[ADVENT 2025] 1. The Drumroll of Hope with Jill Miller
Jon and Liz interview Jill Miller, seeJesus' Adaptive Curriculum Writer, about her new Bible study, Advent, and her children's book, Tully's Christmas Mess. You can view these new books and past advent podcasts and blog posts here. "It was December 26, and I put the tree away after it fell down again. Paul said, 'Why are you putting the tree away? It's only the day after Christmas.' I said, 'Hon, she did what she could.' I love that verse!" "Jesus adapted the majesty that he came from, so we can get a grip on it, a tiny grip." "If you only know the nativity moment of the Christmas story, it is like coming in at the end of a movie - you miss all that that stuff that helps you feel the climax of the moment. But the Advent Study, as we move through Isaiah and then the story leading up to Jesus' birth, we actually have a drum roll. It starts out really soft, but as it goes through the story, it gets louder and louder when Jesus comes. Then, we have the cymbals!"
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[SPECIAL] How to Lead a Prayer Meeting
Paul, Liz, and Adam Barker, our A Praying Life Ministry Director, sat down to share ideas about how to lead a good prayer meeting -- whether an "official" meeting or any gathering of Christian friends who pray for one another. "I watched my dad over the years leading prayer meetings. There were so many little things he did, but it seemed there were two aspects that were really key. First was the people there and what was on their hearts. The second was drawing people into the larger work of God. If you get too heavy on either side, the meeting gets unbalanced." "A good prayer meeting brings love and prayer together: people are listening to one another before prayer and listening to one another during prayer." "Sometimes, you have to stop and celebrate as opposed to rushing on. Being curious, remembering past requests, drawing people out. There's this huge exercise of love behind a prayer meeting, which hopefully helps the people praying learn to love too. It is just just lovely when that happens."
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[DISCIPLESHIP] 15. Sin Identification vs Beauty Formation
Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship, looking at the relationship between sin identification and beauty formation. "Sin identification and beauty formation are mirrors of one another. The beauty of Christ, which God is by his Spirit forming in us, is where we're going. And sin is the missing of the mark right where we are." "Beauty formation actually has an end goal: getting ready for heaven." "We are his workmanship. Our salvation begins this process of God working in us the beauty of Christ. He's the artist working on us, and the result is that we then become artists ourselves."
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[DISCIPLESHIP] 14. The High Peaks of Discipleship
Paul, Jon, and Liz reflect on the landscape of discipleship, contrasting the boredom of plains with the beauty of high peaks. "One quality of all the high points is perfection. You see it in Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount's 'Be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect.' In other words, when you do these things, do them really, really well." "Beauty is one of the church's best apologetics." "Really, perfection is a whole style of the New Testament. Like, we're really in this for real. Toyota and Honda really struggled when they brought their plants to America, because they could not reach the perfection the Japanese machinists could reach in terms of clearances on the parts. Americans couldn't get any closer than two 1/100ths of an inch of perfection, and the Japanese got to one 1/100th. Every good trade has these perfections in it. Where are these perfections in Christianity, in our faith? That's what you see in the high peaks."
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[DISCIPLESHIP] 13. The Role of Beauty in Discipleship, Part 2
Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about the quiet role of beauty in discipleship. "Often, we don't see and feel the reality of God's created order, because we've not cultivated an eye for beauty. And that it gives everything a kind of a frivolity. D.C Shindler describes it, 'We don't feel the weightiness or givenness of things. There's a kind of a lightness of being.' The loss of a sense of reality is just all over; it's a subtle way that the culture is impacting the church. Even the church doesn't feel the weight of beauty, the weight of goodness." "God, who is beautiful, has created a creation that reflects his beauty and has made me to see it. As we enter into this world that he's made, we experience beauty too." "I was leading a cohort for a group of leaders who were prayer resistant, and one of the leaders who has since become a good friend said, 'I'm only here because I'm paid to be here.' And that was an experience of beauty for me. I actually got excited. It was real. I have longed for more reality in the church because the temptation to pretense in religious things is so powerful."
In this podcast, Paul E. Miller, author of A Praying Life, invites you into a conversation about Jesus and how he lived as a person. Ministry and conversation partners, Liz Voboril and Jon H., join Paul in exploring the details of Jesus' earthly life. In attending closely to the cadences of the one person who lived a perfect life, we gain a clearer vision of what it means to be human. Learn more about Paul Miller and his ministry at seejesus.net.
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