Status Updates From Encontros com Jesus: respos...

Ch10: How should we respond? Look to Mary's example at the annunciation:
Mary was a nobody who became greater than everybody, simply because God came to her and she responded in the humblest possible way. She reasoned (used logic), she doubted (with honest questions not statements), she surrendered (out of belief & to all the unknowns of what it'd cost her), she connected with others (which led her to worship).

As soon as you say, "I will obey you if" that is not obedience.

...my salvation works like this- suffering leads to glory and death to resurrection. So have no fear. Receive Jesus Christ into your life, and I will be your honor. It doesn't matter what the world thinks.

I'm afraid many people want to negotiate the cost rather than count it. That is, they are willing to give up things, but they won't give up the right to determine what those things are.

Ch9Q: How is Jesus our Savior? What was the ascension?
Ans.Summ.: The ascension was Jesus, always king but taking a new throne as head of and for the Church, able to communicate to and guide and commune with His people everywhere, ruling over everything together for the good of His people, and guaranteeing the forgiveness, acceptance, and delight of God to His people.

The man who died for you, who still has the nail prints in his hands--the signs of his suffering for you—is in control of everything at the right hand of the Father. Can you relax?
Are you anxious? Are you feeling you can't keep everything going; you've got to keep all these balls up in the air? Then you don't believe in the ascension or you're not using it as a re-
source.

The ultimate case of this principle is the fate of Jesus himself, in his rejection, betrayal, torture, and death. When the forces of darkness unleashed themselves on him to destroy him, they only succeeded in vanquishing themselves (Colossians 2:15).

(On Romans 8:28) No, he is saying that from the vantage point of eternity, looking back on all of history, it will be clear that even the genuinely bad things that happened were incorporated and used by God—so that in the end they only accomplished the opposite of what they intended.

Jesus' ascension was not merely a great honor for him, but it also was for us! He went to heaven to get things done for our good.

Jesus has always been king -- he has always had authority over us because he is God.
But now, at the ascension, as the risen God-man, he begins his job as heavenly head of the church, and now he rules over all other rulers and powers-indeed "over everything for the church" (Ephesians 1:21-22).

St. Augustine said it like this: "You ascended from before our eyes and we turned back grieving, only to find you in our hearts."Jesus is telling Mary, "You can let go of my hand, for I can give you something better than my hand in your hand. I can put my heart in your heart."

...He's still doing all the things he did before, but now, after the ascension, he's doing them with access to anyone in any place and all at once. The ascension doesn't mean the loss of his intimacy, his leadership, and his advocacy; it means the magnification and infinite availability of all of these.

As long as the man Jesus existed in the world of space and time, he could only be at one spot at one moment...at the ascension Jesus leaves the space-time continuum and passes into the presence of the Father...now he has been so glorified that everything he does has a cosmic scope...As a result, any time-space limitation to his work passes away...

...ascension to a throne is not defined by a change in physical elevation (though that happens in the ceremony) but rather a change in legal status and relationship.

what is the ascension? It is not simply Jesus' return from the earth to heaven. It is a new enthronement for Jesus, ushering in a new relationship with us and with the whole world.

The ascension, when understood, becomes an irreplaceable, important resource for living our lives in the world— and it's a resource no other religion or philosophy of life holds out to us.

(Ch7cont) Because of this He not only passively covered us by His death, but actively covered us by how He lived and what He chose the full extent of the cross. We are not only pardoned, we are seen as fully loved and wanted and welcome in God's presence from now into the future.

Ch8Q: what did Jesus do save us? How did he obey perfectly for us?
Ans.(summ.): Looking at the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was in agony likely because he was getting a foretaste of what He was about to go through - complete separation from God as someone who was not desirous of it. He was glimpsed the suffering ahead of Him, sweat blood in response, but still chose to carry forward in perfect obedience & love.

If you have this love, you will be a little more like him. Look at him dying in the dark for you. Let it melt you into his likeness.

The paradox is that only if we see [Jesus] as a substitute rather than a model can we actually have the ability to live according to his model.

Jesus is so God-centered and yet so human and honest at once. Let this be your guide for prayer. You must neither repress your feelings nor be ruled by them.

The basic purpose of prayer is not to bend God's will to mine but to mold my will into his.

First, Jesus in the garden is an unparalleled model of integ. rity. In the dark, with nobody looking, knowing that he is called to do the hardest thing anyone has ever done, Jesus still does the right thing. He does the same thing in the dark and in private that the next day he will do in full view.

Therefore God brought hi..[so he] might see where he was going and might voluntarily enter into it and bear it for us, knowing what it was. If Jesus Christ did not full know before he took it, and drunk it, it would not properly have been his own act as a human being. But when he took that cup knowing what he did, so was his love to us infinitely more wonderful and his obedience to God infinitely more perfect.

Here ok earth, even those of us who disbelieve and flee from God are not completely cut off from him...(Acts 17:28)...even though we may not acknowledge the God of the Bible, he is still upholding our lives in ways we cannot see.