Manning – Joel Bidderman

A Place to Be Human: Meditations on community part five

As a worship leader, I want to lead others in being authentic; because I believe that when we are authentic and real (with God and each other), our worship is authentic. I fully believe that our identity as Believers is tied up in and defined by Who God is and what He's done. At the same time, I believe that only when we are willing to come to God as humans in our sin and humanity, broken, needy, and honest, is there 'worship in spirit and truth' (John [...]

By Joel| 2014-08-18T22:34:43+00:00 February 10th, 2012|Abandonment, Bonhoeffer, Christian Music, discipleship, Jesus Shaped Community, Manning, prayer, Safe Place, trust|0 Comments

Trust, Part Four: of transcendence and immanence

Manning wrote in Ruthless Trust (2000):...We can no more catch a hurricane in a shrimp net or Niagara Falls in a coffee cup then we can grasp the infinity of God's reality. A one-sided focus on his Otherness reduces the Holy One to a cosmic observer, a distant outsider disengaged from the yaw and pitch of human struggle.Immanence is not the opposite of transcendence but its correlative, immanence and transcendence are two sides of the same coin, two facets of the same divine reality. Transcendence means that God cannot be [...]

By Joel| 2014-08-18T22:34:45+00:00 July 10th, 2011|Manning, trust|0 Comments

Trust, Part Two: the scars remain

The love of God is not a pastry - it is a meal. Or for that matter, perhaps it is the protein that makes up the food. While fame, money, self-reliance, or the many other things that we fill our lives with, may keep us going, they may substitute but cannot replace the building block for a healthy life. Sometimes western Christianity has a tendency to cast the vibe that the love of God is a garnish to an 'American Dream,' when it is so much more. Journeying [...]

By Joel| 2014-08-18T22:34:45+00:00 June 22nd, 2011|Abandonment, Manning, trust|0 Comments

Trust, Part One: the lesson we keep learning until we die

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives- the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections- that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing [...]

By Joel| 2014-08-18T22:34:45+00:00 June 21st, 2011|Abandonment, Manning, prayer, trust|0 Comments