If God wrote your biography, how would it read?

Based on reader comments over the past year, the chapter that answers this question is among the most popular in the book, Jesus Manifesto.

Click here to download and read it.

Hint: Most of Christianity has made Jesus Christ a means rather than an end, the End and Goal. My chapter unpacks that statement.

Related:

Living by the Tree of Life

Over the years, I’ve ministered a great deal on the Tree of Life and its practical meaning for Christians today. The reason is because the message radically changed my own life.

Chapter 8 of Jesus Manifesto is an introduction to the subject. It’s called “The Forgotten Tree.”

Click here to download the chapter.

When my editor read the pre-publication manuscript of REVISE US AGAIN, he told me that the chapter called “The Three Gospels” had a huge impact on him.

“History,” Martin Luther said, “is like a drunk man on a horse. No sooner does he fall off on the left side, does he mount again and fall off on the right.”

The same can be said about the Christian life. (So it seems to me anyway.)

In the chapter entitled “The Three Gospels,” I discuss three distinct “gospels” (messages) that many contemporary Christians have accepted. Continue Reading…

There’s a great deal of emphasis today on being like Christ. This is commonly tied into and even defined as “discipleship.” The way to be like Christ, it is taught, is by imitating His behavior. I believe that this emphasis is correct. But it’s not complete.

Christian leaders have been telling God’s people that they must “be like Christ” for the last six hundred years (at least). The well-known book by Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, was published around 1418.

Some 480 years later, Charles M. Sheldon’s book In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? was published. Ever since then, Christians have been trying to “do what Jesus did.” But this “gospel” hasn’t worked. The reason? It’s an instance of asking the wrong question. The question is not “What would Jesus do?” I believe it’s “What is Jesus Christ doing through me … and through us?” Continue Reading…

Jesus often comes to us in unexpected ways and unexpected means.

Think about how He came to Earth. For centuries, Israel had waited for a political Messiah. They expected Him to lead a rebellion and free Israel from Roman oppression. But how did the Messiah make His entrance? He came in a way that made it easy for His own people to reject Him. He came as a frail baby, born in a feeding room for animals. There He was. The promised Messiah who was expected to overthrow the Roman Empire and set Israel free from oppression. A needy Nazarene born in a manger.

When Jesus grew up, He ate and drank in their presence and taught in their streets (Luke 13:26). Yet they didn’t recognize Him. He was unassumingly modest. A mere craftsman; the son of a craftsman. He grew up in the despised city of Nazareth, fraternizing with the despised and oppressed. But more startling, He befriended sinners (Luke 7:34). As such, the people of God didn’t recognize Him. Why? Because He came in a way that made it easy for them to reject Him. And what about the disciples? Continue Reading…

“I don’t gaze at men and glance at Jesus. I gaze at Jesus and glance at men.”

~ E. Stanley Jones