblical idea, though the exact phrase is never used in Scripture. Most popularly associated with Brother Lawrence, the phrase, at heart, means “discerning, and developing habits for discerning, an awareness of God’s presence.”
Cultivating right thoughts about our lives and circumstances, considering them in light of eternity, is the third spiritual essential Ken Boa discusses in this eight-part series.
Ken Boa teaches on the second of eight spiritual essentials: loving Jesus. He talks about God's demand that we love Jesus more than anyone else, and His desire that we love Him primarily for who He is rather than just for His gifts/benefits.