4. Assignment: Bless the people God places before me

The church exists wherever the people of God go. As such, we take the message of the Kingdom with us. Our assignment is to bless the people we encounter, leaning deeper into the divine connections.

The Transformation Map below provides us with a helpful tool to gauge where people are in their faith journey— or, to say it another way, their awakening.

The numbers on the bottom represent energy vibrations (everything in the world has a frequency— a measure of how alive something is). Though the numbers aren’t separated on this chart to scale, they do provide us with a helpful comparison. 

Notably, only 20% of the people on the planet ever make the transition to COURAGE, noted at 200 MHz.This means that most people live in shame, guilt, fear, or anger. That is, most people aren’t experiencing the abundant experience of life Jesus came to provide (see John 10:10).

Our goal isn’t to “win a convert” by telling them to intellectually agree and then pray a prayer with us. Rather, we want to help move everyone up the scale— just a bit at a time— when we encounter them. This is a far more do-able strategy and, as you’ll see, it’s one Jesus used.

As we align with Kingdom principles (by honoring God with the “first” of our time and money), we become more magnetic.

This enables us to align others, as we step into community with them.

Jesus approached sin as a doctor, not as a judge or jury. And that meant that in the same way a physician is personal, so also was He.

Jesus didn’t stay disconnected from people— as a judge or jury might. Nor did He deal with them legally. He dealt with the pain-point, the problem at hand.

Jesus approached people in the opposite way we often do. Whereas many Christians want people to "believe" first, Jesus pulled people in close-- and flipped the entire paradigm upside down.

• Belong = Jesus embraced people first, accepting them wherever they were on their faith journey. Or, to use language from a few pages ago, He met them wherever they were on the Transformation Map. 
• Become = At this point, they became something different, their behaviors began changing, and they came to believe. 
• Behave = Many made radical changes, even quickly.
• Believe = The entire process was so organic that, many times, it’s difficult to tell when the they crossed the line from doubt to believe.

The framework we use to implement the "Jesus Model" is found in Luke 10:5f., where Jesus told us what to do when we encounter people. 

• Bless. We always bless everyone. This is our default mode. 
• Fellowship. If a supernatural connection is felt, we go deeper in the relationship. (If it's not, we continue blessing people, knowing that we're enriching the lives of others and, at some point soon, the Holy Spirit will highlight a divine connection for us.)
• Minister. When a need arises, we meet it-- especially a need that requires divine intervention. We're shown this issue not so we can judge it but so that we can help people through it.
• Proclaim. As God moves, we define the moment by expressing God's presence in the situation.