Trinitarian Soundings - The God of Relationship

#love #trinity #jesus #holyspirit #father #newwine #nwnws #trinitarian #epiphany 

Theology, the Trinity... Where do we even start? The discussion this morning flows from the truth of theology, specifically, Trinitarian theology. How does a Trinitarian, Christ-centered theology play out in how we see the “other”? Where the body of Christ gets it right and where it does not.

As the Christian Scriptures reveal, the human is created in the image of the Trinity – A Godhead that does not remain absent or quiet throughout the course of history. We are not talking about a God hidden behind divine revelation. Rather, God is for us fully revealed and fully concealed in His self-disclosure.

The Christian Scriptures calls the reader into transformation –conversion—which is not a static event, something that happens once in a lifetime, but a continual process of turning toward the Son, who leads us, in union with the Holy Spirit, into an ever-deepening relationship with the Father. Thus, we are brought into the very life of the Trinity, that communion of love without end. 

The Trinity is the paradigm by which we are to live. It is dynamic in relation; thus, God's being is His eternal, intrinsic communion. So what then of today? Are we relationally wired by the God of  creation or have we become machines programmed by our own hands?

 

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

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Is there light?

In light of devastation - emotional, physical, spiritual, what is life? In light of pain, turmoil, trouble, what is life? In this life is there light?

Devastation all around seems to dampen the delight of divine beauty.

How it is that we can move into the holidays with hearts filled with good tidings and cheer? Where is our hope?

The complexity of the answer as to where is our hope, is found in the simplicity of what was done some 2000 years ago for the whole of humanity. Birth...death…hope.

Yes, a baby was born so that as a man He might hang on a tree.

One birth. One death. One tree. Three nails. Eternal hope.

Hope is wrapped in the truth of Immanuel - God with us. The only way to engage the happenings of today while seeking to celebrate the truth of life is found in the One who is life.

Jesus came to reign down hope. He came to shower us in joy. And with His entrance on the world stage He gave us the way to respond to the darkness that suffocates life.

Yes, Jesus came to suffocate us in His all-consuming love...

It is in His breath-taking performance that we are given the oxygen needed to ignite this world with His crazy insane love. A love that gives us the power to step directly into the devastation by giving ourselves over to the truth of Christmas... I mean really giving ourselves over.

When we give into the Christmas truth we find the truth of Mas Christ is what suffocates my darkness with the light of His eternal flame. And in the burning truth of His eternal love we come to witness the glory of heaven as it erupted through the birth of a baby. A birth that fills our hearts and lungs with the air of truth behind (and within) Christmas.

Let us this day prayerfully embrace the Holy Spirit so that we might exhale the grime of life. Let us this day ask the Spirit to fill us with His strength so that we might inhale the unrelenting Christmas hope that erupts in the birth of divine love. Amen Jesus.

Eruption of Thanksgiving...

To give thanks insinuates something to be thankful for; it points to something beyond ourselves that has impacted our lives in such a way that our response is one of gratitude and praise.

Today many of us will find a multitude of “items” or “people” who fit this bill, and truth be told, many of us do have a plethora of things and/or people for which we are thankful.

But what if we stopped and took a moment... What if in the midst of all the food, football and fellowship we are missing the deeper, underlying foundation of thankfulness?

I wonder for those who bear the mark of Jesus - for those who call themselves followers of The Way, how many will illumine the cross on this day?

It is the cross where thanksgiving is found…it is where thanksgiving erupts.

As soon as we gaze upon the cross our hearts, our eyes are taken to the scene of the manager hidden away in the dusty, dirty, dark crevasse of a mountainside. Yes, thanksgiving is found from the cradle to the cross for it is here that we find the One who is the ultimate giving of thanks…Jesus Christ.

For God so loved the world that He gave… Our giving of thanks is the direct result of being given Love. That is, we must always remember that hanging on the cross is the One born in the manger—not just any baby, but the One who was with God, the One who is God, the One who is with us...The One who is Love...

Might some time today we give pause to the majesty of the cross? Might we stop to thank the One who gave of Himself so that we might receive the truth of ourselves? Might we take a moment and enter the drama of salvation so as to become the faithful performance of love?

Let your celebrations be magnificent this day! Stand, dance, shout for joy! And in your moments of bliss don't forget the One who is thankful for you! Amen Jesus!

Heaven's passion

No matter what may come your way, when we are in Christ through the Spirit, nothing in this world can separate us from His love. All we need is to find our place in prayer so as to realize our place in His heart.

God’s great desire for His people is that we feel secure in His love and in His power. Everything else in life may be unstable—our health, our family, our job, our education, our society, our world. At any given time and within any given moment you may feel as if you are out on a ledge forty stories up in an unpredictable wind. You feel yourself losing balance and falling, and every brick you grab pulls out of its mortar. When we walk according to "ourself" the ground beneath and the pillars all around us will only crumble.

Stability only comes from the One born in the stable.

Paradox of life is that being in Christ is the riskiest decision you can make…according to the world.

And yet saying "yes" to Jesus is the greatest decision you can take security in. Saying yes to Christ is saying yes to the crazy of life so as to find the stability of heaven's passion. As Paul writes, life in Christ is: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword—we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered (Romans 8:35–36).

Paul knew the craziness of a life of a disciple but he knew that the love of Christ was even crazier in its power, presence and passion.

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us…for nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vs 37-39).

Paul’s life of faith was much like ours, one many questioned as to why do it? Why live such a life? Why give sacrificially when you are beaten, ostracized, criticized, while being opposed from every side?

But for Paul, as is for us today, the stability and power needed comes from the truth of being in Christ. For in Christ and through the Spirit we encounter the heart of God so as to find security in His love and strength in His power, even if everything else in the world is uncertain.

We have to be willing to fall to our knees and thank the One who became sin so as to seal us with His eternal love. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection far surpass all understanding and knowledge and yet they are so simple that a child can understand that Jesus loves them. This is why Christ’s incarnational performance is to be the foundation of who we are if we are to be the foundation of love this world so desperately needs.

Jesus wants to be our security. Question is, “How will you respond to the life Jesus is calling you into? Resting in His security or trying to secure your own rest?”

Father Almighty, in Christ and through the Spirit, we are covered in Your eternal security and presence so that we might be the covering of Your love for all the world to experience. Amen Jesus!

For the sake of the other

Read John 13:1-35

A gospel that does not reconcile is not a Christian gospel at all. And reconciliation is rooted in love. Yet so often we do not really believe that the proof of our discipleship is in our Love—that we love the Lord our God so that we might love one another.

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (v35).

To be in love with Jesus is to become as He is. That is, our love for Christ is manifested not only in our willingness to live as He did, but also to sacrifice for the sake of the other.

Participating in the will of God occurs when through the Holy Spirit, Christ becomes the pattern of our life, when He becomes our first love. As Paul writes:

“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and 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).

A life that has this world as its first love seeks peace and hope in the comforts of the world. But a life in love with Jesus stands in stark contrast to a life lived in love with the world. For the truth of the Christian faith is that peace and hope are only found in the One who is peace, the One who is hope.

Jesus does not tell us that life is all about comfortability, and yet in Christ we find comfort. Jesus does not tell us that life is all about the easy road and yet in Christ we find that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. To have Jesus as our first love is to live out His love for the sake of the world. To have Jesus as our first love is to not only remember that audacious claims of Scripture that tell us how Jesus joyfully “endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God," (Heb 12.2), but more importantly, to embrace and embody the way, the truth and the life of Christ by running “with endurance the race that is set before us” by looking to and loving fully the author and perfecter of our faith—Jesus Christ.

To love Christ is to live sacrificially and in so doing you will receive generously the joy of life! Who do you love?

Unexpected Ways

The Gospel is good news. But what is so good about it? It is so much easier to place bumper sticker answers on one’s car than it is to bump up against these questions.

Jesus will only connect in an age when he remains radically different in our daily lives, breaking us out of our complacency, comfort, and self-imposed “normalcy.” When we truly see Him as the way, the truth and the life…

Fear and faith cannot occupy the same space in our hearts. For in Christ we are embraced by the perfection of love and perfect love casts out fear. Christ came to be our peace, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you…Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14.27).

Crazy to think about it, but just hours before Jesus was crucified he was concerned for the peace and the joy and the faith of his followers. Think of it. He is about to be tortured to death with one of the most horrific means of torture ever devised, and His burden was to solidify in the souls of His followers peace and joy and faith.

Jesus fought hard against the “false teachings” of the day so that those who would place their faith in Him, might experience the everlasting joy of heaven. Jesus suffered on behalf of those who place their belief in who He is—He sacrificed His life so that we who believe in Him might have the beauty, the peace, the truth of eternal life.

There on the cross Jesus says to humanity, “I want you to have peace. I want you to be deeply joyful. I want you to believe in what I say and what I do — to have unshakable faith. I want you to have the kind of peace that I give, not the world. The kind of joy that I give, not the world. The kind of faith, I give, not the world. I want you to have the truth of love and the truth of faith—I want you to have Me.”

Let us this day stop trying to control the storms and instead, by the power of the Holy Spirit, step into the calming power of the Savior. Let us this day place all our care upon Jesus, “for He cares for us” (1 Peter 5.7). Let us this day ask the Spirit to increase our faith by taking us deeper into the unexpected ways of Jesus.

Scandal of the Cross

Following Christ, which has become possible through his self-surrender, will not consist in doing some right thing but in fundamentally surrendering everything, and surrendering it to the God who has totally emptied himself, so that he can use [that right thing] for the world, according to his own purposes.

The life of Christ is the center of our participation. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar writes "The scandal of the cross cannot be removed by further theoretical discussion but only by praxis, which is twofold: it is a decisive step into the future, beyond the baneful barriers set up by doctrine, and it is also a return to Christianity’s authentic and original meaning: God shows his truth to us through acting.” As the apostle Paul tells us, we should "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;  for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2.12-13).

The world is God’s theater of glory; it is the place for humanity’s performance in Christ through the Spirit. Faithfulness to the performance of God recognizes that Christianity is praxis. It tells us how we should act not simply what we should believe.