Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
1 John 4:13–16 (HCSB)
This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
CONSIDER
The Christian life is like a stool supported by three legs. The three legs, or witnesses, are the historical, the Spirit, and the community. All three witnesses are within 1 John 4:13–16.
The historical witness is external and objective: And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior.
The witness of the Spirit is the internal and subjective experience of the objective reality: This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit.
The witness of the community is interpersonal and relational: God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
Faith is the crisis (or confrontational turning point) of belief, which leads to the process of experience, which becomes the demonstration of the truth in love.
Bringing it home, identify where you are strong and where you need to grow. Ask yourself these questions:
Let’s begin with the empirical evidence. Do you struggle to fully embrace the orthodox and historical teaching of the love of God in Jesus Christ? If so, I encourage you to develop a daily practice of affirming the historic creeds of the church. Start with the Apostles’ Creed. Try saying it aloud every morning for the next twenty-eight days.
Do you struggle with the inner witness of the Spirit, the experience of the love of God in Jesus Christ? If so, I encourage you to grow in your practice of the means of grace: reading Scripture, praying (make it defined through posture, voice, time; clear through writing, etc.), fasting (which takes prayer to the next level of experience), conferencing (processing experience with other believers), and taking Communion (stop trying to understand it and instead posture yourself to behold the mystery of the Lord’s Supper).
Do you struggle with the interpersonal expression or demonstration of the love of God in Jesus Christ in community? If so, I encourage you to grow in your focused intention. Literally construct experiments whereby you do small (and even hidden) acts of loving service for other people.
Faith is the mysterious convergence of crisis and process and demonstration built on three corresponding kinds of evidence: empirical, experiential, and experimental.
All of this is, of course, an artificial construct rather than a formula. We need handles on faith to grow in our discipleship. It doesn’t just happen. Let’s get on with the second half of the gospel—that’s where the action is. Let this time be a new season to freshly consecrate yourself to Jesus in some tangible ways.
PRAY
Lord Jesus, thank you for the truth of the gospel. Thank you for the way the truth of the gospel can be known personally in my own experience. And thank you for the way the truth of the gospel can move from my experience to original expressions of the gospel to other people. This is a mystery and a miracle. Come, Holy Spirit, and bring it all to bear in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
