written by Stephan Joubert
Looks like the day someone has your postal address, cellphone number, or email address, you are a permanent target. Everyone from marketing organizations to individuals mean they have the right to come and put up camp in your life without invitation. Believers shouldn’t dare mimic these games. Only on invitation may we become part and stay part of other people’s living spaces, be that virtual, electronic, or actual. The secret of good relationships is found in maintaining an open but reverential distance between us and other people. The onus is always on them to invite us closer. Respect for the privacy of others is the right seedbed for new relationships, the kind in which God’s goodness grows.
written by Stephan Joubert
In The Orthodox Heretic, Peter Rollins tells the imaginary tale of someone who heard Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus taught that they should walk a second mile for the enemies, he started doing that. Instead of carrying the weapons of a Roman soldier only one mile, he once offered to carry it two miles. Later this person again encountered Jesus and told Him that he practically applied this new law. Jesus answered him: “Wait, you misunderstood me. It’s actually three miles!” The point is that Jesus didn’t teach a bunch of new laws that we need to obey slavishly. For Him it’s about relationships that is love-driven. Ones that no longer keep book of good or evil.
written by Stephan Joubert
There is a wall around every marriage. For some, it is a prison wall that sentences the victims inside to life imprisonment. No wonder that many people try climb over the walls of their marriages through adulterous relationships, pornography, and the like. The Lord’s type of wall around a marriage is a castle wall. It keeps safety and warmth in. It keeps marriage partners close to each other. It keeps them safe. God created marriage as a glimpse of paradise here on earth. Marriage should be that one relationship where joy abounds and the cup of happiness overflows. Marriage partners are havens to one another. They are each other’s life-long soul partners, friends and lovers. That’s why I rejoice daily to the Lord about my wife. Do you do the same about your spouse?
written by Stephan Joubert
The recent earthquake in Haiti leaves one at a complete loss for words. How terrible isn’t it be to be dumped into such despair in one fleeting instant. Still, it is captivating to see how governments, aid organizations, and churches from across the globe opens their hearts and their hands with acts of assistance. Our world is truly flat. We are all interrelated even though we live on separate continents and islands. That’s why we can’t look away when people elsewhere on earth are hurting. That counts from Zimbabwe to Haiti. We should pray together when tragedies of nature strike elsewhere. We should stand up when injustice is victorious in neighboring countries. Each of us should do what we can in the Name of God. We need to pray, talk, protest, give… or report somewhere for duty.
written by Stephan Joubert
“We must be witnesses for the Lord.” How many times have you heard that? Indeed, but for some people it means that they have the right to give a monologue about their faith whenever it suits them. But what if such “testimonies” mostly do more harm than good? Can believers continually get away with excuses that one has to suffer for the Lord when others take them on about their rude and insensitive “testimonies”? If, on one side, it is true that we have to give testimony of our faith, then it is also true on the other side that we have to give testimony of all the wrong ways in which we are witnesses to the Lord. Jesus taught us to be careful and wise. We don’t automatically occupy the moral high-ground in every conversation. We need to earn the right to be heard through our discerning way of life before God and others.
written by Stephan Joubert
Is faith primarily about my own spiritual growth — my own deepening, and my inner battle against sin? Or does faith stretch wider than such personal matters? Does faith affect my daily relationship with others? Does it make a practical difference to the way I treat a waitress or servant, and how much I tip them? Or how I address the person at the supermarket pay point? Does my faith in Christ attribute to my level of concern with polluted water sources, or the fact that the earth is being heated up by poisonous gasses? Does it make a deeper impact on the world and other people’s lives than simply my attendance at bible studies, gatherings, or sermons in my own congregation? If not, then it’s about time that my faith gets relevant in the real world. What does all my piety help if it only makes me a better person, but no one get’s any benefit from this? Then I’m missing the point.
written by Stephan Joubert
That dialog between Alyosha and Ivan in Feoder Dostoyevski’s classic work The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), about Jesus’ return no the Spanish city Seville, scares me. In this imaginary narrative Jesus returns to the city Seville right in the middle of the Spanish inquisition. Very soon the Cardinal turns up to arrest Jesus. Later in the jail he accusingly asks Jesus why He had to come back, because the church of that day no longer needs Him. After a long monologue from the cardinal Jesus stands up and without a word kisses the Cardinal on his lips. Bewildered, he let Jesus free. And he begs Him never to come back. The cardinal wasn’t changed by Jesus’ visit. May this never happen to you and me when Jesus visits us. May we never look upon Him as the spoil-sport, but as the One who started the feast of our religion.
written by Stephan Joubert
“Be kind to your enemies. It’s you who made them.” I read that the other day. It’s true words, but not easy to live out. Our enemies are our enemies exactly because we don’t get along with them. Otherwise, they would have been our friends. We all know people we don’t get along with. The mistake we need to be careful of is thinking that we first need to like these people before we can do good toward them. When the bible teaches we should love our enemies, it means we should act correctly toward them even when we don’t feel like it. No need to wait until our feelings toward them change. Followers of Jesus are the first to show kindness toward those who don’t show kindness to them. Be the first to walk that second mile, even if you don’t feel like it.
written by Stephan Joubert
For some people, finding God is a life-long journey. The good news is that God wants to be found by everyone who sincerely seeks Him. Nobody knocks on his heavenly door in vain. Interesting to note that the bible says He’s also to be found in silence. To be still is to discover the real you. In being still you are confronted by the real you. That self that you sometimes want to avoid and hide at all costs. Learn to be still every day for a short time. No, learn to be still before God. Leave all your many, meaningless words. Leave your verbal torrent in his presence. Just be still — quiet. For once, do not utter a word. “In quietness and confidence is your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Not in all your senseless talking and acting. For a change discover, without words, God’s nearness, dissimilarity, holiness, and beauty.
written by Stephan Joubert
Everything stands or falls with leadership. That’s what the experts say. Although this remark is only 50% true, it’s still a mouth-full. Leaders are those who simultaneously have the gift and the capability to influence others. Leadership is to lead people onto new routes of life. It’s to take people with you toward a new dream. It’s to unite teams and groups so that they can reach new territory. Don’t think leadership is automatically settled in the right titles or positions. Leaders are those that use their talents and capabilities to change ideas and to transform hearts. That’s why leaders should have enough time to be alone with the Lord — to allow the Lord to grind out their own character. Leaders with cracks in their personalities leave people in a lurch at critical moments. Strong moral leadership is vitally important in our day. Men and women with integrity before God, and before people, are needed urgently.
