July 2009
Plane city Utah That's the real name plain city police video of a white Dodge Intrepid I mean the link said seven craziest car chases ever. How can I not click on that some watching it? And it really doesn't seem all that Eventful the Dodge is a little bit erratic, but it generally stays in its own lane They say it never got above 45 miles an hour basically stayed right around there, but Close through a couple stop signs a few traffic lights. You can tell the police are on them have the lights on But it's not really that eventful and I'm thinking why is this one of the seven craziest chase scenes ever and then all of a sudden a Sharp left turn and the car stops and the door opens and you find out Why this video has gone viral Why it's Crazy when a seven-year-old boy steps out and runs into the house Now what would drive a seven-year-old boy to steal his mom and dad's car and drive Generally within his lane all the way back home. He said well I just didn't want to go to church. Here we are Can you blame him? I mean who wants to be at church With people like us here as one preacher has said Why do the people who ran to Jesus?
Run away From us John five is where we're going this page 1653 in your pew Bible Jesus is Gunning for the religious types for people like you and me Look out if you're picking up in the middle of this series. Let me give you a brief context at the beginning of this chapter Jesus healed a man a lame man, but he did it on purpose on the Sabbath Which made all the religious people mad and he's drawing out that They don't see the bigger point They're so focused on the laws. They're so legalistic. They miss what they were what they're for So with that context in mind let's hear from the Lord as he gets out a big stick on people like you and me God's word beginning at verse 31 If I testify about myself This is Jesus talking. My testimony is not true There's another who testifies in my favor and I know that his testimony about me is true I'm briefly there Jesus isn't saying that his word isn't worthwhile. He's making an appeal to ancient Juris prudence. You had to have two witnesses. You had to have evidence to be presented in court. We'll come back to that You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth Not that I accept human testimony We gloss over things like that If somebody walked up to you and said as a human being not that I accept human testimony. This is ridiculous We just understand at this moment either Jesus is crazy or he's an alien who got off a spacecraft I mean, that's the position he leaves you in Who is this guy? Not that I accept human testimony, but I mentioned it that you may be saved John was a lamp that burned and gave light and you chose for a time to enjoy his light I Have testimony way more than that of John for the works that the father has given me to finish the very works I'm doing Testified that the father has sent me and the father who has sent me Has himself testified concerning me? You've never heard his voice nor seen his form nor does his word dwell in you for you do not believe the one he sent You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life These are the very scriptures that testify about me Yet you refuse to me you refuse to come to me to have life I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you I Know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts Ouch, I have come in my father's name and you do not accept me But if someone else comes in his own name you'll accept him How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? But do not think I will accuse you before the father your accuser is Moses on whom your hopes are set if you believed Moses you would believe me for he wrote about me But since you do not believe what he wrote How are you going to believe What I say This is God's word. Let's pray
Jesus we came here to do exactly what the Pharisees were doing in a sense to To study your word Or to help us Help us not just to want to use it But to want to come to you Meet us now in this time That we would have your love in our hearts that we wouldn't be Walking away unchanged and your name we pray Amen If you haven't picked up on it already as we're going through John Jesus knows how to pick a fight and it's not that he's just a contrarian He's after something He's doing something Because if Jesus walks up to people and he starts using certain words that they've already come become accustomed to use in a certain way They only hear what they already think that just shoe warn him in To what they already thought nothing changes So out of love Jesus Picks a fight sometimes Think about it this way when Joshua was walking along getting ready to fight and he's got Israel's army and he encounters an angel of God and he asks him Who sighed are you on your own our side or their side the answer comes back? No Wrong question your question presumes the wrong thing Who is on the Lord's side is what matters he's he's bringing a whole new paradigm a whole new grid You can't read me through that grid Joshua am I for you or for them? This isn't us them question if you come to Jesus and you ask are you a Republican or a Democrat? He's going to look at you and say no Don't Don't try and shoehorn me into your categories. I bring my own category. I'm about the political kingdom of me God and that brings criticism for everything else See Christ will not let us categorize him in our pre-existing grid Because he doesn't want you to walk away thinking. Oh, yeah, I'll put that back on the shelf And so he's going to aggravate aggravate hopefully Everybody in the room, which is what he was after back then us what he's after now as we look at this text This is all about scripture which is ironic when you have scripture talking about scripture But let's engage this if those of you like an outline. This is what we're looking at this one in scripture How we view it how to view it how to use it and what the point is view use point All right, so how should we view this stuff? I told you before we were reading it just passing through Jesus comes out of the gate and verses 31 and 32 making this statement that just sounds weird If you come to the Bible assuming and most people wouldn't necessarily, but if you come to the Bible assuming he's God in the flesh This is a weird statement But of course, I know you won't believe just my testimony. I can't testify about myself We've got to get context here Just like today if you were a lawyer in a courtroom If you don't want to have a simple case of he said she said you got to have Corroborating evidence you've got to have at least two different forms of evidence to come against somebody who may be Fabricating something their their line. They're saying they did this when they didn't if you have two witnesses who can put them on the scene or two people who saw it When I you've got a case That's what Jesus is saying I understand that according to ancient law he grew law even modern law You need multiple evidences and so he gives them He talks about John the Baptist even though that's only human testimony He talks about his works. He talks about Scripture and the greatest evidence in all of these is Scripture and it's really interesting
because you begin to ask what is it What is the nature what's the character of scripture? There's no way for me to come at this than just a Just to back up and tell you my experience coming through Higher learning institutions which I'm a fan of education. We'll come back to that But coming through where they Repeatedly would tell you things. I mean if you looked in the mercer dictionary the Bible which I have you look in these Explanations of what it is what the Bible is will tell you that in a lot of cases it's a human document That talks about God. I want to stop right there if that's your view of what the Bible is Then already you have sat Jesus on the shelf You've already said He's not of any way to your authority Than any other human I'm human It's just his experience first mind Notice what Jesus says here All right, he says Moses wrote Which is a human did right but he also calls it if you back up that was in verse 46 back in verse 38 he calls it the Father's testimony So on the one hand it's written by humans But it's a divine author Now hang on a second. I got to get technical for a minute I know some of you gloss over when I get technical. Let's just just follow me for a second all right This is not like how Muslims view the Qur'an Muslims would say uh, you know god told Muhammad exactly what to write word for word we call that mantic diction like he was a stenographer and he just wrote down what he heard Joseph Smith had You know this crystal that he read Egyptian hieroglyphs that he found on the golden tablets and he copied him word for word He has the word exactly dictated by god that's not the way the bible presents itself If you read second peter one What we're told is as the Holy Spirit carried men along They prophesied in the spirit they said god's truth But it basically is saying within their own character That's the reason we have four different gospels you get different perspectives. You have a human character That's used to bring divine truth So you can see the personality of John versus the personality of Paul versus the personality of Peter You see these different personalities and it gives you a greater depth of who Jesus says they look at it Now it still begs the question Should it have authority in my life Well first of all we're saying is this evidence is this evidence of who Jesus was Is this evidence of who he is we don't have any other Extant we don't have any other text that talk about Jesus. I mean who would if you're in the the poorest third world countries of today Our news doesn't keep quite the same account as it as it does of our own country And those days the news to travel even Less adequately than it does today. This is a this is a backwards country in a backwards region There's just not that much about some poor carpenter If you want to know Jesus the evidence we have Is scripture is the bible ironically Now we've got to look at it to see well how he views it how it views itself All right, let me let me draw that out a little bit for you
if If you want to know Who Jesus is it's a good question to ask How did he view scripture? Because if it's the way that we know him The question becomes how should I read this bible? How should I read this book that talks to me that tells me who God is
Let me put this a little differently Michael Jackson You know i'm running with some guys the other day. We're talking about Michael Jackson. He's phenomenal artist on you just musical level people would say he was an incredible musician, but his life was tragic What was the tragedy? Well, you know he surrounded himself with yes men Nobody could tell him hey, it's probably not wise If you're not a pedophile to say I'm good. I'm just gonna hang out me and kids all day In my bed. I mean these kinds of things are Far fetch who does that it's horrible nobody came in and said to him you can't do this This is inappropriate because he'd surrounded himself with yes men if somebody Came to him and said that's inappropriate He just said you're outside the circle he insulated himself he had the power the fame the ability to say you're outside my circle Same thing happened 2006. I remember in Chattanooga when Terrell Owens was the most famous graduate of UTC University, Tennessee, Chattanooga And when it came out that they thought he'd tried to commit suicide They may be overdosed on these pills and he came out saying no, no, no, it was just an allergic reaction And the media was having a field day with it was Terrell Owens who was already a crazy football player figure was always in the news doing wild things Was he trying to hurt himself and his publicist if you remember this the lady who came on and defended him at the press conference says Terrell has 25 million reasons to live Oh, they went nuts about that. Well, that's not a good reason to live It's just money But it's clear that the reason you're in Terrell's life is because of the 25 million reasons That she was just another yes woman around him who was there To insulate him from the world to say whatever he wanted to hear because for her it was about his money Why am I telling you that because if you approach scripture Like it's something that you can you can insulate yourself from you can pick and choose what it says You don't give it authority in your life It will never change you You know, it'll be just like those folks who say I just want to hear the yes, I just want to hear. I'm okay Jesus comes with news that is hard and good, but the guys two things go together And if we start picking and choosing what we're gonna what we're gonna receive
Let me throw it actually a little differently when I was a young kid and I know those of you who are geeks like me remember seeing Star Wars And there was a scene in the first Star Wars where I mean you're already blown away by all this eye candy and space Travel in their own different planets and things And and he's meeting this weird character Luke Skywalker is meeting this he's the hero of the story He's meeting this weird character Obi-Wan and he's kind of this weird Uh guy with a deep history. We don't know who he is and they're riding into the town Country boy goes to town and they meet up with the bad guys the stormtroopers. They're the soldiers for the empire And they're looking for these robots that they've got called droids They're in this little craft and they pull up and the bad guys stop them and they say Although whose droids are those and then this thing happens Obi-Wan this old man looks over at him and he goes these are not the droids you're looking for And the bad guy goes these are not the droids we're looking for You can let us go We're gonna let you go move along now move along and they pull away And now and all of a sudden is a small child. It's mind-boggling power. You know Oh my goodness the Jedi mind trick. I want that. I could use that at school tomorrow You know My homework is already done. You got all A's you know this this is the way my world should operate Go clean your room your room is clean. You know, I mean this is this is a good thing For a little while See when reality begins to hit When we approach God that way and we say um Everything's okay We deny reality as though we what we're claiming is I have an authority equal to yours And I can do Whatever I want to do See, I want to tell you if if you want to say how should I view scripture If you're here at church here, you know where Christians were talking about Jesus You want to have Jesus you want to encounter Jesus But you don't really know about this whole Bible thing and there's all these things and they're not really sure about You can't have Jesus if you don't have the Bible And part of the reason for that is because Jesus bases his whole life on the Bible I mean every time he turns around he's quoting scripture. It is written. It is written It is written everything he does he goes to the cross you prick him and he bleeds and he speaks scripture In the middle of pain and suffering scripture comes pouring out It's integral to who he is you can't have Jesus If you don't have the Bible So begs the question how does Jesus view the Bible? Well, where he already saw he thought how Moses wrote was God's word I'll remember I was in a class at Princeton And at Princeton they took you through these classes in seminary in the first few Orientation classes for new students was basically to assault your understanding that the Bible was Completely authoritative. There's the whole question. There's all these problems You got to wrestle with these questions And it was interesting to me because as a as a religion major from undergrad I got to bypass some of those but my friends were going through it I'd had a different set of teachers who had given me Answers to those questions and I got sick of answering questions that the professors weren't answering when I knew there were There were studies out there that would answer And finally I got an upper-level course with some of my friends and we're going through Jesus passages talking about the Old Testament and this professor Who didn't believe the Bible was authoritative Starts talking about how Jesus reads this Psalm of David and how he uses one word a single word to argue against these guys And he says isn't it so peculiar that Jesus seems to give authority even to just one word and I raised my hand I said I mean, do you think he regards it as without error and it was like the error went out of the room Yeah, his whole point he was intriguing He was tickling the minds of these folks who had who had had a Sunday school faith that had now Been devastated in many ways Well, you can't believe that but he was coming back and tickling them with the edge of the truth of scripture to say What if Jesus kind of thought like this? Oh, but that's not possible We're more we're more aridite than that. There's no way we can't accept that But there was the hint of it. I mean it came peaking out and I had friends There were other people it's similar to other professors there thankfully who disagreed passionately about this Said oh, yes You come to the conclusion every argument at seminary because we weren't all in agreement unlike RTS Jackson Princeton there was not an agreement about whether or not the Bible was authoritative and by that I mean it has authority over you or do you have authority over it everything came back every argument came back to this question what matters more your experience Or what the Bible says Oh, and there was all kind of minutia and sophisticated maneuvering within that question, but that was the question and when pressed upon it The primary answer that came back was well the problem with that whole argument is even your interpretation of the Bible is your experience So ultimately it's your experience As if that was a way to dodge the content of what was said That what Jesus is claiming is the God of the universe spoke into our world see a lot of people say we just can't know We can't know and philosophy be called it the via negativa the negative way It sounds humble you just can't know but if God stepped into time if he took The opportunity and purposefully stepped in it is not humble to say we can't know when God has made it know It is actually very arrogant to say the opposite of what God say
I mean track with me on this the content of the Bible purports to be God speaking the Bible is God speaking Which means if we say God doesn't speak
What are we doing to ourselves? What do we say? I mean understand that if you're here and you don't know what to make of the Bible and you're resting with who Jesus is This is really worth thinking about If you want to encounter who Jesus is and you read these passages and you start thinking I don't like that Jesus says that I'm just going to kind of ignore that you recognize you're going to Jesus and saying This is not what you said You have no real access you have no real relationship with him You walk up to somebody tomorrow and they tell you hey you got a piece of lettuce on your teeth There is no lettuce on my teeth. I mean not only you in denial about your own situation, but you're denying your relationship with them You can't have intimacy with somebody if you won't listen to them You won't hear from them. There's no real relationship You have no access to God if he can't speak into your world
A man that was walking haze to the bathroom a couple weeks ago my wife was walking my son to the bathroom and Three-year-old that he is he says I don't want to go to the bathroom. I don't need to go to the bathroom Because there was TV to be watched He would just wanted to keep watching the cartoon he'd been watching and a man said no it's time to go to the bathroom He said he said I don't want to she said you need to obey me and he looked up because he's heard this several times He looked up and he said um Sometimes I obey you and sometimes you obey me
Three-year-old logic 35-year-old logic This is us With God That's how we want it to work and a man stops and she says oh no That's not how it works. I love you But I'm your mom. I've been placed in authority over you I'm not out to ruin your world I'm actually here to help you and love you and the thing that you think Is for your own benefit will actually be the ruin of you and our couch if we don't do something about this
I need to speak into your world you need to hear from me because I love you
See the Bible is inherently relational. It's meant to be read relationally But it has to be authoritative Otherwise you have no access to what's really being said So it comes down to this you want Jesus? Do you have his view of scripture? He saw it as fully authoritative he quoted it all the time word for word Authority Does the Bible speak into your life or do you speak over against it? I think we all have sins to confess there But what do we after? Secondly the use of scripture. This is where it gets really nasty some of you may have thought I got that That's me. I believe in the authority of the Bible. Look at this This is the verse that my friends would quote to me in verses 39 and 40 You diligently study the scriptures because you think by them you possess eternal life They love to quote that I had friends who they were good enough Bible scholars to know how to aggravate me It was good because it challenged me to think But let's get something first of all Jesus isn't saying don't study the Bible We do need to know God's word The problem is they're studying it and they're missing the point but we'll come back to that These guys were scholars They were better scholars than anybody in this room They were better scholars. I dare say that just about anybody in this country They knew the Bible Word for word they memorized it they dedicated themselves to it Jesus comes and says to them You don't know Moses You want to make somebody religious mad? You go attack their identity You go tell them they're not good at their religion He's coming after them They would have thought this is ridiculous. I mean these guys were scrupulously studying I mean, that's what this word means here the diligently study they knew it inside and out A rabbi in this era Many of them were proud of the fact that they knew the verses the singular versus you know the verses that had every Everywhere every letter of the Hebrew alphabet in them. They knew They knew the middle letter of entire books They would tell you what the middle letter was So what This is a problem when I was in high school I remember I was beginning to to discover my faith on my own and I was learning I began to really like that I was learning and and aren't we somebody somebody pulled out this Bible trivia game I don't know along the way We're just sitting around it's a group of guys and they're asking off questions and some of them I knew some of them I didn't but I was kind of proud of what I did know and kind of stunned about some of the stuff I didn't but one question came down that I had no idea what the answer was
What's the middle verse of the New Testament
You know it kind of hung in the air and I thought I should know that And to this day, I'll never forget the middle verse in the New Testament is act 1717 because I thought I'm supposed to know that that's important Well nobody stopped to mention that verses weren't really put in until the 1700s You know, they were just just a letter. You know, it was just a book written chapter divisions weren't even added until much later You know that doesn't matter. It's not the point But I thought that was important. I was supposed to know that See these guys new things that were peripheral they weren't important Sure, it's great if you get some moral insights through the ethical teaching of Jesus But if you miss the foundation You know, it's kind of like if you went to somebody's house and you admired how their gutter was attached to the roof But the rest of the building was falling over you know the foundation was crumbling If it is important for us to understand all these various things, but if we don't get the point of what they're about These guys had studied and studied and studied and missed who he was
Growing up I had all these posters Oh my wall of Ferraris and You know exotic sports cars that I loved and earlier this year I read an article that was talking about how these people who love to collect exotic sports cars cars that cost more than most people's houses And they put them in a garage and they sit there because they're great investments What a tragedy I mean this card it was made to move at incredible speed with Incredible agility and do all these things and very very few people get to drive them and if they do you know they want the odometer to stay below 500 miles Except for Richard Jordan Richard Jordan lived in Texas He was engaged He was successful tech rep He bought a house because that's what his fiance wanted he decorated the house because that's what his fiance wanted He had this job because that's what his fiance wanted and she dumped him And he said why do I have all this stuff What what what what am I gonna do with it? So he sold everything And after all the debts were paid he had $90,000 in assets He used that money as a down payment on a new Lamborghini Galardo $250,000 vehicle He goes Picks it up on July 4th of 2006 and he starts touring the country
53 speeding tickets later
When he finally is driven it so long so hard that the timing chain crunches and it becomes an expensive paper weight Did he has stored in a near an office that he's got now Where he goes back to work they people come and interview him They're blown away but the guy who really drove a Lamborghini like it was meant to be driven They said I just wanted to experience it. I lived For the road. I lived it was my house. I would rather be in it than anything else I lived for it And he went and got in this thing and just drove Because he wanted to experience it And be in it It wasn't a tool to get him to something else. It wasn't a resource to collect money He He wanted to have The experience of what it was designed for
Some of you have Bibles that are beautiful and pristine and have never been written in right in them Underline and get aggravated. I can't believe God says that Russ. Why would he say that? I want people coming to my office Why does God say this Russ? You know why? You were meant You were meant to engage God Realistically as a sinner it means you will argue with God. It's all over the Psalms The name Israel means to strive with God to wrestle with God to fight God
Man if somebody attacks you in the middle of the night in your house It's on the fight is on and your life is dependent on it In the middle of the desert in the middle of the night Jacob gets tackled And he starts fighting and it's God and that's where he gets the name Israel We were meant to discover God through interacting with him You were meant to dig in and wrestle if you're not being aggravated by what scripture says Then you're probably doing some Jedi mind tricks Are you really is God getting in your face and aggravating you See that's what Jesus is after here when he comes to these guys and says you don't have the love of God in your hearts What he's saying is you use scripture to get glory for yourself and that's why Moses will be your accuser Now catch this Because some of you this is this is far fetch far field from where you are These guys lived for the first five books of the Bible called the Pentateuch which Moses wrote the majority of He can't write your own epilogue Moses wrote this That's what Jesus is referencing Moses spoke about me And a good Jew was all about the Pentateuch and he's saying to them You don't get it You don't love it. It's just to make you look good If you read your Bible because it makes you feel good Then you may be missing God entirely
Is it personal Is it about his love living in you and dwelling in you David says in Psalm 119 I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you He didn't say I've hidden your word in my mind just so I can think about you from time to time So I can impress people with my doctrinal nuanced positions I can go on the blogosphere and fight with people. No I've hidden your word in my heart So it will aggravate me convict me challenge me My parents divorced and my mom remarried when I was six and then my sister started rolling in 8 10 12 years old And suddenly I went from single child who got what I wanted to their other children in this household And they are aggravating to me And these little toddlers Can expose things I didn't want them to expose you know, I do something and then I'm like oh Shhh I'll give you some candy if you don't tell mom And then mom they're giving the candy your mom comes in later. Did you know that rust?
But they were living in my house and they were Exposing things that I would be convicted of One of the ways you know That the word of God as authority in your life is that it's speaking in and challenging you To change it You you know you're just using the Bible if it only is something that makes you look better See one of two things will happen actually if you begin to look at the scripture Seriously, you'll either get You either get arrogant because you think you know more stuff in other people which means you're using it to beat the other people over the head Or you get really really despairing Because you'll begin to say oh man This is bad news for me Which leads a lot of people to walk away from the church is the reason people say what a bunch of arrogant people or I'm such a horrible person I don't belong there or things like that Jesus wants you to see the depth of your sin but to come further The law was not meant to make you be proud of how you keep the 10 commandments the 10 commandments exist so you'll see oh my I'm this far from God. I don't keep any own when it comes right down to it I need God that desperately we're this messed up That's what these guys were missing Completely missing the goal of scripture And that's why Jesus then brings them to the point All right, we talked about view of scripture use of scripture and the point of scripture is Jesus If you don't get that it's about me you don't get it's what he's saying He's saying to faithful Jews who studied it you should know about me Now this is incredibly hard for my old testament professors to hear because they with they taught people We don't if your paper has anything about Jesus. It's an automatic fail because they're the Hebrew scriptures Well, they were written in Hebrew, but Jesus tells these guys. It's all about me. You should be looking for me if you're studying this It points to me I'm the point of it because it should lead you to say oh man I failed at this not Look how good I am they see they had a disconnect between the moral law and the ceremonial law The moral law said do these things and you're good and the ceremonial law said when you mess up do this They thought we don't mess up so we don't need that they didn't see oh you do mess up. That's what you need the ceremonial law And all these lambs that you're killing point to the ultimate lamb that will die
It always all is about Jesus. That's what I told you parents if you don't have this Jesus storybook Bible get it If you're not a parent and you want to know more about scripture at a basic level get the Jesus storybook Bible will help you think out How Christ is on every page? He's saying every page is about me
Mark Driscoll is a somewhat controversial pastor in Seattle But I love how edgy he is on thinking things out. He said he was driving down the road one day He said I was listening to Christian radio for the first time in a long time and the last time for a long time to come And he said on the radio This commercial comes on in this famous church says they're having a national conference to study the Old Testament and Christians from all around should come to this conference because they've got the most celebrated scholar the Old Testament rabbi so and so And he said he started to grip the wheel harder He said rabbi so and so not a Jew who is a Christian But someone who believes the Old Testament is definitively not about Jesus He said wait a minute you can glean a lot of moral ideas But you're missing the main point How can you have the guy come to teach you about the Old Testament when Jesus says I am the point of the Old Testament and he doesn't believe that You're gonna miss everything. I mean, let me put this a little bit differently A lot of Christians fight over all kinds of stuff they fight over you know the views of creation the views of the end times about whether or not you believe this or that doctrine Those things can be important, but when they become all important it means you don't have a right view of scripture Some things are more important than other Jesus is saying it right here When you read these things and you thought about these doctrines it should have led you to me because I'm the most important thing Didn't lead you to me So we did this this summer with Elijah and Elijah you remember And if you think of Elijah and Elijah raising the these children who had died and you think well that means I should be like Elijah or Elijah somebody dies. I should stretch myself out on them and say please lord save them mouth to mouth hand to hand You missed the point. I should try really hard to do these things. No, that's impossible There's only one who will come and be stretched out and Trained death for life at the cross There's only one Who will change everything is the hinge of history This is what it all comes down to for you and me and everyone else Jesus is the center He's what scripture points to he's what all of life is supposed to point to But the reason we give authority to the Bible is to point us to God to have a relationship with him
Because he comes and does what we can't As broken as we are and instead of taking a hammer and hitting other people with how they failed to do those things it makes us see I'm this messed up and yet he loves like that. I won't end on that I'm more messed up than anybody else here. I just want to share How his love works They're the same place that convicts me my sin is the place I have absolute comfort He loves me all the way down I won't end on that Then that will change how you read the Bible it'll change how you do everything You will go away and you will say I want to read because I want to know the greatest lover of my soul I won't real intimacy. I don't want a cold dead relationship I want him to speak into my world and make my relationship with him better make my life More like his not because I need to feel better because I want in on him I want him to be the center of my life And not me because I'm destroying it brothers and sisters Jesus wants you to invite him in with full authority To see his the depth of his love for you To be changed Not so we can go over and tell all the other denominations and all the other people how wrong they are But so we can hit our knees at the foot of the cross and say please come join us here There's no other hope There's no other love like this every other religion says You rise up and make yourself divine And that will kill you Only with Jesus does the divine come down and say I will die in your place and raise you up to life
Come to me Let's pray Jesus we need you We're gonna sing that you would be our vision And yet we're gonna go away and soak our eyes on other things Lord we pray that you would be the center of our existence That you would be the glasses through which we view everything that you would be the standard the authority the life changing Center That you would come and rearrange my furniture So that I would live life to the fullest Or change me Draw people to you the only truth the only real love The hope of our existence and your name we pray hey man