The Stories We Tell Ourselves

``Because Jesus says the kingdom is here and now. But when we don't have Christ on the throne, when our eyes are not focused on heaven, what we try and do is all of those wonderful things, but we're limited by our own hands and our own sin. We need to have a view of heaven and earth through the lens of the cross. Where the horizontal beam of that cross, it allows us to view earth, view a place that needs to be worked in, that needs to be saved, and needs to be enjoyed because it is a beautiful creation. But the vertical beam of that cross takes us back to heaven to worship and serve the king that dwells in the kingdom. [00:34:55] (46 seconds)  #KingdomThroughTheCross

And when we trust Jesus as our savior, our relationship with God is made right again through his grace, and he gives us new life. And often, we stop there. But he continues. There is restoration. And when we walk with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, there is feasting and we feast on God's word. God renews and restores us daily. And we believe that one day Jesus will return to renew all things. This is the complete ark of scripture. If you wanted to to simplify and just show one ark, this is what it looks like. Creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. [00:28:57] (43 seconds)  #CreationToRestoration

Mark Sayers, he calls this the implicit prosperity gospel. We know the prosperity gospel, the explicit one, where we say, well, if I give give give, God will give give give back in a name it and claim it kind of culture. But the implicit looks like this. Our alternative gospel is that we are gnostic Christian seekers searching for the good life, wanting the solace of faith with the autonomy of the third culture. What this means is we want all of the blessings of God and his kingdom. I like the idea of calling myself a Christian and thinking that there's faith in my life, but I want the freedom to call my life my life, and I wanna call the shots. [00:23:41] (49 seconds)  #ProsperityTrap

Because when we teach this idea of morality, and it's only centered around morality, we kind of develop this, again, this captive lie of how good can I be while still having the best life possible, instead of following the one who exudes all that goodness? So if this is the captive lie, if this is the lie that some of our stories have the potential of centering around, how do we move back the to the centrality of the gospel? How do we move ourselves back to to being seeing the story in truth? I believe it takes two things. Gospel clarity and gospel resilience. [00:25:53] (43 seconds)  #GospelClarity