Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Paul, Jon, and Liz explore the beauty of submission and why Jesus, fully submitted to his Father, became more vibrant and free. "The modern word that is almost anathema to our culture is  submission . Jesus' primary driver for his entire life was his submission to his Father, and he would not call us to do anything that he himself had not done." "Jesus didn't get flatter by submitting to his Fathe...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus and how he loves. In the podcast, they reference a chart on the four ways Jesus loves that you can view  here . "When Jesus sets up a boundary, it's because people want him to do something that, in the world's eyes, would be way more glorious or easy. He'll put up boundaries to keep to his mission that's actually much harder and more painf...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus, reflecting on one of the ways Jesus loves: receiving what other people bring into his life. "Selfless openness is simply being willing to let other people intrude into your world. With Mary Magdalene in the garden, Jesus stays in the background. He's the receiver of what's going on. Jesus receives Mary's tears quietly. He leaves space for...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about how Jesus lived as a human, looking at the footwashing scene in John 13. "Though footwashing was everywhere in the ancient world, it's only in John's gospel where we read a detailed description of the process of footwashing. And this account only exists because of the incarnated Son of God taking each step to do it. It's breathtaking: that the h...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their discussion about what Jesus is like as a person, looking at the rest of his conversation with Pilate. "Jesus' authority is so real that he doesn't roll over when talking to Pilate. There are times he stays silent, like at the Jewish trial, but he's actually very active through his passion." "Jesus talks about what holds him steady, what his ballast is, and it's hi...

Paul, Jon, and Liz begin a two-part conversation about Jesus and Pilate, looking at how differently Jesus navigated this conversation than his Resurrection announcement with Mary. "Usually if a conversation begins with mocking, it can spiral into a serious quarrel, or it can just become immature with a lot of insults. Jesus diffuses the situation, as an act of kindness to Pilate. 'I'm not a threat...

Paul, Jon, and Liz begin a new series about Jesus, called Unexplored Wonder, in which they look at familiar stories and draw our attention to the way Jesus lived as a human. The series begins with the Resurrection Announcement. "What so struck me is how much Jesus leaves space. I think that's partly because I tend to fill space. And I should explain what I mean by that. When you're talking, you're...

Jon recently returned from a trip to Asia, where he was training church leaders, many from the persecuted church. In this episode, he shares some observations from his travels with Paul and Liz. "A recent trip to Asia really brought a lot of eye-opening clarity to me. It wasn't necessarily designed this way, but it ended up that I had multiple opportunities to work with the persecuted church broad...

Paul and Liz talk with seeJesus Arab World Trainer "Mafdi" about what we can learn about discipleship from someone who lives in a country ruled by a King. "Every believer has things in their life that are 'footwashing' – where you have to do humble tasks that someone might have shoved in your face, or they're just difficult to do and they're every day. Seeing them as something my King is asking me...

Liz and Jon interview our Student Ministry Director, Robert Row, and Mid-Atlantic Coordinator, Christian Graham. "I do think the tide is turning, and there's a shift in the middle of the coming generation, in the younger half of it. I wouldn't describe them as an anxious generation anymore. I'd describe them as a generation that's bringing revival to the country, to our country. I can't speak to i...

Jon and Liz interview Jill Miller, seeJesus' Adaptive Curriculum Writer, about her new Bible study, Advent , and her children's book,  Tully's Christmas Mess . You can view these new books and past advent podcasts and blog posts  here . "It was December 26, and I put the tree away after it fell down again. Paul said, 'Why are you putting the tree away? It's only the day after Christmas.' I said, '...

Paul, Liz, and Adam Barker, our A Praying Life Ministry Director, sat down to share ideas about how to lead a good prayer meeting -- whether an "official" meeting or any gathering of Christian friends who pray for one another. "I watched my dad over the years leading prayer meetings. There were so many little things he did, but it seemed there were two aspects that were really key. First was the p...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, looking at the relationship between sin identification and beauty formation. "Sin identification and beauty formation are mirrors of one another. The beauty of Christ, which God is by his Spirit forming in us, is where we're going. And sin is the missing of the mark right where we are." "Beauty formation actually has an end goal: g...

Paul, Jon, and Liz reflect on the landscape of discipleship, contrasting the boredom of plains with the beauty of high peaks. "One quality of all the high points is perfection. You see it in Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount's 'Be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect.' In other words, when you do these things, do them really, really well." "Beauty is one of the church's best apologetic...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about the quiet role of beauty in discipleship. "Often, we don't see and feel the reality of God's created order, because we've not cultivated an eye for beauty. And that it gives everything a kind of a frivolity. D.C Shindler describes it, 'We don't feel the weightiness or givenness of things. There's a kind of a lightness of being.' The loss of a se...

Paul, Jon, Adam, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, looking at the role of beauty. "Our first tagline at seeJesus was 'helping people see the beauty of Jesus,' and people really struggled to understand what we did. I thought that was because the beauty of Jesus is hard for people grasp if they don't understand the person of Jesus. But I've come to realize, that the church is a...

Paul, Adam, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, considering how learning to pray is related to learning to love. "You could look at prayer kind of like an onion, where the outer layer might be prayer and the next layer is being faithful in prayer, and then all of a sudden you're discovering the Spirit at work. Things are happening that weren't in your categories. And there...

Paul, Adam, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, looking at the role of the will. "Life is filled with these polarities: Grace or truth? Do I leave space, or do I draw near? At the crux is my communion with my Heavenly Father. Discipleship puts these decisions of daily life under a magnifying glass." "Your will is controlled by what you love, and the grip of that love is so powe...

Paul and Liz continue this new series with Adam Barker, Director of A Praying Life. "You can try to teach someone to love and give them all the pieces, but if they don't love from the heart, nothing will happen…. Jesus is driving at creating a community of God followers around him, his life and his teaching. He's driving for perfection. That's why things like the Sermon on the Mount are really imp...

Paul and Liz begin a short new series sharing lessons learned over the years about discipleship. Adam Barker, Director of our A Praying Life Ministry, joins us. "One of the things I do when discipling Christians is I hold them individually accountable. I just go around and ask, 'Did you do the assigned reading?' Why do I do this? Probably because I have learned that my evangelical Christian friend...

Paul, Robert, and Liz wrap up this study of Jesus by reflecting on what Jesus tells us about his glory... and what that means for how we follow him. "We would think the glory would be the resurrection, that it would start Sunday. But Jesus says the glory starts Friday… which is just so different than how we think of glory." "Most of the time you only see glory in retrospect. When you're enduring q...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about the resurrection of Jesus. "It was the apocryphal gospel of Peter that helped me to realize how much space Jesus left in this Resurrection scene. If you follow what the gospel of Peter says, Jesus comes back from the grave like King Kong - he fills up all the space. You can't even see his head, because it is literally up through the clouds!"...

Paul, Robert, and Liz begin looking at the first moments after the resurrection of Jesus, examining his interaction with Mary Magdalene. "Mary Magdalene is the first person we know of who turns away from two angels, because they aren't helping her. She's in pursuit, and the angels aren't helping her, so she starts looking around. We know from Luke that she had been demon-possessed, and Jesus had f...

Paul, Robert, and Liz finish their conversation about Jesus on the cross, slowly walking through his last seven statements. "Notice how short Jesus' sentences are on the cross. He has to push himself up on his feet to catch a breath and then to be able to exhale that breath without dropping… it makes it all that much harder to talk." "Everything about this person is supernatural!" "Jesus cries out...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their slow walk through the last hours of Jesus' life, looking at Jesus and the cross. "There are so many things that Jesus says that are memorable because they're pithy. 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do' is certainly one that has implanted itself in our memories. But it's very serious. Jesus is holding back the wrath of God. They don't realize th...