Gregor

Gregor edited the contributors of The Illyrians to the Albanians Wednesday, March 27, 2013.

• Added a contributor: Neritan Ceka: (Primary Author)

Gregor uploaded a cover image to The Illyrians to the Albanians Wednesday, March 27, 2013.

Gregor edited the description of Ascension Day Friday, March 22, 2013.

• Only 47 days left until Larry Durrant's execution, but lawyer LacJac McElroy is determined to save his client's life. There are only three small problems: the evidence against Durrant is overwhelming, he's made a full confession, and he wants to die... But Jac's hungry to make his mark and he knows something just isn't right about Larry Durrant's murder conviction. Trouble is, everyone thinks Larry's guilty, from the Louisiana Governor right down to the accused, who has confessed to the crime and now wants to make peace with his maker. Jac soon discovers that someone doesn't want anyone — especially a lawyer — digging around this case. And they'll stop at nothing to make sure Larry's execution goes ahead on schedule. Now Jac must decide whether he's prepared to risk his career, his reputation and his life to save a man who, by his own admission, is a murderer . . . When DEATH is your only hope... Ascension Day is the most exciting and compelling death-row thriller since The Shawshank Redemption REVIEWS: 'Matthews certainly knows how to keep the reader hungry for the next revelation'. - Kirkus UK. Ascension Day is like a narcotic, laced with danger, and totally addictive. Impossible to put down. This is what thrillers are meant to be. Jac McElroy is a character I want to read more of. - Jon Jordan. Crime Spree Magazine. Goes to the wire... a gripping thriller. - The Scotsman. 'If John Grisham ever developed a sense of irony, or Scott Turow ever tried to write from the other side of the prison bars, they might come up with something like John Matthews’s Ascension Day. This is a book that doesn’t sacrifice style for suspense, or character for plot. The legal thriller has needed a jolt of electricity for a few years now and Matthews may just be the man to throw the switch.' - Peter Blauner, Author of Slipping Into Darkness and The Intruder. 'Move over Grisham, your reign is over! Reminiscent of vintage Grisham, but Matthews has his own distinctive style. Strong, believable characters and a plot that grips from page one and won't let go, twisting and turning its way towards a nail-biting climax - they don't come much better than this. One of the best and most memorable thrillers I've read in years. A winner all the way.' - Bob Burke. Mystery Readers International. 'ASCENSION DAY is a fast-paced thriller set between New Orleans and an upstate Louisiana prison, and Matthews' strong descriptive prose brings the darkness at the heart of Libreville penitentiary alive. His chief protagonist, Jac McElroy, is particularly interesting with his Franco-Scottish heritage - and his ever-changing relationship with prisoner Larry Durrant sets the main pulse for this race-against-time thriller... with the stakes and tension racheted up throughout the book.' - Luke Croll, Reviewing the Evidence.

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership Friday, March 15, 2013.

• Added a quotation: “The simple truth is this: the real Jesus story turns patriarchy upside down. When people ask me what changed my thinking initially, the answer is simple: the life and ministry of our Lord and how he dealt with women.”
• Added a quotation: “God is not one to show partiality (acts 10:34 NASB) and that we are all members of the royal priesthood, called out of darkness by God to proclaim the mighty acts of God (1 Peter 2:9-10).”

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership Friday, March 15, 2013.

• Added a quotation: “What we lose by excluding the distinctively feminine from "official" ministries of teaching and preaching is of incalculable value. That loss is one of a few fundamental factors that account for the astonishing weakness of "the church" in the contemporary context.”

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of Velvet Elvis Sunday, February 17, 2013.

• Added a quotation: “The Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be.”
• Added a quotation: “Doctrine is a wonderful servant and a horrible master.”
• Added a quotation: “God is bigger than any religion. God is bigger than any worldview. God is bigger than the Christian faith.”
• Added a quotation: “Questions bring freedom. Freedom that I don't have to be God and I don't have to pretend that I have it all figured out. I can let God be God.”
• Added a quotation: “If you study the Bible and it doesn't lead you to wonder and awe, then you haven't studied the Bible.”
• Added a quotation: “The Bible tells a story. A story that isn't over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.”
• Added a quotation: “If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God.”
• Added a quotation: “The issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. It is searching for the things they have already affirmed as real and beautiful and true and then telling them who you believe is the source of all that. "I am here to tell you where I think it comes from..."”
• Added a quotation: “The thought of the word "church" and the word "marketing" in the same sentence makes me sick.”
• Added a quotation: “For Jesus, being saved or reconciled to God involves far ore than just the saving of your physical body or your soul. It involves all of you.”
• Added a quotation: “Salvation is living more and more in harmony with God, a process that will go on forever.”
• Added a quotation: “God isn't just interested in the covering over our sins; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be. It is not just the removal of what's being held against us; it is God pulling us into the people He originally had in mind when He made us.”
• Added a quotation: “So this old nature of mine, the one that was constantly pulling me down and causing me to live in ways I wasn't created to live... has died. And, no matter how many times that old nature raises its ugly head and pretends to be alive, it is dead.”
• Added a quotation: “It is not that we are perfect now or that we will never have to struggle. Or that the old person won't come back from time to time. It's that this new way of life involves a constant, conscious decision to keep dying to the old so that we can live in the new.”
• Added a quotation: “For Jesus, eternal life wasn't a state of being for the future that we would enter into somewhere else; it is a quality of life that starts now.”
• Added a quotation: “When I sin and the old person comes back from the dead for a few moments... I admit it. I confess it. I thank God I am forgiven. I make amends with anyone who has been affected by my actions. And then I move on.”
• Added a quotation: “For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one because he understood that the life beyond this one is a continuation of the kinds of choices we make here and now.”
• Added a quotation: “For Jesus, this new kind of life in Him is not about escaping this world but about making it a better place, here and now. The goal for Jesus isn't to get into heaven. the goal is to get heaven here.”
• Added a quotation: “Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn't as bright as it could be?”
• Added a quotation: “It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display.”

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose Tuesday, January 29, 2013.

• Added a quotation: “Those who commit to a strong military are often the ones who otherwise resist government control, all the while signing a blank check for aggressive government that serves corporate interest.”
• Added a quotation: “it is not the will of God that between 82 and 84 people die every day by guns. Many of these lives will be saved the moment the faith community wakes up, learns about the Gun Empire, and decides to do something about the violence that is all routine in America.”
• Added a quotation: “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if it is true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. (C.S. Lewis)”
• Added a quotation: “Where the most guns are, society records the most gun deaths.”
• Added a quotation: “Children in the United States are twelve times more likely to die from firearms injury than children in twenty five other industrialized nations combined. Gun murder rate sin the United States per one hundred thousand people are more than seventeen times higher than those in Australia; thirty five times higher than in Germany; thirty seven times higher than in Spain; and 355 times higher than in Japan.”
• Added a quotation: “Across our paths this week may walk more challenge, more sorrow, more fulfillment than any other week in our lives. Or, the next seven days may be a routine repeat of a hundred unspectacular weeks we have known before.”
• Added a quotation: “Gun violence is nonpartisan. Guns kill Republicans, Democrats, and Independents every day.”
• Added a quotation: “The religious community must take seriously the risk of idolatry that could result from an unwarranted fascination with guns that overlooks or ignores the social consequences of their misuse.”
• Added a quotation: “<Gun advocates> depend on deception and distortion of the truth to gain influence in the world, but take no responsibility when thousands of Americans die by guns each year.”
• Added a quotation: “That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our life and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we worship we are becoming. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)”
• Added a quotation: “as the golden calf gave the ancients a false sense of security, many 21st century Americans look for security in weapons.”
• Added a quotation: “When guns become absolutes questioning their ultimate value is forbidden... when guns become absolutes, their owners entertain no grays, for their guns have supplanted God.”
• Added a quotation: “More American citizens were killed with guns in the 18 year period between 1979 and 1997 (651,697) than all servicemen and women killed in battle in all of the United States' wars since 1775 (650,858).”
• Added a quotation: “Violence, not Christianity, is the real religion of America.”
• Added a quotation: “The blasphemy of redemptive violence is that we consider ourselves to be God's chosen people and therefore responsible and entitled to bring violence upon others whose intentions and purposes are, or may be, contrary to ours.”
• Added a quotation: “The Gun Empire wants all Americans to believe more guns will stop crime and even provide a polite society. With more than 300 million civilian guns, almost enough for every man, woman, and child, we should have already reached a level of politeness that would be the envy of the whole world.”
• Added a quotation: “The idols of power and deadly force command immense "spiritual influence" over those who are tricked into believeing that power and deadly force are essential for reconciliation between nations and for solving human conflicts here at home.”
• Added a quotation: “The greatest strength of the idol of power and deadly force is deception and the most egregious deception of all is convincing others that evil is good and freedom requires violence.”
• Added a quotation: “You would get a far better understanding of the NRA if you approached us as if you were approaching one of the great religions of the world. (Warren Cassidy, former NRA Executive)”
• Added a quotation: “Fear sells guns.”
• Added a quotation: “We casually accept the escalation of violence as an inevitable reality. We simply adapt and change our norms and learn to live with the increased tensions that accompany them. Rather than resist and reject the changes violence demands of us, we psychologically inoculate ourselves to its presence so that it no longer horrifies us, but only makes us nervous.”
• Added a quotation: “Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty as well as by the abuses of power. (James Madison)”
• Added a quotation: “The most pathetic words I ever hear are from people who listen to the innumerable ways the Gun Empire deceives us and perpetuates murder and mayhem, only to sigh: "The only thing we can do is pray." That is code for "there is nothing we can do." What a denial of God's love. What a rejection of discipleship and the power of Christ in our lives. Prayer unaccompanied by attempts to awaken listless people or congregations, or pouring out one's blood, sweat, and tears to stop the violence, will never satisfy the imperatives of love.”

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of Banned Questions about Jesus Friday, December 28, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace... only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. (Anne Lamott)”
• Added a quotation: “The lamb of God is not offered to God by humanity but is God offered to us to enable a new humanity.”
• Added a quotation: “I don't think that choosing Christ is a one-time affair, but rather a decision I make (or don't make) every moment of my life.”
• Added a quotation: “We've created a subculture dominated by self-defense theology (we call it apologetics) and cultural separation from the world (we cal it holy living) that undermines everything about Jesus' worldly ministry, including his willingness to die on the cross.”
• Added a quotation: “Maybe instead of spending so much time worrying about Christ's return, we should focus on cleaning up our mess. War, poverty, genocide, extremism, disease, and ecological abuse all undermine Christian testimony as the "light of the world".”
• Added a quotation: “To me, a worldview bound by some notion of rigid Newtonian physics seems less creative, less dynamic, and less interesting than faith open to the supernatural.”
• Added a quotation: “Because Jesus has defeated death, he is the true Lord of the whole world. Therefore we, His followers, have a job to do; we must act as His heralds, announcing His lordship to the entire world.”
• Added a quotation: “The reason Jesus and God's kingdom reject violence is not because it can't bring about a victory, but because an act of violence leads to a victor who is also a violator of their victims.”
• Added a quotation: “The Christian alternative to war is worship (Stanley Hauerwas)”

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of In the Grip of Grace Thursday, December 13, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “We know He has a tattoo, and we know what it says. "I have written your name on my hand," He declares (Isa. 49:16)”
• Added a quotation: “Your parents may have forgotten you, your teachers may have neglected you, your siblings may be ashamed of you; but within reach of your prayers is the maker of the oceans. God!”
• Added a quotation: “You are saved not because of what you do, but because of what Christ did.”
• Added a quotation: “If your sin were too great for his grace, he never would have saved you in the first place.”
• Added a quotation: “God would prefer we have an occasional limp than a perpetual strut. And, if it takes a thorn in the flesh for Him to make His point, He loves us enough not to pluck it out.”
• Added a quotation: “Content. That's the word. A state of heart in which you would be at peace if God gave you nothing more than He already has.”
• Added a quotation: “Confessed sin becomes the bridge over which we can walk back into the presence of God.”
• Added a quotation: “Mercy understood is holiness desired.”
• Added a quotation: “Holiness demands that sin be punished. Mercy compels that the sinner be loved.”
• Added a quotation: “God's highest dream is not to make us rich, not to make us successful or popular or famous. God's dream is to make us right with Him.”
• Added a quotation: “If a society deletes God from the human equation, what sandbags will they stack against the swelling tide of barbarism and hedonism?”
• Added a quotation: “Every star is an announcement. Each leaf a reminder. The glaciers are megaphones, the seasons are chapters, the clouds are banners. Nature is a song of many parts but one theme and one verse: God is.”
• Added a quotation: “God loves his children, and he hates what destroys them.”
• Added a quotation: “Many don't understand God's anger because they confuse the wrath of God with the wrath of man. The two have little in common.”

Gregor edited the memorable quotes of The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything Saturday, December 8, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “Believing untrue things, however sincerely, can have it's own unintended consequences.”
• Added a quotation: “This carpenter's son from Galilee challenges every existing political movement to a radical rethinking and dares everyone to imagine and consider his revolutionary alternative.”
• Added a quotation: “So here, "eternal life" means knowing, and knowing means an interactive relationship with the only true God and with Jesus Christ, his messenger.”
• Added a quotation: “Kingdom of God... Let's render it simply an extraordinary life to the full centered in a relationship with God.”
• Added a quotation: “A parable renders its hearers not as experts, not as know-it-alls, not as scholars... but as children.”
• Added a quotation: “We will understand neither signs and wonders in particular nor the idea of the kingdom of God in general if we try to shrink them into our restrictive universe. We have to meet these phenomena in their natural habitat.”
• Added a quotation: “God, the good King, is present, working from the inside. The King is in the kingdom, and the kingdom is among us here and now... for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. The King is present in the mess and chaos of everyday life on earth, bringing healing, sight, perception, liberation, wholeness, wholesomeness, movement, health, fullness, nourishment, sanity, and balance. The incursion of the kingdom of God has begun. We are under a gentle, compassionate assault by a kingdom of peace and healing and forgiveness and life.”
• Added a quotation: “For Jesus' secret message of the kingdom to be realized, it must first expose the evil of all alternative kingdoms or regimes or systems of ideologies. And, for that evil to be exposed, it must be drawn out of the shadows, where it hides in secret.”
• Added a quotation: “When Christianity sees itself more as a belief system or set of rituals for the select few and less as a way of daily life available to all, it loses the "magic" of the kingdom.”