Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

This episode is the sixth in a series called "Forming a J-Curve Community," based on Part 5 of Paul's book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. "Some of the Corinthians called themselves the elite, the 'spiritual' ones. It sounds like it was an early version of Gnosticism. They considered themselves 'spiritual' and looked down on Christians that weren't as wise as they were." "The world has the right to demand that we look like Jesus." "The Spirit appears to be, if there is such a thing, the gentlest of the Trinity. We're warned against offending the Spirit. My pride offends the Spirit. My independence offends the Spirit. In that sense he is elusive."

This episode is the fifth in the "Forming a J-Curve Community" series, based on Part 5 of Paul's book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. "The new way of getting power is the Spirit. The way Paul accesses that power is the same way Jesus did in his death and his resurrection – it was through dying. In effect, Paul is re-enacting the dying and rising of Jesus all the time." "A ministry of prayer is the only ministry where you disappear. In every other ministry, someone notices you." "The Spirit of Jesus needs to be at the center of a community in order to defeat the human community's tendency to idolizing community and moving merely to safety. It is my primary task as a Christian leader to be a conduit for the Spirit's power, and that happens through humility and weakness."

This episode is the fourth in a new series called "Forming a J-Curve Community," based on Part 5 of Paul's book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. "The 'health and wealth' gospel has come out of an environment where we have taught justification without the J-Curve. The health and wealth gospel is basically that Jesus is for me, and that prayer is a way to power." "If you teach grace without living a cruciform life of dying love then you are creating cheap grace. You cannot leave a vacuum." "As I re-enact the gospel, that becomes the glue that brings incredibly different people together. If you begin to do the J-Curve, you undermine tribalism and eventually destroy it."

This episode is the second in a new series called "Forming a J-Curve Community," based on Part 5 of Paul's book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. "Behind every faction, there's some idol in the center. A tribe is always centered around something that it is worshipping." "You don't get at power by seeking it – you get at power by losing it, just like Jesus did." "Paul is deliberately weakening himself. He's leaving space for the spirit. When I lead with weakness then I'm a person of prayer because I don't know what to do. This is Proverbs: the heart of wisdom is knowing you don't have it."

This episode is the second in a new series called "Forming a J-Curve Community," based on Part 5 of Paul's book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. "What we're going to look at is the very first problem Paul tackles in Corinthians 1, and it's the problem of tribalism…. They're starting denominations, but they're about 1500 years too early!" "Because my tribe is Jesus, I can enter every tribe. But I don't have to be captured by the tribal narrative they have." "A tribe creates a virtual wall that reduces pain. So to go out of my little group and into your world, I'm drawing out potential humbling for me."

This episode begins a new series called "Forming a J-Curve Community," based in part on Part 5 of Paul's book The J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. "Babbius' monument [in Corinth] is telling us a story, and the story, or narrative, is about what is important…. Being seen and honored and known is what life is about here. What Paul counters the Corinthians with is a different narrative. "For the Apostle Paul the cross is not just our salvation, it is the narrative of our life." "Opposing the Babbius narrative is the cross. They could not be more different. The cross is at the bottom of the Failure-Boasting slide. Babbius is going up. He's made it in life and he's announcing it. Paul is coming in and telling the story of a poor Jewish peasant who was rejected by his own people and crucified at the cross. But it is in that weakness that the power of God lies."

This is the fourth and final episode in a series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes have been excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori, Liz Voboril and Keith Grant. "Generally speaking the emphasis within our therapeutic world is either improving the self with some kind of wisdom or improving the self's environment. So we making 'good choices', staying away from draining people, do lots of self-care, etc. But at the very center of Christianity is Jesus. His journey leads to the cross. "The cross is not a place for improving the self, it's a place for the death of self." "I think it's a right desire that we can't wait to get back to our pre-pandemic "normal," but it can become almost an expectation that if we if we aren't in a normal situation then we can't be fully human. But, in fact, it's in the embodiment of our living in the particular place that God has put us right now where the beauty of Jesus begins to emerge."

This is the third episode in a series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes will be excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori, Liz Voboril and Keith Grant. To view upcoming webinars, visit seejesus.net/events. "Sometimes it's hard for us to get into touch with what the Apostle Paul was like as a person because he's either so exalted that he's almost Jesus number 2, or he just kind of floats. I want to drill down a little bit in into this particular way that Paul has of looking at life." "Paul is not an optimist, he's a realist." "Paul sees life exactly as it is. When Paul was on that Damascus Road, he was stunned by the presence of the resurrected Jesus—the blazing light of the risen Savior—and that blazing light is still with him in his prison cell.

This is the second episode in a new series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes will be excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori and Liz Voboril. To view upcoming webinars, visit seejesus.net/events. "One of the tendencies that we have as believers is to edit our prayers to get them all balanced and it can freeze people. There's a real beauty in beginning with what's on your heart. It doesn't mean that doesn't have to be reshaped and grown, but you've got begin with what's on your heart." "The gospel gives us permission to be ourselves. That doesn't mean that ourselves don't need some work, we all know that, but it lets us sort of relax." "I've likened this tendency to a kind of a perfectionism with prayer to creating an avatar. You create a spiritual being that you aren't and try to get that person to pray right. When you're no longer yourself, as messy as you may be, then you can't connect with God because it's not the real you connecting with the real God."

This is the first episode in a new series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes will be excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori and Liz Voboril. To view upcoming webinars, visit seejesus.net/events. "We're separated from this text by 2,000 years, but you can feel Paul's emotions. They are vivid. Emotions are a function of what it is to be human. It's kind of a human flourishing you're looking at. Human flourishing is not escaping or being pulled somehow above the emotions of life. Paul is completely embedded in love in the hearts of the Thessalonians. They are on his heart, so therefore he feels anxiety. It normalizes good anxiety." "Anxiety is like anger. It is potentially sinful. But it's not inherently sinful. That's the simplest way to say it." "We tend to put anxiety and human flourishing in two different buckets, as if they are enemies of one another. What dying and rising with Jesus does it mixes the buckets. It puts them together. In fact, it's anxiety, a life of stuff coming at you, that is the way you get to know Jesus. The things that are making me anxious are my door to knowing Jesus. And that's true human flourishing: being in Jesus."