105 Sermon Illustrations on Spirituality

On some clear evening when the stars shrink back before the pathway of the ascending moon, and night is almost transformed to day, we are moved to admiration and pleasure; yet all this attractive light, focused to the smallest compass, could not dissolve the most delicate petal of frost or melt the tiniest snowflake.

Such is science without sentiment, the intellect without the heart, religion without spirituality. But on the other hand, the true church is one which combines both; which is purely rational, yet deeply religious; which is perfectly tolerant and catholic; which yet extends its fraternal hand to the needy, opprest, and downtrodden of every class; which is bound to no creed whatsoever, but is genuinely, rationally, vitally spiritual.

— GEORGE C. CRESSEY

Use of a spiritual inventory on visits can help deepen the spirituality of a church. Typical questions are:

1. What's one joy and one struggle you're experiencing in your life or ministry?

2. How would you describe your walk with God this past year?

3. Where do you feel you would most like to grow as a Christian?

4. Could you give me a thumbnail sketch of your spiritual history?

5. How did you first come to believe?

6. In your devotional life, what's one thing you've recently discovered?

7. How would you finish this sentence: I feel good about my walk with God when....

8. What have been some of the ups and downs of your spiritual life since you came to faith?

9. How has our church helped you in your spiritual development?

10. What do you need from me as a friend and fellow believer to go on to maturity in Christ Jesus?

To use it, people must feel open with you, you must have a relationship with them, and a soft approach works better than a hard one, and it is better to be an encourager than a judge. An hour long call can cover it.

Joe Kong, a Cambodian Christian, was saved in Bubna's church and discipled. He used this technique to plant over a dozen Cambodian churches. He said, "Pastor, the way you developed me spiritually is how I'm developing leaders for the Cambodian churches. It is a biblical pattern, and it works."

Spiritual authenticity is more important than vibrancy. People need to see that their pastor is real. In one sermon, Hybels said he was tired of apologizing for his sins. But the Bible says a day is coming when he won't have to apologize anymore (Rev 21:4).

Study on "salt" in the Bible.

1. Salt Preserves.

2. Salt Flavors.

3. Its Ingredients:

a. Purity

b. Reality

c. Conviction

d. Enthusiasm

4. Its Self-Conserving Power.

We are growing spiritually when:

1. We are increasingly aware of our sins and weaknesses.

2. Our response to sin is quick and followed by genuine repentance.

3. Our spiritual battles are becoming more fierce and yet we still rejoice.

4. We see trials and temptations as opportunities for growth.

5. We view service for Him as high honor and not a burden.

6. We view everything that comes our way as being from God. (Romans 8:28?)

7. We sense our faith is growing stronger (ie - when our faith level rises,

or when it takes more to "ruffle" us)

8. We desire to spend more time in genuine praise and worship.

9. Our desire to obey Him is becoming more intense and sin is less

attractive.

10. We are eager to share with others what Christ is doing in our life.

11. We are experiencing an increasing awareness of His presence.

12. We jealously guard our private time of prayer and Bible reading.

13. We prefer to spend more time with Him above all others.

#2463

*

The death of William Booth's father led him to examine his life. William accepted Jesus as his Savior and discovered the Wesleyan church. Salvation became real to him when he returned a silver pencil box to a boy he had cheated.

Spiritual needs came first in the Salvation Army. They were mistreated by many, both poor and rich. Lord Shaftesbury fumed that the Army was "a trick of the devil...trying to make Christianity ridiculous." But Queen Victoria met him, as did Edward VII, and Queen Mary attended his funeral. A former fallen woman, now saved, placed three beginning-to-fade carnations on the casket, which remained to the end of the service, the only flowers on it. As Queen Mary turned, perhaps with an enquiring look, the girl said simply, "He cared for the likes of us."

Eerdman's Handbook to the History of Christianity reads, "The Salvation Army was concerned about spiritual rather than material conditions. The first thing to be done to improve the condition of the wretched was to get at their hearts."

In sixty years of active ministry, he preached 60,000 sermons, recruited in 55 countries 2,000,000 soldiers for his Army, and traveled 60,000 miles.

Many Christians are only "Christaholics" and not disciples at all. Disciples are cross-bearers; they seek Christ. Christaholics seek happiness. Disciples dare to discipline themselves, and the demands they place on themselves leave them enjoying the happiness of their growth. Christaholics are escapists looking for a shortcut to nirvana. Like drug addicts, they are trying to "bomb out" of their depressing world.

There is no automatic joy. Christ is not a happiness capsule; he is the way to the Father. But the way to the Father is not a carnival ride in which we sit and do nothing while we are whisked through various spiritual sensations.

David Brainerd, 18th century missionary to American Indians:

“I withdrew to my usual place of retirement, in great tranquility. I knew only to breathe out my desire for perfect conformity to Him in all things. God was so precious that the world with all its enjoyments seemed infinitely vile. I had no more desire for favor of men than pebbles.

“At noon I had the most ardent longings after God Which I ever felt in my life. In my secret retirement, I could do nothing but tell my dear Lord in a sweet calmness that He knew I desired nothing but Him, nothing but holiness, that He had given me these desires and He only could give the thing desired.

“I never seemed to be so unhinged from myself, and to be so wholly devoted to God. My heart was swallowed up in God most of the day.”

[Version in sermon down below:]

First, huge shovels dig house-sized scoops of lignite coal. Pulverized and loaded onto railroad boxcars, the coal travels to a generating plant in east Texas, where it is further crushed into the huge furnaces that crank three turbines.

Whirring at 3,600 revolutions per minute, these turbines are housed in concrete-and-steel casings 100 feet long, 10 feet tall, and 10 feet across. They generate enough electricity for thousands of people.

A visitor to this plant once asked the chief engineer, "Where do you store the electricity?"

"We don't store it," the engineer replied, "we just make it."

When a light switch is flipped on in Dallas one hundred miles west, it literally places a demand on the system; it registers at the generating plant and prompts greater output.

God's grace and power likewise cannot be stored. Though inexhaustible, they come in the measure required, at the moment of need.

===========================

Version in sermon:

The summer before I married Celeste, I stayed with my folks in Colorado Springs. The only job I could get was with ManPower, a temporary agency that had me dig ditches, lay sod on soccer fields and recycle aluminum cans. At the end of the summer they got me something almost permanent: a flunky at the city power plant.

While I cleared muck out of settling tanks, long trains from Wyoming dumped carload after carload at the plant's storage area. Bulldozers pushed it into mountains, and then funneled it onto long conveyor belts. From there stamping mills ground it as fine as flour and injected the coal dust into huge furnaces. These furnaces were the loudest things I ever heard. And hot, too. Their intense heat drove steam through turbines which spun at 3,600 revolutions per minute. The turbines were housed in concrete-and-steel casings 100 feet long, 10 feet tall, and 10 feet across. They generated enough electricity for the whole city of 300,000.

A visitor to a power plant once asked the chief engineer, "Where do you store the electricity?" "We don't store it," the engineer replied, "we just make it."

When a light switch is flipped on one hundred miles, it literally places a demand on the system. That small need registers at the generating plant and prompts greater output.

In the same way, God's grace and power cannot be stored. Though inexhaustible, they come in the measure required, at the moment of need. But only if you're plugged into the system.

The cross gives us an intimate glimpse into God's heart. The gospel reveals:

1. The love of God.

2. The justice of God.

3. A deeper knowledge of God.

#3047

*

We consent to abide all our days just ourside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God. We fail to draw near because there is a veil in our hearts, our sinful nature, our "self." Our self-sins are: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration,

self-love, and others. Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiriutal experience. The cross must kill our "self" to set us free.

Why are we afraid to be quiet before God? A.W. Tozer said, "Very few of us know the secret of bathing our souls in silence."

A. What do we really fear?

1. Being silent isn't a very productive thing to do.

2. We are afraid of what God will say if we do listen.

3. We are confronted with the truth that we are not in control.

B. What do we really want?

1. Wisdom. Knowledge comes from the Bible, wisdom comes from

sitting at God's feet.

2. Humility. No one can be arrogant when bowing before a holy God.

3. Faith. In silence we see our helplessness, but we begin to see

God's help beyond ourselves.

4. Peace. Silence causes a sense of peace and calmness to grow.

C. How can I learn to be still?

1. Find a quiet time and place to meet with God.

2. Select a passage of Scripture to meditate on.

3. Focus on listening.

4. Ask God to come closer to you.

5. Try not to imagine what God is like, what the experience will be

like, or what God will do.

6. Never become discouraged.

7. When done, allow time to get refocused on what to do next.

Daily worship quenches the thirst in our souls. What might happen if we worked worship into our schedules?

On hot summer days Ruth Senter used to refresh herself at an artesian well. Jesus also referred to the refreshment of wells and applied it to spiritual life. Worship is not the place or the form, but what happens inside us as we focus away from ourselves and onto God. It is coming to God for a drink.

Worship is a major theme of the Bible and not just what we do Sunday morning. In our day, it seems we honor, respect, and show allegiance to everything but God. Mostly, we worship ourselves. Israel had the same problem hundreds of years ago. Eli saw the decline of worship, and Ezekiel had a vision of the Shekinah glory abandoning the temple. But after the Exile worship was reinstated. Ezekiel also had a vision of the glory returning.

In the New Jerusalem water will flow from the center of worship and invigorate everything in its path. This also happens when we find time for worship. Not only are we refreshed, but the waters keep on flowing from us to others, bringing health and healing.

[sidebar compares David's experience in fleeing Absalom in 2 Samuel 15, with David's Psalm 63.]

I was reading a long essay by a Yugoslav writer, Mihajlo Mihajlov, who spent some years in a prison in Yugoslavia. He cites case after case of people who, like Solzhenitsyn, say that enlightenment came to them in the prison.

They understood what freedom was when they had lost their freedom, they understood what the purpose of life was when they seemed to have no future. They say moreover, that when it’s a question of choosing whether to save your soul or body, the man who chooses to save his soul gathers strength thereby to go on living, whereas the man who chooses to save his body at the expense of his soul loses both body and soul. In other words, fulfilling exactly what our Lord said, that he who hates his life in this world shall keep his life for all eternity, as those who love their lives in this world will assuredly lose them.

Now, that’s where I see the light in our darkness. There’s an image I love – if the whole world were to be covered with concrete, there still would be some cracks in it, and through these cracks green shoots would come. The testimonies from the labor camps are the green shoots we can see in the world, breaking out from the monolithic power now dominating ever greater areas of it. In contradistinction, this is the liberal death wish, holding out fallacious and ultimately destructive hope that we can construct a happy, fulfilled life in terms of our physical and material needs, and in the moral and intellectual dimensions of our mortality.

Final sermon in Family series. Family Faith. 2 Timothy 1:1-7

=====================================

IS THERE ROOM IN YOUR FAMILY FOR GOD?

=====================================

I. Is Christ in your home?

II. Put God first in your family.

A. Are your loved ones saved?

B. Strength during times of grief.

III. Develop spiritual habits in your family.

A. Families can do what Churches cannot.

B. Family devotions.

C. Church should not be an afterthought.

IV. Have real faith, not canned variety.

A. Outward religion is not enough.

B. Be genuine.

C. Exhibit Biblical virtues in your home.

V. Divided families.

A. Few families will be wholly given to God. Matt 10:34

B. Christians have a sanctifying effect. 1 Cor 7:14

C. Godly grandparents have a special role. 2 Tim 1:5

VI. From generation to generation.

[Heavily adapted from #2360, sermon from 11/8/92.]

#3830

*

The outrageously fruitful ministry of my father.

It is unnerving to say that the most godly person I have ever known is my father, James "Buck" Hatch, who turns 80 this year -- unnerving because he has never been a tower of strength. Those of us who have known him best saw his weaknesses as clearly as his strengths. Grace amid weakness is, I suppose, the theme of this birthday tribute, for it was through his brokenness, not his strength, that he brought healing attention to the shadowed interior rooms of people's lives. His life has much to say about the nature of Christian ministry.

A painfully shy person, always near the brink of depression, Buck has experienced life more as a vale of tears than as a vista of opportunities. I often remember Dad coming to dinner -- a boisterous affair with four sons -- and just sitting at the table, not uttering a word.

His life cannot be canonized as an all-American success story. It was his father who had been the Horatio Alger type, rising from poverty on a hard-scrabble North Carolina farm to ownership of a prosperous hosiery mill in Charlotte. My father had little use for the respectability my grandfather sought. Driving a Pierce Arrow, owning a fashionable home, joining the country club -- these did nothing to fill the void of a soul not at home with itself.

Why his eldest son consistently forfeited opportunities for success was an enormous puzzle to my grandfather. An honors student at Duke University, Buck abandoned his pursuit of a career in medicine, much to his father's dismay, after a powerful conversion experience drew him toward the ministry. He served for a time as a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi and then did graduate work in psychology at the University of Chicago under the renowned Carl Rogers. Once again he refused to use his degree as a professional springboard. He went to work for what his father feared was an upstart, fundamentalist institution, Columbia Bible College. To my grandfather, a dyed-in-the-wool member of Charlotte's staid First Presbyterian Church, this made no sense.

Without fanfare, for over 40 years, my father has poured himself into people at Columbia Bible College and the surrounding community. Year after year he taught classes in Scripture, biblical hermeneutics, psychology, and family life. His office was open ten hours a week for counseling, a pattern he continues today without charging a fee.

My parents' relationship has been a model of gentleness and mutual respect. Dad was the most untypical Southern gentlemen I have known. He didn't wait around to be waited upon. From bathing the children to washing the dishes, he did whatever would be of most help to my mother. Mother, in turn, used our home and her warm hospitality to enhance Buck's calling. Their commitment to a common ministry cemented their beautiful relationship. Toward this end, they gladly submitted themselves to each other.

Dad has been no respecter of persons. He has naturally gravitated to "little" people, the ungifted, the unattractive, those often regarded as unlovely, or troublesome, or unuseful. One deeply wounded person whom he counseled for years wrote, "You have been Jesus in flesh and bone to me."

As an adolescent, I could never understand how the ministry of my shy and private father reverberated with such power in people's lives. When he taught, people listened, riveted. When he preached, people's views of God and themselves changed, often in dramatic ways. And when he counseled, broken people tasted healing.

No amount of analysis can explain the contagious quality of love he radiates: he is a vessel simply brimming with the powerful love of Christ. But it is instructive to think about the central characteristics of his life and ministry.

OUTRAGEOUS AFFIRMATION

Describing my father's character requires a word that is the antithesis of judgmental. Robertson McQuilkin, Dad's longtime friend and colleague, coined it on my parents' fiftieth anniversary when he wrote, "Your affirmation was constant and outrageous."

That's the word -- outrageous. Buck showers boundless affirmation upon family, friends, and students alike. A family friend recently told me he regularly visits my parents' home feeling that his life is a failure, and he always comes away buoyed with hope. "I could walk into Mr. Hatch's house unshaven, dirty, and completely disheveled," he noted. "If I had only one strand of hair in place, Buck would stop me to note how great I looked."

What a refreshing gift -- to release others from judging themselves severely. In the exercise of this gift, Buck's life and beliefs converge. The depths of his own experience awakened him to the heights of divine grace and care. His bedrock conviction: God is far more reliable, faithful, and forgiving than his people imagine.

Dad has known that inner yearnings for the embrace of God are rarely fulfilled, that people hear the message of grace but seldom believe it intended for them. Whatever people profess about God's love and care, Buck knows the default mode of the human heart: God seems aloof and indifferent, and we are distanced from him by our repeated failures and lack of faith.

Dad's single-minded goal throughout his preaching, teaching, and counseling has been this -- to remove the veils that keep people from seeing God's lovingkindness. As Philip Yancey once noted in a letter, Dad's influence was key in "unpolluting" his faulty concepts of God. Dad's purpose, as Augustine put it, was to "restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God might be seen." He did not chide people for their lack of spiritual vitality. Instead, deftly as a surgeon, he lifted away layer upon opaque layer of guilt and shame. In Buck Hatch's presence, people experienced love and acceptance.

Buck lived what he taught -- unconditional love. He knew nothing of stern fundamentalist moralism, despite living in an environment steeped in it. Instead, he gravitated to those who were out of step: the lonely, the rebellious, the angry, the confused-and particularly anyone whose self-esteem had been stripped away. Scores of letters to my parents attest to his rare ability to pour himself into hurting people. One student wrote: "You have been a father to the hundreds of people who needed a father like you."

OWNING BROKENNESS

The sterling quality of my dad's ministry was not forged without great cost. Through the goodness of God over fourscore years, my father has come to radiate a deep and abiding joy. But you could not call him a happy person. He has always wrestled with thorns in the flesh that drove him not to rely on himself.

Buck Hatch bore the scars of a terribly dysfunctional family, whatever its outward success may have been. He remembers sitting at the top of the stairs, night after night, straining to hear a single kind word between his parents. He always climbed into bed disappointed.

The second of five children, Buck seemed most buffeted by his shattered home life. Although bright, he was insecure, melancholy, and introverted. His older sister and two younger brothers, however, came to maturity visibly confident, outgoing, and successful. One brother became student body president at Wheaton College where a friend described him as the most natural leader he knew. Similarly, his sister was a professional woman in the 1950s, rising to be director of personnel at the Carson, Pirie, Scott department store in Chicago.

Their success was short-lived. My aunt became a chronic alcoholic and lost her job, her apartment on the Magnificent Mile, and her exquisite furniture. My uncle's story was yet more tragic. After serving as a chaplain in World War II, he openly renounced the ministry and his faith, cut off ties with the family, and lived a meager existence, bouncing from odd job to odd job, until his death. Another brother, whose life as a young man seemed stable and prosperous, witnessed the collapse of his personal and family life. He died prematurely, his health also compromised by alcoholism.

This story of a shattered family is a parable of grace. Buck Hatch, who began his pilgrimage carrying the heaviest burden, found strength in his infirmity and became a stronghold for his troubled siblings. My aunt, beaten and fatigued, moved in with my parents, who worked patiently to get her back on her feet.

Dad's sister-in-law, rudely divorced by his brother, also moved to Columbia and found loving support in our home. Years later she wrote my parents: "I am not writing this letter just for myself. This comes from all the Hatches alive and dead whom you two have loved, helped in so many ways, and prayed for through the years.... [You have] helped a very unhappy and sorrow-filled woman get her life back together-again so gently, so lovingly and unfailingly there when needed."

Dad never fled from his own brokenness or tried to paper it over. It is this lack of pretense that people found so winsome. My dad's brokenness, not his strength, gives him ready access into the interior rooms of people's lives. He typically listens more than he speaks. When he does have something to say, it springs from deep wells of experience. And when people confess to him their dark nights of the soul, they do not get pat solutions but an embrace from one who has also traversed the darkness.

AFFIRMING THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL

My father always laughs at any suggestion of his being an intellectual and points to my mother whose love for books outstrips his own. Yet from the time of his graduate training at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, my dad pursued a serious intellectual agenda: how to relate the natural "truths" of modern psychology to biblical revelation. In personal terms, he explored what it meant to have a relationship with God for those severely wounded by broken relationships.

This was Dad's passion a generation before the church became awash in therapeutic forms of Christianity. Dad rejected any suggestion that he was an authority on the subject and refused to put his thoughts into writing, despite repeated suggestions from former students. Yet his insights were profound.

In his teaching and counseling, Dad emphasized an incarnational view of reality, a careful blend and balance of the natural and the spiritual. He did not, for example, expect quick and easy spiritual solutions to problems faced by Christians who had been denied healthy intimate relationships. If Christianity is a relationship, my father reasoned, how can someone who has grown up in a web of poisoned relationships learn to identify with a nurturing and covenant-keeping God? Like the Swiss physician Paul Tournier, Dad emphasized that new life in Christ does not free us from obedience to the natural order. In other words, no progress in faith erases a person's past. Everything that has been lived and gathered by experience still exists and must be reckoned with.

At the same time, Dad insisted that helping people to cope psychologically was only the beginning of the pilgrimage to know God and his ways. Effective counseling, as he saw it, allowed people to get beyond themselves and prepared them to encounter the matchless grace of God, the only enduring reason for living.

Moving easily among these diverse realities -- psychological, theological, and pastoral -- gave my father acute insight into how broken people easily miss the essence of the gospel. How do hurting people negotiate the lofty expectations of the Christian life? The Bible speaks of a life characterized by love, joy, and peace, yet people often look within and find pain, frustration, and bitterness. Buck Hatch understood that the logical reaction for many was to despair of living a fruitful Christian life. Similarly, he understood the tendency of persons who had not known much affirmation to try to win God's acceptance through a flurry of good works.

With words gentle but firm, Dad called a halt to the cycle of guilt that plagued these Christians. He insisted that the gospel offered no quick fixes for deep-seated dispositions of the soul. Using Jeremiah, a man of tears, he was able to explain to some why life, given their backgrounds, would be a continuing struggle. At the same time, he pointed them to a faithful Savior whose mercy was always new. My father knew that for some, just getting through each day could be a glorious victory of grace.

Try as they might, some people over the years were slow to believe that God loved and understood them. Yet they could count on the acceptance of at least one other person. Bitter travail and gracious healing allowed this friend to stand in the stead of his Savior.

My father's ministry became widespread despite his best efforts to keep it small and local. He resisted lecturing at other institutions, putting his thoughts into print, or -- perish the thought -- creating a clinic or a parachurch organization to continue his work.

We live in a day when Christians strive to emulate the latest successful ministry, unaware that as a goal that is a contradiction in terms. The life of Buck Hatch is a vivid reminder that the divine economy inverts natural priorities. In Christ's kingdom, the last shall be first, life is saved by losing it, and weakness confounds strength. In the greatest paradox of all, bitter affliction may allow the power of Christ to rest upon us. This is the best training I could have received in a religion that worships a crucified Savior.

********************

Nathan Hatch is vice president for graduate studies and research at the University of Notre Dame.

Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

Learn to express the pure joy of knowing God [full article at #21847]

============================================

Praising God blesses us by focusing our eyes on His greatness. It transforms our perspective on life's difficulties. Ps 66:2-3

Praise is a powerful weapon to break down walls, open doors, and win battles as we fight to extend God's kingdom.

REASONS FOR PRAISE

God is worthy of praise, Isa 51:13, 1 Chron 29:11, Ps 148:3,

Luke 19:40

Praise deepens intimacy with God. Ps 22:3, 2 Chron 5:13-14,

1 Cor 3:16

Praising God blesses us. Deut 30:16, Ps 63:2-5

Praise is a weapon in spiritual warfare. 2 Chron 20:6,12,21-22,

Acts 16:25-33

PRAISE AND DISAPPOINTMENT. Hab 3:17-18, Ps 42:11, 2 Sam 12:20, Job 1:21

Ways to Practice Praise Ps 119:164

Sing. Ps 147:1, Ps 149:1

Meditate.

Use your body. Ps 150:4, Ps 33:1

Praise with others.

Created for Worship. Eph 1:12, Ps 34:1

All couples run into "touchy subjects" -- topics that stir up frustration and

lead to awkward silences. Sex and money top the list in many marriages. But

chances are good that you and your spouse struggle with a third area: how to

talk about spiritual things.

Talking in-depth about spiritual issues can create significant anxiety.

"Will I sound immature if I talk about my relationship with God? If I'm

honest about what's going on in my life, will my spouse think I'm not

spiritual enough?" Ever since sin came between the first married couple and

God, fear, self-consciousness and embarrassment have made spiritual intimacy

a difficult proposition. The vulnerability it takes to talk about matters of

faith leads many people to keep the conversation short or avoid it

altogether.

A second obstacle is the way each spouse was brought up. Maybe when your

mate was growing up, her family talked about Christianity as easily as they

did the weather. But at your house, family members rarely spoke of spiritual

things beyond saying "good sermon today" on the way home from church. And,

of course, many people never even attended church until they became adults.

Some people grew up with spiritual expressiveness being as natural as

breathing, while to others, it's still a foreign concept.

Add to that a third difference: the natural tendencies of different

personality types. In Experiencing God Together, David Stoop writes, "When

we approach the subject of spiritual intimacy, our personality differences

obviously predispose us to certain approaches to God ... and to our basic

understanding of how religion relates to life."

For instance, some people have a strong bent toward duty and responsibility.

Their spirituality is shaped by their desire to serve and make the right

choices. Others are more mystical, emphasizing the importance of experiences

and leadings from God. A third personality type is more people-oriented.

These folks think of their spirituality in terms of how it relates to the

people they care about. Still others are problem-solvers. They are most

interested in "how-to's" and identifying the best course of action from a

spiritual perspective. A fifth group is more intellectual about faith

issues. They emphasize learning facts and grasping spiritual concepts.

Different personalities use different languages of spirituality. If a

mystical type marries a problem-solver, they can easily end up talking past

each other.

Who's More Interested?

======================

Often, the sticking point comes down to an uneven level of interest. Typically, one partner feels a much stronger need to talk about God to feel close spiritually, while the other is content simply to share activities like worshiping together or spending time with friends from church. Sometimes this difference is a reflection of overall communication patterns: The more-interested partner is more expressive about all areas of life. Other times the more-interested person is experiencing a spiritual "growth spurt" while the less-interested partner is on a plateau.

But whatever the reason, this interest differential can lead to hide-and-seek

patterns. One spouse actively pursues spiritually oriented conversations by

bringing up first one subject and then another. If the other spouse "hides"

by failing to show an interest, the more-interested mate can end up feeling a

lot of resentment.

Less-interested mates see things differently. They feel pressured, making

them want to hit the "eject" button whenever a spiritual topic arises. Those

less interested can also feel they are being judged as less committed in

their Christianity simply because they don't talk about it as much.

These patterns make a tough topic even tougher. So what can you do?

The "More-Interested"

=====================

Spouse If efforts to deepen your spiritual communication have failed, it's time to take a different tack.

1. LEARN YOUR PARTNER'S LANGUAGE. By becoming more attuned to your spouse's

spiritual personality, described earlier, you can learn to use the language

that will communicate most effectively.

2. APPEAL TO YOUR MATE'S SPIRITUAL STRENGTHS. If your spouse's spiritual

focus is on people and relationships, ask for input and opinions from a

relational perspective. If he or she has a more mystical bent, you might ask

something like "How can I figure out what God wants me to do in this

situation?" When we ask questions that are tuned in to our partners'

spiritual wavelength, they may feel they have a lot more to offer.

3. BREAK THE HIDE-AND-SEEK PATTERN. Gently end conversations about spiritual

matters when you notice your mate is withdrawing or becoming uncomfortable.

It's better to try again later than to cause frustration by pressing to keep

alive a conversation that's not going anywhere.

4. CATCH YOUR PARTNER DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. When you do get spiritual input

from your mate, jot him or her a note: "Thanks for your perspective."

Expressing your appreciation can go a long way toward easing your spouse's

discomfort. When less-interested partners know they'll get credit for the

efforts they make to join in spiritual conversations, they are more likely to

open up the next time.

The "Less-Interested" Spouse

============================

Even if you don't feel an urgency about deepening the spiritual communication with your spouse, chances are good that he or she does. To meet your spouse half-way, consider some of these steps.

1. RECOGNIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR ROLE. When it comes to spiritual

intimacy, there is something your spouse values deeply that only you can

give. Though talking about spiritual matters doesn't come easily to you, God

has called you to be your mate's spiritual helper. That's an important role

that belongs only to you.

2. SHARE YOUR FEARS AND UNEASINESS. Write a letter to your spouse to assure

him or her that you know talking about spiritual things is important.

Include the reasons you find it difficult to discuss your spiritual life.

Don't assume your mate knows these things. Even the letter will count as a

spiritual connection to your partner.

3. RECOGNIZE THAT QUESTIONS ARE BETTER THAN ANSWERS. Take some pressure off

yourself by remembering that active listening and asking good questions both

make for good conversations. The role of "spiritual sounding board" is a

valuable one, and it's easier than trying to come up with a lot of

interesting things to say.

4. CULTIVATE SPIRITUAL EXPRESSIVENESS. You can even do this alone by putting

your spiritual life into written words. As you write down your thoughts

about God and his work in your life, consider which ones you could share

later with your spouse.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tim Sutherland is a marriage and family therapist practicing in the Chicago

area. He and his wife, Julie, have two children.

Copyright(c) 1997 by Christianity Today, Inc/Marriage Partnership

Magazine. Spring 1997, Vol. 14, No. 1, Page 26

*

DANGER ZONE - Signs That Your Relationship With God May Need Attention

A foolish old farmer, so the story goes, concluded one day that the oats he had fed his mule for years were simply costing him too much. So he hatched a plan: He mixed a little sawdust in with the feed, and then a little more the next day, and even more the next, each time reducing the amount of oats in the mix.

The mule didn't seem to notice the gradual change, so the farmer thought things were fine and kept decreasing the proportion of oats. But weeks later, on the day he finally fed the poor beast nothing but sawdust, the mule finished the meal ... and fell over dead.

A silly tale, perhaps, but it serves as a parable of the backslider -- the Christian who slips further and further away from God through unrepented sin or neglect. Though we know our souls cannot survive on spiritual sawdust, we may well convince ourselves that a little won't hurt too much, and a little less real spiritual food won't be missed. Then, over time, the proportion of sawdust increases while the oats gradually disappear. Before long, the change is complete, and our starved, sawdust-stuffed spiritual life has collapsed. The intimacy we once enjoyed with the Father has evaporated.

This process can be so subtle, progressing in such small increments, that we fail to recognize the problem. Yet the "mule" does display a few symptoms warning us that all is not well. We might summarize them under three headings, each describing a critical loss in our spiritual life: the loss of love for God, the loss of fear of God, and the loss of faith in God.

LOSS OF LOVE FOR GOD

The first Christians in the city of Ephesus received a fine grounding in the Word of God from the Apostle Paul. His letter to them burned with a passionate love for God that was no doubt contagious. Paul prayed that they, "being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge" (Eph. 3:17-19). He fervently hoped that they would be among those "who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love" (Eph. 6:24).

Sadly, not many years later, Jesus gave John a disturbing message for these Ephesian Christians:

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.... Yet I

hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember

the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things

you did at first. -- Rev 2:2,4-5

The Ephesians' passionate "first love" was gone. They were apparently still going through at least some of the motions of devotion to God, but their hearts had grown cold.

What specific "red flags" might go up to indicate that our first love for the Lord is waning? Think of the telltale signs of a love grown cold in human relationships; the parallels to our love for Christ may be useful.

LOSS OF JOY. We take joy in what we love. When we lose the joy in our relationship with someone, it's a sign that our love for that person has somehow diminished. A loss of joy in our relationship with God is thus one indicator that our first love has dimmed.

King David experienced such a loss following his adultery with Bathsheba. In Psalm 51 he described his anguish when he recognized how far he had fallen from God. In that prayer for mercy, he cried out to the Lord, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation" (v. 12).

AVERSION TO PRAYER AND GOD'S WORD. We want to spend time with those we love. We want to pour out our hearts to them and listen as they open up their own hearts to us. So when we develop an aversion to spending time talking and listening to someone, that's a second sure sign of love lost.

We talk to God in prayer and listen to Him as we study and meditate upon the Scriptures. As a devout rural pastor once put it, "I have a relish for God. If you love squash, you eat it for breakfast, you eat it for dinner, you eat it for supper. You just can't get enough of it. And if you love God, you just can't get enough of Him. You want to pray and read the Word." If, on the other hand, we've grown reluctant to spend time with Him in these ways, this is a sign that our love for God has cooled.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, what was the first token of their fall? They tried to hide from the God whose fellowship they had once so naturally enjoyed (Gen. 3:8).

AVERSION TO CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. I once saw a pet-lover's bumper sticker that said: "Love me, love my cats." When you love someone, you love the ones he or she loves. You enjoy spending time with the friends of your friend. But when a friendship turns sour, you tend to lose interest in that person's friends as well, and you want to avoid people who are likely to talk about the person you want to forget.

For that reason, Christians whose love for God has grown cold because of sin tend to avoid fellowship with committed believers. They don't want to be around people who remind them of the one they're trying not to think about. In Hebrews 10, the author closely associates fellowship with God and fellowship with other believers. "Let us draw near to God," he says in verse 22, and, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing" (v. 25). Clearly, we cannot draw near to God without a corresponding desire to relate to others who love Him as well.

MISPLACED TREASURE. Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt. 6:21). We are made to love, and love we will. If we lose our love for God, other loves will fill His place in our hearts. Time once spent with God will be devoted to other pursuits that yield little or no spiritual fruit.

Thus the backslidden believer often becomes immersed in an array of worldly concerns as substitutes for the old spiritual life. Entertainment replaces prayer and time in the Word as a form of "diversion" -- that is, something that diverts attention from troubling thoughts that might lead to serious self-examination. "Safe" secular acquaintances with no spiritual interests take the place of Christian friends. Energies once spent in evangelism, outreach, or other forms of ministry are now focused inward on financial or career goals. Money once designated for church and charity is redirected to more selfish or frivolous ends.

Once we stop searching for the one pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45-46), we will devote our time, energy, and money to the pursuit of other treasures. Having lost our first love for God, we will go -- in the words of an old '70s song -- "looking for love in all the wrong places."

LOSS OF FEAR OF GOD

Though we often think of love and fear as opposites, the Scriptures remind us repeatedly that a mature relationship with God is characterized by both attitudes: "The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love" (Ps. 147:11). When we drift away from God, we lose not only our love for Him, but also our healthy fear of Him. And if "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 9:10), then the loss of that fear is the beginning of dangerous folly.

What are the signs that we no longer fear God? Since "to fear the Lord is to hate evil" (Prov. 8:13), we need only examine our attitude toward sin. A growing attachment to sin -- a sure sign that we are losing our fear of God -- typically manifests itself in several stages:

COVERING UP SIN. In the first stage, we recognize our wrongdoing, and in our shame we try to hide it. Adam and Eve provide the classic example: After their fall in the garden, they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves (Gen. 3:7). King David, too, knew the trouble that comes from refusing to confess sins to God and from trying to "cover up ... iniquity" (Ps. 32:5).

Of course, trying to hide our sin from God is useless:

Does he who formed the eye not see? Does he who disciplines nations

not punish? ... The Lord knows the thoughts of man; he knows that

they are futile. -- Ps. 94:9-11

But in this early stage of disobedience, we fool ourselves into thinking that somehow He won't know what we've done as long as we don't admit it to anyone.

DENYING RESPONSIBILITY. When we realize we can't hide our sin from God, the next step is to insist that what we're doing wrong isn't really our fault. Once again, note the pattern in Eden: Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:12-13).

Our excuses are legion: "Yes, it's an ugly little habit, but I was raised this way." "Of course I'm not supposed to hold grudges, but how could anyone be expected to forgive what they did to me?" "People with artistic personalities just have this weakness." Whatever the excuse, the sin continues, and the sinner moves further and further from God.

PROCRASTINATING OVER REPENTANCE. Once we realize we cannot shift the blame -- for at some deep level we know that we truly are responsible for our wrongdoing -- our next strategy is to put off the day of repentance. Augustine of Hippo, the celebrated fifth-century bishop whose autobiography, The Confessions, recounts his promiscuous youth, remembered praying this prayer: "Lord, give me self-control, but not yet!"

Believers who are actively disobeying God forget His warning: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Ps. 95:7-8). They wait until tomorrow to repent, but tomorrow never comes. Their hearts harden like lumps of clay left in the hot sun, becoming useless because they can no longer be shaped according to God's will.

JUSTIFYING SIN. If we put off repentance long enough, our consciences become seared (1 Tim. 4:2). We stop trying to hide sin, make excuses, or delay our reckoning with it; instead we begin to convince ourselves that it isn't really sin after all. In time we may even grow brazen in our wrongdoing, openly defying God or others who condemn our behavior.

King Saul was a master rationalizer. When the prophet Samuel rebuked him for disobeying God's command to destroy everything in the enemy city of Amalek, Saul tried to justify his behavior by claiming that he had saved the best of the booty to sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel pointed out that the king had nevertheless disobeyed God's clear instructions. Yet Saul adamantly insisted that he had done no wrong (1 Sam. 15:1-21).

Other biblical backsliders repeat this pattern. Having slain Abel, Cain defied God with the impudent challenge: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9). The high priest Caiaphas had an elaborate rationale for murdering Jesus: If He wasn't put to death, he reasoned, the Nazarene's followers would cause trouble, the Romans would react violently, and the Jewish nation would be harmed (Jn. 11:45-50). Having Jesus executed, he insisted, was obviously the right thing to do.

The hardened believer thus embraces sin and refuses correction. All fear of God is gone. "This is the way of an adulteress," says a biblical proverb. "She eats and wipes her mouth and says, 'I've done nothing wrong'" (Prov. 30:20).

LOSS OF FAITH IN GOD

Unrepented sin can eventually lead to unbelief and a disastrous rejection of God. Consider, for example, the children of Israel who hardened their hearts in the desert. Having lost their initial loving gratitude for all that God had done to save them, they persisted in sin, until they finally lost faith altogether. They concluded that there was no God on the mountain after all and that something else must have delivered them from bondage. So they worshiped instead a golden calf of their own creation (Exodus 32).

Sadly, I can recall several Christians I've known who followed a similar path, rejecting the Lord altogether. Despite every indication of genuine faith, they gradually slipped deeper and deeper into sin. They lost their love for God and their fear of God and in the end no longer believed even the essentials of the faith. Finally, they declared themselves Christians no more.

Why does loss of faith follow loss of love and fear? First, we must recall that prayer, meditating on God's Word, and fellowship with other believers feed our faith. Thus, when we avoid these spiritual disciplines, we starve our faith. The old "mule" needs its oats; sawdust in the feed bag is deadly.

Perhaps another reason for loss of faith is that those who justify their wrongdoing must deny the truth of Scripture. Once they have undermined in their own hearts the claims of God's Word with regard to morality, they have opened the door to doubts about its other claims. Ever since the serpent first tempted Eve, the devil has sought to seduce believers with the unsettling question: "Did God really say ... ?" (Gen. 3:1).

Affirming God's existence and His claim to our obedience while habitually disobeying Him creates a tension in our souls that is ultimately unbearable. We can never fully convince ourselves that our behavior is justified when God has plainly said it isn't. But if we refuse to repent, the only way out of the dilemma is to conclude that either He hasn't truly spoken or that He doesn't exist after all. The result: "a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God" (Heb. 3:12).

I have taught many students from Christian families who went looking for another faith because they wanted to hold on to some particular sin. Typically, they end up in some form of New Age religion because it makes few moral demands. They relieve themselves of the inner tension by denying that there is a God who commands: "Be holy, because I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16).

EXAMINE YOURSELVES

"Examine yourselves," the Apostle Paul instructs us, "to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves" (2 Cor. 13:5). Do we find evidence that we've failed to address sinful patterns and hard-heartedness toward God? Are there signs that we have lost our first love, our fear of the Lord?

If so, God still stands ready to help us find the way back to Him. The spiritual disciplines we've forsaken -- prayer, Scripture study, Christian fellowship -- can serve to rekindle our love and a healthy fear, driving us to repentance and a new beginning. Then the prayer of Jude (vv. 24-25) can become our firm hope:

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his

glorious presence without fault and with great joy -- to the only God our

Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our

Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

--------------------------------------------

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PAUL THIGPEN is a fellow in theology at the College of St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Texas. Most people would be surprised to know that even though he's written professionally for 12 years, Paul still types with two fingers. "They're very fast fingers," he says.

The Gospel of Mark's prescription for spiritual sanity

======================================================

Recently my wife started reading WINNIE THE POOH to me. She had read it to our children 35 years ago, and I had overheard parts of it. But she thought it would be good if I got it whole and firsthand before it was too late.

One evening while she was reading, I was watching the autumn light leak out of the mountain lake that is our front yard and letting the words of the story drift through my consciousness. Suddenly I was fully awake: the blurred world in which I teach and write on Christian spiritual theology came into crisp focus. I saw the people I was working with in a fresh way.

Jan had just completed chapter 8 in which the childlike animals had been assembled by Christopher Robin for an adventure — they were off to discover the North Pole. It is a meandering tale in which everyone takes everything with complete seriousness, although no one understands much of what is going on. Each character contributes something essential to the quest. The world is large with meaning, and no one is left out — but no one is sure what the North Pole is, not even Christopher Robin who proposed the expedition.

Along the way little Roo falls into a stream and needs rescuing — everyone pitches in. Pooh picks up a pole and fishes him out. The emergency over, the animals talk it over while Pooh stands there with the pole in his hands. Christopher Robin then says,

"Pooh…where did you find that pole?"

Pooh looked at the pole in his hands.

"I just found it," he said, "I thought it ought to be useful. I just

picked it up."

"Pooh," said Christopher Robin solemnly, "the Expedition is over.

You have found the North Pole!"

"Oh!" said Pooh.

The animals go on with their desultory, haphazard conversation for a while until Christopher Robin finally gets them back to attending to the North Pole that Pooh had discovered.

They stuck the pole in the ground, and Christopher Robin tied a

message on to it,

North Pole

Discovered By Pooh

Pooh Found It.

Then they all went home again….

What I so suddenly “saw” as I was listening to Jan read was the culture in which I live, peopled with engaging characters out looking for a vaguely defined spirituality (the “North Pole”). Every once in a while one of them picks up something and someone says, “That's it!” Sure enough, it does look like “it.” And someone, usually a “spiritual authority” (Christopher Robin), hangs a sign on it: “Spirituality.” And then everyone goes home again, until the next expedition is proposed.

People are attracted to “spirituality” in increasing numbers these days. Fresh expeditions for the “North Pole” set out almost daily from most places in the country. (The “East Pole” and the “West Pole” are also options). As I listened to the story that late autumn evening, I recognized many of the “characters” whom I love and admire so much but am not content to leave as is: I want to honor every detail of their childlike charm, but I also want to show them both what and where the “North Pole” is. I want to lead them to Jesus.

Fundamental to the Christian task of dealing with our meaning-hungry, spirit-thirsty, God-curious world is to teach and preach the Holy Scriptures as the Revelation of Life, the life defined and created by Jesus. This has always been necessary, but there is a contemporary urgency to the task in these times in which we are flooded with “spiritualities” that, ignorant of Jesus, are developed from the various and sundry experiences of Christopher Robin and friends, especially Pooh, “a bear of very little brain.”

If the Holy Spirit through Scripture as a whole both forms the company and provides the map to the “North Pole,” the Gospel of Mark is as good a place as any to take our bearings. The entire canon of Scripture is our comprehensive text, but Mark as the first Gospel holds a certain primacy. It is THE basic text for Christian spirituality.

FORMED BY GOSPEL

No one had ever written a Christian gospel before Mark wrote his. He created a new genre. It turned out to be a form of writing that quickly became both foundational and formative for the life of church and Christian.

The Bible as a whole comes to us in the form of narrative, and it is within this large, somewhat sprawling narrative that Mark writes his gospel. Stories invite us into a world other than ourselves, and, if they are good and true stories, a world larger than ourselves. Bible stories are good and true stories, and the world that they invite us into is the world of God's creation and salvation and blessing.

This is in contrast to the ancient preference for myth making, which turns us into spectators of the supernatural. It is also in contrast to the modern preference for moral philosophy that puts us in charge of our own salvation. “Gospel story” is a verbal way of accounting for reality that, like its subject — the Incarnation — is simultaneously divine and human. It REVEALS something we could never come up with on our own by observation or experiment or guess; and at the same time, it ENGAGES, it brings us into the action as recipients and participants without dumping the responsibility on us for making it turn out right.

There can hardly be any question

about the intent of Saint Mark:

the plot and emphasis and

meaning of Jesus is his death.

This has great implications for our spirituality, for the form itself protects us against two major ways we go off the rails: becoming frivolous spectators, clamoring for new and more exotic entertainment out of heaven; or, becoming anxious moralists, putting our shoulders to the wheel and taking on the burdens of the world. The very form of the text shapes responses in us that make it hard to become a mere spectator or a mere moralist. This is not a text that we master, it is one that we are mastered by.

Spirituality is the attention we give to our souls, to the invisible interior of our lives that is the core of our identity, these image-of-God souls that comprise our uniqueness and glory. Spirituality would appear to be a wonderful thing, and our initial exclamation is most likely, “Would that all the Lord's people were so engaged!” But 20 centuries of experience in spirituality qualifies our enthusiasm considerably. In actual practice, it turns out to be not so wonderful. When you look at our history, it is no wonder that spirituality is so often treated with suspicion, and not infrequently with outright hostility. For in actual practice, spirituality very often develops into neurosis, degenerates into selfishness, becomes pretentious, turns violent. How does this happen?

The short answer is that it happens when we step outside the gospel story and take ourselves as the basic and authoritative text for our spirituality; we begin exegeting ourselves as a sacred text. We don't usually throw the gospel out; we merely put it on the shelf and think that we are honoring it by consulting it from time to time as an indispensable reference work.

Our spiritual guides tell us, “You are wonderful, glorious beings, precious souls. Your aspirations for holiness and goodness and truth are splendid. But you are not the content of spirituality; God revealed in Jesus is that. You need a text to read and study and learn from — here's your text, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Start with Mark's gospel as your basic text.”

We open the text and read the story of Jesus, an odd kind of story. It tells us very little of what interests us in a story. We learn virtually nothing about Jesus that we really want to know. There is no description of his appearance. Nothing about his origin, friends, education, family. How are we to evaluate or understand this person? And there is very little reference to what he thought, to how he felt, his emotions, his interior struggles.

At some point or other we realize that this is a story about God — and about us. Even though Jesus is the most referred-to person in the story, there is a surprising reticence in regard to Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of God, so we are always being faced in Jesus with what we are faced with in God: most of what is here we don't get, we don't see, don't understand. We don't figure Jesus out, we don't search Jesus out, we don't get Jesus on our terms. It follows that neither do we get God on our terms. As a story, it is a most unsatisfying story.

And then we realize that our attention has been drawn away from ourselves and is on Jesus, God revealed in Jesus. True spirituality, Christian spirituality, takes attention off of ourselves and focuses it on another, on Jesus.

There are others in the story, of course, many others — the sick and hungry, victims and outsiders, friends and enemies. But Jesus is always the subject. No event and no person appears in this story apart from Jesus. Jesus provides both context and content for everyone's life. Spirituality — the attention we give to our souls — turns out in practice (when we let Saint Mark shape our practice) to be the attention we give to God revealed in Jesus. The text trains us in such perception and practice. Line after line, page after page — Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. None of us provides the content for our own spirituality; it is given to us; Jesus gives it to us. The text allows for no exceptions.

THE DEATH OF JESUS

As we read this text we soon discover that the entire story funnels into the narration of the events of a single week of Jesus' life, the week of his passion, death, and resurrection. And of these three items, death gets the most detailed treatment. If we are asked to say as briefly as possible what Mark's gospel consists of, we must say, “the death of Jesus.”

That doesn't sound very promising, especially for those of us who are looking for a text by which to live, a text by which to nurture our souls. But there it is. There are 16 chapters in the story. For the first eight, Jesus is alive, strolling unhurriedly through the villages and backroads of Galilee, bringing others to life.

And then, just as he has everyone's attention, he starts talking about death. The last eight chapters of the Gospel are dominated by death talk.

The death announcement also signals a change of pace. As the story is told through the first eight chapters, there is a leisurely and meandering quality to the narration. But with the death announcement, that changes: now he heads straight for Jerusalem. Urgency and gravity and destination now characterize the narration. The direction changes, the pace changes, the mood changes. Three times Jesus is explicit: he is going to suffer and be killed and rise again (8:31; 9:31; 10:33).

And then it happens: death. Jesus' death is narrated carefully and precisely. No incident in his life is told with this much detail. There can hardly be any question about Mark's intent: the plot and emphasis and meaning of Jesus is his death. This is a carefully DEFINED death. It is defined as voluntary. Jesus did not have to go to Jerusalem; he went on his own volition. He gave his assent to death. This was not accidental death; this was not an unavoidable death.

It is defined as sacrificial. He accepted death that others might receive life, “his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45; cf. 14:23-24).

And it is defined in the company of resurrection. Each of the three explicit death announcements concludes with a statement of resurrection. The gospel story as a whole concludes with a witness to resurrection. This does not make it any less a death, but it is a quite differently defined death than we are accustomed to dealing with.

TRAGEDY and PROCRASTINATION are the words that characterize our culture's attitude toward death. The tragic view of death is a legacy of the Greeks. The Greeks wrote with elegance of tragic deaths — lives that were caught up in the working out of large, impersonal forces, lives pursued with the best of intentions, but then enmeshed in circumstances that canceled the intentions, circumstances indifferent to human heroism or hope. The death of Jesus is not tragic.

The procrastinated death is a legacy of modern medicine. In a culture where life is reduced to heartbeat and brainwave, death can never be accepted as such. Since there is no more to life than can be accounted for by biology — no meaning, no spirituality, no eternity — increasingly desperate attempts are made to put it off, to delay it, to deny it. The death of Jesus is not procrastinated.

It is essential that we counter our culture by letting Mark's storytelling shape our understanding of death and eventually come to understand our own death within the rich dimensions and relations of Jesus' story.

THE ASCETIC AND THE AESTHETIC

Right at the center of Mark's text is a passage that I designate as the “spirituality” of the text: 8:27-9:9. It is set at the center of the gospel story so that one half of the Gospel, the multiple Galilean evocations of life, falls symmetrically on one side, and on the other side, the single-minded travel to Jerusalem and death.

This passage consists of two stories. The first story, Jesus' call for renunciation as he and his disciples start out on the road to Jerusalem, provides the ASCETIC dimension in spirituality. The second story, Jesus' transfiguration on Mount Tabor, provides the AESTHETIC dimension in spirituality.

The stories are bracketed at either end by affirmations of Jesus' true identity as God among us: first, Peter saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”; second, the voice out of heaven saying, “This is my beloved son, listen to him.” Human testimony at one end, divine attestation at the other.

These stories are organically connected. They are the two-beat rhythm in a single spiritual theology, not two alternate ways of doing spiritual theology. The two stories bring together the ascetic and aesthetic movements, the no and the yes that work together at the heart of spiritual theology.

THE ASCETIC. This is God's no in Jesus. Jesus' words are succinct and stark: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (8:34). The ascetic life deals with life on the road.

The verbs that leap out of the sentence and pounce on us are “deny yourself” and “take up your cross.” Renunciation and death. It feels like an assault, an attack. We recoil.

But then we notice that these two negatives are bracketed by the positive verb “follow,” first as an infinitive, then as an imperative. “If anyone wants to follow” opens the sentence; “you follow me” concludes it. Jesus is going someplace; he invites us to come along. There is no hostility in that. It sounds, in fact, quite glorious: the great verb “follow” sheds glory on the negative verbs that call for renunciation and death.

There is always a strong ascetic element in true spiritual theology. Following Jesus means NOT following your impulses and appetites and whims and dreams, all of which are sufficiently damaged by sin to make them unreliable guides for getting anyplace worth going. Following Jesus means NOT following the death-procrastinating, death-denying practices of a culture that, by obsessively pursuing life under the aegis of idols and ideologies, ends up with a life that is so constricted and diminished that it is hardly worthy of the name.

Grammatically, the negative, our capacity to say no, is one of the most impressive features of our language. The negative is our access to freedom. Only humans can say no. Animals can't say no. Animals do what instinct dictates. The judicious, well-placed no frees us from many a blind alley, many a rough detour, frees us from debilitating distractions and seductive sacrilege. The art of saying no sets us free to follow Jesus.

FOLLOWING JESUS means

not following your impulses

and appetites

and whims

and dreams.

If we adhere carefully to Mark's text, we will never associate the ascetic with the life-denying. Ascetic practice sweeps out the clutter of the god-pretentious self, making ample space for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; it embraces and prepares for a kind of death that the culture knows nothing about, making room for the dance of resurrection. Whenever we are around someone who is doing this well, we notice the lightness of step, the nimbleness of spirit, the quickness to laughter.

THE AESTHETIC. Alongside Mark's ascetic is his aesthetic. This is God's yes in Jesus. Peter, James, and John see Jesus transfigured before them on the mountain into cloud-brightness in the company of Moses and Elijah and hear God's blessing, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” (9:7). The aesthetic deals with life on the mountain. The word BEAUTY does not occur in the story, but beauty is what the disciples experienced, and what we find ourselves experiencing.

There is always a strong aesthetic element in true spiritual theology. Climbing the mountain with Jesus means coming upon beauty that takes our breath away. Staying in the company of Jesus means contemplating his glory, listening in on this vast, intergenerational conversation consisting of law and prophet and gospel that takes place around Jesus, hearing the divine confirmation of revelation in Jesus. When God's Spirit makes his appearance, we recognize the appearance as beautiful.

Now here is the thing about the transfigured Jesus. Jesus is the form of revelation, “and the light does not fall on this form from above and from outside, rather it breaks forth from the form's interior” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, THE GLORY OF THE LORD, vol. 1, p. 151). The only adequate response that can be made to light is to keep our eyes open, to attend to what is illumined — adoration.

The aesthetic impulse in spiritual theology has to do with training in perception, acquiring a taste for what is being revealed in Jesus. We are not good at this. Our senses have been dulled by sin. The world, for all its vaunted celebration of sensuality, is relentlessly anesthetic, obliterating feeling by ugliness and noise, draining the beauty out of people and things so that they are functionally efficient, scornful of the aesthetic except as it can be contained in a museum or flower garden. Our senses require healing and rehabilitation so that they are adequate for receiving and responding to visitations and appearances of Spirit, God's Holy Spirit.

These bodies of ours with their five senses are not impediments to a life of faith; our sensuality is not a barrier to spirituality but our only access to it. When John wanted to assure some early Christians of the authenticity of his spiritual experience, he did it by calling on the witness of his senses of sight, hearing, and touch (1 John 1:1). In his opening sentence, he calls on the witness of his senses seven times.

Mark sets this story of glorious affirmation in immediate juxtaposition to his story of stern negation. He knows that, simple and obvious as it is, it is easy to get it wrong. Peter's initial response in both the ascetic road story and the aesthetic mountain story was wrong.

On the road, Peter tried to avoid the cross; on the mountain, he tried to possess the glory. Peter rejected the ascetic way by offering Jesus a better plan, a way of salvation in which no one has to be inconvenienced. Jesus, in the sternest rebuke recorded in the Gospels, called him Satan. Peter rejected the aesthetic way by offering to build memorials on the mountain, a way of worship in which he could take over from Jesus and provide something hands-on and practical. This time Jesus just ignored him.

Peter's propensity to get it wrong keeps us on our toes. Century after century we Christians keep getting it wrong — and in numerous ways. Every time we get sloppy in reading this text of Saint Mark and leave the company of Jesus, we get it wrong.

ONE MORE THING

Mark chose to tell us about Jesus as the revelation of God, a full accounting of Jesus' work of salvation. We are invited to become full participants in the story of Jesus and shown how to become such participants. We are not simply TOLD that Jesus is the Son of God; we not only BECOME beneficiaries of his atonement; we are invited to die his death and live his life with the freedom and dignity of participants. And here is a marvelous thing: we enter the center of the story without becoming the center of the story.

Spirituality is always in danger of self-absorption, of becoming so intrigued with matters of soul that God is treated as a mere accessory to my experience. This requires much vigilance. Spiritual theology is, among other things, the exercise of this vigilance.

And for this Mark provides our basic text. The two stories at the center, the road and mountain stories, are clearly proleptic — they anticipate Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. They immerse us and train us in the ascetic negations and aesthetic affirmations, but they don't leave us there; they cast us forward in faith and obedience to the life that is finally and only complete in the definitive no and glorious yes of Jesus crucified and risen.

_________

Eugene H. Peterson is the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and author of Leap over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians (Harper San Francisco, 1997).

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. July 13, 1998 Vol. 42, No. 8, Page 51

Who is God? And who is God for me? There are many ways, many theologies, many systems-of-words which have tried to answer these, the most important questions humans have ever asked.

Some of these theologies concentrate on God’s essence (who he is); others on his activity (what he does); others still on his relationship with his human creatures (who he is for us). All fail to capture adequately the grandeur, the creativity, and the love of the God who has revealed himself in history to his people, through the Scriptures, in nature, in our consciences, in the events of the world, in our own lives, but ultimately in the life of Jesus Christ. Here we will simply look at three attributes of God: his greatness, his goodness, and his generosity.

1. God is great. All of the Christian saints affirm, with so many of the Psalmists, ‘Great is the Lord’. He is the sovereign ruler of the universe. All power and authority belong to him. He is not a passive spectator.

He is great in his ‘being’, beyond our comprehension or definition (any definition claiming to be adequate would be an idol of the mind).

He is great in wisdom. He is the one unto whom ‘all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden’.

So our prayer to him must begin with worship, with adoration. Some of the great hymns can help us: ‘Great God of wonders...’; ‘Jesus thou joy of loving hearts...’.

As one person lay dying of cancer he wrote: ‘All too often our faith is earth-bound and we find it hard to believe that God can do anything that our minds cannot explain. It is only as we spend time worshipping God, concentrating on the nature of his person, especially his greatness and his love, that our faith begins to rise’. (David Watson, Fear No Evil, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984, p.59).

So adoration and worship are therapeutic!

But we must add an important footnote here. The God who is incarnated in Jesus is the kind of God who, when he wants to show himself in our world, does so in weakness and poverty.

2. God is good. He is ‘for us’. When we call on him in the day of trouble, he will care for us (Psalm 50:15). As we read the biblical drama we find that he either delivers us from trouble, or in trouble. He is always there for us. He will never leave us or forsake us.

However, we are not to treat God as a lawyer or doctor, only going to him when we’ve got a problem. Some of us want our adolescent independence too soon! God is our father, and like little children we ought to learn to enjoy our father’s company in all the events of our lives. When a little girl said ‘God’s my best friend!’ she was uttering something that is at the heart of true spirituality.

He should become everything to us (‘What could be greedier’, remarks St. Augustine, ‘than a person for whom God is not enough?’) and everything we do should be done for his glory. We should want him to accomplish in our lives ‘all things according to the counsel of his will’ (Ephesians 1:11). When we really believe God is good it is easier to pray ‘not my will but yours... ‘

3. God delights to give gifts. There are thirty texts in the New Testament describing prayer as asking. Our Father delights to give gifts to us. Indeed, he is the ‘God of surprises’, who delights to give before we ask. Christian thought calls this aspect of God’s character ‘prevenient grace’ (Grace – God’s giving freely out of his love for us; prevenient – from the Latin ‘to go before’). We will notice these gifts all the time if we have developed the habit of living gratefully. True lovers think in terms of giving gifts to one another.

In a very real sense, of course, God’s best gift to us is himself. Our response? As the great commandment puts it, we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This is not the same as ‘getting religion’ – even the Christian religion; it is actively seeking and loving God himself.

Brother Lawrence was a lame, clumsy man who went to a monastery to atone somehow for his disabilities. He was put to work washing floors and kitchen pots and pans. In the midst of all this he ‘practised the presence of God.’ When he was dying his friends asked what he was thinking about. He replied, ‘I am doing what I shall do through all eternity – blessing God, praising God, adoring God, giving him the love of my whole heart.’

Charity, says the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, ‘is nought else but love of God for himself above all creatures.’

I love you, Lord,

not doubtingly but with absolute certainty.

Your Word beat upon my heart

until I fell in love with you

and now the universe

and everything in it

tells me to love you... (Augustine).

...

The Masai called their god Engai. Well, that is no more strange- sounding than our gods. The god invoked by the pope to bless the troops of Mussolini about to embark on the plunder of Ethiopia, and the god invoked by an American cardinal to bless the ‘soldiers of Christ’ in Vietnam, and the god of French glory, and the German god of Hitler were no more the High God of Scripture than is ‘Diana of the Ephesians’ or Engai of the Masai of Eastern Africa. [Vincent J Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, London, SCM, 1985, p.46.]

I have always been ‘surprised’ by life.

And as I believe that God is life, just as he is light and love, I have come to the conclusion that it is God himself who has ‘surprised’ me on my journey.

God is surprise. God is novelty. God is creativity...

I don’t know how it happened to you, but I know how it happened to me.

God arrived in my heart like a huge parable. Everything around me spoke to me of him.

The sky spoke to me of him,

the earth spoke to me of him,

the sea spoke to me of him.

He was like a secret hidden in all things,

visible and invisible.

He was like the solution to all problems.

He was like the most important person who had ever entered my

life and with whom I should have lived for ever...

The Good News is this: that God is God, that God is the God of the Impossible, he is the God who can make Sarah’s barren womb fruitful and separate the waters of the Red Sea.

He is a living God.

He is a God who guides.

He is a God who raises from the dead.

He is an Eternal God.

He is a God who wants me in his Kingdom for ever.

[Carlo Carretto, The Desert in the City, London, Fount Paperbacks, 1983, pp. 9, 25-26, 58.]

Something in us wants to insist on having [both] – God and health, God and riches, God and honour, God and long life... But God is so infinitely much more than these other things that in the end the ‘and’ bit does not add anything. All that is good and that belongs to our eternal joy is included in God, for God is all in all. [Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, London, Fountain Paperbacks, 1987, p.39]

Perceiving, as other mortals have not perceived, the burning love of God, the saint gives God love for love. He cannot help it. Certainly, it is not the fruit of labour. Having seen the love of God, his own love leaps in response. His heart is drawn out of him and lost in God’s immensity.

No mortal can love as God loves, but the saint loves with all that there is of him... It is by love that the saint becomes free – free of that awful self-centredness which is the mark of most mortals... It is by love that we come to freedom, and there is no other way.

[W.E. Sangster, The Pure in Heart, Epworth, 1954, pp. 242-243.]

He had always been governed by love, without selfish views; and having resolved to make the love of God the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. He was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking him only, and nothing else, not even his gifts...

‘I did not engage in a religious life but for the love of God, and I have endeavoured to act only for him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love him.’

[Brother Lawrence, THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD: THE BEST RULE OF A HOLY LIFE, BEING CONVERSATIONS AND LETTERS OF BROTHER LAWRENCE, Epworth, nd., pp. 6-7.]

O God, I love thee, I love thee -

Not out of hope of heaven for me

Not fearing not to love and be

In the everlasting burning.

Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me

Didst reach thine arms out dying,

For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,

Mocked and marred countenance,

Sorrows passing number,

Sweat and care and cumber,

Yea and death, and this for me,

And thou couldst see me sinning:

Then I, why should not I love thee,

Jesus, so much in love with me?

Not for heaven’s sake; not to be

Out of hell by loving thee;

Not for any gains I see;

But just the way that thou didst me

I do love and I will love thee:

What must I love thee, Lord, for then?

For being my king and God. Amen.

[Translated from the Latin by Gerard Manley Hopkins]

[A fearful person said ‘I fear lest I should be cast into hell.’ Another anxious person said ‘I dread lest I should be deprived of the joy of heaven... ] A third was very happy and contented. [He was asked] ‘What is the secret of your joy and peace?’ He said, ‘My constant prayer to God is that he may grant me to love him with heart and soul, and may serve and worship him by love alone. Should I worship him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve him from desire of gaining heaven, may he keep me out. But should I worship him from love alone, may he reveal himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with his love and presence.’

[Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Spiritual Life, Christian Literature Society, 1926/1986, pp. 13-14. Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Spiritual Life]

‘... When thoughts come, welcome them, and when they do not flow freely simply rest back and love, and grant Me the shared joy of being loved by you. For I, too, by my very nature, am hungry with an insatiable hunger for the love of all of you, just as your love reaches out at your highest moments to all the people about you. So child, I, even I, God, whom people have foolishly feared and flattered for my gifts, I want love and friendship more than I want grovelling subjects. So while we love each other, child, My share is as keen as yours.’

[Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic, Lutterworth, 1957, p.30.]

Thou knowest not what, saving that thou feelest in thy will a naked intent unto God... this darkness and this cloud... hindereth thee, so that thou mayest neither see him clearly by light of understanding in thy reason, nor feel him in sweetness of love in thy affection. And therefore shape thee to bide in this darkness as long as thou mayest, evermore crying after him whom thou lovest. For if ever thou shalt see him or feel him as it may be here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness... Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.

[The Cloud of Unknowing: The Cloud of Unknowing, quoted in Michael Cox, Handbook of Christian Spirituality, Harper & Row, 1985, p.139.]

When the next step comes, you do not take the step, you do not know the transition, you do not fall into anything. You do not go anywhere, and so you do not know the way by which you got there or the way by which you come back afterward. You are certainly not lost. You do not fly. There is no space, or there is all space: it makes no difference.

The next step is not a step... And here all adjectives fall to pieces. Words become stupid. Everything you say is misleading – unless you list every possible experience and say: ‘That is not what it is.’ ‘That is not what I am talking about.’

What it is is freedom. It is perfect love. It is pure renunciation. It is the fruition of God... It is freedom living and circulating in God, who is Freedom. It is love loving in Love. It is the purity of God rejoicing in his own liberty.

[Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation: Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions Books, 1961, pp. 282-284.]

To the few who are converted, goodness is pleasant, and needs no sanctions. It needs no authority, for it has been verified by experience. But when people have to be coerced into goodness it is plain that they do not care for it.

[Walter Lippmann: Walter Lippmann, ‘A Preface to Morals’, Time, 1964, p.188.]

The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord... Our Lord told his disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of his sayings would prove that we loved him, and the failure or refusal to keep them would prove that we did not. This is the true test of love... Not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Love for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling...

If we would turn from fine-spun theological speculations about grace and faith, and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves, and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: Do we love the Lord or no?

[A.W. Tozer, ‘Love’s Final Test’, The Life of Faith, October 20, 1960.]

‘Marvelously close, God, help me to keep thinking of You all day today, as love crowding gently as the ether, watm as the sunlight, into every nook and cranny of my thoughts, words, looks, acts – love pressing in, and oozing out, floating like perfume out to others.

O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.’

‘My child, this makes Me happy. Now let love flow out to My world of needy people all about you. Despise not one of the least. Do not see colour or clothes, just souls and My children. Do not hear titles or languages, just hear Me speak through them. I call from behind every eye, I float upon every wave of speech and song and sigh. See Me in people, for I seek to make them grow in Christlike love.’

[Frank Laubach, Learning the Vocabulary of God: A Spiritual Diary, Lutterworth, 1956, pp. 59-60.]

In Graham Greene’s novel, The Heart of the Matter, Scobie is torn between love for his wife and his mistress, and decides to commit suicide. Sitting in his car he holds a very moving conversation with God, acknowledging that he is guilty before God and that he can no longer face the altar. ‘You’ll be better off when you lose me once and for all. You’ll be at peace when I’m out of your reach,’ he tells God.

God replies... ‘You say you love me, yet you’ll do this to Me – rob Me of you for ever. I made you with love. I’ve wept your tears... and now you push me away, put me out of your reach. I am as humble as any other beggar. Can’t you trust me as you’d trust a faithful dog? I’ve been faithful to you for 2000 years... Can’t you trust me to see that the suffering isn’t too great?’

[Ivor Bailey, ‘Live and Let Love’, a sermon preached from Maughan Church, Adelaide, July 9, 1972. ... ]

I no longer want to build empires,

to ascend thrones,

or to be number one in my little kingdom.

I want to love you,

and to respond to your love for me

by communicating such love to others.

This is what I want, O Lord,

but you know my soft spots, my hang-ups.

May the victory be yours today, O Lord.

In Jesus’ name. Amen

[Leslie F. Brandt, A Book of Christian Prayer: Leslie F. Brandt, A Book of Christian Prayer, Kingsway, 1978 p.10. ]

O merciful God, grant that I may always do your will perfectly in all things.

May it be my wish to work only for your honour and glory.

May I rejoice in nothing except what leads to you.

May I wish nothing that leads away from you.

May all passing things be as nothing in my eyes.

May all that is yours be dear to me and may you, my God, be dear to me above all things.

May I wish for nothing apart from you.

May all joys have no importance for me apart from you.

May all effort and work delight me when it is for you.

[Thomas Aquinas, cited in Praying with the Saints Dublin, Veritas Publications, 1989, p.65.]

No soul can have rest until it finds created things are empty. When the soul gives up all for love, so that it can have him that is all, then it finds true rest.

For he is endless and has made us for his own self only, and has restored us by his blessed Passion, and keeps us in his blessed love. And he does all this through his goodness.

God of goodness give me yourself, for you are enough for me and I may ask nothing that is less, that may be full worship to you. And if I ask anything that is less, I am always wanting – but only in you I have all.

[Julian of Norwich, Showings, Chapter 5. cited in Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, London, Fountain Paperbacks, 1987, p.48]

O you Omnipotent goodness, you care for us all as if each of us were your only concern, and you look after each of us as if we were all one person...!

Eternal truth, truth of love, love of eternity! That’s what you are, my God, and that’s why day and night you form the breath of my being. When I first knew you, you lifted me up and I realised there was something to see, but I wasn’t quite capable of seeing it. My vision was too weak to stand the radiance of your glory, and I trembled with a combination of love and dread. I seemed to be a long way from you, in a far country, listening to your voice as it spoke to me from above, ‘I am the real food. Grow up and feed on me. But you will never change me into yourself as your digestion changes its food; rather you will be changed into my likeness’.

[Sherwood E Wirt, The Confessions of Augustine in Modern English Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1977, pp.46, 95-96.]

Lord, I am your child. In some mysterious sense, my Father, you are hungry for my love. Your love is mediated through words and the Word, through sunsets and rain and the whispering trees, soft shadows on the water. I was created for friendship with you, my Creator. I was redeemed for friendship with you, my Saviour. I am cared for for friendship with you, my ever-present Friend. Lord it’s not a self-improvement course I want, but you.

We taste thee, O thou living Bread,

And long to feast upon thee still.

We drink of thee the fountainhead,

And thirst our souls from thee to fill.

I have tasted a little of your goodness, Lord, and it has both satisfied me and made me hunger for more. My desire is to desire you more. Give me a gift of love – for you and for others. And to journey towards the final self- forgetfulness – to be absorbed into you forever.

=============

Ah Lord GOD! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. — Jeremiah 32:17

You know no God but me,

and besides me there is no saviour.

I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. — Isaiah 44:6

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory. — Isaiah 6:3

He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. — 1 Timothy 6:16

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. — James 1:17

The beloved of the LORD rests in safety. — Deuteronomy 33:12

Happy are you, O Israel!

Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD,

the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph! — Deuteronomy 33:29

I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.

I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.

I bent down to them and fed them. — Hosea 11:4

It is I who answer and look after you.

I am like an evergreen cypress;

your faithfulness comes from me. — Hosea 14:8

The LORD, your God, is in your midst...

he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing. — Zephaniah 3:17

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. — 1 John 4:16

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy. — 1 Peter 1:8

Love the Lord, all you his saints.

The Lord preserves the faithful,

but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,

all you who wait for the Lord. — Psalm 31:23–24

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. — John 1:12-13

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone. Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! — Matthew 7:7-11

And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 4:19

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

and gently lead the mother sheep. — Isaiah 40:11

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. ... For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:14-17, 38-39

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. — 2 Thessalonians 3:5

_____________

A Benediction: Keep yourselves in the love of God, as you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy to give you eternal life. May God’s grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with undying love. Benediction: Jude 21, Ephesians 6:24 (both GNB).

If you were asked what you would call a person who believes in astrology, reincarnation, and the possibility of communicating with the dead, your answer would probably be a "New Ager."

Well, according to a new book, these are just some of the beliefs held by people who call themselves "born again Christians" -- which goes to show that simply calling yourself "born again" doesn't make it so.

In his book, Spiritual Marketplace, sociologist Wade Clark Roof chronicles the shift in religious attitudes in contemporary America. Roof finds that, as a result of the Baby Boomer "quest culture," many Americans understand religious faith as some sort of emotional personal experience, which they describe as "spiritual." And all sorts of strange beliefs can fit under that heading.

By describing themselves as "spiritual" rather than "religious," these people tell us a lot. The word "religion," you see, comes from the Latin word for "to bind." But boomer spirituality distrusts authority and dismisses the importance of belonging to a particular church or denomination.

Their emphasis on being spiritual carries with it a syncretistic approach to belief -- meaning that, instead of adhering to a specific set of doctrines, they feel free to pick-and-choose from all the various belief systems, or to create their own tailor-made religion.

Unfortunately, syncretism has found its way into evangelical circles, as well. Roof says that many people who describe themselves as "born again Christians" actually hold beliefs that are at odds with biblical Christianity.

Some 25 percent of those interviewed in Roof's study believe in the possibility of communicating with the dead. A third of them believe in reincarnation and astrology; and, half say they believe in psychic powers.

Moreover, half said, "the various religions of the world are 'equally good and true.'" This prompted Roof to characterize this brand of so-called born-again Christianity as "markedly different" from earlier varieties. Or as columnist Terry Mattingly puts it "born again ... doesn't mean what it used to mean." It also tells us that polls of born-again voters can be very misleading.

Actually, it's not that born-again Christianity has changed. It's that Roof's subjects, like many of those who claim to be born-again Christians, actually practice an entirely different faith.

The situation described by Roof is analogous to the circumstances confronted in the '20s and '30s by theologian Gresham Machem. Liberal theologians had introduced new doctrines and ideas into the Church, often claiming biblical warrant for these ideas. As a result, many people were confused by these teachings.

In his classic book, "Christianity & Liberalism," Machem showed that while these ideas might be attractive, they weren't Christianity. In the same way, while the mixture of Christianity and other religions may suit the spirit of our age, it simply isn't born-again Christianity.

We need to remind people lovingly that Christianity is more than a spiritual experience. It's a worldview -- a set of beliefs about the God who acted in history, belief that has been revealed through Scripture and transmitted by our 2,000-year-old heritage of Western Civilization.

It is these beliefs, and not our "spiritual" feelings, that define what it means to be a Christian -- no matter what the spirit of the age may tell us.

___________________

Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

One of the great longings of the human heart is to worship; yet, within that very disposition there are tugs in many directions that contradict the essence of worship. This fragmentation is felt in every life. But there is a further complication. The idea of worship itself is not monolithic or uniform when you get a glimpse of the different kinds of worship in which people engage.

The thirst for worship or for the sacred across cultures and across time is ineradicable among the educated and the uneducated, the young and the old. During my days as a student at college in New Delhi, I well remember students seated around me with colored ash smeared on their foreheads, having visited the temple on their way to school. All over the world, churches, temples, mosques, and tabernacles abound. Sacred books still line the shelves of seekers after truth - the Gita, the Koran, the Bible. Religious ceremonies are performed and prayers are invoked in life’s most significant moments. Even a casual look at the record of human history reveals a fervent pursuit of spiritual things.

Jesus was very much aware of this bent within the human spirit. That is why He said worship should be done in truth, as well as in spirit. Without truth there is no limit to the superstition, deception, and sadly, even violence that can come in the name of religion. You see, worship alone cannot justify itself; it needs the constraints of truth, and that truth is the person and character of God. As an individual makes a commitment to God, not only is his or her life unified for God’s glory, but the impetus of truth is given for all other pursuits and relationships.

In other words, worship must not only be formal, it must also be substantive. You see, we humans are not a collection of isolated and unrelated senses just seeking expression. We are fashioned to bind these expressions by the character and reverence of God.

So much goes on in the name of religion today that must make us question whose character is being revealed in the process.

Worship that is true and spiritual binds all the diverse aspirations and propensities creating a tapestry of beauty and a life that is in harmony with the goodness and the holiness of God. So next time you pause to worship or even to observe it, ask the question: Is this what Jesus Christ meant when He said we are to worship God in spirit and in Truth?

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #14142]

*

When it comes to witnessing to people caught up in the New Age Movement, Marcia Montenegro speaks from experience. For years Montenegro was an astrologer. She looked to the stars for answers rather than God.

Montenegro said her views changed in 1990 after she began attending church and reading her Bible. Before long she realized "that I had been on a spiritual path leading away from God my whole life. I understood for the first time who Jesus was and why he died on the cross," she recalled. "I gave my life to him at that very moment."

Montenegro now heads a ministry to people with alternative beliefs called CANA (Christian Answers for the New Age).

Looking back on her old life, which included friends who were psychics and pagans among others, Montenegro observed, "Christianity was far away from me and I wanted nothing to do with it."

Although she attended a Southern Baptist church in Maryland as a teenager and was involved in a lot of activities, she was not a Christian. "I didn't understand I needed a Savior. I thought I just had to be 'good' to get to heaven."

As she grew older and developed friends from other religions, she began to question Christianity. In college she explored the eastern religions because she thought they provided "ancient wisdom."

Montenegro soon became enveloped in the New Age Movement, which she describes as an "umbrella term" for many beliefs based on combinations of eastern religions, humanism and the occult.

She said Christians sometimes tend to write off the New Age Movement as something "flaky or superficial."

That is a mistake, Montenegro continued, because she believes the New Age Movement is "serious, spiritual deception."

The New Age Movement has entered the "mainstream of western culture," she said, and can be found in health, education, business, sports, and even the church.

"It is not on the fringe anymore, and it is not going away," she warned.

While New Agers speak of spirituality and will talk about God, "it's not the God of the Bible," she cautioned.

She said the church needs to be able to respond to New Agers. But to do so, Christians must establish relationships with New Agers and to show them respect.

"The human response is to feel superior to the people who believe those 'strange' ideas," Montenegro said. "We are not better (than the New Agers). We are forgiven and we are saved."

"We once were sinners the same as an astrologer, a witch, or any other New Ager," she added. "We need to see them as people Christ died for."

Montenegro said prayer is a key for reaching New Agers. Sharing her testimony at this year's Tennessee Baptist evangelism conference, she said she learned only after accepting Christ that a Christian co-worker had been praying for her all along.

Montenegro said Christians should not be afraid to talk with New Agers and to ask them questions about their beliefs. In the process of asking and listening, she suggested the response: "That's different from what the Bible says."

While Christians need to appeal to the Bible as the foundation for their beliefs, they can't take it for granted that New Agers will accept that Scripture is true. "You have to stand on the Bible, but you don't hit them over the head with it," she said.

She remembers encounters before she accepted Christ with Christians who came up to her and told her she was going to hell. "That confirmed to me how I thought they were too judgmental," she said.

When talking with New Agers, Montenegro suggested avoiding the phrase, "I believe." Instead, she said, use "God says" or "Jesus says."

She said New Agers often are more willing to talk about Jesus than the Bible.

"They may be hostile toward Christianity and the Bible, but they are willing to talk about Jesus," she said.

Discipleship after a person makes a decision for Christ is important for anyone, but it is especially so for New Agers who take that step, Montenegro stressed.

After her conversion, Montenegro said, she was afraid that Christians would wonder if she was really saved. "There is a lot of fear from former New Agers to even talk with their pastor," she said.

New Agers need a mature, well-grounded Christian to talk to, Montenegro said. "They need to be discipled."

New Agers lose their community when they accept Christ, she said. "They need help, love, attention and discipleship."

_______________________

Lonnie Wilkey is editor of Baptist and Reflector, news journal of the Tennessee Baptist Convention.

*

[former illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #4784]

In a seminar Dr. Larry Crabb described the mature believer with these words:

Our personal need for security, significance (and sufficiency) can only be genuinely and fully met in relationship with Jesus Christ.... All we need to function effectively as persons is at any given moment fully supplied in relationship with Christ and in what He chooses to provide.... Every Christian is in fact totally secure and eternally significant. We are loved unconditionally by a personal God with a sacrificial love which is as profound as it is unwavering... Because of our position in Christ and our place in His purpose, our lives have meaning. We matter. We are valuable. We are significant. A personally healthy Christian is persuaded of his worth in Christ to the point where his motivation to live for God is rooted fundamentally in his relationship to God.... A personally full Christian needs nothing other than God and what He chooses to provide in order to persevere and to grow in responsible living.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #1532]