Church Interactive

I wonder how I can write this without sounding “holier than Thou?”

As we mature in our Lord and begin to live a deeper walk we challenge the thinking of the average Christian. How we react to their reactions is a measuring stick of the depths of our walk.

Wading into the depths of God’s love and living it out may bring conflict with the average Christian as their understanding of God is challenged. Yet, it is precisely in their conflict that growth can occur.

As we grow deeper, God’s Spirit works to enrich our view of God. This reveals the errors of our beliefs. These are the beliefs that have been shaped by our needs and struggles rather than a clearer view of God. As we begin to grasp the deeper truths of God we are faced with a choice. Either we can let go of the blurry view of God and live a richer life OR we can hang onto our blurry view and live a poorer life.

Too often our beliefs are what we feel secure in rather than being secure in God. Wading into the deeper water is letting go of what God’s Spirit is telling us to release and living out the better view of God He is trying to get us to see. Those who understand the deeper walk will see just how deep their walk is as they deal with this conflict. Godly insight helps one to realize that this is a personal thing. God is at work. So we must let God work and not react to what our brother or sister says and does. We must come along beside them, lift them up and care for them. The deeper life we claim to grasp demands this. God is forcing us to live out of the depths we claim to believe.

This is one reason God works to make us interact with each other in the church. We all learn from each other and we discover what we really believe in how we work through this interaction.

Concepts of Love

Today, let me just throw across the page a smattering of thoughts that I have collected about love, particularly God's love and how we should live it out.

The love of God is such that should we see it clearly we would die of that love.

Love and death are mingled at Calvary. We can’t have one without the other. “In love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.” Thornton Wilder
· The invitation of Jesus is this as we see Him on the Cross: ‘Don’t weep for me, join me. The life I have planned for you is a Christian life, much like the life I led.” Brennan Manning
· “Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians are called upon to suffer. God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh, he bore the cross, he bore our sins…In the same way his followers are called upon to bear, and that is precisely what it means to be a Christian …The yoke and burden of Christ are His cross.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
· The more perfectly and purely I love Jesus, the more I become one with Him in love and share in his sufferings. The intimately I know the man of sorrows, the more I love Him and suffer with His sufferings. Angela of Foligno
· “We relive the passion of Jesus through the life of compassion. On the Cross, the open arms of the Crucified One reached out to feel the pain and suffering of the world.” Brennan Manning

Whenever love is withdrawn, pride is the cause.

“There can be only two basic loves: the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self OR the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.” Augustine

The nearer we come to the perfect purity of love, the more we turn from thoughts of ourselves in order to fix them totally upon God.

“It I truly have a fervent love of God in me—a love that enlightens my heart with the depths of His love—then when anyone speaks evil of me, I will be patient and gracious unto them.” Angela of Foligno:

“It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.” Mother Teresa

“Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the world will seem beautiful or desirable.” Brennan Manning

“We die daily in Jesus Christ or we deny him. This death in us has something to do with love toward Christ and toward people. We die to it when we love Christ and the brethren from the bottom of our hearts, for love is total surrender to what a person loves.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“It is an indicator of purity of heart when you can look at a sinner and have mercy, notice a weak person and feel compassion.” Pseudo-Marcarius

“Does my heart seek no other joy than Jesus alone? Does my heart feel a burning love that is for Him alone? May my heart be Jesus loving, Jesus thinking and Jesus desiring—breathing in Him daily.” Richard Rolle

“Lord, kindle my heart with the heat of your love, enlighten my inmost being with the Light of your truth, feed me with the honey of your grace—as much as my body and soul can endure.” Richard Rolle

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”’ Antoine DeSaint-Exupery

“The world does not understand vulnerability…Vulnerability is flatly rejected by the world as incompetence and compassionate caring is dismissed as unprofitable. The great deception of public televisions advertising is that being poor, vulnerable and weak is uncool and ineffectual…Social climbing, power plays and winning breed a sprit of competition that bids farewell to compassion. The spirituality of the servant is incomprehensible to the advertising industry.” Brennan Manning – Today competition overrules compassion in American Christianity. We are becoming what we see.

“Keep a clear eye toward life’s end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God’s creature. What you are in His sight is what you are and nothing more. Remember, that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received—the fading symbols of honor, trappings of power—but only what you have given: a heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.” St. Francis of Assisi

The Church Disillusioned

Many churches are shattered because of a fanciful idea of what the church should be like. Christians within the church bring with them a definite image of what the Christian community ought to be like. God quickly frustrates all such images. God desires to lead us to a proper understanding of a genuine Christian community. The grace of God will not permit us to live in a dream world. When the church experiences the reality of its disillusionment and sees all of its unpleasant and evil appearances, it will begin to be what it should be in God’s sight. It will begin to grasp the promise that has been given to it.

A Church that cannot bear and cannot survive this disillusionment and clings instead to it idealized image loses the promise of a durable Christian community. Every human idealized image that is brought into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be broken up so that genuine community can survive. Those who love their dream of the Christian community more than the community itself become destroyers of that Christian community. This is true even if their personal intentions may be honest, earnest and sacrificial.

God hates wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and conceited. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter their community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law and judge one another even God accordingly. They stand adamant, a living reproach to all others in the Christian community, as if their visionary ideal binds the people together. Whatever does not go their way, they call a failure. When their idealized image is shattered, they see the community breaking to pieces. So they first become accusers of other Christians in the community, then accusers of God, and finally accusers of themselves.

God is the one who has laid the foundation of our community. It is God through Jesus who unites us in one body with other Christians. We enter into that life with other Christians, not as those who make demands, but as those who thankfully receive. We thank God for what God has done for us. We thank God for giving us other Christians who live by God’s call, forgiveness and promise. We do not complain about what God does not give us; rather we are thankful for what God does give us daily. We believe that what God has given is enough. We accept the other believers who go on living with us through sin and need under the blessings of God’s grace. Is God’s gift any less great on the most distressing and difficult days within the Christian community?

Even in sin and misunderstanding, the one who sins is still a person with whom I stand with under the Word of Jesus. Will not the occasion of another Christian’s sin help me to again give thanks for both of us that we live in the grace of God’s forgiving love? We prevent God from giving the great spiritual gifts prepared for us because we do not give thanks for His daily gifts. If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even when there are no great experiences, no noticeable riches, but much weakness, difficulty and little faith…then we hinder God from letting our community grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.
{Adapted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Life Together; pages 35-37}

Please e-mail me your thoughts about this blog at pastormac@newlifewc.com

The HEART of Prayer

Prayer – We think we know what it is. It is asking God for things. We pray to seek God’s guidance. Or we pray requesting God to heal or direct or fix or assist in some way. When we grow in our prayer life we discover that prayer is a two way street. We begin to believe that it involves dialogue and not just our monologue. Yet how does this dialogue work? Does God call us on our cell phone? Do we sit and stare off into space until we “hear” his voice? Perhaps there is some nudging of our desires or wills that comes from God.

For many years I prayed intercessory prayers. I had lists of Scripture promises that I claimed and lists of people and needs that I prayed for. This is prayer. Yet, I have learned that this is just a small piece of the prayer pie. Our prayer relationship with God goes so much deeper than just listing our demands and our needs along with the people whose lives need help.

What we should seek in prayer is that God breathe into our spirits the depths of His heart. We are seeking to know our Father’s heart.

Prayer needs to become an adoring, uncomplicated and enduring attention on God.[1] True prayer should create a longing to love God more. When we pray we are allowing our hearts and spirits to ascend toward God. We are seeking the nearness of his presence.

When we pray we should invite God’s Spirit to fall upon us. We recognize that God is present with us. We focus our hearts and spirits upon the Lord. We want to contemplate who He is and reach out in love to him. True prayer is starting to happen.

Now we can place our hearts, spirits and minds in the brilliance of God’s Light. We are exposing them to the warmth of His heavenly love. This will begin to purity them so we can now pray from His heart rather than from ours.

Prayer involves centering our hearts, spirits and minds on Jesus. We are lifting them up to him with a stirring of our love for Him. We are seeking Him for HIS sake only and not for anything we might receive from Him. Our sole concern is to center everything upon Him. [2] If I am aware of myself when I am praying, my attention is diverted from God. If it is God whom I love and all pleasure disappears from my praying, what difference does it make? God is still God, even in times of dryness. Do I love the comfort of God or the God of comfort?

This deepening love for God will create a deeper walk with God that will provide a deeper intimate union with God that will keep me unmoved and untroubled at all times!

We are seeking to live our lives in such a way that just as we can feel the warmth of the sun on our faces, the people around us will feel the warmth of God radiating out from our lives. Our daily lives are becoming a prayer to the Lord. We are learning to “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) Our lives are beginning to bear the imprint of our Father upon them.

We are learning the language of God. We are growing in our awareness of the heart of God. God begins to laugh into our souls and sing within our hearts and dance within our spirits. This is what prayer is all about!
[1] Francis DeSales; Living Love; pg 45
[2] The Cloud of Unknowing, pg 40-41