TKO - Antagonistic Teaching of Jesus in the Book of John

“Being lost is living by a set of values that systematically dismantles your life” -  Unknown source.  

I wish I knew the person that shared this quote.  It makes me think about my own life and the historic decisions I have made for the better or for the worse, and how those decisions have either stabalized my or made it more unstable.  I had to read the quote several more times before the "key" word stuck out to me.  That word is "living."  

Living is a decision, a decision that requires each of us to decipher whether our living is a by-product of how we were taught to live life, or whether it is a by-product illuminated by truth.  How we live is determined by the set of values we pursue.  Those values either dismantle or construct what is the foundation of our lives.  Please understand, there is no way to bypass the events of your life that cause dismantling.  Sometimes we have no control over those events.  What we do have control over is how we construct, or even reconstruct.  

There is a test to examine if your life is stabilized, that is very easy and elementary to understand.  Here it is!  Look to see if your life is adding any lumber to the lives around you.  To many of us live life like it's the "blind leading the blind."  Someone blind taught us to see, taught us to walk, taught us to hear, and we know no different when it comes to what our purpose in lives is.  Notice I said lives, not life.  

Lives get so dismantled, so easy, because we don't SEE properly, because someone led us astray and we followed.  I remember in college two guys in my dorm, Mike and Brian.  They were roommates, and shortly after Brian landed on campus, Mike, an upperclassman, would take Brian across campus to show him the way to the various classrooms.  Strangely enough, both Mike and Brian were born blind.  On one occasion, both Mike and Brian were caught in a circle of shrubs and didn't know how to get out.  It took someone who could see to come along side of them and illuminate the way out.

Light will dismantle your life, but at the same time, it will reconstruct it.  That is the difference a little light will make when we recognize how our choices have caused to dismantle.

Love to hear your thoughts,

Randy

TKO - Antagonistic Teaching of Jesus in John

I want to ask a simple question of you this week that falls in line with my message from this past Sunday - "Who is Jesus to you?"  This question springs from a statement Jesus made in John 7 when he was in the middle of a teaching battle during a very holy week in Jewish traditions, known as the Feast of Tabernacles.  In John 7:28, Jesus is teaching about the authenticity of his claims as the Christ, and as He teaches he makes this statement - 

"Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29 but I know him because I am from him and he sent me."
John 7:28-29 (NIV)

  
The phrase for "cry out" means to scream.  Jesus screams a rhetorical question in this passage – “Yes, you know me, do you?”  In other words, you claim you know me, but do you really?  So I had to ask myself, what does it look like to KNOW Jesus, and what is the proof in my life?

We all have images of what Jesus looks like and how we are to follow that image, but what if we had the direction and flow wrong.  What if it were to be more like this is what Jesus looks like and this is how he flows from us.  

Last week I shared about Christ's statements in John 6 about being the Bread of Life, and how Christ called us to consume His flesh and drink his blood.  I don't believe for a second that Jesus was being literal, but I do believe He was calling us to an action that involved consumption and absorption of Christ.  This is a change of direction and flow.  It is us consuming and absorbing Christ and allowing Him to flow from within in us, so what people then see is less of us and more of Christ.  

Some might suggest that this strips us of our individuality and freedom.  I don't necessarily think so, because then Christ would be stripping us of those two very things which is contrary to His nature.  The creative processes of Christ in creation was to provide individuality and freedom that each fell in place with the loving nature of God.  

So when I ask, "who is Christ to you," I ask wondering directionally if it is Christ "flowing" through me, or if it is my following Him.  Both are imperative, yes, but if out of order, a definite struggle.