Next time you feel strong, negative emotions about something… (Seth Kniep)
Ask yourself, “Why am I bothered right now?” Answer that question then ask, “And why does that bother me?” Keep doing this and you’ll find the core issue.
Why am I angry at my son? Because he didn’t get home on time. Why am I angry that he didn’t get home on time? Because I worried about him and thought something terrible happened. Why are you upset about him causing you worry? It made my evening miserable.
Motions layer up like onions. You have to keep peeling them back to get to the core cause of the original emotion. The core emotion was not, “You dishonored God and your parent and I love you enough to be upset about it.” The core emotion was, “You caused me suffering and that makes me mad that you’d hurt me like that.”
Once you encounter the core, you will know if the root problem was looking for identity in something created or if it was triggered by genuine love for God and people. The only things that should bother us are things that bother God. If you find that you were angry because your child showing up late inconvenienced you more than because he was not respecting you and God, you can apply the gospel to your sin, repent from the heart, and experience freedom to address the problem with love instead of uncontrolled irritability or anger.
For example, on the cross Jesus experienced more discomfort than any human could ever know. Yet he still suffered because he loves his father and he loves you. He refused to put his comfort before people. Because he paid for your sin, you can be forgiven and do likewise. The perfect evening where no one inconveniences you will never satisfy your heart. In fact it’s selfish. But knowing Jesus Christ and loving him and others can. So instead of getting mad because you were inconvenienced, take a deep breath and patiently tell your child why his inconsiderate action was sinful and unloving. Then move on. God’s grace is always enough to forgive you. Just don’t stay there. Go and sin no more.
We’re all looking for pleasure and purpose… (Seth Kniep)
I’ll never forget Shlomo, a five foot Israeli who made up for his height with pregnant advice. “Seth,” he told me one day, “everything people do is for one of two reasons: to avoid pain or to increase pleasure.”
He was right. Reverse time 60 years and psychologist Abraham Maslow said the same thing in different words. (Maslow was one of those brainy dudes whose research became the foundation for numerous future studies). Maslow developed the “hierarchy of needs” theory, proposing that humans have five basic needs which break down into the same two categories: avoiding pain (air, water, food, tolerable temperature, safety) and increasing pleasure (love, self-respect, and self-actualization). Everyone’s doing it. The employee works hard to avoid poverty and gain wealth. The single person avoids loneliness by falling in love and getting married. People exercise to escape cholesterol and feel good. Students go to school to to avoid ignorance and get an education. I got rid of my pc and bought a mac. (I had to throw that in there.) It’s true for the religious too: avoid hell and go to heaven. Even the suicidalist is prompted by the same ultimate motivation. Wounded by life one too many times, the college student finds that overdosing is the easiest escape from the pain. No matter how spiritual or material our motives may be, we are all on a mission to escape pain and find pleasure. Eight centuries ago St. Thomas Aquinas observed, “Man cannot live without joy.” In early 2010, Joe Stack flew his plane into the IRS offices of Austin, Texas. Only months before, a church planter put a pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. Both were running from pain. Both were looking for pleasure. When life could not give what they wanted, purpose crumbled and suicide was the easiest exit. Musician or missionary, terrorist or truck driver, all are motivated by the mission of pleasure. The masochistic monk seeks it as passionately as the hard-partying hedonist. We are no different. We pursue something that offers satisfaction. At one moment it might be the thrill of a video game. At another it might be the fulfillment of hard work, the peace of meditation, or the ecstasy of sex. The question is not, if we are searching but where. Jesus had the audacity to say that He offers the greatest and ultimate pleasure, a pleasure that lasts forever… “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty’” (John 6:35). To drink the living water Jesus offers, to eat the bread of life Jesus gives, means to find your hope, your delight, your joy, your purpose—your pleasure—in Jesus.Met today/w/guy curious about JC. What is simplest breakdown of raw discipleship? (Seth Kniep)
Discipleship is as simple as helping people take their next step…toward Jesus.
Listen to their journey. Hear the frustrations, successes, joys and disappointments. Share your journey. If you’re being honest and raw, you will both connect at some common point in your journey. Enter at the point of resonation. Press in at the place of need. From here, show your friend the kingdom of God by helping him to view all of life through Jesus Christ as awesome creator, merciful savior, holy judge, and eternal God. This comes naturally and organically if you are following Jesus already.
After three years of watching Jesus heal lepers, make the blind to see, and teach like no man ever taught before, the twelve disciples still struggled to believe that he had to die and rise again. They still couldn’t get how seeing Jesus meant seeing the Father. Yet Jesus still called them disciples. They were following Jesus, with lots of mistakes along the way, but on they walked, learning as they went.
Never give up on someone. Ask the Spirit to show you who to reach out to. And as you get to know and spend time with each person you’ll know how to nudge each person on to the next step.
At the end of the day, we aren’t trying to convert people to become adherents to Christianity. We are discipling people to become followers of Jesus. We want to show them how to take up their cross and follow him, even if it costs them their life. If Jesus really did live, die, then live again, how could we not give our life to following him and helping others do likewise?
We threw away things people kill each other for now… (Seth Kniep)
I watched the Book of Eli. Impressive movie. In light of today’s 13 billion, 100 billion dollar debt of the US, Eli (Denzel Washington) makes a statement that may become reality sooner than we realize. Speaking of people before the world war that cracked the ozone layer and fried most of the earth, Eli (Denzel Washington) tells Solara (Mila Kunis): “People had more than they needed. We had no idea what was precious and what wasn’t. We threw away things people kill each other for now.”
losing to win (Luke 17:33) (Seth Kniep)
full yet unfulfilled
learned but leery
entertained yet jaded
slept but weary.
strong but strengthless
clued yet clueless
humored but hapless sated yet craving
counseled but raving
forgiven yet guilty
married but lonely invited yet so estranged
knowing not growing
safe yet insecure
welcomed but loafing noble actions and habits
respectful—not sin
but emptier than nothing
‘til the Savior rules within
God made famous through crushing Israel’s enemy? (Seth Kniep)
The Bible keeps showing me over and over again that God’s prime purpose for all things is to make his fame known to the ends of the earth. I can’t get over how consistently the Bible develops this theme. I’m on a read-thru-the-Bible-in-90-days program (not because I think it makes me godly but because I know how much I need it!) which gets around 16 chapters of Scripture in my head affirming the “fame” theme every morning.
Isn’t living for fame a little arrogant or narcissistic? If God is not God, then yes. But if it’s evil of God to seek fame, we are using a standard higher than himself to measure him by. Where does that standard come from? Who determines it? And if a standard higher than God exists, then by definition God cannot be God. In summary, if God is sinful to seek fame God cannot God, therefore God is not seeking fame since he is not God. The question trumps itself.
If delighting in God’s fame brings us the meaning and purpose for which we were created then God’s fame-pursuit is not evil but loving. It’s in our instinct already to worship something (celebrities, cars, ministry, success, money) so our own nature tells us that worship is “DNAed” into our purpose. If ultimate satisfaction is found in delighting in God, then the kindest thing God does is teach us to find our delight in knowing him which ultimately spreads his fame.
What on earth does God’s punishment of people and nations have to do with spreading his fame? That sounds more like tyranny to me. The prophet Ezekiel predicted that a nation called “Gog” (sounds so Tokienish) will attack Israel (Ezekiel 38). The second before utter annihilation God will save Israel and crush Gog her enemy. An unusual verse throws light on God’s motivation: “It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you [Gog] against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog” (Eze 38:16). Through Gog, God will be sanctified (set apart) before all the nations. God’s demonstration of holiness and power displays his fame just as much as his displays of grace and mercy.
God does not look through his telescope and say, “Hmmm. What country can I crush today so I can prove how strong I am to the world?” God has betrothed Israel as his chosen people, so any nation who attacks God’s people triggers God’s holy anger much like a husband would attack a man who tried to hurt his wife. Yet through this action, God’s fame is displayed to the world.
The chapter closes with these words: “I will magnify Myself, sanctify Myself, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the Lord” (Eze 38:23). Even in his anger God shows mercy. If humanity’s greatest need is to know God, and if punishing an evil nation is the best and only method through which God can get their attention to see that he is Lord of all the nations, then this act of judgment is just as much an act of kindness.
No wonder Jesus would say five and a half centuries later…”In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Mat 5:16).
And Peter would say, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Pet 2:12).
How can we follow Jesus if we are not willing to go where He went? (Seth Kniep)
For many, following Jesus means reading the Bible, praying, serving in your local church, and tithing. These are commanded in Scripture and commendable. But there are two problems with using these activities as measure of one’s love for Jesus: 1) One could do these actions and not be following Jesus at all. 2) These activities leave out a huge part of what it means to follow Jesus: loving people who don’t.
Repeatedly, the New Testament letters talk about the importance of following Jesus. How can we follow Jesus if we are not wiling to go where he went? Where did he go? To the broken. To the hurting. To the rejected. To the sinful. For someone to measure his following of Jesus by his religious activities is silly. Yes, habits of reading the word, praying, tithing, and serving in a local church are good. But unless these actions are the product of love for Jesus in turn fueled by the love that he first showed us, the actions mean no more to him than the husband who makes his wife breakfast because that’s what he’s supposed to do. And how could people possibly call themselves “Christians” if they don’t love and spend time with people who don’t look, dress, act, or think like they do?
If you want to follow Jesus, it will take you places you wouldn’t otherwise go. It will require you to reach down and serve people who you might not otherwise hang out with. And it may cause you to encounter questions and criticism that will stretch your faith and test how genuine your love really is.
God cares about my soul. Does he care about my body? If God healed ppl in the Bible times, what about today? Is it sin to be obese? Tmrw… (Seth Kniep)
This Sunday Church in Reverse meets in the guest banquet room of Artz Rib House at 2230 S Lamar Blvd. Connect with other people investigating God and asking the hard questions. Seth Kniep will be speaking on the relevance of physical health and suffering in the kingdom of God on earth. Alan Alacorn will bring some acoustic and Eric Leonard will bring an update on the coffee house venture…
