Brenda L Crouch

@markchironna A good reminder!

You cannot skip the hard work of thinking things through. But the hard work is not the destination. It is the road. A lot of people set up camp on the road and call it home.

@markchironna I lament for what the “desert” represents to westerners who are consumed with acquiring power and possessions. True formation doesn’t come w/out pain and crushing. It develops slowly-generationally. It makes us aliens in our own homes. Beginners walking in Cruciform tension.

The desert tradition did not produce gentle elders who only affirmed. It produced elders who loved deeply enough to confront. The abbas and ammas understood that arrogance and hubris are not minor character flaws but spiritual dangers that, left unaddressed, will distort everything a person touches, their relationships, their ministry, their capacity to hear God. The desert environment itself served as a corrective to the ego. Timothy Carson observes that the barren expanse was designed to strip away material possessions, carnal desires, and self-centeredness, creating space for virtue to flourish where inflated self-regard once stood. Neil Pembroke and his collaborators go further, noting that the fathers diagnosed forgetfulness of one's true nature as the deepest spiritual failure underlying arrogance, and that the drive to compete, establish status, and accumulate clouds spiritual vision entirely. This is why the elder's confrontation mattered. It interrupted the forgetting. John McGuckin's description of the desert elder as one who combined personal austerity with patience toward others does not mean the elder was passive. It means the elder had earned the right to speak a hard word because they had first endured hard words spoken to them. Christopher Hall reminds us that some monks resisted genuine self-awareness for years and that their spiritual development was stunted as a result. Someone had to name what those monks could not see. That is the work of a genuine spiritual leader, and it is not abuse. It is love with backbone. The desert monks understood that the spiritual life is never mastered, only continually begun again in fresh dependence on God. Abba Poemen embodied this by making a fresh beginning daily, and Abba Silvanus taught that one could lay a new foundation at every moment through persistent effort. Thomas Merton captured the same conviction when he said there were only three stages: to be a beginner, to be more of a beginner, and to be only a beginner. When that posture of perpetual beginning is alive in a community, confrontation is not threatening because everyone, leader and disciple alike, stands on the same ground. We need leaders who have been formed enough to confront without dominating, and we need communities mature enough to receive that confrontation without collapsing it into the category of abuse. The two are not the same. The desert knew the difference. Learning it again is essential.

There is a difference between conviction and stimulation. Conviction deepens over time and survives scrutiny. Stimulation demands constant reinforcement. When the feeling must be fed to stay alive, it is not truth that is being sustained.

Listening is not a strategy. It is a moral act. To listen is to acknowledge the other as more than an obstacle. Without listening, communication collapses into parallel monologues that never meet.

@KSPrior Beautiful! ♥️

Son of God, Son of Mary (art by Jose Luis Marin)

As preachers, we don’t have to manufacture immediacy. The living God has already entered the drama and carries the mission Himself. And in this, von Balthasar helps us remember something we often forget. God is not waiting for us to ignite the moment. He is the central actor in the story of redemption, moving long before we step into the pulpit. Our task isn’t to force urgency or orchestrate impact. Our task is to stand inside the movement God has already begun, to bear witness to the One who is already calling, already working, already drawing His people. The weight is His. The nearness is His. We preach from participation, not performance.

Peacekeeping leads to false peace. Peacemaking leads to true peace. Peacemaking is often an act of disruption while seeking to resist disconnection. Those who live in this way are called children of God. #Advent

@LunaticFriend2 Oh my, that’s unfortunate! The ornament is lovely. Paul & I are wishing you a beautiful Christmas season from Rome.

These are my favorite Christmas ornaments old school hand blown glass.. I'm trying to be in the Christmas spirit but I got kicked off of my main account on x for a word that I shall not repeat in the future and no it wasn't a cuss word

So beautifully expressed and so relevant to the ministry of Christ!

What God does in us as we wait is often much more important than what we are waiting for. #Advent

@KSPrior @madamspeaker As a survivor of these abuses who once had to fight to protect my child, I am sickened by this report and haunted by how legalistic complementarianism abandoned me when I needed the Church most. These systems aren’t just being exposed—they’re crumbling.

“A recent lawsuit claims leaders of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, ignored repeated warnings about child sexual abuse and domestic violence and pressured a mother to keep her children in harm’s way.” The details are so disturbing. julieroys.com/grace-communit…

Gratitude transforms how we relate. It interrupts the instinct to judge and compare. It allows us to see each other’s dignity instead of fault lines. A thankful person becomes a steadying presence, creating room for others to be human, to grow, to falter, and to rise again. Communities shaped by this posture grow healthier.

The start of Advent is 6 days away (November 30th) The good news of Advent is not that we are faithful in our waiting (we often aren't) but that God is faithful in his coming.

I think to think on simpler things, to slow ourselves to a snail’s pace, is a secret to prolific gratitude. To forsake the screens and engage the senses. Sit outside, for instance, and lose count numbering the shades of green. Close your eyes and listen for this bird and that and think how the least impressive to the eye, say, an otherwise forgettable wren, often sings the loveliest songs. Hold a leaf underside up and run your fingertip along its veins. Appreciate the intricate work of the spider before you sweep away its web. And be a good kind of weird about food this holiday season and not so miserably neurotic unless it threatens your health. Unnecessary guilt holds a pillow to the face of gratitude. Sanctify the meal with thanksgiving. That’s what the Bible says. Bless it and it will bless. Take time to taste before you swallow. Dwell a moment on it. Think how God could have created us without need of food or with need perhaps but only for nourishment, no enjoyment necessary. Take a single bite and search out traces of a teaspoon of vanilla quietly disseminated in the whole pie. Rejoice and be glad for the triumvirate of kitchen graces! Onions, garlic and celery! Their boastful fragrance simmering in salted butter. Think how, in this ever crueler world, there are still babies and puppies and kittens and hopping goats and, to God be the glory, ossicones crowning the heads of giraffes. Awake from slumber, ye screen-numbed souls. There is no end to the gratitude of one paying attention. The Lord, the Lord, concocting, kind and creative, has once again dealt bountifully with us.

@LunaticFriend2 Com’on now!!! 😆

I’m bryan duncan and I endorsed this message

Your true voice will awaken in the sound of His! “Call to me, and I will answer you and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”Jeremiah 33:3

@markchironna Powerful!!

Shaming the mind prevents the healing of the heart. There is a difference between honest humility about our thinking and being taught to fear it. Scripture calls us to test our thoughts, to submit them to God, and to stay aware of how easily the heart can drift. But when people are taught that their own thinking is untrustworthy in every respect, they retreat from the very interior place where God meets them. Shame does not produce wisdom. It constricts attention, tightens the soul, and makes the inner world feel unsafe. When the mind is treated as an adversary rather than a faculty that needs healing, the heart finds no ground on which to open. The gospel never heals by humiliating the mind. It restores by cleansing the "nous", the deep center where perception and love rise together. When that place is honored, not condemned, the heart begins to breathe again. It becomes capable of receiving truth instead of hiding from it. If healing is going to reach the core, the mind cannot be shamed into silence. It needs to be welcomed back into its proper role, brought into the light, and re-ordered toward God. Only then does the heart find the safety it needs to be restored.

@LunaticFriend2 Oh wow… so sorry! 😞

Someone stole my car right out of the driveway last night. They had to know that I just put a brand new engine in it. So this is what blank feels like. 🤯

@BethMooreLPM Such a sobering and thoughtful post, which is not lost on me! I’ve found that forgiveness and repentance is a deep journey of discovery with Christ-awakening Truths that we have been both conscious and unconscious of. Love & Truth call us to hope for that which we cannot mend.

Many years ago our long time pastor at first Baptist in Houston asked my husband to become a deacon at our church. Keith declined, replying that, sorrowfully, he was not the kind of man a deacon should be. I’ve thought about it a thousand times through the years. Thought about how he had more character than 10,000 others who would not blink an eye to accept such a visible role in the church only to bring their untreated carnality and arrogance, their unrepentant dissensions and rivalries to the service of the church, masquerading as pious, no few hiding their unquenchable lusts and pornographic addictions. I thought about it Sunday as I witnessed the deacon ordination of a dear brother at my church who had completed many hours of preparation through formal courses and training and as I heard the solemn promises he was making and saw him sign a document before our congregation and watched his wife put on his vestments face-to-face with him as a reminder, our bishop explained, that his ministry as deacon first began with serving her. It was so meaningful and moving. I believed my brother. I believe he will flourish in his service to the church. I say all this because of the seriousness I saw in my husband many years ago when he declined this office. I say all this because of the seriousness I saw in my dear brother two days ago as he accepted this office. I say this because of how comparatively little weight many of us seem to attach to being in leadership positions in our churches. I think perhaps Keith might have shown more maturity in his refusal than God alone knows how many others in their hasty acceptance. These words come from a very flawed woman who has been forgiven and delivered from much sin. And, in large part, because of the resultant woefully painful seasons of divine discipline over my sins, one who also wonders how on earth we who are in Christian leadership roles think we can get away with our unrepentant duplicities. I wonder how we are getting away with this if we are meeting in earnestness with the Lord on a regular basis. Are we bringing to him our confessions of sins of pride and greed and lust and covetousness and hatred and discord? I have questions because of the trouble and heartache I’ve met with my own disobedience. I ultimately didn’t have enough tenacity to resist conviction. How do we bear the withdrawal of Christ’s fellowship as we continue unrepentant in our sins against him and our brothers and sisters in Christ and our neighbors? This exposure we’re constantly seeing will not stop. Christ has come for his church. He will refine her with fire. We pray our usual prayers and we sing our favorite songs and we read our favorite scriptures to use against our favorite foes and attend all our services. So often we do all the things. All the things but what the Head of the church is waiting for. Repentance. Repentance that we — that I — have thought so little of him. So little of his words. So little of who we are — and I of who I am — in him. He stands at the door and knocks.

@BethMooreLPM Beautiful…You are a gifted poet! 🌟

I just happened on this as I was cleaning some books off a shelf of my library at home and I don’t even remember writing it. Would’ve been some time around 1998/99. So crazy.