Wayne Jacobsen's Blog, page 84
July 14, 2011
The Jesus Lens #12 – The Middle Letters
The twelfth audio in our new series about the wonder of Scripture and how to read and interpret it through the revelation of Jesus.
The Jesus Lens #12: The Middle Letters – As their individual journeys began to play out in church communities Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Hebrews were written to help them learn how to live more deeply in God's life as well as to see the church take shape among them.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
July 12, 2011
The Ongoing Challenges in Kenya
A recent outreach to Mt. Elgon to help people learn to live in the love of the Father.
Learning to pass along the life of love through conversations instead of lectures
Praying
The broken transmission damaged on a trip to the highlands of Mt. Elgon
The life of God continues to be shared through the people I met with in Kenya. A recent report from Michael about the love of God growing among them and that they are increasingly shifting from large-group lectures, to small-group conversations to help people truly learn to live loved and not just hear sermons about it. I'm really blessed with this change. Here's some of what Michael wrote me this week:
Thank you very much for the great work that you are doing for the Lord especial the work of sending the gospel of Christ across the world. As I shared with you earlier that we are sharing with groups and just training them to understand God's love to every body. So I have been receiving more invitations from the brethren here in Kenya and other part of East Africa, to go myself or send the team to help them about this revelation. I thank God some of the trip I have been sending the team a small group of people to go and help and some of the group I have been joining them. And I have seen really the hunger from the hearts of people. And yesterday Sammy my son he asked me that why this truth has been hidden for long generation and why God is revealing now?
So we have been visiting some areas where we have been meeting with local brethren ready to hear what God might having for them and very area we have been going it so fruitful and high expectation of understanding. Sometimes we break in the meetings and allow people to share among themselves. They can questions because many people were bound by religion system so some times we pray more so that people may have inner understanding. May the Lord be praised and honored for His people to get the true revelation from Him.
In Mt Elgon, we went for villages in high mountains where many people have been died during the land clashes and you may get hundreds of women who are widows and the young single mothers. My dear brother, let us continue praying for this people as God provides such time of this let us show them that they are really under the care of God no matter they may be alone but they are with |Jesus who cares the lives, there is a lot of every kind of suffering in this area but God is the solution of very thing. Among the hundreds of children we managed to take only just two but we promised that has the father provides we shall help where necessary.
We want to thank you very much for your support along with the team for the past years to help these people in relief. (We are looking for ways to help) many widows become self-reliant through income-generating businesses in teams of ten. The hunger has become very worse in the area but God is only the solution for this, you can also pray with the widows of Mt. Elgon that God may give them clear understanding. May the Lord bless you as we pray for one another.
Michael
So God's grace is growing among them, but so are the needs in this distant land. News reports continue to talk about the famine and subsequent starvation of many people in the horn of Africa, which includes this part of Kenya. The crops have failed, costs have soared. Every time I write to them I'm helping them learn how to trust Jesus for his provision and not just rely on gifts from Lifestream. They are learning to do that. At the same time, I can't help but feel like I have a stake in this unfolding story since God has knit my heart with theirs. All we can do is make the need available to others and see what God provides for them.
There are three critical needs now:
Repair of the gear box for their car which is now totally useless ($3500)
Helping widows in Mt. Elgon start businesses that can provide for their daily needs ($300 for each team of 10 widows).
Meeting the staff costs and food needs for the orphanage in Kitale that we helped build ($2000 per month)
We appreciate so much those of you who have already helped us here. If any of you would like to give to one of these needs, or simply find out more about our ongoing touch with these dear brothers and sisters in Kenya, you can read this earlier blog or see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.
Thank you for your love, prayers, and concern for these dear people.
July 11, 2011
The Jesus Lens #11 – The Early Letters
The eleventh audio in our new series about the wonder of Scripture and how to read and interpret it through the revelation of Jesus.
The Jesus Lens #11: The Early Letters – As the believers walked out their newfound relationship with Jesus, issues emerged that required greater clarity. James, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Romans were among the first letters written to help people learn how to follow him.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
July 8, 2011
What Is Valued Among Men
We are getting settled back home after an incredible trip first to Spain to share with believers there, and then to Rome where we took a walk back through time to the beginning stages of western civilization. We started our trip there among the ruins of ancient Rome—the Colosseum, Palatine Hill where the rulers built their palaces, and the Roman Forum where they ruled. Later in the trip we visited the Vatican and St. Peters, a underground excavation of a 4th century basilica for early believers, and St. John's Cathedral that was near our hotel and was the first seat of the papal authority for the Catholic Church, and it continues to be so even though St. Peter's Basilica is nearer the Vatican.
As someone fascinated by human history experiencing these sights firsthand was amazing on a number of levels, many of which were conflicting. I could admire what mankind was able to create in ancient times, but that would be consumed by the fact that they could only do so by conquering people in far-off lands, stealing their treasures for themselves, and bringing them back as slaves to do their work. At home they created a society that sustain an elite class of the privileged at the cost of keeping everyone else impoverished. As long as they pacified 99% of the population with food and entertainment, the 1% could continue their privileged lives with little consequence.
To help me make sense of these things I saw there I also took two books along to read: Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire by Simon Baker and History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present by John O'Malley. I am still reading those now and am finding them fascinating, in both the achievements and atrocities of mankind and how in most cases how those two are directly linked.
What amazed me was seeing the juxtaposition of the pinnacle of pagan culture (Rome) and what is supposed to be the crowing glory of Christendom (the Vatican). But they are exactly identical in what they loved and treasured and in what they were willing to do to establish their authority and to manipulate the common man. In fact one could say that the priorities of the Roman Empire didn't vanish with the fall of the culture, they simply rolled over into the defining realities of the hierarchical structures and facilities of the "church" in that day. Whether it was a small group of Romans wanting to conquer the known world to satiate their desire for power and extravagance, or a small group of religious leaders wanting to do the same thing. Moving from the Roman Forum to the Vatican it was obvious that both cultures were created and sustained by the same preoccupations with:
The pursuit of personal power at any cost
The building of large and opulent temples and monuments
A quest for significance by emperors or popes that would endure even beyond death
The ability to think of one's self above other people and thus deserving of a privileged life even if it causes others to suffer
And through it all one phrase kept coming to mind: "What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight." (Luke16:15) That's what Jesus said to the Pharisees about their attempts to serve both God and mammon, and he gave them a firm warning that mammon would always win that contest. And so it has, even down to the present day.
As a culture we are still impressed with magnificent-if-gaudy buildings or fascinated with celebrity. It's the same worldly vices reborn in our generation. So many seek to find significance through fame or finances even if they have to trample on others to gain their illusion of success. It all begins with the simple deception that God's gifts make me better than, more deserving than, more right than the people who live around me. It takes that delusion to treat people the way you have to treat them to be at home in the upper reaches of society. And even those that don't have that kind of "success" either spend their life striving to find it, or live frustrated with God that he didn't make them as successful or as well-known as they think they should be.
What saddens me most here are those who expound the message of grace but don't know how to live in it for others. They take advantage for themselves, but don't know how to extend it to the closest people to them. Jesus reminded his first disciples not to exalt any person above others, and certainly not to place themselves there. "You have one Father and you are all brothers," he reminded them. And, "The greatest among you is the servant of all." Once our sense of success is based in the world's priorities of wealth, visibility, and success we have already traded Jesus' kingdom for another, no matter how much lip service we pay to his. God's gifts are not for personal privilege but for serving others.
After seeing the vanity and emptiness of so much opulence and false notions of power and influence, I came away even more committed to the wonderful simplicity of relationships with others as brothers and sisters, in the simple wonder of God's gifts and graces imparted as freely to others as he has done so for me.
"What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight."
July 7, 2011
The Jesus Lens #10 – The Elliptical Playground
The tenth audio in our new series about the wonder of Scripture and how to read and interpret it through the revelation of Jesus.
The Jesus Lens #10: The Elliptical Playground – The truth Scripture describes is not always a linear set of propositions, but an unveiling of two or more seemingly contradictory revelations. The truth is found as both are held in tension inside a relationship with Jesus.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
The Jesus Lens #10 – The Middle Letters
The tenth audio in our new series about the wonder of Scripture and how to read and interpret it through the revelation of Jesus.
The Jesus Lens #10: The Elliptical Playground – The truth Scripture describes is not always a linear set of propositions, but an unveiling of two or more seemingly contradictory revelations. The truth is found as both are held in tension inside a relationship with Jesus.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
July 5, 2011
The Jesus Lens – Third Dialog Session
During our recording sessions, Wayne paused to answer questions from those in attendance. This is some of the dialog that followed sessions 8 and 9.
The Jesus Lens: Third Dialog Session – Here is some of the interaction that followed Wayne's teaching. If you'd like to add your questions to some of the material you're hearing in this series, please send them to the Lifestream office through our Contact Page. When we get enough questions, Wayne will interact with them in a future audio podcast.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
The Jesus Lens #9 – The Most Dangerous Person in Christianity
The ninth audio in our new series about the wonder of Scripture and how to read and interpret it through the revelation of Jesus.
The Jesus Lens #9: The Most Dangerous Person In Christianity – Everyone interprets Scripture on some criteria, the most dangerous ones are those who don't think they do and presume to merely take Scripture literally. These are often those who most want to force their distorted views on others.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
June 30, 2011
The Jesus Lens #8 – Those Early Believers
The eighth audio in our new series about the wonder of Scripture and how to read and interpret it through the revelation of Jesus.
The Jesus Lens #8: Beginning At the End, The Gospels – Luke-Acts is one continuous narrative that bridges the life of Jesus while he was on earth with the life of Jesus in the early believers. Watch them grow, learn, make mistakes in learning to live in Jesus and share that life with others.
To download Study Notes and Powerpoint Slides, or for more information on this series please go to The Jesus Lens Pages at Lifestream. You can also subscribe to any new audio postings at The Lifestream Podcast at iTunes.
June 29, 2011
From Malaga, Spain to Rome, Italy
"We finished up our retreat in Malaga on Sunday afternoon with a bit of sharing. If you'd like to see some pictures from our time with a smaller group under a fig tree, you can see it here. This discussion began with a small group of women under a fig tree who wanted to ask more pointed questions about how to help people who have suffered great abuse or pain connect with the reality of a Father's love they had never known. I reminded them that this is God's job not ours. We can encourage, we can help share the Truth, but it is God's to reveal his love, even through periods of great pain. And he does it so well. I encouraged them to ask the people they are helping in turn to ask the Lord to show them his love. This is God's work, not ours to prove by logical arguments.
As we talked the discussion grew as more people joined in. Eventually we started debriefing from the weekend. They wanted to hear Sara's story and how God brought her into a new place of freedom. It was wonderful and connected with so many. Then we talked about how each of us can relax more into God's freedom every day.
As is the case with so many stops I make, it is difficult to leave those God knits our hearts to even over a weekend. On Monday our hosts took us to Gibraltar and some time on the mountain with a group of monkeys. On Tuesday we flew to Rome to meet up with our friends from Switzerland to spend some days in fellowship as we explore the city of Rome. Yesterday we saw the Spanish Steps and the area around Trevi Fountain. This morning we wandered around the Coloseum together and explored the Roman Forum and archeological digs on Palatine.
Tomorrow we are headed to the Vatican. I'm looking forward to it, even though it will bring a number of conflicting emotions to bear. Breathtaking art, amazing architecture from long ago, and all of that provided for by an often-oppressive religious institution that accomplished these things with so-called offerings to God. Tomorrow ought to rock!
