Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Exploring the power of prayer and unexpected outcomes. Reflecting on the process of transformation through dying and rising. Discussing the act of loving disabled people and enemies. Exploring the surprises that come with following Jesus.

In this new series, the team works through some central themes that have emerged as we've been talking with leaders about A Praying Church, elaborating on material Paul recently shared at an event at the The Gospel Coalition conference. "I tell the story at the beginning of the A Praying Church book and seminar. My dad, Jack Miller, had just started at Westminster Seminary faculty. He just gotten his PhD, and started as faculty at Westminster Seminary when he visited Francis Shaffer at L’Abri. He came back very surprised, because he had experienced a community ever so briefly that had prayer at the center and he'd never seen or experienced that before. Here he was an accomplished reformed scholar, even evangelist and pastor, and that was totally new to him." "Pride and self-will constantly draw us into a fellowship of his suffering -- and that's the door to prayer." "Paul ends that section of Ephesians 3 by praying a doxology. He turns and worships, 'now to him who's able to do beyond all that we can ask or even think.' Some translations say 'imagine,' and that’s a great translation because your imagination takes you into worlds that are outside of parameters, outside of our thought life. One of my reflections on my dad is that after all this, he began to do daring things and dream about doing daring things. So his prayers got bigger."

Robert, Paul and Liz wrap up this series by stepping back and looking at Jesus' range of love. You can download a one-page tool that summarizes these 4 ways of loving, along with the questions and prayers the team shares in this episode here. "Jesus is really hard to put in a box. We've talked a lot about how you just cannot predict him. You know if you're reading the Gospels for the first time, he surprises at every turn. The reason for that is that his range is so big. Where we get locked into one range of loving, his uniqueness is he moves between all the ranges. So he never stops surprising us." "There’s a famous description of the Gospel of John that says its portrayal of Jesus is so shallow that a child can play in it, but so deep that an elephant can swim in it." "The more we meditate on and study the person of Jesus, it expands your categories. You need Jesus in you to move into his categories. The Gospels give me the categories for love and lead me to do much more daring things, and also sometimes wait much more longer than I would naturally wait!"

Jon, Paul and Liz continue their conversations on how Jesus' love is shaped by his dependence on his Father. "Selfless openness is a willingness to let other people intrude into your life. If there's any form of love that our modern culture is allergic to, it's this one. Particularly as wealth grows, your time becomes your most valuable asset. So when someone intrudes into your life, you're giving them your best gift—and they don't even know it, which is doubly irritating!" "Jesus loves to love. Sometimes I love to love, but sometimes I love because I should love." "Our faith functions like a gentle intrusion of us to Jesus. We have a reticence to do that with important people, but Jesus loves it when we bring our needs to him."

Paul, Jon and Liz look at how Jesus' pattern of loving by way of "gentle intrusion" includes drawing near physically and touching people. "Jesus shows us again and again that love moves towards people. That one idea is so clarifying! It gives me a direction and a thing to do -- even though I have no idea exactly where things will go. I move out of my safety zone and into someone else's world." "Touch is a physical manifestation of this basic principle: love moves toward people." "In Revelation 1, when John sees this overwhelming vision of the resurrected Christ…as light as the sun. John falls at Jesus' feet, almost like he's dead. And then Jesus reaches down and touches him. Jesus closes the gap. It's kind of the story of his life!"

Oops! We released Part 2 of our Zacchaeus podcast before we released Part 1. We have changed and reordered them on our hosting service, and if you refresh, you should see the two episodes in the right order. Our apologies! The podcast team continues their series looking at Jesus and how his dependence on the Father shapes his love. This is the first of two episodes watching Jesus love Zacchaeus. "When my dad preached a sermon on Zacchaeus some forty years ago and said when you think of Zacchaeus, think of Danny Devito. His whole persona, his character. Self-confident, a little on the obnoxious side of charming. Danny Devito just kind of nails it!... Zacchaeus is a man of action, and Jesus incarnates with him by essentially ordering him: Come down immediately; I must stay at your house today. It’s something we would never even think of doing with a complete stranger." "'Blessed are those who are making everyone happy' could be a modern beatitude." "We’re living in a cultural setting where you approach everyone and everything with skepticism and cynicism. To move toward someone with this 'gentle intrusion' love of Jesus can be automatically categorized and received as a malicious kind of move. And so we sometimes ‘freeze’ instead of loving. This gentle intrusion is a side of Christ that we need to learn."

Oops! We released Part 2 of our Zacchaeus podcast before we released Part 1. Part 1 will be released on August 2. Our apologies! Jon, Robert, Paul and Liz continue their conversation about how Jesus intrudes into Zacchaeus’s life. "The second half of the Zacchaeus story is just delightful, but it’s easy to miss. I find most Christians are unaware of exactly what happens in this second part. Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’s house and all the people begin to mutter…" "All acts of love involve a kind of atonement; there’s an exchange involved." "Zacchaeus immediately sees what the problem is: he has shamed Jesus by associating with him and the only way he can increase Jesus’ reputation is by changing his own reputation. He’s one of the few people in the gospels who gives Jesus a gift…"

The series continues by looking at how Jesus handles temptation when Satan returns. "One of the principal patterns across all the gospels is the demand for a sign that comes from the Jews. It’s a little out of our cultural world, and let me just explain. You’ll see examples in the Talmud about great rabbis doing a sign, and what it is is a miracle that shows you off. It might be a miracle where you make the roof go up two feet and come down. It has nothing to do with love." "The very nature of a sign is to separate love from power. That’s the problem with celebrity culture in the church. It separates love from power. Love always involves humility and going lower." "In all these temptations, Satan is tempting Jesus to act on his own, but Jesus says, 'I do nothing on my own. I do just what I see my Father doing.' So, for me, that means asking others' opinions, staying under authority, being content with the rhythms of life that God’s given me. We’ve talked about being content in the garden that God has given. So many besetting sins involve looking outside of the garden God’s put you in. They're all a way of making bread."

In this episode, the team reflects a bit on where we are in our Jesus & Dependence series and what we’ll be moving into in our next few episodes. "If you’ve been listening to our recent podcasts and that was your only window to Jesus, you would probably say he’s kind of a negative person. He says no to everybody; he said no to his mother, no to his brothers, and he was kind of negative with Satan. He’s a Debbie Downer…" "No one does compassion like Jesus, but compassion is not at the center for Jesus. His Father is; communion with the Father through the Spirit is at the center of his life." "The Centurion at the cross has never seen a miracle; he knew virtually nothing of this man. But just watching how Jesus acts and relates over those 6 dying hours. This is a man who knows men, and by the end of those 6 hours, he concludes that he has almost certainly met a god. It was how he lived that so stunning." Paul and the team reference a 4-quadrant chart in today’s conversation – you can download it here.

Paul, Robert and Liz continue their conversation about Satan’s temptation of Jesus. "We tend to be independent of God in our strengths. When we know we’re weak, we pray. That’s why most of our sins tend to clump around our areas of strength." "Satan is inviting Jesus to be a celebrity, and Jesus is just disgusted at the idea." "Put your heavenly Father at the center. Don’t go running after those things. Your heavenly Father will take care of you. Seek first His kingdom and his righteousness. It’s going to be more than ok."