jesus at iupui

The New Economy of Jesus: Forgiveness

admin — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 01:37:19 +0000

The New Economy of Christ: Generosity

admin — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:46:44 +0000

Abe preaching in the UC today. The video did not record for the whole time. The audio, thankfully, did.

I Want to be Poor with Jesus

admin — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:12:43 +0000

Rus preaching with all the Indianapolis Missionaries (minus Nick) in the UC on Sept. 12th, 2007. Unfortunately, the camera cut out towards the end of this preaching.

Baptized in the Holy Spirit

admin — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 03:03:18 +0000

Jon preached today about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Watch the video.

The solution that works

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:04:52 +0000

Watch the video of Rus preaching at the UC this morning.

Don’t miss the risen Lord!

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:00:08 +0000

We preached again today. Praise God, he is RISEN! Standing behind Nick are Rus, Mary and Hannah. Below is the text of Nick’s talk:

We’re here to talk about friendship with each other and friendship with Jesus. We celebrated Jesus’ resurrection last Sunday! The fact is, he’s still alive! He’s got a real body; he was resurrected not just spiritually but physically. Here’s here, with us. But it’s easy to miss him. It’s easy to miss what he’s doing in the world today, just like it was easy to miss what he was doing in the world 2000 years ago.

Right after he was resurrected, two of his disciples were walking back from Jerusalem to their hometown, Emmaus. They had basically given up on him. They thought everything was over and that Jesus was a failure because he’d been crucified. They didn’t know he’d risen from the dead. So they’re walking along and Jesus walks up to them and he starts talking to them, and they don’t recognize him. He walks with them for half a day, and they don’t recognize. him. The fact is, they weren’t expecting to see him at all. It was the same with Mary Magdalene in the garden; she thought he was the gardener. We can miss Jesus because we’re not expecting him.

We can also miss him because we’re expecting something else; we’re expecting the wrong thing. For example, the people that grew up with Jesus, when they saw him, they didn’t think what he was saying was true. He came to start a new society founded on friendship with him, but the people who had known him his whole life said, “No, we know this guy. We’ve changed his diapers. There’s no way he can actually be the son of God.” They were expecting something else.

A lot of people followed Jesus around–huge crowds. They thought that he was just a prophet and healer, which he was, but he was more than that. He wanted to start a new society. And they missed it. They were expecting the wrong thing. It’s easy to miss Jesus. It was easy to miss him then and it’s easy to miss him now.

But he’s here. He’s active. He’s always trying to befriend us. Always trying to build more friendship with us. It’s easy to miss that. Sometimes it looks like a conversation with a good friend. Sometimes it looks like a conversation with a stranger. Sometimes it looks like something we read, or something that happens in our life, like a miraculously harm-free car accident. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have experienced some kind of miracle in their life and acknowledged that it was God protecting them. Has that ever happened to you? Sometimes it looks like a group of people standing up and yelling in the in the food court. It’s easy to miss. Don’t miss it! Don’t miss the Lord when he visits you.

All it takes to build friendship with Jesus is humility and perseverance. He’s here. He’s saying, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20). He also says, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it” (Mark 10:15). A lot of people have experiences of Jesus when they’re really young. That’s because little kids are humble. And because they’re humble, they don’t miss the Lord as easily. But then people can get older, skeptical and proud. They miss the Lord when he visits them.

We’ve found Jesus again. We continue to be friends with him and with each other. And we can teach you how to be friends with Jesus again too. We can teach you how to be friends with Jesus and with us. So whoever has ears to hear, hear!

Come and talk to us.

Poverty and friendship

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:49:39 +0000

Watch the video of Nick preaching in the UC today. Below is the text of his talk.

Have you ever thought about how extreme situations can create really deep friendships between people? I’m thinking of soldiers at war or people lost in the wilderness or poor communities that band together and fight for their rights. Think of folks who start new businesses together. That’s really tough. It’s the sort of thing that either drives people apart or brings them much closer together. I read a story recently about two women who got a sea kayak and rowed across the Atlantic together. That’s what I’m talking about. If you’ve got a friend, do something hard and meaningful with him or her and you will grow in friendship.

Being rich works the opposite direction. It may look like rich people or beautiful people or really cool people have lots of friends but you can never really be sure about them, can you? Not until hard times come and you look around to see who is still with you. Being rich or beautiful or popular actually doesn’t win anyone real friends. It surrounds you with people who want what you have but they don’t necessarily want to be friends with you.

Why does Jesus say “Fortunate are you who are poor for the kingdom of God is yours”? Because when you’re poor all you have to turn to is God and other people. Why does he say, “But unfortunate are you who are rich for you have your reward now”? Because when you’re rich it’s a lot easier to turn to stuff instead of people. When you’re poor your reward is God and other people. When you’re rich your reward is stuff.

When you read the Gospels you see that Jesus hung out with poor people: beggars, lots of sick people, fishermen, shepherds, prostitutes. It was a really radical thing to do. He was rejecting the established and powerful segments of society and saying, “I’m with the poor people. These are my people.” Actually, he was building a new society. A society founded on friendship with him, not money and popularity. There’s no room for friendship in a society founded on money and popularity. That’s why Jesus says it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus is STILL with the poor people–the people who aren’t popular, who are desperate, who are at the end of their rope. I’m talking about the people who have nowhere to turn but to God and other people. Jesus is still building a new society founded on friendship with him, not money and popularity.

If you’re poor, Jesus says, “Fortunate are you for yours is the kingdom of God!” If you’re at the end of your rope, if you’re saying, “I don’t know how I’m going to keep going like this,” we have good news for you! Jesus is right there with you, and so are we. We’re at the end of our rope. We’ve got no money, we’re not popular, but we’re friends with each other and with Jesus. We talk to him every day and he talks to us. It’s awesome! The extreme and difficult thing we’re doing together is building a new society founded on friendship with Jesus, not money and popularity. And it’s totally deepening our friendship. We hear him speak every day. Our reward is Jesus and each other. If you’re at the end of your rope, don’t go it alone! Go it with Jesus and with us. Come talk to us. We can teach you how to talk to Jesus and hear him every day too.

Friendship and reconciliation

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:45:17 +0000

Here’s the video of Nick preaching in the food court today. Below is the text (roughly) of his talk:

Friendship is really important to us. In fact, there’s nothing more important than friendship. Our message is really simple: friendship with the Lord and friendship with each other in him. That’s all we’re ever going to stand up here and talk about. Today I’m going to talk about some things we want to NOT do if we’re going to be friends with the Lord and with each other.

We all know from experience that there are things we can do to BUILD friendship and things we can do to tear it down. If you pick on your friend for long enough, even if it’s just a joke, he’s not going to want to be around you anymore; she’s not going to trust you anymore. We shouldn’t make fun of each other if we want to strengthen our friendships.

There are some things we can do to wreck friendships in an instant. I’m talking about more serious stuff: lying, gossip, stealing, abuse. If I go and tell your friends something bad about you that you told me in confidence, and then you find out about it…our friendship is OVER! — not just our friendship, but I just damaged and maybe ended your friendships with all the people I talked to. What we do impacts everybody. You and I may even still love each other, but we can’t be friends until we reconcile–until I come to you and I say, “I’m really sorry I stabbed you in the back, I don’t ever want to do that again, please forgive me.” And then you say, “I forgive you.” It takes both of us. If I don’t ask for forgiveness and if you don’t forgive me, we’re not reconciled and we can’t be friends anymore.

It’s the same way with our friendship with God. There are things we can do to wreck our friendship with him. Little things that add up over time and big things that are decisive–just like with our other friends. What we do impacts everybody. We need to reconcile with God when we wreck our friendship with him. We need to say, “God, I’m really sorry I did that, I never want to do it again, please forgive me” and he will. He will forgive us if we forgive other people. Jesus said, “If you forgive others their wrongs, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours.” That’s Matthew chapter 6.

And here’s something really amazing and really good: not everybody wants to forgive us the wrong we do them. Sometimes people just won’t forgive us. But God WANTS to forgive us! Even when Jesus was hanging on the cross he said, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34).

Every friendship is unique. And our friendship with God is really different from our other friendships. He’s God, he’s the King, he’s really in charge, he’s running everything. He has ways he wants things to work and we can either live in and with him in that, or not. We can either be one of his people or not depending on what we do. If we do things that wreck our friendship we put ourselves out of his people or keep ourselves out of his people.

Jesus and the Apostle Paul make it really clear that there are things we can do to put ourselves in God’s people our out of it. Jesus says he’s going to send his angels to weed out of his kingdom everything that is scandalous and everyone who does evil (Matt 13). And Paul says wicked people will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6). And people have made lists of the things we can do to keep ourselves out of God’s people. That’s what the Ten Commandments are about. There’s no ONE list. But it’s worth knowing that there are concrete things we can do that will put us out of God’s people and what those things are. Murder, lying about people, stealing, having sex with people you’re not married to, abusing people while you’re drunk, etc. There are serious things we can do that cut off our relationships with each other and with God and keep us out of his people.

The solution is reconciliation. When we reconcile with God and with each other our friendships grow deeper and deeper and we become more and more a part of his people. On the other hand, if I do something wrong that I need to ask your forgiveness for, the longer I wait the worse the problem gets between us. It can just fester. The longer we wait to reconcile the worse things get until relationships just kind of freeze. It’s the same way with people and God. Unless we reconcile, we are not and cannot be friends and we stay outside of God’s people. Things just get worse and worse forever. That’s what hell is. It’s not just a punishment, it’s where we are if we’re not in God’s people.

God wants to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). That’s the goal and that’s what we’re working toward here at IUPUI. When we start to reconcile with God and with each other things start to change concretely and physically, as well as spiritually. God wants to unite all THINGS (that includes stuff, not just people). What could that look like here? It could look like rearranging the tables in the food court so that more people can sit together over lunch everyday. Not three, how about 12? It could look like a whole bunch of us walking over to Wishard, Riley and IU hospital (they’re in our backyard!), walking through the lobbies and hallways and healing folks. It could look like starting businesses together, organizing spring break trips together, sharing dinners together, the list can go on as long as we want it to!

Jesus was a real man

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:44:09 +0000

Watch the video of Nick preaching in the UC food court at lunch today.

I am not a religious person!

admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:01:09 +0000

This is the video of Rus preaching in the UC food court yesterday.