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SubscribeThe Gospel is as Strange as it is Beautiful #god #jesus #gospel #love #science
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The Gospel is as Strange as it is Beautiful #god #jesus #gospel #love #science
No one is smarter than God. No surprise there. Or stronger, or faster, ...
No one is smarter than God. No surprise there. Or stronger, or faster, or any of those other fantastic qualities. But what about weirder? Stranger, maybe
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Simply Ask God to Pray for You #jesus #prayer #help #love #christian
What if you're too broken to even start praying? Can you ask God to do ...
What if you're too broken to even start praying?
Can you ask God to do the praying for you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer. I love that hymn. ...What I don't love so much is my remembrance of the hundreds of times I really needed to do just that. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Some burden was overwhelming, almost paralyzing, and I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it, or even should do about it. This was the time to take it to the Lord in prayer. But sometimes you feel so low, so bad, that you don't know how to begin praying, let alone fill that prayer with anything meaningful. Dear heavenly Father. That's one way to start. God, help me. Our Father, who art in heaven. There are all kinds of things to start saying, and none of them seem, I don’t know. So sometimes it's best to skip the words and just groan within your spirit. Forget trying to figure out what to say, and simply mimic what the Holy Spirit himself does on our behalf. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray He intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Your groan is not a failure to pray. Your groan sometimes is the prayer. It's a horrible feeling when you're that low and you have an all-consuming burden that only God Almighty can do anything about. Take it to the Lord in prayer is a fantastic and blessed statement. It's what happens next, and then next, and so on, that lands, at least in my experience, above my pay grade. Prayer is so simple, and yet it's impossible. I want to do it. I can do it. Just bow your head, or raise your arms, or hit your knees. Sometimes the physical gesture does help get you started. And then this seemingly easy activity takes on its impossible nature. God, is this going to work? Am I getting what I deserve? Why did this happen, and why did it happen to that person? These moments happen to everyone. Not all the time, but sometimes just a little too frequently for anybody to handle. Lord, don't just teach me how to pray. Do the praying for me. That's how low I feel, how empty I am of producing even a few words out of my mouth. Don't even ask me to take it to you. Can you just do that for me? Pray for exactly what I need to get through this moment, not even this day, but this very moment. Whatever I'm called upon to do, don't just give me the ability. Do it for me. That's my sincere prayer. You are going to get through this. You can find a lot of comforting material that frankly you need a prophet.com. God bless, and goodnight.Show More
Can you ask God to do the praying for you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer. I love that hymn. ...What I don't love so much is my remembrance of the hundreds of times I really needed to do just that. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Some burden was overwhelming, almost paralyzing, and I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it, or even should do about it. This was the time to take it to the Lord in prayer. But sometimes you feel so low, so bad, that you don't know how to begin praying, let alone fill that prayer with anything meaningful. Dear heavenly Father. That's one way to start. God, help me. Our Father, who art in heaven. There are all kinds of things to start saying, and none of them seem, I don’t know. So sometimes it's best to skip the words and just groan within your spirit. Forget trying to figure out what to say, and simply mimic what the Holy Spirit himself does on our behalf. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray He intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Your groan is not a failure to pray. Your groan sometimes is the prayer. It's a horrible feeling when you're that low and you have an all-consuming burden that only God Almighty can do anything about. Take it to the Lord in prayer is a fantastic and blessed statement. It's what happens next, and then next, and so on, that lands, at least in my experience, above my pay grade. Prayer is so simple, and yet it's impossible. I want to do it. I can do it. Just bow your head, or raise your arms, or hit your knees. Sometimes the physical gesture does help get you started. And then this seemingly easy activity takes on its impossible nature. God, is this going to work? Am I getting what I deserve? Why did this happen, and why did it happen to that person? These moments happen to everyone. Not all the time, but sometimes just a little too frequently for anybody to handle. Lord, don't just teach me how to pray. Do the praying for me. That's how low I feel, how empty I am of producing even a few words out of my mouth. Don't even ask me to take it to you. Can you just do that for me? Pray for exactly what I need to get through this moment, not even this day, but this very moment. Whatever I'm called upon to do, don't just give me the ability. Do it for me. That's my sincere prayer. You are going to get through this. You can find a lot of comforting material that frankly you need a prophet.com. God bless, and goodnight.Show More
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A Different Way to Think About "Conversion" #jesus #conversion #christian #love
Some of you are adult converts. You came to Christ through a sermon ...
Some of you are adult converts. You came to Christ through a sermon you heard, or through one authoritative, empathetic conversation that moved you and drove you to your knees ...for the first time in your life. Others of you have been Christians since you were baptized as an infant, and you came to Christ through the water of that sacrament. Either way, almost every Christian uses the same phrase. Coming to Christ. Becoming a Christian. That language is wonderful, and it is powerful. It describes a moment that isn't matched by finding the love of your life, or by falling deeply into a vocation that fits your interests and aptitudes. Coming into Jesus is a union, a joining together that exceeds every other one. But it gets even better when we turn the sentence around. We did not so much come to Christ, through a sermon or through a sacrament, as we have come out of him. We have come from out of Jesus. Our very existence, and everyone and everything around us, from the galaxies way out there, and the violent black holes and pulsars that permeate them, all the way down to the tiniest strange quantum particles, and of course everything in between, all of it has come from out of Jesus. He is before all things. He is in all things. He is responsible for everything. Everything that has been created has been created from out of him. Now here is the part that is filled with blessing, and with incomprehensibility, and at times it is even maddening and cruel and frustrating, but it ends up here. What makes talking about our relationship to Jesus over-the-top wonderful is that we have emerged from out of that man who is God, in a condition that looks brutal and abandoned as well as glorious, a condition that testifies. It contains the complete roller coaster ride of your life. Not just the mountain-high moment of your conversion, or the hours when you are surrounded by beautiful hymns, warm embraces, and truly loving conversation. When your life is flooded with the opposite, with disappointment, loneliness, rejection, doubt, and all the rest, that has proceeded from out of the same Jesus as the other one did. So if you are new here, and you are wondering whether your coming to Christ ever counted, whether you did it correctly, hear this. You are not standing outside a door, hoping to be let in. You came out of him. The whole ride, the highs and the wreckage, came out of him with you. It is not that we have come to Jesus, in one manner or another. It is that we have come from out of God's eternal condition, found inside of his Christ. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. And don't forget to subscribe. God bless, and goodnight.Show More
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How Does Anyone Believe in God's Faithfulness? #jesus #god #hymns #faith #love
Great is thy faithfulness. That's one of the hymns I play in the ...
Great is thy faithfulness. That's one of the hymns I play in the background while I study. And I was surprised to find there are as many people who don't ...like that hymn as there are who love it. A man in my congregation told me as much. I know his situation. He is in the middle of the worst stretch of his life, and God's faithfulness, like God's providence, is so hidden sometimes that hearing somebody sing about it is the exact opposite of comfort. It's more like nails on a chalkboard. Irritating, even maddening, to hear God credited with taking care of your life, faithful to every promise of love and protection, when your life reads exactly the opposite. I have been there and so have you. The last thing you want to hear is that God has a plan and it will all work out. So, I won't say it to him. Not yet. When the time is right, and that will take some passage of it, I trust the Holy Spirit moves me to say one line from the chorus. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. How exactly do God's hands provide? You already know where this leads. God's hands and his feet do indeed provide. Grace and blessing and forgiveness, as they intercede for us, doing all the talking out of the wounded body of Jesus at the right hand of the Father, those hands. And what are they saying? They preach a sermon that even Jesus did not want to hear one particular afternoon. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. But that cry gave way to, into thy hands I commit my spirit. And by the grace of God, the same happens to us. When the last thing you want to dwell on is the faithfulness of God, because maybe you don't believe it anymore, you are just as Christlike as in the moment you turn the corner and see things differently. Jesus is present in the entire journey, because he is that entire journey. He is the moment you hit bottom and don't believe God is there anymore. And then his faithfulness shows up as the very thing you are railing against. Those crucified scars are not only what guide us to a brighter day. The wounds Jesus carries in eternity are everything he has provided in his inscrutable faithfulness. God is faithful to the crucified life. Whether it is the one manifested on Good Friday, or the one that has you down today, you are right in the target zone. Perfectly centered with Jesus in the crucified condition of God's faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. All I have needed, your crucified hands have provided. Find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. And don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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What If We All Get What We Deserve? #jesus #love #christian #bible
I saw a bumper sticker in the grocery store parking lot today. Have ...
I saw a bumper sticker in the grocery store parking lot today. Have the day you deserve. Right next to it were two more, can't we all just get along, ...and pay it forward, so I'm fairly sure she meant it in the kindest way possible. But that sentence, it’s loaded, no? There's one camp that hears it as a threat, the human heart is selfish and cruel and sinful, and if today is about getting what’s coming to you, then the day we deserve is punishment, temporal and eternal. Then there's the other camp, the people who look out at all the cruelty and injustice and indifference, at innocent people and innocent creatures suffering, and what they mean is, I hope some unexpected grace lands on you today, because you deserve better than what you're getting. Two camps. Reading opposite meanings. I stood in the parking lot thinking, is there any way to make both of them happy? Is there anywhere those two readings meet? And of course there is. It's where the answer to everything is. The cross of Christ. Good Friday. Because Good Friday is the day every one of us got exactly what we deserved. This is the day we are punished for our cruelty, our selfishness, and wayward indifference toward one another. There it is. The pay back. The day the score is settled. Simultaneously, the day we are shown grace, blessing, forgiveness. Are both camps happy? The harsh camp is right. The tender one is as well. God said both things at once, inside of Jesus. He is condemning and pardoning, you are rich and you are poor. Shamed and honored. You are dying and you are living, all of it at once, and you are getting precisely what you deserve. Good Friday is the answer to every bumper sticker. Have the day you deserve. Yes. And that day is filled with being crucified with Christ. Don’t make it one day on the church calendar. This is the day you and I are living in right now. Every morning. This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Not because it's empty of our punishment, but because in the very same hour it is our acquittal, our release, our get out of jail free card, and all the rest that goes with it. Have the day you deserve, my friend. I mean that in the best possible way. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. Don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Adam and Eve and Jesus #jesus #genesis #inthebeginning #god #love #bible
Adam is created first, formed from the dust of the ground, a ...
Adam is created first, formed from the dust of the ground, a combination of material and the breath of God proceeding out of his own mouth. Eve does not arrive ...the same way. She emerges from a wound; a wound opened in Adam's side while he lies in the deep sleep of death. If that sounds familiar, it should. This is Christology, and it is sitting right there on page two of your Bible. We are one flesh with our Head, Jesus Christ, and our existence depends entirely on the deep sleep, the death, of the second and final Adam. He is wounded, he is pierced, and that is what produces our life. For those of you who have been at this a long time, look closer. The Hebrew calls Adam's sleep tardemah, a sleep no man wakes himself out of. And the word translated "rib" is the same word used for the sides of the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God, now, the flesh of Jesus. Out of the side of the man comes his bride. Out of the temple, the building destroyed in three days and raised, come all of us. The Fall into Sin. What about that? They don’t go down together. Here’s what I mean. Eve is deceived. Adam is not deceived. Adam crosses over willingly into the sinful condition for the sake of his bride. The two of them have fallen, but not on equal terms. She was overcome. He walked in with his eyes open. Which tells you exactly whose story this has been the whole time. The real fall into sin is not the event recorded in Genesis. That event is telling us in time, by way of history, something that exists in the eternal life of God. The real fall did not take place in a garden. It is manifested on Good Friday, when the second and final Adam falls into our sin, having bound Himself to us in an indissoluble embrace in His incarnation. He knows what’s happening. We are the ones trying to catch up. There is a spear that pierces his side and out comes water and blood. The apostle John hangs enormous weight on that detail. That water and that blood is for the life of the world. In fact, they are the life of the world. And we are the human beings who personify that thirst-quenching water and that death-defining blood. Eve came out of Adam's side while he slept the sleep of death. So did you. It’s all about Jesus. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com, and don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Elijah Went to Heaven in a Fiery Chariot #jesus #elijah #bible #christian #love
Elijah is taken to heaven in a flaming chariot. One of the great ...
Elijah is taken to heaven in a flaming chariot. One of the great stories from Sunday school. Why Elijah, and why are horses and a chariot on fire? If you ...wanted to personify the entire Hebrew Bible, that phrase "the Law and the Prophets," you would pick Moses and Elijah. Moses has died. Now Elijah is joining him. And front and center in that reunion are horses and a chariot. The Bible has a lot to say about horses and chariots. They represent military might, and they are never to be trusted in the hands of Egypt, or Babylon, or any human being. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of our Lord. God has his own horses and chariots. The Lord of hosts means the God who has his own army. In his hands, they are victory and deliverance. So, the same symbol cuts both ways. Now fire. Fire falls on an offering in or at the dedication of a at temple, and that means the thing has been accepted. Fire is also the refiner's fire of Malachi, and the unquenchable fire. Accepting as well as purifying and consuming. Put it all together and you have Good Friday. Every human desire to fight our own battles, to be our own masters, to control our own destinies, to have our own horses and chariot, combined God riding in the chariot directing the whole assault. Now, set it on fire. This flaming chariot is God's fatally wounded Jesus. Good Friday. Moses and Elijah show up again on the Mount of Transfiguration, and Luke tells us what they were talking about: heaven's favorite subject, heaven's only subject, the exodus Jesus is about to accomplish in Jerusalem. What Elijah was riding on into heaven. Elijah was being escorted, covered in flame and not consumed, like that bush back in Moses' career. Jesus ascends from the Mount of Olives still wounded, still displaying the scars and like a flaming chariot brings his crucified identity home. Ascending the crucified life, in a chariot or a crucified body, is just another way of saying distribute this everywhere. Elisha watched it happen and received a double portion. At Pentecost, that same fiery, “Elijah-like” love came down and rested on God's people. The double portion became our common inheritance. Even Elisha's dead bones raise the dead. Our imperfect, sin-laden, hypocritical lives are dead bones. Contact with them brings life anyway. This isn't history we're observing. It's his story. Once you know what you’re looking for when you study the Bible you can reverse engineer any verse back to cross. You can find all my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. Don't forget to subscribe. God bless, and goodnight.Show More
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Can You Find Jesus in The Tribe of Dan? #jesus #bible #christian #isreal
Like everything else in the Bible, the tribe of Dan is full of ...
Like everything else in the Bible, the tribe of Dan is full of Christology. Dan means to judge. On his deathbed Jacob said Dan would judge his brothers, more like ...a serpent than sibling, striking the heel and knocking the rider off his horse. Jesus on Good Friday. The tribe of Dan came out of Egypt with over sixty thousand fighting men, second only to Judah, yet received the smallest inheritance right in the center of the land, in the valleys facing the Philistines. Dan never took their inheritance. Rather than contend for that spot, they looked for something easier. Way up north they found a quiet, unsuspecting city named whose name means lion, took it and renamed it Dan, the new lion setting above them all, and then proceeded to establish idol worship alongside the worship of God. Forbidden, of course. God's people were never to make an image of him. This well-meant idolatry was rotten from the start. Centuries later a golden calf was set up there, and Dan became shorthand for apostasy. The tribe, whose name means judge, left the center, sought superiority, sitting above everyone. Down from Dan flows the Jordan river, carrying condemnation to the Dead Sea. That is the law. I will write my law on their hearts, God says. It was meant for the center of the heart. But it will not lodge there. It relocates. It takes higher, haughty ground. It stops being a precious possession and guide and becomes an accuser. The commandment given for life ends up bringing death. Dan gave us Samson, the one man who fought for that central location, killing more in his dying than in his living. Jesus again. In this same location David meets Goliath. In Goliath, sin does what it always does. It grows and grows, until one day it stands up in the middle of your life and challenges you. The tribe of Dan makes one last contribution to Christology and makes it by not showing up. In the last place the twelve tribes are ever listed in the Bible, Revelation seven, Dan is missing, replaced by Levi, the tribe that had no inheritance because the Lord himself was their inheritance, the tribe of atoning sacrifice. The accusing law, Dan, is not there. The forgiving sacrifice, Levi, is, and that is the eternal arrangement. Just like everything else in the Bible, every battle, every border, every inheritance, drill down deep enough and you find Christ crucified. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. And don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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"Love Your Enemies" - Take the Bumper Sticker Test #jesus #love #bible #bumperstickers
The bumper sticker test for “love your enemies”. There's a bumper ...
The bumper sticker test for “love your enemies”. There's a bumper sticker test for this one. Here we go. Love your enemies. You have got to be kidding me. I ...have a hard enough time loving the people I love. By the grace of God, I have a fantastic wife and son, family and friends, and even inside that circle love is something we work at constantly, like keeping yourself from falling down, because there is always a gravity pulling the other way. Jesus says it plainly love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This is the gospel. It is how we put Christ's sacrifice into action, keeping no account of wrongs suffered, loving our enemies as if we are the Christ figure and everyone around us has a hammer and nails in. For as long as the church has been around you can find worship services filled with prayers asking God to bless everyone outside our circle, those who create discord among us, and those who are outside because they hate what this whole thing stands for. Those are the people in the bullseye of our love. It is so easy to form clubs, to feel at home only with those who think and breathe exactly as we do. The more you identify with your tribe, the more distinct it becomes from everybody else, and hatred boils over. All it takes is a bumper sticker, an irritating gesture, a phrase the other side uses, and suddenly we have encountered the enemy. There is another way, we work at it as constantly as we work at our balance. It took us nine months to learn to walk, and now we never notice all that goes on beneath our thinking to keep us upright. That uprightness is the love of God in Christ, extended especially toward the people who are crucifying us. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Let it be the first thing out of your mouth when somebody cuts you off, flips you off, and shows you a bumper sticker you hate. That is the moment to remember, love your enemies. And you will feel the release, physically, emotionally, and finally in your soul, as you expand into that other person instead of shrinking into a corner. This is not approval. You can love a man whose position you will fight to your last breath. Take your marching orders from the greatest division in the universe. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? A division within the Triune God? The Son forsaken in the flesh he inhabits from us. The psalm ends with all the earth turning to the Lord. The deepest division in the cosmos is its greatest unifying event. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, as I love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me. Find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. Subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Paul's Command at the End of Galatians #jesus #love #christian #bible
Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ. These ...
Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ. These words come at the end of a letter about misunderstanding the law and what it does to your ...relationship with God. You would think Paul might have said, bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the love of Christ. But at the very end he reaches back, picks up that word, law, and ties it to Jesus, when you understand what happened on that cross, love and law stop being two things. Look at the cross. That is the law of God perfectly fulfilled, in the same moment, the law of God is devouring its most comprehensive transgressor. Jesus has been made into every single person who fell short of the glory of God, everyone walking in the iniquity of their own heart. At the same cross, in that same instant, is the image of sacrificial love. Greater love has no man than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends. That is how God loves us as he loves himself, and how we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It is the chief characteristic of every fruit of the Spirit. There is no law against love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. That is where the law finally gets fulfilled, as fruit, in a human life. So how do we bear one another's burdens. We become one another. When we partake of the body and blood of Christ, we lose our individuality and take on what is common to all of us, our burdens, our sins, our forgiveness, our cross, our conqueror. We are all members of that suffering and crucified Christ, raised to eternal glory in that same mortally wounded condition. So we treat each other as people who, in the middle of our weaknesses, have left those weaknesses far behind, and still have them all in front of us. We are all quietly ashamed that we are not further along. Every one of us carries the burden of the lack of a progress narrative. Treat yourself with some grace in your next embarrassing failure, and do the same with your neighbor. Because Jesus is the way. He is your entire journey. He is your entire progress, and that progress is not getting better and better. No. You have been perfect from the start. Perfectly crucified, in the exact condition that brings a smile to God's face. That is what fulfills the joy, the hopes, the dreams, and the requirements of everyone gathered at God's table. The cross of Christ is smack dab in the center of that little phrase, bear one another's burdens. It is the moment God fulfills his love and his law together, in the blessed atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com, and don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Christology and the Red Sea #redsea #bible #deliverance #jesus #moses #egypt
We're going to tell the story of the parting of the Red Sea through ...
We're going to tell the story of the parting of the Red Sea through the eyes of gold. That's right, the precious metal. Before they left Egypt God told them ...they would not leave empty handed, they were to plunder the Egyptians of gold, and this was plunder taken from the gods of a nation being judged by God. So out they came wearing the wealth of Egyptian idolatry, and then God cleaves the Red Sea. Now the word cleave is perfect. It means to split apart as well as to come together. A man cleaves to his wife and they come together. An axe cleaves a log in two. They walk through on dry ground carrying the gold from the gods of Egypt, which they had been commanded to leave behind and refused, and here was their workaround, God himself told them to take gold. The waters’ part, God's people go through, those same waters cleave on Pharoah. Both definitions, one day of salvation. On the other side, Aaron, Moses' brother, takes that gold and makes a golden calf. Later that same gold comes back around, freely offered this time, for the lid of the ark of the covenant, the mercy seat. The Egyptian gold is split in two. Half becomes an idolatrous calf, half the seat of God's presence. This has Christology written all over it, an act of idolatry, killing God's son, ends up being the very seat of mercy. God put Jesus forward as the mercy seat. God set this in motion when he told them to take that gold, knowing what would be made of it. The night Jesus was betrayed he told Judas to go do quickly what he was going to do, and the silver that came out of the temple to pay him, ended up right back inside. God runs this whole story in a blessed inscrutable paradox that we can only stand and watch, which is exactly what Exodus says, stand and see your salvation, the Lord will fight for you. He is the actor; we are the passive blessed recipients of his baptismal act. Nobody walked out of Egypt having left their sins behind. They went through those waters at their worst while God was at his best, and that is the only way it has ever been done. One last thing about the gold. Moses ground that calf into powder and made the people drink it, which was the ordeal for an unfaithful wife. We are the unfaithful party in this marriage and nowhere is that clearer than the baby in Bethlehem, marrying himself to all humanity, the faithful husband to the unfaithful bride, carrying all of us to Calvary, the deliverance the Red Sea foreshadowed. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. And don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Why Did Jesus Drown 2000 Pigs? #jesus #christian #bible #pigs
Two thousand pigs went over a cliff and drowned in the sea. Why pigs? ...
Two thousand pigs went over a cliff and drowned in the sea. Why pigs? Those poor guys. Somebody lost a lot of money right there, their entire business, gone, a ...legitimate business. Unclean to a Jewish eye, sure, the most unclean thing there is, but nobody out here was breaking a law. So why did Jesus permit it. The demons begged and he let them go. Let's start with the man who was demon possessed, take a close look at that poor guy, that guy is you and me. He is full of something he cannot get rid of, something that has him by the throat, and if you have ever laid awake at night with something living inside you that you cannot evict, then you know this man. Then Jesus arrives, and the uncleanness does not just vanish into thin air. No. It is time for Jesus to move this stuff, and that is the key to the whole story. The demons are transferred out of one man and into a herd of swine. What was hidden inside one man is now out in the open, and the whole unclean herd heads over the cliff, down into the water, and is drowned. A burial at sea, a public baptism that kills, kills what was captivating from within. Picture two thousand pigs running toward the cliff. They hit the water as one collective whole, a composite unclean body going down. Say that again slowly, something will come to mind. This isn't two thousand individual animals anymore. This is one collective whole being drowned in the depths of the sea. On Good Friday God gathered every unclean, imprisoning ingredient, every satanic impulse and every demonic deed, into one body, and He went over the cliff into the depths of His cruciform baptism. This is not a story about pigs. It's about Jesus as the collection of all us swine, the man who is all of us. That is what goes over the cliff. Mark, in writing this story, uses the word beg, to be called near, literally, three times. The demons beg to enter the pigs, and Jesus says yes. The town comes out and begs Jesus to leave. They would prefer things the way they were. The healed man begs to come along with Jesus. No. You have work to do here. These are the three ingredients of being crucified with Christ. Evil desires its punishment. We want to be left to our own devices, and you have a vocation, a job to do, right where you have been placed. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. Don’t forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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How Did Daniel End Up in a Lion's Den? #jesus #love #bible #christian #prophetdaniel
By the time Daniel is thrown to the lions, the nation of Babylon is ...
By the time Daniel is thrown to the lions, the nation of Babylon is dead. The empire that hauled him off as a young man fell the night before, and ...the Persians left the old bureaucrats in place. They still drew a salary and were clawing at the last scrap of relevance. So, they hunted down the best man among them. That’s what a petty, dead regime does. Daniel is the obvious Christ figure. Wrongly accused, thrown into a pit, the tomb is sealed with the king's ring. In the morning the king calls down, hoping against hope. Daniel comes out without so much as a scratch. There is your resurrection. But if you stop there, you have read half the story. A second group goes into that same pit. The accusers, the men who railroaded him. That is you and me and the rest of humanity. What do the lions do to us? We are devoured before we hit the bottom. Caiaphas, Annas, Herod, Pilate, Judas, all of us, members of this doomed earthly regime. This last act of the present evil age finishes off that evil age. Back to Daniel. Before God innocence was found in me, and before you, O king, I have done no wrong. He was railroaded and he says so. Jesus says almost nothing at his trial. He speaks through the Psalms. They hated me without cause. What I did not steal, must I now restore? Daniel's innocence shuts the lions' mouths. Christ's innocence opens them, because he goes down as both, innocent Daniel and the accusers. Jesus is Daniel, delivered. Jesus is the rest of us, devoured. The devil prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, and on Good Friday he found that someone. Crucifying Christ destroyed sin, death, and his own power. A kingdom divided cannot stand. And his kingdom, Satan’s, does not. He destroyed himself. Jesus is also the king, bound by a law he wrote and signed and cannot revoke. Through the law I died to the law, Paul writes. The law is satisfied when God goes down into the pit under his own signature, for his own name's sake. The wounds are still in the risen body, so the lion’s den is remembered as well as escaped. When the king stands over it and declares that the living God rescues and delivers, he is preaching over a grave that has both devoured the guilty, us, and released the innocent, Daniel, Jesus, and us. You can find me at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. Don’t forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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When Did Jesus Encounter the Ten Commandments? #jesus #christian #tencommandments #bible #love
The Ten Commandments. You know, two stone tablets, the movie from way ...
The Ten Commandments. You know, two stone tablets, the movie from way back when. There is no more famous, no foundational set of laws ever given. The first three run ...vertical, our relationship to God. The last seven horizontal, our relationship to each other. Make that shape in the air with me, because everything in the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, is about the cross of Christ. Jesus and those 10 commandments they meet up with each other, don't they? Somebody's finally met their match. He is the law's perfect keeper and the law's total victim, at the very same time. He did not just keep them, he exceeded them, so that God the Father gave his full approval to the life and conduct of his Son. And then every bit of the judgment and guilt and condemnation that comes from breaking them converged on that same man, more heavily than on anyone else, when Jesus became every sinful one of us and paid for our lawbreaking. Perfectly kept by him and wholly broken in him. That is why the Jordan river stood at attention when the ark crossed over, the never-ending flow of shame and condemnation stopped cold, standing in awe of this man. That is why the rock was struck twice and living water came out. Striking that rock is Good Friday, commanded by God from eternity, carried out by men in disobedience, and either way, from the rock, Christ flows the water of life. So, the Ten Commandments have a love hate relationship with Jesus. They cannot stand him, because he kept every single one of them, not one blemish, not one fault, not one stumble. And they are in love with him, because they never got to devour and humiliate a human being the way they did on Good Friday. Jesus and the Ten Commandments, a true heavyweight encounter. James wrote it this way. If you keep the whole law and stumble at one point, you are guilty of all. Who kept the whole law? Only Jesus. And if you are looking for the one stumble, Calvary. Put those two together and here is the equation. The man who committed no sin, plus one moment of stumbling, equals guilty of all. Guilty of breaking every single commandment. He hands you his perfect conduct, he receives your perfectly imperfect behavior, and the two purposes of the law are finished in him, salvation fulfilled and condemnation exhausted. Like the ark of the covenant, Jesus keeps those tablets safely inside himself. Watch Charlton Heston tonight, and every time you see those two tablets, remember, the first three run vertical, the last seven run horizontal, make that shape in the air, and remind yourself that the cross is the explanation for everything. Subscribe, and find everything at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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What Does the Word "Cosmos" Mean? #jesus #cosmology #cosmetics #face #love #beauty
Cosmology and cosmetology come from the same root. One is planets and ...
Cosmology and cosmetology come from the same root. One is planets and galaxies, the other is hair and nails, and they are not distant cousins, they are siblings. Both come ...from cosmos, a harmonious arrangement, something ornamented and beautiful, the universe, the aggregate of all things. Drill down to the root and it means caring for something by giving it a face, a beautiful face. Ordered beauty, the essential ingredient of the universe. It is one thing, looking up at the night sky and be amazed at the stars. Cosmologists want a closer look at the face of this universe, they find violence, exploding stars, and even more violent vacuums, black holes. The cosmetologist is after a different kind of face. She sees your mother or your sister and orders everything just right, so beauty is made visible on the face. God says the universe has a face. God, who said light shall shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Take a close look at that face, shining with love and forgiveness, and you find unexpected things. The power of God is like dynamite, like a star exploding, on the blackest, most devouring day in history, the black hole of the cross. Jesus, in this crucified condition, is the image, the cosmetology, of the invisible God. God makes peace through the blood of his cross. That sentence has the word peace in it, and it describes a man bleeding to death. Therein lies the meaning of the cosmos. For God so loved the cosmos. Is this a problem, or is this the plan? The cross is not God's ugly repair job on a world gone wrong. Let's powder in some beauty on this ugly face of yours. No. Allow me to layer this over all the damage. The awesome yet violent beauty of the night sky is the beauty of the image of God. Heaven’s cosmetologist was very busy on Good Friday. If your life looks more like a black hole than a pretty face, you are not outside his beauty, you are smack dab in the middle of His most beautiful Golgotha-makeover. The most gifted beautician is the sculptor of the cruciform cosmos. Look all around you, up or down, day or night, you are in a professional salon, being made beautiful with nails and a crown of thorns. Cosmos and cosmetology to care for something by giving it a beautiful face. Subscribe to my channel and find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless, and goodnight.Show More
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What Was Stored Inside the Ark of the Covenant? #jesus #bible #arkofthecovenant #love
Most people know the Ark from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that's more ...
Most people know the Ark from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that's more or less what it looked like, a box, a special lid, and three things inside. The ...Ten Commandments. Manna, the bread that fell from heaven. And the walking stick of Aaron, Moses' older brother, the first high priest, a dead stick that would periodically blossom and show unexpected signs of life. Remember those three things. Jesus is the Ark. He is the man who keeps the Ten Commandments inside himself, and keeps them, meaning he obeys them. He is the bread that came down from heaven, the true manna. And a dead piece of wood that miraculously produces life? That is the cross. The Ark, God’s special and precious, untouchable presence was always pointing to someone. It was a box foreshadowing the law keeper, bread from heaven, cross-to-life. On Easter morning Mary Magdalene steps into the tomb, and there are two angels, one at the head and one at the foot, turned toward each other, bending over, looking down at the place where the body of Jesus had been. That is exactly what the lid of the Ark of the Covenant looked like, two golden cherubim, facing each other. Why are these two angels staring at a spot where Jesus isn't anymore? Why aren't they out running all over Easter morning pointing at the resurrected Christ? This is the place where it all happened. This is where the Ten Commandments were not only kept, but they also killed us, all of us, in our disobedience, life and death. This is where the manna from heaven turned out to have been crucified from before the foundation of the world. That stuff falling from the sky for 40 years during the wilderness wandering was the stuff of the cruciform body of Jesus raining down from heaven. And Aaron’s rod, most obvious of all, is where the dead wood of the cross blossoms into newness of life. Newness. Not the biological life you and I know. This is life as we do not know it. This is the strange, paradoxical life of God, and it is found in the mortally wounded body of God, located in his grave! The cross of Good Friday is not left behind on Easter, it is raised. He still has the wounds, and they are not in the process of healing. The scars are not fading. They are the announcements. They are the very thing that says, look, this is the presence of God among you, and in you. The Ark of the Covenant, the treasure chest located deep inside God, and hidden inside of you. God’s law, His body, and that peculiar, even alien life flowering from Good Friday. Take and eat, manifest this love to the world. You can find all of my stuff at frankly you need a profit.com and don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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In a Moment, In the Twinkling of An Eye, Death Becomes Life #jesus #resurrection #indianapolis
Back in May, at the Indianapolis 500, Felix Rosenqvist beat David ...
Back in May, at the Indianapolis 500, Felix Rosenqvist beat David Malukas by twenty-three thousandths of a second, the closest finish in a hundred and ten runnings of that race. ...The blink of an eye. A real blink takes about a tenth of a second, longer. The finish was over before your eyelid reopened. Now, allow me to show you something from your Bible. First Corinthians 15. Paul is describing the resurrection of the dead, and he says it comes in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. The word he uses for moment is atomos, the uncuttable, the same word that gave us our word atom. Paul reached for the smallest sliver of time his language had, and said, that is how fast death becomes life. Here is where I'm going. We keep Good Friday and Easter on the calendar as two days, and that is fine. We are creatures of time. But before God they are not two events. They are one event seen from two sides. Good Friday is the winning of the game. Easter is the parade down the middle of the city. Nobody thinks the Super Bowl and the parade are two separate victories. The parade wins nothing. It announces what was already won. It was finished on Good Friday. The distance between that finish and the victory is nil. An atom of time. And the distance in space is nil too. The body that died is the body that rose. The wounds are still there. The place where death did its worst is the exact place where life came up out of the ground, wearing that death like glory. God did not carry it somewhere else to be repaired. He raised it right there. First and second at Indianapolis were an atom apart. But unlike the race, there is no loser. The defeat and the victory are not two things. Losing on Good Friday is winning on Easter Sunday. you are afraid tonight, of dying for example, or of some smaller death, your marriage, your health, your relationships, in Christ, the worst thing that will ever happen to you and the best are not separated by a long, dark distance. They are separated by an atom of time. Cut it as fine as you like. You can’t make it any shorter. The fear and the certainty. The feeling that you do not matter and knowing that you belong. Being homesick and welcoming arms reaching to greet you. There’re as far apart as the blink of an eye. In a moment. In the twinkling of an eye. You can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. And don’t forget to subscribe. God bless, and good night.Show More
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Feeling Lower Than the Dead Sea? The River of Life Flows Downhill #jesus #god #christian #deadsea
The lowest place on the surface of the earth, and we probably know ...
The lowest place on the surface of the earth, and we probably know this from Sunday school, is the Dead Sea, the Salt Sea, just east of the Holy Land. ...It is fourteen hundred feet below sea level, ten times saltier than the ocean, and it drops four more feet every year, riddled with sinkholes all around. Nothing lives there, no fish, nothing growing on the shore, and it gets deader by the year. And the Salt Sea is fed by the Jordan River, and Jordan means to flow down from. It flows down from the tribe of Dan, the northernmost tribe, way up there. And Dan, the son of Jacob, his name means to judge, and Jacob said that Dan would judge his brothers like a serpent. Dan is less of a brother and more of a snake, and this is the river that feeds the Dead Sea. It is as if the judgment of humanity flows down into this dead place. That is not just geography, that is Christology. Paul says that Christ descended into the lower parts of the earth. Jesus went down into the saltiest, most lifeless, godforsaken place there is, a body of water fed by judgment, by the snake bite that knocks the rider off his horse, again spoken about Dan. If that is not Christ on Good Friday, then I do not know what Jacob was saying to his son. Now Ezekiel weighs in and talks about a river running out of the temple, down into the Dead Sea. And he says that water is going to be healed. Everything the river touches will live, and there will be fish, a whole lot of fish, in the deadest water on the planet, with fishermen spreading nets on the shore. Fishers of men. Biologically, that is nonsense. But think about what God is doing. He could have promised revival on the Sea of Galilee, but he picked the one body of water everybody agrees cannot produce life, and he put his resurrection promise right there. Can you not hear the message of Christ crucified? If you are at your Dead Sea moment of your life, at your lowest point, if the ground around you is riddled with sinkholes, and you believe grace ran out on you, let Ezekiel breath the gospel back into your dead life, like his more famous story of the valley of dry bones. Jesus went lower than you are. Life emerges from the place defined by death, and that is not the Dead Sea, that is Good Friday. Your life might be shrinking, four feet every year, you might be at the bottom of everything, and that is perfect, absolutely perfect, because the river of life, flows downhill, the body and blood of Jesus, is flowing into you. For more like this, check out franklyyouneedaprophet.com, and don't forget to subscribe. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Should We Get a Cell Phone or Start a Family? #family #cellphone #humor
Should we get a cell phone, or should we start a family? Should we ...
Should we get a cell phone, or should we start a family? Should we start a family, or should we get a cell phone? My wife and I sat down ...and counted the cost. One of these two commitments is a twenty four seven, lifetime responsibility. There is a steep learning curve when you welcome one of these into your home. Everybody else acts like they read the manual, and there you are at one in the morning, poking at it, whispering, please, please stop making that noise. As far as a good night's sleep is concerned, when you bring one of these into your life you can kiss that goodbye, because you are going to hear strange sounds all night long, and not one of them will be in English. Then there is the public relations problem. You do not want to be standing in the middle of a crowd, in a quiet room, at the worst possible moment, at a job interview, at church, or at a funeral, and have the little thing make a noise that is entirely inappropriate for that setting, and everybody turns and looks at you, and now they know, you do not actually know what you are doing. Drop her, and your heart stops. Everyone you meet has strong opinions about the choices you've made. And the resources, oh my, month after month, they require your resources. There is no guarantee chores will be done, or dishes will be washed, at some point, you know, pulling your own weight. At eighteen, who knows what's gonna happen, leaving home, becoming independent, starting a separate life. It may simply sit on the couch, draining you, demanding from you, indefinitely. And everything you're gonna miss out on because of the attention you have to give this. Do you really want to sign up for something like that? So after a long and serious discussion, my wife and I decided to push the easy button. We are not getting a cell phone. We are going to start a family. I'm Frank Balgeman, the physics pastor from the Santa Cruz Mountains. I don't usually make videos like this, but I wanted to have a little fun today. For a look at what I usually do from a video and blog standpoint, you can check out all my stuff at Frankly You Need a Prophet dot com. And don't forget to subscribe. God bless, and good night.Show More
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Your Brain on Good Friday #pain #pleasure #science #jesus
Your brain handles pleasure with two different systems, and they ...
Your brain handles pleasure with two different systems, and they aren't the same. The first one is wanting. It's the chase, the chemical rush that fires when something turns out ...better than expected. It doesn't switch on when you're happy. It switches on when you're surprised. That's why match point at Wimbledon lights a player up more than the trophy ceremony does. The second is liking, the actual warm glow. Chocolate, a hug, the greatest moment of your life.
Pain splits the same way. One part of your brain tells you where it hurts and how much. A completely different part decides how bad it is, and that's what makes it suffering instead of just information. Injure that region of the brain and a patient will say the pain is still there; they just don't mind it anymore. Your brain's wiring keeps these apart. Desire in one place. Agony in another.
Now let’s go to the cross. The word excruciating comes from the Latin for out of the cross. Our language uses the crucifixion for our worst pain. Every time you call a headache excruciating, you're preaching Good Friday.
But listen to Jesus on the way there. With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you. Not resignation, but desire, said twice, the way Hebrew doubles a word when it means it with all of your being. He isn't dragged to Golgotha. He's drawn there. The wanting and the suffering, which our bodies work so hard to keep apart, come together in Jesus.
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. We assume that's about the miracles. It isn't. It's spoken over the Son going to the cross, over the moment he is saving the world. The Father's pleasure rests on the Son's agony, because that agony is the joy of heaven. Just as light and dark are the same to Him, so with pain and pleasure. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. The Easter joy set before Jesus is the resurrection of that same excruciating Friday.
Our brains separate pleasure from pain to keep us safe and sane. God joins them, and that's the blessedly insane, logically illogical, comprehensible inscrutable message of the Christian life lived inside the living and simultaneously fatally wounded Lamb of God. Subscribe to my channel, and you can find all my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless and good night.Show More
Pain splits the same way. One part of your brain tells you where it hurts and how much. A completely different part decides how bad it is, and that's what makes it suffering instead of just information. Injure that region of the brain and a patient will say the pain is still there; they just don't mind it anymore. Your brain's wiring keeps these apart. Desire in one place. Agony in another.
Now let’s go to the cross. The word excruciating comes from the Latin for out of the cross. Our language uses the crucifixion for our worst pain. Every time you call a headache excruciating, you're preaching Good Friday.
But listen to Jesus on the way there. With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you. Not resignation, but desire, said twice, the way Hebrew doubles a word when it means it with all of your being. He isn't dragged to Golgotha. He's drawn there. The wanting and the suffering, which our bodies work so hard to keep apart, come together in Jesus.
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. We assume that's about the miracles. It isn't. It's spoken over the Son going to the cross, over the moment he is saving the world. The Father's pleasure rests on the Son's agony, because that agony is the joy of heaven. Just as light and dark are the same to Him, so with pain and pleasure. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. The Easter joy set before Jesus is the resurrection of that same excruciating Friday.
Our brains separate pleasure from pain to keep us safe and sane. God joins them, and that's the blessedly insane, logically illogical, comprehensible inscrutable message of the Christian life lived inside the living and simultaneously fatally wounded Lamb of God. Subscribe to my channel, and you can find all my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless and good night.Show More
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When is God in "God Mode"? #god #jesus #christian #godmode
God mode. You've seen these. Roger Federer in God Mode. Magnus Carlsen ...
God mode. You've seen these. Roger Federer in God Mode. Magnus Carlsen in God Mode. Scroll long enough you’ll find one on YouTube. They're designed to get you to stop ...and spend a few minutes entertaining yourself. But what exactly is meant by God mode? What does somebody mean, in an obviously sensationalized way, when they call a passing shot up the line, or the most brilliant chess move in the last six months, God Mode? Both of my examples are men at the top of their game. There was a time when nobody played the game of tennis more beautifully or more brilliantly than Roger Federer, and Magnus Carlsen is arguably the greatest chess player of all time. But there are moments when even these two greats surpass themselves. They're in the zone. They are playing at a level that is superhuman. The racket has become a wand. The ability to see ten moves ahead has turned into twenty. That's where the phrase God Mode comes from. A mere terrestrial breaking through the ceiling of what is humanly possible. There actually is one human being who was truly in God Mode. This human being is God. He walked on the water or raised Lazarus from the dead. But Peter also walked on the water. Peter and Paul both raised people from the dead. Those aren't the real God-mode moments. When Jesus was operating in absolute God Mode, He was being crucified. That is the scandalous message God has been preaching and manifesting about Himself since before the world was created, and then throughout all time, since creation, in the entire narrative of salvation history. We preach Christ crucified, the power of God and the wisdom of God. The God-mode of God. When Jesus says the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, He is not talking about a parade or a trophy. He is talking about Calvary. God Mode is the exact opposite of what we think it is. It's not the expected, classic image of a man lifting the Wimbledon trophy, or checkmating in 12 moves. God Mode is the crucified Christ. Right then and there He is in the most powerful and most glorious condition in that other age, the age to come. Subscribe to my channel, and you can find all of my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless, and goodnight.Show More
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Why Does the World Go After Weak People? #jesus #bible #love #christian
Feeling weak and almost broken. Like a candle burning down to the ...
Feeling weak and almost broken. Like a candle burning down to the last, one breeze from going out, or a blade of grass stepped on, hanging by a few fibers. ...There's a famous verse in Isaiah for you. God is describing his chosen Servant, the one he delights in, the one he puts his Spirit on. Here's his character. A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not snuff out. That's exactly what you need to hear right now. The world loves to break things, especially weak people. The world breaks bruised reeds. It sees someone down and out and finishes the job. It sees a flame barely holding on and says, that's not worth keeping, and pinches it out. Not Jesus. He comes to the bent reed and doesn't snap it, he splints it, props it up, heals it from the inside out. He comes to the smoking wick, and doesn't lick his fingers, he cups his hands around it and persuades it back. This isn't spoken to strong, capable people who have their act together, marching forward with confidence. This isn't a metaphor for the beautiful people. This is how God treats the defeated, the barely hanging on, the ones who feel they have nothing left to offer, too far gone and beyond helping. Quite frankly, God, I'm just not worth the effort. You are not too far gone. You are exactly the kind of person he came for. Centuries later, Matthew quotes this verse and says, that's him, the Servant Isaiah meant. Jesus is the one who doesn't break the bruised reed, the one who won't snuff out the little guy. So, if all you've got tonight is a flicker, He's not measuring the size of your fire. He's not disappointed in how dim you are. He's cupping his hands around you, keeping you burning. You're going to be okay. That flame is going to be okay. In fact, a pretty powerful flame came down on Jesus on Good Friday, and he wasn't too happy about it. Then that same crucifixion spirit flame came down at Pentecost, and horrible things happened to many of those people. It looked for all the world like they were broken reeds, candles snuffed out. Stephen. James. Paul. Silas. Almost all of the twelve. He who loses his life, he whose flame, in this age is snuffed out, again and again by others, gains the whole world, the whole kit and caboodle, inside of the broken reed of Christ crucified on Good Friday. If it feels like you're being crushed, you are a precious grape becoming the of eternal celebration. I'm Frank Balgeman, the Physics Pastor from the Santa Cruz Mountains. Subscribe to my channel and find all my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless and good night.Show More
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What Does Sir Isaac Newton Teach Us About the Bible? #science #bible #jesus
An apple never hit young Isaac Newton on the head, but something ...
An apple never hit young Isaac Newton on the head, but something legendary did happen, and for over 200 years it was the most important thing in science. Picture him ...as a young man sitting on the ground under a tree. His dictionary doesn't even have the word gravity in it yet. And if someone had said the reason you’re sitting on the ground is the same reason that moon is hanging in the sky, he'd have thought you were connecting two things that were just too different. One is a rock in the heavens, the other a guy in an orchard. Heaven and earth united? But then let's just say the apple falls. This is what makes him a world-class physicist. It's not that he's smarter or knows more. It's that he knows what things to start throwing away. He was sitting in an ocean of details, the wind on his face, the beautiful girl walking by, the price of apples at market. And he ignored almost all of it. He found the one or two details that were foundational and put everything else aside. That's the whole trick. And when you do it right, two things happen. First, things that looked like complete strangers turn out to be blood relatives. And second, you're filled with wonder and astonishment, the fingerprint of great science. It's how you know you have found something real and lasting, given to you as a gift. Now, I'm the Physics Pastor from the Santa Cruz Mountains, and I bring that training, by the grace of God, to the Bible. Creation. The fall into sin. The call of Abraham. Slavery in Egypt. Deliverance, kings, poetry, laws, pages of cruelty and indifference. The Bible is an ocean of details swirling around to confuse you. But what does it do in that storm? It tells you to do the exact same thing Newton did under that tree, condense this down to the one essential thing. There is a universal law of gravitation, if you will, that explains every one of these things. It's the man who is God in a very unexpected condition. The Holy Spirit guides you through his own work using the same algorithm science has run for 300 years. Science has nothing on the Word of God, which has been doing that from the beginning. Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God distills down to this one man in the condition he's in on Good Friday, manifesting who he has been from before the creation of the world. Eureka. Or something like that. All these things that seem like they don't get along turn out to be blood relatives in the literal sense of that word, and it is absolutely amazing. Subscribe to my channel and find all my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless and goodnight.Show More
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Homeless for Three Days - Then He Won the Lottery #money #jesus #billionaire
Imagine you and your wife are newlyweds. You find your first ...
Imagine you and your wife are newlyweds. You find your first apartment. After a few years of saving, you move into a starter home. Five years later, a nicer one. ...Ten years after that, you finally step into your forever home, the home of your dreams. And then you fall on hard times. Really hard times. You lose everything, and you find yourself out on the street with nothing. Homeless. Thankfully, it only lasts three days. Because on the third day, you win the lottery. Now you and your beautiful wife are living in a fifty-million-dollar mansion on the California coast. Oprah Winfrey is your neighbor to the south, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to the north. My, oh my, how you've turned things around. But you're doing something strange in that new home. You've plastered a huge mural across the front of it: the homeless shelter where you stayed for three nights. Step inside and every wall is painted with it. Photographs. Frescoes of the shelter. Reminders of your homelessness. Everywhere you turn all you see is the worst three days of your life. Now, you know where I'm going with this. The ministry of Jesus started small. An apartment of two disciples, then six, then twelve. He grew so popular they wanted to crown Him king. On Palm Sunday, Jerusalem welcomed Him in as though this were His forever home. And then, suddenly, He was homeless, with nowhere to lay His head. For three days and three nights, it was as bad as it could get. The authorities had won. His disciples scattered. One of them took his own life. And in the depths of it, Jesus cried out to His Father as though even He had been abandoned. This is worse than homelessness. And then, Easter morning, Jesus wins the lottery. Resurrection Sunday. He's back. But look closely at the mansion He raised from the grave, the body He inhabits in resurrected glory. It still carries every mark of that homeless Good Friday. The wounds. The scars. The shredded back. The wounds aren't just taking their time to heal. The scars are what got resurrected. God Put on display, on the coast of California, the homeless shelter. The crucified life is what came back and is now prime real estate on full display. We spend our lives measuring the distance between the mansion and the street. Progressing, hopefully, upward and onto something better. Heaven sees it differently. As far as your heavenly condition is concerned, winning the lottery is being crucified with Christ. Inside of that homeless/mansion God is throwing his greatest party. I'm Frank Balgeman, the Physics Pastor from the Santa Cruz Mountains. Subscribe, and find all my stuff at franklyyouneedaprophet.com. God bless, and good night.Show More