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Series One Introduction - The Gospel

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Series One - The Gospel George MacDonald had no interest in you thinking the way he thought. His desire was far greater than that. He wanted you to meet the One he met. That desire shaped everything he wrote. Like our own, his generation was filled with voices claiming to explain God. Many painted a picture of the Divine that would be considered cruel, unforgiving, or untrustworthy if found in our own fathers or neighbors. Such a picture obscures the truth of God as our common Father. MacDonald believed the deepest problem was not that people had rejected God, but that many had never truly seen Him. The Gospel changes when the Father’s face comes into view. That is where this first series begins. The Gospel is not first a message about what we must do. It is the revelation of who God has always been. Before there was sin, before there was fear, before there was religion, there was the Father, the Son, and the Spirit sharing Their Life together. The Good News is that this eterna...
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Series Two Introduction - The Way of the Gospel

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  Series Two – The Way of the Gospel George MacDonald believed that seeing the Father is only the beginning. Once His goodness comes into view, another question naturally follows:  How then shall His children live? This second series explores that question. In Series One, MacDonald revealed the Father's heart through the life of Jesus Christ. Here he turns our attention to the Way of that Life. The Gospel is never merely a way of thinking. It is something to enter into, participate in, and live within. No doctrine or theory can produce this Life. Jesus alone is the Way. The greatest hindrance to this Life is not our weakness but our slavery to the tyranny of "things." The outer life, with its possessions, ambitions, control, and self-sufficiency, quietly competes with the inner Life of relationship and love. Whether our hearts are captured by what we possess or by what we long to have, we become servants of the temporary while forgetting the Eternal. It is spiritual...
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Series Three Introduction - The Fruit of the Gospel

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  Series Three – The Fruit of the Gospel George MacDonald believed the Gospel was never meant to end with seeing the Father or even with learning the Way. The Father's desire has always been that His children share in His Life. As we behold His goodness in the face of the Son and walk with Him in obedience, the Holy Spirit quietly transforms us into what we see. This third series explores the fruit of that transformation. From the beginning, the Father's purpose has been that everything in heaven and earth should find its life in Christ. The Gospel is the unfolding of that eternal purpose, the King and His Kingdom. We were not created merely to know about God, but to know Him. The Life shared by the Father, Son, and Spirit is a life of relationship and communion, and Their invitation has always been for us to participate in that fellowship. As we respond to Their love, we gradually become what we have always been in Christ. The fruit of the Gospel is not measured by knowl...
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Through a Glass

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  Through a Glass Seeing the Divine Narrative Seeing One of the central themes running throughout Scripture is not simply believing, but seeing. Long before our theology changes, our vision changes. We begin to see God, ourselves, and the world differently. The Apostle Paul uses two beautiful metaphors involving glass in his letters to the Corinthians. The first speaks of seeing "through a glass, darkly." The second speaks of "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord." Together they describe both our problem and our hope. We see reality, but not clearly. Then, as Christ is revealed, our vision begins to clear. Perhaps this is one way of describing the entire human journey. We all see life through some kind of glass. Our experiences, traditions, assumptions, fears, and even our theology shape what we see. The world itself has not changed, but our seeing has.   Through a Glass Darkly "For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to fa...
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The Man Behind the Sermons

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  The Man Behind the Sermons   Biography of George MacDonald (1824–1905) George MacDonald was the forerunner of the Inklings—C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others. He was a minister, poet, novelist, and imaginative seer. In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote numerous works of Christian theology, including several collections of sermons. Lewis, his most famous champion, said, "I dare not say that he is never in error; but... I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer... to the Spirit of Christ Himself... I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master." Madeleine L'Engle later called George MacDonald, "The grandfather of us all—all of us who struggle to come to terms with truth through imagination." Few Christian writers have influenced so many generations of readers while remaining so little known by the broader Christian world. Yet for those who discover him, George MacDonald often becomes less an author to...
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Programmed for Change

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  Programmed for Change Becoming What We Are Metamorphosis is one of creation's most remarkable stories. It is not primarily a change of being as much as it is a radical change of form and function. Many creatures undergo metamorphosis. Frogs, moths, dragonflies, and butterflies all experience this remarkable transformation. Yet the butterfly remains the most familiar picture of a creature becoming what it seemed impossible for it to become. For generations, scientists believed the caterpillar simply dissolved into a biological soup from which the butterfly emerged. Recent research tells a different story. Transformation is not random destruction followed by a new creation. It is a carefully programmed process of both dying and becoming. Some cells and organs atrophy and disappear, while others—present from the very beginning—suddenly awaken and grow. The butterfly is not created in the chrysalis. It is revealed. Perhaps the butterfly can teach us something about ours...
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Introduction

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  George MacDonald Unspoken Sermons Introduction Every story begins somewhere. Some begin with a hero. Others with a mystery, a battle, or a quest. The greatest stories begin by inviting us into another world—a world that is strangely familiar and yet unlike the one we thought we knew. George MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons are such a story. At first, I thought of them as thirty-six independent sermons, each standing on its own. Like many readers, I would return to favorite passages, underline memorable sentences, and admire MacDonald's remarkable ability to speak of God with both tenderness and fire. Yet I always had the sense that something larger was holding the sermons together, something just beyond my reach. Over time that "something" slowly came into focus. MacDonald was not writing thirty-six separate sermons. He was unfolding one Divine Narrative. Not a story with characters and chapters, but one great narrative that begins with our origin in th...
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