MJY Strategies
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Jun-06-2021 | MJY StrategiesThe Test of Authenticity
Authenticity is venturing into the darkest parts of a culture and discovering God there. Though divine testing may appear disciplinary in nature, its intent is authentic relationship…
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May-29-2021 | MJY StrategiesThe Challenge of Authenticity
Anything based on power over things will eventually disillusion us. But power under things (as in undergirding or providing support and security), takes much grace, and does not creep into oppression. This is true authenticity – using our power and resources to build up rather than control.
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Apr-11-2021 | MyanmarFour Generations of Hope for Myanmar
When we are forced as people into choosing war over nonviolence, it is a terrible line we cross. Myanmar (Burma) is crossing such a line in its civil conflict with the army. Buddhists (most of the Burmese) and Christians (many of the indigenous ethnics) who lived against violence now are making hard choices. I do not envy them.
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Apr-04-2021 | MyanmarUnderstanding Myanmar’s Crisis
China is in everyone’s global spotlight, even though Myanmar is the one bleeding. How far will China extend its interests? Will it take a clear and active role?
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Mar-14-2021 | MJY StrategiesCommunicating for Good
What would life be like if we couldn’t speak? Try to imagine a world where nobody speaks — your thoughts immediately jump to other forms of communication. We think of gestures, hand signs, facial expressions, hieroglyphics and ideograms but all of these are still language. It’s impossible to be human without communication.
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Mar-07-2021 | MJY StrategiesSeven Powerful Postures for Prodigals
Do you have a black sheep in the family? Is your heart breaking for one of your kids or a sibling you feel has wandered off the edge of no return? Or do you look at an entire generation like Gen Z or at a country like consumeristic America and get a feeling of prodigal overload?
The Black Eyed Peas’ song, “Generation Now,” contains lyrics like, “And I just can't wait, I need it immediately and I just can't wait, I want it immediately.” This is reminiscent of Jesus’ well known story prodigal son in Luke 15.
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Feb-28-2021 | MJY StrategiesDo You Make Inclusive Or Exclusive Claims About Jesus?
Is exclusivity a good thing? There is a certain quality of exclusivity in consumerism; a limited edition adds value to your purchase. When something is rare, it is more often than not, valuable. Followers of Jesus have a claim to exclusivity in Jesus’ words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
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Feb-22-2021 | MJY StrategiesThe Drug of Busyness and the Fear of Rest
Time stopped dead last year — for many of us. It was a few weeks for some; for others, months. City streets were quiet. Neighborhoods bloomed with people on streets sidewalks and in yards. It was almost neighborly to see people that were normally gone at the office 6-7 days a week.
Then slowly, gradually, like a dam giving way: first a trickle; then a flood-tide…and somehow we are swimming in busyness again. Busyness is productivity, right? But sometimes busyness also medicates us—the blur of time becomes numbness, protecting us from our shame that we lack glory…or the pain that our glory is really hollow.
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Feb-14-2021 | MJY StrategiesThe Advantage of Living at the Margins
We thrive more at the margins than at the center of a culture. Too far off the margins and the church historically becomes irrelevant to the culture or is persecuted into dust.
The margins in a favorite book are the place where we record ideas, moments of inspiration. The margins of a road are where pedestrians wander and where roads connect to peoples’ homes and commerce. Where destinations intersect with journey.
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Feb-07-2021 | Love Your EnemyPraying Psalms for Enemies
Only Jesus can hate an enemy yet greater still, ferociously love them through the laid down love of his cross. I can mature in this path but only within the grace of Jesus’ life. If I am to say anything against an enemy, I should invite God’s Spirit to search me and know my depths. This deep searching by the Spirit will prepare my heart to love an enemy beyond my hatred. Only from Jesus’ perspective can I see an enemy’s value in heaven more than I despise their potential for hell.
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Jan-24-2021 | MJY StrategiesThe Danger of Sides
Increasingly, polarization is one today’s greatest dangers. Not just a lack of tolerance on left and right, moral and amoral but a lack of interest of learning from the other side. We are all becoming mini political ideologists or dogmatic religious leaders (atheist religion included) — we feel too em-powered by our position to have a coffee with the enemy. Or maybe we are too scared or too angry? This is not to say we need to always break bread with the enemy of our ideology. Still, make a practice of openness.
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Jan-17-2021 | MJY StrategiesMessy Mercy
Mercy is often messy. Mercy to Lot opened a place for two new tribes born out of incest, the Moabites and the Ammonites that later troubled Israel. Mercy came again when later in history these tribes integrated into King David’s bloodline through his grandmother and mother. Eventually this Davidic bloodline brought mercy incarnate in Jesus. Then mercy came to us in a climax of grace through a bloody cross. That was messy too.people are you writing off as so heinous you would not negotiate mercy for them?
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Jan-03-2021 | MJY StrategiesLooking for Grace in the New Year
It’s a New Year and I’d like to start it with a difficult theological idea: There is a thread of good and evil that runs through everything and everyone. The church doesn’t struggle with this idea too much until it becomes personal. If the fingers point at them, they get alarmed. After all, how can evil coincide with good? That seems horrifying.
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Dec-24-2020 | MJY StrategiesA Vulnerable Christmas Meditation
Jesus entered our world facing towards a cross and a resurrection. One of the amazing intentions of his life and his cross was to identify with us. He came low, conceived as a baby in the warm dark of a mother’s womb. A key aspect of his resurrection from death is to teach us to identify with him. He is from heaven, and we are to identify and work from that viewpoint.
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Dec-20-2020 | MJY StrategiesSystem 1 & System 2 Thinking
This blog overviews research on two everyday thinking processes and considers how we apply this to hearing God. Some Christian circles tend to avoid good thinking, finding it “unspiritual,” others think their way right past God himself, missing the spiritual life available to them.
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