Word of Life Church Podcast

Pastor Brian Zahnd recently made a blog post that received considerable attention, entitled, "My Problem With The Bible". It has been shared over 17,000 times on Facebook, 700+ tweets on Twitter, and been reposted on numerous blogs across the internet. Obviously, he has hit on something that a lot of people resonate with. In this sermon, Pastor Brian shares that he is serious about the Bible, and wants to read it for all it's worth, but he has a problem with it. Discover what his problem is (and perhaps your problem too) in this sermon.

When we look to Scripture we discover God is the God of time who created time along with everything else in his creation. God existed before time. He is not bound by time, but rules over time. He entered into time through Jesus Christ. Time, as a part of God’s good creation, is sacred. One of the ways we can recover the sacredness of time is to organize it around Jesus himself. We mark the years by Jesus. This year is 2014 AD, with “AD” meaning the year of our Lord. We follow the church calendar in order to mark the months of the years around Jesus. We honor the sacredness of Sabbath because of the resurrection of Jesus and if we open ourselves, we find every moment to be sacred. Every moment opens up before us as an opportunity to acknowledge Jesus and make the moment-by-moment choice to obey him and not waste the time we have been given.

Jesus is presently building his church. We are called to walk in such a way as to build up the church, because we are one body, one church, one body of Christ. We work with Jesus to build up the church by consciously doing life together. God has made us in his image, in the image of the one God revealed in the distinct persons. We were created as distinct, unique individuals who are interconnected with other people. In the New Testament we find the recurring phrase "one another". This phrase tips us off to our responsibilities, the things we can do for one another as we live together, working to build a healthy, unified church.

The Bible opens with the story of God's work of creation. At the end of the first account of creation in Genesis the point is made emphatically: "...and behold, it was very good." Genesis 2 gives a second account of creation—this time the emphasis is on the human vocation. Creation was good, but it was incomplete. Adam was to work with God as a gardener, tending God’s good earth, cultivating it, caring for it, protecting it, and expanding it. The original human vocation was to work with God in the cultivation and care of God’s good earth. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the earth in order to deputize them for the care and cultivation of the earth. But then sin happened, with catastrophic effects upon human identity and vocation. Not only did human beings begin to suffer, creation itself began to suffer. God's children commissioned with the care of God's good earth had turned bad.

Why is there light and water and trees and whales and life and Valentine's Day? Because God is love. Creation is God’s infinite love expressed as matter and energy. God is love that seeks expression in the beauty of self-giving creativity. This is the basic revelation needed to understand the phenomenal gift of life. At the bottom of the universe, and at the end of all things, there is love. The meaning of life adds up to love. And unless you love, you will live life wrong.

When we feel hurt, threatened, angered by a person, an incident, or some situation, we instinctively view it through a perspective of self-defense. If you are a non-contemplative person you will think your perspective is the total truth. We must have a change in perspective, or we will forever look at the world the same way. There are breakthroughs in perspective that occur through the practice of contemplative prayer that can happen no other way. Contemplative prayer is prayer without agenda and largely without words. In contemplative prayer, you sit with your problems and issues in the presence of Jesus. Jesus can give us an entirely new perspective outside of ourselves.

One of the primary goals of spiritual formation is to become your true self. This is why the primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what you want, but to become properly formed. If you spend all your time praying out of your agitated, grasping, foolish, fearful self, it does very little good. We have been distorted by sin, both our sin and the sins of the fallen world. We must lift up our soul to God. We lift up our soul to God that we might recover the proper image and that we might escape our false self and find our true self. Your true self is one that is calm, content, wise, and unafraid. Deep inside, this is who you really are.

Part of maintaining a healthy soul is learning who you really are, knowing yourself. In this message, Peri Zahnd presents a description of the Enneagram personality system, including the basics that you will need to understand how the Enneagram works. As you will see, only a few simple concepts are needed to begin your journey of self-discovery.

In order to experience natural, open conversation with Jesus, an openness is required. The initiation is on Jesus' part, but our response requires an opening. There is a gentle knock, which leads to either an opening, or nothing. All conversion results from a moment of spiritual openness. But too often we restrict spiritual openness to a single moment of conversion. An over-emphasis on a single "got saved" moment ruins us for future spiritual growth. People often have their one moment of spiritual openness, then slam the door forever! Christianity is an ongoing conversation with Jesus. This is true both for the individual believer and for the corporate body. Jesus Christ is the Living Word with whom we must constantly engage. We need to cultivate spiritual openness. This is the path to more conversions and deeper salvation.

The Living God is both the father and home of the human soul. When a soul tries to live on its own apart from God is in a wrong state, it has "lost" its way. This is why "lost" is so often the metaphor used to describe what is wrong with us. The lost soul tries to live apart from its true father and away from its real home. The opposite of the lost soul is the soul that lives by faith. Living by faith is the proper way to go about the task of being human. Your soul is a precious gift from God. But the fallen world with its system of power politics, greedy economics, and scapegoating religion, is an enemy to your soul. The world will leave your soul in tatters, distorted by pride, fear, and greed. This is why we need to discover the way in Christ to restore our soul.