Lines

One-liners — short, sayable lines I want to make sure land during the lesson. Each line carries an idea I'd rather not paraphrase on the fly.

Series focus statement (per Frank's packet)

Jesus First! Crucified In Love, Raised In Power, Reigning Forever As King.

Lines

• JESUS FIRST doesn't just mean a quiet time first thing in the morning. (Setup for the move to pre-eminence and eternality — Jesus first as ontological reality, not just devotional habit. Plays directly off the series focus statement above.)

• I know He created all things, and He even restores or recreates, but I forget that he sustains all things. Thought: Col. 1:17 added color.

• I don't hold things together — but I try to. (working phrasing — final wording TBD) Thought: Col. 1:17 says He holds all things together. I don't. I try to, and that's the joke and the ache of it. Lends itself to illustration / example / story (parenting, calendar, marriage, the body breaking down, the tightening grip of control), but also speaks for itself if delivered plain. Fill in the verbatim line once it lands.

• Isn't He amazing? Isn't He supreme? Thought: Let's worship God. Haha. I love focusing on Jesus with others. And they always respond by being mutually edified and encouraged when I do this. It gets our relational circuits flowing. And it focuses the eyes on Jesus Christ. Who He is!

Reservoir — quotes I might draw from

Brooke Ligertwood — Worship in the Word: Foundations of Reverence, Episode 1: "Creator and Creation"

On God's eternality:

"God eternally and self-sufficiently forever was, forever is, and forever will be."

"He was at the beginning because He was before the beginning. There was never a moment when God did not exist."

On preeminence:

"Preeminence is basically just a fancy word for God's firstness. He is first in all things. First in honour, first in power, first in worth."

"God is not only first in the sense of being prior to all things, but He is also first in importance. He reigns supreme in power, priority, and worth, surpassing all others in every conceivable way."

Worth → worship bridge:

"Because God is both eternal and preeminent first … He is worthy — or to use a more common word, deserving — of our worship. In fact, the word worth is precisely where we get the word worship."

Source: creatr course 2191260964 / transcript 9n6btu66d1.

Rob Bell — Everything Is Spiritual (2016 Tour Film)

On scientists describing the big-bang singularity:

"In the beginning was a point. The general belief among scientists is that the universe [is] expanding from that single point for the past 13.8 billion years. [...] A single point, a boom, and then 13.8 billion years of ongoing creation. Now, when you read what scientists say about this point, they get downright poetic. They say things like, a single point of infinite density containing all the compressed mass space-time of the universe. [...] A sextillion-ton pinprick of cataclysmic energy. And my personal favorite description of this point, an ineffable singularity of stupendous fecundity."

Source: expansion/rob_bell/Rob Bell - Everything is Spiritual (2016 Tour Film).txt. YouTube: JT09JbaEh_I.

Francis of Assisi (traditionally attributed) — on integrity of walk and word

"It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."

Source: epigraph to Bryan Loritts's session in The Art of Teaching workbook (_reusable/art_of_teaching_workbook.md). Attribution caution: widely quoted as Francis of Assisi but historians regard most "Francis-said" preaching quotations as apocryphal — the sentiment matches his life and the Franciscan tradition, but a direct primary source is hard to pin down. If you cite, "in the Franciscan tradition" or "long attributed to Francis" is safer than a flat attribution.

Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed — on identity vs reputation

"Our reputation (what others think of us) is not as important as our identity (who we really are)."

Companion sentence (the spiritual-formation extension):

"Spiritual formation begins when we untangle reputation and identity, and when what God thinks of us is more important than what we think of ourselves or what others think of us."

Source: Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed, Ch. 8 "Joseph: The Story of Reputation" — local copy commentaries/mcknight_jesus_creed.md line 2148; extracts at commentaries/mcknight_jesus_creed_extracts_v2.md §2.5. McKnight develops the move further: God himself "loses his reputation" in choosing parents with bad reputations for his Son — and ultimately in the "reputation-losing death of his very Son on a cross." That pairs naturally with v.20 if it ever surfaces in delivery.

N.T. Wright — the church embodies what it extends (paired statements)

Wright makes the same move in both books, with his signature "put to rights" vocabulary. Two angles on a single claim: the reconciled become reconcilers; the healed become agents of healing.

From the outside-in (Simply Christian):

"From the very beginning, in Jesus' own teaching, it has been clear that people who are called to be agents of God's healing love, putting the world to rights, are themselves to be people whose own lives are put to rights by the same healing love."

Source: N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, ch. 15 — extracts at commentaries/wright_simply_christian_extracts.md.

From the inside-out (How God Became King):

"Those who are put right with God through the cross are to be putting-right people for the world. Justification is God's advance putting right of men and women, against the day when he will put all things right, and thereby constituting the justified people as the key agents in that latter project."

Source: N.T. Wright, How God Became King, ch. 10 — extracts at commentaries/wright_how_god_became_king_extracts.md.

The HGBK phrasing ("putting-right people for the world") is the punchier of the two; the Simply Christian phrasing is more lyrical. Both pair naturally onto v.20 — "to reconcile to himself all things… through the blood of his cross" — those reconciled become reconcilers.