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Imagine that God is Love [Excerpt by Scot McKnight]

Feb 27

Excerpt from One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow (eBook) by Scot McKnight.

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Lots of people say they know that God loves them, but deep inside they don't feel loved and so they feel like impostors with God. Even more, deep inside they are so conflicted about love itself that they cannot become vulnerable enough to embrace this God and know that God embraces back.

It is much easier to say we believe God loves us
than it is to bask and dwell in that God of Love
by receiving and returning love…

Until we get our heart connected to God's heart, Jesus' dream kingdom will be neither understood nor embraced. At the core of Jesus' dream kingdom is God, and that God is a God of Love. No, even better, that God is Love the way that God is Life.

The only way to be connected to God is to love the God who is Love himself.

We need to think back into Time and Before Time to the time when God was all there was, back to Before this world of ours even existed. What we have learned from Jesus and the New Testament and the Church is that … God was indwelling God. The Father. The Son. The Spirit. One. Three-in-One. Indwelling and interpenetrating One Another in the endless God Dance of love and delight. This dance of love is who God was and is, and this is what God is like and what God will always be like, and that means that the only way to be connected to God is to love the God who is Love himself.

To follow Jesus … is to enter into the Divine Dance.

To follow Jesus into this God-who-is-Love God is to enter into the Divine Dance. Jesus' vision of the dream kingdom, then, is a dream about dancing with the God who is Love. It's like Jesus to imagine a world where that kind of God was at work. So we must listen to another of Jesus' stories and…

Imagine a World Where God Is Love

Jesus was imagining the kingdom one day when he told a parable we call the Prodigal Son… The story starts at a table where Jesus is dining with the religious experts of Jesus’ day who had serious questions about his table friends [see Luke 15:1-2]. The experts want Jesus to explain himself for doing such an unholy thing like associating with (to the point of sharing a meal with) sinners. Jesus does explain himself, but he does so by telling a fantastic story that takes their question and sabotages it. At the same time, the tax collectors and sinners are listening in to Jesus' response and they discover that he is tossing grace toward them.

What Jesus wants us to see in this Kingdom.Life is a Father-God who loves us in ways we never imagined and a table of fellowship that is full of Kingdom.Life joy and love. But this father sabotages the expectations of many listeners (and many today are like them)…

"We've got to imagine this world to make it happen."

We've got to imagine this world to make it happen. The dream of reconciliation with God and with the family can only happen if we first believe it can, and then we have to take the first steps to return to the Father.

[Read the Parable of the Prodigal Son]

-Scot McKnight

Question: If we already agree that God is Love, does it make a difference when we take time to imagine that God is Love? Imagine that God is Love, then share your thoughts in a comment.

- Adam Forrest, Zondervan

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Learn more about One.Life (eBook).

Visit Scot McKnight's blog at www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed.

Image and some styling above are web-exclusive features not included in the text of One.Life. Image: Rembrandt's interpretation of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)

1 Response divine dance, ebooks, god.is.love., imagine, life, mcknight, one, one life, scot Read & Comment

On Counting our Blessings: The “One Thousand Gifts” Book and App

Nov 30

Does gratitude come easy? Not for me. That's why Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts book and mobile app captured my attention. Let's start with the book.

Seeing and Receiving our Blessings: Ann Voskamp's Book One Thousand Gifts

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As the summary of One Thousand Gifts reads, Voskamp's book shows readers "a way of seeing that opens [our] eyes to ordinary amazing grace." I roundly concur. (At time of writing, I've read about half of Voskamp's book.)

I'd like to share one of my favorite parts from One Thousand Gifts. Voskamp describes how things change for her when she begins to literally count her blessings…

Excerpt from One Thousand Gifts

Across the backside [of the scrap paper], on a whim, a dare, I scratch it down: Gift List. I begin the list. Not of gifts I want but of gifts I already have.

Morning shadows across the old floors
Jam piled high on the toast
Cry of blue jay from high in the spruce…

They are just the common things and maybe I don't even know they are gifts really until I write them down and that is really what they look like. Gifts He bestows. This writing it down – it is sort of like … unwrapping love…

Jesus: Favorite Uncle or Uptight Boss? by Scot McKnight

Jan 24

Guest post by Scot McKnight, who blogs at www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed. Scot's latest book is One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow.

Now Available

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I don’t know about you, but I get tossed between absolute wonder and utter frustration when I read the moral challenges of Jesus. Some days I wonder if we ought not call Jesus a "moral zealot" to chase away our beliefs that he is an avuncular Lord. Consider words like this: "Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect" or "Let the dead bury the dead," or the always yougottabekiddin’ me! line of Jesus that if we don’t give up our possessions we can’t be his disciple.

Sometimes, if I were to confess the deepest truth, I can almost unconsciously dismiss these lines with "that’s just the way Jesus talked," but I can’t for one conscious moment think Jesus said some of the following things and didn’t mean business:

If you don’t have surpassing righteousness you can’t enter the kingdom (Matt. 5:20)

If you don’t do the will of my Father you can’t enter into life (Matt. 7:21-27)
If you don’t become like children you can’t enter the kingdom (Matt. 18:1-4)

It's the "you can’t enter" stuff that disturbs me.

My years of studying these lines (and I teach some of them nearly every semester and encounter them more times a year than I care to count) has convinced me that they are designed at their deepest core to confront us with the singular challenge Jesus gives to us as a daily summons. It goes like this:

Can One Mom Make a Global Difference? Shayne Moore’s CNN Interview

Sep 23

Do you have to be a world leader to affect massive issues like global poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic? No, answers stay-at-home mom Shayne Moore, "You can make a difference right from your own home."

Moore shares some insights and tips in her recent interview on CNN's "Mission Possible" segment:

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Shayne shares her journey in the upcoming Zondervan book Global Soccer Mom: Changing the World Is Easier Than You Think, which hits stores in January, 2011. Global Soccer Mom is an inspirational story for ordinary women who want to make an extraordinary difference in their world. Global Soccer Mom will help you get started.

About Shayne Moore
Shayne Moore is one of the original members of the ONE campaign, The Campaign to Make Poverty History, and was a non-celebrity spokesperson for the campaign. She sits on the executive board of directors for Upendo Village, an HIV/AIDS clinic targeting marginalized women and children in Kenya and supports and works closely with World Vision. With an MA in Theology, Shayne is an active speaker and writes for her blog, "Theology Mama." She lives in Wheaton, Illinois with her husband and three children. She can be found on facebook and on Twitter @TheologyMama. Her book Global Soccer Mom releases January 2011.

0 Responses campaign, cnn, difference, global, interview, mom, moore, one, shayne, soccer Read & Comment

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