{"id":870,"date":"2014-12-17T03:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T08:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/the-forerunner\/"},"modified":"2014-12-17T03:00:29","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T08:00:29","slug":"the-forerunner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/the-forerunner\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forerunner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Renaissance Girl<\/p>\n<p>John the Baptist astounds me.\u00a0His entire existence was about Jesus.\u00a0And not just in the way we endeavor to &#8220;live for Jesus&#8221; &#8212; but literally &#8212; all about Him, from the moment John leaped in his mother&#8217;s womb at the sound of Mary&#8217;s voice (perhaps eager to get started on his task), to the moment he submitted to the will of God and baptized Christ (despite his humble protest that it should be the other way around). He was beheaded at the whim of a girl and her mother, because his message to &#8220;prepare&#8221; threatened their comfortable existence. <em>Everything <\/em>he did &#8212; wild and confronting as it was &#8212; was meant to point to Jesus. And then John quietly stepped aside when He arrived.<\/p>\n<p>I am astounded by this, because this is not how I live at all. But what if I could? What if, instead of seeking accolades myself, I was ALL about Jesus? My prayer as we draw closer to Christmas, is for the grace to become a little more like John the Baptist.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4088387\" src=\"http:\/\/of.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/stjohn2-253x300.jpg\" alt=\"The Community of Jesus\" width=\"253\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/E0lgmHK1PKg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Renaissance Girl John the Baptist astounds me.\u00a0His entire existence was about Jesus.\u00a0And not just in the way we endeavor to &#8220;live for Jesus&#8221; &#8212; but literally &#8212; all about Him, from the moment John leaped in his mother&#8217;s womb &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/the-forerunner\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}