Centering Jesus

Book excerpt: What happens when Jesus becomes obscured from our point of view? With all the hostility boiling just under the surface of our world, we need a renewed vision of Jesus as the Lamb of God who can lead us in the peaceable ways of the Kingdom. When we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives, we lean into the desires of our hearts more than the desires God has for us. As a result, our entire spirituality becomes driven by the self and for the self. We need renewed practices of centering Jesus in our hearts and minds. In Centering Jesus, Derek Vreeland invites you to imagine what it looks like to keep Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of three key areas of our lives--our spiritual formation, our moral lives, and our common life together. With the deep divide in American culture and the polarization that continues to grow, we need a renewed focus on the Lamb so that we might blaze a path forward into civility and kindness. Learn how to identify the problems that occur when Jesus is obscured from our view; walk through some of the key biblical descriptions of the Lamb; describe a Lamb-shaped and Jesus-centered approach to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, the foundation of our moral lives; and experience the Lamb at the center of common life together, specifically worship life, participation in acts of justice, and political life.