Jesus our All in All (#4)

Once more, here is more from "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola:

"Watch Him as He sits before a woman caught in the act of adultery. See her with bleeding cuts on her body, dragged like a rag doll before a hungry mob of judgmental men, waiting for the first stone to crush her head and bring her to a death that she justly deserves. Behold your glorious Lord. He asks one question, a question that pierces the heart of every man who is ready to send this woman to her grave. Mesmerized by the Lord's words, each man drops his stone and walks away. Christ's parting words to the guilty woman? 'Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.'

What a Christ!

Watch Him as he is taken before Rome's delegates in the city of Jerusalem. See Him standing before Pilate - rejected, dejected, bludgeoned, beaten, spat upon. Behold Him who created the heavens, the Lord of the universe, suffering the most horrific gruesome form of torture that was ever invented by the human imagination.

Observe Him hanging on a wooden stake, dying a slow, hideous death, covered with blood - naked, mocked, and shamed. The Messiah has become a public spectacle that elicits the spine-chilling, gleeful laughter of satan himself...

The powers of Rome may have defeated the suffering artisan 2,000 years ago, but in the end, He shall triumph...for upon that bloody hill, Jesus of Nazareth defeated the powers of darkness and won for Himself the keys of death, hell, and the grave...There is no circumstance too hard for Him...He now lives by the power of an endless life, and He never fails.

And one day, every kingdom, every ruler, every principality and power shall bow their mortal knees to the rejected Nazarene...Indeed, it will be His time, and He will have the last word."

Beautiful Jesus...thank You, thank You! Come to us by Your Spirit and help us love You as our eyes are opened to see how You love us. Amen.

Jesus Our All in All (#3)

More about Jesus from "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola:

"Watch Him as he encounters a battered, abused, shamed, and forgotten woman. She's a Samaritan of ill repute - a five-time divorcee. Your Lord breaks all social conventions by talking to her in public. But that's not all. He shares with her one of the greatest truths that a human being can know. In addition, He breaks Jewish custom by using her utensils and eating with her friends in a Samaritan village (something Jews were forbidden to do). Here is a Lord who embraces a dejected woman and woos her and her friends to Himself.

What a Christ.

Watch Him as He allows a prostitute to love Him in the house of a Pharisee. She pours expensive perfume on His feet, unbinds her hair and uses it as a towel to anoint His feet. Such an act is scandalous (for a woman to unbind her hair in that day was akin to publicly removing her bra in our day). The Pharisees move into high-octane-judgment mode toward Jesus and the woman. And what does the Lord do? He accepts this woman's extravagant act of love and adoration and rebukes the finger-pointing Pharisee for his self-righteousness, saying, 'Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.' To the woman He said, 'Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.'

What a Christ."

Lord Jesus, You are beautiful in every way! Would You help us see as You see by Your Spirit? Come to us and renew our minds related to what You value and to what Your heart counts as precious. Thank You for Your undying love and affection for weak humans!

Jesus Our All in All

Continuing with quotes from Frank Viola's book, "Jesus Manifesto", about the wonder and beauty of Jesus:

"Let's go back to the first century and take another look at our Lord. 'Come and behold Him.' We bless and are blessed as we simply 'behold Him', not as we boast of talents or do great things, but as 'we look full in His wonderful face.' Everyday 'beholding' releases Jesus, especially when that beholding is done by a community.

"Watch Him at a wedding in Cana. According to the custom of that day, the bridegroom was responsible for supplying the food and wine...The wine ran out. This represented a social disgrace - a grave oversight on the part of the bridegroom.

"Behold your Lord's first miracle. He turns water into wine - but no ordinary wine. He creates a wine that is finer than the wine that had run out. In one brilliant stroke of compassion, Jesus Christ removes the bridegroom's shame. He supplies the lack. He covers the mistake. He removes the disgrace. He reverses the failure. And He makes the bridegroom look like a champion.

"What a Christ."

Dear Spirit of Jesus, reveal to us the extent to which you go to cover us in our weakness and lack. Thank You for such a heart that delights to cover us in failure...may we be transformed into Your image as we behold this truth about You. We love You, dearest Lord!

Jesus our All in All

For the next few weeks I'll be sharing quotes from the recently released book, "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola. I pray that Jesus will grow larger and larger in our view until He fills all our vision and the issues of life "grow strangely dim" when seen next to His beauty and glory and power.

From "Jesus Manifesto":

"The body of Christ is in dire need of a reconversion to Jesus...To say He that He is our Savior and Lord is correct, of course, but it's inadequate. He is so much more. Christ is:

your Shepherd
your Advocate
your Mediator
your Bridegroom
your Conqueror
your Lion
your Lamb
your sacrifice
your manna
your smitten Rock
your living water
your food
your drink
your good and abundant land
your dwelling place
your Sabbath
your new moon
your Jubilee
your new wine
your feast
your aroma
your anchor
your wisdom
your peace
your comfort
your Healer
your joy
your glory
your power
your strength
your wealth
your victory
your redemption
your Prophet
your Priest
your kinsman redeemer
your teacher
your guide
your liberator
your deliverer
your Prince
your Captain
your vision
your sight
your beloved
your way
your truth
your life
your author
your finisher
your beginning
your end
your age
your eternity
---your ALL IN ALL."


Jesus, You are all of this and more...You have a name that no one knows, and we will be knowing You eternally. Spirit of God, come and reveal this One that You know and love so well! Amen...

Good News about God: The Lord our Refuge

Psalm 142:5 "I cry to you, O LORD; I say, 'You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.'"

Human history is full of stories of God's love expressed through His miraculous protection of His children in very tangible ways. Over and over He protected His people Israel from her enemies, and He provided divine protection for David and Elijah and Paul and many others throughout human history in a variety of ways.

There is another dimension to His being our Refuge that is just as real, though not as visible; and that is His protection of our hearts and minds in the spiritual conflicts that we continually encounter in this age.

Psalm 142 from which the verse above is taken is David's cry to God for refuge and protection from his enemies; he recognizes his vulnerability ("no refuge remains for me") and that his enemies were "too strong for me." He felt his need of greater protection than a cave in the side of the mountain. From there he cries out to God, "You are my refuge..."

As I thought on this good news that the Lord is our refuge, I kept thinking about the woman in John 8 who was accused of committing adultery and on the verge of being stoned. Jesus was her Refuge! He protected her by placing His own body between her and her accusers; He stood in the place of vulnerability to take the beating of the stones rather than she. Through this action He foreshadowed the ultimate place of refuge, the cross. There He took all of the accusations and attacks of the evil one into Himself, thereby providing Himself as our Refuge, our place of protection and shelter. All that is hurled at us is blocked by Him if we are in Him by faith.

The prophet Isaiah (chapter 28) spoke of a "precious Cornerstone", a tested Stone, that God has laid as a foundation in Zion in whom God's people are to trust and believe. He spoke of this chosen Cornerstone after denouncing the leaders for "making lies their refuge and taking shelter in falsehood." He calls them to make this sure and tested Cornerstone their refuge rather than lies and falsehood.

As I continue to know the true and living God more, I realize how I have sought refuge in half-truths about Him. When the increasing pressures of life bear down, these half-truths about who He really is aren't enough to carry me through. If I think wrongly about Him, my soul can't find refuge and protection in Him, but as I grow in correct understanding of Him as He really is, I am protected and sheltered from the accusations and attacks of the evil one.

Demonic activity will increase as we approach the end, and our understanding of the Lord our Refuge will be increasingly real and precious to us. May we be as the woman found in adultery and accept His protection and not try to face and debate our pursuers who "are too strong for me" but who are no match for Jesus! His name is a strong tower into which we run for protection.

Lord, Spirit of God, would You put the name of Jesus on our hearts and our lips continually as we encounter increasing opposition to You and Your kingdom in the days ahead? Jesus, "YOU ARE MY REFUGE", we say with Your servant David and all of Your saints throughout the ages. Thank You that Your name reflects Who You really are, and in You is our protection and shelter from the lies of the enemy!

Scriptures for meditation:
John 8:1-11; Isaiah 28:14-22; Psalm 142:5; 141:8; 16:1; 46:1; 62:8; 94:22; Joel 3:16.

Good News about God: Jesus our Righteousness, Part 2

Psalm 140:13 "The upright shall dwell in Your presence."

Jesus, your blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Mid flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in that great day,
Cleansed and redeemed, no debt to pay;
For by your cross absolved I am
From sin and guilt, from fear and shame.

(By Count Ludwig VonZinzendorf)

Good News about God: Jesus our Rightness

I Corinthians 1:30 "...of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us... righteousness and sanctification and redemption..."

We all yearn to be righteous. We're made to be aligned with God's rightness, and when we're not, we fight to prove we are right. The so-called atheist fights by denying there is a God; the reprobate deals with this by justifying and giving himself totally to his sinful lifestyle; the religious person copes with it through trying harder to please God; and the evangelical handles his fight to be right through proving he's correct doctrinally.

The evil one knows of this human yearning to be right, to discern between right and wrong, and in the Garden of Eden he played on this by highlighting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, therein obscuring the tree of life.

As followers of the Lamb, we never mature out of the place of being tempted to shift our energies and focus from Him (the Tree of Life) to trying to figure out on our own what's right and wrong (Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). The Apostle Paul calls this "self-righteousness" or "righteousness which is of the law".

The drive in us to be right is very strong and causes great and many conflicts in our relationships. God's desire was (and is) that humans would understand right and wrong IN HIM rather than independently of Him, and so He instructed Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life and forbade them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By partaking of Life, they would have discerned rightly between right and wrong. Jesus said of Himself that He judged nothing on His own but only in alignment with His Father. In other words, His evaluation of people and situations was not based on His own independent ideas and feelings but on how His Father viewed them.

Jesus lived His life wholly dependent on His Father, and our only hope of being aligned with God's rightness is Jesus' righteous life active within us. We don't acquire a righteousness of our own; Christ in us is our righteousness! In our simple daily submission and obedience to His voice and nudges, His life increases in us and our independence decreases. We grow increasingly sensitive to His life within and live by His rightness rather than by our own independent opinions based on our natural life apart from Him.

"He must increase, but I must decrease."

Scriptures for meditation:
Isaiah 11:3-5;I Cor. 1:30; Philippians 3:8,9; John 3:30; 5:30; 7:24; 8:15,16,28,29.