Hi, this is John Eldridge, and welcome to the Ransomed Heart podcast. What we are doing over this series is

exploring the personality of Jesus from my new book, Beautiful Outlaw.

There is absolutely no one and nothing that is more captivating than Jesus when you can see him as he really is.

And to know Jesus as he really is is to fall in love with him.

So what we're doing in this series, I am reading some excerpts from a new book called

Beautiful Outlaw, discovering the playful, extravagant disruptive personality

of Jesus.

And so let's explore Jesus together.

Most people go through their entire lives without anyone ever speaking honest, loving, direct words to the most damaging issues in their lives.

Pause for a moment and count the times this has been done for you.

Better, pause and count the times you have offered this to someone you love.

We chit-chat.

We spend our days at the level of conversation as substantive as smoke.

We dance around one another like birds in a mating ritual, bobbing, ducking, puffing out our

chest, flapping our wings, circling one another, now advancing, now retreating. If we filmed a week of it in time-lapse photography,

it would make the Discovery Channel.

Let's be honest.

Why aren't we more honest with each other?

Because it will cost us.

Socrates didn't exactly get a warm reception for telling the truth.

John the Baptist got his head handed to him on a platter for telling it like it is.

Kill the messenger.

...