Author: Phil Rehberg

Why Spiritual Theology Has Been Weak in the Area of Koinonia

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“Koinonia” is the Greek word for fellowship. The basic meaning of koinonia is participation. Believers are to be participating with one another. Paul makes this clear every time he talks about believers gathering together. See Romans 12:1-16, I Corinthians 14:23-40, Ephesians 5:15-21, Colossians 3:9-17, Hebrews 10:24-25. Every believer has gifts and is supposed to exercise them to edify others. And every believer is supposed to be open to being edified. I believe Paul emphasizes this practice more than any other essential practice, including preaching, worship, prayer and studying scripture. This mutuality is supposed to be essential to spiritual growth. We can refer to this conception as “biblical koinonia”. The heart of biblical koinonia is mutual openness and edification for which I use the acronym “MOE”. We were never supposed to spend the majority of weekly gathering times just listening to a sermon and singing songs while neglecting mutual edification. We Continue Reading →

Realizing That Sometimes We Are Unbelieving Believers

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One of the biggest challenges in our Christian life is to actually believe what God says. We read many wonderful and mysterious truths in God’s Word, and we tell ourselves that we believe them, but often our heart does not really believe. He wants us to believe what He says so that he can change us and make us one with Him. If we don’t believe the spiritual truths He is trying to teach us, then his river of life can’t flow freely through us. Unbelief places a dam on his river of life. But knowing this problem still doesn’t purge our unbelief. He says that He loves us, but often we wonder. He says He is always with us, but we so easily believe that He is off in the distance. So we will find as we follow Jesus that we are partially “unbelieving believers”. But He does not Continue Reading →

Going Deeper With Repentance – Why can’t we change better?

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As we progress in the Christian life, we begin to notice certain sinful areas of our life that we can’t seem to conquer. We all have our own weaknesses and no matter how hard we try, we continue to fail. We may be able to control our surface behavior, but inside we still feel the impulse to sin. Earlier in our Christian life, we were able to overcome many of our sins just by actively resisting temptation and receiving God’s strength through the five channels of growth. But now we are starting to realize that our sins are powered by deep desires, attitudes, and beliefs that we can’t control or change. And our own special areas of weakness are constantly reminding us of this. They are like a spotlight on our old nature. Rejoice! Now we are discovering the end of ourself. We have come to the end of the Continue Reading →

Do You Have A Heavenly Perspective? (Excerpt from host’s book “Flourish”)

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This week we are featuring an excerpt from my book Flourish since the kindle version is on sale for 99 cents at Amazon.com this week through Friday. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Flourish-Growth-Community-Living-Gospel/dp/0986382302 . Flourish is for anyone who desires to become mature in Christ. You can reach a place where common temptations are easily overcome and you are able to connect with people in God’s way. The book explains most of the important elements of following Jesus. There are over 50 chapters and most of the chapters in the book are short so you can pause and absorb what you have just read. Relationships and community are the unifying themes of the book. Here is the entire main body of chapter 29: “An essential principle of following Jesus is learning to live with a heavenly perspective. This means living our lives, knowing that we are citizens of heaven, (Philippians 3:20), Continue Reading →

Letting Go Of The False Self So We Can Grow

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Discovering our false self is very important for spiritual growth. God wants to reveal our falseness and destroy our false or ideal self. Our false or ideal self is the “self” we created since childhood in order to avoid being rejected and instead be accepted by others. It includes all the inauthentic strategies we develop to cope with our world. Some people create a false self that always smiles and cooperates and agrees with everyone. Others create a false self that prefers to oppose and fight others; their false self is the “tough” self. Some create a false self that escapes rejection altogether by hiding behind hobbies or studies or career. There are endless varieties of false self and we all have our own individual version. One very common version of the false self for Christians is the religious false self. This false self pretends that everything is okay inside Continue Reading →