Secondhand Jesus

God has offered us firsthand knowledge of His love, His grace, and His power. Yet so often, we too easily settle for someone else's descriptions, the Cliff notes from another's spiritual journey. We are content for "God-experts" to do the heavy lifting and then give us the bottom line. And like any secondhand information, after enough times through the grapevine, the truth about God deteriorates and crumbs of rumor are all that remain. But when life derails, and things don't go as we had planned, our thin view of God is challenged. In those critical moments, we can choose to walk away from God, or to let our questions lead us home. When we choose to wrestle with God, to engage Him for ourselves, we-like Jacob and Job and David-will see rumors die and revelation come alive. It's time to hear the magnificent, Divine Invitation. It's time to take God up on His offer and embrace the mystery and majesty of knowing Him for ourselves.

Too often we look for shortcuts in our relationship with God and in times of crisis, we find that our view of God is secondhand information.

What Jesus Said to the Church Both Then and Now "Christ's Message to the Church in Ephesus" is a classic teaching by Rick Renner. In his characteristically thorough and engaging teaching style, Rick delves deep into the revelation that Jesus Christ gave to the Ephesian church. Presenting these truths within the cultural and historical context of New Testament times, Rick examines each of Jesus’ messages that were directed both to the pastoral leadership and to the congregation itself. It becomes startlingly clear in this teaching that the Head of the Church was speaking a present-tense message for every member of His Body for every generation. The teaching and illustrations in this profoundly insightful series will have a strong and lasting impact on the quality of your devotion and your obedience to God. It will also positively enhance your understanding of the New Testament and the instruction that Jesus continues to speak to His Church. Topics in this ten-part series include: Why Golden Candlesticks? What Jesus Knows About You Doctrinal Integrity How To Recognize True and False Apostles How Does Anyone Leave a First Love? What Is True Repentance? Who Were the Nicolaitans? Particularly for us upon whom the last days have come, these messages hold tremendous relevance and importance.

Here is a lively journey through the Gospel according to Mark, providing many powerful, fresh insights. With a new, very personal approach, this book helps us to understand and apply revealed truth.

About the Contributor(s): Monte Shanks is Assistant Professor at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

This challenging work by a notable theologian explores the origins of the Christian gospel in Israel's scriptures and calls for a reevaluation of the Old Testament and its role in the church. Paul van Buren defends the view that the early gospel arose when the disciples discovered in the story of the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22) words and images that allowed them to turn the crucifixion of Jesus and following events into the realities of Good Friday and Easter. The final statement of van Buren's respected career, According to the Scriptures offers hope that Jewish and Christian communities can be drawn closer through mutual respect for each other's interpretive traditions.

In this book, Sunny Kuan-Hui Wang explores the relationship between sense perception and testimony in the Gospel of John. While Johannine scholars tend to focus on one or the other, she shows that sense perception and testimony are both significant and are used together with the intention of drawing readers into the narrative so that they become witnesses in an emotionally engaged way. It is argued that John's use of sense perception together with testimony is rooted in Jewish literature. Yet John also employs a Graeco-Roman rhetorical technique, enargeia , which appeals to the persuasive power of sense perception to make his narrative vivid. John does not downplay sense perception. Rather, he uses it in the context of testimony as a means of persuasion to draw the readers, in their imagination, into the experience of the first disciples and thus deeper into faith and witness.

Where is the life God promised us? Life is busy. We live like slaves to our fast-paced, suffocating schedules. We spend our energy and time in triviality, relegating God to the background. He seems distant to us, and we resist the idea that God wants to give, say, and show us more; we dismiss it as rumor. But Jesus calls us to a better way. Another dream- an unimagined future. Close the gap between what you hear about and what you see. Rumors is filled with the same forward-thinking spirit that defines its authors, Jon Tyson and Darren Whitehead. ?Louie Giglio, pastor, Passion City Church Both challenging and encouraging, Rumors of God will reintroduce you to a God worth talking about. ?Gabe Lyons, author, The Next Christians, founder, Q, coauthor, UnChristian This book invites us to find the rumors of God all around us. Read it, but be ready to be changed. ?Scot McKnight, author, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow and Jesus Creed for Students For those who are jaded by the church, or have become cynical about the power of the Gospel in our time, Rumors of God is a great antidote. ?Alan Hirsch, author, dreamer, activist (www.theforgottenways.org) Foreword by Bill Hybels, founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and chairman of the board for the Willow Creek Association. The irony: two upstart Aussies from tiny towns half a world away wind up leading high impact churches in two of the most significant cities in North America. Only God. Darren Whitehead and Jon Tyson are deep thinking Christ followers with a bias for action in the world. A rare combination these days. They are both leaders and communicators, visionaries and "get stuff done for God" guys. Extremely rare. I have had the privilege of working closely with Darren at Willow Creek Community Church for over 7 years. He is thoughtful, relationally intelligent and one of the hardest working young leaders I know. In Rumors of God, Darren and Jon have some how succeeded in slipping 3D glasses over our eyes. The results are that passages from scripture come alive in ways that will impact readers for a long time. I salute the efforts of these young mates and pray that readers will be as stretched in their minds and hearts as I have been.