John 15: 15 “I do not call you servants any longer … but I have called you friends” To be called a friend of God is to be like Abraham (2 Chronicles 20:7) or Moses (Exodus 33:11) who were called friends of God. The main image of our relationship with God in the Old Testament was as […]
When I was eight years old we lived in a rural French village. The public school we went to still had (Catholic) religion class, and I distinctly remember in the first class it was announced that a few of us (myself included) would be going to the computer room during the time. In some cases […]
John 15: 12 “Love one another as I have loved you” One day at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Brian, a chaplain to the Chi Alpha student outreach of the Assemblies of God Church asked me, “Can you give a talk to our students on the baptism in the Holy Spirit?” Was I ever surprised! […]
There’s a secret library at the top of the stairs at 31 Lynton Road. During my GAP year, I had the privilege of living in this house, the London home of the Servants of the Word. I suppose the room is not really all that secret, it’s just tucked out of the way. For attention, it […]
John 15: 4 – “Abide in me as I abide in you” It is an undisputed botanical fact that a branch cut off from the stem or vine of a plant dies. It cannot bear fruit. This is the point which Jesus makes in John 15 when he states, “I am the vine…apart from me […]
The most important aspect for me of living as a member of an ecumenical community in the Sword of the Spirit, is the daily praying and sharing of my faith and life with brothers and sisters from different Christian denominations, now for almost 40 years. I grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the 1960s/70s, […]
John 15: 16a “You did not choose me I chose you.” The idea of ‘chosen-ness’ to many people can smack of elitism. God’s choices, however, are not based on the superior qualities of any person or group. He chooses people to be something and to do something. He chose Israel to be a light to the nations and fulfill his […]
Introduction The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is actually an eight-day observance or “octave” of prayer. It has been this way since the beginnings of this international movement in 1908. This is now the Sword of the Spirit’s 11th year of participating internationally in this worldwide observance. This year we are using the Bible passages proposed […]
– by Bruce Yocum December, the end of the calendar year 2020, and COVID-19 is still with us. Here in England, where I am living, severe new restrictions have just been introduced, eliminating almost all possibility of people celebrating Christmas together with more than immediate family or household. There is concern that a new strain […]
