Middle-Aged Male Midwest American English Narration
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General) North American (US Midwest- Chicago, Great Lakes)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
this is a book about what matters our time is valuable. So let's get right to the point what matters. I mean, what matters really in your christian walk in your life of faith, What gives it substance? What gives it direction? When you dig down all the way to the bottom? What do you find supporting everything else? Different people might have different answers, The bible, church tradition, christian doctrine, Good theology, God. The list goes on. There are lots of options, lots of things that matter. But is there something that really matters? Something? one thing that matters most, I think there is, and I think that even if we didn't have our scriptures and our doctrines and our traditions, we would still have it. We would still have the one thing that matters most jesus. If we didn't have anything else, but Jesus, we'd still have a firm unshakable foundation. Even if we had lost the bible, the story of Jesus would have lived on. Even if we had no traditions, the teachings of Jesus would still inspire us and shape our spiritual lives in beautiful ways. Even without our creeds and doctrines and statements of faith, Jesus would still be everything. He claimed to be everything else. Everything about our faith depends on jesus. So if we get one thing right, it had better be Jesus. I don't think we've got him quite right by that. I mean that most christians don't seem to know, Jesus very well. I know that sounds incongruous like a complete contradiction in terms and maybe I've offended you, but hear me out, I've been in one kind of ministry or another for over a decade, not a long time, but long enough to see a few things and as I look at my church, as I watch, entire denominations struggle to stay afloat as I talk with other pastors. And as I survey the broad landscape of Christianity, especially Christianity in America where I live, I become more and more convinced that our lack of knowledge of jesus, who he is and what he's like on a ground level, on a real blood sweat and bone level is causing problems that are bigger than we can imagine. It seems to me that we have built a whole lot of structure, religion, belief, doctrine and practice around a person we wouldn't recognize if we saw him walking down the street, I don't exempt myself from this problem. By the way, I don't claim to have complete or perfect knowledge of jesus. But somewhere along the way, as I tried to sort through all of my beliefs and figure out what God wanted my life to become jesus broke onto the scene in a powerful way. He started me on a journey toward knowing him better toward knowing jesus as a person and not just as a theological puzzle piece or a set of doctrines to be believed. Don't get me wrong, I haven't abandoned theology, but in searching for and finding jesus as a real flesh and blood person, I have found that my faith has become something more than just a system of belief. It's become something more like an adventure or if it was already an adventure. Now it's an adventure with a map and a compass, or if I already had a map and compass, now, I have a destination. This renewed walk of faith isn't perfect, not by any means, but it's more vibrant and more real and more grounded than it was before. Why? Because now the keystone of my faith, the foundation on which everything else stands. The center is not a creed, a doctrine, a church affiliation, a theological system, or even the bible. It's a jewish rabbi, a carpenter's son named jesus, and at the center of our faith is where he belongs. It's the only place he fits. In fact, I hope to show in this book that if we put jesus anywhere else besides the center of our faith, where if we put anything else in the center with jesus, or instead of jesus, we set ourselves up for total failure. We risk absolute spiritual meltdown. We buy ourselves a broken and empty theology for a broken and empty church. That idea is the backbone of this book. It's the reason I'm writing it because I believe with everything I am, that we need to get jesus right and that we will never be doing this church thing the way God wants us to unless and until we put jesus at the center of our faith where he belongs.