Guest Speaker: Jon Bowles - "Father, Glorify Your Name"

Redemption Church KC Sermon Podcast

1. Pastor John Bowles centered his sermon today on John 12:28. This verse includes this succinct prayer from Jesus: “Father, glorify your name.” John shared that this prayer can make him feel uncomfortable at times. He attributed that to the fact that, a lot the time, this doesn’t align with what he really wants. Then he asked us all a simple question to begin: how does this prayer make you feel? Share your response to this initial question and your thoughts about why your response may be what it is with your group.
John also asked this question: If glorifying God is to make God real and show his substance in a way that makes him real, how are we doing with that? Reflect on this question. What catches your attention in this shorthand definition of what it means to glorify God? What response does it provoke in you? Then reflect on the question itself. What are your thoughts? Do you feel personally engaged in this type of glorification? Do you think it is something you’d like to be a part of more? or less? or at all?
How do you conceive of the links between individuals engaging in this type of glorification and the big picture community-wide and church-wide glorification of God? Which feels more urgent or important for you? Which feels easier to imagine or engage in?
2. John shared this quote from CS Lewis: “All the loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that this world contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale agains the least moment of the joy that is felt in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all.”
What do you think about this quote? Does it ring true for you? Does it stir up objections for you? Agreement? What feelings does it prompt in you? When you think about the things that weigh on you as your own “loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings” in this world, what kind of emotions surface in you as you reflect on this perspective? What thoughts?
3. John also talked about the positioning of this prayer within the book of John; it’s smack dab in the middle. He framed it as a fulcrum in the life of Jesus with the time preceding this moment as a time in which Jesus’ public ministry and profile were growing in both size and prominence. After this point of transition, Jesus moved more into a space of letting go of all that, and of living in a way that was more solely focused on what God desired of him.
John suggested that as we pattern our lives after Jesus, each of us undergoes this type of transition as well. We may spend the first parts of our lives doing and building, but we then experience a time (often in midlife) of loss and transition in which we can learn that all those things we worked toward aren’t really ours and aren’t who we are. At that point, we move into a space in which we become more focused on something beyond ourselves.
Where do you see yourself in this process? How does it correspond to your physical age? If we grant this process is accurately described, what do you think about it? John mentioned that many of us may resist this process. Do you feel resistance to it (or to the idea of it) in yourself? Whether your answer is more “yes" or more “no," why do you think your answer is what it is?