THE WAY
A Revolutionary Curriculum
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Tim Timmons by visiting www.TimTimmons.com.
Copyright © 2016 by Tim Timmons
Published by Embers Press,
2618 San Miguel Dr., Newport Beach, CA 92660
The Way – A Revolutionary Curriculum
e-Book at www.timtimmons.com
Audio at www.timtimmons.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9842429-3-1
e-Book ISBN-13: 978-0-9842429-8-6
The Way © Cover & Interior Design by Mark & Kim Seigler
Edited by Rick Kurjan
Book edition September 2016
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other — except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Unless otherwise identified, all Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from, the New American Standard Bible® (nasb), copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, used by permission. Other versions used include: the Holy Bible, New International Version® (niv®). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®; and THE MESSAGE (msg), copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
VOLUME I: PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION
STUDY GUIDE 1: “SEE!”
StudySession#1 What Went Wrong?...The Problem!
StudySession#2 What Went Wrong?...The Solution!
StudySession#3 Jesus Is Good News for Everyone!
StudySession#4 Jesus Is Life’s Focal Point!
StudySession#5 The End Game Is to Change You & Your World!
StudySession#6 How to Experience the Presence of Jesus!
STUDY GUIDE 2: “FOLLOW!”
StudySession#1 The Revolutionary Call!
StudySession#2 Three Requirements for Being a Disciple!
StudySession#3 You Are the SALT of the Earth!
StudySession#4 You are the LIGHT of the World!
StudySession#5 Three Habits of Following Jesus!
StudySession#6 Five Ways to Show Jesus Off!
Postscript Why a Jesus Curriculum?
STUDY GUIDE 1: “SEE!”
INTRODUCTION
Study Session #1 - What Went Wrong?...The Problem!
Study Session #2 - What Went Wrong?...The Solution!
Study Session #3 - Jesus Is Good News for Everyone!
Study Session #4 - Jesus Is Life’s Focal Point!
Study Session #5 - The End Game Is to Change You & Your World!
Study Session #6 - How to Experience the Presence of Jesus!
THE WAY is the first in a series of small group studies.
THE WAY includes 4 Study Guides, each with 6 Study Sessions. These 24 studies are not written in the traditional study guide format, with one person being the teacher and the rest listening. Instead, they are designed to promote discussion and interaction within the context of a few people gathered together. This is based upon the conviction that "when two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus," Jesus will show up! This is a Jesus curriculum without political or religious agendas. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. We’re not talking about the religious Jesus. We’re talking about the most prominent and powerful person ever — just Jesus, simply the person of Jesus.
There’s something about Jesus without religious baggage — his words, his Spirit, his actions, his loving ways, his bent toward the disenfranchised, and even his name — that brings healing and wholeness. Jesus is truly the most effective person you can embrace for yourself. The Jesus movement is the fastest growing movement in the world today within every culture!
THE WAY is not just another Bible study or a lecture from one to the many;
it is a revolutionary way for everyone to participate and SEE Jesus personally. The ultimate purpose of THE WAY small group curriculum is to participate in the Jesus movement for the transformation of nations through love — loving God, loving one another, loving others, and even loving your enemies. It’s a revolution of love! The single-mindedness of THE WAY is to gather people together initially for personal transformation and then to change the world.
In the year 2002, a former communist, atheist guerilla fighter encountered Jesus while in political prison and found a new freedom. The same year, a former Christian pastor and author encountered Jesus while imprisoned by religiosity and was set free! THE WAY contains the principles that transformed their lives and set them free! THE WAY is not the invention of two men; it is the plan and practice of Jesus from the very beginning!
Begin your Jesus journey with THE WAY and invite others to walk with you.
STUDY SESSION #1
WHAT WENT WRONG?...The Problem!
In our fast-paced world, life feels out of control.
All over the world, there are common concerns and common issues that are identified as the major problems – greed; crime; cruelty; corruption; extremism and terror; moral deterioration; racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts; intolerance, etc. Families are not stable. Relationships are not lasting. Most people are dissatisfied or, at least, uncertain about what is happening! The moral ground of right and wrong is shifting. It’s more and more difficult to trust the governmental, religious, and corporate institutions. These concerns and issues are found in all the nations and communities without exception. They only vary in levels, scopes, or sophistications!
In our personal lives, we are unhappy. As a global society we have lost our way and desperately need to find the way back on track. We want to change our lives, our surroundings, and our nations. We want to make a difference in the world. We want peace, reconciliation, and social progress to prevail. But oftentimes we don’t know the way. We tried many ways, but failed. Nothing seems to work. As a result, most embrace the herd mentality, because it’s familiar and seems safe. The need to belong is stronger than the drive to dare to make a difference, so go along to get along becomes the theme. In summary, many things about our personal lives are wrong. Many things about our relationships are wrong and almost everything around the world is going wrong.
Let’s further examine these in the following three areas: Personal, Relational, and Global.
✎ What things come to mind where you see that we have lost our way?
✎ Where do you feel the most pressure to go along with the crowd to get along?
✎ How is your life working for you? Are you still trying to figure out how to live life to the fullest?
1. WHAT IS WRONG IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES
No matter our status in life — financial, relational, professional — there is only one thing that really matters: Is our life working for us? Is what we are doing getting us what we really want?
When life isn’t working, and when a low-grade depression sets in as a result, where do we turn in times like these? What is it that we can hang on to, when we find ourselves saying, “Why?” “Why me?” or “Why now?” How do we obtain a sense of guidance?
The most natural thing to do is to blame something, anything, for what’s not working. We may deeply blame ourselves. Or, better yet, it’s easy to blame someone else for our predicament. And, when our lives aren’t working, our lives are out of control, and when our lives are out of control, we will find ourselves in a swirl of fear, anger, guilt, shame, loss of purpose and destiny, hopelessness, worry.
✎ Who or what do you blame most often when things aren’t going your way?
“FEAR”
When our future is out of control, we will have fear. Every day when we wake up, we are blasted with the message that there is something fearful out there or in our own minds that can harm us or bring inevitable disaster upon us.
To mention a few examples:
“ANGER”
When our present is out of control, we will have anger. People and circumstances just aren’t doing what we want them to do and are out of control:
In addition to the people and circumstances that are out of control, there is one more thing that continues to fuel anger in our minds. It might be called brain-chatter. Here is how it works. We tend to do the following: Expect the worse. Personalize everything. Live by the power of the “shoulds,” shoulding ourselves to death. Specialize in mind-reading games, thinking we know what’s really going on. Take in criticism and block out compliments. See everything in terms of black and white. Compare, compare, compare. Overgeneralize — always and never! Blame and attack. Insist that nothing be changed. We must always be right and never, ever wrong. Thinking this way is guaranteed to fuel our anger!
Anger occurs when we are frustrated with our present being out of control. Life just gets out of control no matter which way we turn.
“GUILT”
When our past is out of control, it’s usually due to guilt. Dealing with our past can be so destructive. Most tend to dwell on the past so much that it becomes impossible to move forward. Some spend so much time focusing on the past that they just can’t see anything else. They are stuck there. It’s like having a rearview mirror that is larger than our windshield. We have to stick our heads out of our windows to see where we are going. Our past blocks the way of our present and our future, and that’s dangerous!
What must happen is to take the past out of our present and future and put it back into the past where it belongs. But this, in itself, is not enough. You see, we might think we are burying our past, but when we bury it alive, our past will nag and haunt us, working toward our destruction. Somehow we have to do something to put our past to death, and then our past will be under control.
The theme of being out of control continues! Fear appears when our future is out of control. Anger shows up when our present is out of control. And, guilt gnaws away at our gut when our past is out of control. All three of these render us paralyzed, damaged, and ineffective.
“SHAME”
There is a fourth kind of paralysis — shame. Shame is the residue of having been seized by fear, anger, and guilt. It manifests itself in a similar way as a low-grade infection — even a low-level depression. Shame is a contamination of your personness — a blight that leaves you feeling inadequate or feeling not good enough.
With shame it’s not that our past, present, or future is out of control, but we are out of control; we are like a small boat that is being tossed about in a storm or a Ping-Pong ball that is being driven by the wind and once in a while experiences a hard hit. These four toxins are relentless enemies of people everywhere. No one is immune!
“HOPELESSNESS”
There is a fifth kind of paralysis that has gripped our world — hopelessness. After holding to a belief that something “out there” can instantly fill up the emptiness inside and being disappointed again and again, a numbness sets in that craves greater and greater stimulation in order to make us feel alive. This inordinate craving leads to an anxious drive to go to extremes — extreme sports and adventures, bigger and better things, smaller yet faster technologies. These may be harmless by themselves and even have a genius of creativity, however none of these is therapeutic for the soul. This is a setup for addiction and obsessive behavior. The gnawing question continues, ”When is enough, enough?”
It’s different from having a disease. Instead of disease, it’s being in a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life. We crave satisfaction — a sense of security — yet most are finding themselves living in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction. After doing all we know to do or doing all “everybody” else is doing, there is a gnawing emptiness at the gut level. We’re living with no sense of purpose — no meaning in life. As a young professional recently admitted, “There really does seem to be a hole in my soul that I can’t fill.”
When hopelessness reigns, the hole in the soul has a large opening and is ready for filling up with whatever or whoever is next. This has created a vast opening for young people to be drawn into self-centeredness, to accumulate wealth to feel better, and to strive after positions of power to gain self-importance. This same allurement sets them up to be recruited into drugs, pornography, sex-slavery, gangs, and both domestic and international terrorism. At all levels, hopelessness fills the heart!
✎ How have you tried to manage your fear, anger, guilt, and shame? Did it make them better or worse?
✎ How has self-reliance worked for you?
2. WHAT IS WRONG IN OUR RELATIONAL LIVES
In the same way we crave satisfaction and live in a state of dissatisfaction, we also crave intimacy yet experience a painful detachment — a gnawing ache of loneliness. Intimacy — everyone wants it, all shrinks talk about it, the movies sell it, the pornographers counterfeit it, the self-help books promise it, but very few actually experience it — it’s so alluring and yet so elusive! The most frustrating aspect of the search for intimacy may be that you can’t pursue it as a direct goal; you reach it only as the by-product of your genuine willingness to be open with yourself and with other human beings!
This painful detachment is a cold hollowness. The hollowness can be described as:
✎ What events or circumstances in your life have caused you the most emotional pain?
✎ Is your method for dealing with the pain helping to get rid of it or making it worse?
Because of this intense pain within relationships, there is a built-in self-destruction.
Therefore, we settle for relationships that are held together by performance rather than the beautiful experience of unconditional love. Since we rarely experience such a thing, we aren’t sure it even exists. Mother Teresa described this human condition well when she said, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.”
✎ What do you do, when you’re alone?
✎ Do you have someone you can be with and talk with when you’re hurting?
3. WHAT IS WRONG IN OUR VOLATILE WORLD
When we say our world we mean our workplace, our community, and the world at large.
People were created to be valued and loved; things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because material things are being valued and loved, and people are being devalued and used. The result is that any hope of building true character is easily corrupted and loving, trusting relationships become an elusive dream.
We continue to crave satisfaction, yet we live in a state of dissatisfaction. We crave intimacy, yet we experience a painful detachment — a gnawing ache of loneliness. We also crave significance — to make a difference in this messed-up world. It seems the more we crave a sense of worth the more we are hit with disorientation and devaluation of our efforts. Discouragement replaces any optimism we have been able to collect. Our craving to make a difference is overwhelmed by massive confusion about what to do and how to do it.
We are bombarded with deterrents and distractions from every direction, all of which threaten every good intention we embrace.
Our noble cravings for satisfaction, intimacy, and significance are thwarted. We are left with broken hearts, broken spirits, broken bodies, broken homes, broken lives, and broken relationships. All in a broken world.
✎ How is your life busier, more complicated, more stressful, or more painful than ever?
✎ What is your response to the news and events that are happening around you or that you hear about happening somewhere else?
WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO GET THESE THINGS RIGHT?
In most of the things we face today, the only thing we can do is worry.
We see no way of making adequate changes, so we build up greater anxiety. This anxiety produces a profound frustration. It’s a downward cycle of worry, frustration, more worry, anger, health issues, and more worry . . . it never ends and it’s painful!
We do our best to handle the pain. At first most become experts in the art of denial that the problem or pain is not that bad. Or, the common denial is, “It’s not that bad yet.”
Denial only works for a time, until the pain becomes unbearable. This leads to a secondary move to handle the pain — to self-medicate! We handle the pain through medicating ourselves with alcohol, drugs, toys, and a variety of distractions. No matter how much we use and abuse, the medication works only temporarily.
In fact, we acquire new problems. We take on addictions to the medications. The very medication we choose to relieve the pain becomes monstrously destructive. This triggers another downward, depressive spiral.
We lie to ourselves as if we don’t have any problem and continue suppressing and redefining the pain in hopelessness. We try to buy happiness with our money. In the end, all of these attempts to soothe the pain amount to putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages. We’ve concerned ourselves with our symptoms, but not with the source of our problems and pain.
Not even the highest levels of power in the world — social, military, political, and religious — have been able to produce a lasting solution to our personal, relational, and global troubles. Not even the most promising ideologies nor the most capable diplomacies have proven to be solutions to man’s problems. No way has yet been universally identified.
Here’s the problem. There are three primary blockages as we search for the way to get our personal lives, our relational lives, our workplaces, our communities, our nations, and the world back on track.
So far, the ways to solve these problems are political, diplomatic, religious, military, witchcraft, self-proclaimed philosophical thoughts, or psychological/psychiatric prescriptions. And these delivery systems are at best imperfect, and at worst, corrupt and defective. We’ve met with leaders in some of the worst regions of the world. The leadership soon tires of the failed attempts to make peace where there is no peace. The track record of failure creates a kind of numbness, accompanied by cynicism and hopelessness. What’s interesting is that the proponents of these delivery systems incessantly show up to try and give people hope in a world that has been torn apart, or at least confused, by them. They posture their programs as saviors, yet prove out to be saboteurs. They are flawed by their inherent agendas, motivated by the same purpose of perpetuating their own existence. Their way leads to nowhere. Reconciliation and peace cannot happen within this context!
What we’re talking about is bringing the power of making a positive difference into our society. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the all-time leaders in social change, saw this power clearly. He said it this way: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” No program, no matter how effective, has the power to bring change. Only changed people can affect change in society. You can’t give away, teach, or mandate what you don’t already own yourself. Why is it that the same program can produce dramatically different results? It may be the same program; it’s the leadership dynamic that makes the difference. All positive change in society must start with you! Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
Reformation always sounds good and looks good, but it only has the power to reform — to rearrange the externals. People enthusiastically rally around reform programs. They are easy to embrace because they are easy to manage. The basic problem is that reformation traffics in symptoms without ever dealing with the source of the problem, therefore no authentic change occurs. Or, if there is perceived change, it’s useless in making a significant difference in personal, relational, and global problems. In the end, reformation has the noble goal of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Transformation is what is needed at the core level — an inner change of heart — to see your life, your relationships, your workplace, your community, your nation, and the world differently.
✎ Have you been involved with any of these faulty systems or strategies? What were the results for you?
IN SEARCH OF THE WAY
After examining and experiencing the limitations of the primary blockages of change we have come to the realization that inner transformation has to come from a spiritual “higher power.”
The most preferable higher power has the potential of being godlike. This is why those ways mentioned above can’t work as adequate higher powers. They are man-made systems with so many add-ons that are governed by culture, man’s interpretations of Holy Scriptures, emotional prejudices, historical traditions, and sacred opinions of mankind everywhere. Man-made systems are nothing more than systems of dos and don’ts — mostly don’ts!
What is desperately needed is a relationship with the higher power — a personal relationship with a godlike entity that can change you and others on the inside.
We have come to realize that there is only one who qualifies as an adequate higher power. His name is Jesus. We’re not talking about the religious Jesus. We’re talking about the most prominent and powerful person ever — just Jesus, simply the person of Jesus.
In the most pragmatic way, this Jesus seems to be able to affect these internal changes in people. We have experienced this personally and have observed this effect in people who need what he has.
There’s something about Jesus without religious baggage — his words, his Spirit, his actions, his loving ways, his bent toward the disenfranchised, and even his name — that brings healing and wholeness to life. Jesus is truly the most effective person you can embrace for yourself.
Once an atheist, and a very closed-minded one at that, Oxford professor and critic C. S. Lewis became a follower of Jesus, reluctantly at first, by his own admission. But he saw enough of this winsome Jesus to take a halting step . . . one after the other, until at last he started thinking differently, living differently, teaching differently, and writing differently. He went from writing essays on literary criticism to writing The Chronicles of Narnia. And he remained a follower to the end of his life.
When Lewis was an atheist, he made the statement, “How absurd that a human could possibly believe that he could have a personal relationship with the Creator God.” He said, “It is as absurd as Hamlet thinking he could have a personal relationship with Shakespeare, his creator.”
Later, on further thought, Lewis observed, “Hamlet could have had a personal relationship with Shakespeare, if Shakespeare had written himself, the author/creator, as a character into the play.”
This is what we believe God did. He wrote himself into the play. The name of the character is Jesus.
“Come & See!”
Consider this Jesus who is revered as
• The Christ to Christians
• A Rabbi to the Jews
• A Prophet to the Muslims
• An Avatar to the Hindus
• An Enlightened One to Buddhists
• A wise teacher to secularists
• A friend to the broken and disenfranchised
However they view him, however you view him, his name is Jesus. And he is out to deliver the message of good news to all people of all religions — even to those with no religion at all — the way, the truth, and the life of all people.
People all around the world are eager to come and see . . . Jesus. And when you show them just Jesus, without all the cultural and ecclesiastical add-ons, they are drawn to him.
Come and see. Come and see this man who can’t be explained, can’t be put into a box, can’t be categorized, systematized, or made religious. It doesn’t matter where you are from — Europe or Africa, America or Asia or any other region. It doesn’t matter who you are — male or female, King, President, General, laborer, or unemployed. It doesn’t matter what you do — tax collector, fisherman, cleaner, housemaid, engineer or scientist or prostitute. It doesn’t matter if you are a Sheikh, a High Priest, a Patriarch, an Arch Bishop, a centurion who pledges allegiance to Caesar, a pagan who offers sacrifices at the temple of Artemis, or a Pharisee who is part of a corrupt religious system.
Politics isn’t the way….
Religion isn’t the way….
Wealth isn’t the way….
Fame or celebrity isn’t the way….
War or violence isn’t the way….
THE WAY is Jesus! The only way!
✎ When you think of the person of Jesus, what comes to mind? What are the words, ideas, or experiences that you would use to describe Jesus?
✎ Have you viewed Jesus as a revolutionary or just a religious leader?
✎ Is there any good reason why you wouldn’t follow after this Jesus and join the spiritual revolution to change yourself and then the world?
✎ If the religious ideas about Jesus were taken away from him, would that make it easier or more difficult for you to relate to him?
STUDY SESSION #2
WHAT WENT WRONG?...The Solution!
WHAT IS SMALL GROUP?
Jesus is THE WAY. He is the ultimate answer to the question “What went wrong?”