The Jesus Lens/jlqa5

Any questions? I know I throw a lot and I know it's late, so you may not have any, and that's fine if you don't, but what kind of question do we have working through any of the Gospels, Acts, Epistles? I saw that... well, the question I have is, what does keep the Gospel pure or really mean? Are we playing in this elliptical tarpid of... I called the playground. Well, there's the playground, but then there's the tarpid. I don't know about the tarpid. Well, the tarpid is going back to Judaism, and then there's this immorality thing of, oh, I can do whatever I want, so I don't know if it's just like sleeping around with people or whatever it is. Trading partners in marriage or any kind of thing, yeah. And the question is... What does it mean to keep the Gospel pure? Is that kind of the essence of it? Yeah, kind of a phrase I use a lot. Are you quoting Scripture somewhere? I'm trying to think of what translation is using that, where? Is there something you have to say? It showed up in your notes somewhere. Oh, okay. Well, then cross it out, because I don't like the phrase. I wouldn't think it's my obligation to keep the Gospel pure. I think that's got to be God's job, first of all. I don't think any of us awaken to a day where we want to say, I've got to be perfect today. That's God's goal and mine. Everything's short of that's a disappointment. Be holy as I am holy is an invitation to a journey. It's not an on-off switch. But keeping it pure, if we're going to use that terminology, to me would mean the same thing I've talked about, this passion for truth. And so if I'm not seeing truth clearly now, and I've often said to people, the wane of today, if I'd have met me 20 years ago, that wane would have thrown me out of my office. And I know that's true, because I'm rewriting a book I wrote 20 years ago. And people have asked for this book on the vineyard to come out again, which I grew up on a vineyard, so it's Farmers U of John 15. I want to do this book. The problem is I started reading it going, I don't like the guy who wrote this book. He's obnoxious. He's top-down. The content is wonderful. I love the content. I hate the presentation. So I thought we were just going to have some reformatic, and I was going to put it out again. I've had to rewrite it, because I don't like that guy. Which for me has been great to see how much God has changed. And if he was asking me 20 years ago, am I keeping the gospel pure, I would have said, man, absolutely. And I thought I was. But found out that, man, I was misguided about a lot. I was really into a conformity-based kind of environment, and there wasn't a whole lot of love and grace in it. But on the love and grace side, there's always two dangers to fall off of. The licentiousness, we'll just do whatever we want. The legalism, we can't just live in love. We've got to work hard to keep the gospel pure. And I think that's where it's become a deception. I think I just want to keep saying to God every day, Father, let me live in your truth. And when I read the Scriptures, I look for things that say, oh, man, if this is true, then this thing in my life is going to need to shift some. It's not in a good place. And I don't mind doing that. I don't mind saying, God, I'm seeing something here, and I'm going to look for other Scriptures to see if I can find a loophole and get a way out of that. But it's not seriously. I'm really going to say God keep changing me. I think it's just having a heart for purity, having a heart for the simplicity of a growing relationship. That's how I would see it. I don't know where it is in my notes. It sounds scary. If it's Sarah, I'll find that in my notes. Second Timothy, Sarah, make a note. We may have to take a look at that. And maybe something that Timothy says. Yeah, Lisa. You've talked continuously about living loved and the more that we trust, the more we understand how much we love, the more that we trust. And something that struck me when you were talking in an earlier session was it seems like we are most able to realize we fall short when I realize how much he loves me. There's so much safety in that recognition, and it reminds me a lot of what you wrote in your book. And so that seems like so counterintuitive, just the thought of recognizing and not needing to defend when we understand how much we're loved. So I don't know that I have a question except that that dynamic is still a mystery to me. How that... The counterintuitiveness of it? You know, I think that's true. And I've said this a lot in other places is because we think of love in human terms. And we can say, gosh, we loved our parents. But as we got older, we were doing things we knew our parents wouldn't approve of behind their back. And so we think of love as a pretty weak reality. You can love somebody and that love basically allows us to serve ourselves and just kind of be nice. So I think our intuitive sense of love is it's pretty weak. And I could say I love God and really just try and sneak around doing stuff I want. I think what I've discovered, and I think I would have taught that way again 20 years ago, I've been part of what that teaching would have looked like. What I've discovered in my own life is the more secure I am in God's kind of loving, which isn't a self-based kind of love. When we talk about love humanistically, we're basically saying there's something about you I really like. And so if you benefit me in some way and I benefit you in some way, we might have a friendship and we can talk about loving each other. And then if one of us does something that offends the other, then we can say we don't love each other anymore and the friendship breaks up. And our sense of love is very self-dominated. God's kind of love is very self-giving. Greater love has no end than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. But Jesus and the Father knew if we could win them inside this relationship of affection, it would change the way they live. Because sin is the result of my doing what I do because I'm afraid God's not going to take care of me. So I take care of myself. When I'm more one into how much he cares for me and he's going to provide for my life what I need today, I don't have to grab for myself what God hasn't given me, which is basically what Eve and Adam are doing in the garden. And so I think, yeah, it is counterintuitive and it is not just the principle of love leads to transformation. I beat that over the head all the time. When I'm talking about living love, I'm talking about inside a real relationship with the presence of the Father and Son and Spirit in our lives. So that I am loved by a personality in the universe. It's hard to describe what that looks like for God exactly. But I'm being loved by that entity and I'm getting to know that entity. And the more I get to know him, man, I want to be like him. He has all the best stuff on the planet. He thinks better about everything than I think. I used to read scriptures like that. You know what he talks about? Praying and Ephesians 3, the prayer about God exceedingly, abundantly above anything we could ask or imagine. He talks about God and our prayers. And we thought that meant, well, if I pray for a Toyota, God might give me a Lexus. Or if I want a two bedroom home, he'd give me a four bedroom home. And it really wasn't that. It's just every situation you're in, when God's not answering the prayer, I want answered because I want this person dealt with or hurt or, you know, so David's prayers wiped them out from the face of the earth. And I prayed some of those prayers at the time. And I just know that's not what he's doing. He's doing something better. I'm usually praying for my own comfort. God's involved in my life for my transformation and for his unfolding purpose in the world. The more we engage him as a real presence, the more despicable sin looks to us. I think that's true. And we end up not living in sin as much because something's become more endearing, not because we've followed some rule. So I know it's counterintuitive. I tell you, it's transformed more in my life in the last 15 years than the previous 42. When I was a good slave in Pharisee, I was working hard. I could keep the rules. It wasn't that I couldn't work hard. I did. Externally, I was fine internally. There's this arrogance that's destructive to people. I know what that is. And that's what Paul said. Chiefest of Pharisees made me the chiefest of sinners. And it's not just being humble there. I became so righteous in myself that I was killing people who didn't measure up or didn't agree with what I agreed with. And so the only thing that transforms, I think John is on that page. I think Paul's on that page. The only thing that transforms is knowing how loved we are by him and learning to live inside that reality. But it's not just a principle. It's not just, OK, he loves me. I'm trying to figure out how he loves me. OK, I'm going to try and act like that. It's really engaging a presence inside that love that's transforming. Thank you. Anybody else? You're welcome. I want to talk about kind of the love and the way the story is being told as far as seeing the overview and then diving down in deeper to discover that. Most of my life has been underneath teachings of, you know, the proof texting is referred to as the Scofield Method or expository where you're just down on the bottom level. What drives that? Where does that come from? Is it a product of some sort of fear? Is it something just comes out of the institutions that are training our leaders, the pastors? Where do you see that being driven from that we're worried about the details and the rules? And we've missed this whole Abba side of the story. Maybe different places in different generations. I mean, for the Galatians, we look at them. They lost that just because, as Paul said, you wanted something to boast about in your own flesh. So I think that's part of it. I think principal theology or living by guidelines does get particularly those of us who are good performers and I think about 10% of us make good Pharisees. We're good performers. I think about 90% of us just performing. I just can't make my strength that we'll do that. It makes us have this false sense of security that we can somehow control God. That if I do A, B, and C, God has to do D, E, and F. It's that illusion of control that I think is endearing. I think, gosh, I'd like that to work. I also think when we traded the presence of Jesus for a rule book, as we talked about last night, the Word of God became the book, not the presence of Christ. Then academics became the leaders, people who understood the scriptures academically the best. They became the fodder for creating the kinds of people that then became leaders and teachers in our communities. And it's easy to access the academic understanding of scripture and reduce it to a set of principles and applications so people can try and live better lives. That's easy to teach. And I think it just becomes the way to do it. And then it becomes unquestioned. Obviously, when it's in the scriptures, it's the way we should live. So just live that way. And it all comes back to then our own sense of will and accomplishment. And Paul says this gospel really gets you to the point of I put no confidence in my flesh to live this life. And the guidelines and principles don't get you there. So I think it's a combination of things. It's certainly the act. We've given leadership of congregations to successful academics. At very young ages, more and more, of people who haven't even gotten to a place that Paul describes in Timothy and Titus, of a life of character demonstrating your life in your relationship to your children and your business. And we've taken people and we made it a profession so you become quote, unquote an elder, pastor, overseer, whatever, at 25 fresh out of seminary. You've got no life experience whatsoever and no demonstration of character. And then we wonder why 10, 15 years later there's no character in these lives that you learn to live on the front of a stage telling other people what to do and don't have a clue to do with their own lives. And their own well-being is tied to the other people doing what they want so they've got a successful church. I think it's just a whole system that's easier to take us away from the stirring desire for a relationship and replace it with even for a lot of people. Sunday morning, I just go to church on Sunday at 10 o'clock and put in my guilt time and then the rest of the week's mine. I can do whatever I want. And that just becomes an easy icon to trick ourselves with. We were talking about this a little bit before and it's like a teddy bear. It's this little safety blanket or the kid has that really doesn't provide anything other than the perception. As long as it provides a perception there's some reality. I think the reasons are many but it doesn't change the invitation. And now tomorrow we're going to look at the Old Testament and all the ways that this was being led up to, the story I've just told you from the new is the fulfillment of the Old. It's not the counterpoint to the Old. It's the fulfillment. And we'll take a look at that tomorrow.