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Paul Miller

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.

Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Liz and Jon interview our Student Ministry Director, Robert Row, and Mid-Atlantic Coordinator, Christian Graham. 
"I do think the tide is turning, and there's a shift in the middle of the coming generation, in the younger half of it. I wouldn't describe them as an anxious generation anymore. I'd describe them as a generation that's bringing revival to the country, to our country. I can't speak to it necessarily around the world, but I know it's happening here."
 "We have to be ready, because this generation is bringing revival in some really beautiful ways." 
"It seems that evangelism has been based on how much knowledge you have, so that you can answer all the questions that come at you. But we're really training students to study God's Word by asking good questions and then to enter into these interactive studies. Jesus is the King of question-asking, and before he even says a word, you have wise men and shepherds, who come experience this Messiah laying in a manger and then go tell others."

[ADVENT 2025] 2. Fresh Faith Among Students with Robert Row and Christian Graham

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!"

[ADVENT 2025] 1. The Drumroll of Hope with Jill Miller

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."

[SPECIAL] How to Lead a Prayer Meeting

This is the third episode in a series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes will be excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori, Liz Voboril and Keith Grant. To view upcoming webinars, visit seejesus.net/events. 
 
"Sometimes it's hard for us to get into touch with what the Apostle Paul was like as a person because he's either so exalted that he's almost Jesus number 2, or he just kind of floats. I want to drill down a little bit in into this particular way that Paul has of looking at life."
 "Paul is not an optimist, he's a realist." 

 "Paul sees life exactly as it is. When Paul was on that Damascus Road, he was stunned by the presence of the resurrected Jesus—the blazing light of the risen Savior—and that blazing light is still with him in his prison cell.

[HOPE] 3. Hunting for Resurrection

This is the second episode in a new series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes will be excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori and Liz Voboril. To view upcoming webinars, visit seejesus.net/events. 
 
"One of the tendencies that we have as believers is to edit our prayers to get them all balanced and it can freeze people. There's a real beauty in beginning with what's on your heart. It doesn't mean that doesn't have to be reshaped and grown, but you've got begin with what's on your heart."
 "The gospel gives us permission to be ourselves. That doesn't mean that ourselves don't need some work, we all know that, but it lets us sort of relax." 

 "I've likened this tendency to a kind of a perfectionism with prayer to creating an avatar. You create a spiritual being that you aren't and try to get that person to pray right. When you're no longer yourself, as messy as you may be, then you can't connect with God because it's not the real you connecting with the real God."

[HOPE] 2. Praying Under Quarantine

This is the first episode in a new series called Hope and Direction in a Time of Crisis. These episodes will be excerpted from free webinars hosted by Paul Miller and conversation partners Jon Hori and Liz Voboril. To view upcoming webinars, visit seejesus.net/events. 
 
"We're separated from this text by 2,000 years, but you can feel Paul's emotions. They are vivid. Emotions are a function of what it is to be human. It's kind of a human flourishing you're looking at. Human flourishing is not escaping or being pulled somehow above the emotions of life. Paul is completely embedded in love in the hearts of the Thessalonians. They are on his heart, so therefore he feels anxiety. It normalizes good anxiety."
 "Anxiety is like anger. It is potentially sinful. But it's not inherently sinful. That's the simplest way to say it." 

 "We tend to put anxiety and human flourishing in two different buckets, as if they are enemies of one another. What dying and rising with Jesus does it mixes the buckets. It puts them together. In fact, it's anxiety, a life of stuff coming at you, that is the way you get to know Jesus. The things that are making me anxious are my door to knowing Jesus. And that's true human flourishing: being in Jesus."

[HOPE] 1. Anxious Yet Flourishing

In this final episode in our Lenten series, we turn our attention to the resurrection.
 
"The way Jesus announces [his resurrection] is pure Jesus. We discover that Jesus has been just standing there quietly with Mary, saying nothing. I love that. It's so like him to just be present with Mary. Generally speaking the more powerful our voice is, the more market share we have in a conversation, the more we use that. No one has more market share than Jesus. No one has more powerful voice, and yet he's the quietest person in the room."
 "Jesus's sign is his spent-ness." 

 "Jesus's sign is his spent-ness. He loves to the very the end, the Telos. He's completely drained of everything at the end of his life. His scars, his wounds, reveal the completeness of his love. And for us, it's our scars that bind us to Christ and that reveal Christ in us to others. Christianity is not some sort of scar management or plastic surgery. That would be taking the American dream and draping it over true Christianity and missing the real thing."

[JESUS' PASSION] 4. The True Gardener and His Sign

Jesus doesn't say he's troubled in spirit. John, who is just to his right, picks it up. If you are aware of someone—you love them, or you are just an astute observer of people—you can tell when they are anxious. I think this is one of three references that John has to Jesus' anxiety. And they are all surrounding the passion. What I love about it is that it normalizes anxiety. So much of our modern world either tries to escape anxiety or feels guilty about it. But Jesus was anxious."
 "If you are a lover of people, and I mean that in the broadest sense of the biblical love, it's going to lead you into tension." 

 "What I love about this whole scene [when Judas and the Jewish leaders arrive at Gethsemane], is that when you put it all together, Jesus is like Bruce Lee or Jason Bourne. Everything's a weapon. He's rebuking, loving, protecting, challenging, healing, commanding. He is the prince of peace. So this person that we saw all agitated is in complete command of himself. Even now he's probably feeling anxiety, but he's not trapped by his emotions. He is a vibrant lover of the people around him. And that's what makes the passion so beautiful. The camera has moved to slow motion on Jesus life we can see incident after incident where Jesus is loving, rebuking, caring, comforting, lamenting. He's showing us what it is to be a person."

[JESUS' PASSION] 3. Love Under Pressure

"God in his wisdom is kind of bringing a poverty on the entire world. It's striking, especially in America. We have a Declaration of Independence so it's written in to our seminal documents that we should not be constricted by anybody. And yet God is constricting us."
 "I'm not saying the virus is a beautiful thing, but all suffering for those of us who are in Christ can be drawn up into the dying of Jesus." 

 "The only way he can make us weak is to overload all our well-oiled systems. And that's what's happening in all of our lives to different extents. And we are surrounded by people who are also overloaded. People are losing their work, coming under financial stress. So it's not only something that teaches us to love, it opens up doors, opportunities to love."

[SPECIAL] How We're Thinking and Praying about COVID-19

In this episode, we look at how Jesus' sadness as he nears the cross is another window into his personhood.
 
"It really is true that Jesus is present. He's present with not only their rejection of him but with himself. He's comfortable being sad. And I don't think as Christians we're that comfortable or we hear much teaching on the negative emotions."
 "It's just a remarkable window into Jesus heart that he's looking outside of himself at a time like this." 

 "One of the neat things about Jesus' sadness is that he doesn't get self-entangled. That is, if there's a problem in Christianity with stoicism, in the broader culture there's increasingly this problem of getting self-entangled in your grief. If emotions can be a bit suppressed within Christianity, within the broader culture they have almost become sacred."

[ADVENT 2025] 2. Fresh Faith Among Students with Robert Row and Christian Graham

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