[April 26, 2026] Will You Follow Me?

"Man, if we could just begin to live in the power and the authority that is ours in Jesus, if we could actually believe that we were created for good works that he prepared in advance for us to do. If we believed that we are no longer under the thumb of sin and Satan and the evil one, but we are free to walk in the abundant life that Jesus offers us. What might God do? [00:26:18] (30 seconds)  #LiveInJesusAuthority

"This deception is twofold. The evil one wants us to seize autonomy from God and to redefine good and evil based on our own ideas, the voices in our heads, and the inclinations of our hearts. And the thing is, this strategy works. It's been working from the beginning. You only need to turn on the news, open your social media feed, or just look at your own life outside of God to see that it's true. [00:06:39] (31 seconds)  #DeceptionOfAutonomy

"Paul sees three contributing factors to this death that he listed here. The course of the world, the prince of the power of the air which is Satan, and the lust of our flesh and of our mind. Paul is making a pretty major claim about reality here. Paul is saying that these three enemies, the world, the flesh and the evil one are killing us and there is nothing that we can do about it. [00:11:37] (32 seconds)  #WorldFleshAndTheEnemy

"And so what Paul is saying, grace is a gift, and grace is a free gift. Grace is unmerited, we cannot earn it, we cannot work for it, there's nothing that we can do to deserve it. But grace does require a response from us. There's a scholar named John Barclay who really helped me unpack this, and the way that he phrases this idea is that grace is unconditioned, but grace is not unconditional. [00:22:32] (31 seconds)  #GraceRequiresResponse

"We might be uncomfortable with this idea because of our ideas about gift giving and because of the pushback to the legalism that came out of the reformation. There's a lot of good reasons for us to feel uncomfortable about this. Hear me again, grace cannot be earned. Grace is the free gift of God, but there is a response on our part to the grace of God. Jesus, Paul, the new testament testament writers, they had no qualms about this. [00:23:16] (26 seconds)  #GraceNotEarnedRespond

"Remember, the overarching story of the bible, we were created for God, for relationship with God, to rule and reign alongside him. We were deceived by the evil one. We rebelled against him, and now under the influence of what Paul calls the powers and the principalities and the dark spiritual forces of this world, people and communities and institutions are actively trying to derail and destroy God's good plan and the people that he loves. [00:14:31] (32 seconds)  #CreatedForRelationship

"Now in our western culture, we see the purest level of gift giving as being a gift that is given with no strings attached. But that is not the way that traditional cultures view gift giving. Not today, in the world today, and certainly not in the time of Jesus and the time of Paul. They grew up in a culture where a gift was given for the purpose of creating a connection, for the purpose of establishing a relationship. [00:22:01] (31 seconds)  #GiftCreatesConnection

"Raised up with him. In the resurrection, Jesus inaugurated a new age and a new humanity. This present age is defined by sin and evil and violence and pain. And the age to come that Jesus inaugurated by his resurrection is defined by love and justice and mercy and peace and God's very presence. And we live as the new humanity in the overlap. [00:18:59] (30 seconds)  #NewHumanityInTheOverlap