Making connections for life

This is a very very very rough (10 mins) cut (raw tape really) of a talk I gave yesterday at church called Making connections for life from Revelation 1.

It is the first in a series that I am hoping will be given a fair bit of airtime later in the year as the Jesus all about life campaign ramps up in Sydney.
One of the important things to do in association with the Jesus all about life campaign is to explain life as it is meant by the scriptures, rather than the allowing the community's (whether Christian or non Christian) knee jerk assumptions to stand.

We need to show people that the life that Jesus is all about about is new life, spiritual life, eternal life, a life lived in relationship with God and is to be contrasted with the absolute ongoing misery of eternal death.

I think one of the risks of the Jesus all about life campaign is that it could be heard to be saying that it is Jesus who will give us a better life now, and if that's all that people take away then they will have been misled with a false prosperity gospel.

However I think it is better to get involved and define Jesus and life correctly rather than to stand on the sidelines and let this great opportunity pass by.

This will require a degree of thinking. One could start in John's gospel. However because of familiarity with John, I decided to try the more roundabout route of Revelation. I was struck powerfully by Jesus words in Revelation 1:18: 'I am the living one, behold I was dead but now I am alive for ever and ever.'

Also, I think Revelation is a fantastic place to explain to post moderns (or post post moderns) the big picture of relationship with God from, as the writer paints the meta-narrative of life so spectacularly in such big impressionistic brush strokes.

We hope to have a better edited version up later in the week.

In the meantime here are the links: outline | video | audio