Blog

By Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

To Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way we must honor the One who said " Let there be Light"

Let there be Light.

Let His light shine through you brighter and brighter until all who know you know that He lives in and shines through you.

He is Jesus and I am Bill Lawrence  and I want His light to shine through me and all who learn from me. My aim is to introduce a blog to you that I am calling Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way in which I teach biblical truth from both the Old and New Testament. Each blog will have a specific title based on the passage I am covering  . In each blog I want you to understand how Jesus lived so you can live the Jesus way and shine the Jesus light through you because He lives in you and through you if you know Him. And if you don't know Him I want to introduce Him to you through this blog and those that follow so you can have eternal life and begin to live His way through the Holy Spirit.

First I want you to know that Jesus learned the Word God,

He learned the Old Testament as He quoted it, proclaimed it, taught it, and behaved as it commanded.

He modeled what became the Gospels as He taught His men and seekers like Nicodemus (John 3) and the unexpecting questioners, like the woman at the well (John 4).

He demonstrated it in the book of Acts as He worked through the proclaimers in the Roman Empire.

He inspired the Epistles as He worked through Paul, Peter, James, and John as well as the writer in the book of Hebrews.

He dictated The Revelation to the Apostle John when he was on the island of Patmos, in his final word to us, recorded in the last book in the Bible.

This means that these writings are all  biblical truths, and the Christian life is an expression of God’s grace. And through God’s word I want you to experience what it is to know the total fullness of God’s grace because the Bible is all about God’s grace.

But I want to speak now of what I call Learn ‘n Live, that has a two-fold emphasis.

That is why I must focus on teaching biblical truth that you may already know or will be learning and at some point soon, I hope, teaching truth as marked by great insight, content that relates to life and reality as we know it. This is the truth that Jesus learned as a boy and lived in His daily life first as a carpenter and then as a disciple maker when He was one of us and learned  to understand life through His radical desperate dependence on the Holy Spirit.

Learn this insight, the core knowledge, the reality we need to mull over in our minds over and over again as we consider what the facts are and what they mean in our thinking from what these facts mean as they go deep in our thinking.

The second vital emphasis I want is for us to live according to the Old Testament as we face our deepest fears, the truth about us that we keep secret, especially from those we lead, because we cannot live the Jesus way unless we are free from our fears. We don't want anyone to know the struggles we wrestle with and won't face that we must face if we are to be used by Jesus. This is why Jesus called Peter Satan because Satan was having an impact in Peter, and Jesus wanted to deliver him from the evil one. The problem with this reality in our lives is that when we keep it secret we also commit sin, and it is keeping us from being used by the Lord as His leader, so we must face it. Otherwise He must make it known so we will desperately turn to Him and discover the freedom that is ours in Him. Thus He will treat us exactly the same way He treated Peter whom He called Satan, not because he was owned by Satan but because the evil one could use him unless he faced the struggles in his life. Thus the Lord, who sees, all will make our secrets known, not for our shame, but because Calvary was a public reality and the resurrection became public, and His grace is public, and He wants all He has done for you to be known by all to be public so He can use you publicly in powerful ways to make the difference He wants to make in the lives your influence. So it is that He treats us exactly the same way He treated Peter.

This is true because you are the are the ones who work to Learn ‘n Live the Jesus Way in

Satan’s World because living the Jesus way is the only way we can make a difference for Him in our generation.

Thus it is that I am introducing this blog to you.

Learn and Live the Jesus Way--and we do this in Satan's world

These two realities will constantly be in our thinking as I make them central to all I say. Thus it is that

             You are nothing becoming something by God’s grace.

             You are nobody becoming somebody according to God’s purpose.

             You are unvaluable becoming valuable through God’s enablement.

And the cross is at the center of all that our Lord does in our lives as He is working in us and blessing us and preparing us for eternity because He is coming to take us to be with Him forever.

So what else can we say but what we all want? We want Jesus to come. Think of what He said:

I am coming quickly!

 Amen.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

The greatest crisis in the world today is a crisis of leadership

and the crisis of leadership is a crisis of character.

                        --Howard Hendricks

The greatest crisis in the world today is the heart of all that I am dealing in leaders now.

I am Bill Lawrence, once a pastor in San Jose, CA, then a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, and then an international mentor in multiple countries around the world. I have struggled to learn as much as I could and I now seek to share  some aspects of truth with all who will join me through three kinds of Blogs that I am calling Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way, From the Most Unwanted to the Most Wanted, and The Open Door.

Along the way I have discovered that the best way to lead is to stand and walk and talk on your knees. Prayer is the greatest weapon you will ever have, and I ask you to join me in prayer as we consider these three blogs designed to strengthen your weakness--the weakness you share with me because I too am weak--through the strength of Jesus as we are enabled together by the Holy Spirit. I will overview each of my blogs as I introduce them and then present them one-by-one as the Lord guides me in the indefinite future.

Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way

This is a serious Bible study done as I believe Jesus must have done, verse by verse, paragraph by para-graph, situation by situation related to life as we live it with an emphasis on the thorough consideration of multiple portions of the text in both the Old and New Testaments. I will introduce it in an overview blog and then go to Philippians 2 where we can focus on thinking in light of Paul's exhortation to think as Jesus thought. Nothing could be more relevant to leading the Jesus way of leading than to think as He thought. From there we will go to many different passages and see life and the needs we face as we consider the specific issues we face and strive to approach them His way and determine to carry out His will as we see it. We will study how He related to His men as He exhorted them, comforted them, confronted them, taught them, even pleaded with them to be His disciples. Lead those you are directing in the same way He did as you Learn 'n Live the Jesus way--and never forget you do this in Satan's world. He is clever, implying that he is giving life to each generation as he actually influences them to receive his reward of death.

From the Most Unwanted to the Most Wanted

I can never escape from the fact that I was once the most unwanted, a child with neither mother nor father, although it seemed that I somehow might have had both unseen in the silent Lord. Yet the only option for me was either adoption or an orphanage. Could there have been a worse fate than an orphanage? And then I had wonderful adopted parents who did not want me to grow up. They wanted me to stay the little boy I was when they brought me into their lives and they did everything they could to keep me that way. But the sovereign God who was silent through adoption remained publicly silent in my teen age years only to show up in power and impact in my twenties and demonstrate that He had been worked behind the curtains all along. And I know the same is true for you even though so much is missing in your life right now. I want you to know about God's grace and His faithfulness and the One who said, Let there be light, is working now even when you can't see Him to bring Amazing Grace in your life. My passion is for you--and my blog will say this over-and-over. Just remember that the rush by word now is often the introduction of the amazing action of the sovereign Lord YAHWEH.

The Open Door

Despite all that we know about God, there were times when life is senseless and confusing, and there is no word for anything that is going on. You just get up and go on through the day doing what you need to do with no insight or understanding of what YAHWEH is doing, just another day. How do you make any sense out of this? That's when you need to walk through the open door, close the door, move into the small room or down be-side your bed, and get down on your knees or at least sit down and wonder, Is there any reason for this? Why am I alive? What is the reason for all of this? Is there a in the word for any of this?

I will try at least to give you something to think about. Something to consider. Something that may give you some perspective that will help you or find someone close to you or even a stranger who has great needs you can meet and you discover that the greatest way you can meet your needs is to meet someone else's needs.

So I say to you go through the Open Door and see what need it meets or where it takes you. After all a new discovery often overcomes all your old needs.

A dark moment in life may take you to a small candle light or a sudden bright brilliance or a kind of insight or a question that you can think about or even an answer that meets your needs in a new way. Something done differently any way.

So those are the blogs that lie ahead for you. These are thoughts to mull over. Plans to consider. Ideas to brew over. Actions you can take for others. Maybe you can start blogs for yourself and those you influence in different ways. YAHWEH can use these insights and hopes you that could fulfill. Get started. Why knows how God can bring blessings in your life.

Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

I am rather startled when I hear believers ask, what would Jesus do, as if we don’t already know what He is doing.

How can we not know what He is doing when He made it more than obvious by His very actions what He does? What He does is exactly the same as what He did when He was here on earth.  All we have to do to know what He is doing is to read the Gospels. The issue is not what He would  do, as if that is uncertain or unclear or indefinite or some kind of a mystery. The reality is that is more than clear. All we have to do is to look at what He did on the cross with two sinners and realize that this is what He will do with all sinners. After all, a sinner is a sinner, and His response to those two sinners is exactly the same as His response is to all sinners.

There were two sinners who died with Him, two sinners and those two sinners represent all sinners. They were not special sinners. They were simply ordinary sinners, two men condemned to pay the price for their sin on that day with Jesus who represent all sinners because they were like all other sinners. They sinned. That’s all there was to it. They did what sinners do. They acted out of their own interests the way all sinners act out of their own interests. They acted for themselves. Only their actions were above the ordiary everyday sin. Undoubtedly they started out in small ways, as we all do. But their sin got bigger and bigger and bigger. At some point they got caught in extra ordinary sin. They paid some kind of penalty, but the penalty must not have been big enough that the only way to stop them from sinning was to take their life away from them. They faced the death penalty. And they hung on across, one on the right and the other on the left side of the sinless Jesus.

It is at this point that we see, not what Jesus would do, but what Jesus does. He offers forgiveness to both of them and gives it to the one who accepts it.

So we see that forgiveness is available for all, but is only given to those who accept it.

Thus it is that I give you two steps as we stand before the cross of Jesus.

The first is to offer forgiveness to any who have not accepted it.

Even though you may not be as sinful as the thief on the cross, all of us have sinned, and none of us is as righteous as the Lord Himself. Thus we need to trust Jesus for eternal life. It’s amazing how overtly Jesus dealt with sin on the cross. Yet to see it directly confronted and at the same time completely overcome is still overwhelming. After all, that’s why He was there. But we must still realize that con-demnation was replaced by forgiveness for all who will receive it. This is why I plead with you if you have not yet received it to accept forgiveness now and know what it is to have eternal life.

There were two men on the cross with Jesus, and both of them, like us, deserved the penalty they received. One was bitter beyond belief, but the other knew they deserved to be there and said so (Luke 23:39-42). He said to Jesus, Jesus, remember me when You come in your kingdom. Jesus responded to him, Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in paradise. So it is with you. If you confess your sin and acknowledge the reality that you, like all of us, are a sinner, you are in a place to be forgiven. The Lord who died for you wants to cleanse you if you will call on Jesus to redeem you now and forgive you, you have eternal life, and He lives in you and enables you to bear eternal fruit in temporal form. So now I plead with you to trust  Jesus for eternal life. If you refuse to make this decision all you have is eternal death. All your wealth, all your position, all your power, all your fame, everything you have is gone the moment you leave temporal life and enter eternal reality. This is why I plead with you to realize that Jesus died for you, that He now lives for you, that He wants to give you eternal life, and that is yours if you will trust Him.

Thus I ask you to join that thief on the cross who recognized Him as the one who offered Him eternal life and invite Him to be your Savior, the one who will and give you the forgiveness that He died to give you.

The second step I ask you to take is for you who have accepted the forgiveness given to you, even if you have just done it now. That means you have also been given eternal life. The fact that you have been given forgiveness and eternal life means you have freedom, great freedom from hiding sin in the corners and closets of your life. That in turn, means you don’t have the fear that anyone will find out things about you that you don’t want them to know. You don’t have to hide anything from anyone any more. You do have privacy, but that’s different from secrecy. You have a right to privacy, the right to have well selected leaders who share the truths that make you who your are. That’s very different from the secrecy of sin. You have a new privacy that builds you and strengthens you as a leader to step forward with confidence as you lead the followers the Lord gives to make a difference through His insight and grace.

Now live eternal life even as you continue to live temporal life. Everything you do now bears His fruit if you trust Him and live life His way through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus it is that you need to grow through the power of the Spirit and bear the fruit of the Spirit and have the impact of Jesus through you as you fulfill His reason for being here on earth. While you are here to have your family, be part of your church, pursue a career, impact your community, and influence the part of the world the Lord gives to you, you bring all of this together and make disciples.

You see, we are here on earth to Jesus’s place. Thus He works His way through us as we

Love each other—even those we don’t like

Abide in Jesus—through radical, desperate dependence on Him

and

Make disciples

By Bill Lawrence, 

President of  Leader Formation International

. . . and it was night.

John 13:30

Have you ever thought of how much Jesus loved Judas Iscariot, His apparent disciple, the treasurer of the twelve, the betrayer who sold Him to the Jerusalem persecutors?

Think of how John remembered that night sixty years later. He wanted the world as he knew it to grasp how amazing the love of Jesus is. He loves even those who reject Him. I cannot help but reach out to any who read this who have not yet received our Lord as the One who died on Calvary for you. His death is your death; His life is your life; His offer of salvation is your opportunity to receive salvation.

Read on and know that there is Light, special, unique, spiritual Light. Don’t stumble in the darkness. Turn to the Light and find the Life that is yours while you still can.

I am now going back to a man named John who was one of twelve men who were in the Upper Room, in a house in Jerusalem, gathered together for the Passover supper with Jesus 2,000 years ago. Jesus was their leader, and they had been together for nearly three years traveling in northern Israel, then south to Jerusalem, then back up to Galilee. When they gathered together for this Passover meal Jesus took off His outer garment, wrapped a towel around himself, and washed their feet, which was very uncommon for a host to do. 

One of the twelve was named Judas Iscariot, who was about to become the betrayer, the one who had been with them for virtually three years, and who appeared to be so committed to them that he was totally trusted by all to keep their money as their treasurer. He was one of them, one who took care of the funds that impacted every one of them. Jesus was about to die on Calvary for all of them. Including Judas Iscariot, the treasurer-traitor.

He heard Peter ask a question all of them had, but only Simon the fisherman asked. He heard Jesus say they were clean, but He had to know Judas wasn’t clean. How could he, who was about to sell the Carpenter and their Leader to the Roman authorities, possibly be clean? Still Jesus died for him. And John made that point for all who read his word, a point that he will make clearer in just  a few words.

He first states the vital truth that Jesus declared Himself to be the amazing I AM, the YAHWEH of the Old Testament who became the flesh of time and eternity, who is available for all who want Him.

Having made that point Jesus continues revealing Himself.

He is troubled in spirit, deep in Himself, and He expresses the intensity of His inner self by declaring, Truly, truly (absolutely it is true, it is true), I say to you (I TELL you absolutely), one of you will betray Me.

From the very core of His being He tells them—and us—that one of them will betray Me.

None of them could figure this out. They would never do this. They just can’t believe that any one of them would ever betray Him. He was their Leader, the One who was going to make them powerful over Rome and give them the Empire. It doesn’t make sense. So even though he is not identified by name John is called on out of his unique relationship with Jesus to ask Him who could that possibly be? And Jesus identifies him, but they still don’t grasp who it was.

Thus he tells us at this point in his writing what he did not grasp in the darkest moment of one of the most brilliant Light in the Upper Room. 

At this point I call on all who pray for those who live in darkness that they will turn to the Light. There are many who profess to belong to the Light but who only offer darkness, and those who have known them have been impacted by them and hear about the Light but only see the darkness. As a result they have rejected the Light and do not respond to the Light at all. This is tragic for them, and the evil one is having his way, which is a tragedy for all involved. The only solution to this is a life of gentleness, kindness, gracious words, and much prayer. Let prayer shine the Light through your lives and look for the opportunity to shine the Light through unstated actions rather than useless lectures, speeches, and sermons. Don’t drive the unreachable away. Be gracious, kind, and supportive, and pray your way forward. Lectures will only drive you further away until you are unwelcome at every turn. Though the evil one often masks the Light he cannot turn Him away if we radically and desperately—and gently—bear the fruit of John 15 that is the mark of His love, and our lives will make a difference in ways we don’t realize. All of this is seen in the amazing love of Calvary and the Light of resurrection.

Jesus loves me. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves even the most sinful you ever know. How do you know? For the Bible tells you so. We are weak, but He IS strong, and He will exercise His strength through us to strive to reach even Judas Iscariot. Jesus did all He could do to reach Judas before He sent him on his way to do the evil he was committed to do. Even he could not live with it and in the end and he ended his life with shame and self-imposed death.

So I say to all who have turned from the Light, Come back. Come back.

Let there be Light

The Light shines in the darkness—let the Light shine to you and then let the Light shine through you

By Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

Greetings.

My name is John, and I was once the youngest of the Apostles whom Jesus chose to be with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem for nearly three years, but now I’m the oldest of His men, just over ninety, the only one left after the cross. However, I am still able to communicate His truth and make Him known and write about Him. I have already written three short letters, now known to you as I, II, and III John, and I am also writing the Gospel of John, though it’s different from the other three Gospels, as you know. They were biograhies, all very accurate and uncommonly well done, but mine is focused on a set of signs and I want you to know that I remember very well and that I taught about in Jerusalem, Roman Asia, and now in Ephesus. I have just written them and now I am focused on our last night together when we were in the Upper Room as we gathered in Jerusalem and I am communicating about the cross, the resurrection, and our Lord’s commission.

Step back now as a reader and think of John the Apostle who became an elder in Ephesus. He remem- bered back to the Upper Room and what happened that fatal night sixty years before he wrote these wrods when Jesus spoke to them from His heart to His men, even the betrayer. Jesus had great passion for them as He worked through the struggle and tension of the opening words recorded for us in chapter thirteen when He dressed himself as a slave and strove to reach the betrayer only He had to give him up. Once He was forced to release him to his evil task, Jesus sought to reach the hearts of His men. Yet first He had to go to His own heart and give His passion to His men as He taught them to the depth of their beings. He starts with RADICAL Love as He washes His men’s feet and reaches out to them.

I wonder if John struggled as he wrote about that  painful night sixty years after Jesus, his best friend on earth, was very different than He had ever been. The host never took off his outer garments and put a towel around himself and got on his knees and washed his guests’ feet, yet this is exactly what Jesus did. Peter said what all of them surely felt, but only impetuous Peter had the impulse to say it. Lord, do you wash my feet , . .?

John had to struggle as he wrote his Gospel so long after his youth. His Gospel was different from the other three with seven signs and then an intense word in what we know as the Upper Room Discourse followed by Jesus’s prayer for a different way for Him to pay for sin. No, not the cross. No horrible suffering and pain. Surely there is another way to pay for sin!

The Apostle was thinking back to his youth when he was wrestling with tension, stress, and distress all at once. He would not have understood what he faced with his Friend as he was so intimate with him at the Passover meal the third time that they were together. He could not grasp what His Friend meant when He took off his outer garments and wrapped Himself with a towel and washed his feet. This was Jesus the promised Messiah who would overthrow the Roman Empire and rule the world, and he, John, along with the other twelve, would rule in Rome’s place. He remembered the stress that came upon him and he feels it once again even though he understood it sixty years later.

Think of what it must have been like to discover that a traitor was in your midst, that a man whom all of you trusted totally and you gave all of your funds to him and made him the treasurer of your move-ment, a man who shared your vision and your values and for whom you had high regard

I now ask you a question. Have you faced such a situation in your life?

It is impossible to think that you faced a situation like the cross, although some live in places where the government turned on you because you are a Christian. Some of you are in places where being a Christian has cost you more than anyone can possibly imagine.

Attack. Shame. Persecution. Hatred. Rejection. Even death.

We know that this is what the early believers faced starting with Jesus Himself and going to the first apostles and moving to early believers, known and unknown, and continuing to our very time. It has never ceased.

But there have been other struggles.

Rejection. Divorce. Mockery. Deception. Dishonesty. Cheating. Bribery

How does this impact you? Do you have memories from the past caused by someone you loved and trusted who turned in you and let you down? What do you do with such a person now? Do you dwell on those memories and allow them to be the center of your life?

Is there someone in your life who has had a profound role and has distorted your life? Has there been a Judas in your life who took advantage of you and took truths that matter to you and turned them against you so you had to pay a great price just to hang on to your life? That does happen to many when there is no just reason for it.

Or can it be that you have entered into uncertain leadership, and you’re not sure what you are going to actually accomplish? You’re like John, on the edge of loss more than gain and you don’t understand what God is allowing to happen to you? You do your best, but everything is uncertain and you’re not sure what you should do? Why isn’t life clearer? That can happen. Paul did trust the Lord, but surely he wanted to strengthen churches in Spain rather than be beheaded in Rome, yet he trusted Jesus.

John, like the early church’s leaders, had to deal with much uncertainty as they had to face overcoming attack and resistance as they made Jesus known. They took their risks, established their churches, built their elders, wrote their Gospels and epistles, and, eventually, The Revelation,  equip their elders, proclaimed their message, expanded their numbers, and while they were constantly resisted, they grew.

What about you? Are you seeing God work through you? Can you join John, even at ninety, and see the Lord of the cross and the grave work through the darkness of what looks like defeat. Can it actually be the resurrection of triumph? So it is that I finish with this question.

Is the darkness of defeat actually your resurrection of triumph through the resurrected Lord Jesus?

Think about it.