Spelade

  • We’re beginning a new series that will look at Jesus as a person, and along the way, we’re picking up on some themes that go back to our earliest episodes. This week, we explain a bit about the back story of this series and talk about what we see in Jesus in the story of the widow of Nain in Luke 7.

    "It was in reading this story my thinking and awareness of Jesus as a person first began to open up. As I was reading this, a little light went off and I thought, 'Now, wait a minute. In the prodigal son, doesn’t something similar happen when Jesus describes how the father greets the prodigal son? And where the father looks and sees the son on the horizon, feels compassion and then acts?' And then I thought, 'Wait a minute, isn’t that also in the good Samaritan too?' "

    "Looking is not insignificant – in the Hebrew mind, all action begins with looking."

    "This attentiveness to a person that we see in Jesus leads to a tenderness with people. Jesus is not a miracle machine. He’s not a justification by faith robot. He’s showing us how to be human." Watch this video to hear more about how Paul learned to love by watching Jesus.

    If you’re interested in going deeper into the material we discussed today, look at lesson one of Unit 1, The Person of Jesus: Compassion. Learn more at seeJesus.net/PersonOfJesus.

  • Robert Row joins Paul Miller and Liz Voboril in this new series looking at how, paradoxically, dependence on the Father frees Jesus to love.

    “Jesus’ brothers look a lot freer than Jesus. They don’t have this dependence on the Father the way he does. So they can go to the Feast. He says go, he’s not stopping them. He just says you guys have a freedom that I don’t have.”

    “His words could be a commercial nowadays: Your time is now. It’s always your time!”

    "Jesus sounds the opposite of free when he says, 'I don’t do anything but what I see my Father doing.' But what you actually see in his life is immense freedom. He has that that ninja capacity to pivot from compassion to honesty – the whole range of ways to love. I think that’s part of what is so attractive about his dependence. Our assumption is that dependence leads to a small, very limited life. When in fact, in Jesus, we see it play out in this amazing kaleidoscope of ways.”