Pondering with Purpose

Quote:  I’m convinced that God has lessons to teach us that can only be learned in liminal space, only in a state of dislocation.  This is not just a necessary evil, like they've gotta get through the wilderness to get to the promised land. This [the wilderness] is actually the workshop of their character. God is remaking the people. He’s gotta get Egypt out of them before… they are ready for life in the land - Carmen J Imes  This school year, I have been teaching through an Old Testament Survey series with my junior high students.  There are multitudinous resources that I have heavily leaned on in this process.  Anyone who knows me basically at all will know that at the top of that list is “Bible Project” (bonus points if you guessed it before you read that). This profound quote is mediated to me from, you guessed it, the Bible Project. But you might be wondering, I thought Tim Mackie was the brain of the Bible Project and that quote says “Carmen Imes”. Tim is ...

Quote: [Prayer is] the risk of facing a God we’ve mastered talking about singing about reading about and learning about. It means risking real interaction with that God, and the longer we’ve got used to settling for the noise around God, the higher the stakes - Tyler Staton  This quote comes from the book “Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools”.  It is absolutely the best book on prayer I have ever read and one of the best books I have read. The author Tyler Staton is the pastor of Bridgetown church in Portland in OR. I have been following the church for a number of years since I read Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer (the former pastor of the same). I heard about the book through JMC and then saw that one of my other favorite people, Tim Mackie, had written the forward. When looking for a new study with my mentor, I suggested this book and we have been reading it for a month now. It was so hard to pick one quote from this book.  Every chapter has been insi...

Quote:   We are all part of a culture that wants to do something extraordinary but it seems to me in Scripture that God just wants a people who will go the extra mile in the ordinary - Rechab Gray.  Rechab is one of the most genuine, thoughtful, and quotable people I have ever met.  He is a thinker, a preacher and an amazing man of God.  I met Rechab (if you can call Zoom meetings) an introduction last Spring in my “Exegesis and Application of the Pastoral Epistles” class.  Rechab was the professor.  From the outset Rechab made one thing clear. He was going to make sure we saw on every page of the Pastoral epistles how they pointed to the God-Man Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  That was such a sweet class.   By the end of the semester I knew that I wanted to spend more time with Rechab. So as I registered for Fall classes I saw that he was teaching “Missional Leadership”. After reading the course description, “This course is designed to introduce...

Hello and welcome to my blog.  My name is Zachary Gross.  I am 21 years old.  I am a senior at Eternity Bible College (EBC) preparing to complete a Bachelor’s Degree in Advanced Biblical and Cultural Exegesis. I am also the Junior High Ministries Director at Agoura Bible Fellowship (ABF).  All that to say I spend many waking hours studying and meditating on scripture, the Christian life, and its manifold, multifaceted, multidimensional (Eph. 3:10) reality.  I thoroughly believe that the Scriptures are a unified story that leads to Jesus. He is my savior and my Rabbi. I want to be with him, become like him, and do what he did. Why start a blog?  As I study, think, and reflect each week whether for my classes at EBC or my messages or Bible Studies with Junior High Students at ABF.  I have many thoughts.  Some profound. Some not. That study and thought often has to be honed and specified for a homework assignment or sermon deadline. I wanted a space ...