PARENTING & HOSPITALITY

'...if we have had a ministry to the lost, and if our children have seen us embracing our neighbors who are struggling, or hardened, or falling under the weight of sin and tragedy, perhaps, just perhaps, our children will trust us with their deep things. Perhaps they will remember that we embraced our neighbors and strangers, that we loved them and prayed for them, and that we were not jostled or unsettled to share block parties or BBQs, our churches and our homes, with troubled people. Perhaps our love of those image bearers, all of them, especially the difficult ones, will be a pledge to our children that the mosaics of their private lives are safe with us.'

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered, p.158.

HOSPITALITY

'Hospitality begins with loving the stranger. So the first reality check to do id this: if everybody at your table is on the same page and from the same side of the tracks, you aren't practicing hospitality. You may need to do a heart-check here as well. It is easier to feel safe in the company of people who are just like you, who struggle and identify with the same things you do. But creating a safe space is not the ultimate point or purpose of Christian hospitality.'

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered, p.153.

CONTROVERSY OVER SIN

'It is almost incredible how much ground the devil takes when he has once made sin a matter of controversy: some are of one mind, and some of the other; you are of one opinion, and I am of another. If it were ever a controversy whether drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, swearing, stealing, or any villainy were a sin or not, it would be committed more commonly and with much less regret of conscience. By this means, good men themselves are dangerously disabled to resist sin, and are more prepared to commit it. Take heed lest the devil cast you into this sleep of carnal security.'  

Richard Baxter in Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered, p.135.

IDENTITY & TEMPTATION

'Making an identity out of temptation is like putting on the opposing team's jersey at a ball game and then taking to the field: it is confusing, deceptive, and dangerous. How can we make an identity out of temptation? By collapsing what you desire with who you are. By collapsing what tempts you or what trips you up with who you will become.'

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered, p.83.

TEMPTATION

'Temptation yielded to is lust deified.'
Oswald Chambers in Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered, p.75.

BIBLE READING & PRAYER

'If we rush through Bible reading and prayer time, we miss the blessing and the power. Often because of misplaced priorities, we unwittingly limp along on a starvation diet of Scripture, forgetting that we have an appointment with Satan, our deceiver and accuser, the minute we rise from our reading chair. Our time in the Word and prayer should change us. Through it, we should be transformed, equipped, encouraged, and prepared. We should never neglect our Bible reading and prayer time, knowing that we do so only at our own spiritual peril.' 

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered, p.57.

TEMPTATION

'Temptation patterns linger, but they do not rule your life anymore and they do not define you. Temptation patterns are outsiders to your true nature in Christ. They don't co-reign with Christ even as they remain. But if you are alive, you will struggle with temptation. And if you have become an expert in practicing a particular sin, you can bet your bottom dollar that you have body memories than can recall this well-practiced sin to mind. I sure do. It is crucial for those of us with long track records of cultivating indwelling sin to know our enemy: woe to you if you grow sentimental about these loitering temptation patterns and try to make a little room for them in your life.'

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, p.55. 

THE GOSPEL

'The gospel is a story about a king who appears as a plumber's assistant.'
Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.265.

HERESY

'The providential reason God allows heresy among the faithful, according to the ancient Christian writers, is to challenge the worshiping community to correct its exaggerations so as to bring it back into the balanced consensus.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.165.

MODERNITY VS. ORTHODOXY

'Modernity has only lasted less than a dozen generations, while orthodox Christianity has already flourished for more than four hundred generations and shows no sign of fatigue. Yet orthodoxy seems like the newcomer in the university and to the cultural elites, since that is where it has been most forgotten. 

The list of modernities since the patristic period that have been transcended by orthodoxy is too long to describe here. Tribalism, feudalism, nominalism and social utopianism provide examples.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.164.