Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

In this episode, we share a gem from the seeJesus archives -- it's a talk Paul Miller gave at the Bethlehem Pre-Conference in February 2020 introducing the J-Curve. We'll share the first part of the talk this week, and the conclusion in 2 weeks. "Suffering disorients you. You think everything's gone wrong because even though no one told us we sort of instinctively feel that life should be free of suffering, and if we give up on that we might become a stoic and say well life is just like that. The J-Curve locates me so instead of being disoriented by suffering I know where I am…" "The Spirit finds your weakness irresistible. It's where he does his best work!" "The J-Curve is a flesh-killing machine…it's God's way of imprinting the beauty of Jesus on you. I think that's what God is doing with his entire church, he's weakening us so that we can taste Christ."

Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Liz Voboril for this interview with Lydia Leggett ad David Bostrom, two of seeJesus's A Praying Life Trainers. "A prayer card is a non-complicated actual note card where you start writing down things that you're asking of the Lord so that you can remember. It's a tool that is helpful for keeping track of what you're asking the Lord to do." "One of the real benefits of prayer cards is that they help you pay better attention to what God might be doing." "I think of Colossians 4:2, 'Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.' Prayer cards help me be watchful because in our distracted world it's hard to be watchful without a record of what you're asking the Lord to do. As you watch the story unfold you're able to be thank more thankful because you've got a record of what you've seen the Lord do, not necessarily answers to prayer that you just check off, but a story developing that feeds thanksgiving and faith in your own heart."

Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Liz Voboril for this interview with Jon and Sonia H. Jon is seeJesus's West Coast and East Asia Director. He and his wife Sonia have four children (and two rambunctious dogs!). "The kids would come to the table expectantly, especially my little one. He would grab the box and put on the table. He was just very eager, anticipating and wondering you know, how is the Lord going to answer our prayers today? He had already seen, in that short amount of time, how the Lord answered specific prayer requests. It was nice to see that childlike faith in him, and it was contagious..." "It's almost like the family prayer box becomes a mini theater—a window to watching God at work." "The last thing we want is for people to think 'Oh, they have this magnificent praying family!' It's full of flops... but one of the main things to remember is that the invitation from the Father is just to keep coming!"

This episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. Today they're joined by guest Maresa DePuy, Prayer and Women's Mentoring Director at Life Park Church near Charleston, SC. "One woman named Mary started praying by herself behind the scenes, and I came in about a year later and joined her. We would pray Sunday mornings during services in the back of the church interceding for the prayer needs. One by one, God sent us other 'Annas' in the church and so we were a small cluster of praying women for a few years as the story began…" "I do think it's a temptation that you can fall into as a prayer team leader to just kind of force prayer into the church. It's really got to be done by the Spirit..." "The prayer meeting becomes an incubator or a greenhouse where all of this faith just begins to bloom. So you leave more confident, expecting that the work of God is going to go forth in some way and the exciting part is you don't know how. You come back to that next prayer meeting with a posture of celebration and thanksgiving. What we try to do in our in our staff meetings and our community prayer services is celebrate what we see God doing in response to our weak, broken, but Spirit-filled prayers."

This episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. "The rising side is really what makes the J-Curve the J-Curve. Because in Jesus' day and Paul's day, everybody knew about the dying side. I mean that's what paganism was. Paganism was a management system for dying reasonably well." "There's a lot of wisdom in stoicism but no hope..." "The upside of the J is answered prayer. It's God at work. It's God invading my world... so, Jesus dying on the cross, praying psalm 22 as he's dying... he's requesting resurrection when he says 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' He doesn't want to be forsaken. He's not just lamenting. He wants out. He wants to be saved from death. And the resurrection is the Father's response to Jesus. So now the entire Christian life now is a reenacting of that at much less intense level."

"This parable is trying to show is the current management model of the church which puts prayer in the periphery is simply crazy. Like you have an organization where you ignore your CEO. It's just bad management and it comes under the guise of good management." "How odd it is that the church worships Jesus spends little very little time waiting and talking to him." "He's not just the savior of my heart—he saves my family today. His saving work is active and present. He is the CEO! I think Jesus, by his Spirit, permitted the pandemic to slow the church down. To get us to pay attention to janitors."

This episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. "In leading prayer meetings, I don't want to overwhelm people. I don't want to make it a pietistic guilt trip. I don't want to go legalistic. I want the prayer meeting to function the same way discipling or mentoring works. I don't even want a prayer meeting to seem like an extraordinary meeting. Because super spiritual makes me nervous. It just sets you up for a fall, I think.." "It's not like you're all individual people praying solitary prayers, taking turns. You're not in a lineup. You're praying together." "Prayer isn't a time where you shut down desire. You awaken it. There's such fear of bad desire that we go stoic and shut down all desire. But prayer is a time where desire comes alive, and people can speak into that. I will speak into wrong desire that might emerge in a prayer time. I'll do that privately. But when desire come alive it's real, it's you praying, not some spiritual person that you're trying to create."

This is episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. "I remember when I was 17 sitting in the pews of this small 60-person church where dad was a part-time pastor. He was so excited about Jesus, and I knew enough to think that you can't be that excited about Jesus and God not do something. And He did!…." "Prayer functions like fuel for the Spirit. It's a pattern see see all through Jesus' life, and it's the drivetrain of the church." "Your church, your life, your body is dead like Jesus on the cross. And as you begin to pray, it's like Easter morning, you're waiting for Easter morning, you're waiting for God to break through..."

This is episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. "Jesus focuses on teaching his disciples how to pray, and it begins with them requesting it. Jesus doesn't teach them until they're eager to learn. They've got to want to do it." "If you struggle to get prayer meetings going, take heart—Jesus' attempt to get a prayer meeting going failed too." "Now when you turn the page, and you go from Luke to Acts, it is absolutely delightful because Acts like Luke opens with a prayer meeting, except it's a 10-day prayer meeting and they've really got it, because Jesus didn't tell them to pray, he's told them to wait, and they knew what they should do— they prayed."

This is episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. "The first glimmer of the church is in Genesis 4:26. At the end of this chapter, in the midst of this sort of descent into evil, people begin to call upon the name of the Lord. What jumps out is that they're defined by prayer. That is what it is to be the called out people of God." "When Solomon dedicates the temple in 1 Kings, he doesn't preach he prays." "For the Jewish people, the temple became known as a place of prayer. That that was their primary thought as to what you did in the temple—it just it permeates Jewish culture even outside of Christianity. Solomon imprinted the DNA of the temple as the place of prayer."