Tag Archives: advent

470-Time Extraction: Advent in the Next Five Minutes

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“If I told you that the Kingdom of God would be fully present to all of us within the next five minutes, how many of you would be skeptical?

In today’s podcast and post I conclude my Advent series by extracting the layer of time from our discussion of the Kingdom of God. I’ll show how the promised Kingdom not only started 2000 years ago, but fully present here and now, and why it’s Yelp reviews are so poor.

Join me now as I prove precisely why receiving the Kingdom is so difficult, and why we prefer the fictional heaven of religion instead.

469-Ritual Extraction: The Advent of Solitude

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“Why do you suppose that the Advent of the Kingdom of God began in the wilderness, twenty miles away from religion? Or is that a new consideration for you?

In today’s podcast and post, I teach how Religion has controlled the Advent narrative for a long time, and in doing so, has conflated the Kingdom of God with religion itself, thus imposing barriers to entry and rituals to get us “in.”

Join me now as I reconnect us to the authentic Advent experience of the Kingdom in which everyone exists already. Learn how we can possess both today, from the solitude of our own internal desert.

468-Emotional Extraction: True Advent Feels Wrong

“If the Biblical Advent goes beyond the nativity story to include John the Baptist “preparing the way,” and that “way” was not through religion, then why do you think people today are so emotionally threatened by John’s invitation to leave the religious industrial complex?

In today’s podcast and post, John the Baptist swings his axe and calls us into God’s kingdom which resides outside of religion in the desert.

Join me now as we deconstruct our emotional dissonance to John’s Gospel, which sounds so wrong when we first hear it.

467-Cranial Extraction: Advent NOT Nativity

“As we enter the Advent season, do you think the Nativity Scene best represents of the Advent of the Kingdom of God? Should churches use the Christmas season to attract more people to the Christian religion?

In today’s podcast and post I will reveal that the bible’s revelation of the Advent was an invitation out of religion, and not into it. 

Join me now as we examine how John the Baptist inaugurated a Kingdom and a message that was intended to be the end of religion, not the beginning of a new one.

412-The Advent of Unbelief

“Have you ever had a question or doubt about your religion or its view on the world? Have you ever felt oppressed or hurt by your system of faith?

In today’s podcast and post we conclude the second half of our Advent series by discussing how Christ appears to us through what religion calls…unbelief. 

Join me now as we see beyond the manipulative power plays that religion hoists upon us and explore how the Gospel never puts us into religion, and instead, the advent of Christ becomes that voice which leads us out.

323-The Advent for Hypocrites

“What does the Advent or Christmas have to do with self-deception?”

In this final Advent post on Christmas Eve, I want to peel off a thick layer of confusion or misunderstanding about the Advent, which religion has used to divide our world into sinners and saints. Be warned. Anyone who is unwilling or unable to see their own hypocrisy, will certainly reject this aspect of the Advent.

Join me now as we learn to see the Advent which lives beyond everything and why it is an undeniable, unescapable invitation into the freedom of authenticity, and why so many of us prefer to live a lie.

322-The Advent from Samaria

“What do you know about Samaria? How did such a city come to believe Jesus was the savior of the world?”

In today’s podcast and post we camp for another day in the story of the Samaritan woman. This time, I will dive into biblical history so that we can all see the message which lies hidden in with the plain sight of racial and religious tension.

Join me now as I reveal how Samaria is alive and well in our modern world and how it provides a path to peace which doesn’t require conversion to nor abandonment of any religion.

321-The Advent in our Unspectacular Life

“What is the Advent season? And what exactly are we waiting for?

For so many in our world, the Advent is like waiting for the Amazon truck to arrive. It’s the anticipation for something that which change our present circumstances. In today’s podcast and post, I will challenge this assumption and reveal that this isn’t the Advent at all.

Join me now as we learn to see Beyond Everything with a look at our mundane, unspectacular existence to see if we can find the true experience of Advent.

269- Skimming Over Advent

“Does anybody care about Advent?”

While our churches are talking about Advent, the rest of the world has long abandoned the liturgical calendar. The Christmas season is now commercial and has overridden our season of anticipation, but it’s even worse than that.

In today’s podcast and post, I recycle a post from years ago to refresh our consideration that the church is no longer anticipating the Savior of the World, but a dread warrior who is coming back to destroy rather than love his enemies.

Join me now as we see beyond our anticipation of the “End Times” and explore why we stopped believing that God will arrive through each one of us.

69- The God of Christmas.

 

What does is mean that God has come into the world? Is the nativity story the only time that has happened? If not, why is the birth of Jesus so emphasized in the church? In this conclusion of this Advent series I will explore the two common ways that the Jewish prophesy of Isaiah 9 is unfolding before us. It is my hope that by placing these two approaches next to each other, that you will intuit on a deep, soul level the difference between conversion and completion, and in doing so, discover that the God of Christmas has awakened all of our hearts.