Posts with the tag “discipleship”

Most of us have areas of life where we are trying to hold new things in old containers. A new commitment poured into old patterns. A new desire for God poured into a schedule with no room for Him. The wine is not the problem. The container is the problem. Jesus is putting new wine in you. Make sure you are becoming the kind of container that can hold it.  Read More

Every sculptor says the same thing. The finished piece was always inside the marble. The work is removing everything that does not belong until what was always intended is finally revealed. Here is what Scripture says about the finished version of you. The ancient teachers described the resurrection this way: God raises you first in exactly the condition you were in when you died. Same body. Same face. So everyone can see it is really you. And then the healing begins. And the transformation accelerates into something Daniel could only describe as shining like stars forever and ever. You are not the finished version. The chisel is still working. And what is inside the marble is more luminous than you have probably let yourself imagine. Read the full post.   Read More

Most of us have developed a habit of cleaning up before we come to God. We treat access to Jesus like a reward for progress rather than a resource for people who have none. But nobody lowered their friend through a roof because things were going well. Desperate measures are for desperate people. And desperate people are exactly who Jesus kept showing up for.  Read More

A physicist, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on a desert island with one can of food and no way to open it. The physicist says smash it. The chemist says heat it. The economist says: assume a can opener. Assume the problem away. Build your entire framework around a tool you do not actually have. Here is what kept me up this week. There is a day coming when the books will be opened. Every account will be reviewed. And on that day, assuming a can opener will not work. But Yom Kippur has always been a picture of something else entirely. A day when God silences the accuser and wipes the ledger clean in one moment. The question is whose account you are standing in when that day arrives. Read the full post.   Read More

Uncle Ben made it famous: with great power comes great responsibility. But here is the problem for most believers. It is not that we fail to take responsibility seriously. It is that we have drastically underestimated the power we are actually carrying. The lessons of Scripture describe the gifts of the Holy Spirit as tokens of the Messianic Era — a down payment on the age to come, pressing the power of the future kingdom into the present moment. Every person in whom the Spirit dwells is walking around with a deposit of eternity inside them. You are not a reservoir. You are a riverbed. And the city around you needs what you are carrying. Read the full post.  Read More

There is a gap between the authority we have declared and the authority we have actually handed over. We say Jesus. But the voice that wakes us up at two in the morning belongs to someone else. This week, notice the voices. Not to fight them. Just to name them. Because you cannot submit to the authority of Jesus in a room where you cannot hear Him over everyone else.  Read More

Every few years a story surfaces that follows the same basic pattern. A charismatic leader. An intense community. Sacrifice and devotion. And then the collapse. The secular world draws the obvious conclusion: the problem is religion. The problem is authority. But that misses the actual diagnosis. The problem is never that people submitted to authority. The problem is that they submitted to the wrong one. Jesus walked into a synagogue and the people immediately knew something was different. He taught as one who had authority, not as someone who had borrowed it from someone else. In the last days, Scripture says the counterfeits will be convincing enough to mislead even the elect. Which means discernment has never mattered more. Read the full post.  Read More

Most of us have nets. Not fishing nets. The thing we keep holding onto that keeps us from full availability to Jesus. Simon and Andrew were not doing something wrong. The nets were their livelihood, their identity, their plan. The nets were not the problem. Holding them when Jesus said follow was. You already know what yours is. You knew it Sunday.  Read More

The Eisenhower Matrix divides your to-do list into four boxes: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither. It is one of the most useful productivity tools ever invented. But it has one fatal flaw. It assumes you are working with the right definition of important. Jesus walked up to ordinary people doing ordinary work and announced: the time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. And the early disciples reorganized everything around that single declaration. That is not a productivity hack. That is an eschatological reordering. And it is still the invitation on the table. Read the full post.  Read More

You are not just in your own story. You are in someone else's story too. There is a person in your world right now who needs what you have learned, what you survived, what you figured out the hard way. The question is whether you are willing to invest in someone who will fly farther than you did without crediting the runway you built for them.  Read More

In the movie The Intern, a 70-year-old man who had done everything the world told him to do — retire, travel, take up golf — was miserable. So he applied for an internship, walked in with a briefcase and a pocket square, and said: "Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. Well, I still have music in me." That line did not belong in a movie. It belonged in a sermon. Because Psalm 92 says the righteous will still yield fruit in old age. Full of sap. Very green. And God has never once called anyone to retire. Read the full post.  Read More

Every graduation season somebody reads the Dr. Seuss book. The one with the winding road. And the words land the way they always do: "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Beautiful. True. And not enough. Because Jesus did not say follow your dreams. He said follow Me. And the generation standing in cap and gown right now is about to discover that the direction they choose matters more than any commencement speech told them. Read the full post.  Read More

There is a seat at your grandmother's table that nobody sits in anymore. The chair that was always his, always hers. The empty place that represents a meal that is not finished yet. Every family has a version of that chair. And if you listen closely, the Lord's Supper is the Church's answer to it. Because on the night before He was crucified, Jesus did not just start a memorial. He made a promise. He said: the next time I eat and drink at this table, it will be in the kingdom. The meal is not over. The guest of honor is still coming. Read the full post.  Read More

Most of us have spent our whole Christian lives with a vague picture of what we are actually waiting for. Heaven. Something nice. Something far from here. But the prophets were not vague. They described a capital city, a real table, nations stopping their wars, the blind seeing as a matter of course. Not escape from this world but the best possible version of it under the best possible King. The question Monday is asking: are you building your life on something that survives the trumpet?  Read More

There is a moment in every swimming lesson that nobody talks about honestly. The moment the instructor says let go of the wall. Everything in that child says no. The wall is solid. The water is unpredictable. Baptism is that moment. And it is one of the most prophetically loaded things a believer can do in a world that is desperately afraid of what comes next. Because when you went under that water, you were not just getting wet. You were practicing dying. And when you came back up, you were declaring something that death itself cannot argue with. Read the full post.  Read More

Yesterday you went somewhere and handed something to someone. You showed up for someone who needed it. And Jesus says you were looking at Him the whole time. The righteous in Matthew 25 were surprised. They did not know they were serving Jesus. They were just showing up. The service project is over but the posture does not have to be. Resurrection living is not an event. It is a direction you keep walking in.  Read More

Peter said he loved Jesus three times. Every time Jesus responded the same way. Not good, I forgive you. He said feed my lambs. The restoration and the assignment arrived in the same moment. You are loved and you are sent. Most of us have accepted the love and are still sitting on the beach. Love for Jesus always has a direction. And it always moves toward someone else.  Read More

The prophet Ezekiel saw a river flowing out from the Temple in Jerusalem. A trickle at first. Then ankle deep. Then deep enough to swim in. And everywhere it went, things came back to life. Even the Dead Sea turned fresh. Jesus stood at the Temple during the water ceremony and said: that river is Me. And everyone who believes in Me becomes part of it. The question is not whether resurrection power lives inside you. If you belong to Jesus, it does. The question is whether it is moving. Because the river was never designed to stay at the source. Read the full post.  Read More

Want to go deeper? This blog expands on the message preached on April 19 at GracePointe. Watch the full message at https://gpnaz.church/media. There is a character in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew named Uncle Andrew.He is present at the creation of Narnia. He is standing there when Aslan, the great lion who represents Christ, opens his mouth and sings the world into existence. Stars appear. Mo...  Read More

Want to go deeper? This blog expands on the message preached on April 19 at GracePointe. Watch the full message at https://gpnaz.church/media."He told them, 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and b...  Read More