“The cross of Christ shines through each of the four sacred gifts (value, strength, grace, joy) of our God-given callings. We all stand equally condemned under God’s righteous Law, yet equally forgiven and redeemed by His grace. The cross is the lens through which I must interpret every human interaction and relationship.”- Rev. Jeffrey Leininger […]
“The reality is, most of our daily interactions . . . have been brought into our lives with little choice on our part. Each of these can be regarded as callings, people for whom Christ died whose lives have been woven into ours. It is precisely because most of the relationships we have are not […]
“Sometimes our strivings to ‘be like God’ can become self-made super-works that we subconsciously employ to pay off our sins. The trap is that there’s just as much sin in the spiritual stuff as the earthly stuff — just ask anyone who’s ever worked . . . in the church. Often this leads to greater […]
“In the actions, activities, and attitudes of His ministry among us, Jesus both embraced and restored all that was wrong with the creation. In love, He did not abandon His creation to its destructive rebellion, but neither did He remove it from its earthly origins. Jesus descended into the dirt, declaring it good again through […]
“God loves dirt. God made dirt. After creating all other living things through the power of His Word, God knelt down into the dust, forming humanity with His own hands. . . . with human beings, God got His hands dirty.”- Rev. Jeffrey Leininger “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the […]
Discerning God at work through you, amid the faces, places, and spaces of ordinary life, means nothing further needs to be accomplished but humble faithfulness with the small stuff.”- Rev. Jeffrey Leininger “God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world […]
” . . . a seemingly commonplace activity has sacred import because God [works] in, through, and behind people to serve His creation. These . . . can effectively be accomplished through anyone – believers or not. Christians, however, recognize God’s activity through them, rejoice in it, seek to grow in it, and desire God’s […]
“Martin Luther had a curious but helpful way of talking about [God working through sinful, ordinary people]. He described people doing God’s work as His masks — Larvae Dei (masks of God) is the Latin phrase. . . . We’re His masks, giving the appearance that it’s merely human beings at work. But remove our […]
“Faithfulness in the ordinary, everyday callings of life — ‘sweating the small stuff.’ so to speak — is the beginning of any great task and a virtue of any great person. . . . we are called to be faithful in the smallest and largest of callings. God sees us ‘sweating the small stuff,’ and […]
“We all want to make a difference, move mountains by faith, slay Goliaths with but five smooth stones, and leave a legacy of love and service. When we come to understand the depths and power of Christ’s love, Christians feel compelled to take that faith into action in both word and deed.”- Rev. Jeffrey Leininger […]
Equally dangerous, however, is the false god of the future — the forward-staring face of Janus. This false god can take a number of forms, but the most prevalent is that of godless anxiety. . . . we become hindered with constant fear, worry, and uncertainty. A thousand doubts and what-ifs arise as we pay […]
“A fixation on the past, attempts to reestablish it, and constant comparisons to . . . present ministry [make] new initiatives and new energy impossible. The attempts at repristination — seeking to restore a lost, golden, and more pristine era — [cause] . . . a fall into Janus-like idolatry.”- Rev. Jeffrey Leininger “The grass […]