Silent Night: Growing as a Disciple

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the holiday hustle and bustle? If you're like most it does not take just the holidays to keep your life hectic. The Psalms 46 command to "be still and know that I am God" gets lost in the swirl of the Christmas crush.

How do you survive and keep the your faith growing? Silence and solitude, the antidote for our Western culture.

Master’s Invitation
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

Disciplines of Silence and Solitude

Solitude—We purposefully abstain from interaction with other human beings, denying ourselves companionship and all that comes from our conscious interaction with others.
Silence—We close off our souls from “sounds,” whether those sounds be noise, music, or words.

What is Solitude?
Though often unaware of it, we have a need for solitude & silence. Jesus calls us from loneliness to solitude.

Loneliness:
· Inner emptiness
· Our fear of being alone drives us to noise and crowds.

Solitude:
· inner fulfillment
· state of mind and heart,
· Not a place, a portable sanctuary of the heart

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community....
Let him who is not in community beware of being alone....
Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Is Silence Golden?
· Silence is hard for us to do because it makes us feel helpless.
· Who is going to speak up for us if we do not?
· How are we going to make others do what we want them to do unless we tell them until they do it?
· How are others going to know how to interpret my actions unless I tell them what I meant by what I did?
· Silence is intimately related to trust

-"Real Silence, real stillness, really holding one's tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Steps to Take
· Little moments of solitude during our day
· Find or develop a "quiet place"

Self observation:
· Is our speech a frantic attempt to explain or justify our actions?
· Are our words few and full?
· Can we communicate without words?

Personal retreat:
· 3-4 hours (an evening) once a quarter
· recalibrate your life direction (1 & 10 yr goals)
· Listen to the thunder of God's silence - "listen to God's speech in his wonderous, terrible, gentle, loving, all-embracing silence."

-"It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them....Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say."
-Thomas Merton

Recovering from Thanksgiving

My name is Doug and I have a confession to make! I ate too much at Thanksgiving! Of course it was not my fault, since the sheer weight of familial peer pressure is beyond my control. Right? Wrong. Just as it is easy to grow flabby physically, it is just as easy to grow flabby spiritually. Or, I believe it is even easier, because your soul is not evidently in ill health from looking in a mirror on jumping on a scale. As the band Casting Crown puts it: "...it's a slow fade, when you give your life away..." Sliding spiritually is a subtle affair that we can be lulled into before we realize it (if we ever do).

So how do you keep spiritually fit. You start with the body. What? That makes no sense from our perspective. But our problem is that we have inverted God's order of things. God has created our bodies to serve our soul and spirit. But in our fall, when sin come into play, we began allowing the needs of the body to direct and coerce the soul and spirit.

Why do we fast as a spiritual discipline? Is it to lose weight or purify our bodies? Although it can be of benefit in these areas, the main reason it is practiced as a spiritual discipline is to realign our body's role as the servant of our soul and spirit. Through our control of what we do with our bodies, we train it to hunger for God's presence as much as we do for a donut when we see a illuminated "Hot Now" in neon!

THE FIRST THANKS-LIVING

Perfect circumstances led to the First Thanksgiving; right? In spite of a horrific experience in trying to establish a colony, William Bradford and the Pilgrims persevered, depended upon God and joyfully gave Him thanks. Thankful hearts emerged from tremedous hardships. Contrary to the world's philosophy, in God's economy when give up we receive even more. It applies to our spiritual life, and hence our lives. When I give up or engage in activities for the purpose of growing my spiritual life, I receive so much more in riches of God's blessing and the change of my character into more and more the likeness of Christ.

The more we know God, the more thankful and awestruck we are of His grace. However, in our state of being enamored with the world we perceive around us and our trival pursuit of fulfilling our desires, we must practice spiritual disciplines. Spiritual Disciplines allows the person who practices them to act righteously and do what needs to be done when it needs to be done, no excuses needed.

The list below is from a classic book on spiritual disciplines called The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard. There are basically two types of spiritual disciplines as he puts it: “Abstinence and engagement are the outbreathing and inbreathing of our spiritual lives,…”

Disciplines of Abstinence

“...to abstain from the sensual urges—the evil desires, the passions of the flesh [your lower nature]—that wage war against the soul.” 1 Peter 2:11

“If we feel any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. ...It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God.” W. R. Inge

1. SOLITUDE—We purposefully abstain from interaction with other human beings, denying ourselves companionship and all that comes from our conscious interaction with others.
2. SILENCE—We close off our souls from “sounds,” whether those sounds be noise, music, or words.
3. FASTING—We abstain in some significant way from food and possibly from drink as well.
4. FRUGALITY—We abstain from using money or goods at our disposal in ways that merely gratify our desires or our hunger for status, luxury, or glamour.
5. CHASTITY—We purposefully turn away from dwelling upon or engaging in the sexual dimension of our relationships to others, even our husbands or wives.
6. SECRECY—We abstain from causing our good deeds and qualities to be known.
7. SACRIFICE—We abstain from the possession or enjoyment of what is necessary for our living—forsake the security of meeting our needs with what is in our hands.

Disciplines of Engagement

1. STUDY—We engage ourselves, above all, with the written and spoken Word of God.
2. WORSHIP—We engage ourselves with, dwell upon, and express the greatness, beauty, and goodness of God through the use of words, rituals, and symbols.
3. CELEBRATION—We enjoy ourselves, our lives, our world, in conjunction with our faith and confidence in God’s greatness, beauty, and goodness.
4. SERVICE—We engage our goods and strength in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world.
5. PRAYER—Almost always practiced in conjunction with other disciplines, prayer is a discipline in which we converse with God in light of His ceaseless presence.
6. FELLOWSHIP—We engage in common activities of worship, study, prayer, celebration, and service to other disciples.
7. CONFESSION—We let trusted others know our deepest weaknesses and failures.
8. SUBMISSION—We engage the experience of those in our fellowship, who are qualified to direct our efforts in growth and who then add the weight of their wise authority on the side of our willing spirit to help us do the things we don’t want to do.

More to Come

In the coming weeks we will look at these disciplines individually.

Thanksgiving Wishes

Before I go, hope you and yours have a great and safe Thanksgiving. Here is a little humor form Jeff Larson from "the back pew."

Is Life Like Disney World?

Having just returned from a great vacation in Orlando seeing three of Disney's four worlds, I reflected on the "reality" of Disney. It was the same question I poised to the family as we had our devotional time Sunday morning.

We concluded that the Disney experience was great and carefully staged to be that way. In a lot of ways, life is full of wonderful experiences and fairy tale endings. But also the reality that life has many unexpected turn, trials, disasters and rarely has a clean ending within a thirty minute time frame.

So back to real life with all its joys and trials. Although we cannot earn our salvation, the life of a believer takes tremendous initiative and effort. So enters the "Golden Triangle," an understanding of God's role, our role and how it all works together to make us more into His likeness.

The combination of Holy Spirit (the source of transformation), ordinary life events and our practice of Spiritual Disciplines as we stayed centered in the mind of Christ is God's means by which our very heart is changed.

Growing as a Disciple

I love reading Dallas Willard's insights into the means for a person to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. Here are some notes I have made:

Growth Happens
26 He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." Mark 4:26-29

Jesus said what?
“…teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:20
“…Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Matthew 7:24

Master’s Invitation
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

Disciple of Jesus
· A continual student of Jesus
· An apprentice of Jesus who desires to be with Jesus to learn from Him how to be like Him.
· A normal Christian
· One who can live righteously

Consumer Christian
· One who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness
· The services of the church to meet personal and family needs
· No intention of giving their life and innermost thoughts to the kingdom of heaven
· Outward compliance at best, no inward transformation

What do we believe?
REALLY believe? We say we trust God, but when things don’t go “right” what is our reaction?

Education’s Goal: Getting the right answer
Discipleship’s Goal: Living the right answer

Faulty primary objectives
1. External conformity
2. Profession of perfectly correct doctrine
3. Regular involvement in church activities
4. Special states of mind or ecstatic experiences

Garden Variety Conversation

You've seen it before, a room full of teenagers all sitting next to each other but entranced with texting their friends (who may be in the room themselves) on their cell phones. Take that same group and challenge them to initiate an ongoing conversation with their peers face to face and they would be hard pressed. Even more difficult would be the assignment, if they had to have a good conversation with an adult with proper eye contact and good listening skills.

But, before we totally impugned adolescents' lack of manners, I believe it is just a symptom of a deeper problem that plagues children and adults as well. Disconnection is a consequence of sin. Sin separated us from our Creator, destroying the oneness we were created to enjoy. Shame and fear entered the picture as Adam and Eve were driven from the garden and His presence. No longer the walks in paradise conversing with God, completely free from hiding behind any masks or pretense, because they had disobeyed.

"Through the one act of disobedience..." the conversation ceased. But through the One's act of obedience on our behalf we have opportunity to reconnect (Romans 5:12-19). John 15:9-17 gives us a whole new insight into re-connecting:

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other."

Loving God is the ultimate goal of life (Matthew 22:37). Jesus lets us know that the friendship with Him is based on a love that is evidenced by obedience. The opposite of what drives us out of relationship - disobedience - is what keeps us in relationship - obedience. "Saved by grace, not by works" holds true, but the evidence of our complete trust in Him is our desire to obey and please Him. As we grow in this relationship with Him, we begin to gain back what Adam had lost. That daily, moment by moment, walking with God - enjoying His company, talking, listening and responding to others and circumstances fully aware of His presence: A Garden of Eden variety conversation!

Spring: Changes & Transformations

Yeah! Spring is here! With a very early Easter this year, I was a little suspect on whether or not Spring had arrived. But as the warm weather holds out, the grass, trees, flowers, shrubs and weeds are in the process of transforming from lifeless brown to rich shades of green and multiple colors.
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In God's design, the process of transformation is a restoring to the order He intended of perfect harmony with Him. Often illustrated by death and rebirth, he is not interested in polishing up the old, but a new start. For transformation to take place, changes will have to take place.
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To transform is to change. However, changes do not necessarily lead to transformation. As George Barna puts in the introduction to Pagan Christianity?, "Are we living in a culture that is so infatuated with change that we have forgotten that the church is about transformations, not mere change?" God calls us to make changes that He directs and empowers.
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In the life of the individual, transformation, centered on becoming like Christ, is the work of the Holy Spirit, who we cooperate with by practicing spiritual disciplines and understanding life events as our training lessons for our infinite life in the kingdom.
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In the life of the church, transformation, centered on being led by Christ, is the work of the Holy Spirit, who we cooperate with by discovering and using our spiritual gifts in the context of a local body of believers, as we carry on the work of Christ in this world in a display of love and unity.
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Bob Roberts, Jr. wrote in his book, Transformation, "The church is at its strongest ever financially, educationally, and politically, even though some would readily disagree on those points. Yet, my fear is that it has become institutionalized and denominationalized to the point where the primary things we ask of people is their money, attendance, and a few hours every quarter to help with a Sunday School project. Tragically, entire denominations and institutions continue to fight old battles (of which most laypeople no longer see the relevance) instead of funneling the trillions of dollars flowing through their systems toward the one goal of making a significant difference in the world. We don't make a difference because the gospel has not made us different as God intended it to do. We are just more religious. We are more worried that our church is not growing than the fact that we are not growing in our walk with God."
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If life transformation is the bottom line, we must as individuals and churches be intentional about the means for transformation. Anything less and we slip back into playing church.

Slowing Down on Trampolines

Interestingly enough, trampolines are a great social device. Being coaxed by my kids to jump on the trampoline during every spare moment, my thoughts of pain were quickly replaced by the desire to prove I could still do flips (bad choice). The serendipity of these experiences has been the interaction with them that happens when, worn out from bouncing, we take a break (usually laying down) and talk, while trying to recover. It reminded me of one of the passages I am memorizing:

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen,slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore git rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. James 1:19-22 NIV

I'm afraid we are, in our sinful nature, prone to do just the opposite. We are quick to speak, quick to become angry and slow to listen (to the point of not). Even though God desires us to live righteously, we like living how we please - tempered by enough knowledge and good intentions to assuage our guilt. God is not interested in our righteousness IQ but our righteous living. Being slow to become angry shows a desire to have the righteous life, but to make it a reality, you have to see what the "therefore" is "there for."

Slowing down and listening to others as well as God, requires a taking off and a putting on. "Git rid" involves a conscious choice not to do those things we know violate God's moral standard. But it also involves not engaging in any thing, relationship or circumstance that would facilitate it. That's the negative, the positive action we take is realizing our utter dependency on God and His Word. It is such a pledge of allegiance to God's truth that we not only take it in and meditate on it, but we also make it a living reality - we do it.

I'm trying not to wait for trampoline moments to slow down, listen and respond. It is an attitude of humble dependence, moment by moment on Him.

Prayer Requests in 13b

Luke 11:1-13, I know I had read this passage on prayer many times before. But there is so much richness in the words of Christ, even the last phrase of his teaching may have profound impact. I have heard it used in many sermons and teachings on the "way" to pray. But all stopped at 13a or read over it without examining it.

Luke 11:13b is a strange way to end a discourse in which Jesus teaches the pattern, persistence, boldness and entreaty in prayer. After praying in a "certain place," Jesus was questioned by His disciples about how to pray. Their motives may have been pure, but it is interesting that they tacked on "just as John taught his disciples." To this simple request, Jesus gives us prayer 101, session 1. (For a great example of truly the "Lord's Prayer" see His priestly prayer in John 17.)

Of course it is obvious from reading this passage, we must include certain elements into our prayer life, we must have the tenacity of a friend in need in the middle of the night, we must specifically ask, seek and knock and we must know that God is just and will answer our prayers with His "good gifts." Stopping there you could assume that all this lesson was focused on was meeting needs we readily recognized: "daily bread," forgiveness, ability to forgive others, "it," doors opened, "fish" and an "egg." But what is it that your Father in heaven is so eager to give you that He is just waiting for your request?

Although it might have been far from the disciples' minds (of that day and today) it was not far from the prophet Joel's mind as he was inspired to write of Him coming. It was not an obscure element of Paul's theology, but central in the victorious Christian life as depicted in so many of his writings and in particular in Romans chapter eight. And most importantly, as noted in this chapter, and more extensively in John chapters fourteen through seventeen, Jesus held this request to be The Source for all who are to be called by His name.

What should be the prayer request as a result of prayer 101 session 1? The Holy Spirit to those who ask the Father. Of all our praise, thanksgiving, and requests, the asking for the Holy Spirit is central in the answering of all of them. Without the Spirit of God we are spiritually powerless and will live a sham of a God-explained life. I'm sure Jesus' disciples made many requests of Him in person and in prayer after His Ascension, but it was the fulfilment of their prayers at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came that the disciples shook the world. All of our needs, which God has promised to provide for from His glorious riches, come in line after what Jesus implied should be our request, the very Spirit of God. It is in that dynamic relationship with the Triune God, that propels us in His movements in this world.

The Lord's Supper and being punched in the stomach

Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you? You felt totally defense-less and gasping for breath. No recourse left, but to try and recover and regain your composure. Totally unanticipated, you are left reeling.

It was an ordinary Wednesday night. The service was pretty much typical with the exception that it included the Lord's Supper. As I participated in the service and focused on what what the Lord's Supper reminded us of (the death of Jesus on the cross), I found my mind focused on sin and its consequences. As we sang "Jesus paid it all," I wondered how powerful a love that took all the pain of all the sin of all mankind unjustly on Himself. As He hung on that cross the pain of the nails and the intense physical suffering were nothing in comparison to taking on the pain of the sins of this world, including mine. Every sin has a consequence. Some immediately evident, others more indirect. Sin has a relatively short term reward at a great long term price. Sin causes grief, suffering, brokenness, separation, mistrust, defeat, and death. Sin gives a hard, gut wrenching punch.

God brought to mind what someone had said to me earlier. They felt like they had been "punched in the stomach." Through a Christian book, God had spoke to them about an area they did not realize was a sin against God and someone else. When the conviction of the sin hit them, they said it felt like a "punch in the stomach." Thankfully, in their case, it led to humbly seeking forgiveness.

Jesus absorbed all "our punches," all the consequences and pain of our sins. In an ordinary service, an extraordinary message of love came through a gut wrenching reminder of Christ's great sacrifice. Totally unanticipated, I had to leave silently, totally defense-less and in my soul gasping for breath. No recourse left, but to surrender.