Highlights from jesus manifesto (the book) - pt. 1

I posted my after-reading summary of Leonard Sweet & Frank Viola's book 'Jesus Manifesto' in a post HERE. I still think it's odd that the book entitled "Jesus Manifesto" has a website at thejesusmanifesto.com, and the group "The Jesus Manifesto" has a website at jesusmanifesto.com (or is it the other way around?). At any rate, I guess that's what friends are for.

So, here are some of the highlights from my reading of Sweet & Viola's 'Jesus Manifesto':

• p. xxii - "Conversion is more than a change in direction; it's a change in connection."
• p. xxii - "The world likes Jesus; they just don't like the church. But increasingly, the church likes the church, yet they don't like Jesus."
• p. xxiii - "...three features are present in every awakening in the history of the Christian church: (1) a rediscovery of the "living Word," or the Scriptures and its authority; (2) a rediscovery of the living Christ and His supremacy; and (3) a rediscovery of the living Spirit and the Spirit's gifts and power to manifest Christ in the context of that culture."
• p. xxiv - "...Jesus quizzed Peter with one ultimate question, and only one. And that one decisive question is the same one he asks us today. It is not, 'Are you ready to accept leadership status in My church?' It is not, 'How many people did you lead to Me?' It is not 'Have you spoken in tongues yet?' It is not, 'Is leadership your passion?' It is not, 'To whom will you be accountable?' It is not, 'Are you doing better than the best you can do so God will be happy with you?' And it is not, 'Will you surround yourself with people who have leadership potential and will make you look good?' The question is only this: 'Do you love Me?'
• p. xxvi - "The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time." Ludwig Wittgenstein
• p. 2 - "God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ."
• p. 8-9 - "Jesus Christ makes Scripture intelligible... the entire story of Israel is the story of the Messiah, Jesus. Christ is the new Israel, the new Jacob..." (and onto p. 9).
• p. 20 - "The characteristic of Christianity lies in the fact that its source, depth, and riches are involved with the knowledge of God's Son. It matters not how much we know of methods or doctrines or power. What really matters is the knowledge of the Son of God." (Watchman Nee).
• p. 20 - "To our minds, there is one reason why a Christian would not be absolutely occupied and consumed with Christ. That person's eyes have not been opened to see His greatness."
• p. 20 - "The need today is for the scales to fall from our eyes so that we may see the infinite goodness of our Lord."
• p. 23 - "We have met countless 'Bible-believing Christians' who would say, 'Yeah, Jesus is Lord and Savior. I got that T-shirt long ago. But we must now mature, go deeper, and go on to other things.' Go deeper? And what 'other things?' Other things beyond Christ? Is there anything deeper than Christ?... The person who believes that a Christian or a church can graduate beyond Christ has never fully seen the Jesus that Paul of Tarsus preached and declared."
• p. 25 - "In times of crisis, the church doesn't need rules established, laws passed, or wolves shot. She needs a seismic revelation of her Lord - the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form."
• p. 25 - "Some preachers need a travel agent to handle all the guilt trips they put on God's people."
• p. 26 - "God hadn't sent a Ruler of the rules, a Regulator of the regulations, a Pontiff of the pontifications, or a Principal of the principles. He had sent the very embodiment of divine fullness."
• p. 29 - "The Creator became the creature to make peace with an alienated creation."
• p. 34 - "Jesus Christ is like a vast ocean. He is too immense to fully explore, and too rich to fathom. You are like a bottle. The wonder of the gospel is that the bottle is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the bottle."
• p. 39 - "In a church that is filled with leader-oholics, justice-oholics, commandment-oholics, and doctrine-oholics, it is essential that we comprehend how Paul understood his calling as an apostle. For Paul, his apostolate was not to advance a defining array of doctrines or a checklist of propositions. As far as he was concerned, our faith is not even a relationship with a set of doctrines or commandments./ Christianity is a relationship with Jesus the Christ. When things go wrong, it's not because we don't understand certain doctrines or fail to follow particular commands. It's because we have lost our 'first love'... or never had it in the first place..."
• p. 41 - "Do you know your Lord as we have presented Him? Can you proclaim Him as Paul did in Colossians? Can you set God's people on fire with the same magnificent unveiling of Jesus?/ If not, you will always be tempted to motivate God's people with lower things: principles, rules, regulations, religious duty, shame, fear, and guilt. You will continue to preach 'things' instead of HIM."