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Paul Miller

In this podcast, Paul E. Miller, author of A Praying Life, invites you into a conversation about Jesus and how he lived as a person. Ministry and conversation partners, Liz Voboril and Jon H., join Paul in exploring the details of Jesus’ earthly life. In attending closely to the cadences of the one person who lived a perfect life, we gain a clearer vision of what it means to be human. Learn more about Paul Miller and his ministry at seejesus.net.

Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Paul, Jon, Adam, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, looking at the role of beauty.
 
"Our first tagline at seeJesus was 'helping people see the beauty of Jesus,' and people really struggled to understand what we did. I thought that was because the beauty of Jesus is hard for people grasp if they don’t understand the person of Jesus. But I've come to realize, that the church is actually weak on beauty itself…"
 "Seeing beauty requires attentiveness. But when you pursue it directly, you end up with a kind of a fake beauty or a hunt for emotional experiences." 
"They say if you can get a kid excited about reading, then you’ve opened up a world to them for life. I’ve seen a similar dynamic in discipleship, where if you get someone excited about Jesus and the beauty of Jesus, then discipleship is downhill, not uphill. Beauty puts energy into obedience."

[DISCIPLESHIP] 12. The Role of Beauty in Discipleship, Part 1

Paul, Adam, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, considering how learning to pray is related to learning to love.
 
"You could look at prayer kind of like an onion, where the outer layer might be prayer and the next layer is being faithful in prayer, and then all of a sudden you're discovering the Spirit at work. Things are happening that weren't in your categories. And there's work in your heart that's beginning to happen."
 "You're beginning to enter the mind of Christ. You're living in this world of love. You're getting to know God." 
"And then you find yourself praying all the time. And pretty soon, all these things become habits, which makes sense of Paul's phrase, to be in step with the Spirit. So it's this life of continuous prayer to the Heavenly Father, where you’re waiting on the Spirit and he's constantly making Jesus present."

[DISCIPLESHIP] 11. Prayer and Love

Paul, Adam, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, looking at the role of the will.
 
"Life is filled with these polarities: Grace or truth? Do I leave space, or do I draw near? At the crux is my communion with my Heavenly Father. Discipleship puts these decisions of daily life under a magnifying glass."
 "Your will is controlled by what you love, and the grip of that love is so powerful that you often don't even realize you're exercising your will." 
"When you slow down, you begin to uncover your will. You're really beginning to unmask your heart to yourself…. De-centering yourself and connecting that self with God is what the work of discipleship is. That’s why teaching someone to pray is the foundational work of discipleship."

[DISCIPLESHIP] 10. The Will is Where the Interior and Exterior Meet

Paul and Liz continue this new series with Adam Barker, Director of A Praying Life.
 
"You can try to teach someone to love and give them all the pieces, but if they don't love from the heart, nothing will happen…. Jesus is driving at creating a community of God followers around him, his life and his teaching. He's driving for perfection. That’s why things like the Sermon on the Mount are really important, because it's a sermon on the perfect Christian."
 "When I'm teaching people to pray, I'm teaching them to love, and if they don't understand that, their praying life will become self-centered." 
"Don't misunderstand me – Jesus knows you won’t be perfect this side of heaven, but he's driving after it nonetheless. He's driving for this beauty of Christ to be formed in us. And without that passion for change, without the goal of the church looking like Jesus, then discipleship just gets boring. But if people are really changing, if they're really learning to love their wife or their husband in a difficult marriage, then they're on the front lines every day. Discipleship is calling people to a life of love that's honest and compassionate and prayerfully dependent."

[DISCIPLESHIP] 9. Learning to Pray is Learning to Love

Paul and Liz begin a short new series sharing lessons learned over the years about discipleship. Adam Barker, Director of our A Praying Life Ministry, joins us.
 
"One of the things I do when discipling Christians is I hold them individually accountable. I just go around and ask, ‘Did you do the assigned reading?’ Why do I do this? Probably because I have learned that my evangelical Christian friends in suburbia are no different than the inner city kids I used to teach when it comes to doing homework."
 "In the modern American church, we're so concentrated on gathering people and making them feel good about that gathering, and that often kills discipleship." 
"I was leading cohorts in a church that had a passive learning paradigm, so it took me a couple of weeks to even begin to break into that. When I got some negative comments from a participant during the second or third week, I was delighted. That was honest engagement, so I knew where he was at! You can't disciple unless you know where someone is really at."

[DISCIPLESHIP] 8. Discipleship is Not Passive

Paul, Robert, and Liz wrap up this study of Jesus by reflecting on what Jesus tells us about his glory... and what that means for how we follow him.
 
"We would think the glory would be the resurrection, that it would start Sunday. But Jesus says the glory starts Friday… which is just so different than how we think of glory."
 "Most of the time you only see glory in retrospect. When you're enduring quietly with no cheering crowd, that's your glory." 
"What's Jesus going to do at the wedding feast of the lamb? He's going to be the center of the feast, and he's going to also be the host and the servants. He's going to be around checking people, checking their drinks, serving food. He just loves to love. He loves to wash feet."

[PASSION] 17. The Glory of Jesus (POJ 5.11)

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about the resurrection of Jesus.
 
"It was the apocryphal gospel of Peter that helped me to realize how much space Jesus left in this Resurrection scene. If you follow what the gospel of Peter says, Jesus comes back from the grave like King Kong - he fills up all the space. You can't even see his head, because it is literally up through the clouds!"
 "I want Jesus’ DNA – to ask questions, to be slow to bring judgment." 
"In the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in Luke and John, Jesus is the same size as Mary. He leaves space by quietly being there until she sees him – and even then he doesn't say who he is but asks her questions. And because of that, we discover some of what Mary’s like as a person. If Jesus had identified himself immediately, we’d have missed that glimpse of Mary."

[PASSION] 16. Resurrection, Part 2 (POJ 5.9)

Paul, Robert, and Liz begin looking at the first moments after the resurrection of Jesus, examining his interaction with Mary Magdalene.
 
"Mary Magdalene is the first person we know of who turns away from two angels, because they aren't helping her. She’s in pursuit, and the angels aren't helping her, so she starts looking around. We know from Luke that she had been demon-possessed, and Jesus had freed her, so what we're looking at in her single-minded focus is the depth of her love for Jesus."
 "Jesus is the first person of a new creation." 
"Sickness is going to end. Cancer is going to end. Meanness is going to end, murder is going to end, death's going to end. This is the biggest and best news in all of history, and Jesus is able to make her name and who she is as a person the center of how he shares the news with her."

[PASSION] 15. Resurrection, Part 1 (POJ 5.9)

Paul, Robert, and Liz finish their conversation about Jesus on the cross, slowly walking through his last seven statements.
 
"Notice how short Jesus' sentences are on the cross. He has to push himself up on his feet to catch a breath and then to be able to exhale that breath without dropping… it makes it all that much harder to talk."
 "Everything about this person is supernatural!" 
"Jesus cries out, 'It is finished!' The job is done. In John 2, Jesus tells his mother at the wedding in Cana, 'My time has not yet come.' But now the battle's over. He's done the will of his father. For the disciples, at this point, it looks like everything has gone wrong, but they'll later realize that this is a cry of triumph."

[PASSION] 14. The Cross, Part 2 (POJ 5.8)

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their slow walk through the last hours of Jesus' life, looking at Jesus and the cross.
 
"There are so many things that Jesus says that are memorable because they're pithy. 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do' is certainly one that has implanted itself in our memories. But it’s very serious. Jesus is holding back the wrath of God. They don't realize that they're crucifying an innocent man, so Jesus is showing mercy on them."
 "The only person that openly defends Jesus is a thief." 
"When Pilate said, ‘Where are you from?’ he was not asking for Jesus’ name. He knew this was Jesus of Nazareth. He wasn’t saying, ‘what's your hometown,’ but, 'are you actually God?' And of course, the main thing Pilate is mocking here is not Jesus, but the Jews, and they know it."

[DISCIPLESHIP] 12. The Role of Beauty in Discipleship, Part 1

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