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!"  

Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

[SPECIAL] The Gift of Honesty

 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] 10. Pray Big (Part 2)

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.’"

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 9. Pray Big (Part 1)

In this episode, we share the 2nd half of a gem from the seeJesus archives -- it's a talk Paul Miller gave at the Bethlehem Pre-Conference in February 2020 introducing the J-Curve. The first half can be found one episode back. "One of the beautiful things about looking at the J-Curve is that it stabilizes your emotions and it gives shape to them. It's one of the characters of the modern world that people embrace their emotions and go into free fall..." "The cross is not a place for self-improvement—it’s a place for dying" "We have this sort of epicurean software that we bring to the gospel. Dying and rising with Christ gives me a whole narrative that liberates my emotions but frees me from the tyranny of them at the same time, so I don't have to be caught— not only by the spirit of my age, but I don't have to be trapped by my own spirit. I can be real; I'm free to lament, and I'm free to sing in prison like Paul." You can watch a video of this complete talk, and/or download the charts Paul shares at seejesus.net/jcurveoverview.  

What is the J-Curve and How Does it Help? (Part 2)

In this episode, we share a gem from the seeJesus archives -- it's a talk Paul Miller gave at the Bethlehem Pre-Conference in February 2020 introducing the J-Curve. We'll share the first part of the talk this week, and the conclusion in 2 weeks.  "Suffering disorients you. You think everything's gone wrong because even though no one told us we sort of instinctively feel that life should be free of suffering, and if we give up on that we might become a stoic and say well life is just like that. The J-Curve locates me so instead of being disoriented by suffering I know where I am…" "The Spirit finds your weakness irresistible. It's where he does his best work!" "The J-Curve is a flesh-killing machine…it's God's way of imprinting the beauty of Jesus on you. I think that's what God is doing with his entire church, he's weakening us so that we can taste Christ."

[J-CURVE] 1. What is the J-Curve and How Does it Help? (Part 1)

Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Liz Voboril for this interview with Lydia Leggett ad David Bostrom, two of seeJesus's A Praying Life Trainers. "A prayer card is a non-complicated actual note card where you start writing down things that you're asking of the Lord so that you can remember. It's a tool that is helpful for keeping track of what you're asking the Lord to do." "One of the real benefits of prayer cards is that they help you pay better attention to what God might be doing." "I think of Colossians 4:2, ‘Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.’ Prayer cards help me be watchful because in our distracted world it’s hard to be watchful without a record of what you're asking the Lord to do. As you watch the story unfold you're able to be thank more thankful because you've got a record of what you've seen the Lord do, not necessarily answers to prayer that you just check off, but a story developing that feeds thanksgiving and faith in your own heart.”

[SPECIAL] Prayer Cards 101

Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Liz Voboril for this interview with Jon and Sonia Hori. Jon is seeJesus's West Coast and East Asia Director. He and his wife Sonia have four children (and two rambunctious dogs!).  "The kids would come to the table expectantly, especially my little one. He would grab the box and put on the table. He was just very eager, anticipating and wondering you know, how is the Lord going to answer our prayers today? He had already seen, in that short amount of time, how the Lord answered specific prayer requests. It was nice to see that childlike faith in him, and it was contagious..." “It’s almost like the family prayer box becomes a mini theater—a window to watching God at work." "The last thing we want is for people to think ‘Oh, they have this magnificent praying family!’ It’s full of flops... but one of the main things to remember is that the invitation from the Father is just to keep coming!"

[SPECIAL] Praying as a Family - An Interview with Jon and Sonia Hori

This episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. Today they're joined by guest Maresa DePuy, Prayer and Women's Mentoring Director at Life Park Church near Charleston, SC.  "One woman named Mary started praying by herself behind the scenes, and I came in about a year later and joined her. We would pray Sunday mornings during services in the back of the church interceding for the prayer needs. One by one, God sent us other ‘Annas’ in the church and so we were a small cluster of praying women for a few years as the story began…" “I do think it's a temptation that you can fall into as a prayer team leader to just kind of force prayer into the church. It's really got to be done by the Spirit..." "The prayer meeting becomes an incubator or a greenhouse where all of this faith just begins to bloom. So you leave more confident, expecting that the work of God is going to go forth in some way and the exciting part is you don't know how. You come back to that next prayer meeting with a posture of celebration and thanksgiving. What we try to do in our in our staff meetings and our community prayer services is celebrate what we see God doing in response to our weak, broken, but Spirit-filled prayers."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 8. Conversation with an "Anna" - Interview with Maresa DePuy

This episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series.  “The rising side is really what makes the J-Curve the J-Curve. Because in Jesus' day and Paul's day, everybody knew about the dying side. I mean that's what paganism was. Paganism was a management system for dying reasonably well." “There's a lot of wisdom in stoicism but no hope..." "The upside of the J is answered prayer. It's God at work. It's God invading my world... so,  Jesus dying on the cross, praying psalm 22 as he's dying... he's requesting resurrection when he says 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' He doesn't want to be forsaken. He's not just lamenting. He wants out. He wants to be saved from death. And the resurrection is the Father's response to Jesus. So now the entire Christian life now is a reenacting of that at much less intense level."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 7. Praying the J-Curve

"This parable is trying to show is the current management model of the church which puts prayer in the periphery is simply crazy. Like you have an organization where you ignore your CEO. It’s just bad management and it comes under the guise of good management." "How odd it is that the church worships Jesus spends little very little time waiting and talking to him." "He's not just the savior of my heart—he saves my family today. His saving work is active and present. He is the CEO! I think Jesus, by his Spirit, permitted the pandemic to slow the church down. To get us to pay attention to janitors."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 6. The Parable of the Missing CEO

This episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series. "In leading prayer meetings, I don't want to overwhelm people. I don't want to make it a pietistic guilt trip. I don't want to go legalistic. I want the prayer meeting to function the same way discipling or mentoring works. I don't even want a prayer meeting to seem like an extraordinary meeting. Because super spiritual makes me nervous. It just sets you up for a fall, I think..” "It's not like you're all individual people praying solitary prayers, taking turns. You're not in a lineup. You're praying together." "Prayer isn't a time where you shut down desire. You awaken it. There's such fear of bad desire that we go stoic and shut down all desire. But prayer is a time where desire comes alive, and people can speak into that. I will speak into wrong desire that might emerge in a prayer time. I'll do that privately. But when desire come alive it's real, it's you praying, not some spiritual person that you're trying to create."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 5. Leading Prayer

 This is episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series.  "I remember when I was 17 sitting in the pews of this small 60-person church where dad was a part-time pastor. He was so excited about Jesus, and I knew enough to think that you can't be that excited about Jesus and God not do something. And He did!….” "Prayer functions like fuel for the Spirit. It's a pattern see see all through Jesus' life, and it's the drivetrain of the church." "Your church, your life, your body is dead like Jesus on the cross. And as you begin to pray, it's like Easter morning, you're waiting for Easter morning, you're waiting for God to break through..."   

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 4. Discovering the Drivetrain

This is episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series.  "Jesus focuses on teaching his disciples how to pray, and it begins with them requesting it. Jesus doesn't teach them until they're eager to learn. They've got to want to do it.” "If you struggle to get prayer meetings going, take heart—Jesus' attempt to get a prayer meeting going failed too." "Now when you turn the page, and you go from Luke to Acts, it is absolutely delightful because Acts like Luke opens with a prayer meeting, except it's a 10-day prayer meeting and they've really got it, because Jesus didn't tell them to pray, he's told them to wait, and they knew what they should do— they prayed."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 3. Jesus as the House of Prayer

This is episode is part of a series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul and Liz Voboril for this series.  "The first glimmer of the church is in Genesis 4:26. At the end of this chapter, in the midst of this sort of descent into evil, people begin to call upon the name of the Lord. What jumps out is that they're defined by prayer. That is what it is to be the called out people of God.” "When Solomon dedicates the temple in 1 Kings, he doesn't preach he prays." "For the Jewish people, the temple became known as a place of prayer. That that was their primary thought as to what you did in the temple—it just it permeates Jewish culture even outside of Christianity. Solomon imprinted the DNA of the temple as the place of prayer."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 2. House of Prayer

This is the first episode in a new series titled A Praying Church. Bob Allums, Director of seeJesus's A Praying Life Ministry, joins Paul, Jon Hori and Liz Voboril for this series.  "In Luke you have the praying Jesus, and in Acts you have the praying church. But over the past 50 years, corporate prayer has been on very significant decline in the American church.” "The reason why we pray together is because the beating heart of the church of Jesus Christ is the Spirit of Jesus."  "Advent is like the feel of the early stages of the work of the Spirit. It's just pure faith and waiting. You're not doing anything. There's this incredible American “allergy” to advent as a lifestyle. The cadence I’ve just described is almost unknown – no that would not be right to say - it is lost to the western church. It has been very known in the past, but it is now currently at a low ebb."

[A PRAYING CHURCH] 1. The Beating Heart of the Church

In this podcast, Paul E. Miller, author of A Praying Life, invites you into a conversation about Jesus and how he lived as a person. Ministry and conversation partners, Liz Voboril and Jon H., join Paul in exploring the details of Jesus’ earthly life. In attending closely to the cadences of the one person who lived a perfect life, we gain a clearer vision of what it means to be human. Learn more about Paul Miller and his ministry at seejesus.net.

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Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

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