Archive for the ‘Christian Living’ Tag
Imagine God’s Desire, Again!
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Christian Living, Gospel, The Dance and Dream of the Trinity, The Plan of Adoption, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, Forgiveness, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Salvation, Sin, Trinity
Comments (2) The Father’s desire is for you – and in Jesus he has you!
This good news is the very heart of what God is speaking into our souls in Jesus, through their Spirit. Therefore we cannot think or talk about it too much! This audio will help you keep growing in your understanding of how the desires of your heart are flowing from the life of the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and the creative way in which the Father is pursuing his relationship with you.
Imagine God’s Desire, Again! by Tim Brassell
Stop Worrying! Jesus is Having Faith for You
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Christian Living | Tags: Christian Living, Faith, Jesus, Perichoresis, Trinity
Comments (3) I have been thinking about faith lately.
I have also been thinking about how I believe most people misunderstand the subject and suffer needlessly. Maybe you are one of them. Most of us are so trained in thinking in an individual way that it becomes very difficult to rest in Jesus’ faith on our behalf! Yes, you heard me correctly!
Jesus Christ is having perfect faith FOR you before the Father!
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not asking you to produce the perfect faith that he “demands”, and at this point it would be very wise for you to remember that you have a corrupt and sinful nature! This means that whatever “faith” you have is also sinful and corrupt – including your faith in God! If we are really honest with ourselves, all of us are really no better than the man mentioned in Mark 9:24, who said to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
And that is where Jesus, the God/Man, stepped in and saved the day for each of us!
I think most people (perhaps even you!) suffer needlessly because they are actually having faith in their own faith rather than having faith in God’s faith for us! Let’s face it, our personal faith, because of sin is admittedly weak! After all, how can something sinful and corrupt (YOU and your faith), offer a faith to a perfect God that is sinless and un-corrupt?! At best, your personal faith in God is like a roller-coaster; up one minute and down the next! I have been there and done that, and I hate the T-shirt, too!!
Now don’t get me wrong! In one sense, part of the reason you have weak faith in God the Father, Son and Spirit is that you also have STRONG faith in something else! No person anywhere REALLY lacks faith! We either have faith in the Truth or faith in a lie, but we definitely have faith and belief in something, usually VERY STRONGLY!!
The kind of faith that the Father, Son and Spirit urges us to have in Him is like the faith my young daughter exercised one day when she asked me if she could mow the grass.
She was way too young and uncoordinated to get on the lawn tractor and mow safely, but she desperately wanted to share in MY mowing of the grass. So, what did I do? You guessed it! I lifted her up into my lap and let her “mow the grass”. She “turned the key” (yeh, right!). She “turned the wheel” (her hands on top of my hands!) She “accelerated” (by placing her little feet on my shins and banging them up pretty good!) She also bragged afterwards about how she “mowed the grass” that day! Ha-Ha!
Do you get the point??? My daughter actually did NOTHING that day, EXCEPT share in my mowing of the grass!! In fact, the truth be told, other than the love and bonding between us, she was more of a hindrance and safety hazard in mowing the grass that day! I literally did EVERYTHING! I shared my mowing of the grass with her! I shared my ability to mow the grass with her!! I also shared MY FAITH with her! Between the two of us I was the only one who knew how to mow the grass in confidence and assurance, and she got to participate in my confident assurance – MY FAITH!! She placed her faith IN ME AND MY FAITH!
That’s biblical faith!!! We are supposed to have faith IN JESUS!
In other words, we are supposed to have faith in his faith on our behalf, just like my daughter actually had faith in my faith! She wasn’t worried about a thing while I mowed, but was having loads of fun!
You and I could never work up enough faith to trust and embrace the Father, Son and Spirit – not in our sinful flesh! It’s too much of a strain and burden to bear on our sinful humanity! Many of us are burnt out on faith because our faith is misplaced! We are trying to have faith in our own faith. But the problem is that our faith is so small and corrupt that it, honestly, can NEVER really hold up to the “faith challenges” it is presented with!!
We are supposed to embrace the fact that Jesus is standing in for us!
We are not only supposed to be trusting that Jesus stood in for us (past tense), BUT, that Jesus is STILL standing in for us and is having faith FOR US – FOR YOU – FOR ME, RIGHT NOW!! It even takes Jesus to help us embrace this truth!
This is why faith in God’s Good News of grace is called a GIFT (Ep 2:8!). This is why Paul said we don’t have to worry about anything – Phillipians 4:6 – that includes our faith! This is also why the Apostle Paul wrote what he did:
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ~ Gal. 2:19-20
Do you see?! We live by the faith OF the Son of God – Jesus!
He is having perfect faith for you and I before the Father! So be at rest and “chill”! Have your doubts, anxieties, and worries if you want (you’re going to have them anyway, you are sinful and corrupt remember?!) But as Jesus gives you grace (and He does and will share grace with you!), embrace that he is having faith for you and keep “mowing the grass” of life in His confidence!
A long time ago, the Father planned for you to be Adopted and lifted up into His Relationship in Jesus Christ! 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ literally lifted you up with all of humanity up into this relationship that He shares with His Father in the Spirit, in His ascension! You Have ALWAYS been the child the Father always wanted from the day you were born – no matter who you are – and you are seated in the heavenly places with God in Jesus!! (Ephesians 1:3-15, and 2:4-10!!!) .
Yes, the Father Son and Spirit Like you Very, Very MUCH!
In fact, God the Trinity Loves You MORE than He Loves Himself as the One True God!!! And if you cannot have faith in this true fact right now, it’s okay! Jesus is still standing in for you and having faith for you….REMEMBER?!!!
Have faith IN HIM – in Jesus – and in His ability to share His faith with you, more and more overtime!!! Look at Who He is! Look at the imaginative world he created – the cosmos (EVERYTHING!) – and let this be a sign to you that He is a Relational and Creative Genius Who can WIN YOU (not coerce or force you!) into embracing Him and His faith on your behalf!
~ Tim Brassell
Tools of God
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, Evangelism, Missions, Perichoresis, Salvation, Trinity
Leave a comment We will all end up sleeping away about 1/3 of our lives. (About 8 hrs out of every 24 we live).
Besides that, most of us need three meals a day – plus a snack or two in between. And if you isolate us from other people for more than a day or two we start getting a little wacky – make it a few months and we go insane.
Imagine you owned an MP3 player that had to have 8 hrs. of downtime out of every 24 hours and had to recharge its batteries at least three times during every 16 hrs. that it’s operational.
Would you call that an efficient machine? I sure wouldn’t! Frankly, I’d throw the thing away and get a better one.
What if that same MP3 player needed constant interaction with other MP3 players in order to function at its best? What if it needed daily interface with other machines – not just to download new songs but just to transmit trivial information back and forth like “how efficiently are your songs playing back today?” and “what’s your sound quality like?” I can’t even imagine how frustrating that would be!
Such an MP3 player would serve no useful purpose for me.It would be a useless tool and a worthless instrument.
Perhaps that’s why the Father of our brother Jesus does not call us “tools” or “instruments” but “beloved children” – adopted forever into the life that he and his Son share with us in their Spirit.
~ Jonathan Stepp
Woo-Hoo!
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Bible, Christian Living, Jesus, Matthew 5, Perichoresis, Sermon on the Mount, The Shack, Trinity
Comments (6) Here’s a Trinitarian paraphrase of Matthew 5:3-16
(3) The Triune Life has been freely given to all. If you are spiritually impoverished, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ for this gift does not depend on your religious skills.
(4) If you are sad, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ for you will be comforted.
(5) If you are unassertive, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ for your inheritance does not depend on your ability to assert your right to it.
(6) If you are starved for the world to be put right, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ because you will get what you want.
(7) If you are kind to people who don’t deserve it, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ because the Trinity is like that too.
(8) If you long for an undistorted vision of Papa, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ because you will receive the desire of your heart.
(9) If you constantly find yourself in between warring parties, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ because you are behaving just like your Papa.
(10) If your fight for social justice gets you in trouble, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ because you are already experiencing the Triune Life that has been given to you.
(11) If people spread lies about you and insult you because of me, shout ‘WOOHOO!’ (12) because you are experiencing the life of Jesus in the world; you are in good company.
(13) Like a pinch of salt in a big pot of soup, you ‘little people’ have a much greater effect on the world than you’d think. The trick is to stay spicy; it’s hard to be different from everybody else, but that’s the whole point. The world already has plenty of landscaping pebbles; what it needs now is salt, really SALTY salt.
(14) Through you, light is coming into the world. Like a city on a hill, you will be seen—just by you being you. (15) And nobody puts a candle under a bowl; they put it on a stand, where its light can bless everyone. (16) So don’t hide who you are. When people see the love inside you, they will see Papa and love Him.
~ John Stonecypher
Imagine God’s Desire
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Christian Living, The Dance and Dream of the Trinity, The Plan of Adoption, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, Forgiveness, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Salvation, Sin, Trinity
Comments (4) The Father’s desire is for you – and in Jesus he has you!
This 15 min. audio will help you understand more clearly how the desires of your heart are flowing from the life of the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and the creative way in which the Father is pursuing his relationship with you.
Imagine God’s Desire by Tim Brassell
Yahweh is not Codependent
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, God, Jesus, Perichoresis, Relationships, The Shack, Trinity
Comments (4) Something I love about THE SHACK: Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu have good boundaries with each other.
In times past, my best attempts at a Trinitarian vision always involved some kind of enmeshment between persons. In my mind, I couldn’t imagine how God could be truly ONE unless the 3 were always together, always doing the same thing, always thinking the same thing. In this vision, I saw 3 identical bodies with identical faces and simultaneous blinking. The 3 did not have conversations, but instead sort of chanted the Single Triune Mind in unison.
But THE SHACK opened up some fresh space for my imagination.
Jesus was a Middle Eastern man (makes sense); Papa was a feisty middle-aged black woman; and Sarayu was a flighty, eccentric Asian woman. Not only did they LOOK different, they SPOKE and ACTED different; they didn’t even stay in the same room most of the time. They each had their own projects that they were working on – Papa cooking in the kitchen, Jesus tinkering in his workshop, Sarayu puttering around her garden.
They are unified in love and mutual submission, but never enmeshed in codependence.
This changes so much about my approach to life and relationships. I’d always believed that love meant not having boundaries. That love meant always being together, always doing the same thing, always thinking the same thing. Saying YES to all requests. Never disagreeing. Always feeling the same emotions.
My vision of love was all wrong.
I’m putting a lot of effort right now into learning more healthy and authentic ways of relating to people. And THE SHACK‘s theological vision is helping.
~ John Stonecypher
Why Your Religion Isn’t Working
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Baptism, Christian Living, Christianity, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Religion, Sacraments, Trinity
Comments (6) You’ve probably forgotten that Christianity is about God’s forgiveness, NOT your goodness!
And that is one of the reasons it can confidently be said that God is not a Christian, including Jesus (or Immanuel – “God with us” in human flesh!). And when I say God, I mean the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as Gregory of Nazianzus has said, and Martin Davis reminds us on his blog.
Yes, to be a Christian is to be aware that you are not good, even after all of your confession, baptism, and good work like faithful attendance at a Gospel (Jesus) proclaiming Church! Don’t get me wrong – all of these things ARE GOOD because they are supposed to remind each of us that “there is none good, no not one”, EXCEPT Jesus Christ, AND that he shares His goodness with us EVEN IN OUR CURRENT BADNESS!!!)
These sacraments, or signs pointing to Jesus, are simply (and profoundly!) nothing less than the practical ways we participate in and experience the fact that ONLY God is Good, and apart from him we can do nothing!
Confession is to say “I confess that I am not good apart from Jesus! I am only good IN HIM! I admit that it is only through the grace of shared relationships, experiences, and the opening of my eyes to see Who he is and who I am in Him, that Jesus has brought me to realize that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing!”
To be Baptized is to proclaim, “It was Jesus’ one baptism 2000 years ago that washed all of humanity clean and was a fitting human response to the Father in fallen flesh. ONLY in His literal humanity, and lack of sin in fallen flesh, was humanity adopted, made truly obedient, renewed, and lifted up into the Life of the Trinity! I participate with Him in His baptism, NOW, PUBLICLY displaying my belief in His One Baptism of, and for, everyone in Himself!”
Even to experience the good work of faithful attendance at a Gospel (Jesus!) proclaiming Church is to demonstrate and shout boldly to the Cosmos “We are All welcome at the Divine Party where sinners (every human being on the planet!) are celebrated as the Children the Father Always wanted and claimed in Jesus 2000 years ago! We are sinners because we have completely misunderstood the heart of the Father and thought He was all about rules! He’s not! We were mistaken! We can eat and celebrate at the party anyway because it’s not about our Goodness – It’s about His forgiveness!! Let’s PARRRR-TAYYYYYY!!!”
WARNING: If we keep forgetting this truth of the Gospel, we’ll keep making the same HUGE mistake that religious people of every generation make.
As Baxter Kruger states eloquently and hauntingly in his little booklet The Parable of the Dancing God, regarding religious people:
They invent their own terms. Instead of recognizing their own failure and nothingness, and then basking in the Father’s sheer grace and living in His lavish embrace, they create a religion. They create imaginary definitions, so that they can convince themselves that they are good, righteous and loving. And things get so twisted and wrongheaded, they cannot get to grips with a gracious Father who embraces and accepts the fallen ones, nor a Jesus who receives them freely and treats them as old friends. They never know the real God and life in His pleasure. Their self-righteousness keeps them from seeing and experiencing His grace. They never join in the divine party. How could they? They do not see themselves as desperate failures who stand helpless and powerless to change–they are doing religion. Inevitably, bitterness wells up within their heart when they see the free-ness of the Father’s embrace and His lavish feast. And their religious presence stifles the marvel of amazed sinners and turns the celebration into a dead and boring act of “religious service” to God, which is lifeless and vacuous of glory. (pp. 25-26)
Yikes! That’s exactly what’s happened, and why our religion isn’t working! Help us Holy Spirit, cause we, our kids, our grandchildren, and our single mothers and fathers REALLY want to “PARRRR-TAYYYYYY!!!” Ha-Ha!
~ Timothy Brassell
Coincidence? I think so.
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living, Gospel, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, God's Will, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Trinity
Comments (2) We Christians love coincidence.
You know the kind: “Well, right after talking to you I was praying that somehow God would show me if we should be together, I was just headed into the grocery store when I ran into an old high school classmate I hadn’t seen for 10 years. His boss had just this morning given him tickets to the U2 concert next week – but he can’t use them because his mom’s having surgery that day. He asked if I wanted them! So, see, God does want us to go on a date together – to the U2 concert!”
I’ve heard coincidence used as an authority for determining everything from what ministries a church should engage in to settling questions of doctrine.
So what’s the deal?
I think the problem is that we don’t want to take responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and decisions. It’s easier to say “this is what God wants – see, he worked out all these coincidental circumstances to show us his will.”
Consider two alternate views of reality:
View One: God is in heaven. He wants you to do exactly what he wants done so that everything will be perfect and no one will ever make a mess (like, say, crucifying the Son or stoning a deacon to death). You are on earth. For some reason God has trouble communicating – maybe it’s because he’s so far away, or you’re so hard of hearing – whatever it is, God has to orchestrate elaborate coincidental schemes to get your attention and tell you what to do so everything can be perfect.
View Two: The Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have embraced all our lives and the whole creation – the good, the bad, and the ugly. In Jesus we have all been raised up into the Trinity’s life of joy, love, and freedom. Because humanity is secure in Jesus we are free to make choices, to succeed or fail, without any fear that all will be lost. The Father can deal with messes (like, say, crucifixions), in fact, he’s good at cleaning them up – and helping us learn to clean them up – and like any Father he enjoys going through life with his kids and helping them learn. He doesn’t necessarily do everything for them but he does do everything with them.
To me, that second view of reality sounds more like the Father that Jesus has shown me.
~ Jonathan Stepp
Fear and Trembling
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, Fear, God, Jesus, Perichoresis, Trinity
Comments (5) Why is the Old Testament so concerned with telling us to FEAR God?
After all, John teaches us that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4.18a). We could chalk this up to an Old Covenant vs. New Covenant thing, but I don’t think that quite works. The fear of God is also taught by New Testament teachers, from Peter and Paul (1 Pet 2.17; Eph 5.21; Phil 2.12), to Jesus and his angels (Lk 12.5).
Certainly John is right in saying that love casts out the kind of fear that “has to do with punishment” (1 Jn 4.18).
But there seems to be another kind of fear, one that is beautiful and good.
I can honestly say that I fear my wife. It’s not that I’m afraid of her hitting me on the head with a frying pan (as much as I occasionally deserve it). It’s not that kind of fear. It has do with my knowledge that I have absolutely no control over this woman. Sometimes she does things I like, sometimes she does things I don’t like, and I never know what’s going to happen next. It’s not about her doing good things or bad things; it’s about her being a distinct person from me. It’s what makes relationships risky and thrilling. It’s what necessitates that glorious experience we call “submitting one to another” (which, interestingly enough, we do “out of our fear of Christ” (Eph 5.21).
We all know that falling in love is a terrifying experience, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a fear that love doesn’t cast out. In fact, there is no such thing as love apart from this kind of fear. As my theology prof Leron Shults likes to say, “love is a delightful terror and a terrible delight.” And that’s the way we like it.
To fear God is to accept and deal with the fact that Aslan is not a tame lion.
If we want a non-fearsome easy-to-control god, we’ll have to settle for idols (which is, in fact, what we so often do). But if we want to face reality rather than fiction, then we must deal with Someone with teeth and a sense of adventure. We know that He will never leave nor forsake us, but we still never know what He’s going to do next, and whether or not we’re going to like it.
And we wouldn’t want it any other way.
~ John Stonecypher
How the Trinity does Ministry
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living, Grace Communion International, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Jesus, Ministry, Perichoresis, Trinity
Comments (4) We can learn a lot about ministry by looking at how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit minister to us. When God the Son wanted to bring the life of the Trinity to us he:
1. Took up permanent residence in our humanity
2. And built long term relationships.
When we see this we realize that God has “moved into our neighborhood” and will live here forever! He’s not going anywhere. And that permanent residency is great for building really long term relationships – the kind that last forever. This tells us our most effective ministry will be realized in the long-lasting relationships of our lives and that we should give top priority to these relationships.
If we really want to help others experience the assurance of how Jesus has baptized them into the life of the Trinity we need to focus on the places we live every day in long term relationship.
That’s why family really is more important than work, church, or hobbies. With our wives, husbands, children, parents, and siblings we have the chance to experience the fullest and deepest reality of what it means to be adopted children of the Father in Christ.
Our local church family is second in providing this experience. Staying with a group of believers week in and week out for years on end has the potential to baptize us in the assurance of who we are in Christ and enable us to share that baptism with others.
Of course, families and churches are all dysfunctional to some extent. The key to families and churches being healthy places of ministry is our focus on Jesus. If our daily and weekly relationships are built around the truth of how Jesus has brought us into the life of the Trinity then even our dysfunctionality can be healed and turned into positive change for our lives and the lives of others.
When I look around at American Christianity I think I see a lot of evidence that we are not really focused on who Jesus is for us. One evidence is that we are addicted to “event/experience” ministry.
We lack assurance of who we are in Christ because we have a theology that says our status as children of the Father depends on our belief instead of on who Jesus is for us. As a result we are addicted to events that make us feel – however briefly – that we are good and acceptable and loved by the Father. Family life and Sunday services are too “routine” and “dull” to give us the emotional fix we need.
So, the Christian world is full of one day, weekend, one week, and three week events that slake our thirst for assurance for a little while. But the long term effects of these events are very small in comparison to the long term effects of family and church life.
The vast majority of what my children believe about their life in Christ will be shaped by what they experience every day in my house, every Sunday at church, and every Monday night at youth group. Only a small minority of their identity will be shaped by what they experience at exciting events.
Why? Because family and church are built around long-term relationships in which I and others have taken up permanent residence in my children’s lives. Event ministry is just the event – the relationships are superficial and extremely short term.
I’m not necessarily bashing short term ministry events. Such experiences can be helpful, in moderation. What I am bashing is our form of Christianity which holds up these intense experiences as somehow better than and more “spiritual” than actually living in relationship.
There’s something wrong with our understanding of who we are in Christ when we don’t think we’ve done “real” ministry by cooking breakfast for our children, encouraging a spouse to keep trusting Jesus, or taking communion with the 25 people who’ve been our church family for the last 18 years!
The irony is that family and church are not only more effective, they’re actually easier to fit into our lives. It doesn’t cost me any money or disrupt the flow of my life to pray with my kids before they go to school or show up at church on Sunday morning. In contrast, I have spent thousands of dollars, driven thousands of miles, and twisted my schedule into knots to get them to exciting events.
Do I really want to experience the assurance of knowing who I am in Christ and help others do the same? Then I must live with them, the way the Son of God lives with us, and stay in relationship with them for years, the way Jesus stays with us.
~ By Jonathan Stepp