New Wine Uncorked: Following Jesus: Into the Promise Land or the Polluted Landfill

#love #trinity #jesus #newwine #nwnws 

Following Jesus means that you know Him, or at least have an idea of where He is leading… So what then of the path in front of the Jesus follower? Is it a path of promise or a polluted one drowning in toxic “love.” 

In this episode of New Wine Uncorked, Phil, Kayla, and Matt traverse the wonderful terrain of love… When we follow Jesus on to the path of love, where exactly does this path lead? And am I equipped to walk such a path? 

Recorded live on Fridays at 10am (pst) New Wine UnCorked seeks to step into culture with a heart bent towards engagement, reconciliation, and relationship. 

Dialogue is the truth of participation as dia via Latin from Greek dia-logos invokes a participatory conversation. It is interactive. From dia "through" + legein "speak." Going through the Word so to engage through our word, New Wine seeks to uncork the impossible possibility of the human and our pursuit of this Uncommon God so to realize our common good. 

Love Beyond

When is there a time that we don't need love?

Holiday seasons only illuminate and exaggerate the truth of our need for love. And here is the absolute of love's truth: In Christ we encounter the fullness of love. Yes, in Jesus we meet the "realness" of love because when we encounter Jesus we encounter love.

It is a love that is beyond... It is a love that is here... Now

A love that is crazy, insane, inviting, intoxicating, scandalous, scrumptious, fiery, fierce, radical, relentless, real... 

It is a love that has come to saturate our hearts, our souls, our minds and our bodies so that we might fall deep... oh so deep, into the heart of God. 

But please be mindful of one thing... It is a love that will mess you up... It will rock your world... 

Problem for so many of us is that we are afraid of love. We are afraid of entertaining the idea that we are lovable.

And so we close ourselves off. To each other. To ourselves. To Jesus.

What is holding you back from opening up? The greatest gift you could give yourself this Christmas season is the gift of love. 

He is here. He is waiting. He is love...

Stepping into leadership...Christ-like

What does it mean to lead like Christ? My thoughts...https://vimeo.com/123298231

Living Out Christ

Living out the gospel can be rough, troublesome, tumultuous, joyful, illuminating, exhilarating, etc…One thing is for sure, living out the gospel is not stagnant. So why is this? Truth be told, that man on the cross questioned down to the bottom of hell, for our sakes, is the ultimate question that God puts to us. What we do with Jesus determines not only who we are but how we will live. 

As followers of Christ we are called to be imitators of Him – that is, to participate in His ministry of reconciliation. This can only happen when: First, we recognize our need of Jesus; and second, see the needs of others before our own. Being in Christ is a process of growth – it is a daily movement into His movement. I like what John Newton (author of Amazing Grace) writes:

I am not what I ought to be.I am not what I wish to beI am not even what I hope to by.But by the cross of Christ,I am not what I was

We can only live out our love of Christ as well as suffer for his sake when, through the Holy Spirit, Christ becomes the pattern of our life and the person after which we would sculpture our person. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children ²and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 5.1-2). 

Take this moment and ask the Lord to highlight areas of your life that you could better imitate Christ.  Stop, and take in this moment – take to heart the proverb, Carpe diem – which simply means, “Seize the day!”  Thank God for this moment and celebrate your life by living out Christ in your love to God, to yourself, and to the other!

So Close No Matter How Far

The band Metallica writes:

So close no matter how far

Couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

No nothing else matters

 

Never opened myself this way

Life is ours, we live it our way

All these words I don't just say

And nothing else matters

This is how so many people live their lives – focused on self such that their trust is in who they are, living life their way, because in the end, “nothing else matters.”

The drama of life - what does it have to say about a life focused solely on self? What would this look like? A nation of self-possessed people...Chaos and confusion or comfort and compassion?

The Bible says that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will not only be satisfied, but they will also be blessed (cf. Matt 5.6). In fact, Jesus goes on to tell us not to store up treasures on earth but to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven. He then makes this most audacious claim: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (cf. Matt 6.19-21).

Oh Jesus...

Think about it, Jesus is stating that the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is one who has her priorities right. Let's be realistic, surely Jesus must not understand what He is saying...Or better yet, His sermon on the mount isn't meant for Americans. America is the land of the free, the land of independence. Any show of interdependence is a sign of weakness. We are meant to have our treasures here on earth and have the focus of life be on self - on myself.

This is why the message of Jesus is radical and expects nothing less than radical change. He does not ask us for anything - He asks us for everything!

The follower of Christ is one whose heart is an offense to this world because it is enveloped by and in the love of Jesus. We want nothing more than to live as Jesus because He is our treasure. For a person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness nothing else matters but the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The drama of salvation reorients the meaning of life; it re-writes the lyrics of our lives. Those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God are satisfied because they have stepped into Christ’s redeeming performance and now, everything, or better yet, everyone matters because nothing else but Jesus matters!

Ah the beautiful paradoxes of faith…If nothing but our Triune God matters in the treasure of our heart, then the lyrics of our song can truly sing, “forever trusting who we are” because we have realized the truth that we are created in the image of a loving God who has poured out His love into our hearts. And from this love we live life our way, which is Jesus’ way, seeking the lost and brokenhearted so that they too might hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God.

Lunatic, Liar or Lord?

Jesus. Some people claim he's a great teacher while others think he is nothing more than a great prophet. Some dismiss him as a liar or even a lunatic, (a madman), and yet a countless number hail him as Savior and Lord. The great C.S. Lewis once remarked:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity, 56)

Whatever people think of him, nobody can deny that he stands at the very crux of human history. As Talk-Show host Larry King answered when asked who he would most like to have interviewed from across history, "Jesus Christ—I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin born, because the answer to that question would define history." Larry King was absolutely right as in his answer, he identifies the hinge upon which all history turns. The call placed on each one of us today is to identify the claims for the deity of Christ so to then understand the foundation of the faith found in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Life beckons us to investigate the claims of Christ for in doing so we come to realize what it means to be a player in God's drama - that is, to be a participant in this thing called life. ‘God does not play the world drama all on his own; he makes room for humanity to join in,’ and this joining in is made possible through the performance of Christ. And from His performance, humanity is given insight into our own personhood as Christ is, according to Hans Urs von Balthasar, "the center of the world, he is the key to the interpretation not only of creation, but of God Himself. . . . God wills to maintain his relation to the world only with Jesus Christ as the centre of that relationship, the content and fulfilment of the eternal Covenant." (Theology of History, 20-22)

What are you doing to gain the meaning of life? Who do you say Jesus Christ is?