Growth

The Story that Shapes Your Soul

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“Looking out upon her audience, Angharad saw the faces grim in the reflected fire glow; and they seemed to her in this moment not faces at all, but empty vessels into which she would pour the elixir of the song which was more than a song. They would hear and, God willing, the story would work in their hearts and minds to produce its rare healing fruit.” (Scarlet, The King Raven Trilogy, by Stephen R. Lawhead, 2007, p. 200)

We each have narratives that inform the decisions we make and how we feel about life.  These stories are powerful. In fact, these stories have the power of life and death in our relationships with each other and with God. These stories are formed from our life experiences or from the tales told around the table. Marraige counselors know the power of our stories. In an effort to improve the attitude and feelings of well-being they will have a couple tell “the story” of how they met and how their courtship progressed. These stories elicit what may be remnant good-will in order to help them gain traction for making adjustments and grow in their relationship.

Advertisers & Story

Advertisers know that the stories we absorb are powerful. In fact advertisement is an effort at telling a story that moves us; that moves us to buy into their product or brand.  The most masterful I saw recently was the one of a group of men fishing while the audio relives the fateful moment they learned they had won the Lott0 649.  I hate it; but its good. In 30 seconds we get backstory and a present story. People who let this story shape their lives will buy lotto tickets in spite of their dismal chances.

Soul Training & Story

I have been thinking about story and its power to shape our souls while reading James Byron Smith’s book, The Good and Beautiful God. His approach to spiritual formation in Christ, is that we must adopt the stories or narratives of Jesus as part of our soul-training in God’s grace. These stories of Jesus will orient us toward the revealed character of God. Smith writes:

“We are shaped by our stories. In fact, our stories, once in place, determine much of our behavior without regard to their accuracy or helpfulness. Once these stories are stored in our minds, they stay there largely unchallenged until we die. And here is the main point: these narratives are running (and often ruining) our lives. That is why it is crucial to get the right narratives.

Once we “find” the narratives inside our minds, we can measure them against Jesus’ narratives. Because Jesus is the preexistent and eternal Son of God, no one knows God or the nature and meaning of life more than Jesus. Jesus’ narratives are the truth. He himself is the truth. So the key is adopting Jesus’ narratives.

Jesus revealed his Father to us. The New Testament reveals a God who is pulsing with goodness and power and love and beauty. To know the God of Jesus is to know the truth about how God really is.

In order to change we first have to change our minds. Jesus’ opening line to his first sermon was, “Repent, [metanoia], for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Metanoia refers to the changing of one’s mind. Jesus understood that transformation begins in the mind. The apostle Paul said the same thing when he proclaimed, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God–what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). (The Good and Beautiful God, 25-26)

Lent and The Good News

Lent is the seasonal Christian journey toward the Cross and the Empty tomb of Jesus Christ.  It is our opportunity to reflect deeply on the meta-narrative of God’s love for people and His purposes revealed in Jesus Christ. Each week of Lent I am taking time to reflect at length on a narrative Jesus told to reveal the Kingdom of God and to bring healing to his listeners. I invite you to join me in this process and experience God’s grace in fresh and new ways. Choose a story from the Gospels for each week and bring it to mind throughout the day and on each evening.  You may discover that you need to fast from other stories. It may be that you are entertaining your soul to death through the constant emersion of media stories and that you need to turn those off by fasting from TV or movies over the next few weeks. May the word of Jesus accomplish the Father’s will through the ministry of His Spirit in us.

Below is an excerpt from Stephen Lawhead’s book Scarlet that I believe captures the work of God’s grace through story and how we can cooperate with Jesus’ grace.

Here, Angharad stopped; she let the last notes of the harp fade into the night, then added, “But that is a tale for another time.” Setting aside the harp, she stood and spread her hands over the heads of her listeners. “Go now,” she said softly, as a mother speaking to a sleep-heavy child. “Say nothing, but go to your sleep and to your dreams. Let the song work its power within you, my children.”

Bran, no less than the others, felt as if his soul had been cast adrift–all around him, washed a vast and restless sea that he must navigate in a too-small boat with neither sail nor oars. For him, at least, the feeling was familiar. This was how he always felt after hearing one of Angharad’s tales. Nevertheless, he obeyed her instruction and did not speak to anyone, but went to his rest, where the song would continue speaking through the night and through the days to come. And although part of him wanted nothing more than to ride at once to Llanelli, storm the gaol, and rescue the captive by force, he had learned his lesson and resisted any such rash action. Instead, Bran bided his time and let the story do its work.

All through the winter and into the spring, the story sowed and tended its potent seeds; the meaning of the tale grew to fruition deep in Bran’s soul until, one morning in early summer, he awoke to the clear and certain knowledge of what the tale signified. More, he knew what he must do to rescue Will Scarlet.”  (Scarlet, p. 309)

Jesus said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain–first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29 NIV

Love & Rejection

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“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”  William Congreve, “The Mourning Bride” 1697

Any serious consideration of love must confront the experience of rejection.  Those unprepared for rejection will be surprised by it and unsure of how to get back up and into loving others.  Most of us live measured lives dominated by our efforts to avoid being rejected.  Rejection comes in small doses and large.  Even while Jesus equipped the disciples to pursue His mission with sincere love, he prepared them for rejection.

Rejection hurts.

Really.  It really hurts.  When you’ve been ignored, passed over, snubbed or outright dissed, the experience creates physical symptoms.  In fact, according to Matt Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California, Los Angeles, the same part of the brain “lights up” when we experience emotional pain as when we experience physical pain.

Turn to Jesus when you feel rejected.

Strange thing: when you follow Jesus into His mission of love and Gospel life, rejection lurks.  Even though Jesus had instructed the disciples on how to respond to rejection (Luke 9:5) at this stage of His ministry, they quickly forgot it under the initial pain of rejection.  “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

Before we condemn the disciples, do you remember the vengeful desire that rose up in you when you were rejected?  When you tried to move toward another person with love and kindness and they rejected you?  When you spoke of your life with Jesus and the good news of the Gospel and they rejected you?  It hurts. And that hurt is actually compounded by our memories of previous hurt laid upon us in rejection of the past.  Fortunately, the disciples’ relationship with Jesus as Lord prevailed.  Before striking out, they asked Him.

Not speaking with Jesus about our pain in rejection ushers us into some damaging scenarios: patterns of denial and the inability to connect with others, idolatry and patterns of destructive and selfish management of our pain.  The Disciples were right to speak with Jesus first.

Rejection and growth.

“But he turned and rebuked them.  And they went on to another village.”

Jesus can refine your character, your love, and your faith when you have been rejected.  Jesus rebuked the disciples for their vengefulness (Luke 9:55) Genuine growth as a person of faith on mission with Jesus requires the grace of God.  When rejected we realign our heart with Jesus–the one who experienced profound rejection at the cross (Isaiah 53) and then by His grace and the power of the Holy Spirit we continue with Him in His mission (Romans 5:1-5).

If you have experienced persistent and profound rejection from those from whom you had expected great care and love, I pray that you would progressively know that healing work of Jesus Christ in your live.  If you have committed yourself to the mission of Jesus I pray that when you are rejected you will look to Jesus for cues on how to respond so that you leave room for the grace of God to work in your life and in the one(s) who rejected you.

The critic vs. the skeptic

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“A critical person is not a skeptical person, who raises or looks for difficulties in order to undermine Christianity and to avoid personal commitment.  Critical persons have faith and are seeking better to understand what they believe.  To one who lives only in a pious mode, a person who at times is in a critical mode of speaking may appear threatening and even a skeptic.  Some skeptics, on the other hand, take all believers to be merely pious people, without critical faculties, and they mistakenly identify faith with irrationality.”  Diogenes Allen, Theology for a Troubled Believer, xvi.

the first problem with a grudge

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Have you ever found yourself in a thought-loop unable to get your mind on something else?  Really its worse than the time I was unable to find my way out of Oklahoma City.  Around and around I drove for what seemed like an eternity trying to find the way out of that city and head back towards Fort Worth.  I was trying to leave but couldn’t find the way.

The problem with a grudge though, is that we aren’t trying to leave.  We harbour, nurse, feed our offendedness with rationalistic reasons for why we are right to feel the way we do and to keep holding onto it.  Before we know it a root of bitterness and resentment has turned into a habitual way of relating in relationships  making us over-sensitive, proud, and very self-righteous.  I know, I’ve been there.

As we have been reading through Mark in our journey with Jesus at Cityview I have been surprised at the way Mark correlates Jesus’ teaching with Jesus’ activity.  This pattern is evident in the text associated with Palm Sunday.

A.  Jesus enter Jersusalem as a triumphant king and proceeds to the temple where he looks around.  Mark 11:1-11

B.  The next day, Jesus examines a fig tree for fruit, and finding none, judges it.  11:1-17

C.  Jesus returns to the Temple and clears the Court of Gentiles, and announces that the redemptive purpose of the temple is not being fulfilled:  Is it not written, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?” But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’  Mark 11:13-19

D.  The chief priests and teachers are deeply offended and begin to seek in earnest a way to get rid of Jesus.

E.   The Disciples observe the withered fig tree and Peter is astonished.

E.  Jesus addresses two concerns He has for the Disciples:
1.  Faith-full prayer/conversation with God.
2.  Forgiveness in prayer of any people with whom they might hold an offense.

I believe Jesus recognizes a challenge for the disciples that will keep them from realizing their full redemptive potential in His Kingdom.  In the course of the ministry with Him, Jesus’ disciples will run into confrontations with people.  The Kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus confronts what is wrong in the world:  unbelief, abandonment to the flesh, idolatry, misuse of God’s gifts, and the abuse of people.  The disciples  had just accompanied Jesus on such a foray and I believe it would have been easy for them to hold “something” against the people who were now planning Jesus’ death.

An enemy thinks the world would be a better place without you.  And clearly these enemies of Jesus were headed down that path.  However, Jesus would have nothing to do with holding a grudge, planting bitterness, and nursing resentment.

In the future, these disciples of Jesus confronting a world of unbelief and opposition at times to the Gospel would discover that the world would not change as quickly as they might have hoped.  The now-but-not-yet nature of the Kingdom of God meant that they must look forward with faith in a good God who does complete what He says that he would complete.  Even Israel in celebration of the Passover where called out in this week to persist in their faith that God would prevail.  They must not retreat into despair or un-believing doubting prayer.  I do not believe the issue here is whether or not the disciples believed God could do something miraculous.  The real issue was in doubting the fundamental nature of God as one who cares.  Faith-full believing prayer maintains the revealed character of God in His Word as fundamentally good.  It is this quiet confidence and faith then that allows us to engage the sovereignty of God with faith in prayer.  His “no,” “yes,” or “wait” can be accepted and trusted.

And it is this observation that brings us to the first problem with a grudge.  We want to believe that a grudge or resentment is first and foremost a problem between me and the person, or me and the company, or me and that race of people, or me and individual in the past.  But Jesus makes a grudge or sensitive offendedness to a first and foremost a problem between me and God.

“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”  Mark 11:25

The first problem with a grudge toward a person is that it is a problem between me and God.  If I am holding something against another person and believing that they owe me, it is a problem between me and God.  And it is such a problem that I will not be able to fulfill the full redemptive purpose of God for my life.  Jesus tells me that God refuses to bless this course of action in my interior world.  A grudge will cause me to be as lifeless and fruitless as the fig tree Jesus examined the day before this teaching.  A grudge will cause me to be as cluttered, busy, and void of the redemptive purposes of God as Israel was in the Court of the Gentiles.  A grudge, you see, is actually an persistent act of unbelief and treats the Gospel of Jesus’ grace, God’s unmerited choosing, as something small, trite, and of little consequence.  God will not bless grudge keeping, bitterness, and nursed resentments.  Unforgiveness keeps me from fulfilling the redemptive purposes of God and limits my generosity, kindness, compassion, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, joy, peace, self-control, and love.

What to do?

Well we can’t wait to forgive until the other person changes.  To pray is to change.  If I am in conversation with God I am the one called to forgive.  Choose over and over to say, “This person owes me nothing.”  I entrust them to God.  I entrust myself to God’s grace in the Gospel of Jesus.  God has abundantly blessed me…I can afford to extend such grace to others…even to others who wish ill of me.   Jesus has shown us how, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Our challenge is that because most of us who are habitually confronted with our ability to keep a grudge rarely enter into that pain because of our commitment to Jesus’ mission, we fail to make the connection between grudges, grace, and our experience of God’s power.  Our experience of such pain derives mostly from unmetabolized pain in our past and/or from the irritants  that accompany daily relationships common to us all.

When we stand praying and God reminds us of a offense we are holding onto, he is inviting us to a new level of living and relationship in the Kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ.

It is possible that unforgiveness can become such a mountain in our soul that we are not sure we will ever be free of it.  The 70 times 7 challenges to forgiveness have  shown me that forgiveness is sometimes a  process of growth and experience of Jesus grace.  Thankfulness for the other person(s), Surrender of myself to God, Interecssion for God to bless the other person(s), and then finally imagining what the full redemptive work of Jesus’ grace could look like.  On the later, let me paint the picture I have:  Seated at the banquet table of heaven we raise our glasses to toast Jesus, the King of Kings, but instead he begins to toast us…he makes his way to me and blesses me, toasts me, welcomes me to His table as a loved and cherished son…a tear slips down me cheek and Jesus reaches out to wipe it away…I turn away and find that beside me is one who was an enemy, recognition crosses our eyes in an instant, and all I can think to say is, “Jesus is awesome isn’t He?”

the compassion of Jesus

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I enjoy Open Table.  When we share the meal and time together as brothers and sisters inThe Compassion of Jesus Christ  on Thursdays at Cityview for our community meal I get really excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives.  Plus we have really good food!  This week we prepared ourselves for the Lord’s Supper by reflecting on the compassion of Jesus.  Its really a bit surprising.  Our cultural disposition is quite accusatory towards those who preach.  But when it came to compassion that’s exactly what Jesus did.

You see compassion is to be moved toward another person by the reality of their condition.  In this case Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake with his tired and hungry disciples seeking a quiet place.  But instead of quiet they found a crowd.  Jesus “saw the large crowd and had compassion on them because they were sheep without a shepherd.  So he began teaching them many things.”

Obviously Jesus was an entertaining teacher; he taught through the day and past dinner.  But more than that was going on.  He recognized that the most desperate hunger of the crowd’s souls could only be met by truth, by Him, by the good news of His Kingdom.  So he taught them.  The truth could set them free.  Now before you shut Jesus and the church off, see what happens next in the account from Mark.

The disciples, probably being really hungry themselves, recognized that the crowds of people where in a desperate situation for food.  They were away from the towns and villages and the families that had spent the day with Jesus were now very hungry.  The Disciples wanted Jesus to send them away.  This is not compassion.  The disciples were not moved toward the people.  Rather, once they recognized the condition of the crowd, the disciples wanted to be done with them.  I love what happened next.

Jesus told the disciples to feed the crowd.  When they protested that it would cost eight months of wages, Jesus told them to see “what they had.”  In other words Jesus told them go find out what this community had.  When they came back with five loaves and two fish, Jesus took this community offering and fed them all.  They collected twelve baskets of leftovers.  Now that’s hard to believe.  And in case you are wondering the disciples had a hard time accepting Jesus’ authority of nature as well.  Just notice that even within the next twelve hours they were astonished that Jesus had this kind of authority.

My observations here are about the compassion of Jesus.  1.  He was moved towards people because of their condition:  their interior world was lacking  truth, specifically the truth about Him and the Kingdom; so, he taught them.  2.  He was moved towards people because of their condition the physical reality of hunger; so, he had his disciples gather what was already present in the community and share it beyond what one would have thought possible.

I believe Jesus was nurturing the spiritual motives necessary for His disciples to be a movement:  Complete trust and dependence in Him and compassion for the lost.  If we are to join Jesus in His work we must ask the Holy Spirit to nurture these motives in us.  Otherwise, we will keep our mouths shut in a culture that is suspect of truth proclamations and we will run away from people whose needs exceed what we have in our pockets.  Two aspects of our ministry of the gospel of the Kingdom that must be held together tightly:  proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus’ grace and the sharing of our community’s resources in the name, power, and character of Jesus.  Clearly Glenn Beck is not the first to struggle with Jesus’ ability to hold these two realities together, nor will he be the last.