Forgotten Ways

Jesus is Lord – DVD

* Gift of persecution causes us to distill the message down to the central message of the church: Jesus is my Lord and Savior, I cling to Him and no one else!
- Jesus is the doorway to love & knowledge of God
- Don’t have time to argue theological issues, philosophies, etc

* All good and great ideas are transferable – they are affective
- ex: sneezing…less complex, more transferable

* Kingdom of God – King of the whole universe…rules beyond the church

* Jesus is Lord – enough to build a movement around
“Live under the Lord Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit”

* Our understanding of God is understood by understanding Jesus
- Jesus is God like, greater truth is God is like Jesus
o I can go w/Jesus: compassion, mercy, grace, etc

* If Jesus is Lord He is your Savior – Lordship/Kingdom of God is the NT topic

* Early church and Chinese church what got them into trouble – Jesus is Lord

* Christianity w/out Christ = religion
- can’t know Him w/out the gospels (historical Jesus - incarnation)
o not spooky Jesus
o not Jesus my homeboy Jesus
o not Sunday school Jesus – kids version
o not well adjusted middle class – crazy stuff
• hate parents (loyalty to Him)
• money, power, status, security, convenience…Jesus is more dangerous the closer you get to Him!

* If all your image of Jesus is this romantic lover, it may get you to the mission field, but it will not keep you there.

* Jesus does not look like you on a good day, we must not make Him in our image…’God made us in His image and we returned the favor.’

* I look at the building and I look at the gospels I don’t see the same Jesus…when we look at church buildings it communicates what we think about Jesus.

* The way we get our understanding of Jesus is through the gospels

* If Jesus turned up in our town we would probably kill Him again…you don’t put nice guys are the cross.
- Jesus and religion don’t mix: spirit and truth now, not just in Jerusalem

Jesus is Lord – Book

* The early church clung to the gospel and unlocked the liberating power of it, not all the theological paraphernalia – they distilled the message down to the essence of it.
- under the conditions of the early church and Chinese church faith was once again linked to the utter simplicity to Jesus.

* The gospel was in the hands of the people – easy to get, and easy to pass on…repentance toward God, faith in Jesus Christ. For us to return back to this simplicity we must return back to the teaching of Jesus. Back to the person Christ, not things we know about, things He said, things He did, but actually knowing Him.
- 2 Cor 11:3
- Jn 17:3
- Jn 5 (its not enough to know what the Word says, we must know the Person)
o Ask how do we get to know Christ better – practical ways.
• Mission w/Him – “follow Me”
• Talking to w/Him – disciples
• Listening to Him – Jn 10:27 & Mt 4:4
• You find the Shepherd amongst the sheep - fellowship w/other believers
• Man for other people – tax gathers, prostitutes, disenfranchised, marginalized of society.
• Knowing He is w/you! 24/7 = everything is spiritual!
• Not sacred and secular, that is not the Hebraic mindset or biblical worldview…worship God through life ☺
o Ex: w/school and church
o Worshiping and baby J butt
• Worship – offering our world back to God!

*We love and worship God by:
1. loving others
2. obeying Jesus
3. fellowshipping with other believers
4. speaking about the things of God
5. longing for the return of Christ
6. forsaking other gods & idols
7. loving what God has created
8. forgiving others

* Israel’s primary declaration = Shema – Yahweh is Lord!
- all of life alignment = aligning your whole life around Jesus and His kingdom

* The holiness of Jesus – seeks to change the world and sanctify it

* What are ways that you’re seeking to worship God outside of regular corporate gatherings?


Discipleship – DVD

* Very few change through mere thinking…Jesus formed people not through a classroom, but through life-to-life dicipling.

* Where did I work with Jesus today?
Where did I resist or work against the work of Jesus today?
- great journal practice

* We’re sent people, sent into the world by God

* God is not a Sunday God, but a Monday through Sunday God.

* Investing in people life – listening, caring, serving = loving relationships, deeply relational…one person at a time. We have to stop thinking of revival of a faceless mass of people coming to Christ and begin to see revival as loving the person before you.

Discipleship – book

* The destiny of every believer is to be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom 8:29)

* Church is not just another venue of good and service, it’s a family on a mission together…consumerism has plagued our lives more than we know, where we feel that unless we have whatever that thing is we are restless when really the issue is coming to a rest in being a follower of Jesus whose life is given to Him and His purposes.

*The commission He gave to the church was to make disciples of all nations – He wanted us to help make little versions of himself all throughout society.
- reproducing Himself in and through His people
- all the spiritual disciplines should pt us to the one thing – Christlikeness…this is our eternal destiny!
o Our focus is Jesus – as we know Him we become like Him. According to 2 Cor 3:18 as we behold Him we become like Him.
• Share being offended – what am I going to behold, the offense or the one with the offendable heart who chooses to forgive?
• Share Shiloh doing dishes – what am I going to behold, the dishes and join in the accuser over people about their lives or the one who came not to be served but to serve?
• Share about kids wanting me to pay attention –
• Share about anger
• Share about purity
• Share about loving difficult people

* We must become the gospel to the people around us – Jn 1:14
- There was something about the holiness of Christ that did not repel sinners, tax gathers, prostitutes, drunkards, but actually had the opposite affect on them – they wanted Jesus around!
o We all must ask ourselves what message does our life give off to those who are beyond church? Does it draw people to Christ or repel people from Him?
• Jesus was the man for other people – not coming to judge the world, according to John 3:17, but actually to save it!
• I am not saying we’re suppose to be loved by everyone, that is silly and not the gospel, but our lives as Jesus life was should enhance the lives around us…loving people unconditionally, not on the condition if they change then we can love them, accept them, and care for them.

* Jesus style of discipleship was centered around the call to mission – as He was sent into the world and now He was taking them on His mission, which by the end of His life in John 17 we see Him praying to the Father about not taking these disciples out of the world but sending them into the world as He was sent into the world.

* Basic Christianity – normal Christian life, not abnormal: MK 8:34, Matt 22:37-39
- loving
- generosity
- forgiving
- hospital
- spending time w/those outside the faith
- sermon on the mount

* When we come to Scripture we should not have the attitude of what can I get out of this? Rather we should be saying, How do these scriptures call, shape, transform, and send me?
- ¬It’s coming to the word not to take, take, take from God; rather, its coming to know Him and do His will…Jn 4 the woman at the well: this story is loaded w/nuggets of understanding about life, but one profound truth that Jesus just drops this one liner on is the secret of satisfaction. Honestly, I want to convince you from this scripture that you can actually be satisfied in this life – that mean regardless if you are married, not married, have a job don’t have a job, have lots of money or have no money, have your future planned out or have no idea what tomorrow looks like…the secret is this: the will of God satisfies the hunger of man.

* Salvation is a gift, but discipleship is a process!
- you do nothing to earn salvation, but you must enter into the process to exp the fullness of it = discipleship
- Repentance as a lifestyle, begins here…turning from self to God (repentance toward God, faith in Jesus Christ)
o The good news for Jesus was not the gospel of salvation, but the gospel of the kingdom = present reality


* Frost contends, that Jesus was sent “into the crap of life.” He was sent to the broken, the homeless, the lost, the lepers, the prostitutes, the oppressed, the outcasts. Frost’s point was that the church loves to focus on the second part of John 20:21. We love to talk about how we are sent. We are a sending church. We are a sent people. But as helpful as it is to recognized that we are a called and sent people of God, we do not really “step into the mission of Jesus” if we are not sent into the broken parts of the world, “just as the Father” sent Jesus.
This means, at least in part, that we must move beyond proximity (which is certainly a start) to a place of “presence.” We must “move into the neighborhood” (Jn 1:14, MSG), not just geographically, but with our hearts. We must embody the Gospel among the people that we have been sent to.


* Those walking in the Beatitudes (attitudes we need to be) - These are the ones that are obeying my reign and rule and they’re experiencing the blessings of the here and now -

* Dis-ease : we need courage to do something w/our dis-ease in life or it becomes a disease