More Than Bread

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There is a prayer in John 17, a prayer between Jesus and his Father, just before Jesus goes to the cross. At the heart of that prayer is a simple request, "Father make them one. All those who will believe in me, make them one." Honestly I find myself grieved by how easily we minimize the unity at heart of his dream. He's praying that we would form a glory-saturated community that would reveal Jesus to the world around us. 

And in fact, I will suggest that Jesus greatest prayer also reveals the great dream of his heart, a dream that continues to this day, "that we would be known by the quantity and quality of our love for each other. Jesus greatest dream became his greatest prayer. Sometimes it seems like Jesus-dream is little more than a  pipedream. But if we love him, if we truly value the price of the cross, if we not only proclaim it but actually consider ourselves to be his followers, shouldn't his
dream, be our dream? Shouldn't his prayer, be our prayer?

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We are starting a new series at Calvary called "Homecoming" and I'll be putting them on each Monday. This episode is on the Palm Sunday story. It gives us a look at this reality. Often when Jesus comes into a city, a neighborhood, a school, he comes in with tears in his eyes and a fire in his heart. He comes in with tears in his eyes for those who are missing their encounter with him, and a fire in his heart for those who let it happen.

Which one do you need to see? The tears in his eyes, or the fire in his heart?

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What are you filled with?  What fills your life, right now?  We can be filled with a lot of stuff, good and bad. What are you filled with today? In John 14-17, Jesus begins to talk about the Spirit of God. If you remember back in John 7, he talked about the Spirit of God so filling us up that rivers of living water flow out of our souls! It's an uncommon call to be filled with the Spirit.  We may not exactly be sure what it means. But we do know what it's like to be filled with something. 

If someone says they are filled with grief, or filled with fear, or despair or anger or ambition or joy, or filled with love. We know what that's like.  We know that what we are filled with dominates our thoughts, dictates our actions, perhaps even describes who we are. So what fills you up?

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John 14-16 is an amazing piece of scripture. Jesus is sharing his last thoughts before he dies on a cross, and changes the story of the world. It's his locker-room talk before his team goes out to play the most important game of their lives. And he is talking to them about life, about what they need to thrive in the hard times to come. In the space of a few minutes, he will use the word "remain" at least 8 times. That's the word that I want us to hang onto. "Remain" or some of your translations say "abide." The greek word translated remain can mean to take a stand against difficult circumstances, but it was also used to refer to close personal relationships. 

So maybe the sense of the word is to stick close even when it's difficult.  When trouble comes, stick close to Jesus. When it's hard to hope, stick close to Jesus. When you want your life to make a difference, stick close to Jesus!

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As you know I’m kind of stuck in John 14-17. Which isn’t a bad thing at all, if you took my advice and have been reading those four chapters every day, maybe even multiple times a day. So in the last episode, I ended with this thought. I didn’t develop it much, but I threw it out there at the end, the thought was simply this, "If hope is contagious, love is how it spreads." If hope is contagious, love is how it spreads, so if we want to spread hope, we might need a love breakthrough!

In this episode, we'll touch a bit more on the relationships that Jesus touches on in John 14-17. Each relationship is a place where we can pray for breakthrough!

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Remember in a recent episode, talking about prayer, I said that while helplessness is a great initiator of prayer, helplessness is not enough. We need hopefulness to sustain prayer. But when our helplessness meets His hopefulness, something pretty amazing can happen. So I want to talk a bit again about that hopefulness. And here is the statement that I'm going to make... 

Hope is contagious!

I'm praying that contagious hope fills every heart that listens to this episode!

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What is peace? In our culture today, we typically define peace in terms of absence. It's the absence of noise, the absence of storms, the absence of conflict and anxiety. But when Jesus spoke of peace, he used the Hebrew word, shalom. Shalom is fullness and wholeness, not absence. Shalom is well-being in the widest sense of the word. It's the blessing of God which sums up all other blessings. Shalom is more about fullness than emptiness, more about presence than  absence. Shalom is the wholeness of heart that comes from a fullness of God.

Are you seeking peace?

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Expectancy is a tenacious hope that never stops believing that the best is yet to come. In this episode we will hear Jesus tie together expectancy, child-birth, and travailing prayer. Travailing prayer is the painful work of giving birth to something new. The Bible seems to speak little of casual prayer. It's pages are filled with examples of people who wrestled with God, travailed, groaned and cried out in prayer to see God's purposes birthed in their lives and the world around them.

So I have to ask you, the same questions, I ask myself. Who are the people in our day who will pray like this? Where are the next gen students who will travail in prayer until God births something new in their school? Where are the neighbors who will let expectancy saturate their trouble so that they cannot help but travail in prayer? Where are the employees who will push in prayer till God births smthng new in their company? Where are the travailing mothers and fathers, the grandmas and grandpas, who will not let God rest till the Spirit gives birth to a new season in their family? 

It's time to travail...

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It would probably be a good thing for you to read on your own all of John 14-17 multiple times as you listen to the next 5-6 episodes. These four chapters are Jesus last words before he gives his life for a world in trouble. So imagine this, you're with Jesus, sitting by a fire in a cabin, or talking a walk in the afternoon. You're walking through a vineyard and you don't know it but Jesus is sharing his last words before he dies on a cross. Most scholars call these four chapters, Jesus "Farewell Discourse." I think it's anything but his farewell discourse. These are not last words, they are beginning words; summation words maybe, transition words definitely, but not last words.

This is Jesus locker-room challenge before you go out and play the most important game of your life. This is your favorite teacher at commencement looking you in the eye and saying, "You got this." It's your OBGYN doctor, saying, "push, it's time to push. I know it hurts, but something good is coming."

I hope these next few episodes covering John 14-17, truly encourage you!

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In our culture today, Christians are known by and known for a handful of things, to be honest to many of those things are not good things. We are known for our politics. We are known for our moral stands on issues that matter to us. But are we known for the way we love each other? 

What are we known for?