Contact Information
Phone:
-
Daytime: 715-338-2796
- Evenings: 715-485-3528 (Jon)
Postal address:
Searching Together
PO Box 548
St Croix Falls WI 54024-0548
E-Mail: :jzens@searchingtogether.org
Canadian readers contact:
Larry Hartley
2391 Route 114
Weldon, N.B., Canada E4H 4R2
United Kingdom readers contact:
Doug Heffernan
Cork Fellowship
Cork, Ireland
Australian readers contact:
Ray Levick
149-153 Epping Hwy, Unit 248
Marsfield 2122, Australia
Author, speaker, editor of Searching Together, itinerant encourager of relational communities.
Jon, It was so great to meet and spend time with you and Dottie this past weekend. I will keep you, and the ministry that you are called to, in prayer. I will also be lifting Dottie up in prayer as she goes into the darkness to help others. The love that both of you have for JESUS and others eminates from you. GOD BLESS you both. I hope to see you and spend time together in the near future.
Thanks for your kind words, Tony! That was a great weekend. Hope to see you again!
I would like to have newsletters or devotions by my email. And also maybe have receive from Canada. I live in Canada. Thank you
January 13, 2015
Hi Jon,
Charlotte and I send New Years Greetings to you, Dotty and family. It has been some time since I have communicated with you. However, I wish to say that your commitment to Jesus Christ and Searching Together has benefited me and many others greatly in the continual search for Godly reading material that the Holy Spirit uses to help us to know The Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
Jon, recently I was introduced to a Spanish Reformer Juan De Valdes through a publication “Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers,” Editors: George H. Williams and Angel M. Mergal.
After reading Part Two of “Evangelical Catholicism as Represented by Juan De Valdes” I have been thoroughly blessed and desire that you and the Searching Together Team would consider republishing the articles contained therein in your magazine. In particular I would like to see the dialogue between the countess Giulia Gonzaga and Juan De Valdes titled “The Christian Alphabet,” by Valdes.
Also “The Benefit of Christ,” written by a Monk of the Black Benedictines called Don Benedetto, I would like to see published in the Searching Together magazine, here is a Link: http://www.chapellibrary.org/pdf-other/otboc2.pdf
Presently I am reading through Juan De Valdes commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. This work is so powerful, so clear, and so simple; it speaks to my heart first and than to my head. It also tells me that anyone can republish it because it is without copyright.
Added note: While reading Luther on the Epistle to the Galatians I noticed that he uses the term “The Benefit of Christ” Pg.287. This document “The Benefit of Christ,” written by Don Benedetto, a Monk of the Black Benedictines, was Juan De Valdes’ starting point in all of his biblical teaching.
I wish to thank you for introducing me to Frank Viola’s publications, we have been blessed and sharing “From Eternity to Here” with our friends, a beautiful work.
Every Blessing to the Searching Together Team!
Larry
Thank you, Larry & Charlotte, for your gracious words! We have the fondest of memories when we met your family in Canada years ago! I will check out the sources you mention when time allows.
Hi Jon, This was posted on my facebook wall by a pastor of a church I used to attend, about evolutionary creationism, something that he is exploring, Would like to read your opinion on this. http://thesurprisinggodblog.gci.org/2014/11/evolution-and-image-of-god.html
Matt, I just don’t have time right now to read this. Maybe someone else will wish to comment. I think macro-evolution is a lost cause. I think some dogmatic statements by creationists say too much & go beyond the evidence. The big picture is that Jesus Christ created everything, and everything is for Him, and He holds everything together.
Yes, I did mean in that sentence to refer to the Spirit as feminine. That’s the only time I’ve done that. It felt like the way to say it at that moment. I think it must be underscored — God’s essence is transgender, totally above gender. Even when the Son became a male, he was like the first Adam, having a Woman within Him (Gen 5:2). “Adam” consisted of male and female. To suggest, as John Piper does, that God has a “male-bent” is biased and misleading. Here are some remarks from an article that need to be remembered.
…The word for “spirit” by itself (pneuma) is actually gender-neutral. The Hebrew word for “spirit” (ruach) is feminine in Genesis 1:2. But the gender of a word in Greek or Hebrew has nothing to do with gender identity . . . . God is invisible and spirit (I.e., non-body). This is why no material thing was ever to be used to represent God (Exodus 20:4). If gender is an attribute of the body, then a spirit does not have gender. God, in His essence, has no gender . . . . Gender identifications of God in the Bible are not unanimous. Many people think that the Bible presents God in exclusively male terms, but this is not the case. God is said to give birth in the book of Job and portrays Himself as a mother in Isaiah. Jesus described the Father as being like a woman in search of a lost coin in Luke 15 (and Himself as a “mother hen” in Matthew 23:37). In Genesis 1:26-27 God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness,” and then “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” Thus, the image of God was male and female — not simply one or the other. This is further confirmed in Genesis 5:2, which can be literally translated as “He created them male and female; when they were created, he blessed them and named them Adam.” The Hebrew term “Adam” means “man” — the context showing whether it means “man” (as opposed to woman) or “mankind” (in the collective sense). Therefore, to whatever degree humanity is made in the image of God, gender is not an issue. (http://WWW.gotquestions.org/Holy-Spirit-gender.HTML)
Hope this helps a bit, Brian, to understand where I’m coming from!
Well, said. One of my messages got through in part, appears windows likes to shut things off now and then… I love the article “Spirit Led.” By all means 2 Corinthian 3 tells us not by print alone we become the written lining epistles. Hope some got through , I referred to pgs Hopewood “Primitive Christianity,” 1918 publication is well mapped with some deeply interesting and informative statements that would challenge the post modern mechanical religious systems.
A real fine resource on the early body which deals largely with the relationship of God as Spirit, outside the dogmatized human systems used today. Well said lot of deep truth for people to get back to the real deal of being faith ward bond and spirit led..
Blessings! Long over due, longtime waiting, may truth abound in love.