Archive for the ‘Trinity’ Tag
You Are His
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Gospel, The Dance and Dream of the Trinity, The Plan of Adoption, Trinity | Tags: Christianity, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Salvation, Trinity
Leave a comment You belong to the Father! He has made you his child through his Son Jesus Christ.
Do you believe it? If you do – even a little bit – it is because Jesus is sharing his belief with you. This 15 min. audio post will help you believe even more deeply in the truth of your Adoption:
You are His – By Tim Brassell
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
On Submission
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Jesus, Lent, Perichoresis, Spiritual Disciplines, Trinity
Comments (2) It’s surprising how much good theology you can learn from an atheist.
Case in point: My friend Phil (not his real name), a recovering addict who struggles with Step 2 and 3 of the Twelve Steps: Believing “that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” and making “a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.” What’s a good atheist to do? I asked him about this, and he replied:
“My higher power is my recovery group. I can’t trust my own judgment when it comes to my addiction, so I trust the judgment of my group. Christians say ‘What would Jesus do?’ I say ‘What would my group want me to do?’ If my groups says No, then I don’t do it. They haven’t steered me wrong yet.”
While I would love to see Phil get to know the One True Power who is there for him, I am still happy about this step he’s taken.
He’s stumbled onto a vital practice of the Adopted Life: SUBMISSION.
Submission is a lot like fasting. When I fast, I deny myself something that I want. When I submit, I actively seek what you want. Father, Son, and Spirit have great fun with this. They know submission as an adventure, not a chore. In my experiments with this kind of life, I set aside times where I will ask my wife/kids/friends/pastors: “What can I do for you?” and then I do whatever they ask. It’s fun.
For me, there’s also another side to submission, related to the fact that I’m wise enough to know that I’m not as wise as I think I am.
So I’m taking up the spiritual practice of disobeying myself. So far, the results are pretty good. I submit to Jesus and his Gospel. And as part of that, I also submit to His Community (the church) and to His Community’s Book (the Bible). According to Paul, our submission to Christ has everything to do with our submission to one another (Eph 5.21-24). A life of wisdom is a life of submission (James 3.17). If I am a fool, it is because I have grown blind to my own foolishness. If I am to become wise, my only hope is to submit to what anothers’ eyes see.
So here I’m learning to practice submission in somewhat the same way Phil does. I let some wise people have intimate access to my life. When they see a problem I don’t see, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. And when a bunch of them see the same problem, and I still don’t see it, I know there’s a good chance I’ve discovered one of my blind spots. So if possible, I try to behave as if they are right, and then I step back to see what happens.
All I can say is this: They haven’t steered me wrong yet.
~ by John Stonecypher
The Father’s Plan
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Gospel, The Plan of Adoption, Trinity | Tags: Bible, Christianity, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Salvation, Theology, Trinity
Comments (5) Did God really create humanity so he could adopt us as his children? After all, the word “adoption” only appears a few times in the New Testament.
This is a question I’ve received more than once in the last couple of years, and a question I also wondered about when I first started thinking of the gospel in terms of Ephesians 1:5, which says: The Father predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ.
It does seem that the NT spends a lot more time talking about sin, atonement, our behavior, and our belief, than it does about the idea of adoption.
Then, one day, it hit me: how many times does my Father have to tell me what the plan is before I’ll believe it? In other words, why do I find it hard to believe that adoption was the plan just because that word is only used a couple of times in the NT? If the Father’s Spirit says “adoption is the Father’s plan” – as he does in Eph. 1:5 – then that’s the plan, whether the Spirit says it once or a thousand times.
Here’s an analogy:
Suppose you came to visit me in Nashville and after church I said “Meet me at Demos’ for lunch at 1:30” and then I spent 5 minutes giving you detailed directions on how to get downtown to the restaurant. I show up at 1:30 but you don’t show up, so I call your cell and you say “oh, well, you only said ‘let’s eat at Demos’ one time, but you spent five minutes telling me about the streets in downtown Nashville, so I’ve just been driving around downtown”.
That is definitely missing the forest for the trees isn’t it?!
It’s true that the NT spends a lot of time talking about how the plan of adoption was accomplished: how the Son became human as the man Jesus, how he crucified our sinful nature in his cross, how he raised us up to his Father’s right hand in his ascension, and how his Spirit is helping us come to believe the truth that we are adopted in Christ as children of the Father.
But just because the Spirit only tells us a couple of times what the plan was doesn’t mean that the details of the plan are more important than the plan itself. The end, the destiny, the purpose of human existence – that we have been adopted in Christ as children of the Father – is the most important fact we can know about ourselves and our Dad in heaven.
Don’t miss the forest for the trees! How we are adopted in Christ is important but it’s not as important as the fact that we are adopted.
~ by Jonathan Stepp
On Fasting
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Christianity, Fasting, Gospel, Jesus, Lent, Perichoresis, Salvation, Trinity
Leave a comment In Jesus we meet something unusual – a God who says No to himself.
Jesus desires comfort instead of pain, just like all of us. But he lays aside his desires and says “Not my will, but yours.” Why does Jesus empty himself of his prerogatives and privileges? Philippians 2 says he does it because he is “in nature God.” Why does he give rather than grasp? Because that is simply the way God is.
“Getting what I want” is not a big concern in the divine life.
The Trinity is worlds away from the self-absorbed divine glory hog I believed in as a kid. Jesus, his Dad, and their Spirit abound with glory, not because they’re really good at getting glorified, but because they’re having so much fun giving glory to each other. “Not my will but yours” has been on Jesus’ lips from th days before his name was Jesus.
Being the son of Adam that I am, I am often preoccupied with getting what I want.
Why? Because deep down, I believe that getting what I want is extremely important. Of course, this belief is total crap, and I know that. But my appetite-driven behaviors indicate that I apparently still believe it anyway.
This is where fasting comes in.
Fasting is an exercise that challenges this deeply distorted belief that I just can’t seem to stop believing in. To fast is to leap, by faith, into an experience of not getting what I want, in order to discover reality in a deeper way: First, I learn that not getting what I want (food, TV, sex, chocolate) is really not so bad as I’d thought. Second, I learn that there is Something Better out there which is far more worthy of my desires.
In fasting, I unmask my lying idolatries (things I think I need in addition to God) and discover I don’t need them after all. And when my idols fall, I can see past them to the abundant life of Father, Son and Spirit that has been there all along.
When my rotten bottom-of-the-dumpster pizza is taken away, I discover the Feast that has been laid out for me from before time.
Happy Lent, everybody.
~ by John Stonecypher
No Stronger Message
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Evangelism, Gospel, The Dance and Dream of the Trinity | Tags: Christianity, Church, Evangelism, Gospel, Grace, Jesus, Salvation, Trinity
Comments (2) The Father has adopted all humanity – does that sound like a wimpy gospel of “easy-believism”? The message of humanity’s adoption is not a watered down gospel – it’s the strongest message ever delivered!
This 15 min. audio will help you see more clearly that There is No Stronger Message than the Gospel of Adoption
~ By Tim Brassell
First Things
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Children's Ministry, Gospel | Tags: Children's Ministry, Evangelism, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Salvation, Trinity
Comments (2) My 5 year-old said “Maybe I’ll draw a picture of the Trinity” and I was reminded again how important it is that we get First Things first when teaching others about the gospel.
Just a few years ago I would have considered the Trinity to be a difficult and remote doctrine, the subject of study for “mature” Christians and theology students – not something to teach children about.
How wrong I was!
How can my kids ever understand their existence, the purpose for their lives, or the nature of reality itself unless they have a healthy image in their hearts and minds of the God who made them?
God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The essence of God’s nature is loving, inclusive relationship. If this isn’t the First Thing you know about God then you don’t know God as he really is! If this isn’t the First Thing we teach others about the gospel then we haven’t really taught them the gospel fully enough!
Only when we know God as the Father who has adopted us in the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ and poured out the Holy Spirit on our humanity (Eph. 1:5, Acts 2:17) can we begin to know who we are and whose we are.
But aren’t kids too immature to understand the Trinity?
I guess it depends on what you mean by “understand”. If you mean “explain why and how God is Triune” then I would say that no one understands the Trinity! How can I, a mere mortal, explain the how and why of my creator? The best that any of us can do is to know and believe the testimony of Jesus. He tells us that he is God, that his Father is God, and that their Holy Spirit is God, and that together the three of them are the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
As it turns out, kids can actually understand that quite well.
My son Lewis is only 5 years old but when he thinks of God he thinks of the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. And when he sits down to create a picture of something he knows the Trinity is on his list of things that he can draw.
Looking at the picture he drew I thanked Jesus for helping me begin to learn to get First Things first.
~ by Jonathan Stepp
On Confession
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Confession, Gospel, Jesus, Lent, repentance, Sin, Trinity, Trinity and Humanity
Leave a comment On some days I miss my old theology, because at least THEN I had some control over things.
I did my thing called “faith,” which obligated God to make my afterlife pleasant by putting me in a nice (non-flaming) neighborhood. But since then I’ve learned that my Papa already loves me, that Jesus has already included me within his forever-life with Papa, and their Spirit is already saturating every moment of my life with experiences of this Truth. I’ve learned that my belief or non-belief doesn’t change any of that.
So why is my life a cauldron of shame?
I can’t blame it on God anymore. Jesus, his Papa, and their Spirit treat me royally; they always have and always will. The problem is not God. The problem is not my location or circumstances. “Going to heaven” won’t make it better. “Going to hell” won’t make it worse. Because the problem isn’t “out there.” The problem is in me; the problem is that I hate the truth.
Don’t get me wrong; I like the idea that God loves me, etc. That part rocks. I am happy to confess that truth. It’s the other part of the truth that I don’t want to confess. The truth about the things I’ve done, the lies I’ve told, the people I’ve hurt. The truth that I’ve loved darkness and still sorta do.
FESS means “to speak.” CON means “with.” To confess is to SPEAK-WITH God. To say what God says, to tell the truth with Him in one voice together. I’ve done plenty of confession in prayer; I’m well aware that my misdeeds are not news to God. And I’ve always tried to be pretty open about being a guy who has an ongoing history of brokenness, just like everybody else.
So why is my shame still here?
Addicts learn a painful lesson in the Twelve Steps, especially Step Five: We discover that we cannot break free from shame without confessing “to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Or, as Brother James puts it: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5.16). When we connect with the truth (with God, with ourselves, and with others), we begin to become unbroken/healed/saved.
Now, if you keep secrets about your past but still feel completely shame-free, that’s wonderful. I don’t know how you manage that, but I’m happy for you. All I know is that I cannot keep secrets if I want to be free from shame. I need to have a small circle of people-my wife and a couple friends-who know everything. The whole list, with all the relevant details. If I withhold relevant facts (about past or present), it is because I believe they will reject me if I tell them. That belief is the voice of shame, and I refuse to listen to it anymore. I am no longer willing to let toxic shame have any place in my life.
If a secret unpleasant truth is poisoning me on the inside, confession is how I expel it from my body. I believe I will survive the process because Jesus has taught me that the truth will set me free. I want freedom more than I want the artificial comfort of keeping my skeletons in my closet. “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception” (2 Cor 4.2).
I am choosing to accept and confess the truth about myself. I am choosing to believe in the ability of God (and His people) to love me anyway. So that “by believing I may have life” (John 20.31).
~ by John Stonecypher
FOR US and For Our Salvation
Filed under: By Tim Brassell, Christian Living, The Dance and Dream of the Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Gospel, Jesus, Perichoresis, Salvation, Spirituality, Trinity
Comments (2) Why did the Son of God become the man Jesus? Are you seeking assurance, peace, and confidence in your soul?
You do not want to miss this audio post, it’s a 13 min. discussion of the Father’s plan of adoption and how he has included us all in the Triune Life through his Son Jesus Christ. It will baptize your soul in assurance.
FOR US and For Our Salvation by Tim Brassell
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living | Tags: Christian Living, Facebook, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Perichoresis, Relationships, Trinity
Comments (1) Could Facebook be a gift of the Holy Spirit to humanity? There are a lot of funny videos and emails circulating that make fun of the annoying aspects of the social networking site – but there is also something profoundly relational taking place with Facebook, and the Holy Spirit is all about relationship.
It’s not just Facebook, it’s all the social networking sites that allow people to connect and relate around the parts of their lives that inspire them: photography, music, movies, and even theology.
Think about it this way: for thousands of years most human beings lived their lives in relationship and connection to the same people. Living in tribes, villages, and small cities, most people developed deep, lasting relationships with their extended families and people their same age with whom they grew up, worked, lived, and even died together.
The Industrial Revolution and the mobility of modern society have changed all that. Most of us grew up with one group of people, went to school with another group, and have lived and worked with several different groups over the years since. In the midst of all that mobility we lost contact with almost everyone we knew except for our immediate family and, perhaps, one or two close friends.
Which do you think represents the Triune Life in which Jesus has included humanity: relationships that are maintained over years or relationships that last a little while and then vanish?
Here, at the dawn of the 21st century we find ourselves in a society of fragmented relationships, where people come together for a little while and then go their separate ways. In the midst of this relational fragmentation social networking on the internet has come along and suddenly we are reconnecting and entering once again into relationship with people who were once central to our lives.
We are reconnecting with best friends from high school, college classmates, and people we ministered with in other times and places.
For the first time in over 100 years it is now possible, through networks like Facebook, for people in our highly mobile society to stay in relationship with childhood friends and extended family for their entire lives. My kids may very well use social networking to keep many of their same friends for the next 70-80 years.
The Holy Spirit is the facilitator of relationships. He binds together the heart of the Father and Jesus – and his life of relationship has been poured out on the human race in Jesus (Acts 2:17).
On Facebook I see relationships being re-established, maintained, and even strengthened by the ingenious work of creative people. That leads me to think that I must be seeing the gift and ministry of the Holy Spirit expressed in our lives.
~ by Jonathan Stepp