Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

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[A PRAYING CHURCH] 16. Waking the Sleeping Giant Nov 03, 2021

Show notes

"The Sunday before Thanksgiving, I would love to see pastors have an awareness that probably about half the people in church are going into a situation with difficult relatives. They're going to be in situations where they're put down or marginalized or ignored. How do they get through that? They need to know the depth of God's love for them. You could almost say that Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 is a Sunday before Thanksgiving dinner prayer. He's praying Jesus into them."

"Pauls' prayer at the end of Ephesians 3 is a prayer for capacity. He's praying that God will grow their capacity so they'll know the height and breadth and depth of God's love for them... that's our most basic need as saints, and that has to come from the Spirit."

"Your church is not running seven ministries — everybody, every saint within your congregation is on the front line and running five to twenty ministries, and Thanksgiving Dinner happens to be one of them.... The ministry of the church isn't just the formal things that happen in the building, it is all this love that spills out of this congregation into the people around them."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 15. Seeing the Saints Oct 20, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Paul Miller, Jon Hori, Bob Allums and Liz Voboril continue the A Praying Church series with "Seeing the Saints."

"Historians call the 1500s the century of the Bible. And part of that love for scripture meant moving the sermon to the center of the worship service on Sunday morning and communion became quarterly. There were many good parts to that, but practically, someone had to give the sermon and that was the preacher. That created the problem that has bedeviled the protestant church for 500 years: the celebrity preacher."

"The Apostle Paul views the saints kind of like getting an old antique. You can see the beauty in it. It needs to be cleaned and polished, but you can see that glow there."

"This saints category is an incredibly encouraging way of looking at yourself and other people – it's so freeing. I think what the gospel does for our heart, the saints category does for your ministry and your relationships. You can begin to see people through a resurrection lens because you are resurrected. You're on a hunt for resurrection in their hearts because you know that they have experienced that same thing. It transforms the whole way you look at the church, the way you look at the body of Christ, how you pray, when you pray. In some ways, it's the final piece that brings a praying church together."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 14. The Inside-Out Kingdom Oct 06, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Paul Miller, Jon Hori, Bob Allums and Liz Voboril continue the A Praying Church series, looking at the nature of the church and how the frontlines might not be where we think they are.

"It's easy to look out at the pews and see consumers. Why consumers? Because they're writing emails complaining about this and that. It's easy to be caught up in people's own narratives but that misses that Pauline lens of resurrection. These people have not only been made righteous in Christ but there's a real righteousness flowing out of them and that Jesus wants to come out of them. We have to shift from seeing them as consumers to seeing them as saints, and equipping them, telling them what they are, encouraging them, and having people share their frontline stories."

"Prayer is not a gift, anymore than breathing is a gift. You can live without your right hand, but you can't live without breathing. Prayer is fundamental to the life of the church."

"If you google 'armor of God Ephesians 6 image' you'll get a picture of a solitary soldier. But that's not what Paul is talking about. It's very clear the whole passage is plural -- all the plurals are hidden because we don't pick them up in English... We tend to see the armor of God almost through a pietistic lens where it's sort of the individual person trying to get through the day, but Paul has in mind the entire church working together in this battle against evil."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 13. How Not to Get Weird Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Paul Miller, Jon Hori, Bob Allums and Liz Voboril talk about "How Not to Get Weird" with prayer.

"Jesus talks about the danger of weird praying in the Sermon on the Mount. He warns against going to a street corner and announcing your prayer. His antidote is 'go to your closet' -- and I do think your closet is a good check on your integrity. Private and public prayers should mirror one another. When you pray better in public than you do in private that opens the danger to your prayers becoming presentations."

"Good comedy functions prophetically, and there are so many Hollywood prayers that mock phony Christian syrupy dramatic prayers."

"Anytime there's a miss between the outer and the inner, Jesus calls that hypocrisy. Nothing upsets him more. If you're bad on the outside and bad on the inside, he's fine with that, he'll go have dinner with you. But when you're bad on the inside and trying to look good on the outside Jesus retches. Any time we add drama to prayer, or we over spiritualize prayer, or we don't have love with prayer, we send a double message that's disorienting to people and they should be disoriented because that's not the way life should be."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 12. Praying in Our "Mini-Communities" Sep 08, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we explore how one way of praying continually is to pray in all our "mini-communities." Paul is joined by Jon Hori, Bob Allums and Liz Voboril.

"I learned the secret to praying with praying with your spouse. It is to go 100% in their shoes, or as we say at seeJesus, to incarnate. If they want to lead the prayer time, let them lead the prayer time; if they want to pray at you, let them pray at you. You have to remove any possible prayer barriers."

"Jesus began with his disciples with just a 22 second prayer. That's how long it takes to say the Lord's prayer."

"Guy culture can be macho and mocking. When there is a heavy diet of mocking, it is very hard to pray together in small communities. Guy cultures like this can do prayer meetings, but the mocking culture makes it harder to penetrate below that shallowness because you are afraid someone will mock you."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 11. Pray Continually Aug 25, 2021

Show notes

We resume our A Praying Church series with the first of two episodes on "Pray Continually" with Paul Miller, Jon Hori, Bob Allums and Liz Voboril.

"Prayer and faith go hand-in-hand. Prayer is, in effect, a faith muscle. You don't go to the gym and try to lift 200 lbs if you've never been there before. The muscle has to grow. It takes time. You start with your little garden and add more seeds to it."

"You have to begin seeing God doing things. As you see God answer your prayers, it builds your faith more. Our hearts are not naturally believing, and our world is filled with unbelief."

"Paul uses the phrase 'constant in prayer,' in other words 'you be constant in prayer.' With the lack of the plural 'you all' in English, it's easy to miss that he's saying 'Y'all be constant in prayer", or the Philly version, 'Yous guys be constant in prayer.' It is a call for the entire community to be constant in prayer."

[SPECIAL] When Dad Taught Youth Group Aug 11, 2021

Show notes

To celebrate the release of the new Person of Jesus Study -- Student Edition, we invited asked John Miller, Paul's oldest son, to join us for a conversation about how the study got it's start when John was a senior in High School.

"I did this sabbatical on the person of Jesus where I just studied the gospels…and one of the things that struck me was how alive Jesus was when you actually paid attention to him as a person. I thought 'if our teenagers could get a hold of this, it would create a a reality in their minds that you couldn't take away.'"

"I wanted to imprint John with the person of Jesus."

"I didn't realize that over all these different weeks, I had gotten to know Jesus. Watching his death was really hard...[After that lesson], I had a week where my friend had died and it was weird just walking around. The only thing I could get myself to understand about what had happened was that Jesus, who was my Lord and savior, whom I'd already given my life to, had now become my friend, and my friend had died. I knew that Jesus was alive. I knew he conquered the grave, but in that moment for me, my friend was dead."

[SPECIAL] The Gift of Honesty Jul 28, 2021

Show notes

To celebrate the release of the revised The Person of Jesus, Unit 2: Honesty study, we invited Timo Strawbridge, Director of Spiritual Life at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Lakeland, FL, to join Paul and Liz for a conversation on how Jesus' honesty helps us.

"One of the things that just shocked me about Jesus was his honesty. I was trying to read the gospels and say okay if this guy were at my house, what would I notice about him. He said things and talked like he didn't care what people thought about him!"

"The goal of Jesus' honesty is not to make his life less painful because he has less weird or obnoxious people in it – his goal is to draw people into the life of his Father."

"You really need to combine compassion and honesty. In a difficult relationship, it's a compassionate act to invite honesty or to hold off on your honesty to let people speak into your life. Jesus constantly begins with understanding, so there's a kind of a general order there: begin with compassion and let that shape your honesty. Honesty's a little bit like pepper or hot salsa – a little goes a long way!"

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 10. Pray Big (Part 2) Jul 14, 2021

Show notes

We continue our A Praying Church series with the 2nd part of our conversation on "Pray Big".

"My dad, Jack Miller, gave me one of the books that's had a big influence on my prayer life. It was a book about the story of the life of James O. Fraser, a missionary to the Lisu people of China called Behind the Ranges."

"Don't mix up confidence with faith — that is deadly."

"You can't 'overstretch' faith. So, if you go too big then it's overstretched…it's not real. The other problem which I think is much more of a problem in American circles is to not exercise faith, to think that faith just drops on you…'"

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 9. Pray Big (Part 1) Jun 30, 2021

Show notes

Paul is back from a podcast break and we're resuming our A Praying Church series with a two-part conversation on "Pray Big".

"The idea of praying big is that there's a tendency in prayer meetings or even in your own prayer life to focus on immediate needs, moving from Aunt Edna's hip to Uncle Ira's arthritis back again to cousin Eddie's whatever! I'm not belittling the importance of those prayers, but to pray only those would be like getting stuck in the weeds."

"Sometimes you need to look at the forest instead of one particular tree."

"The part of the Lord's prayer that fits this is the opening petition: "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That prayer is mammoth! That is the Jesus version of 'go big or go home.'"

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