Communion Meal & the Lord’s Supper

10. In a world which sings, “Oh, who is this Jesus?” and a church which sings, “Oh, let’s all be like Jesus,” who will sing with lungs of leather, “Oh, how we love Jesus!”

If Jesus could rise from the dead, we can at least rise from our bed, get off our couches and pews, and respond to the Lord’s resurrection life within us, joining Jesus in what he’s up to in the world. We call on others to join us—not in removing ourselves from planet Earth, but to plant our feet more firmly on the Earth while our spirits soar in the heavens of God’s pleasure and purpose. We are not of this world, but we live in this world for the Lord’s rights and interests. We, collectively, as the ekklesia of God, are Christ in and to this world.

May God have a people on this earth who are a people of Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. A people of the cross. A people who are consumed with God’s eternal passion, which is to make his Son preeminent, supreme, and the head over all things visible and invisible. A people who have discovered the touch of the Almighty in the face of his glorious Son. A people who wish to know only Christ and him crucified, and to let everything else fall by the wayside. A people who are laying hold of his depths, discovering his riches, touching his life, and receiving his love, and making HIM in all of his unfathomable glory known to others.

¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”^[c]

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

²⁶ Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. ³¹ Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”^[d]

I Corinthians 1:18-31

from Viola & Sweet/ The Jesus Manifesto

Power over Death

9. Only Jesus can transfix and then transfigure the void at the heart of the church. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his church. While Jesus is distinct from his Bride, he is not separate from her. She is in fact his very own Body in the earth. God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. And God in Christ is only known fully in and through his church. (As Paul said, “The manifold wisdom of God – which is Christ – is known through the ekklesia.”)

[Resources: Christian Life Coaching    Looking for a new Career ?]

The Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It’s a corporate journey. Knowing Christ and making him known is not an individual prospect. Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth, with a crash. Thus Christ and his church are intimately joined and connected. What God has joined together, let no person put asunder. We were made for life with God; our only happiness is found in life with God. And God’s own pleasure and delight is found therein as well. (from Viola & Sweet/ The Jesus Manifesto)

The Supremacy of the Son of God

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Colossians 1:15-20

Communion Meal & the Lord's Supper

7. Jesus Christ was not a social activist nor a moral philosopher. To pitch him that way is to drain his glory and dilute his excellence. Justice apart from Christ is a dead thing. The only battering ram that can storm the gates of hell is not the cry of Justice, but the name of Jesus. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of Justice, Peace, Holiness, Righteousness. He is the sum of all spiritual things, the “strange attractor” of the cosmos. When Jesus becomes an abstraction, faith loses its reproductive power. Jesus did not come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live.

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8. It is possible to confuse an academic knowledge or theology about Jesus with a personal knowledge of the living Christ himself. These two stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies. The fullness of Christ can never be accessed through the frontal lobe alone. Christian faith claims to be rational, but also to reach out to touch ultimate mysteries. The cure for a big head is a big heart.

Jesus does not leave his disciples with CliffsNotes for a systematic theology. He leaves his disciples with breath and body.

Jesus does not leave his disciples with a coherent and clear belief system by which to love God and others. Jesus gives his disciples wounds to touch and hands to heal.

Jesus does not leave his disciples with intellectual belief or a “Christian worldview.” He leaves his disciples with a relational faith.

Christians don’t follow a book. Christians follow a person, and this library of divinely inspired books we call “The Holy Bible” best help us follow that person. The Written Word is a map that leads us to The Living Word. Or as Jesus himself put it, “All Scripture testifies of me.” The Bible is not the destination; it’s a compass that points to Christ, heaven’s North Star.

The Bible does not offer a plan or a blueprint for living. The “good news” was not a new set of laws, or a new set of ethical injunctions, or a new and better PLAN. The “good news” was the story of a person’s life, as reflected in The Apostle’s Creed. The Mystery of Faith proclaims this narrative: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” The meaning of Christianity does not come from allegiance to complex theological doctrines, but a passionate love for a way of living in the world that revolves around following Jesus, who taught that love is what makes life a success . . . not wealth or health or anything else: but love. And God is love.

from The Jesus Manifesto by Viola & Sweet

Breaking of Bread

5. The “Jesus of history” cannot be disconnected from the “Christ of faith.” The Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee is the same person who indwells the church today. There is no disconnect between the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel and the incredible, all-inclusive, cosmic Christ of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The Christ who lived in the first century has a pre-existence before time. He also has a post-existence after time. He is Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, A and Z, all at the same time. He stands in the future and at the end of time at the same moment that He indwells every child of God. Failure to embrace these paradoxical truths has created monumental problems and has diminished the greatness of Christ in the eyes of God’s people.

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6. It’s possible to confuse “the cause” of Christ with the person of Christ. When the early church said “Jesus is Lord,” they did not mean “Jesus is my core value.” Jesus isn’t a cause; he is a real and living person who can be known, loved, experienced, enthroned and embodied. Focusing on his cause or mission doesn’t equate focusing on or following him. It’s all too possible to serve “the god” of serving Jesus as opposed to serving him out of an enraptured heart that’s been captivated by his irresistible beauty and unfathomable love. Jesus led us to think of God differently, as relationship, as the God of all relationship.

PART 5 is coming!

Claiming the Mind Of Christ

4. Being a follower of Jesus does not involve imitation so much as it does implantation and impartation. Incarnation–the notion that God connects to us in baby form and human touch—is the most shocking doctrine of the Christian religion. The incarnation is both once-and-for-all and ongoing, as the One “who was and is to come” now is and lives his resurrection life in and through us. Incarnation doesn’t just apply to Jesus; it applies to every one of us. Of course, not in the same sacramental way. But close. We have been given God’s “Spirit” which makes Christ “real” in our lives. We have been made, as Peter puts it, “partakers of the divine nature.” How, then, in the face of so great a truth can we ask for toys and trinkets? How can we lust after lesser gifts and itch for religious and spiritual thingys? We’ve been touched from on high by the fires of the Almighty and given divine life. A life that has passed through death – the very resurrection life of the Son of God himself. How can we not be fired up?

[Resources: Christian Life Coaching    Looking for a new Career?]

To put it in a question: What was the engine, or the accelerator, of the Lord’s amazing life? What was the taproot or the headwaters of his outward behavior? It was this: Jesus lived by an indwelling Father. After his resurrection, the passage has now moved. What God the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you and to me. He’s our indwelling Presence, and we share in the life of Jesus’ own relationship with the Father. There is a vast ocean of difference between trying to compel Christians to imitate Jesus and learning how to impart an implanted Christ. The former only ends up in failure and frustration. The latter is the gateway to life and joy in our daying and our dying. We stand with Paul: “Christ lives in me.” Our life is Christ. In him do we live, breathe, and have our being. “What would Jesus do?” is not Christianity. Christianity asks: “What is Christ doing through me … through us? And how is Jesus doing it?” Following Jesus means “trust and obey” (respond), and living by his indwelling life through the power of the Spirit.

A Meal and Great Fellowship

Restoring the Supremacy of Christ (1)

1. The center and circumference of the Christian life is none other than the person of Christ. All other things, including things related to him and about him, are eclipsed by the sight of his peerless worth. Knowing Christ is Eternal Life. And knowing him profoundly, deeply, and in reality, as well as experiencing his unsearchable riches, is the chief pursuit of our lives, as it was for the first Christians. God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ.

2. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his teachings. Aristotle says to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.” Socrates says to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.” Buddha says to his disciples, “Follow my meditations.” Confucius says to his disciples, “Follow my sayings.” Muhammad says to his disciples, “Follow my noble pillars.” Jesus says to his disciples, “Follow me.” In all other religions, a follower can follow the teachings of its founder without having a relationship with that founder. Not so with Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus cannot be separated from Jesus himself. Jesus Christ is still alive and he embodies his teachings. It is a profound mistake, therefore, to treat Christ as simply the founder of a set of moral, ethical, or social teaching. The Lord Jesus and his teaching are one. The Medium and the Message are One. Christ is the incarnation of the Kingdom of God and the Sermon on the Mount.

3. God’s grand mission and eternal purpose in the earth and in heaven centers in Christ . . . both the individual Christ (the Head) and the corporate Christ (the Body). This universe is moving towards one final goal – the fullness of Christ where He shall fill all things with himself. To be truly missional, then, means constructing one’s life and ministry on Christ. He is both the heart and bloodstream of God’s plan. To miss this is to miss the plot; indeed, it is to miss everything.

Resources: Christian Life Coaching    FREE Online Personality Assessment

Part 2: More to come from Viola & Sweet/Jesus Manifesto

Coaching Sustainable Growth

The value of Christian Coaching can be expressed in this statement: “ Most of us even Christians believe happiness can be achieved by making more money, having control of our time and work life, losing weight, changing our hair color, driving a better car or taking a certain holiday. In fact, happiness lies within each of us.”    Jesus came to give us an abundant life (John 10:10) and we have everything we need to live it.  The choice is ours to make.

 ² Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.  ³ His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 2 Peter 1:2-4

 If we are able to get in touch with our true core values and beliefs, we can tap into our ability to create the happiness won for us on the cross.   Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, most people have lost touch with their true selves, that unique person God designed with so many talents and gifts. Instead we live disconnected from who we were created to be and live a life listening to what our ego says we need to be happy.  Far too often we take on the values we see around us; values the media and advertisers tell us we must have, but in the end, these have nothing to do with happiness.  Christian Coaching helps people get in touch with their true self, core spiritual values so that true happiness can be experienced and enjoy every day.

For more information on Coaching please take a look at WindRiver Strategies.  Do you want to get a quick view of “who you are”?  Then, try personality assessment from WindRiver Strategies and PeopleMaps.  It takes just minutes to complete and there are FREE overviews, as well.

Take the FREE version or login for more depth

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Everyone Can Be A Jerk...Right?

Why did I do it? Because I love a good project. Because love always hopes. Because Jesus was a friend to drunks. Because, as my friend and addiction crusader Bob Vann likes to say, “There’s a fine line between ministry and enabling, and only the Holy Spirit can tell you where to draw that line.”

I did it because all the king’s horses and all the king’s men kept promising me they had a 97% success rate. It took me 15 years to notice the amazing coincidence that my “Projects” were in the 3% non- success category 100% of the time.

I did it only to discover that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men don’t know a blasted thing about curing addiction, but they sure know a lot about marketing.

Did I say “treat” addiction? No, I said “cure”. Ironically, the priceless cure is much cheaper and quicker than the useless treatment.

Physicians often “treat” addiction by throwing pharmaceuticals at it. Such people are little more than respected drug dealers with the initials M.D. tacked behind their names. Obviously, God knew what He was doing when He oversaw the translation of the Greek word “pharmakeia” into the English word “witchcraft.”

Peace officers “treat” addiction by removing the party from the perp’s pocket and locking him up where he can’t get his hands on the stuff. Such people, God bless them, are merely doing their job, and curing addiction is not part of their job.

Many good-hearted Christians “treat” the addict by “handing him over to the Lord”—Creepianity’s sanctimonious lingo for washing its hands of a loser– or volunteering a weekly hour or two at a tidy ministry where people talk about hurts, habits and hangups. May God richly bless these people, too, but hardcore addiction is about as much a “hangup” as dying is a “bad day.”

Call me a slow learner, but it took me $700,000 and 15 years to get some of God’s best and richest promises hard-wired into the depths of my soul. Without all that tuition in the school of hard knocks, I would never have come to believe, irreversibly, that “It was good for me to be afflicted,” or that God is truly “close to the brokenhearted” or that “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.””

As we begin this series of addiction-related posts, I’m just about bursting with both indignation and hope. The indignation arises from a deep resolve that most addicts are orphans. They’re not adorable and they’re not innocent, but any person who’s burned every last bridge on this earth is most certainly an orphan. The isolation and pain of the addict is a siren wailing “hypocrite” into my ear and the ear of anyone who knows perfectly well that “religion that God our Father accepts is this; to help widows and orphans in their distress.”

My hope for addicts is this: No matter what anybody besides God may say, addiction is a spiritual matter. It has been the glory of God to conceal the matter, and it will be the glory of God, along with those who diligently search out the matter, to solve it.

At the current rate of enlightenment within the ranks of believers, it‘s a safe bet that Christianity is now hot on the heels of that glory. That’s hope, and hope never lets us down.

(To be continued with Street Jesus, Sweet Jesus. To my dear and faithful friends who’ve been following this blog, you may be surprised or even offended that we seem to have veered off our usual course of fun. We’ll return to normal business soon, but for now, please be a Planter: If someone you know is tormented by addiction, these next few days could bring the hope they’ve been gasping for. Please copy liberally and forward with gusto!)

Everyone Can Be A Jerk...Right?

www.laymanator.com

(See more on life strategies at www.windriverstrategies.net)

About half the income that’s passed through my hands since 1996 has been spent fighting addiction. That’s about $700,000 thrown at an enemy who gladly took it, tossed it in the fires of hell and laughed as he watched it burn. The only thing missing from this twisted odyssey has been the peeled grapes.

Let’s pause for a moment to recall the infamous words of the penniless Lotto winner: “Some I spent on whiskey, some at the racetrack and some on wild women. The rest I just blew.”

Where did all my money go? What became of that small fortune which, had it been invested with worldly wisdom, could have funded my early retirement?

Some went to secular rehabs. Some went to Christian rehabs. Some went to physicians, some to psychologists, some to counselors, some to social workers, some to the pharmacy and some to the meth clinic.

Some went for fines, some for restitution, some for probation, some for collect calls and some for that little cart they push around in jail with the $8 cigarettes and $3 Honey Buns.

Some went to hospitals, some to do-it-yourself drug-tests, and some to beggars on the off-ramps and sidewalks and shoulders of this great nation.

The lion’s share of that Fat Stack went to Western Union and pawn shops and Buy Here Pay Here lots and cabs and weekly motels and loans to well-meaning addicts who never repaid a single dime. Within a 10-mile radius of my home, it would be hard to find a single sleazy business that has not received a goodly chunk of my hard-earned money. And no, I’m not trying to be funny.

On occasion, I’ve even gone so far as to buy my own stuff back from drug addicts. I’ve found you can get some great deals when you cut out the pawn shop and deal directly with the thief. OK, now I’m trying to be funny, but truth is the core of the joke.

The rest I just blew. Can you say, “enabler?” I knew you could.