The things that helped me the most in time management are…
1) I worked on a job description. I had coffee with Pat and we went
over what Darrin had given to me and what I have been or would like to
be doing. Then we prioritized them according to what was most
important and with this we set goals for how many hours I should be
spending in each broad category of work such as youth group,
hospitality stuff, Alpha, etc. I made sure to account for clean up
times, emails time, and many of the random tasks that can take up
hours of my time each week.
2) Then I traced how many hours that I spent doing each area of
ministry. I was able to see how many hours I had worked in each area
of ministry and also how many more hours I either should or should not
spend working. I could check in the middle of the week where I was
at. On average it is important to spend the most time in the priority
areas.
This was good for me to see how much I was working because ministry is
so ambiguous and this can be confusing. I think it is important not
to work too much and burn ourselves our and also to not work too little.
3) Having a schedule book that I can take with me everywhere because
if I don't write it down right away then I usually won't.
Goals
1) Be flexible to the seasons of ministry but disciplined through all the quick and slows.
2) Continue to meet with Tasha and plan our weeks, budget, and big upcoming events.
3) Set some goals for the summer time. Try to figure out how much time I want to spend doing French, youth group, Alpha, fall prep, neighbors, etc. Dream for the fall. Get together with the University team and talk about how the new team and ideas that come along with that go.
4) Figure out an exercise routine with Jay. Stick with it.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
adam's apest
Adam’s APEST Test
STPEA
Shepherding: 21
Teaching: 20
Prophetic: 19
Evangelistic: 15
Apostolic: 4
APEST ASSESSMENT INTRODUCTION:
APEST is a ministry assessment emerging from the most comprehensive statement of ministry structure, that of
Ephesians 4:7,11-12. Within this passage we find the fivefold ministry of APEST: apostolic, prophetic, evangelist,
shepherd and teacher;
But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it... It is he who gave some to be apostles,
some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be shepherds and teachers, to prepare God's people
for works of service, so that the body of Christ.
All five ministries are needed to engender, call forth, and sustain a full ministry in the Jesus movement. In fact, all
five ministries in dynamic relation to one another are absolutely essential to vigorous discipleship, healthy
churches and growing movements. Ephesians 4:7,11-12 assigns APEST ministries to the entire church, not just
leadership. All are to be found somewhere in APEST – a leadership model characterized by a servant-inspired
dynamic.
Copyright © 2007 Alan Hirsch, Forge Mission Training Network and Leadership Vision Consulting. All rights reserved. The Forgotten Ways is available at
Amazon.com and local book retailers. More information at: www.theforgottenways.org and www.leadershipvisionconsulting.com
Evaluating unlicensed DynamicPDF feature. Click here for details. [1:0:s1]
Primary 1: Shepherding 21
Definition:
Characteristics
Shepherding leadership influence by nurturing, protecting and caring for people. Shepherd leaders primary function is as the care-givers of individuals. Shepherding leadership is the people–oriented motivator who develops and supports healthy relational systems. In a leader, he or she has the unique ability to know and understand the needs of people and the ability to develop others. Shepherd leaders focus on the needs of today and manage people through meaningful and personal contact. Often the Shepherd leader has a unique understanding of other’s feelings and emotions, creating a sincere relational bond. He or she will seek to create
safe environments for meaning spiritual growth and discipleship. A Shepherd leader believes in the need to seek to resolve the needs of today at the expense of the focusing on needs of tomorrow. He or she is a humanizer, they provide the emotional glue for the caring of individuals within an organization. The Shepherd leader impacts the community through nurture. The Shepherd leader influences others by their deep love, care and protection of those in their care.
Humanizer of care and concern
Caregiver to people in need
Unifier of an organization
Patient and timely with care
Cultivates loving and mature relationships
Aware of the spiritual network within a community
Core issue if love for people
Desire to see people cared for, connected and understood
Expresses God’s love through creating healthy communities
Seeks the dignity and respect of each person
Primary 2: Teaching 20
Definition:
Characteristics
The genius of Teaching leadership is their ability to reveal and communicate the wisdom of God. Teaching
leadership inspires others to learn and obey the Truth of Christ’s teachings and commands. In a leader, he or she
is the one who explains and seeks explanation of the truth. The Teacher leader focuses on the integration of truth
into the personal and social elements of the community. He or she can be seen as a systematizer, seeking to
organize various intellectual and practical parts into a working unity. With this type of understanding, the Teacher
leader advances a cause through clear and simple communication. Teaching leadership articulates organization
and structure to others for the fulfillment of a cause or task. The Teacher leader impacts the community through
understanding. The teacher leader influences others by clarifying the mind and will of God so people gain wisdom
and understanding.
Communicator of Truth
Philosopher of ideas and principles
Translator of great complexities
Systematizer for solutions
Guides others through wisdom and understanding
Encourages exploration in thinking toward solutions
Core issue is understanding
Have a curiosity to know more and to explain this knowledge
Strong desire for people to understand teachings and wisdom of God
Willing to take the time for people to understand for themselves
Prophetic: 19
Evangelistic: 15
Apostolic: 4
Secondary 1: Prophetic 19
Definition:
The genius of Prophetic leadership is the ability to discern the spiritual realities in a given situation or community.
He or she is a questioner, freely disturbing the status quo and challenging individuals and organization to move in
a different direction. The Prophetic leader impacts communities through integration.
Evangelistic: 15
Secondary 2: Evangelistic 15
Definition:
Evangelistic leadership communicates the gospel message in a way that people respond by having greater faith
in themselves and their purpose. In a leader, he or she is a communicator / recruiter, taking the organizations
message to the outside, and convincing them of it. The Evangelistic leader impacts the community through
expansion.
Apostolic: 4
Secondary 3: Apostolic 4
Definition:
The uniqueness of Apostolic leadership is the ability to pioneer new, innovative and mission minded works. He or
she is an entrepreneur, a groundbreaker and strategist seeking to initiate an organization or individual’s purpose
and mission. The Apostolic leader impacts communities through extension.
STPEA
Shepherding: 21
Teaching: 20
Prophetic: 19
Evangelistic: 15
Apostolic: 4
APEST ASSESSMENT INTRODUCTION:
APEST is a ministry assessment emerging from the most comprehensive statement of ministry structure, that of
Ephesians 4:7,11-12. Within this passage we find the fivefold ministry of APEST: apostolic, prophetic, evangelist,
shepherd and teacher;
But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it... It is he who gave some to be apostles,
some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be shepherds and teachers, to prepare God's people
for works of service, so that the body of Christ.
All five ministries are needed to engender, call forth, and sustain a full ministry in the Jesus movement. In fact, all
five ministries in dynamic relation to one another are absolutely essential to vigorous discipleship, healthy
churches and growing movements. Ephesians 4:7,11-12 assigns APEST ministries to the entire church, not just
leadership. All are to be found somewhere in APEST – a leadership model characterized by a servant-inspired
dynamic.
Copyright © 2007 Alan Hirsch, Forge Mission Training Network and Leadership Vision Consulting. All rights reserved. The Forgotten Ways is available at
Amazon.com and local book retailers. More information at: www.theforgottenways.org and www.leadershipvisionconsulting.com
Evaluating unlicensed DynamicPDF feature. Click here for details. [1:0:s1]
Primary 1: Shepherding 21
Definition:
Characteristics
Shepherding leadership influence by nurturing, protecting and caring for people. Shepherd leaders primary function is as the care-givers of individuals. Shepherding leadership is the people–oriented motivator who develops and supports healthy relational systems. In a leader, he or she has the unique ability to know and understand the needs of people and the ability to develop others. Shepherd leaders focus on the needs of today and manage people through meaningful and personal contact. Often the Shepherd leader has a unique understanding of other’s feelings and emotions, creating a sincere relational bond. He or she will seek to create
safe environments for meaning spiritual growth and discipleship. A Shepherd leader believes in the need to seek to resolve the needs of today at the expense of the focusing on needs of tomorrow. He or she is a humanizer, they provide the emotional glue for the caring of individuals within an organization. The Shepherd leader impacts the community through nurture. The Shepherd leader influences others by their deep love, care and protection of those in their care.
Humanizer of care and concern
Caregiver to people in need
Unifier of an organization
Patient and timely with care
Cultivates loving and mature relationships
Aware of the spiritual network within a community
Core issue if love for people
Desire to see people cared for, connected and understood
Expresses God’s love through creating healthy communities
Seeks the dignity and respect of each person
Primary 2: Teaching 20
Definition:
Characteristics
The genius of Teaching leadership is their ability to reveal and communicate the wisdom of God. Teaching
leadership inspires others to learn and obey the Truth of Christ’s teachings and commands. In a leader, he or she
is the one who explains and seeks explanation of the truth. The Teacher leader focuses on the integration of truth
into the personal and social elements of the community. He or she can be seen as a systematizer, seeking to
organize various intellectual and practical parts into a working unity. With this type of understanding, the Teacher
leader advances a cause through clear and simple communication. Teaching leadership articulates organization
and structure to others for the fulfillment of a cause or task. The Teacher leader impacts the community through
understanding. The teacher leader influences others by clarifying the mind and will of God so people gain wisdom
and understanding.
Communicator of Truth
Philosopher of ideas and principles
Translator of great complexities
Systematizer for solutions
Guides others through wisdom and understanding
Encourages exploration in thinking toward solutions
Core issue is understanding
Have a curiosity to know more and to explain this knowledge
Strong desire for people to understand teachings and wisdom of God
Willing to take the time for people to understand for themselves
Prophetic: 19
Evangelistic: 15
Apostolic: 4
Secondary 1: Prophetic 19
Definition:
The genius of Prophetic leadership is the ability to discern the spiritual realities in a given situation or community.
He or she is a questioner, freely disturbing the status quo and challenging individuals and organization to move in
a different direction. The Prophetic leader impacts communities through integration.
Evangelistic: 15
Secondary 2: Evangelistic 15
Definition:
Evangelistic leadership communicates the gospel message in a way that people respond by having greater faith
in themselves and their purpose. In a leader, he or she is a communicator / recruiter, taking the organizations
message to the outside, and convincing them of it. The Evangelistic leader impacts the community through
expansion.
Apostolic: 4
Secondary 3: Apostolic 4
Definition:
The uniqueness of Apostolic leadership is the ability to pioneer new, innovative and mission minded works. He or
she is an entrepreneur, a groundbreaker and strategist seeking to initiate an organization or individual’s purpose
and mission. The Apostolic leader impacts communities through extension.
fo2 life assignement
Project Purpose
The aims of the projects are:
• To help you maintain important priorities affecting your effectiveness and longevity
• To integrate into your life and practice
• To help you reflect on your life and experiences and find the lessons God would have you learn
Elements
• Timeline (Where have I come from?)
o Boundary Events/Critical Incidents
o Influential people (mentors)
o Key lessons (values)
o Social base history
o Calling & Giftedness
o Other important threads (eg. Physical history, if health issues have been prominent)
• Inventory (Where am I now?)
o Personality & Gifts
o Values
o Social base
o Spiritual Practices & Pathways
o Mentors
o Issues
• Life Purpose Statement
Inclusion of these elements, along with timely completion of weekly assignments, is the basis for evaluation of your project.
• Personal Mission
o An inventory of your cultural learning: strategies for language learning, cultural mentors, other learning strategies & opportunities
o Relational inventory of people that you are getting to know
o Personal time and work management strategies and what you are learning about how you work best
o Goals for the next 6 months/one year for each of the above
Posting Date: Friday, February 8, 2008
Reply Date: Monday, February 11, 2008
1. Spend at least one hour continuing this work by adding new elements to your timeline, and/or by fleshing them out with brief narrative descriptions.
• Start with these four elements:
o Boundary events: events that mark a major change of phase in maturity and/or ministry (see definitions and types in notes and electronic worksheet)
o Critical events: other events that impacted your life in important ways—negative and positive
o Influential People
o Key Lessons: truth recognitions that have formed your values
• Then add other significant factors to your timeline:
o Social Base History: chart how your social base has changed through moving out of home, changes in family of origin (divorce/death), marriage, having children, etc. (some of these may coincide with events you have already recorded)
o Calling and Giftedness: chart your first awareness of your various gifts and your calling into ministry (some of these may coincide with boundary events or key lessons)
o Other important personal factors: determine for yourself if there are other parts of your timeline (such as your health or financial history) that would be important to trace in order to have a complete understanding of where you have come from
• Note: you are not trying to get this material into its final form—just compiling all of the information
1. Read through Notes on Personality, Giftedness, and Values
• Fill out your own Personality and Giftedness Profile in the LLD worksheet (tab: Giftedness), or create your own in the format you have chosen
2. Look over the materials you have already created to begin to discover your own values:
• Personality/giftedness profile
• Timeline incidents, influences and lessons
• Prioritizing Core Values Worksheet answers that you wrote during FO1 (fill this out if you have not already done it; update any answers with new thoughts if you have)
3. Write between four and ten values that you see as being key to you personally.
• Write not only the value, but a description of that value (for examples, look at the end of the Notes on Values)
• Cross-reference these with where you see them coming from in your timeline or giftedness profile
• Note any scriptural basis for the value you have written (references)
• Mark any values that you find are more aspirational that real
1. Read through notes on Social Base, Spiritual Pathways, and Mentors. You may want to also refer to a book on spiritual disciplines.
2. Write a description of your present social base using the following questions (also contained in the LLD Excel worksheet):
• Married: What is your present social base pattern? (Refer to notes for descriptions.) Do you see this as temporary or evolving (and if evolving, into what)? How do you feel you are doing at balancing marriage, family, and work? How does your spouse feel about your social base pattern?
• Single: Who are your functional substitutes for family/spouse? How do you feel about your singleness at this time? Do you sense any gifting for singleness?
• Also read back through your timeline concerning your social base history and note any past issues that may be affecting your present experience.
3. List spiritual disciplines you are currently practicing and any current mentors that you have. (You may want to refer to the notes on mentors or the LLD Excel worksheet to remind yourself of various types of mentors.) Also note 1-2 other disciplines or spiritual practices you would like to add to your present ones.
4. Refer to the work you have already done (timeline, values, and personality/giftedness profile) as well as the descriptions you have just written and come up with a list of 3-5 principal personal issues that you are currently facing, plus a possible mentor for each that could help you address them (either a current or potential mentor. This list should not include work issues per se (except for such things as balancing work and family).
• Possible issues might include such things as:
o A past painful incident/chapter that keeps surfacing and needs healing
o Issues with parenting or marriage
o Spiritual journey
o Financial issues
o Persistent character issue/weakness
o Physical/mental health
• Note: If you have an issue with another person, such as a spouse, a child, or a team member, attempt to address or describe it in terms of your part of the problem rather than theirs, since this is for you to hold the mirror to yourself rather than to analyze them.
• It may also be interesting for you to “map” these issues in a graphic way to see how they interrelate and overlap—in what way each issue affects and touches the others.
1. Read through notes on Cross-Cultural Adjustment and Hospitality.
2. Make an inventory of your cross-cultural learning thus far:
• Language learning so far
• Cultural mentors or guides
• Classes or books you have read on your country or city, or cultural understanding in general
• Other ways you are continuing to investigate culture
3. Make a relational inventory of people you are getting to know inside and outside your community. Divide them into categories that will help you to map your relationships, such as:
• National or expat
• Good friend vs. acquaintance
• Believer or pagan
• In church community or outside
• Source of contact (school, neighborhood, class, park, pub, etc.)
4. Go through the work you have just done and set some goals:
• Make plans for future language and cultural learning, noting specific objectives for the next 3 months and 12 months.
• Mark those relationships that you particularly want to pursue further and note how you will do this.
• Also note places that are particularly fruitful for relationships, and note how you can continue to emphasize your contacts there.
5. If you are working with a group from the same city on the City Tour: set a time for next week to get together to discuss your format and division of content.
6. Post online:
• One of your cultural learning objectives AND
• A description of one or two people that you are most excited about getting to know currently
7. Read all other posts and respond to at least one of them.
1. Read through notes on Work Issues.
2. Record your approaches to time and work management over the last few months, including:
• Guidelines or principles that you have adopted
• Strategies that you are using
• Scheduling practices
• Accountability structures
3. Evaluate these approaches and set some goals on how you would like to improve them in the next six months.
4. Set an appointment with a leader within the next week or two to discuss material you have compiled so far in your Personal Mission and Personal Profile.
There are a few weeks allowed between the end of the Week 6 assignment and FOw for you to finish the projects on your own. During this time you will not be required to post except to respond to logistics questions for FO2.
You should use this time to:
• Get your Personal Profile (Timeline and Inventory) in its final format
o You should also use this information to write your Life Purpose Statement, which is the final element of your Profile (see notes on Timelines for materials on and examples of Life Purpose Statements).
• Format your Personal Mission
The aims of the projects are:
• To help you maintain important priorities affecting your effectiveness and longevity
• To integrate into your life and practice
• To help you reflect on your life and experiences and find the lessons God would have you learn
Elements
• Timeline (Where have I come from?)
o Boundary Events/Critical Incidents
o Influential people (mentors)
o Key lessons (values)
o Social base history
o Calling & Giftedness
o Other important threads (eg. Physical history, if health issues have been prominent)
• Inventory (Where am I now?)
o Personality & Gifts
o Values
o Social base
o Spiritual Practices & Pathways
o Mentors
o Issues
• Life Purpose Statement
Inclusion of these elements, along with timely completion of weekly assignments, is the basis for evaluation of your project.
• Personal Mission
o An inventory of your cultural learning: strategies for language learning, cultural mentors, other learning strategies & opportunities
o Relational inventory of people that you are getting to know
o Personal time and work management strategies and what you are learning about how you work best
o Goals for the next 6 months/one year for each of the above
Posting Date: Friday, February 8, 2008
Reply Date: Monday, February 11, 2008
1. Spend at least one hour continuing this work by adding new elements to your timeline, and/or by fleshing them out with brief narrative descriptions.
• Start with these four elements:
o Boundary events: events that mark a major change of phase in maturity and/or ministry (see definitions and types in notes and electronic worksheet)
o Critical events: other events that impacted your life in important ways—negative and positive
o Influential People
o Key Lessons: truth recognitions that have formed your values
• Then add other significant factors to your timeline:
o Social Base History: chart how your social base has changed through moving out of home, changes in family of origin (divorce/death), marriage, having children, etc. (some of these may coincide with events you have already recorded)
o Calling and Giftedness: chart your first awareness of your various gifts and your calling into ministry (some of these may coincide with boundary events or key lessons)
o Other important personal factors: determine for yourself if there are other parts of your timeline (such as your health or financial history) that would be important to trace in order to have a complete understanding of where you have come from
• Note: you are not trying to get this material into its final form—just compiling all of the information
1. Read through Notes on Personality, Giftedness, and Values
• Fill out your own Personality and Giftedness Profile in the LLD worksheet (tab: Giftedness), or create your own in the format you have chosen
2. Look over the materials you have already created to begin to discover your own values:
• Personality/giftedness profile
• Timeline incidents, influences and lessons
• Prioritizing Core Values Worksheet answers that you wrote during FO1 (fill this out if you have not already done it; update any answers with new thoughts if you have)
3. Write between four and ten values that you see as being key to you personally.
• Write not only the value, but a description of that value (for examples, look at the end of the Notes on Values)
• Cross-reference these with where you see them coming from in your timeline or giftedness profile
• Note any scriptural basis for the value you have written (references)
• Mark any values that you find are more aspirational that real
1. Read through notes on Social Base, Spiritual Pathways, and Mentors. You may want to also refer to a book on spiritual disciplines.
2. Write a description of your present social base using the following questions (also contained in the LLD Excel worksheet):
• Married: What is your present social base pattern? (Refer to notes for descriptions.) Do you see this as temporary or evolving (and if evolving, into what)? How do you feel you are doing at balancing marriage, family, and work? How does your spouse feel about your social base pattern?
• Single: Who are your functional substitutes for family/spouse? How do you feel about your singleness at this time? Do you sense any gifting for singleness?
• Also read back through your timeline concerning your social base history and note any past issues that may be affecting your present experience.
3. List spiritual disciplines you are currently practicing and any current mentors that you have. (You may want to refer to the notes on mentors or the LLD Excel worksheet to remind yourself of various types of mentors.) Also note 1-2 other disciplines or spiritual practices you would like to add to your present ones.
4. Refer to the work you have already done (timeline, values, and personality/giftedness profile) as well as the descriptions you have just written and come up with a list of 3-5 principal personal issues that you are currently facing, plus a possible mentor for each that could help you address them (either a current or potential mentor. This list should not include work issues per se (except for such things as balancing work and family).
• Possible issues might include such things as:
o A past painful incident/chapter that keeps surfacing and needs healing
o Issues with parenting or marriage
o Spiritual journey
o Financial issues
o Persistent character issue/weakness
o Physical/mental health
• Note: If you have an issue with another person, such as a spouse, a child, or a team member, attempt to address or describe it in terms of your part of the problem rather than theirs, since this is for you to hold the mirror to yourself rather than to analyze them.
• It may also be interesting for you to “map” these issues in a graphic way to see how they interrelate and overlap—in what way each issue affects and touches the others.
1. Read through notes on Cross-Cultural Adjustment and Hospitality.
2. Make an inventory of your cross-cultural learning thus far:
• Language learning so far
• Cultural mentors or guides
• Classes or books you have read on your country or city, or cultural understanding in general
• Other ways you are continuing to investigate culture
3. Make a relational inventory of people you are getting to know inside and outside your community. Divide them into categories that will help you to map your relationships, such as:
• National or expat
• Good friend vs. acquaintance
• Believer or pagan
• In church community or outside
• Source of contact (school, neighborhood, class, park, pub, etc.)
4. Go through the work you have just done and set some goals:
• Make plans for future language and cultural learning, noting specific objectives for the next 3 months and 12 months.
• Mark those relationships that you particularly want to pursue further and note how you will do this.
• Also note places that are particularly fruitful for relationships, and note how you can continue to emphasize your contacts there.
5. If you are working with a group from the same city on the City Tour: set a time for next week to get together to discuss your format and division of content.
6. Post online:
• One of your cultural learning objectives AND
• A description of one or two people that you are most excited about getting to know currently
7. Read all other posts and respond to at least one of them.
1. Read through notes on Work Issues.
2. Record your approaches to time and work management over the last few months, including:
• Guidelines or principles that you have adopted
• Strategies that you are using
• Scheduling practices
• Accountability structures
3. Evaluate these approaches and set some goals on how you would like to improve them in the next six months.
4. Set an appointment with a leader within the next week or two to discuss material you have compiled so far in your Personal Mission and Personal Profile.
There are a few weeks allowed between the end of the Week 6 assignment and FOw for you to finish the projects on your own. During this time you will not be required to post except to respond to logistics questions for FO2.
You should use this time to:
• Get your Personal Profile (Timeline and Inventory) in its final format
o You should also use this information to write your Life Purpose Statement, which is the final element of your Profile (see notes on Timelines for materials on and examples of Life Purpose Statements).
• Format your Personal Mission
work on...
I wanted to clarify the difference between justification and sanctification.
Justification is to be freed from guilt or blame. It is the way God sees us. And it is set about through the cross. Justification is a one time event (seen or unseen) that allows us to have access to God through the Holy Spirit and sanctification is the process that takes place when that Spirit conforms us to the image and likeness of Christ ending somehow in glory.
Pneuma (pnyoo'-mah) /Ruwach (roo'-akh)
spirit, ghost
From pneo; a current of air, i.e. Breath (blast) or a breeze; by analogy or figuratively, a spirit, i.e. (human) the rational soul, (by implication) vital principle, mental disposition, etc., or (superhuman) an angel, demon, or (divine) God, Christ's spirit, the Holy Spirit -- ghost, life, spirit(-ual, -ually), mind.
Psuche (psoo-khay')/ Nephesh (neh'-fesh)
soul, life, self
From psucho; breath, i.e. (by implication) spirit, abstractly or concretely (the animal sentient principle only; thus distinguished on the one hand from pneuma, which is the rational and immortal soul; and on the other from zoe, which is mere vitality, even of plants: these terms thus exactly correspond respectively to the Hebrew nephesh, ruwach and chay) -- heart (+ -ily), life, mind, soul, + us, + you.
Zoe (dzo-ay') (Greek)/chay (khah'-ee)(Hebrew)
lifetime
From zao; life (literally or figuratively) -- life(-time).
Soma (so'-mah)
body
From sozo; the body (as a sound whole), used in a very wide application, literally or figuratively -- bodily, body, slave.
Sozo (sode'-zo)
heal, be made whole
From a primary sos (contraction for obsolete saos, "safe"); to save, i.e. Deliver or protect (literally or figuratively) -- heal, preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.
We are limited
There is only so much we can do. We have a capacity, a range. We need to choose where we put our time.
/ can't do
/ can do ok
{ can do well
\ can do ok
\ can't do
We have a spectrum unique to ourselves. Some narrow and focused others wider and shallower some both. In Christ we can do all things. Do the things that Christ would do.
Justification is to be freed from guilt or blame. It is the way God sees us. And it is set about through the cross. Justification is a one time event (seen or unseen) that allows us to have access to God through the Holy Spirit and sanctification is the process that takes place when that Spirit conforms us to the image and likeness of Christ ending somehow in glory.
Pneuma (pnyoo'-mah) /Ruwach (roo'-akh)
spirit, ghost
From pneo; a current of air, i.e. Breath (blast) or a breeze; by analogy or figuratively, a spirit, i.e. (human) the rational soul, (by implication) vital principle, mental disposition, etc., or (superhuman) an angel, demon, or (divine) God, Christ's spirit, the Holy Spirit -- ghost, life, spirit(-ual, -ually), mind.
Psuche (psoo-khay')/ Nephesh (neh'-fesh)
soul, life, self
From psucho; breath, i.e. (by implication) spirit, abstractly or concretely (the animal sentient principle only; thus distinguished on the one hand from pneuma, which is the rational and immortal soul; and on the other from zoe, which is mere vitality, even of plants: these terms thus exactly correspond respectively to the Hebrew nephesh, ruwach and chay) -- heart (+ -ily), life, mind, soul, + us, + you.
Zoe (dzo-ay') (Greek)/chay (khah'-ee)(Hebrew)
lifetime
From zao; life (literally or figuratively) -- life(-time).
Soma (so'-mah)
body
From sozo; the body (as a sound whole), used in a very wide application, literally or figuratively -- bodily, body, slave.
Sozo (sode'-zo)
heal, be made whole
From a primary sos (contraction for obsolete saos, "safe"); to save, i.e. Deliver or protect (literally or figuratively) -- heal, preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.
We are limited
There is only so much we can do. We have a capacity, a range. We need to choose where we put our time.
/ can't do
/ can do ok
{ can do well
\ can do ok
\ can't do
We have a spectrum unique to ourselves. Some narrow and focused others wider and shallower some both. In Christ we can do all things. Do the things that Christ would do.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Bible Reading Resources
The Essential 100 Challenge is a great way to see the big picture of the story of God and his people. It is a manageable way to get to know God, ourselves, truth, and our spiritual ancestors better.
The link includes free resources such as.. the planner the discussion guide, helpful habits, a reading method, and teaching outlines
My favorite resource to study the bible is biblos.com
blue letter bible concordances (Greek and Hebrew word studies), commentaries, dictionary aids, word searches, passage searches, audio bibles, devotionals, video teachings and multiple translations.
Study light dictionaries, commentaries, concordances, etc
Cross walks- illustrations, and bible searching tool
BST great for easy research including a large reference library
Bible Gateway great for key word and passage searches.
Christian Classics Library has all kinds references. Read books from the church fathers , bible study or look up classic commentary on specific bible passages.
The link includes free resources such as.. the planner the discussion guide, helpful habits, a reading method, and teaching outlines
My favorite resource to study the bible is biblos.com
blue letter bible concordances (Greek and Hebrew word studies), commentaries, dictionary aids, word searches, passage searches, audio bibles, devotionals, video teachings and multiple translations.
Study light dictionaries, commentaries, concordances, etc
Cross walks- illustrations, and bible searching tool
BST great for easy research including a large reference library
Bible Gateway great for key word and passage searches.
Christian Classics Library has all kinds references. Read books from the church fathers , bible study or look up classic commentary on specific bible passages.
Bible Reading Methods
Christians in every century have held the bible in high esteem and have accepted it as the word of God written. But few have made the rash claim that it is easy to understand. Yet, since the Bible was given to reveal truth and not obscure it, God surely intends that we understand it.
Methodology
Methodology in Bible study is concerned with the proper path to take to arrive at Scriptural truth."
Of course, proper methodology is essential to many fields of endeavor. A heart surgeon does not perform open heart surgery without following proper, objective methodology. Improper methodology in interpreting Scripture is nothing new.
It sometimes seems almost anything can be proved by the bible, for there is scarcely a religion, sect, or cult in Christendom that does not use scripture texts to “prove” its doctrine. In that respect the bible may well be most abused book in the world.
Even in New Testament times, Peter about "Some things in his (Paul’s) letters are hard to understand. Ignorant people and people who aren't sure of what they believe distort what Paul says in his letters the same way they distort the rest of the Scriptures. These people will be destroyed." (2 Peter 3:16, insert added).
The solution to this problem of widely different interpretations is to employ the correct method of biblical interpretation. It means taking the scriptures at face value in an attempt to know what God meant by what he said.
A Foundational Truth: God Created Language for a Purpose
God chose to use human language as a medium of communication with himself.
The purpose of God's originating of language was for Him to communication with human beings as well as to enable human beings to communicate with each another. The Bible as a body of literature exists because human beings need to know certain truth which they cannot attain by themselves. These truths must come from without - that is, via special revelation from God (Deuteronomy 29:29).
Seeking the Author's Intended Meaning
A text’s meaning is determined by the author and is discovered by readers. Our goal must be to draw the meaning out of the text and not to superimposing a meaning onto the text. Our method of interpreting Scripture is valid or invalid only if seeks out the meaning (or meanings) a statement had for the author and its first hearers or readers. Instead of superimposing a meaning on the biblical text, the objective interpreter seeks to discover the author's intended meaning.
There can also be related implications for a text or related sub meanings. Much meaning can be taken from the types that point to Jesus in David’s psalms but it is important to look first at the author’s original intended meaning first and to test these additional meanings against other places in scripture.
First we determine the meaning of the passage and then we can ask ourselves how this passage and the principles behind it apply to our lives.
Bible study could (and perhaps should) be broken into this method:
Observation – what do you see?
Interpretation – what does it mean?
Correlation – where does it fit?
Application – how does it work?
In keeping this approach, I think it allows someone to grasp the text in a full way before moving ahead too quickly to Application (or allegories).
The Importance of Context
Seeking the biblical author's intended meaning necessitates interpreting Bible verses in context. Every word in the Bible is part of a verse, and every verse is part of a paragraph, and every paragraph is part of a book, and every book is part of the whole of Scripture.
No verse of Scripture can be divorced from the verses around it. Interpreting a verse apart from its context is like trying to analyze a Cezanne painting by looking at only a single square inch of the painting, or like trying to analyze Handel's "Messiah" by listening to a few short notes.
The context is absolutely critical to properly interpreting Bible verses. In interpreting Scripture, there is both an immediate context and a broader context. The immediate context of a verse is the paragraph (or paragraphs) of the biblical book in question. The immediate context should always be consulted in interpreting Bible verses.
The broader context is the whole of Scripture. The entire Holy Scripture is the context and guide for understanding the particular passages of Scripture.
This is why the E100 can be so valuable. It gives us the bigger picture for the broader context of God’s story. When we understand this we can even understand where we fit into the broader context of God’s story so we can interpret events in our lives.
N.T. Wright uses the analogy of the five act play to not only interpret scripture but to interpret our lives. The vast majority of Scripture consists not in a list of rules or doctrines, but in narrative: it tells a remarkably consistent story about God’s plan to restore the world back to God.
Act One: (Creation). Whatever means God uses to create the world it’s a crucial feature of the play that creation is good and that humans are in God’s image.
Act Two: (Fall) God’s good creation is full of rebellion: evil and idolatry become real features of the world.
Act Three: (Israel) The story of Israel as the covenant people of God for the world. This act begins with the Abrahamic covenant and ends with the Jewish anticipation of an event in which God will liberate Israel from spiritual exile and reveal himself as the world’s true King. We must realize that there is an important sense in which many of the laws of ancient Israel have fulfilled their intended purpose.
Act Four (Jesus) The story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As the climax of the narrative it represents the inauguration of a new kingdom in which death and sin are being reversed throughout all of creation.
Act Five: (New Testament and the people of God). The New Testament forms the first scene of this act. The church is the people of God, in Christ, for the world; their job is to act in character: to live out Act Five by showing the world the true way of being human and to bring about God’s victory over evil on earth. This largely involves improvising and retelling of God’s story and gospel – namely that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead to put the world to rights.
Notice that for Wright the five-act play is not just the grand narrative of Scripture, but also the true story that we are living out – more accurately, we are living out Act Five, which has yet to be completed.
As J. I. Packer puts it, "if we would understand the parts, our wisest course is to get to know the whole." We must keep in mind that the interpretation of a specific passage must not contradict the total teaching of Scripture on a point. Individual verses do not exist as isolated fragments, but as parts of a whole. Scripture interprets Scripture.
The Importance of Literary Meanings
We must be aware of different literary genre. The bible includes many writing styles such as literal, symbolic, types, parables, allegories, prophecy, poetry, history, law books, letters, eye witness accounts, figures of speech, and indescribable revelations. It’s important to understand and identify figures of speech in the Bible and seek out God’s message in them.
The Importance of Historical Considerations
Historical considerations are important in properly interpreting the scriptures because the scriptures are written in specific times and places. We consider the circumstances of the writings and the cultural environment.
Ask who wrote the book?
What were the circumstances?
What were the cultural norms at the time?
What were the current problems, situations, or needs?
To whom was the book written?
What were their customs?
What did people of that place and time believe, think, say, do, or make?
Making a Correct Genre Judgment
A "literal" approach to Scripture recognizes that the Bible contains a variety of literary genres, each of which has certain peculiar characteristics that must be recognized in order to interpret the text properly.
Biblical genres include the historical (e.g., Acts), the dramatic epic (e.g., Job), poetry (e.g., Psalms), wise sayings (e.g., Proverbs), and apocalyptic writings (e.g., Revelation).
Obviously, an incorrect genre judgment will can lead us astray in interpreting Scripture. A parable should not be treated as history, nor should poetry or apocalyptic literature (both of which contain many symbols) be treated as straightforward narrative.
The wise interpreter allows his knowledge of genres to control how he approaches each individual biblical text. In this way, he can accurately determine what the biblical author was intending to communicate to the reader. The Bible contains a variety of literary genres and many figures of speech, but the biblical authors most often employed literal statements to convey their ideas.
Interpret the Old Testament in Light of the New Testament
God gave revelation to humankind progressively throughout Old and New Testament times. He didn't just give His entire revelation for all time to our first parents, Adam and Eve, or to Moses, the Lawgiver.
Rather, as time went on - as the centuries slowly passed - God provided more and more revelation that became progressively full so that by the time the New Testament was complete, God had told us everything He wanted us to know. In view of this, a key interpretive principle is that one should always interpret the Old Testament in view of the greater light of the New Testament. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted.
The introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before.
The Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended, and enlarged. Again, then, the Old Testament should be interpreted according to the greater light of the New Testament. The Old Testament is much clearer when approached through the lens of the New Testament.
Dependence on the Holy Spirit
Scripture tells us that we are to rely on the Holy Spirit's illumination to gain insights into the meaning and application of Scripture (John 16:12-15; 1 Corinthians 2:9-11). It is the Holy Spirit's work to throw light upon the Word of God so that the believer can assent to the meaning intended and act on it.
The Holy Spirit, as the "Spirit of truth" (John 16:13), guides us so that "we may understand what God has freely given us" (1 Corinthians 2:12). Full knowledge of the Word of God is impossible without prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God, for He who inspired the Word (2 Peter 1:21) is also its best interpreter. Illumination is necessary because man's mind has been darkened through sin (Romans 1:21), preventing him from properly understanding God's Word.
Human beings cannot understand God's Word apart from God's divine enablement (Ephesians 4:18).
This aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry operates within the sphere of man's soulful capacity, which God Himself gave man. Illumination comes to the minds and hearts of God's people.
Since the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of truth" (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), He does not teach concepts that oppose scripture. In other words, "the Holy Spirit does not guide into interpretations that contradict each other or fail to have internal consistency."
The Example of Jesus Christ
Jesus consistently interpreted the Old Testament characters as being real people and not just fictional characters, including
The Creation account of Adam and Eve (Matthew 13:35; 25:34; Mark 10:6),
Noah's Ark and the flood (Matthew 24:38-39; Luke 17:26-27),
Jonah and the great fish (Matthew 12:39-41),
Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15), and
The account of Lot and his wife (Luke 17:28-29).
In his book The Savior and the Scriptures, theologian Robert P. Lightner notes - following an exhaustive study - that Jesus' interpretation of Scripture "was always in accord with the grammatical and historical meaning. He understood and appreciated the meaning intended by the writers according to the laws of grammar and rhetoric."
Jesus affirmed scripture’s divine inspiration (Matthew 22:43),
Its indestructibility (Matthew 5:17-18), infallibility (John 10:35), final authority (Matthew 4:4,7,10), historicity (Matthew 12:40; 24:37), factual inerrancy (Matthew 22:29-32), and spiritual clarity (Luke 24:25).
Moreover, he emphasized the importance of each word of Scripture (Luke 16:17). Indeed, he sometimes teaches rich truths from only a single line of Scripture (Matthew 22:32,43-45; John 10:34).
Methodology
Methodology in Bible study is concerned with the proper path to take to arrive at Scriptural truth."
Of course, proper methodology is essential to many fields of endeavor. A heart surgeon does not perform open heart surgery without following proper, objective methodology. Improper methodology in interpreting Scripture is nothing new.
It sometimes seems almost anything can be proved by the bible, for there is scarcely a religion, sect, or cult in Christendom that does not use scripture texts to “prove” its doctrine. In that respect the bible may well be most abused book in the world.
Even in New Testament times, Peter about "Some things in his (Paul’s) letters are hard to understand. Ignorant people and people who aren't sure of what they believe distort what Paul says in his letters the same way they distort the rest of the Scriptures. These people will be destroyed." (2 Peter 3:16, insert added).
The solution to this problem of widely different interpretations is to employ the correct method of biblical interpretation. It means taking the scriptures at face value in an attempt to know what God meant by what he said.
A Foundational Truth: God Created Language for a Purpose
God chose to use human language as a medium of communication with himself.
The purpose of God's originating of language was for Him to communication with human beings as well as to enable human beings to communicate with each another. The Bible as a body of literature exists because human beings need to know certain truth which they cannot attain by themselves. These truths must come from without - that is, via special revelation from God (Deuteronomy 29:29).
Seeking the Author's Intended Meaning
A text’s meaning is determined by the author and is discovered by readers. Our goal must be to draw the meaning out of the text and not to superimposing a meaning onto the text. Our method of interpreting Scripture is valid or invalid only if seeks out the meaning (or meanings) a statement had for the author and its first hearers or readers. Instead of superimposing a meaning on the biblical text, the objective interpreter seeks to discover the author's intended meaning.
There can also be related implications for a text or related sub meanings. Much meaning can be taken from the types that point to Jesus in David’s psalms but it is important to look first at the author’s original intended meaning first and to test these additional meanings against other places in scripture.
First we determine the meaning of the passage and then we can ask ourselves how this passage and the principles behind it apply to our lives.
Bible study could (and perhaps should) be broken into this method:
Observation – what do you see?
Interpretation – what does it mean?
Correlation – where does it fit?
Application – how does it work?
In keeping this approach, I think it allows someone to grasp the text in a full way before moving ahead too quickly to Application (or allegories).
The Importance of Context
Seeking the biblical author's intended meaning necessitates interpreting Bible verses in context. Every word in the Bible is part of a verse, and every verse is part of a paragraph, and every paragraph is part of a book, and every book is part of the whole of Scripture.
No verse of Scripture can be divorced from the verses around it. Interpreting a verse apart from its context is like trying to analyze a Cezanne painting by looking at only a single square inch of the painting, or like trying to analyze Handel's "Messiah" by listening to a few short notes.
The context is absolutely critical to properly interpreting Bible verses. In interpreting Scripture, there is both an immediate context and a broader context. The immediate context of a verse is the paragraph (or paragraphs) of the biblical book in question. The immediate context should always be consulted in interpreting Bible verses.
The broader context is the whole of Scripture. The entire Holy Scripture is the context and guide for understanding the particular passages of Scripture.
This is why the E100 can be so valuable. It gives us the bigger picture for the broader context of God’s story. When we understand this we can even understand where we fit into the broader context of God’s story so we can interpret events in our lives.
N.T. Wright uses the analogy of the five act play to not only interpret scripture but to interpret our lives. The vast majority of Scripture consists not in a list of rules or doctrines, but in narrative: it tells a remarkably consistent story about God’s plan to restore the world back to God.
Act One: (Creation). Whatever means God uses to create the world it’s a crucial feature of the play that creation is good and that humans are in God’s image.
Act Two: (Fall) God’s good creation is full of rebellion: evil and idolatry become real features of the world.
Act Three: (Israel) The story of Israel as the covenant people of God for the world. This act begins with the Abrahamic covenant and ends with the Jewish anticipation of an event in which God will liberate Israel from spiritual exile and reveal himself as the world’s true King. We must realize that there is an important sense in which many of the laws of ancient Israel have fulfilled their intended purpose.
Act Four (Jesus) The story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As the climax of the narrative it represents the inauguration of a new kingdom in which death and sin are being reversed throughout all of creation.
Act Five: (New Testament and the people of God). The New Testament forms the first scene of this act. The church is the people of God, in Christ, for the world; their job is to act in character: to live out Act Five by showing the world the true way of being human and to bring about God’s victory over evil on earth. This largely involves improvising and retelling of God’s story and gospel – namely that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead to put the world to rights.
Notice that for Wright the five-act play is not just the grand narrative of Scripture, but also the true story that we are living out – more accurately, we are living out Act Five, which has yet to be completed.
As J. I. Packer puts it, "if we would understand the parts, our wisest course is to get to know the whole." We must keep in mind that the interpretation of a specific passage must not contradict the total teaching of Scripture on a point. Individual verses do not exist as isolated fragments, but as parts of a whole. Scripture interprets Scripture.
The Importance of Literary Meanings
We must be aware of different literary genre. The bible includes many writing styles such as literal, symbolic, types, parables, allegories, prophecy, poetry, history, law books, letters, eye witness accounts, figures of speech, and indescribable revelations. It’s important to understand and identify figures of speech in the Bible and seek out God’s message in them.
The Importance of Historical Considerations
Historical considerations are important in properly interpreting the scriptures because the scriptures are written in specific times and places. We consider the circumstances of the writings and the cultural environment.
Ask who wrote the book?
What were the circumstances?
What were the cultural norms at the time?
What were the current problems, situations, or needs?
To whom was the book written?
What were their customs?
What did people of that place and time believe, think, say, do, or make?
Making a Correct Genre Judgment
A "literal" approach to Scripture recognizes that the Bible contains a variety of literary genres, each of which has certain peculiar characteristics that must be recognized in order to interpret the text properly.
Biblical genres include the historical (e.g., Acts), the dramatic epic (e.g., Job), poetry (e.g., Psalms), wise sayings (e.g., Proverbs), and apocalyptic writings (e.g., Revelation).
Obviously, an incorrect genre judgment will can lead us astray in interpreting Scripture. A parable should not be treated as history, nor should poetry or apocalyptic literature (both of which contain many symbols) be treated as straightforward narrative.
The wise interpreter allows his knowledge of genres to control how he approaches each individual biblical text. In this way, he can accurately determine what the biblical author was intending to communicate to the reader. The Bible contains a variety of literary genres and many figures of speech, but the biblical authors most often employed literal statements to convey their ideas.
Interpret the Old Testament in Light of the New Testament
God gave revelation to humankind progressively throughout Old and New Testament times. He didn't just give His entire revelation for all time to our first parents, Adam and Eve, or to Moses, the Lawgiver.
Rather, as time went on - as the centuries slowly passed - God provided more and more revelation that became progressively full so that by the time the New Testament was complete, God had told us everything He wanted us to know. In view of this, a key interpretive principle is that one should always interpret the Old Testament in view of the greater light of the New Testament. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted.
The introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before.
The Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended, and enlarged. Again, then, the Old Testament should be interpreted according to the greater light of the New Testament. The Old Testament is much clearer when approached through the lens of the New Testament.
Dependence on the Holy Spirit
Scripture tells us that we are to rely on the Holy Spirit's illumination to gain insights into the meaning and application of Scripture (John 16:12-15; 1 Corinthians 2:9-11). It is the Holy Spirit's work to throw light upon the Word of God so that the believer can assent to the meaning intended and act on it.
The Holy Spirit, as the "Spirit of truth" (John 16:13), guides us so that "we may understand what God has freely given us" (1 Corinthians 2:12). Full knowledge of the Word of God is impossible without prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God, for He who inspired the Word (2 Peter 1:21) is also its best interpreter. Illumination is necessary because man's mind has been darkened through sin (Romans 1:21), preventing him from properly understanding God's Word.
Human beings cannot understand God's Word apart from God's divine enablement (Ephesians 4:18).
This aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry operates within the sphere of man's soulful capacity, which God Himself gave man. Illumination comes to the minds and hearts of God's people.
Since the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of truth" (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), He does not teach concepts that oppose scripture. In other words, "the Holy Spirit does not guide into interpretations that contradict each other or fail to have internal consistency."
The Example of Jesus Christ
Jesus consistently interpreted the Old Testament characters as being real people and not just fictional characters, including
The Creation account of Adam and Eve (Matthew 13:35; 25:34; Mark 10:6),
Noah's Ark and the flood (Matthew 24:38-39; Luke 17:26-27),
Jonah and the great fish (Matthew 12:39-41),
Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15), and
The account of Lot and his wife (Luke 17:28-29).
In his book The Savior and the Scriptures, theologian Robert P. Lightner notes - following an exhaustive study - that Jesus' interpretation of Scripture "was always in accord with the grammatical and historical meaning. He understood and appreciated the meaning intended by the writers according to the laws of grammar and rhetoric."
Jesus affirmed scripture’s divine inspiration (Matthew 22:43),
Its indestructibility (Matthew 5:17-18), infallibility (John 10:35), final authority (Matthew 4:4,7,10), historicity (Matthew 12:40; 24:37), factual inerrancy (Matthew 22:29-32), and spiritual clarity (Luke 24:25).
Moreover, he emphasized the importance of each word of Scripture (Luke 16:17). Indeed, he sometimes teaches rich truths from only a single line of Scripture (Matthew 22:32,43-45; John 10:34).
Spiritual Pathways with the link
Spiritual Pathways Service Description: Christians don't always access God in the same way. In fact, there are various ways in which we can feel God's presence in our lives. Some of us experience God relationally--in the presence of other believers. Or our spiritual development may come about in intellectual pursuits. People may find God in service to others. Some may have to be alone and contemplative. The opposite of contemplatives are the spiritual activists, those who like to get others going into Kingdom action. Other spiritual pathways include those who find God in His creation and those who experience Him strongest in worship. It is important for each one of us to develop and use our spiritual pathway, but also respect the pathways of others.
To take the Sacred Pathways test assessment click here.
Sacred Pathways: Loving God According to the Way He Made You
by Gary Thomas
Spirituality is not a "one size fits all" deal. Humanity was created as diverse, so it makes sense that we were designed to love God in different ways.
Do you ever feel guilty because the traditional quiet time just doesn't cut it for you? Are you increasingly frustrated by a "one size fits all spirituality" that most definitely does not fit you?
Don't despair! Scripture and the history of Christian tradition reveal a remarkable diversity of personal devotion. Here are nine spiritual pathways for you to consider as you seek to love God according to the way He's designed you.1
The Naturalist
In Psalm 19:1, David extols nature's ability to awaken our cold hearts to God's warm presence: "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork" (NKJV). The apostle Paul spoke of a similar reality in Romans 1:20a when he wrote, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." Both writers testify to the reality experienced by naturalists — being outdoors does something to awaken our hearts to God.
Most of God's appearances in Scripture occurred outside: Hagar in the desert, Jacob beside a river, and Moses on a mountain. In fact, the very picture of heaven on earth was the Garden of Eden — not a cathedral! Not a Starbucks. And certainly not a shopping mall. Adam and Eve enjoyed a close walk with God in a garden. Of course, others met God inside, in the holy of holies, but naturalists find more spiritual stimulation in a natural setting rather than in a cleverly crafted human one.
If you find that you can't sit still at your desk without falling asleep, or that you're bored by trying to comb through devotional books while lying on your bed, consider getting outside and using nature to help you see and experience God's glory.
The Sensate
The best avenues for some believers to commune with God are the five senses: taste, touch, hearing, seeing, and even smelling. Just as naturalists are spiritually awakened while walking through a forest, so sensates become spiritually attuned when their senses are brought into play. Your most powerful spiritual aids might be majestic music, symbolic architecture, outstanding art, or the sensory experience of communion.
God designed our bodies, so it shouldn't surprise us that he made them in such a way that what we experience through our bodies can awaken our hearts to His presence.
The books of Ezekiel and Revelation reveal a God who comes in a very sense-oriented way: There are loud sounds, flashing lights, even sweet tastes. God designed our bodies, so it shouldn't surprise us that he made them in such a way that what we experience through our bodies can awaken our hearts to His presence.
The Traditionalist
For you traditionalists, religion isn't a dirty word — it's an outgrowth of your relationship with God. You're designed to appreciate the role of ritual, which builds on the power of reinforced behavior. There is something profound for you in worshipping God according to set patterns — your own, or history's. You may organize your life around scheduled times of prayer, and may even choose to carefully observe the Christian calendar, aligning yourself with centuries of faith. According to Acts, both Peter and John had set times for prayer. And Paul followed the custom of praying by the riverside on the Sabbath.
In addition to establishing rituals, you may choose to make good use of Christian symbols. We tend to quickly forget even convicting insights and soul-searing truth, but carefully chosen symbols help to remind us of those truths we want to live by. Types of symbols are limited only by your imagination. Some singles wear a purity ring; others wear a cross necklace. More sophisticated forms of symbolism include people decorating with colors that coincide with the Christian calendar: White is used on Easter and Christmas as a color of joy; purple is used for Lent, Holy Week and Advent; black symbolizes Good Friday.
The Ascetic
The best way to picture an ascetic is to think of a monk, or John the Baptist — someone who goes off on his own, in an austere environment, to get his spiritual batteries charged. You like to meet God internally; you don't want the distractions of a museum or a group meeting, as you prefer to shut out the world and meet God in solitude and austerity. Your preferred environment for personal worship is silence, without any noisy or colorful stimulants.
It's likely that you're part ascetic if you sense the need to have alone time on a regular basis.
It's likely that you're part ascetic if you sense the need to have alone time on a regular basis. You may even prefer solitary retreats, or at least a quiet place with a rather orderly environment. You and your fellow ascetics are often advocates of all night prayer vigils and many of the classical disciplines, such as fasting and biblical meditation.
The Activist
Activists follow in the footsteps of Moses, Elijah and Habakkuk; you love to meet God in the vortex of confrontation. If you're an activist, you want to fight God's battles. Church is primarily a place to collect signatures and sign up volunteers for the "real work" of the Gospel that takes place outside the church building.
As an activist, you're one of the movers and shakers of the Christian community. You may have a political bent or adopt an evangelistic emphasis, but what marks you as an activist is that you feel most alive spiritually when you are in the midst of God's active work. That's when God seems most real, most immanent and most exciting.
The Caregiver
Caregivers love God by loving others. You're the Mordecais to the world's Esthers; the Dorcas's (Acts 10:36) to the local church. Providing care and meeting needs in Jesus' name spiritually energizes you, drawing you ever closer to the Lord. For you, caregiving isn't an obligation as much as it is a threshold to intimacy with God.
Caregiving extends well beyond nursing sick people to include fixing a widow's car, serving as a volunteer firefighter, or researching a cure for a disease. A caregiver is comforted by Jesus' words, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40, NIV). God seems nearest to you when you are looking at Him through the eyes of a sick child or hurting friend.
The Enthusiast
An enthusiast, walking in the footsteps of David, loves excitement and celebration; you probably buy far more worship CDs than books. Enthusiasts tend to be more relational, and therefore favor group worship. You feed off the excitement of other believers praising God.
As an enthusiast, you also revel in God's mystery and supernatural power. You like to take spiritual risks, and wake up hoping God will do something new and fresh. You don't want to just know scriptural concepts; you want to experience and be moved by them. Your exuberance tends to lead you to explore the livelier elements of worship, such as dancing, music, drawing, singing and other creative forms.
The Intellectual
You're an intellectual if your heart is awakened when you understand new concepts about God. Your mind is probably very active, with the result that new intellectual understanding literally births affection; it creates increased respect for your Creator, which leads to worship.
You're an intellectual if your heart is awakened when you understand new concepts about God.
Intellectuals are usually the ones stressing Bible study as the mainstay of their devotion. But some of you, like the biblical Solomon, may also have curious minds in areas beyond the Bible — biology, astronomy, even physics. The more you understand about truth and God's universe, the more in awe of God — and therefore in love with Him — you become.
Just as the naturalist can't wait to get out of doors, the sensate is eager to visit the cathedral, and the ascetic scurries off into his inner world, so the intellectual seeks God in the pages of a book, the shelves of a library, or the vast ruminations of your mind.
The Contemplative
Contemplatives are marked by an emotional attachment and even abandonment to God. Like Mary who sat at Jesus' feet, you see yourself first and foremost as God's lover, and you want to spend your time in God's presence, adoring Him, listening to Him, and just enjoying Him.
You resemble ascetics in that your passion for God often leads you into solitude, where you can sit still and enjoy being in God's presence. Your watchwords are desire and relationship, as affirmed by Jesus in John 15:15: "I no longer call you servants … Instead, I have called you friends."
As a contemplative, you enjoy doing the things that couples like to do: Demonstrating your love for God through secret acts of devotion, giving gifts to God like a poem, or offering an anonymous act of charity. You often favor the discipline of journal writing, where you can intensely explore your heart's devotion.
Most of Us Are Blends
Intellectuals want to understand new things about God; activists want to fight God's battles; enthusiasts want to experience God; naturalists want to meet God in nature; sensates want to see and touch things that remind them of God; traditionalists want to faithfully remember God; ascetics want to be alone with God; caregivers want to be God's hands and feet; contemplatives want to adore God and to know Him better.
The important thing is to understand how you best connect with God so that you can more deliberately and consciously cultivate an increasing affection for your Creator.
Do you see yourself in any of the above categories? Please don't feel that you have to choose just one; most of us are blends, and many of us will move in and out of certain temperaments as we age. The important thing is not to find the right "label," but to understand how you best connect with God so that you can more deliberately and consciously cultivate an increasing affection for your Creator.
One caveat is in order, however. Every Christian, regardless of their temperament, needs to spend appropriate time being shaped by God's Word. Some of you might join group Bible studies, others of you may sit alone with your word dictionaries, concordances, and lexicons, and others of you might regularly listen to the Bible on tape — but interacting with the Word on a daily basis should be a given. The same goes for prayer and times of worshipful adoration. How and where you pray may differ; but every Christian is called to spend time with God.
The good news is that God crafted you with a specific design. You will certainly bear similarities to certain other believers, but you most celebrate the creative quality of God when you give yourself permission to seek His face in a way that honors His creative genius — beginning with your own spiritual makeup.
To take the Sacred Pathways test assessment click here.
Sacred Pathways: Loving God According to the Way He Made You
by Gary Thomas
Spirituality is not a "one size fits all" deal. Humanity was created as diverse, so it makes sense that we were designed to love God in different ways.
Do you ever feel guilty because the traditional quiet time just doesn't cut it for you? Are you increasingly frustrated by a "one size fits all spirituality" that most definitely does not fit you?
Don't despair! Scripture and the history of Christian tradition reveal a remarkable diversity of personal devotion. Here are nine spiritual pathways for you to consider as you seek to love God according to the way He's designed you.1
The Naturalist
In Psalm 19:1, David extols nature's ability to awaken our cold hearts to God's warm presence: "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork" (NKJV). The apostle Paul spoke of a similar reality in Romans 1:20a when he wrote, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." Both writers testify to the reality experienced by naturalists — being outdoors does something to awaken our hearts to God.
Most of God's appearances in Scripture occurred outside: Hagar in the desert, Jacob beside a river, and Moses on a mountain. In fact, the very picture of heaven on earth was the Garden of Eden — not a cathedral! Not a Starbucks. And certainly not a shopping mall. Adam and Eve enjoyed a close walk with God in a garden. Of course, others met God inside, in the holy of holies, but naturalists find more spiritual stimulation in a natural setting rather than in a cleverly crafted human one.
If you find that you can't sit still at your desk without falling asleep, or that you're bored by trying to comb through devotional books while lying on your bed, consider getting outside and using nature to help you see and experience God's glory.
The Sensate
The best avenues for some believers to commune with God are the five senses: taste, touch, hearing, seeing, and even smelling. Just as naturalists are spiritually awakened while walking through a forest, so sensates become spiritually attuned when their senses are brought into play. Your most powerful spiritual aids might be majestic music, symbolic architecture, outstanding art, or the sensory experience of communion.
God designed our bodies, so it shouldn't surprise us that he made them in such a way that what we experience through our bodies can awaken our hearts to His presence.
The books of Ezekiel and Revelation reveal a God who comes in a very sense-oriented way: There are loud sounds, flashing lights, even sweet tastes. God designed our bodies, so it shouldn't surprise us that he made them in such a way that what we experience through our bodies can awaken our hearts to His presence.
The Traditionalist
For you traditionalists, religion isn't a dirty word — it's an outgrowth of your relationship with God. You're designed to appreciate the role of ritual, which builds on the power of reinforced behavior. There is something profound for you in worshipping God according to set patterns — your own, or history's. You may organize your life around scheduled times of prayer, and may even choose to carefully observe the Christian calendar, aligning yourself with centuries of faith. According to Acts, both Peter and John had set times for prayer. And Paul followed the custom of praying by the riverside on the Sabbath.
In addition to establishing rituals, you may choose to make good use of Christian symbols. We tend to quickly forget even convicting insights and soul-searing truth, but carefully chosen symbols help to remind us of those truths we want to live by. Types of symbols are limited only by your imagination. Some singles wear a purity ring; others wear a cross necklace. More sophisticated forms of symbolism include people decorating with colors that coincide with the Christian calendar: White is used on Easter and Christmas as a color of joy; purple is used for Lent, Holy Week and Advent; black symbolizes Good Friday.
The Ascetic
The best way to picture an ascetic is to think of a monk, or John the Baptist — someone who goes off on his own, in an austere environment, to get his spiritual batteries charged. You like to meet God internally; you don't want the distractions of a museum or a group meeting, as you prefer to shut out the world and meet God in solitude and austerity. Your preferred environment for personal worship is silence, without any noisy or colorful stimulants.
It's likely that you're part ascetic if you sense the need to have alone time on a regular basis.
It's likely that you're part ascetic if you sense the need to have alone time on a regular basis. You may even prefer solitary retreats, or at least a quiet place with a rather orderly environment. You and your fellow ascetics are often advocates of all night prayer vigils and many of the classical disciplines, such as fasting and biblical meditation.
The Activist
Activists follow in the footsteps of Moses, Elijah and Habakkuk; you love to meet God in the vortex of confrontation. If you're an activist, you want to fight God's battles. Church is primarily a place to collect signatures and sign up volunteers for the "real work" of the Gospel that takes place outside the church building.
As an activist, you're one of the movers and shakers of the Christian community. You may have a political bent or adopt an evangelistic emphasis, but what marks you as an activist is that you feel most alive spiritually when you are in the midst of God's active work. That's when God seems most real, most immanent and most exciting.
The Caregiver
Caregivers love God by loving others. You're the Mordecais to the world's Esthers; the Dorcas's (Acts 10:36) to the local church. Providing care and meeting needs in Jesus' name spiritually energizes you, drawing you ever closer to the Lord. For you, caregiving isn't an obligation as much as it is a threshold to intimacy with God.
Caregiving extends well beyond nursing sick people to include fixing a widow's car, serving as a volunteer firefighter, or researching a cure for a disease. A caregiver is comforted by Jesus' words, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40, NIV). God seems nearest to you when you are looking at Him through the eyes of a sick child or hurting friend.
The Enthusiast
An enthusiast, walking in the footsteps of David, loves excitement and celebration; you probably buy far more worship CDs than books. Enthusiasts tend to be more relational, and therefore favor group worship. You feed off the excitement of other believers praising God.
As an enthusiast, you also revel in God's mystery and supernatural power. You like to take spiritual risks, and wake up hoping God will do something new and fresh. You don't want to just know scriptural concepts; you want to experience and be moved by them. Your exuberance tends to lead you to explore the livelier elements of worship, such as dancing, music, drawing, singing and other creative forms.
The Intellectual
You're an intellectual if your heart is awakened when you understand new concepts about God. Your mind is probably very active, with the result that new intellectual understanding literally births affection; it creates increased respect for your Creator, which leads to worship.
You're an intellectual if your heart is awakened when you understand new concepts about God.
Intellectuals are usually the ones stressing Bible study as the mainstay of their devotion. But some of you, like the biblical Solomon, may also have curious minds in areas beyond the Bible — biology, astronomy, even physics. The more you understand about truth and God's universe, the more in awe of God — and therefore in love with Him — you become.
Just as the naturalist can't wait to get out of doors, the sensate is eager to visit the cathedral, and the ascetic scurries off into his inner world, so the intellectual seeks God in the pages of a book, the shelves of a library, or the vast ruminations of your mind.
The Contemplative
Contemplatives are marked by an emotional attachment and even abandonment to God. Like Mary who sat at Jesus' feet, you see yourself first and foremost as God's lover, and you want to spend your time in God's presence, adoring Him, listening to Him, and just enjoying Him.
You resemble ascetics in that your passion for God often leads you into solitude, where you can sit still and enjoy being in God's presence. Your watchwords are desire and relationship, as affirmed by Jesus in John 15:15: "I no longer call you servants … Instead, I have called you friends."
As a contemplative, you enjoy doing the things that couples like to do: Demonstrating your love for God through secret acts of devotion, giving gifts to God like a poem, or offering an anonymous act of charity. You often favor the discipline of journal writing, where you can intensely explore your heart's devotion.
Most of Us Are Blends
Intellectuals want to understand new things about God; activists want to fight God's battles; enthusiasts want to experience God; naturalists want to meet God in nature; sensates want to see and touch things that remind them of God; traditionalists want to faithfully remember God; ascetics want to be alone with God; caregivers want to be God's hands and feet; contemplatives want to adore God and to know Him better.
The important thing is to understand how you best connect with God so that you can more deliberately and consciously cultivate an increasing affection for your Creator.
Do you see yourself in any of the above categories? Please don't feel that you have to choose just one; most of us are blends, and many of us will move in and out of certain temperaments as we age. The important thing is not to find the right "label," but to understand how you best connect with God so that you can more deliberately and consciously cultivate an increasing affection for your Creator.
One caveat is in order, however. Every Christian, regardless of their temperament, needs to spend appropriate time being shaped by God's Word. Some of you might join group Bible studies, others of you may sit alone with your word dictionaries, concordances, and lexicons, and others of you might regularly listen to the Bible on tape — but interacting with the Word on a daily basis should be a given. The same goes for prayer and times of worshipful adoration. How and where you pray may differ; but every Christian is called to spend time with God.
The good news is that God crafted you with a specific design. You will certainly bear similarities to certain other believers, but you most celebrate the creative quality of God when you give yourself permission to seek His face in a way that honors His creative genius — beginning with your own spiritual makeup.
Scripture and The Word
The Scriptures and the Word
“In the beginning.. God said ____ and it was so” Genesis 1
“By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host….For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”
-Psalm 33:6,9
“The Word of God is living and active,
it penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit…
it judges the thoughts and intents of the heart. “
Heb 4:12
“In the beginning, the Word (Jesus) existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
-John 1:1
‘And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” -John 1:14
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” -John 6:63
“Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” –John 6:68
”who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” -2Corinthians 3:6
“A person cannot live on bread alone but on every word that God speaks.” -Matthew 4:4
“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
-2Cor 4:6
“And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God (God-breathed) and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
-2 Tim 3:15-16
“For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased”— and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” 2 Peter 1:16-21
“For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
-Romans 15:4
“In the beginning.. God said ____ and it was so” Genesis 1
“By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host….For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”
-Psalm 33:6,9
“The Word of God is living and active,
it penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit…
it judges the thoughts and intents of the heart. “
Heb 4:12
“In the beginning, the Word (Jesus) existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
-John 1:1
‘And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” -John 1:14
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” -John 6:63
“Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” –John 6:68
”who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” -2Corinthians 3:6
“A person cannot live on bread alone but on every word that God speaks.” -Matthew 4:4
“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
-2Cor 4:6
“And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God (God-breathed) and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
-2 Tim 3:15-16
“For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased”— and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” 2 Peter 1:16-21
“For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
-Romans 15:4
Recipies and Toolbooks
We need recipes, not rules. Creating tool books instead of rule books grows people's spirits. It allows us to be productively human. Tools can be used for the good of self and others. Rules rob people of their ability to think and act independently. Instead of manuals that lock people into dehumanizing behavior, we should focus on the reasons behind things and on the outcomes that we want. -From Howard Behar's, "It's Not About the Coffee"
What Only God Can Do and My Part Too
Sacred Rhythms
Spiritual transformation is full of mystery. We can be open to it but we can not accomplish it for ourselves. It can be grasped only through divine revelation and brought about by divine activity. This kind of change is something only God can do. I can not transform myself.
What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God. We can create space in our lives for God to move. We can choose a way of life that opens us up to the presence of God.
Write out your plan.
Be sure to take into account the limits and opportunities of you life stage, your personality, your circumstances.
1. What practices will I seek to engage in on a daily basis? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? Where will I engage in these disciplines? What time of the day/ week/ year?
2. What do I know about the importance of community?
What spiritual disciplines will I share with a spiritual friend, or a group of friends, so as to grow together?
3. What additional activities or practices are particularly important given my personality type or spiritual type?
How will I incorporate these into the rhythm of my spiritual practices?
Are there practices that are particularly needed because of my sins and negative patterns?
4. How will I need to adjust my schedule in order to consistently choose this way of life?
What arrangements do I need to make with those I live with?
Do I need to have any discussions with those I work with or go to school with in order to make this possible?
5. How does this plan look and feel? Is it personal enough? Balanced? Realistic?
Spiritual transformation is full of mystery. We can be open to it but we can not accomplish it for ourselves. It can be grasped only through divine revelation and brought about by divine activity. This kind of change is something only God can do. I can not transform myself.
What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God. We can create space in our lives for God to move. We can choose a way of life that opens us up to the presence of God.
Write out your plan.
Be sure to take into account the limits and opportunities of you life stage, your personality, your circumstances.
1. What practices will I seek to engage in on a daily basis? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? Where will I engage in these disciplines? What time of the day/ week/ year?
2. What do I know about the importance of community?
What spiritual disciplines will I share with a spiritual friend, or a group of friends, so as to grow together?
3. What additional activities or practices are particularly important given my personality type or spiritual type?
How will I incorporate these into the rhythm of my spiritual practices?
Are there practices that are particularly needed because of my sins and negative patterns?
4. How will I need to adjust my schedule in order to consistently choose this way of life?
What arrangements do I need to make with those I live with?
Do I need to have any discussions with those I work with or go to school with in order to make this possible?
5. How does this plan look and feel? Is it personal enough? Balanced? Realistic?
Unconditional Worth in Christ
We have unconditional worth as Christ's children.
When God says this is who we are but the world says something else, don’t place your own opinion or other's opinions over God's.
Who I Am In Christ
I am accepted...
John 1:12
I am God's child.
John 15:15
As a disciple, I am a friend of Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:1
I have been justified.
1 Corinthians 6:17
I am united with the Lord, and I am one with Him in spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
I have been bought with a price and I belong to God.
1 Corinthians 12:27
I am a member of Christ's body.
Ephesians 1:3-8
I have been chosen by God and adopted as His child.
Colossians 1:13-14
I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins.
Colossians 2:9-10
I am complete in Christ.
Hebrews 4:14-16
I have direct access to the throne of grace through Jesus Christ.
I am secure...
Romans 8:1-2
I am free from condemnation.
Romans 8:28
I am assured that God works for my good in all circumstances.
Romans 8:31-39
I am free from any condemnation brought against me and I cannot be separated from the love of God.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
I have been established, anointed and sealed by God.
Colossians 3:1-4
I am hidden with Christ in God.
Philippians 1:6
I am confident that God will complete the good work He started in me.
Philippians 3:20
I am a citizen of heaven.
2 Timothy 1:7
I have not been given a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind.
1 John 5:18
I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch me.
I am significant...
John 15:5
I am a branch of Jesus Christ, the true vine, and a channel of His life.
John 15:16
I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit.
1 Corinthians 3:16
I am God's temple.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
I am a minister of reconciliation for God.
Ephesians 2:6
I am seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenly realm.
Ephesians 2:10
I am God's workmanship.
Ephesians 3:12
I may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
In Christ...
I am a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17; cf. Gal. 5:6; 6:15; Eph. 2:10).
I am a saint (1 Cor. 1:2).
I am a part of His Church (Eph. 2:21-22).
I am a temple for God's Spirit (Eph. 2:22).
I am in the eternal plan of God (Eph. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:9).
I am complete and filled full with the fullness of Christ (Col. 2:9; and compare Col. 1:19).
I am enriched (1 Cor. 1:5).
I am accepted because God's favor has been poured out upon me (Eph. 1:6).
I am light (Eph. 5:8).
I am secure in the love of God (Rom. 8:38-39).
I am established, rooted and built up (2 Cor. 1:21; Col. 2:7).
I am circumcised inwardly (Col. 2:11).
I am near to the heart of God (Eph. 2:13).
WHAT DO I HAVE? WHAT DO I POSSESS?
IN CHRIST...
I have every spiritual blessing (Eph. 1:3).
I have eternal life, an eternal relationship with God (1 John 5:11; 1 Cor. 15:22 and Romans 6:23 where "through" could be translated "in").
I have a glorious salvation (2 Tim. 2:10).
I have a rich inheritance (Eph. 1:4; cf. 1 Pet. 1:4; Rom. 8:17).
I have a glorious future (Eph. 1:4-5).
I have a heavenly position—seated with Him! (Eph. 2:6).
I have a high calling (Phil. 3:14).
I have the hope of eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10 where "by" = "in").
I have God's perfect righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Cor. 1:30; 6:11).
I have sanctification or holiness (1 Cor. 1:2; 1:30; 6:11).
I have God's wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30; cf. Col. 2:3 and 1 Cor. 2:16).
I have redemption or freedom from bondage (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; Rom. 3:24; 1 Cor. 1:30).
I have security (Rom. 8:1).
I have complete forgiveness (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; 1 Cor. 6:11--"washed").
PRACTICAL MATTERS
IN CHRIST...
I walk and live (Col. 2:6).
I stand fast and firm (Phil. 4:1).
I have constant victory (2 Cor. 2:14).
I am fruitful (1 Cor. 15:58; Eph. 2:10).
I can do all things (Phil. 4:13).
I can draw near to God (Eph. 2:13,18).
I have all that I need; every need is supplied (Phil. 4:19 "by"="in").
I can rejoice always (Phil. 4:4; 1 Pet. 1:8).
I have a purifying hope (1 John 3:3).
I am strong (2 Tim. 2:1; Eph. 6:10).
I am faithful (Eph. 1:1).
I have faith and love (1 Tim. 1:13).
I can be mature (Col. 1:28).
When God says this is who we are but the world says something else, don’t place your own opinion or other's opinions over God's.
Who I Am In Christ
I am accepted...
John 1:12
I am God's child.
John 15:15
As a disciple, I am a friend of Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:1
I have been justified.
1 Corinthians 6:17
I am united with the Lord, and I am one with Him in spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
I have been bought with a price and I belong to God.
1 Corinthians 12:27
I am a member of Christ's body.
Ephesians 1:3-8
I have been chosen by God and adopted as His child.
Colossians 1:13-14
I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins.
Colossians 2:9-10
I am complete in Christ.
Hebrews 4:14-16
I have direct access to the throne of grace through Jesus Christ.
I am secure...
Romans 8:1-2
I am free from condemnation.
Romans 8:28
I am assured that God works for my good in all circumstances.
Romans 8:31-39
I am free from any condemnation brought against me and I cannot be separated from the love of God.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
I have been established, anointed and sealed by God.
Colossians 3:1-4
I am hidden with Christ in God.
Philippians 1:6
I am confident that God will complete the good work He started in me.
Philippians 3:20
I am a citizen of heaven.
2 Timothy 1:7
I have not been given a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind.
1 John 5:18
I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch me.
I am significant...
John 15:5
I am a branch of Jesus Christ, the true vine, and a channel of His life.
John 15:16
I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit.
1 Corinthians 3:16
I am God's temple.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
I am a minister of reconciliation for God.
Ephesians 2:6
I am seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenly realm.
Ephesians 2:10
I am God's workmanship.
Ephesians 3:12
I may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
In Christ...
I am a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17; cf. Gal. 5:6; 6:15; Eph. 2:10).
I am a saint (1 Cor. 1:2).
I am a part of His Church (Eph. 2:21-22).
I am a temple for God's Spirit (Eph. 2:22).
I am in the eternal plan of God (Eph. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:9).
I am complete and filled full with the fullness of Christ (Col. 2:9; and compare Col. 1:19).
I am enriched (1 Cor. 1:5).
I am accepted because God's favor has been poured out upon me (Eph. 1:6).
I am light (Eph. 5:8).
I am secure in the love of God (Rom. 8:38-39).
I am established, rooted and built up (2 Cor. 1:21; Col. 2:7).
I am circumcised inwardly (Col. 2:11).
I am near to the heart of God (Eph. 2:13).
WHAT DO I HAVE? WHAT DO I POSSESS?
IN CHRIST...
I have every spiritual blessing (Eph. 1:3).
I have eternal life, an eternal relationship with God (1 John 5:11; 1 Cor. 15:22 and Romans 6:23 where "through" could be translated "in").
I have a glorious salvation (2 Tim. 2:10).
I have a rich inheritance (Eph. 1:4; cf. 1 Pet. 1:4; Rom. 8:17).
I have a glorious future (Eph. 1:4-5).
I have a heavenly position—seated with Him! (Eph. 2:6).
I have a high calling (Phil. 3:14).
I have the hope of eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10 where "by" = "in").
I have God's perfect righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Cor. 1:30; 6:11).
I have sanctification or holiness (1 Cor. 1:2; 1:30; 6:11).
I have God's wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30; cf. Col. 2:3 and 1 Cor. 2:16).
I have redemption or freedom from bondage (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; Rom. 3:24; 1 Cor. 1:30).
I have security (Rom. 8:1).
I have complete forgiveness (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; 1 Cor. 6:11--"washed").
PRACTICAL MATTERS
IN CHRIST...
I walk and live (Col. 2:6).
I stand fast and firm (Phil. 4:1).
I have constant victory (2 Cor. 2:14).
I am fruitful (1 Cor. 15:58; Eph. 2:10).
I can do all things (Phil. 4:13).
I can draw near to God (Eph. 2:13,18).
I have all that I need; every need is supplied (Phil. 4:19 "by"="in").
I can rejoice always (Phil. 4:4; 1 Pet. 1:8).
I have a purifying hope (1 John 3:3).
I am strong (2 Tim. 2:1; Eph. 6:10).
I am faithful (Eph. 1:1).
I have faith and love (1 Tim. 1:13).
I can be mature (Col. 1:28).
love languages- expressions of the greatest commandment
Understanding the way the we give and receive love can be one of the most important things we can learn about ourselves.. but how many times have we considered the ways the those around us give and receive love?
The truth is that we may be expressing our love to someone in one way when they are looking for different things to know the they are loved. And often people are showing us love in ways that we see as insignificant but others see as a chance to show how much they care.
Here are the 5 Love Languages that Gary Chapman chose. I feel that love languages go way beyond this but this is a good way to start and to put some vocabulary to help us express ways we are impacting people and the way we are being impacted.
Words of Affirmation
Mark Twain once said “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” Verbal appreciation speaks powerfully to persons whose primary Love Language is “Words of Affirmation.” Simple statements, such as, “You look great in that suit,” or “You must be the best baker in the world! I love your oatmeal cookies,” are sometimes all a person needs to hear to feel loved.
Aside from verbal compliments, another way to communicate through “Words of Affirmation” is to offer encouragement. Here are some examples: reinforcing a difficult decision; calling attention to progress made on a current project; acknowledging a person’s unique perspective on an important topic. If a loved one listens for “Words of Affirmation,” offering encouragement will help him or her to overcome insecurities and develop greater confidence.
Quality Time
Quality time is more than mere proximity. It’s about focusing all your energy on your mate. A husband watching sports while talking to his wife is NOT quality time. Unless all of your attention is focused on your mate, even an intimate dinner for two can come and go without a minute of quality time being shared.
Quality conversation is very important in a healthy relationship. It involves sharing experiences, thoughts, feelings and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. A good mate will not only listen, but offer advice and respond to assure their mate they are truly listening. Many mates don’t expect you to solve their problems. They need a sympathetic listener.
An important aspect of quality conversation is self-revelation. In order for you to communicate with your mate, you must also be in tune with your inner emotions. It is only when you understand your emotions and inner feelings will you then be able to share quality conversation, and quality time with your mate.
Quality activities are a very important part of quality time. Many mates feel most loved when they spend physical time together, doing activities that they love to do. Spending time together will bring a couple closer, and, in the years to come, will fill up a memory bank that you can reminisce about in the future.
Whether it’s sitting on the couch and having a brief conversation or playing together in a tennis league, quality time is a love language that is shared by many. Setting aside focused time with your mate will ensure a happy marriage.
Receiving Gifts
Some mates respond well to visual symbols of love. If you speak this love language, you are more likely to treasure any gift as an expression of love and devotion. People who speak this love language often feel that a lack of gifts represents a lack of love from their mate. Luckily, this love language is one of the easiest to learn.
If you want to become an effective gift giver, many mates will have to learn to change their attitude about money. If you are naturally a spender, you will have no trouble buying gifts for your mate. However, a person who is used to investing and saving their money may have a tough time adjusting to the concept of spending money as an expression of love. These people must understand that you are investing the money not in gifts, but in deepening your relationship with your mate.
The gift of self is an important symbol of love. Sometimes all your mate desires is for someone to be there for them, going through the same trials and experiencing the same things. Your body can become a very powerful physical symbol of love.
These gifts need not to come every day, or even every week. They don’t even need to cost a lot of money. Free, frequent, expensive, or rare, if your mate relates to the language of receiving gifts, any visible sign of your love will leave them feeling happy and secure in your relationship.
Acts of Service
Sometimes simple chores around the house can be an undeniable expression of love. Even simple things like laundry and taking out the trash require some form of planning, time, effort, and energy. Just as Jesus demonstrated when he washed the feet of his disciples, doing humble chores can be a very powerful expression of love and devotion to your mate.
Very often, both pairs in a couple will speak to the Acts of Service Language. However, it is very important to understand what acts of service your mate most appreciates. Even though couples are helping each other around the house, couples will still fight because the are unknowingly communicating with each other in two different dialects. For example, a wife may spend her day washing the cars and walking the dog, but if her husband feels that laundry and dishes are a superior necessity, he may feel unloved, despite the fact that his wife did many other chores throughout the day. It is important to learn your mate’s dialect and work hard to understand what acts of service will show your love.
It is important to do these acts of service out of love and not obligation. A mate who does chores and helps out around the house out of guilt or fear will inevitably not be speaking a language of love, but a language of resentment. It’s important to perform these acts out of the kindness of your heart.
Demonstrating the acts of service can mean stepping out of the stereotypes. Acts of service require both mates to humble themselves into doing some chores and services that aren’t usually expected from their gender. However, these little sacrifices will mean the world to your mate, and will ensure a happy relationship.
Physical Touch
Many mates feel the most loved when they receive physical contact from their partner. For a mate who speaks this love language loudly, physical touch can make or break the relationship.
Sexual intercourse makes many mates feel secure and loved in a marriage. However, it is only one dialect of physical touch. Many parts of the body are extremely sensitive to stimulation. It is important to discover how your partner not only physically responds but also psychologically responds to these touches.
It is important to learn how your mate speaks the physical touch language. Some touches are irritating and uncomfortable for your mate. Take the time to learn the touches your mate likes. They can be big acts, such as back massages or lovemaking, or little acts such as touches on the cheek or a hand on the shoulder. It’s important to learn how your mate responds to touch. That is how you will make the most of this love language.
All marriages will experience crisis. In these cases, physical touch is very important. In a crisis situation, a hug can communicate an immense amount of love for that person. A person whose primary love language is physical touch would much rather have you hold them and be silent than offer any advice.
It is important to remember that this love language is different for everyone. What type of touch makes you feel secure is not necessarily what will make your partner happy. It is important to learn each other’s dialects. That way you can make the most of your hugging, kissing, and other physical contacts.
Try a simple test here
Sources: Gary Chapman
The truth is that we may be expressing our love to someone in one way when they are looking for different things to know the they are loved. And often people are showing us love in ways that we see as insignificant but others see as a chance to show how much they care.
Here are the 5 Love Languages that Gary Chapman chose. I feel that love languages go way beyond this but this is a good way to start and to put some vocabulary to help us express ways we are impacting people and the way we are being impacted.
Words of Affirmation
Mark Twain once said “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” Verbal appreciation speaks powerfully to persons whose primary Love Language is “Words of Affirmation.” Simple statements, such as, “You look great in that suit,” or “You must be the best baker in the world! I love your oatmeal cookies,” are sometimes all a person needs to hear to feel loved.
Aside from verbal compliments, another way to communicate through “Words of Affirmation” is to offer encouragement. Here are some examples: reinforcing a difficult decision; calling attention to progress made on a current project; acknowledging a person’s unique perspective on an important topic. If a loved one listens for “Words of Affirmation,” offering encouragement will help him or her to overcome insecurities and develop greater confidence.
Quality Time
Quality time is more than mere proximity. It’s about focusing all your energy on your mate. A husband watching sports while talking to his wife is NOT quality time. Unless all of your attention is focused on your mate, even an intimate dinner for two can come and go without a minute of quality time being shared.
Quality conversation is very important in a healthy relationship. It involves sharing experiences, thoughts, feelings and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. A good mate will not only listen, but offer advice and respond to assure their mate they are truly listening. Many mates don’t expect you to solve their problems. They need a sympathetic listener.
An important aspect of quality conversation is self-revelation. In order for you to communicate with your mate, you must also be in tune with your inner emotions. It is only when you understand your emotions and inner feelings will you then be able to share quality conversation, and quality time with your mate.
Quality activities are a very important part of quality time. Many mates feel most loved when they spend physical time together, doing activities that they love to do. Spending time together will bring a couple closer, and, in the years to come, will fill up a memory bank that you can reminisce about in the future.
Whether it’s sitting on the couch and having a brief conversation or playing together in a tennis league, quality time is a love language that is shared by many. Setting aside focused time with your mate will ensure a happy marriage.
Receiving Gifts
Some mates respond well to visual symbols of love. If you speak this love language, you are more likely to treasure any gift as an expression of love and devotion. People who speak this love language often feel that a lack of gifts represents a lack of love from their mate. Luckily, this love language is one of the easiest to learn.
If you want to become an effective gift giver, many mates will have to learn to change their attitude about money. If you are naturally a spender, you will have no trouble buying gifts for your mate. However, a person who is used to investing and saving their money may have a tough time adjusting to the concept of spending money as an expression of love. These people must understand that you are investing the money not in gifts, but in deepening your relationship with your mate.
The gift of self is an important symbol of love. Sometimes all your mate desires is for someone to be there for them, going through the same trials and experiencing the same things. Your body can become a very powerful physical symbol of love.
These gifts need not to come every day, or even every week. They don’t even need to cost a lot of money. Free, frequent, expensive, or rare, if your mate relates to the language of receiving gifts, any visible sign of your love will leave them feeling happy and secure in your relationship.
Acts of Service
Sometimes simple chores around the house can be an undeniable expression of love. Even simple things like laundry and taking out the trash require some form of planning, time, effort, and energy. Just as Jesus demonstrated when he washed the feet of his disciples, doing humble chores can be a very powerful expression of love and devotion to your mate.
Very often, both pairs in a couple will speak to the Acts of Service Language. However, it is very important to understand what acts of service your mate most appreciates. Even though couples are helping each other around the house, couples will still fight because the are unknowingly communicating with each other in two different dialects. For example, a wife may spend her day washing the cars and walking the dog, but if her husband feels that laundry and dishes are a superior necessity, he may feel unloved, despite the fact that his wife did many other chores throughout the day. It is important to learn your mate’s dialect and work hard to understand what acts of service will show your love.
It is important to do these acts of service out of love and not obligation. A mate who does chores and helps out around the house out of guilt or fear will inevitably not be speaking a language of love, but a language of resentment. It’s important to perform these acts out of the kindness of your heart.
Demonstrating the acts of service can mean stepping out of the stereotypes. Acts of service require both mates to humble themselves into doing some chores and services that aren’t usually expected from their gender. However, these little sacrifices will mean the world to your mate, and will ensure a happy relationship.
Physical Touch
Many mates feel the most loved when they receive physical contact from their partner. For a mate who speaks this love language loudly, physical touch can make or break the relationship.
Sexual intercourse makes many mates feel secure and loved in a marriage. However, it is only one dialect of physical touch. Many parts of the body are extremely sensitive to stimulation. It is important to discover how your partner not only physically responds but also psychologically responds to these touches.
It is important to learn how your mate speaks the physical touch language. Some touches are irritating and uncomfortable for your mate. Take the time to learn the touches your mate likes. They can be big acts, such as back massages or lovemaking, or little acts such as touches on the cheek or a hand on the shoulder. It’s important to learn how your mate responds to touch. That is how you will make the most of this love language.
All marriages will experience crisis. In these cases, physical touch is very important. In a crisis situation, a hug can communicate an immense amount of love for that person. A person whose primary love language is physical touch would much rather have you hold them and be silent than offer any advice.
It is important to remember that this love language is different for everyone. What type of touch makes you feel secure is not necessarily what will make your partner happy. It is important to learn each other’s dialects. That way you can make the most of your hugging, kissing, and other physical contacts.
Try a simple test here
Sources: Gary Chapman
From Ideas to Visualization
Our ideas and imaginations steer our lives.
We sometimes know what is true but still have anxiety. Because our brains don't think with information. We think with visualization and imagination. We think by replicating our physical experiences on the inside. (They now have neurological studies that prove this.) When we think of what color car we drive we don't just think of a word we visualize the car and see the color.
We don't just remember the things from the past, such abusive past and tragedies, by seeing information about them, that wouldn't effect us, we re-enter the experience.
We go through it all over again with the emotional component included. The story we run in our head is ran with color and sound and emotion. The story we believe we are in shapes the way we view ourselves and what we believe our identity is.
Our imagination determines how we will anticipate the future and helps to steer the direction we will take. We can know all the truth in the world but if the story we are running in our head is full of lies we have believed from the world and from negative experiences than what we will experience is that.
This is where illustration powerfulness comes from. They are vivid.
Spend time as a spiritual discipline imagining it, seeing it, experiencing it. Ask what do I look like when I am living out the truth that I am filled with the Spirit of God. Imagine yourself in the situation that is most scary and gives you the most anxiety responding, responding not as you always have done in the past with fear, but responding in a way that manifests the kingdom.
These vivid visualizations and the ability to do this is a gift from God. We can have our inner sanctuary there and meet with God. God can take spiritual truths and impact our lives with it.
What story are we living in? We can have idea and not live by those ideas but instead live in another story. Or we can embrace those ideas and breathe life into them with meditation of what they might look like. We can live out those ideas.
What are you most anxious or apprehensive about? How do you visualize the situation playing out? Let Christ redeem that picture. What can it look like with Jesus' help?
We sometimes know what is true but still have anxiety. Because our brains don't think with information. We think with visualization and imagination. We think by replicating our physical experiences on the inside. (They now have neurological studies that prove this.) When we think of what color car we drive we don't just think of a word we visualize the car and see the color.
We don't just remember the things from the past, such abusive past and tragedies, by seeing information about them, that wouldn't effect us, we re-enter the experience.
We go through it all over again with the emotional component included. The story we run in our head is ran with color and sound and emotion. The story we believe we are in shapes the way we view ourselves and what we believe our identity is.
Our imagination determines how we will anticipate the future and helps to steer the direction we will take. We can know all the truth in the world but if the story we are running in our head is full of lies we have believed from the world and from negative experiences than what we will experience is that.
This is where illustration powerfulness comes from. They are vivid.
Spend time as a spiritual discipline imagining it, seeing it, experiencing it. Ask what do I look like when I am living out the truth that I am filled with the Spirit of God. Imagine yourself in the situation that is most scary and gives you the most anxiety responding, responding not as you always have done in the past with fear, but responding in a way that manifests the kingdom.
These vivid visualizations and the ability to do this is a gift from God. We can have our inner sanctuary there and meet with God. God can take spiritual truths and impact our lives with it.
What story are we living in? We can have idea and not live by those ideas but instead live in another story. Or we can embrace those ideas and breathe life into them with meditation of what they might look like. We can live out those ideas.
What are you most anxious or apprehensive about? How do you visualize the situation playing out? Let Christ redeem that picture. What can it look like with Jesus' help?
The Power of Ideas
Dallas Willard wrote powerfully about the way ideas, seemingly powerless and abstract in the world's perspective, shape, change and influence the world we live in. They lead to actions. They go beyond us. It's how movements happen. It's big, strong, powerful. It may not be an instant reaction but they seep through like yeast in the dough- good or bad. They are the mustard seed that grows to great heights.
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little esle. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." -- The Divine Conspiracy.
"French novelist, Paul Bourget, describes the 'egghead' existence of a noted philosopher and psychologist: seeming lost in things 'merely academic' living an humdrum life. Three times a week he had visits from scholars and students. He lived and existence of and inoffensive, scholarly man who, in the words of his houskeeper, 'wouldn't hurt a fly.'
Then one day he was summoned to a criminal inquest concerning a brilliant young man who had been his student and had climbed those four flights of stairs to drink in illuminating and liberating discussions. In prison awaiting trial for murder, this young disciple had written an account of what he had done and of how those liberating doctrines enthusiastically discussed in the abstract had wordd out in actual practice.
World and individual events ride upon the waters of an ideational sea.
The killing fields of Cambodia come from philosophical discussions in Paris.
The ideas of people in current leadership positions are always those they took in during their youth." --D.C.
As Greg Boyd explains in "Waking up to Revolting Beauty" (above). Take every thought captive to Christ.
In order to have faith we must first have an idea. Something abstract. Then we can use our imaginations to make it vivid.
1. What ideas have influenced your life?
2. What is the voice of the world saying to you? How does that effect you?
3. What is the voice of Jesus saying to you? How important are the ideas he speaks?
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little esle. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." -- The Divine Conspiracy.
"French novelist, Paul Bourget, describes the 'egghead' existence of a noted philosopher and psychologist: seeming lost in things 'merely academic' living an humdrum life. Three times a week he had visits from scholars and students. He lived and existence of and inoffensive, scholarly man who, in the words of his houskeeper, 'wouldn't hurt a fly.'
Then one day he was summoned to a criminal inquest concerning a brilliant young man who had been his student and had climbed those four flights of stairs to drink in illuminating and liberating discussions. In prison awaiting trial for murder, this young disciple had written an account of what he had done and of how those liberating doctrines enthusiastically discussed in the abstract had wordd out in actual practice.
World and individual events ride upon the waters of an ideational sea.
The killing fields of Cambodia come from philosophical discussions in Paris.
The ideas of people in current leadership positions are always those they took in during their youth." --D.C.
As Greg Boyd explains in "Waking up to Revolting Beauty" (above). Take every thought captive to Christ.
In order to have faith we must first have an idea. Something abstract. Then we can use our imaginations to make it vivid.
1. What ideas have influenced your life?
2. What is the voice of the world saying to you? How does that effect you?
3. What is the voice of Jesus saying to you? How important are the ideas he speaks?
searching for a place to flourish
At the time (44 years old)my passion and ability to motivate people and build a sense of community hadn't been enough to overcome the culture of a new management and their overriding drive to boost profits at the expense of their people.
I searched for a place where I'd flourish. - Howard Behar (before signing on with Starbucks International, of which he would later become president)
Don't resign yourself to working for a profits only company when there is a place where you would flourish. God did not mess up when he made you. He knit you fearfully and wonderfully. And you are made in and still bear his image. You belong somewhere. Where is it now? Where will it be tomorrow?
I searched for a place where I'd flourish. - Howard Behar (before signing on with Starbucks International, of which he would later become president)
Don't resign yourself to working for a profits only company when there is a place where you would flourish. God did not mess up when he made you. He knit you fearfully and wonderfully. And you are made in and still bear his image. You belong somewhere. Where is it now? Where will it be tomorrow?
Quiet time with Jesus (from Way of the Heart)
Quiet time with God is the furnace of transformation. Without it we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
In our quiet times with God we get rid of our scaffolding; no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, nothing to distract, just me- naked me, and God. We may find in this empty quiet space confusing ideas, worries of the day, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in the mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Everything in us may want to run to friends, work, and distractions.
It is precisely in the midst of this struggle with our worldly self and its demons that our Lord comes to us. He is beside us in all of it.
We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Our primary task is to keep the eyes of our mind and heart firmly fixed on Him. It is only in the midst of Christ's grace and healing that we can face our sin, show our wounds, and face our own true nature.
As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away, take off our masks, and begin to experience freedom as a child of God. We have freedom to be molded into Christ's image, freedom to mature in him, freedom to love and freedom from sin.
So what does this mean in our daily lives? The very first thing we need to do is set apart a time and place to be with God and him alone. The concrete shape of this discipline of solitude will be different for each person but will not remain vague or general. It must be as concrete and specific as daily life is.
Quiet time is a time of purification and transformation, the place of great struggle, and the great encounter. This time is not simply a means to an end. It's ends are met within it. It is the place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from victimizing compulsions of the world. It is a place of salvation.
A heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh. A rebellious heart can be turned into a contrite heart. A closed heart can open itself up. A new self can grow in the loving encounter with Jesus.
Scripture should lead us into the presence of God. We must be careful to use that word not simply as an interesting or motivating word, but as a word that creates the boundaries within which we can listen to the loving caring, gentle presence of God.
Scripture should renew the mind as well as descend slowly from the mind to the heart. The crisis our time in scripture and prayer is that our minds are filled with the ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him. The word heart in the Jewish-Christian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional and moral energies. From the hear arise unknowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. The heart too has its reasons and is the center of perception and understanding. Finally, the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. The heart is the central unifying peace of our personal life where we are totally one with no divisions or distinctions. It is the seat of our personality. It is where Christ dwells in us, the hope of Glory.
By it's very nature this kind of holistic, integral meeting with our savior transforms our whole being and opens the eyes of our soul to the truth of ourselves as well as he truth of God. This type of encounter challenges us to hide nothing from God and to surrender ourselves unconditionally to his mercy. In doing this we will unmask many illusions about ourselves and about God and we will be led into the true relationship we are purposed to have with God.
If we spend time with God in the beginning of our day he may slowly build a place in our hearts for that day so that even while studying, gardening, working, or building, the meeting can continue in our heart and keep us aware of God's presence, guidance and counseling, bringing us into a deeper meaning of what it means that God is our Shepherd. The Lord sends us out into the world and calls us back to be with him in a never-ending communion.
In our quiet times with God we get rid of our scaffolding; no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, nothing to distract, just me- naked me, and God. We may find in this empty quiet space confusing ideas, worries of the day, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in the mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Everything in us may want to run to friends, work, and distractions.
It is precisely in the midst of this struggle with our worldly self and its demons that our Lord comes to us. He is beside us in all of it.
We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Our primary task is to keep the eyes of our mind and heart firmly fixed on Him. It is only in the midst of Christ's grace and healing that we can face our sin, show our wounds, and face our own true nature.
As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away, take off our masks, and begin to experience freedom as a child of God. We have freedom to be molded into Christ's image, freedom to mature in him, freedom to love and freedom from sin.
So what does this mean in our daily lives? The very first thing we need to do is set apart a time and place to be with God and him alone. The concrete shape of this discipline of solitude will be different for each person but will not remain vague or general. It must be as concrete and specific as daily life is.
Quiet time is a time of purification and transformation, the place of great struggle, and the great encounter. This time is not simply a means to an end. It's ends are met within it. It is the place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from victimizing compulsions of the world. It is a place of salvation.
A heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh. A rebellious heart can be turned into a contrite heart. A closed heart can open itself up. A new self can grow in the loving encounter with Jesus.
Scripture should lead us into the presence of God. We must be careful to use that word not simply as an interesting or motivating word, but as a word that creates the boundaries within which we can listen to the loving caring, gentle presence of God.
Scripture should renew the mind as well as descend slowly from the mind to the heart. The crisis our time in scripture and prayer is that our minds are filled with the ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him. The word heart in the Jewish-Christian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional and moral energies. From the hear arise unknowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. The heart too has its reasons and is the center of perception and understanding. Finally, the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. The heart is the central unifying peace of our personal life where we are totally one with no divisions or distinctions. It is the seat of our personality. It is where Christ dwells in us, the hope of Glory.
By it's very nature this kind of holistic, integral meeting with our savior transforms our whole being and opens the eyes of our soul to the truth of ourselves as well as he truth of God. This type of encounter challenges us to hide nothing from God and to surrender ourselves unconditionally to his mercy. In doing this we will unmask many illusions about ourselves and about God and we will be led into the true relationship we are purposed to have with God.
If we spend time with God in the beginning of our day he may slowly build a place in our hearts for that day so that even while studying, gardening, working, or building, the meeting can continue in our heart and keep us aware of God's presence, guidance and counseling, bringing us into a deeper meaning of what it means that God is our Shepherd. The Lord sends us out into the world and calls us back to be with him in a never-ending communion.
Deep, unveiled community- vital friends
The apostle Paul says that in true community love is to be genuine. In the book of Acts we read that in the very first church people "met together with glad and sincere hearts." They were authentic. They were real. They learned to stop pretending to be something they were not.
Ortberg refers to a brilliant essay that C. S. Lewis once wrote called "The Inner Ring." In it Lewis says that in every society, every school, every church, every workplace, there are little groups of people who are on the "inside." And you can tell because they use nicknames and have inside jokes and get invited to certain events. And then there are those who are on the outside, those who don't get chosen at recess or invited to the dance or who get voted off the island. And all of us have the desire to be on the inside and the fear of being left on the outside.
The existence of these rings, Lewis says, isn't necessarily bad. We're all limited and can only maintain so many relationships. But the desire to gain status by being part of a high-status Inner Ring is a deeply dangerous one. It can lead us to constantly compare ourselves with others, to feel anguish when we're left out, and deeper anguish when someone close to us gets ushered in. It can make us compromise and do things that make us look good to those who are deeper in and higher up.
But the Inner Ring turns out to be like an onion. Once we make it to a certain circle, we discover there is another circle, and another one after that. And beside no inner circle can give us the worth that we want so badly to find, because inside each circle we discover that we're still the same person.
Jesus' disciples wrestled with this desire to be on the inside. Two of them, James and John, actually approached Jesus and asked if they could be in the Inner Ring when they got to heaven. They even had their mom lobbying for them. And when the other ten heard about it they flipped out, because if that happened that would mean, that even though they were apostles too, they wouldn't be on the inside. And Jesus just shook his head and wondered when these guys would finally get it that God's desire is to invite everyone into the Inner Ring. His church is not to be a community of exclusion, but a community of embrace.
One of the most penetrating stories about who's in and who's out is told by Matthew. If you have a Bible turn to Matthew 15:21-28. Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." 27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
So let's get real practical now and look at three stages of authenticity that will lead us into deeper levels of community in any relationship.
The first stage is guarded communication. Authenticity doesn't mean we tell everybody, everything about us. That would be unwise and unbiblical. There is a place for guarded communication. We need to be discerning in what we share with whom.
Proverbs 20:19 says, A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid anyone who talks too much.
Don't be too quick to share something personal with somebody you don't know or somebody you can't trust. You can get hurt real bad. Most of us have had that experience and it's painful. I've been on both ends of that equation. I've had confidences betrayed and I've betrayed a few myself, which caused great pain. And when that happens it can shut us down for years in our attempts to build deeper community with people. And we can get real cynical and say things like, "There you go! What did I tell you? You can't trust anybody." When the truth is, "You can't trust everybody. But you can trust somebody."
So there's a place for polite, surface conversation. We all need that and that is a level of community, but it's not the deepest level. We were meant to go deeper.
The apostle Paul has a wonderful line in his second letter to the Corinthians when he writes in 2 Corinthians 3:18, And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
His point is that it's possible for people to live in community with "unveiled faces." We would say without wearing masks. He uses the line in retelling the story of Moses whose face glowed after he met with God on Mount Sinai. And everyone who saw him went, "Wow! What a man of God! He is so special!"
But one morning when Moses looked in the mirror to brush his teeth, he noticed his face wasn't glowing as much. He was losing his radiance and it scared him to death to think that people would see his fading glory and think less of him so he put a veil over his face. He hid his face because he wanted people to think he was more spiritual than he really was. Until his wife finally said, "Moses, take that ridiculous thing off you're not fooling anybody!" What a relief that must have been!
But we can do the same thing that Moses did. We can keep a veil over our face, or a mask, to hide who we really are. Some of us hide behind clichés. We're always "Top draw. Doing great. Never had a bad day." Some of us hide behind humor to deflect conversations that get too personal. Some hide behind their shyness or their busyness or their spirituality. You can impress people from behind the veil, but you can't make friends that way. The truth is we're drawn to people who live with unveiled faces.
If you want to be in a relationship where people share deeply with you, then you need to take the next step towards authenticity, which is appropriate self-disclosure. Someone has said, "Disclosure begets disclosure." It has enormous power.
The apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 4:25, Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
How often I've seen this in small groups over the years. The group starts out with everyone being polite and having guarded conversations. But after a while there's this unspoken yearning to go deeper. And if the group doesn't people start to get bored with it and look for other things to do. Until someone has the courage to take the risk and share a struggle that they're having at work or at school or in their parenting or with their health or in their marriage and all of sudden the group dives into a deeper level of community. And often that's all it takes, one courageous person to lead them there, one person to risk being real.
Again, we're talking about appropriate self-disclosure. What may be appropriate to share one on one, may not be appropriate to share in a group or in a mixed setting of men and women. Nevertheless, this is the level where we take risks with those we trust and show our "as is" tag by revealing areas of failure or embarrassment or vulnerability, things that don't make us look good or that we're not particularly proud of. It's communication that goes beyond cliches and opens up the heart. It's the uncomfortable part of becoming real.
Jesus was the only person who ever walked this planet who was completely transparent. He never learned to hide. He let his friends see him in his unveiled moments of joy and sadness, anger and fatigue. At one point, shortly before he died, he said his friends, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Please pray for me (Mark 14:34)."
Every one of us carries hurts and scars and wounds. And our tendency since the garden is to hide as if our life depended on it. But that's exactly what we can't do. God wants us to come out from behind the bushes with him and with at least one other person. Our life depends on getting found. There's no healing in hiding only bondage.
That's even true at the physical level. Studies show that there is a real connection between self-disclosure and physical health. James knew that 2,000 years ago when he wrote in James 5:16, Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Which brings us to the third stage of authenticity that leads to the deepest level of community. And that is confession. Now there's an overlap between self-disclosure and confession. Self-disclosure can include confession, but it also includes sharing things that have happened to us, hurts and violations that were out of our control. Confession, on the other hand, is a moral term, and involves naming specific things that we've done that need repentance and reconciliation.
Guarded communication is telling people that you're fine when inside you're really scared to death because you just lost your job. Self-disclosure is telling people that you're scared to death about the future because you just lost your job. Confession is telling someone that you're scared to death about the future because you just lost your job and the reason you lost your job is that you were caught stealing from the company.
Confessing our sins to another human being is powerful and crucial to our own healing and sense of forgiveness. When people begin to open up at this level, then God can produce the kind of deep community that he intends for us to enjoy.
Sin thrives on secrecy. And the longer we keep our sin hidden in the shadows of secrecy, the greater its grip will be on our lives. But when we bring it out of the shadows and into the light it quickly loses its power. And we bring it into the light when we confess it to at least one other trusted person. Confessing our sin to one another is the only way we can be delivered from the power of an addiction.
Alcoholics Anonymous has known this for years. The Fifth Step of the Twelve Steps of AA is to admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. It's to come out of the shadows and into the light.
Proverbs 28:13 says, He who covers up his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Confession is a powerful thing because it puts us in a place where God can transform our lives.
Believe me, I know the fear that comes with confession. Someone has said confession may be good for the soul, but bad for the reputation. That's why we need to find someone we can trust whether it be a professional counselor or a trustworthy friend.
Never forget that Valley View first of all a community of sinners before we're a community of saints. No one needs to feel alone around here in their brokenness. All of us struggle. Some may hide it better than others, some may struggle in different areas than we do, but we all do battle every single day. We all carry a mat.
So today's love lesson is that community starts with being real. "Becoming Real," said the wise old skin horse, "is a process. It takes time. It doesn't come all at once. It will be uncomfortable. But once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who just don't understand."
1. How easy or difficult is it for you to trust people now?
2. Rate yourself on a scale from one to five for hiddeness vs openness.
Where would you like to be?
3. What are the qualities you look for in a trustworthy person?
4. What is your veil? What do you hide behind?
-superficial conversation
-humor
-intelligence
-busyness/success
-shyness
-spirituality
5. What is one step you could take to reveal a little more of the truth about yourself in a close relationship?
6. Think about a community you are part of; a small group or your family etc, Are any dynamics present that might prevent intimacy?
-inappropriate humor
-violation of confidentiality
-judgmental statements
-premature advice-giving
How might you best address this?
7. Notice attempts that you make through the day to cover up. Practice freedom of speach. See how well you can cultivate a sense of transparency.
Who are you "unveiled" with?
Ortberg refers to a brilliant essay that C. S. Lewis once wrote called "The Inner Ring." In it Lewis says that in every society, every school, every church, every workplace, there are little groups of people who are on the "inside." And you can tell because they use nicknames and have inside jokes and get invited to certain events. And then there are those who are on the outside, those who don't get chosen at recess or invited to the dance or who get voted off the island. And all of us have the desire to be on the inside and the fear of being left on the outside.
The existence of these rings, Lewis says, isn't necessarily bad. We're all limited and can only maintain so many relationships. But the desire to gain status by being part of a high-status Inner Ring is a deeply dangerous one. It can lead us to constantly compare ourselves with others, to feel anguish when we're left out, and deeper anguish when someone close to us gets ushered in. It can make us compromise and do things that make us look good to those who are deeper in and higher up.
But the Inner Ring turns out to be like an onion. Once we make it to a certain circle, we discover there is another circle, and another one after that. And beside no inner circle can give us the worth that we want so badly to find, because inside each circle we discover that we're still the same person.
Jesus' disciples wrestled with this desire to be on the inside. Two of them, James and John, actually approached Jesus and asked if they could be in the Inner Ring when they got to heaven. They even had their mom lobbying for them. And when the other ten heard about it they flipped out, because if that happened that would mean, that even though they were apostles too, they wouldn't be on the inside. And Jesus just shook his head and wondered when these guys would finally get it that God's desire is to invite everyone into the Inner Ring. His church is not to be a community of exclusion, but a community of embrace.
One of the most penetrating stories about who's in and who's out is told by Matthew. If you have a Bible turn to Matthew 15:21-28. Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." 27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
So let's get real practical now and look at three stages of authenticity that will lead us into deeper levels of community in any relationship.
The first stage is guarded communication. Authenticity doesn't mean we tell everybody, everything about us. That would be unwise and unbiblical. There is a place for guarded communication. We need to be discerning in what we share with whom.
Proverbs 20:19 says, A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid anyone who talks too much.
Don't be too quick to share something personal with somebody you don't know or somebody you can't trust. You can get hurt real bad. Most of us have had that experience and it's painful. I've been on both ends of that equation. I've had confidences betrayed and I've betrayed a few myself, which caused great pain. And when that happens it can shut us down for years in our attempts to build deeper community with people. And we can get real cynical and say things like, "There you go! What did I tell you? You can't trust anybody." When the truth is, "You can't trust everybody. But you can trust somebody."
So there's a place for polite, surface conversation. We all need that and that is a level of community, but it's not the deepest level. We were meant to go deeper.
The apostle Paul has a wonderful line in his second letter to the Corinthians when he writes in 2 Corinthians 3:18, And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
His point is that it's possible for people to live in community with "unveiled faces." We would say without wearing masks. He uses the line in retelling the story of Moses whose face glowed after he met with God on Mount Sinai. And everyone who saw him went, "Wow! What a man of God! He is so special!"
But one morning when Moses looked in the mirror to brush his teeth, he noticed his face wasn't glowing as much. He was losing his radiance and it scared him to death to think that people would see his fading glory and think less of him so he put a veil over his face. He hid his face because he wanted people to think he was more spiritual than he really was. Until his wife finally said, "Moses, take that ridiculous thing off you're not fooling anybody!" What a relief that must have been!
But we can do the same thing that Moses did. We can keep a veil over our face, or a mask, to hide who we really are. Some of us hide behind clichés. We're always "Top draw. Doing great. Never had a bad day." Some of us hide behind humor to deflect conversations that get too personal. Some hide behind their shyness or their busyness or their spirituality. You can impress people from behind the veil, but you can't make friends that way. The truth is we're drawn to people who live with unveiled faces.
If you want to be in a relationship where people share deeply with you, then you need to take the next step towards authenticity, which is appropriate self-disclosure. Someone has said, "Disclosure begets disclosure." It has enormous power.
The apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 4:25, Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
How often I've seen this in small groups over the years. The group starts out with everyone being polite and having guarded conversations. But after a while there's this unspoken yearning to go deeper. And if the group doesn't people start to get bored with it and look for other things to do. Until someone has the courage to take the risk and share a struggle that they're having at work or at school or in their parenting or with their health or in their marriage and all of sudden the group dives into a deeper level of community. And often that's all it takes, one courageous person to lead them there, one person to risk being real.
Again, we're talking about appropriate self-disclosure. What may be appropriate to share one on one, may not be appropriate to share in a group or in a mixed setting of men and women. Nevertheless, this is the level where we take risks with those we trust and show our "as is" tag by revealing areas of failure or embarrassment or vulnerability, things that don't make us look good or that we're not particularly proud of. It's communication that goes beyond cliches and opens up the heart. It's the uncomfortable part of becoming real.
Jesus was the only person who ever walked this planet who was completely transparent. He never learned to hide. He let his friends see him in his unveiled moments of joy and sadness, anger and fatigue. At one point, shortly before he died, he said his friends, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Please pray for me (Mark 14:34)."
Every one of us carries hurts and scars and wounds. And our tendency since the garden is to hide as if our life depended on it. But that's exactly what we can't do. God wants us to come out from behind the bushes with him and with at least one other person. Our life depends on getting found. There's no healing in hiding only bondage.
That's even true at the physical level. Studies show that there is a real connection between self-disclosure and physical health. James knew that 2,000 years ago when he wrote in James 5:16, Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Which brings us to the third stage of authenticity that leads to the deepest level of community. And that is confession. Now there's an overlap between self-disclosure and confession. Self-disclosure can include confession, but it also includes sharing things that have happened to us, hurts and violations that were out of our control. Confession, on the other hand, is a moral term, and involves naming specific things that we've done that need repentance and reconciliation.
Guarded communication is telling people that you're fine when inside you're really scared to death because you just lost your job. Self-disclosure is telling people that you're scared to death about the future because you just lost your job. Confession is telling someone that you're scared to death about the future because you just lost your job and the reason you lost your job is that you were caught stealing from the company.
Confessing our sins to another human being is powerful and crucial to our own healing and sense of forgiveness. When people begin to open up at this level, then God can produce the kind of deep community that he intends for us to enjoy.
Sin thrives on secrecy. And the longer we keep our sin hidden in the shadows of secrecy, the greater its grip will be on our lives. But when we bring it out of the shadows and into the light it quickly loses its power. And we bring it into the light when we confess it to at least one other trusted person. Confessing our sin to one another is the only way we can be delivered from the power of an addiction.
Alcoholics Anonymous has known this for years. The Fifth Step of the Twelve Steps of AA is to admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. It's to come out of the shadows and into the light.
Proverbs 28:13 says, He who covers up his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Confession is a powerful thing because it puts us in a place where God can transform our lives.
Believe me, I know the fear that comes with confession. Someone has said confession may be good for the soul, but bad for the reputation. That's why we need to find someone we can trust whether it be a professional counselor or a trustworthy friend.
Never forget that Valley View first of all a community of sinners before we're a community of saints. No one needs to feel alone around here in their brokenness. All of us struggle. Some may hide it better than others, some may struggle in different areas than we do, but we all do battle every single day. We all carry a mat.
So today's love lesson is that community starts with being real. "Becoming Real," said the wise old skin horse, "is a process. It takes time. It doesn't come all at once. It will be uncomfortable. But once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who just don't understand."
1. How easy or difficult is it for you to trust people now?
2. Rate yourself on a scale from one to five for hiddeness vs openness.
Where would you like to be?
3. What are the qualities you look for in a trustworthy person?
4. What is your veil? What do you hide behind?
-superficial conversation
-humor
-intelligence
-busyness/success
-shyness
-spirituality
5. What is one step you could take to reveal a little more of the truth about yourself in a close relationship?
6. Think about a community you are part of; a small group or your family etc, Are any dynamics present that might prevent intimacy?
-inappropriate humor
-violation of confidentiality
-judgmental statements
-premature advice-giving
How might you best address this?
7. Notice attempts that you make through the day to cover up. Practice freedom of speach. See how well you can cultivate a sense of transparency.
Who are you "unveiled" with?
Conflict Steps, Anger, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation
Nine Steps to Conflict Resolution
Matthew 18:15, "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and show them their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over."
This one statement of Jesus is the key to resolving conflict in any human relationship. The manual for conflict resolution is right here and it's found in seven simple steps, easy enough for a child to follow. Instead of show and tell, it's go and tell. Go and tell the person who hurt you and make it right.
Sounds simple, doesn't it. The problem is we so often don't do it. We tell everybody but the person who hurt us. In fact, this one verse may be the single most violated command that Jesus ever gave. Why? Because at each point we face a crossroads. At each step there are powerful reasons to ignore Jesus and go the other way. So let's walk through the steps one at a time.
Step one is acknowledge the conflict.
Jesus says if your brother or sister sins against you , but we could probably replace it with when your brother or sister sins against you because to be alive means to be in conflict. It's part of the Dance of the Porcupines. It's part of being slightly irregular, "as is" human beings. People aren't normal, but conflict is.
The first step sounds simple enough, acknowledge the conflict. But here's the first crossroad. Most of us would rather pretend that there is no conflict, that the conflict doesn't exist. Sometimes we think that lack of conflict is a sign of spiritual maturity, when really it could be a sign of denial or even apathy in a relationship. So when we're confronted we might say things like, "What's the big deal? Can't you take a joke? I was only kidding." And when we do that we can totally invalidate the person who wants to talk about the hurt.
So the place to start is to honestly admit that there is unresolved conflict that needs to be dealt with. There's been a relational meltdown that needs to be addressed. If we're going to live life in healthy community, un-addressed and unresolved conflict is not an option.
Step two is to own the responsibility of dealing with it.
The word Jesus uses is you not the other person. He calls on every one of us to own the job of conflict resolution, which often brings us to another crossroads.
We don't want to do it. Instead, we want the person who hurt us to make the first move. "It's not fair that I should have to take the first step, I didn't hurt them. They hurt me."
In Matthew 18 the issue is going to the person who has hurt us, but in Matthew 5 Jesus says we need to go to a person if we realize we have hurt them. Matthew 5:23-24, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift."
You see, either way the first move is always ours. In fact, Jesus says it's more important to make a relationship right than it is to go to church. It's the most spiritual thing we can do. There is no hidden Bible verse that says wait for them to come to us. Jesus puts the burden on us in both cases. If we've done something wrong, take the first step. If the other person has done something wrong, we still take the first step.
Why? Because porcupines are stubborn, prickly little creatures. Because there's a surplus of stone throwers and a deficit of peacemakers in this world. And because people who value community are people who own the responsibility to deal with relational breakdown.
Soul work
Part of owning responsibility to deal with the conflict is to forgive the other person as we have been forgiven. Reconciliation and restoration takes work from both parties, forgiveness is something that is ours to give with Christ’s help.
(See the Forgiveness section below at the bottom for what forgiveness is and what it is not.)
Identifying the Log
· Not a superficial exercise, just to gain a better hearing
· Ask God to help you search your heart, thoughts and ways
· Take your ego and subjectivity out of the situation; instead take an objective look at the situation, yourself, and the other person.
Ask yourself ‘Why’ Questions
· Why did this make me angry?
· Why do I find this so hurtful?
· Why am I fearful?
Reflect on your
· Words
· Actions
· Attitudes
· Interpretations
· Motives
Take out the Trash
David in the midst of his anger over his enemies says to the LORD in Psalm 139: 23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
In the middle of our most difficult situations is the best time to grow. (Plants grow fastest in manure) Use this opportunity to ‘take out the trash’ by asking these kind of soul probing questions.
Don’t settle for easy answers: drill down to the hear-level
(FFS see Hud’s Developmental Model section 4.)
Having recognized what the log is, we must now take action to remove it.
· Confess faults to God
· Ask God to help us with insecurities, sin and maturity issues
· Identify the lies we believed
· Receive His forgiveness
· Repent with God’s help
· Acknowledge your part to the other person.
Step three is forgiveness
What forgiveness is ...
o Forgiveness begins when we give up the right to get even.
This is where you need to think about your personal situation. Who is it that you want to pay? Who is it that you want to punish? Who is it that you think about and dream of all the ways their life could be as miserable as they have made yours?
My friend is tormented day and night by thoughts of his father. Somehow, he wants him to pay. I was not asking my friend to excuse his father. I was not asking my friend to forget all the horrible things his father had done to him. I was not asking him to reconcile with his father and put himself in a position where his father might try to hurt him again.
I was asking him to stop trying to get even. Vengeance by its nature is insatiable. I was inviting him to be free ...
Forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling. When we have been hurt by another person we tend to stop seeing them as a person (objectifying) and rather only see the hurt.
o When we forgive we begin to look past the hurt and focus on the humanity of the one who hurt us.
We recognize that they do not live a perfect life ... they didn't have perfect parents ... they are lonely or hurting or weak just like me. But they are also created in the image of a God who loves them.
o Forgiveness progresses when you find yourself wishing the other person well.
No longer do you fantasize about the pain that you would wish upon their life. You begin to hope for good things for them. You desire the peace of God in their troubled life.
Why we forgive…
There's a story told of Leonardo da Vinci, the brilliant artist, who was working on his famous painting "The Last Supper" when he got angry with a certain man. In fact, at one point he was so angry that he lost his temper and lashed out at the person with some very bitter words. Later on when he returned to the canvas to continue painting he tried to work on the face of Jesus. But he was so upset that he just couldn't pull it together to do that. So finally he put down his brush and went out to find the man he had blasted and asked his forgiveness. He reconciled the relationship. The man forgave him and da Vinci was able to go back to his studio and finish painting the face of Jesus.
The Last Supper is a painting of the Lord's Table, the table that we're about to enjoy together. Does it bring to mind a relationship that needs to be reconciled? If it does, then you need to make it right quickly. It's hard to spend time with Jesus and stay angry very long. He's always nudging us towards reconciliation.
There are two ways to live with hurt: the way of vengeance and the way of forgiveness. The first way leads to death, and the second to life.
1. For our own sake
· Refusing to forgive will make our spirits bitter
· It is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die
· God commands us to forgive because He knows that no human beings are more miserable than the unforgiving.
2. For God’s sake
· Forgiveness is the very heart beat of God. It is His invention and the only hope for His romance with the human race. When we choose to forgive, we open the door to the miraculous. God is just waiting for us to express our faith and attempt the unimaginable.
· It is repeatedly commanded in scripture
“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13
· If we do not forgive we will not be forgiven
“But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:15
· If we do not forgive our prayers will be hindered.
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." Mark 11:24-26
3. Restoring the relationship is impossible without forgiveness
· What interests do you share?
4.For the sake of the other person
“Look also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:4
· What underlying interests does the other person have?
Three Things that Forgiveness is Not ...
1. Forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing.
If a little kid is staring at the cereal in the grocery store and runs into you, you don't need to forgive him ... you simply excuse him. He's a little kid. He's enamored by the cereal boxes. It's excusable behavior.
But when there is no good rationale to explain why someone did something to hurt you ... that is when forgiveness is required
2. Forgiveness is not forgetting.
We've all heard the saying forgive and forget. That might be possible when someone cuts you off in traffic. But it is impossible to forget when someone has deeply or repeatedly hurt us.
Forgiving is precisely what is required when we cannot forget.
3. Forgiving is not the same thing as reconciling.
I have a good friend who has always struggled with his father. I always just assumed it was because his father abandoned him and his mother and brothers and sisters ... leaving them in a very difficult situation to fend for themselves.
It wasn't until recent years that he confided in me that for years his father had physically abused him repeatedly in a tortuous, intimidating way. Nobody else in the family knew anything about it and if they did, they never did anything about it.
My friend is an adult now and still tormented by his feelings of hatred toward his father. One day we were talking about how difficult it is for him to get on with his life and I made the radical suggestion that he forgive his father.
I'll never forget the look of anguish that came over him as he shook his head from side to side and said over and over, "no, no, no!"
My friend thought that I was saying he needed to reconcile with his father. To run back to him and spend time with the man that struck terror into his heart. That is not forgiveness. Forgiveness only requires one human being. (forgiveness waits for reconciliation in my opinion. Waits for the other party to be ready) Reconciliation requires two willing parties both broken and sincerely sorry. So what does forgiveness involve?
How to forgive
· We must remember how much we have been forgiven.
Matthew 18:21-35- See the parable of the servant who was forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents, but who refused to forgive a debtor who owed him one hundred denarii.
· It is an act of obedience and gratitude
· When we stop objectifying the other person and see them as imperfect but loved creations of God.
Step four is to decide if you will overlook the offence.
Overlooking is different from denial. When we deny we pretend there is no difficulty.
When we overlook we recognize the problem but determine that the best course of action is to choose to forgive the offence without even brining it to the attention of the offending party.
When is it wrong to overlook?
· When God is being publicly dishonored.
· When your relationship with the other party is damaged in some ongoing way.
· When people are hurt- yourself or others.
· When the offender is in spiritual or physical danger because of their offence.
Don’t “stuff” it
Some of us grew up in homes where anger was never acknowledged. The only way we dealt with anger was to "stuff" it. That was the case in my home. And when you grow up in a family like that you can think, "I should never experience anger. Anger means I'm a terrible person. Anger is bad."
But that's a lie. God gave us with the capacity to get angry. God gets angry from time to time. Psalm 30:5 says, For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime.
Anger is like a smoke detector. It's good to have one on every floor of your house. When it beeps, it tells you that something's wrong. It's good to have smoke detectors. They can save your life. But it's not good to live with a smoke detector that's always beeping.
Anger is our God given smoke detector to warn us that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Anger is meant to motivate us to do something. And this is what we're to do. Go to the person who has made us angry.
Step five is to cool down
Proverbs 14:17 says, People with a hot temper do foolish things. Wiser people remain calm. (GNB) You may need to buy some time just to allow the rpm's to slow down. That's okay. You may even want to do a self-check and ask yourself, "Why am I so angry? And what is it that I want that I'm not getting?"
Anger experts tell us that anger is not a primary emotion. Remember when you were in elementary school and learned about the three primary colors: red, blue and yellow. All the other colors are made from a mixture of those three. Well in that same way, anger is not a primary emotion. It is a mixture of emotions, such as hurt, frustration, or fear. Those are often the feelings that are underneath the anger. We get angry after we first get hurt by someone or after we first get frustrated trying to accomplish a task or first feel afraid of someone or something.
But once we've cooled down and thought things through we need to "go." The apostle Paul wrote these words to a community that was facing conflict.
Ephesians 4:26,” In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” We need to address it as quickly as possible.
If you are uncertain of your feelings, how to respond, or where you were responsible in the conflict, it may be helpful to consider journaling or going to a close and trusted friend before you go to the offending party. This can help us to help you sort out the hurt or anger we feel as well as how to approach the person.
The crossroads here to gossip. Why? Because it's easier and frankly more fun to go to someone else and tear the other person apart. But when we do that we can just make things worse. That doesn't mean we should never talk about our anger. We all need a sounding board that can help us plan to resolve the conflict. But if we're going to a third person, it should be with the goal taking ownership or our own errors and moving towards the person who hurt us for reconciliation.
Step number six is to go to the person.
"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” Matthew 18:15
Not avoiding, but approaching the person with whom you have an issue. This is a huge step in the process and right here the battle is often won or lost. At this crossroads we wrestle with thoughts like, "Just forget it, it's not that big of a deal." "I don't want to make them feel bad." "What they did really shouldn't of hurt me anyway." "Who am I to confront them?" "It could cost the relationship." "What if they come at me with all I've done to hurt them?" "What difference will it make anyway?" The evil one loves to use these thoughts and ideas to sabotage community.
But Jesus says, go. Don't wait. We can't wait until we've rehearsed our speech perfectly. We may stutter and stammer all over the place. It's not important that we do it flawlessly. It's just important that we do it. Avoiding issues of hurt kills community and causes resentment to fester inside of us.
Step seven is to use sensitivity
Go in private. One on one. Just between the two of you, Jesus says. The crossroads here is the temptation to go and let them have it. Make 'em pay. Hurt them back. Embarrass them in front of an audience. But Jesus says, "No." Instead, approach them the same way you would want to be approached. Sensitivity is one of the most important parts of healthy anger management.
We don't go to blow off steam or get it off our chest or let it fly. According to Ortberg, (And Goleman) research done on anger management over several decades has failed to find a single study that demonstrates that catharsis, or letting your anger fly, is an effective way to manage anger. Instead, it just creates more anger inside us and in the person that we rage all over. The simplest guideline here is the golden rule: approach others the way that you would want them to approach you.
Step number eight is to communicate directly
Discuss the problem. Jesus says, Show them their fault. The temptation here is to beat around the bush and not be totally honest. Some of us around here talk about saying the last 10%. Often, after going through all the hard work of setting up a difficult conversation, we get afraid and we shrink back from saying the hardest but most important truth. We fail to say the very thing that caused us to meet in the first place, the last 10%. We get vague and fuzzy just when we need to be crystal clear.
Saying the last 10% sounds like this. "You weren't really listening to me which made me feel like I don't matter to you. That causes me to pull away in our relationship and I don't want that. I want us to connect more closely. That's why I was hurt." It's not easy to say that. But that's what Jesus means by showing them their fault.
Step number nine is the goal of conflict resolution and that is reconciliation and restoration.
If they listen to you, you have won them over. The goal is not to even the score or to make the other person pay or feel bad, it's to be reconciled to each other. Restoring the relationship is the goal of conflict resolution. Getting back into community is the aim. If it's not, all of the hard work is for nothing.
Reconciliation
· Reconciliation is when we are brought into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent. Brought back into relationship.
· Requires that the guilty party desires to be forgiven
· Involves acknowledgement of guilt
· Is a necessary preliminary to restoration
Restoration
· Restoration is the reestablishing of something that was taken away or lost.
· The restitution of the relationship; being brought into a right relationship.
· Involves both parties
· We may need to set boundaries
· May be gradual and conditional
If reconciliation does not work the first time...
You can try a third party
· Coaching- getting someone to help you to approach the situation better
· Mediation- asking someone to sit down with you and your friend to help you work out things together
· Arbitration- You and the other person agree to ask someone to decide about a tangible issue on which you cannot agree.
If they do not listen to you
In sin issues we add three other steps to this. If the person continues in sin after we talk to them personally we are to according to Matthew 18: 15-17…
“But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
1. Take one or two others along. If they refuse to listen…
2. Decide the issue within the church. If they refuse to listen…
3. Treat his as you would anyone who has rejected the way of Christ.
If things have worked out well
· Thank God together
· Get clear agreements on tangible issues
· Learn by reflecting on what has happened
· Seek accountability and growth
If things didn’t work out well
Reaffirm a Godly attitude
Recognize that deep problems may underline a conflict
You are responsible for your own actions, not theirs
Consider a degree of constructive separation
Pray that God will bless the other party
So those are nine simple steps in conflict resolution according to Jesus. That's what keeps a community healthy. But sometimes even conflict resolution doesn't work. Sometimes we need a miracle. And God created one. It's called forgiveness.
Reflection Questions
1. How did your family handle conflict when you were growing up?
2. What characterizes your approach to conflict?
-Avoid at all costs
-I can face it, but I don't like it
-A good argument every once in a while clears the air
-I do conflict recreationally
3. Pay attention to your anger and anxiety today. What triggers it? How do you handle it? Is it most often fed by hurt, by frustration, or by fear?
4. Are there any people in your life who tend to drag you in as a third party to a conflict where you should not be involved? How can you handle this?
5. Think of a person whose conflict management skills you admire. What makes him or her effective? Ask them how they became skilled at dealing with anger.
6. How are you doing at speaking the last 10%, and whom can you ask to hold you accountable to do it?
7. Is there any unresolved conflict in your life? If so, ruthlessly decide to seek and resolve it.
Sources:
John Ortberg
Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them
Bruce Carter
Finding the Love of Your Life
02/29/2004 Anger Management, Matthew 18:15
Matthew 18:15, "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and show them their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over."
This one statement of Jesus is the key to resolving conflict in any human relationship. The manual for conflict resolution is right here and it's found in seven simple steps, easy enough for a child to follow. Instead of show and tell, it's go and tell. Go and tell the person who hurt you and make it right.
Sounds simple, doesn't it. The problem is we so often don't do it. We tell everybody but the person who hurt us. In fact, this one verse may be the single most violated command that Jesus ever gave. Why? Because at each point we face a crossroads. At each step there are powerful reasons to ignore Jesus and go the other way. So let's walk through the steps one at a time.
Step one is acknowledge the conflict.
Jesus says if your brother or sister sins against you , but we could probably replace it with when your brother or sister sins against you because to be alive means to be in conflict. It's part of the Dance of the Porcupines. It's part of being slightly irregular, "as is" human beings. People aren't normal, but conflict is.
The first step sounds simple enough, acknowledge the conflict. But here's the first crossroad. Most of us would rather pretend that there is no conflict, that the conflict doesn't exist. Sometimes we think that lack of conflict is a sign of spiritual maturity, when really it could be a sign of denial or even apathy in a relationship. So when we're confronted we might say things like, "What's the big deal? Can't you take a joke? I was only kidding." And when we do that we can totally invalidate the person who wants to talk about the hurt.
So the place to start is to honestly admit that there is unresolved conflict that needs to be dealt with. There's been a relational meltdown that needs to be addressed. If we're going to live life in healthy community, un-addressed and unresolved conflict is not an option.
Step two is to own the responsibility of dealing with it.
The word Jesus uses is you not the other person. He calls on every one of us to own the job of conflict resolution, which often brings us to another crossroads.
We don't want to do it. Instead, we want the person who hurt us to make the first move. "It's not fair that I should have to take the first step, I didn't hurt them. They hurt me."
In Matthew 18 the issue is going to the person who has hurt us, but in Matthew 5 Jesus says we need to go to a person if we realize we have hurt them. Matthew 5:23-24, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift."
You see, either way the first move is always ours. In fact, Jesus says it's more important to make a relationship right than it is to go to church. It's the most spiritual thing we can do. There is no hidden Bible verse that says wait for them to come to us. Jesus puts the burden on us in both cases. If we've done something wrong, take the first step. If the other person has done something wrong, we still take the first step.
Why? Because porcupines are stubborn, prickly little creatures. Because there's a surplus of stone throwers and a deficit of peacemakers in this world. And because people who value community are people who own the responsibility to deal with relational breakdown.
Soul work
Part of owning responsibility to deal with the conflict is to forgive the other person as we have been forgiven. Reconciliation and restoration takes work from both parties, forgiveness is something that is ours to give with Christ’s help.
(See the Forgiveness section below at the bottom for what forgiveness is and what it is not.)
Identifying the Log
· Not a superficial exercise, just to gain a better hearing
· Ask God to help you search your heart, thoughts and ways
· Take your ego and subjectivity out of the situation; instead take an objective look at the situation, yourself, and the other person.
Ask yourself ‘Why’ Questions
· Why did this make me angry?
· Why do I find this so hurtful?
· Why am I fearful?
Reflect on your
· Words
· Actions
· Attitudes
· Interpretations
· Motives
Take out the Trash
David in the midst of his anger over his enemies says to the LORD in Psalm 139: 23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
In the middle of our most difficult situations is the best time to grow. (Plants grow fastest in manure) Use this opportunity to ‘take out the trash’ by asking these kind of soul probing questions.
Don’t settle for easy answers: drill down to the hear-level
(FFS see Hud’s Developmental Model section 4.)
Having recognized what the log is, we must now take action to remove it.
· Confess faults to God
· Ask God to help us with insecurities, sin and maturity issues
· Identify the lies we believed
· Receive His forgiveness
· Repent with God’s help
· Acknowledge your part to the other person.
Step three is forgiveness
What forgiveness is ...
o Forgiveness begins when we give up the right to get even.
This is where you need to think about your personal situation. Who is it that you want to pay? Who is it that you want to punish? Who is it that you think about and dream of all the ways their life could be as miserable as they have made yours?
My friend is tormented day and night by thoughts of his father. Somehow, he wants him to pay. I was not asking my friend to excuse his father. I was not asking my friend to forget all the horrible things his father had done to him. I was not asking him to reconcile with his father and put himself in a position where his father might try to hurt him again.
I was asking him to stop trying to get even. Vengeance by its nature is insatiable. I was inviting him to be free ...
Forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling. When we have been hurt by another person we tend to stop seeing them as a person (objectifying) and rather only see the hurt.
o When we forgive we begin to look past the hurt and focus on the humanity of the one who hurt us.
We recognize that they do not live a perfect life ... they didn't have perfect parents ... they are lonely or hurting or weak just like me. But they are also created in the image of a God who loves them.
o Forgiveness progresses when you find yourself wishing the other person well.
No longer do you fantasize about the pain that you would wish upon their life. You begin to hope for good things for them. You desire the peace of God in their troubled life.
Why we forgive…
There's a story told of Leonardo da Vinci, the brilliant artist, who was working on his famous painting "The Last Supper" when he got angry with a certain man. In fact, at one point he was so angry that he lost his temper and lashed out at the person with some very bitter words. Later on when he returned to the canvas to continue painting he tried to work on the face of Jesus. But he was so upset that he just couldn't pull it together to do that. So finally he put down his brush and went out to find the man he had blasted and asked his forgiveness. He reconciled the relationship. The man forgave him and da Vinci was able to go back to his studio and finish painting the face of Jesus.
The Last Supper is a painting of the Lord's Table, the table that we're about to enjoy together. Does it bring to mind a relationship that needs to be reconciled? If it does, then you need to make it right quickly. It's hard to spend time with Jesus and stay angry very long. He's always nudging us towards reconciliation.
There are two ways to live with hurt: the way of vengeance and the way of forgiveness. The first way leads to death, and the second to life.
1. For our own sake
· Refusing to forgive will make our spirits bitter
· It is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die
· God commands us to forgive because He knows that no human beings are more miserable than the unforgiving.
2. For God’s sake
· Forgiveness is the very heart beat of God. It is His invention and the only hope for His romance with the human race. When we choose to forgive, we open the door to the miraculous. God is just waiting for us to express our faith and attempt the unimaginable.
· It is repeatedly commanded in scripture
“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13
· If we do not forgive we will not be forgiven
“But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:15
· If we do not forgive our prayers will be hindered.
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." Mark 11:24-26
3. Restoring the relationship is impossible without forgiveness
· What interests do you share?
4.For the sake of the other person
“Look also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:4
· What underlying interests does the other person have?
Three Things that Forgiveness is Not ...
1. Forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing.
If a little kid is staring at the cereal in the grocery store and runs into you, you don't need to forgive him ... you simply excuse him. He's a little kid. He's enamored by the cereal boxes. It's excusable behavior.
But when there is no good rationale to explain why someone did something to hurt you ... that is when forgiveness is required
2. Forgiveness is not forgetting.
We've all heard the saying forgive and forget. That might be possible when someone cuts you off in traffic. But it is impossible to forget when someone has deeply or repeatedly hurt us.
Forgiving is precisely what is required when we cannot forget.
3. Forgiving is not the same thing as reconciling.
I have a good friend who has always struggled with his father. I always just assumed it was because his father abandoned him and his mother and brothers and sisters ... leaving them in a very difficult situation to fend for themselves.
It wasn't until recent years that he confided in me that for years his father had physically abused him repeatedly in a tortuous, intimidating way. Nobody else in the family knew anything about it and if they did, they never did anything about it.
My friend is an adult now and still tormented by his feelings of hatred toward his father. One day we were talking about how difficult it is for him to get on with his life and I made the radical suggestion that he forgive his father.
I'll never forget the look of anguish that came over him as he shook his head from side to side and said over and over, "no, no, no!"
My friend thought that I was saying he needed to reconcile with his father. To run back to him and spend time with the man that struck terror into his heart. That is not forgiveness. Forgiveness only requires one human being. (forgiveness waits for reconciliation in my opinion. Waits for the other party to be ready) Reconciliation requires two willing parties both broken and sincerely sorry. So what does forgiveness involve?
How to forgive
· We must remember how much we have been forgiven.
Matthew 18:21-35- See the parable of the servant who was forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents, but who refused to forgive a debtor who owed him one hundred denarii.
· It is an act of obedience and gratitude
· When we stop objectifying the other person and see them as imperfect but loved creations of God.
Step four is to decide if you will overlook the offence.
Overlooking is different from denial. When we deny we pretend there is no difficulty.
When we overlook we recognize the problem but determine that the best course of action is to choose to forgive the offence without even brining it to the attention of the offending party.
When is it wrong to overlook?
· When God is being publicly dishonored.
· When your relationship with the other party is damaged in some ongoing way.
· When people are hurt- yourself or others.
· When the offender is in spiritual or physical danger because of their offence.
Don’t “stuff” it
Some of us grew up in homes where anger was never acknowledged. The only way we dealt with anger was to "stuff" it. That was the case in my home. And when you grow up in a family like that you can think, "I should never experience anger. Anger means I'm a terrible person. Anger is bad."
But that's a lie. God gave us with the capacity to get angry. God gets angry from time to time. Psalm 30:5 says, For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime.
Anger is like a smoke detector. It's good to have one on every floor of your house. When it beeps, it tells you that something's wrong. It's good to have smoke detectors. They can save your life. But it's not good to live with a smoke detector that's always beeping.
Anger is our God given smoke detector to warn us that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Anger is meant to motivate us to do something. And this is what we're to do. Go to the person who has made us angry.
Step five is to cool down
Proverbs 14:17 says, People with a hot temper do foolish things. Wiser people remain calm. (GNB) You may need to buy some time just to allow the rpm's to slow down. That's okay. You may even want to do a self-check and ask yourself, "Why am I so angry? And what is it that I want that I'm not getting?"
Anger experts tell us that anger is not a primary emotion. Remember when you were in elementary school and learned about the three primary colors: red, blue and yellow. All the other colors are made from a mixture of those three. Well in that same way, anger is not a primary emotion. It is a mixture of emotions, such as hurt, frustration, or fear. Those are often the feelings that are underneath the anger. We get angry after we first get hurt by someone or after we first get frustrated trying to accomplish a task or first feel afraid of someone or something.
But once we've cooled down and thought things through we need to "go." The apostle Paul wrote these words to a community that was facing conflict.
Ephesians 4:26,” In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” We need to address it as quickly as possible.
If you are uncertain of your feelings, how to respond, or where you were responsible in the conflict, it may be helpful to consider journaling or going to a close and trusted friend before you go to the offending party. This can help us to help you sort out the hurt or anger we feel as well as how to approach the person.
The crossroads here to gossip. Why? Because it's easier and frankly more fun to go to someone else and tear the other person apart. But when we do that we can just make things worse. That doesn't mean we should never talk about our anger. We all need a sounding board that can help us plan to resolve the conflict. But if we're going to a third person, it should be with the goal taking ownership or our own errors and moving towards the person who hurt us for reconciliation.
Step number six is to go to the person.
"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” Matthew 18:15
Not avoiding, but approaching the person with whom you have an issue. This is a huge step in the process and right here the battle is often won or lost. At this crossroads we wrestle with thoughts like, "Just forget it, it's not that big of a deal." "I don't want to make them feel bad." "What they did really shouldn't of hurt me anyway." "Who am I to confront them?" "It could cost the relationship." "What if they come at me with all I've done to hurt them?" "What difference will it make anyway?" The evil one loves to use these thoughts and ideas to sabotage community.
But Jesus says, go. Don't wait. We can't wait until we've rehearsed our speech perfectly. We may stutter and stammer all over the place. It's not important that we do it flawlessly. It's just important that we do it. Avoiding issues of hurt kills community and causes resentment to fester inside of us.
Step seven is to use sensitivity
Go in private. One on one. Just between the two of you, Jesus says. The crossroads here is the temptation to go and let them have it. Make 'em pay. Hurt them back. Embarrass them in front of an audience. But Jesus says, "No." Instead, approach them the same way you would want to be approached. Sensitivity is one of the most important parts of healthy anger management.
We don't go to blow off steam or get it off our chest or let it fly. According to Ortberg, (And Goleman) research done on anger management over several decades has failed to find a single study that demonstrates that catharsis, or letting your anger fly, is an effective way to manage anger. Instead, it just creates more anger inside us and in the person that we rage all over. The simplest guideline here is the golden rule: approach others the way that you would want them to approach you.
Step number eight is to communicate directly
Discuss the problem. Jesus says, Show them their fault. The temptation here is to beat around the bush and not be totally honest. Some of us around here talk about saying the last 10%. Often, after going through all the hard work of setting up a difficult conversation, we get afraid and we shrink back from saying the hardest but most important truth. We fail to say the very thing that caused us to meet in the first place, the last 10%. We get vague and fuzzy just when we need to be crystal clear.
Saying the last 10% sounds like this. "You weren't really listening to me which made me feel like I don't matter to you. That causes me to pull away in our relationship and I don't want that. I want us to connect more closely. That's why I was hurt." It's not easy to say that. But that's what Jesus means by showing them their fault.
Step number nine is the goal of conflict resolution and that is reconciliation and restoration.
If they listen to you, you have won them over. The goal is not to even the score or to make the other person pay or feel bad, it's to be reconciled to each other. Restoring the relationship is the goal of conflict resolution. Getting back into community is the aim. If it's not, all of the hard work is for nothing.
Reconciliation
· Reconciliation is when we are brought into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent. Brought back into relationship.
· Requires that the guilty party desires to be forgiven
· Involves acknowledgement of guilt
· Is a necessary preliminary to restoration
Restoration
· Restoration is the reestablishing of something that was taken away or lost.
· The restitution of the relationship; being brought into a right relationship.
· Involves both parties
· We may need to set boundaries
· May be gradual and conditional
If reconciliation does not work the first time...
You can try a third party
· Coaching- getting someone to help you to approach the situation better
· Mediation- asking someone to sit down with you and your friend to help you work out things together
· Arbitration- You and the other person agree to ask someone to decide about a tangible issue on which you cannot agree.
If they do not listen to you
In sin issues we add three other steps to this. If the person continues in sin after we talk to them personally we are to according to Matthew 18: 15-17…
“But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
1. Take one or two others along. If they refuse to listen…
2. Decide the issue within the church. If they refuse to listen…
3. Treat his as you would anyone who has rejected the way of Christ.
If things have worked out well
· Thank God together
· Get clear agreements on tangible issues
· Learn by reflecting on what has happened
· Seek accountability and growth
If things didn’t work out well
Reaffirm a Godly attitude
Recognize that deep problems may underline a conflict
You are responsible for your own actions, not theirs
Consider a degree of constructive separation
Pray that God will bless the other party
So those are nine simple steps in conflict resolution according to Jesus. That's what keeps a community healthy. But sometimes even conflict resolution doesn't work. Sometimes we need a miracle. And God created one. It's called forgiveness.
Reflection Questions
1. How did your family handle conflict when you were growing up?
2. What characterizes your approach to conflict?
-Avoid at all costs
-I can face it, but I don't like it
-A good argument every once in a while clears the air
-I do conflict recreationally
3. Pay attention to your anger and anxiety today. What triggers it? How do you handle it? Is it most often fed by hurt, by frustration, or by fear?
4. Are there any people in your life who tend to drag you in as a third party to a conflict where you should not be involved? How can you handle this?
5. Think of a person whose conflict management skills you admire. What makes him or her effective? Ask them how they became skilled at dealing with anger.
6. How are you doing at speaking the last 10%, and whom can you ask to hold you accountable to do it?
7. Is there any unresolved conflict in your life? If so, ruthlessly decide to seek and resolve it.
Sources:
John Ortberg
Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them
Bruce Carter
Finding the Love of Your Life
02/29/2004 Anger Management, Matthew 18:15
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