Fix Your Eyes on Jesus - Part 3
Notes
Transcript
Main Points
Main Points
Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
From A Holy Longing: (continued from last week - part 2) LOOK INTO USING GCD FIX FLITTERING EYES ARTICLE
The balance we are all searching for lies in a proper relationship to energy, especially creative, erotic, spiritual energy-and these are one and the same thing. Spirituality is about finding the proper ways, disciplines, by which to both access that energy and contain it. Our age, in its struggle to grow up and to grow beyond what it considers the rather infantile and legalistic approach to this in the past, has naïvely begun to believe that we in fact understand this energy, that we can control it, and that we need a little, if any, external help in coping with it.
This naivety is, to my mind, one of the major spiritual stumbling blocks of our time. In terms of understanding spiritual energy and its relationship to us we are not unlike an adolescent boy or girl whose body is bursting with hormonal energy and who feels that he or she is up to the task of creatively coping with that tension without any rules or guidance from elders. Such naivety is, as we know, both arrogant and dangerous.(BREAK) The fires that burn inside us are much more powerful than we naïvely assume. When we neglect to them, thinking that these fires are domestic enough for us to control, we end up either depressed or inflated...
...Our culture is too naïve about the power of energy. We see nothing wrong in exposing ourselves to it in all its rawness... (END OF WHAT WAS USED 9/15/19)
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For it (energy) to be life-giving for us, there must be a genuflection before it, a clear knowledge that it is separate from us, and a cautious, reverential accessing of it. (BREAK) The old moral and religious taboos, as well as the classical liturgical rituals, whatever their faults, tried to teach us this.
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Spirituality is about properly handling the fires, those powerful energies, that flow through us. We struggle because we are naïve and under estimate both the origins and the power of this fire. We think that energy is ours, and it is not. We think we can, all on our own, control it, and we cannot. There is a madness in us that comes from the god and unless we respect and relate it precisely to its divine source we will forever be either too restless or too depressed to ever fully enjoy life or we will be some mini version of David Karesh, convinced that we are God.
Add Quotes from Guide to Prayer - George Macdonald, Mother Theresa, Etc...
Add Quotes from Guide to Prayer - George Macdonald, Mother Theresa, Etc...
Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
Philippians 2:12
We need to drop secondary things and unite on the primary thing.
We need to drop secondary things and unite on the primary thing.
Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
Philippians 2:1-
Meditate on Christ:
Meditate on Christ:
Philippians 2:1-5
You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Meditate on Christ:
Philippians 2:5-
Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
Conclusion - from last week - part 2
Conclusion - from last week - part 2
You are going to see some horrendous things in this life no matter what. None of us no matter how much we try to comfort ourselves can get away from things that are going to disturb and leave pain and wounds. The question is whether our eyes are actually going to be filled with something equally or surpassingly great and that’s why we fix our eyes on Jesus.
Notes:
Notes:
Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Fully known
New Living Translation Chapter 3
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. 2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. 3 And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.
We will be like him, because we will see him as he really is.
Heb 11:27
It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger. He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.
Faith grows by keeping our eyes on the One who is invisible
I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles! He sees the Lord as he is. So why were you not afraid to criticize my servant Moses?”
And the Lord said to them, “Now listen to what I say: “If there were prophets among you, I, the Lord, would reveal myself in visions. I would speak to them in dreams. But not with my servant Moses. Of all my house, he is the one I trust. I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles! He sees the Lord as he is. So why were you not afraid to criticize my servant Moses?”
To see the Lord as he is is connected to deep relationship with God
And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God!
Job’s hope in the midst of his utter suffering was that he would see God
And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.
Hope for it… look for the day you will see God and His promises come to completion
You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.
1 peter
We have never seen him, but we learn to trust from the heart
P
Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.
Wisdom means looking at all God has done, and seeing his faithful love (hesed)
s 107:43
For we live by faith, not by sight.
We pay attention to what we have seen, and turn our eyes from worthless things… but we also put our “eyes” on the promises of God… and the remembrance of what He has done through history and through our own stories... more so even than we pay attention to the things which cause us fear and doubt… we divert our eyes away from those things and turn them instead to Jesus and to HIS HOPE.
And Jesus said, “All right, receive your sight! Your faith has healed you.”
Faith can heal sight...
Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word. Reassure me of your promise, made to those who fear you. Help me abandon my shameful ways; for your regulations are good. I long to obey your commandments! Renew my life with your goodness.
Ps 119:37-40
Turn the eyes… seek God… get his help to strengthen your hope in His promises… get the help you need to turn from shameful ways… His goodness is where the real strength is to renew your life and help you fight the good fight.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.
