Posts Tagged ‘Spiritual Formation’
The Prayer Of Suffering
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Last night in our Tuesday Night Discipleship Study we continued through Richard Foster’s book, Prayer, and came to the topic of “The Prayer of Suffering.” I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I started the chapter, but it wasn’t long before I found what Foster had to say to be compelling and entirely in accord with Scripture and life with Christ.
The “Prayer of Suffering” is not a prayer to have more suffering in life (Christians are not masochists) and it is not even the prayer to eliminate suffering from our lives. It is a prayer – or even more appropriately, a way of living life with others under Christ – of redemptive suffering. Foster says, “Here we give to God the various difficulties and trials that we face, asking him to use them redemptively. We also voluntarily take into ourselves the griefs and sorrows of others in order to set them free.” (pg. 217)
Our ultimate example of redemptive suffering is Christ on the cross. There, he took the pinnacle of unjust punishment, bore our sins, and died in our place. Through the suffering of the cross, Christ redeemed not just our eternal souls, but all the pain and suffering we endure in this life. I think it can be said that without the cross and the empty tomb, suffering is nothing but the nihilistic struggle it feels like, but with Christ it can be a vehicle for our redemption.
And it isn’t just Christ. The apostle Paul wrote that he endured all kinds of things in order to proclaim the Gospel, and that he rejoiced in that the Gospel was proclaimed in spite of his own pain (Col. 1:24-29; Phil 3:8-11). Then he encouraged us to do the same as we go through life with those we love (Galatians 6:2, Romans 12:15).
There is so much more to be said, but I encourage you if you are a disciple of Christ to learn what it means to live through your suffering and the suffering of those you love in a redemptive way. We keep our eyes and lives on Christ the author and perfector of our faith who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross and despised its shame (Heb 12:1-2).
Tags: Book Review, Prayer, Spiritual Formation, Theology
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Funerals Are A Pain
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Funerals are a pain. And I don’t mean that in the sense that they are an annoying inconvenience – they are pain. They mark the passing of family or friend, and they stand as that public moment when we all grieve, love on each other, and make steps toward a new normal without the one we loved. As a pastor I sometimes get to watch as families deal with their loss while the pain is very fresh and sometimes the members of families are all at very different places at all the same time. One thing I have never appreciated about some is their immediate tendency to try and brush aside the grief with something like, “at least they are in a better place.” Though that is true for those who die with Christ, and though that truth is part of the healing process, we ought not to short-circuit the process of death and grief so quickly.
A recent article in CT deals with the new book, The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come, by Rob Moll. In the article we are encouraged to think more about funerals as an act of spiritual formation and even community formation under Christ. We are, after all, people of a crucified and risen savior living in inevitable physical decay. We ought to therefore embody a community of resurrection – and remember that resurrection implies death. Rob Moll notes:
We live in a culture that has forgotten how to help people measure their days. Through medicine and science, we know more about death and how to forestall it than ever before. Yet we know little about how to prepare people for the inevitable. The church is a community that teaches people how to live well by teaching them how to measure their days. Put another way, when the church incarnates a culture of resurrection—one that recognizes the inevitability of death but not its triumph—it teaches people how to die well.
Have we become so obsessed with living well or living comfortably that we have lost sight of dying well as part of the spiritual act of the believer? If we have neglected this, does it betray a lack of confidence in the providential guidance of God in all seasons of life?
Tags: Culture, Discipleship, Spiritual Formation, Theology
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Holy and Happy
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
I have mentioned that our LHC book club recently read Anselm’s Cur Deus
Homo. After reading the book a second time (and being thoroughly impressed a second time), I read up on Anselm and the book, and discovered it was quite the theological and philosophical revolution at the time. One of the passages that stuck out to me was the first chapter of the second book titled, “How man was made holy by God, so as to be happy in the enjoyment of God.” The first few sentences are provocative.
It ought not to be disputed that rational nature was made holy by God, in order to be happy in enjoying Him. For to this end is it rational, in order to discern justice and injustice, good and evil, and between the greater and the lesser good. Otherwise it was made rational in vain. But God made it not rational in vain. Wherefore, doubtless, it was made rational for this end. In like manner is it proved that the intelligent creature received the power of discernment for this purpose, that he might hate and shun evil, and love and choose good, and especially the greater good. For else in vain would God have given him that power of discernment, since man’s discretion would be useless unless he loved and avoided according to it. But it does not befit God to give such power in vain. It is, therefore, established that rational nature was created for this end, viz., to love and choose the highest good supremely, for its own sake and nothing else;…
What strikes me is the capacity that is made holy by God in order for us to be happy in him: our rationality. We were given this capacity for a purpose. It is intended to judge rightly between right and wrong, good and evil, and even make distinctions between lesser and greater goods. The exercise of my mental capacities is an act of sanctification, or redemption, of holiness to the end that I may be happy in God.
Put the other way around, I am happiest in God when this capacity is used to its utmost. The highest use my reason can attain is to supremely love the supreme good – God. And I learn to love him for his own sake and not for what he does or does not do.
Do I love God with all my mind?
Tags: Book Club, Discipleship, Spiritual Formation, Theology
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There May Be Blood
Monday, May 17th, 2010
Has anyone ever promised you that following Jesus would be easy? Maybe Jesus would fulfill your wildest dreams and make everything in your life go smoothly if you simply asked him into your heart. Though I believe it is true that life with God is the only “life abundantly,” I am also convinced that it can be life’s greatest challenge. Jesus doesn’t promise us ease in life, but he does promise us life. After all, what do we expect becoming disciples of an innocent and executed man?
The early disciples of Christ learned this in dramatic fashion during an extended conversation about the bread of life. Jesus turns the conversation from the topic of eating the bread of life, Him, and receiving eternal life, to eating his flesh and drinking his blood; a shocking and even odd metaphor in any culture. And it isn’t an option.
Tags: Bible Study, Discipleship, Jesus, Spiritual Formation
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Knowing God
Monday, May 10th, 2010
Jesus is a controversial figure. Divisive, even. And I speak of the Jesus of Scripture, of course. The “nice guy” Jesus of our culture is not only uncontroversial, he isn’t even interesting. He wants everyone to get alone, he is OK with other gods, and he loves you just the way you are. But when we come into contact with the Jesus of Scripture he immediately divides the room. And such is the case with the story of John 7. Jesus reenters Jerusalem for another feast of the Jews and even before the people know he is there, they are divided about who he is.
If we put ourselves in the places of the people in Jerusalem trying to figure out who Jesus is, we are presented with a real problem. There are those who say he is a great teacher, those who claim he is a rotten teacher. There are those who go so far as to say he is the Messiah, and those who want to kill him for blasphemy. One way or another, Jesus was not – and is not – a boring figure.
So how are we to decide who Jesus is? Are there better or worse ways to understand who he is? If we put it another way, if our spiritual formation depends on getting Jesus right, how do we get him right? In the course of the conversations in chapter 7, Jesus gives us at least two answers to this question. The first is all about our desires.
Tags: Bible Study, Discipleship, Jesus, Spiritual Formation
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Praying the Ordinary
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Last night in our Tuesday evening study, we talked about what Richard
Foster calls, the Prayer of the Ordinary. In short, this kind of prayer takes the normal and ordinary things in life, turns them into prayer, and finds God in them. I find this to be both an extremely challenging and helpful form of prayer.
It is challenging because my ordinary life is often so repetitive, simple, sometimes taxing, and full of things that seem so far from God. What does prayer have to do with feeding the dogs? What does prayer have to do with filling the car with gas? These are the normalities of daily life, and have nothing sacred built into them, right?
Tags: Discipleship, Prayer, Spiritual Formation
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An Impossibility, A Question, An Action
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Jesus and his disciples are on the shore of the Sea of Galilee with a large crowd of people who have followed him almost all the way around the lake. On the side of a mountain there, Jesus teaches all day long. As the sun gets low in the sky, the large crowd has grown hungry and there isn’t a convenient way of feeding them quickly. The large crowd has turned into a large need, and in the face of it, Jesus turns to his disciples and asks, What are you going to do?
“Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?”
Tags: Bible Study, Jesus, Spiritual Formation
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God Loves the World
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
How would you finish the phrase, “Love is…”? We could, and we often do, put all kinds of things and people into that sentence. We use “love” to apply to a radical array and variety of items in our lives. I love a well made mocha. I also love my wife. I love hiking in the Colorado Rockies. I also love my friends. Because we use this word to apply to so many different things, we often lose sight of the power and meaning of love. Sometimes, when a word means almost anything, it comes to mean almost nothing.
So, what does it mean that “God so loved the world” that he gave his one and only Son? John uses a powerful word for love here, and we ought to look at it in at least three ways. This love is attention. When we have a deep love for someone or something, it consumes our attention. They are on our minds often if not all the time, and we are interested in their well-being and their condition. To love a thing is to give our attention to a thing.
Tags: Bible Study, Jesus, Spiritual Formation
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Wisdom Calls
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Proverbs 9:1-6
1 Wisdom has built her house;
she has hewn her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine;
she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her young women to call
from the highest places in the town,
4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
To him who lacks sense she says,
5 “Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6 Leave your simple ways, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
(more…)
she has hewn her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine;
she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her young women to call
from the highest places in the town,
4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
To him who lacks sense she says,
5 “Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6 Leave your simple ways, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
(more…)
Tags: Bible Study, Discipleship, Spiritual Formation
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