Once upon a time, gas stations gave you a choice - leaded or unleaded fuel. Now, the choice we make is now how unleaded do we want to be? If we pay more, we get cleaner fuel - which is better for our vehicles, but also better for the environment.
We have this choice at home, too. We can either run on the fuel by design or fuel by default. By default, we buy the cheap stuff. Fear and shame get the job done. It burns dirty, but it doesn't cost much - and it works.
By design, we make a different choice. Love and truth are not cheap. They cost us time. They require that we sacrifice the efficiency and control that fear and shame give us in our relationships. But they offer something more that efficiency and control can never provide.
Learning to benefit from love and truth as the fuel in our homes, instead of the fuel of fear and shame, is the heart of everything we offer at
John 15 Academy - and it is the foundational message of this podcast.
Find resources and an invitation to
support our work with families on our website.
In this episode, we make key distinctions between "the old way" of fear and shame and "the new way" of Jesus, and we offer these TAKEAWAYS:
- Life by default offers a good life. Life by design offers an abundant life–more than we can ever dream or imagine.
- A man-made life conforms us to the patterns of the empire/this world. We are our own source. A God-made life transforms us more and more into the likeness of Jesus - and we only experience transformation when we follow the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is a God-sourced life.
- The New Way is the original way. The old way is a knock-off. It's like buying a counterfeit story and counting on it to be a fairy tale. We are designed to be transformed. We will never be satisfied in a life of conformity–no matter how high we set the standards.
- As parent and youth leaders and pastors, we get frustrated when we don't see evidence of spiritual transformation–but we don't stop to consider that transformation is impossible in a transactional system.
