God's Wisdom

from Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Barton . . . . 

Love is the deepest calling of the Christian life, the standard by which everything about our lives is measured.  It is the standard by which Christ evaluated himself at the end of his life. "Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end " (John 13:1). Any decision-making process that fails to ask the love question misses the point of the Christian practice of discernment. Discernment is intended to take us deeper and deeper into the heart of God's will:  that we would follow God passionately into love - even if it takes us all the way to the cross.

God does communicate with us through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is given to help us know the demands of love in our situation. At the end of his life, Jesus said that it was to our advantage that he went away, so that the Holy Spirit could come and live with us, closer to us than our own breath. Christ asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit to be a counselor and a guide for us - one who leads us deeper into truth right here, right now, as we are able to bear it.  In this way the Holy Spirit expands Christ's teaching, taking a particular teaching beyond the moment when he gave it in a particular setting to the moment we are in right now.  The Spirit is given to help us answer the call to love in ways that are consistent with and flow out of our own personality, gifts and calling within our particular situation. We are called to live love in the context of our own destiny as freely and authentically and wholeheartedly as Christ did.

The practice of discernment begins with a prayer for indifference. "I am indifferent to anything but God's will." This is a state of wide-openness to God in which I am free from undue attachment to any particular outcome and I am capable of relinquishing whatever might keep me from choosing for love.  Gaining indifference is one of the most demanding aspects of the discernment process.

Just like everything else that is of significance in the spiritual life, God must accomplish this for us. The question that is most pertinent at this place in the discernment process is, What needs to die in me in order for God's will to come forth in my life?  All we can do is pray and wait:  say to God "I know I am not indifferent. I know there is till something in me that is clinging to my own agenda.  If I am to become indifferent, you will have to do it in me."

The movement toward indifference is the threshold between two worlds:  the world of human decision making and the world of discerning the divine will.  In this waiting room of the soul we are ready to pray the second prayer - the prayer for wisdom.  "If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and grudgingly, and it will be given you" (James 1:5). Here we begin to understand why the prayer for indifference was so important: the wisdom of God is foolishness to this world. Discerning people are able to recognize God's guidance sometimes by the very fact that, to some onlookers, it appears at some level to be foolish.  But because we have come to a place of indifference, it doesn't matter.  When we have died to our need to be wise in others' eyes or to prove ourselves according to human standards, we are finally ready to ask for God's wisdom and receive it.

Discernment

Discernment is first of all a habit, a way of

seeing that eventually permeates our whole life.

It is the journey from spiritual blindness (not seeing

God anywhere or seeing Him only where we expect

to see Him) to spiritual sight (finding God everywhere,

especially where we least expect Him).

Ruth Barton

Discernment is a gift cultivated by a prayerful

life and the search for self-knowledge.

Ernest Larkin

Jesus Pure & Simple

When you cannot remember the 22 characteristics of a good wife, the 7 steps to authority, or the 9 ways of love ......
It's time to get back to Jesus.

When a speaker insists (again) that you need to stop your bad habits, increase your devotion, reduce your worry, augment your faith, or banish your fears ....
It's time to get back to Jesus.

When you're overwhelmed by testimonies of others praying all night, fasting forty days, raising the dead, and leading thousands to the Lord on their airplane rides home........
It's time to get back to Jesus.

When you've sat through your one hundred fifty millionth sermon about giving more, suffering more, doing more, or being more.........
It's time to get back to Jesus.

When you attend another hyped-up conference that promises to be the one that will reduce all your problems, and you buy all the books and CD's and try them out, but nothing is reduced except your savings account............
It's time to get back to Jesus.

When someone points a finger in your face and says, "Thus saith the Lord," but their advice contradicts someone else who shouted a different "Thus saith the Lord," and it sounds different from yet another "Thus saith the Lord"............
It's time to get back to Jesus.

When your mailbox is flooded with a multitude of letters, newsletters, and giving requests from a multitude of organizations with three-initial names..........
It's time to get back to Jesus.

It is time to hear His voice and simplify. It's time we get back to Jesus, pure and simple.

(adapted from Jim May, Living at His Place, 1995)

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his

craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the 

simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

1 Corinthians 11:3

Watched a documentary on Bonhoeffer last night.  I believe this is what he sought for the Church and himself - a "religiousless Christianity" that was not about rules but instead about the heart.  I pray that God would use me even half as much as He used Bonhoeffer - I would die a joyful, blessed follower of Jesus.  Amen.

Got Friends?

My family attended Providence Church in West Chester last Sunday and listened to a really good sermon.  Below are some bullet points from that sermon:

*  Jesus uses us as his strategy to fight the war

*  We are in training for the fight every day.  Our words matter, how we use our money matters, everything we do matters.  We are fighting for our lives.

*  We go into the fight together.  We all need godly friends and we need to be godly friends.

*  There is a difference between true friends and acquaintances.  Having lots of friends on Facebook is not the same as being a godly friend.

*  So often in today's culture we convey information rather than humanity.  Social media puts the focus on ourselves and less on others.

*  The definition of a godly friend:  Someone who stays with you where you are but loves you enough to not let you remain where you are.  Jesus modeled this more than anyone (Zacchaeus is just one example).

*  Tests for friendship: 

    1 - friends stop and stick with you - they WANT to be with you - not just for "coffee" but for meal sharing.  Meal sharing was an important social event in the days of Jesus and is often overlooked today.

    2 - Godly friends know all about you and still accept you (Jesus knew Zacchaeus inside out!).  It's not if you behave a certain way or do certain things for them.  If something happens a true friend will stick with you otherwise it's a superficial and fake friendship.

    3 - Friends are willing to wound you in order to help you. Try not to be defensive.  You should know you are with a godly friend if they are willing to hurt you to help you.  We all have at least one friend like this - Jesus!

    4 - Godly friends are willing to lay down their lives for others to see Jesus

In order to have godly friendships your relationship with Jesus comes first.  Remember you are forgiven and you have all you need - these things will transform you and show you what godly friendships should be.

Don't enlarge your circle of friends but rather enrich it.

Wonders

So God created man in his own image, 

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

Have you ever wondered how we have come to know that ....................

     a brook babbles

                    the wind whispers

                                      the sun caresses

                                                             rain cleanses

Have you ever wondered ....................

    who created music?   and why do we feel emotions when we listen to music?  

    who created art? 

                     or our desire to create that comes from deep within?  

                                                                                                  or to tell a story?  

                                                                or to write poetry?

Did all of these wondrous things really come from a "big bang?"   From a blob in the sea?    Did they really evolve from a primate?   Or a chunk of the sun twirling through space?  From panspermia, biopoesis, cosmogeny, endosymbiosis, spontaneous generation, clay, consecutive creation, materialistic or organic evolution?

Have you ever really thought about it?  

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

Genesis 1:26

The Scriptures

excerpts from Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton ...............


This was the beginning of my life in Christian ministry, a life of studying, teaching, applying Scripture, and it was deeply satisfying.

To a point.

You see, something else was happening that was very subtle. Somewhere along the way I figured out that you could get really good at studying and memorizing verses, filling in the blanks of Bible study guides, checking chapters off a reading list, coming up with creative approaches for Bible study and message preparation.  In my circles, you could get major brownie points for such things.  Although I wouldn't have known how to talk about it then, slowly but surely the Scriptures were becoming a place of human striving and intellectual hard work.  Somehow, I had fallen into a pattern of using the Scriptures as a tool to accomplish utilitarian purposes rather than experiencing them primarily as a place of intimacy with God for my own soul's sake.

And somewhere along the way I got tired.  Very tired.  When I was alone with the Scriptures, they began to feel lifeless and boring, irrelevant and obligatory.  When I was with the Scriptures with others - in Bible studies, listening to sermons, reading books and commentaries - the Scripture felt ponderous, like a tool people were using to rein me in, or tell me what to do, or coerce me into their way of thinking.

This kind of admission doesn't go over very well in your average church setting or small group Bible study, but it was true nonetheless.  The real surprise was not that this happened but the fact that the shift was so subtle. After all, the purposes for which I was using the Scriptures were not bad in and of themselves.  Its just that over time, without my awareness, those purposes had trumped the greater purpose for which the Scriptures have been given:  to allow my own heart and soul to be penetrated by an intimate word from God. My mind remained engaged, but my heart and soul had drifted far away.

Many of us approach the Scriptures more like a textbook than like a love letter.

When we engage the Scriptures for spiritual transformation ..................  we open ourselves to a deeper level of understanding and insight that grows out of and leads us deeper into our personal relationship with the One behind the text.

When we engage the Scriptures for spiritual transformation, we make it our top priority to listen to God relationally rather than seeking only to learn more about God cognitively.

Then, as God speaks to us through Scripture, we respond to what we read with our heart and soul rather than just our intellect.

In addition to asking, What does it say? What does it mean? How do I apply it to my life? we might ask:

How do I feel about what is being said? Where do I find myself resonating deeply? Why do I feel this way? What do my reactions tell me about myself - my attitudes, my relating patterns, my perspectives, my behaviors? Am I willing to look at that in God's presence?

Contemporary Christianity

In entering human history God shattered all previous conceptions of who God is and what people are meant to be.  In the New Testament we are presented with a God who suffers crucifixion, a Supreme Being with spit on his face.  What He went through in His passion and death is meant for me too; the invitation He issues is, "Don't weep for Me! Join Me! The life I have planned for Christians is a Christian life, much like the life I led.  I wasn't poor so that you  might be rich. I wasn't mocked so that you might be honored.  I wasn't laughed at so that you could be lauded.  I was revealing the Christian picture of man and woman, one that is meant to include you, too."  Paul wrote to the Colossians, "We are meant to fill up what is wanting in the suffering of Christ."

We get so used to the ultimate Christian fact - Jesus stripped, flogged and crucified - that we no longer see Him for what He actually is:  a living injunction to strip ourselves of earthly cares and worldly wisdom, all desire for human praise, greediness for any kind of comfort, spiritual consolations included; a living summons to let go of every kind of worldliness - including that which prefers the more attractive duty to the less attractive, which prods us to put more effort into relationships with the people we want to stand well with.  Even the last rag we cling to - the self-flattery that suggests that we are being rather humble when we disclaim any resemblance to Jesus Christ - even that rag has to go when we stand face-to-face with the crucified Son of Man.

The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus by Brennan Manning