Saturday, October 29, 2005

Afraid of truth

"We're afraid to speak the truth because it means a part of us must die."
- Miller Talbot

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Friday, October 07, 2005

Dallas Willard articles

Found some interesting food for thought from Dallas Willard while preparing to facilitate the Chinese Life Group for the evening. Click the titles to read the full articles.

Rethinking Evangelism
(excerpt) "God’s intent was to have a kingdom in which we are significantly involved. That is the eternal as well as the temporal plan. Every human being, wherever they may be, is given the opportunity to enter into a companionship, a working relationship with God. The kingdom of God is what God is doing. And his plan was that he would be doing many things with us.

Churches that took seriously the kingdom of God would look a lot like training centers—training centers for life, a life interactive with God."

Being a Christian in a Pluralistic Society
(excerpt) "Our Mount Carmel may be our university, or our business or profession, and the floods of social discrimination may flow against us. This is only to make all the more obvious, to those with eyes to see, that God is with us, and that the life of His resurrected Son is effectual in every dimension of our existence. We welcome our life in a pluralistic society as the very condition most favorable to our own sure knowledge of God, as our aspirations and our accomplishments testify that He is the one at work in us to will as well as to do the good things He desires for His world."

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At 10/09/2005 11:53:00 PM, Blogger Brian & Leslie Hailey said...

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Saturday, October 01, 2005

Beyond Belief & the Holy Spirit

[Warning: ramble ahead.]

Beyond Belief
Hebrews 6:1a, Romans 1:17, Philippians 1:6
words/music by Bob Hartman, from the 1990 Petra album Beyond Belief
lyrics acquired from
www.PetraRocksMyWorld.com

We're content to pitch our tent
When the glory's evident
Seldom do we know the glory came and went

Moving can seem dangerous
In this stranger's pilgrimage
Knowing that you can't stand still, you cross the bridge

(Chorus)
There's a higher place to go, beyond belief, beyond belief
Where we reach the next plateau, beyond belief, beyond belief
And from faith to faith we grow
Towards the center of the flow
Where He beckons us to go, beyond belief, beyond belief


Leap of faith without a net
Makes us want to hedge our bet
Waters never part until our feet get wet

There's a deeper place to go
Where the road seems hard to hoe
He who has begun this work won't let it go

And it takes so long to see the change
But we look around and it seems so strange

We have come so far but the journey's long
And we once were weak but now we're strong

L.M. and I have been on a spiritual journey for the last several years - one where we are beginning to realize and experience the truth that if we want live and experience the life that Christ describes and invites us to, we must go beyond mere belief.

“God said, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’ – but we have turned it into a Bible ministry!”

Bible study is not an end in itself. Most churches would agree, but many function as if they don't. I just found this quote from some random blog I stumbled on. The author (I think) means it as an expression of humility, "Personally, I don't have the guts to follow Jesus, so I often settle for being a Christian." My problem is, I'm not willing to settle. We aren't called to be Christians, we're called to follow Jesus; to be "little Christ's." "Christian" no longer means those things.

I'm convinced that "Christianity" as we generally know it America – high church or low church – is not what Jesus had in mind when He talked about people living in the Kingdom of heaven on earth. I'm not blaming anyone for the situation, I'm just saying that we've more or less lost the Plot. That all sounds ridiculously arrogant, I know. Maybe it is, but either way it's not all that inconceivable that it's true. It seems to me that what He had in mind was us living together with God through Him in the power of His Spirit in such a way that we become transformed into the kind of people we are intended to be. Sounds rather dynamic and experiential and completely life-altering to me. That is a far cry from merely ironing the wrinkles out of our doctrinal panties every Sunday morning. The life Jesus invites us to is not one where we merely figure out how to behave properly by tweaking everyone's theology and philosophy and forming doctrinal and behavioural support communities. We should have learned by now that you can't have an effective "Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" if you aren't willing to threaten people with imprisonment and/or death. To have a hope of controlling outward behaviour through outside influence - washing the outside of the cup first, rather being transformed from the inside out - we'd have to either employ Taliban-type tactics or control the entire entertainment/news media. No wonder our N. American churches are in general so ineffective at facilitating substantial life change of the kind Jesus spoke and displayed! To paraphrase Isaac from Ghana: if we rely on our education and effort we get what education and effort can do. If we rely on God, we get what God can do. Most of what we have in many (most?) church communities can be attributed to human effort - including the average person's personal growth. We've just gotten really good at 'giving God the credit' (and weaselling out of blame) for the results of what we do. I'm not saying God shouldn't ultimately get the credit for everything we have the ability to do. It just seems to me that more often then not 'giving God the credit' is really us attributing self-serving significance to our own actions and events.

There is a difference between controlling people so that they think and behave properly and transforming people so that their thoughts, feelings, and actions are the natural result of who they are becoming and the God they live with. Controlling or influencing people is something we do; transforming is something God does. The results of our attempts at transforming people are, well, the results of what we can do. Acts 2 was pretty significant is to the lives of the 12 Disciples, who become Apostles.

After three years of following Jesus around, seeing and hearing Him teach and work miracles, seeing Him killed, seeing and feeling Him bodily resurrected from the dead, they are still (understandably) thinking Mid-East politics: "Now are you going to kick the Romans' butts and make Israel into a great nation again?" Three years in the Jesus Theological Seminary and what do they do when Jesus gets arrested? They (understandably) run and hide. He gets killed, and they (understandably) lock themselves in a room. I say their actions are 'understandable' because we can hardly expect to do better in their place. It's not like we got three years hands-on training and lectures direct from God Incarnate. But Jesus comes back resurrected and appears before them and what does He say, "Go change the world"? No, He says, "I don't care if you got your three-year seminary degrees direct from the Sovereign Creator Himself. You aren't going anywhere – yet. Stay here and wait."

You'd think that three years of personal training from the Saviour of the world would make one well-equipped to get out there and kick some spiritual tail. But it wasn't enough – it wasn't even close to enough. Three years of experiencing Jesus’ own direct teaching from within their own cultural and historic context wasn’t good enough for Jesus to send them out. Where do we get off thinking that our education could do better? No offence, but as highly as I esteem most of my profs, they aren't exactly on par with Jesus. The Disciples' "before Acts 2" photos and the Apostles' "after Acts 2" photos should make this obvious. They go from abandoning Jesus and hiding behind locked doors to revolutionizing the known world and staying faithful through torture and death. The Holy Spirit is a nice fancy theological thing to posit but He doesn't factor in for squat in any functional way when it comes to how we are trained to live and operate post-college. I see a functional difference in the way the Disciples operated and who they were pre- and post-Acts 2.

At what point in the past did I unconsciously agree to buy into the fearful, spineless, snobbishly prideful, control-obsessed idea that it's perfectly acceptable to take a "no Holy Spirit" option on life with God through Christ? Merely thinking what we’re supposed to think and learning good people-management skills is not enough. Aren't we invited into a dynamic relationship that is not supposed to function as mere theory or sentimental re-interpretation of an otherwise ordinary human experience?

Just stuff we're chewing on...

10 Comments:

At 10/02/2005 01:38:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm chewing on it too

be blessed :)

 
At 10/03/2005 08:51:00 AM, Blogger miller said...

wow, PREEEEEEEEEECH!

buddy, i just want to add a thought here. it seems to me that not only is the Holy Spirit conveniently overlooked by our "teachers" (whoever that is) but we are being educated in a Holy Spirit vacuum... all the Holy Spirit has been removed!

what you said about getting "what we can do" kind of results... hits me where i live. God is, however, helping me to relax and see things a bit differently. he's helping me see that i'm a part of a tribe that he inhabits, a caravan that follows a pillar of fire. i'm a small part of what he is doing but he wants to use me. trouble is, i've been too busy trying to use myself! like a hammer trying to beat in a nail before it has been picked up by the carpenter! among other things, i can't even see the nail... but i just lay there and, like a little boy i know, demand that "i can do it!"

isn't that what Peter's betrayal was all about? wasn't he the only one of twelve that (probably) wore a sword in the courtyard that night? he didn't run away, by george he was gonna be where he could do the most good... i mean he had promised Jesus he would never leave him. Jesus had predicted his own execution and Peter said "not on my watch!"

like Peter, i need to lay down my sword and let the Sword of the Spirit work in me.

great post, thanks

 
At 10/03/2005 03:08:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is good stuff :)

God uses all who are willing to obey. Trouble is so many stuff Him down because of FEAR that it might 'just' be then

Occasionally we will get egg on our face cos we step out in presumption but I also remember the talents . and I dont want to face God and say 'oh I didn't know it was you. I mean I thought it might have been .. but .. He'll correct us gently when we are wrong, and wants us to be brave and use the gifts he's given us for his kingdom

end of rant
have a good day :)

 
At 10/03/2005 09:39:00 PM, Blogger Brian & Leslie Hailey said...

Without walking in constant communion with the Holy Spirit, what can we do, and what can we expect of all those on whom we have dumped tons of "great teaching" ?

I recently visited with Randy Boyd of Prepare International, and he has challenged me profoundly to walk in greater intimacy with the Spirit. When we are living a Spirit-empowered life, we will know the difference. Randy encouraged me to start practicing the gift of praying in tongues throughout every day as one essential way to deepen the intimacy.

He challenged me in another way. After we had been visiting for about half an hour, he told me that he had already been in communication with the Spirit asking him to guide our conversation and direct his words. His conversation with me didn't put his prayer life on halt. It just directed his constant prayers toward our conversation. AMAZING!!!!

 
At 10/03/2005 09:41:00 PM, Blogger Brian & Leslie Hailey said...

(Randy had prayed some 25 times in that half hour. I forgot to include that)

 
At 10/04/2005 10:50:00 PM, Blogger Glenn said...

As an elder in the church, I fear for my own soul because I am responsible for leading members of the congregation, and we are just not doing a very good job. While in China I watched a man "shepherd" a large "herd" of ducks. They were on the water and he was wading. Think about it!!! Sometimes I feel like that, people skimming around in their world doing what they want to do, while we the leaders splash about, stumbling over rocks and other issues. We recently issued a challenge to "walk with Jesus" everyday. What we do on Sunday is not nearly as important as our personal walk, and becoming like Him. Our focus has been on the church established on Pentacost, but we need to go back an additional 50 plus days to see Jesus. I was raised in the church without the Holy Spirit. He was in The Book [if you had the right version], but was not permitted anyplace else - not even in the heart. Thankfully that is changing. The search must go on as restoration is an ongoing process. Each generation must search and find Him. The pain is in the transition, however. Some of us hurt deeply when there is change, fearing loss of everything held dear. Others of us chomp at the bit, impatient with what is clearly seen as necessary change. The cynic sits off to the side sneering at both. Generally the cynic contributes nothing, but is well satisfied with himself, and his special insight. Just remember that Christ loves his bride and is patient with her. Oh, that we could be as patient, while at the same time we seek to please him.

 
At 11/01/2005 03:27:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

okay - wow. how do we get there from here? Can some one show me the way... I feel a little lost.

 
At 2/26/2006 01:13:00 AM, Blogger SM said...

[10/03/2005 09:28:51 AM]

Holy Spirit vacuum is a good way to put it. The only teaching I remember on the Spirit was either poo-pooing on the "still, small voice who picks out my parking spot" kind of ideas, and stuff in Personal Spiritual Formation, which was good, but there was a very consicuous absence of the Spirit when it came to anything outside one's private meditative devotions, and even during personal prayer there wasn't much beyond profound awareness of conviction and love.

I dont' want it to sound like God doesn't use people who aren't "charismatics" or whatever - just that "we were meant to live for so much more" (to quote Switchfoot again).

 
At 2/26/2006 01:14:00 AM, Blogger SM said...

[10/05/2005 04:07:01 PM]

Thanks for sharing those insights. It sure is nice to see some people with life experience around here!

One thing we learned from our University Baptist and simple church experiences is that it's counterproductive and unChristlike to decide where and how to spend your time and energy according to what you don't want to be like. Defining ourselves or our community according to what we don't want to be is a waste of time, and aimless.

As I currently understand things, if I'm going to pursue something it shouldn't be because it's cutting edge, or because it lets me do what I want, meets my "felt needs," and/or sticks it to people and institutions I have issues with. The goal must be worth pursuing regardless of what other people think, say, or do. And I think the life Jesus invites us to is worth pursuing.

But along with all that comes our church context, where the goal we say we're pursuing is often not the goal our actions, structures, and community activities suggest that we are pursuing. I agree that the life to which Jesus invites us is one where we will grow in love for everyone regardless of how fast they move or how willing to sacrifice they are. But "love" according to Christ includes calling things what they are. If we're going to truly love the people in the church - especially people in the church - we can't minimize serious problems. And losing the Plot is a serious problem; the 'religious life' often doesn't closely resemble what Jesus talks about. Acknowledging the situation is a necessary step. Provoking high levels of anxiety in people is not necessarily sinful, though in our church experience it is often done in sinful ways or with sinful motivations. The pendulum needs to stop swinging between "truth" and "love" in our communities. So often we act as if those terms are mutually exclusive: "if you really love them then you'll be nice." As I understand it, truth and love are actually inseparable and interdependent. We need people with wisdom and backbone who can show the kids how to operate with both simultaneously in our spiritual communities.

 
At 2/26/2006 01:15:00 AM, Blogger SM said...

[10/11/2005 03:21:51 PM]

Being "in Christ" isn't simply code language for "going to heaven when you die" or being "in the Lord's church" -- it's literally being in community with Him and each other via the Spirit, here and now, doing with Him what He wants, interacting with Him and each other, etc. To me, very exciting stuff!

So then what we do intentially on Sunday mornings should be geared toward facilitating what you're describing above, right?

Maybe Glenn's comment is symptomatic of a larger problem: that we experience a disconnect between Sunday morning and our everyday walk with Jesus to such a degree that churches are issuing challenges like his on Sunday mornings.

Re: outside encouragement and support... setting that up is one of two or three top priorities for us, along with language. We're already aggressively working the networking webs so that we can find that kind of spiritual support and experience while we're there. We're scheduled to meet some potentials next week actually, in California.

 

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