More Than Bread

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Out of all the amazing parts of God's creation, it's only when he created (creates) people that He says, "That is very good." God's greatest masterpiece is not the amazing way that your body works together. It's not the color of your hair or the shape of your hips, it isn't even your tan-toned abs.  God's greatest masterpiece is your soul, your heart.  God's great masterpiece is the stories that are written as you live life fully alive.  You are a masterpiece in progress.  We so need this truth to saturate our souls. As you listen to this episode, let it soak into your soul!

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"But God..." There are a handful of "but God" moments in scripture that I call divine reversals. Ephesians chapter 2 contains one of my favorites. "We were dead, doomed, and damned, but God... is so rich in mercy..." I love those two words..."but God." Every time you find that divine reversal in scripture, stop and ponder it, let it soak into your soul. Those two words are the turning point of our stories.  They  mark the point where God turned our story into His-story.  But God is so rich in mercy....

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If there was one and only one question we should ask ourselves each new day, perhaps it could be, every morning, "How well do I know Jesus? And do I know Him better now than I did last year at this time?" Jesus once was overheard praying, he said, "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3) Moses spoke with God like a friend, and yet he cried out to know more of God. Paul said, nothing matters to me more than knowing Christ. I want to know Christ.

And in Ephesians 1:15-23, as Paul prays from prison for his friends in Ephesus, he prays that they would know Christ more. Knowing Christ more, that's a good goal for every good and hard day.

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Long ago...before all of this grand and awesome creation was even a gleam in Father God's eye; Paul says that God loved us and chose us. He created you in his image. He fashioned your heart with his heart as a model. At the beginning, the warrior-poet David wrote, as he formed you in your mother's womb...he dreamed dreams about your life and he looked forward to all your days. And it's all because your address, your destiny, your life is "in Christ." There's no better place to be, than "in Christ!"  

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Jesus once asked a man, a man who had been an invalid for 38 years, a man who was doing everything he could (which wasn't much) to be healed, "Do you want to be made well?" Before you think, like I did, "that's a dumb question Jesus," ask yourself, "Do I want to be blessed?" That's the question we start with in Ephesians 1. 

And perhaps it's not such a dumb question. Perhaps it's one that we all need to answer. 

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I love the book of Ephesians because Paul had a never dying hope for the church. Even while he was in prison, his soul soars with hope for the church. Ephesians speaks to me as an individual of my journey to Jesus, but even more it proclaims hope, God-dreamed, Spirit-inspired, Christ-built hope for the church…and at least in part, that’s what I hope we all take away from our time in Ephesians, Paul’s first letter from prison.

In this episode we will look at the greeting as it answers three questions, "Who wrote it?" "Who read it?" and "What is the message?"

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What is it that makes one person open to God and the next person closed? What is it that gives Julie the eyes to see what God is doing while Joe is blind? Why does Sam keep running into divine appointments with God while Sally has nothing to share? It isn't gender or religion. It isn't culture or how well you've got it all together. Sometimes it seems like the least likely to be godly have the most God-encounters. 

I think it's expectancy. Expectancy goes beyond knowing about God or even trusting God with my life. Expectancy is faith on tiptoe. It's more than a belief that God can
do something, it's the anticipation that he will do something. In Paul's first jail-time experience, I believe he developed a sense of expectancy in what God does in prison. It shaped the letters from prison in a deep and meaningful way.

I hope this podcast plants a seed of expectancy in your heart!

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We are starting a new chapter in our podcast on Paul’s "Letters from Prison," the prison epistles. I know at the end of the Psalms Project, I said that we were heading to the old testament book of Daniel, which I love, but as I dove into it, I just had a sense that it was a podcast series for a different time. So we are going from the Old Testament to the New Testament from Psalms to Paul. But specifically, Paul’s letters from prison; four letters, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. 

We'll start with an introduction, and some context to Paul's story with convicting challenge from Paul to live like Christ is my life, and my death brings gain! "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain!"

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What if we become a people of one book? Throughout history, people have either loved or hated the Word of God. They have tried to change it, modify it, undermine its authority, water down its conviction. Dictators, have tried to get it out of their nation, yet they are all dead, and the Word of God still lives today. But what they couldn’t do…we do for them, if we do not listen to, learn from and lean into the Word. There is no other book like the Bible.

 In it, God reveals Himself to us. Across a period of more than 1,600 years, God used forty different human writers from vastly diverse backgrounds to write its sixty-six books. And yet the Bible tells one story — the story of our running from God and God’s running to us. Our rejection and His redemption. His love played out on a cross and his power was revealed in an empty tomb.

 There is no book more important. Let the Spirit of God breathe life into the people of God, through the Word of God...and then we will thrive!

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And now we have come to an end. Wrap-up #2 will be my last podcast…on the Psalms…at least for now…who knows maybe someday I’ll come back and do my middle 40. But for now, a few more wrap-up thoughts. In the last episode, I commented on a fact that I only recently discovered…that the Psalms were written and collected over the course of 1000 years. 

That’s a bit mind-boggling, of course, but then add to that a few thousand more years that they have been sung, prayed, read and studied and--my goodness--it’s such a span. For the last few months we have joined that span. Each of you who have listened…have joined that span of years, that corporate community of worship. The psalms are not just individualized journals entries, they are moments of connection to God, moments where people found their refuge in God, and we have been part of that. Welcome to the final episode of the Top 40 Psalms!