What Does God What From Us?

This newsletter came this morning, and I thought it went along nicely to the last post. God is not looking for sacrifice or service; He is after our hearts because He loves us. Enjoy.

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What Does God What From Us?

11/04/2009

The gospel says that we, who are God’s beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When we turned our back on him he promised to come for us. He sent personal messengers; he used beauty and affliction to recapture our hearts. After all else failed, he conceived the most daring of plans. Under the cover of night he stole into the enemy’s camp incognito, the Ancient of Days disguised as a newborn. The Incarnation, as Phil Yancey reminds us, was a daring raid into enemy territory. The whole world lay under the power of the evil one and we were held in the dungeons of darkness. God risked it all to rescue us. Why? What is it that he sees in us that causes him to act the jealous lover, to lay siege both on the kingdom of darkness and on our own idolatries as if on Troy—not to annihilate, but to win us once again for himself? This fierce intention, this reckless ambition that shoves all conventions aside, willing literally to move heaven and earth—We’ve been offered many explanations.

From one religious camp we’re told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to the right doctrines, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self-actualization, or something else along those lines. He is concerned about all these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts. Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, “their hearts are far from me” (29:13 italics added). How few of us truly believe this. We’ve never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long. The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true.

(Sacred Romanace , 90-91)

God Puts Us With Out Opposite in Marriage

Allison and I receive John Eldredge's newsletters by mail. The following is what he sent for Ransomed Heart's September newsletter. John and Staci are releasing a marriage book in January called, Love and War, which this newsletter is an excerpt from. It goes right along with what we discussed in class and what we will continue to talk about. Enjoy

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Dear Friends,

Just this morning Stasi and I were talking about marriages we both know, and we came to a pretty sobering realization - we can't name one marriage that hasn't been through deep waters in the last three years. Not one. And we know a lot of people, and a lot of marriages. You'd think we'd be able to point to some couple who is trouble free. We can't find one. Not One. Every single marriage we know is either currently struggling, or they've just passed through some major struggle, or they've thrown in the towel. What's with that?

Is it just a bad time to be married, like the 90's were a bad time to live in Rwanda? Is it a bad time for marriage generally, like last fall was a bad time to be in the stock market? Or maybe it's something else. Maybe there's something about marriage, something inherent to it, that we'd all do well to go ahead and admit, face head-on, come to terms with. Marriage is fabulously hard.

Everybody who's been married knows this. Though years into marriage it still catches us off guard, all of us. And newly married couples, when they discover how hard it is, they seem genuinely surprised. Shocked, and disheartened by the fact. Are we doing something wrong? Did I marry the right person? The sirens that lure us into marriage - romance, love, passion, sex, longing, companionship - they seem so far fro the actual reality of married life we fear we've made a colossal mistake, caught the wrong bus, missed our flight. And so the hardness also comes as something of an embarrassment (don't you feel embarrassed to admit how hard your marriage is?) Maybe it's just us.

Nope. This is everyone. We might as well come out and say it.

The sooner we get the shame and confusion off our backs, the sooner we'll find our way through. Of course marriage is hard. For heaven's sake, bring together a man and a woman - two creatures who think, act and feel so differently you'd think they'd come from separate solar systems - and ask them to get along for the rest of their lives under the same roof. That's like taking Cinderella and Huck Finn, tossing them in a submarine and closing the hatch. What did you think would happen?

When it comes to high-level expeditions, one piece of advice that veterans unanimously urge is this: "Choose your tent mate carefully." For you are going to spend weeks to months on end shut-in by foul weather in the forced intimacy of a tiny fabric cocoon with this person. By the time it's over everything about them will drive you mad - the way they eat, the way they breathe, the way they hum show tunes or pick their nails. To keep yourself from a Donnor party ending, you must start with people you are utterly compatible with.

God does the opposite - he puts us with our opposite. Our mutual brokenness plays off of each other so perfectly it's frightening. It's like throwing a dog and a cat in the dryer. Is he absolutely mad? Why would God do such a thing?

Because marriage is a divine conspiracy. It is a conspiracy divinely arranged and with divine intent. God lures us into marriage through love and sex and loneliness, or simply the fact that someone finally paid attention - all those reasons that you got married in the first place. It doesn't really matter, he'll do whatever it takes. he lures us into marriage and then he uses it to transform us.

Come back to the fairy tales - in every one of those stories, the boy and the girl each carry a fatal flaw. if they refuse their transformation - which is essential to the plot of the story - they'll never make it. Evil will win, they will lose heart and split up, and there will be no happily ever after. Beauty and the Beast. The Horse and His Boy, The Golden Key- in every one of those stories, happily ever after waits upon a peculiar turn of events, at the center of which is their transformation.

We all have a style of relating, we have a way that we do life. Our carefully crafted approach colors the way we work, the way we love, the way we handle stress and the way we look for life. Our style is borne out of brokenness and sin, and it is the number one thing that gets in the way of real love and companionship, the shared adventure and all the beauty of marriage. It's really this simple - the number one thing that gets in the way is your way. And we have absolutely no intention of giving it up. Not even to love. So God creates an environment where we have to. It's called marriage.

Now listen carefully - God wants us to be happy. He really does. He simply knows that until we deal with our brokenness, our sin, an dour style of relating, we aren't going to be happy. Nobody around us is going to be very happy, either. Most of what you've been experiencing in the last twelve months is God's attempt to get you to face your style of relating, and repent of it.

This is the old Christian understanding of the world, the understanding that happiness is the fruit of other things, chief among them our own holiness, and so we must undergo a transformation. Just like the fairy tales, we must share in God's holiness before the story is finished. This flies in the face of the more popular view of the world that's crept in recently - the happiness view. This is the idea that frames most people's expectations of marriage (and everything else) - the view that we're here for our happiness and so you'd better make me happy. It comes as quite a disruption when we begin to realize that God might have other things in mind!

But once we accept the plot of the conspiracy - our transformation - then we can get on with the cooperating with God, and that opens the door to all sorts of good things.

This is an excerpt from the book Stasi and I just finished reading on marriage, entitled Love and War. It comes out at the end of the year. But we thought we might begin sharing some of it with you now. We think everyone - married and single - will find the themes true and helpful.

We Are Intended for Pleasure

This John Eldredge daily reading came out today. We hit on this topic in class when we discussed that God's ultimate desire for us is to be holy not happy. Eldredge describes this well by emphasizing that pleasure is still a large concern of the Father for us. I would love to hear your comments on what he has written.

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Intended for Pleasure

09/22/2009

But doesn’t Christianity condemn desire – the Puritans and all that? Not at all. Quite the contrary. Christianity takes desire seriously – far more seriously than the stoic or the mere hedonist. Christianity refuses to budge from the fact that man was made for pleasure, that his beginning and his end is a paradise, and that the goal of living is to find Life. Jesus knows the dilemma of desire and he speaks to it in nearly everything he says. When it comes to the moral question, it is neither simply yes or no to desire, but always what we do with our desire. Christianity recognizes that we have desire gone mad within us. But it does not seek to rectify the problem by killing desire; rather, it seeks the healing of desire, just as it seeks the healing of every other part of our human being.

“Two things contribute to our sanctification,” wrote Pascal. “Pains and pleasures.” And while we know that our journey is strewn with danger and difficulty, “the difficulties they meet with are not without pleasure, and cannot be overcome without pleasure.” Where do you find Jesus saying, “The problem with you people is, you want too much. If you’d just learn to be happy with less, we’d all get along just fine.” “My commands are for your good,” he says, “always.” Something has gone wrong in us, very wrong indeed. So wrong that we have to be told that joy is not found in having another man’s wife, but in having our own. But the point is not the law, the point is the joy. Need I say more than this: Modern Christianity has brought an entire group of people to the point where they have to be told that sex is, in the words of one book, “intended for pleasure.”

God is realistic. He knows that ecstasy is not an option; we are made for bliss and we must have it, one way or another. He also knows that happiness is fragile and rests upon a foundation greater than happiness. All the Christian disciplines were formulated at one time or another in an attempt to heal desire’s waywardness, and so by means of obedience, bring us home to bliss. Walter Brueggemann suggests that faith on its way to maturity moves from “duty to delight.” If it is not moving, then it has become stagnant. If it has changed the goal from delight to duty, it has gone backwards; it is regressing. This is the great lost truth of the Christian faith, that correction of Judaism made by Jesus and passed on to us: The goal of morality is not morality – it is ecstasy. You are intended for pleasure!

(Desire, 46-47)

Missing the Most Important Thing

I have been sitting on this last week and not making the time to post it. These two emails came back to back and speak right into the topics of Church Shame and the Real Gospel that we went over the last couple weeks. Allison has recently been reading this book and says it is one of his best. It will be one of my next two to read.

Enjoy.

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What IS Discipleship?

04/21/2009

What have we come to accept as “discipleship”? A friend of mine recently handed me a program from a large and successful church somewhere in the Midwest. It’s a rather exemplary model of what the idea has fallen to. Their plan for discipleship involves, first, becoming a member of this particular church. Then they encourage you to take a course on doctrine. Be “faithful” in attending the Sunday morning service and a small group fellowship. Complete a special course on Christian growth. Live a life that demonstrates clear evidence of spiritual growth. Complete a class on evangelism. Consistently look for opportunities to evangelize. Complete a course on finances, one on marriage, and another on parenting (provided that you are married or a parent). Complete a leadership training course, a hermeneutics course, a course on spiritual gifts, and another on biblical counseling. Participate in missions. Carry a significant local church ministry “load.”

You’re probably surprised that I would question this sort of program; most churches are trying to get their folks to complete something like this, one way or another. No doubt a great deal of helpful information is passed on. My goodness, you could earn an MBA with less effort. But let me ask you: A program like this— does it teach a person how to apply principles, or how to walk with God? They are not the same thing.

(Waking the Dead , 95-96)

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Missing the Most Important Thing

04/22/2009

We take folks through a discipleship program whereby they master any number of Christian precepts and miss the most important thing of all, the very thing for which we were created: intimacy with God. There are, after all, those troubling words Jesus spoke to those who were doing all the “right” things: “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you’” (Matt. 7:23). Knowing God. That’s the point.

You might recall the old proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The same holds true here. Teach a man a rule and you help him solve a problem; teach a man to walk with God and you help him solve the rest of his life. Truth be told, you couldn’t master enough principles to see yourself safely through this Story. There are too many surprises, ambiguities, exceptions to the rule. Things are hard at work—is it time to make a move? What has God called you to do with your life? Things are hard at home—is this just a phase your son is going through, or should you be more concerned? You can’t seem to shake this depression—is it medical or something darker? What does the future hold for you—and how should you respond?

Only by walking with God can we hope to find the path that leads to life. That is what it means to be a disciple. After all—aren’t we “followers of Christ”? Then by all means, let’s actually follow him. Not ideas about him. Not just his principles. Him.

(Waking the Dead , 96-97)

A System of Guilt

It has been a while since I pulled out an Eldredge newsletter, but this reached back in the archive to retrieve this nugget regard shame in church. I recommend everyone signing up for these (www.ransomedheart.com). They have some great wisdom. Enjoy.

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A System of Guilt

09/28/2008

God speaks to Israel through the prophet Isaiah when she is surrounded by enemies and making every effort to appease them through diplomacy, gifts, treaties, and bribes, and says this to her:

“You went to Molech with olive oil and increased your perfumes. You sent your ambassadors far away; you descended to the grave itself! You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, ‘It is hopeless.’ You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint” (Isa. 57:9–10).

God calls Israel to repent by admitting her weariness and fainting. Instead, she looks for ways to use her personal assets to redeem herself. Jesus spoke to the people about rest and thirst. The Pharisees demanded that they obey a constantly growing weight of religious laws and traditions, and chastised them for staggering under the load. They led people in the exact opposite direction from where their salvation lay—in admitting their weariness and fainting. As long as they hoped in their self-sufficiency, they would not call out to God and receive forgiveness, healing, and restoration.

So many of our contemporary churches operate on this same system of guilt. When our people are crying out for communion and rest, we ask them to teach another Sunday school class. When they falter under the load, we admonish them with Scriptures on serving others. One wonders what would happen if all activity motivated by this type of guilt were to cease for six months. Much of organized Christianity would collapse even as the Pharisees saw happen to their own religious system. As Jesus talked about thirst and rest, he brought people to the reality of their own heart.

(Sacred Romanace , 169)

Join in the Celebration

NOTE: Please fill out the class survey by next week.

Celebration can be a shame killer. Celebrating and inviting someone into celebration opens them up to receive the truth that they are valuable. When honor displaces dishonor, shame loses it foothold. We need to join in the celebration (notes attached).

Shame-based families do not celebrate. They have a hard time giving value to thing for what they are. Children of these families then have a hard time entering into the celebration themselves. Birthdays, songs, and even just sending time with kids are great ways to celebrate them for who they are. As we discussed last fall, the more time in with our kids we have the less time out they will need.

image courtesy of Bent Objects

This may come as a surprise to you: Christianity is not an invitation to become a moral person. It is not a program for getting us in line or for reforming society. It has a powerful effect upon our lives, but when transformation comes, it is always the aftereffect of something else, something at the level of our hearts. And so at its core, Christianity begins with an invitation to desire.

John Eldredge - Desire, page 35

If We Only Knew God's Heart is Good

This John Eldredge daily reading came out last week, but I feel it is appropriate for our discussion Sunday. We are only able to forgive when we believe that God's heart is good. That He is working out all things for our good. He will do a better job looking after us than we ever could.

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If You Knew His Heart Was Good

01/30/2009

Everyone has been betrayed by someone, some more profoundly than others. Betrayal is a violation that strikes at the core of our being; to make ourselves vulnerable and entrust our well-being to another, only to be harmed by those on whom our hopes were set, is among the worst pain of human experience.

Sometimes the way God treats us feels like betrayal. We find ourselves in a dangerous world, unable to arrange for the water our thirsty souls so desperately need. Our rope won’t take the bucket to the bottom of the well. We know God has the ability to draw water for us, but oftentimes he won’t. We feel wronged. After all, doesn’t Scripture say that if we have the power to do someone good, we should do it (Prov. 3:27)? So why doesn’t God?

As I spoke with a friend about her painful life, how reckless and unpredictable God seems, she turned and with pleading eyes asked the question we are all asking somewhere deep within: “How can I trust a lover who is so wild?” Indeed, how do we not only trust him, but love him in return? There’s only one possible answer: You could love him if you knew his heart was good.

(Sacred Romanace , 70)

Jesus Wants To Heal Your Heart

Here is another daily reading from John Eldredge. If you like these posts, I would encourage you to subscribe to his Ransomed Heart emails. Today's email is an invitation from our Lord for our healing. As we shepherd our children's hearts, we must remember that the sin we find their can be healed by the love of Jesus. He wants to heals all the fears, insecurities, trauma, misunderstandings, etc., that lead to sinful behavior.

Enjoy.

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Jesus Wants To Heal Your Heart

11/07/2008

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in
green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
(Psalm 23:1-3).

He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their
wounds. (Psalm 147:3)

Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed;
save me and I will be saved,
for you are the one I praise. (Jeremiah 17:14)

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. (Malachi 4:2)

He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing. (Luke 9:11)

For some reason this has been lost in the recent offerings of the church. Perhaps it has been our pride, which has kept us from admitting that we are broken. Lord knows I’ve done that for years – probably am still doing it now. Perhaps it is our fear of getting our hopes up; it seems too good to be true. Perhaps it's been the church’s almost total focus on sin and the cross. But the Scripture is abundant and clear: Christ came not only to pardon us, but to heal us. He wants the glory restored. So, put the book down for just a moment, and let this sink in: Jesus can, and wants, to heal your heart. What does that rouse in you?

(Waking the Dead , 134-136)

Exploring the Hidden Questions of Our Hearts

Here is another daily reading from John Eldredge. This one speaks to the last blog post perfectly by phrasing God's calling from our hearts in another way.

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Exploring The Hidden Questions Of Our Heart

10/13/2008

It is possible to recover the lost life of our heart and with it the intimacy, beauty, and adventure of life with God. To do so we must leave what is familiar and comfortable—perhaps even parts of the religion in which we have come to trust—and take a journey. This journey first takes us on a search for the lost life of our heart, and for the voice that once called us in those secret places; those places and times when our heart was still with us. The pilgrimage of the heart leads us to remember together what it was that first engaged us in deep ways as children: “. . . anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it,” said Jesus (Mark 10:15).

Our journey will take us to explore the hidden questions of our heart, born out of the stories of our lives. It is only by leaving home and taking a pilgrimage that we will begin to see how our own stories are interwoven with the great Romance God has been telling since before the dawn of time. It is on this pilgrimage that we begin to see that each of us has a part in the cosmic love affair that was created specifically with us in mind. Last, this pilgrimage brings us to the destination, set within all of our hearts, which in some way we have known, longed for, and been haunted by since we were children.

...Our journey begins by asking questions, putting words to the movements of the heart. “What is this restlessness and emptiness I feel, sometimes long years into my Christian journey? What does the spiritual life have to do with the rest of my life? What is it that is set so deeply in my heart, experienced as a longing for adventure and romance, that simply will not leave me alone? Does it have anything to do with God? What is it that he wants from me? Has he been speaking to me through my heart all along? When did I stop listening? When did his voice first call to me?”

(The Sacred Romance, 10,11)

Shaping Their Hearts to Love Goodness

I received this daily email from John Eldredge's Ransomed Heart readings the other day. I felt it went well with "Shepherding a Child's Heart" that we are now reading. I would be interested to hear others comments on this and how they see it relates or not.

Enjoy.

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Shaping Their Hearts To Love Goodness

09/23/2008

Children need two basic messages when they are growing up:

1. You are loved more than you can possibly imagine, and,
2. You are not the center of the universe.

Without the first, a child will grow up insecure, uncertain, looking for love and finding it difficult to believe that he is worthy of being loved, even by God. Without the second, he will grow up selfish and self-centered, assuming that everyone else’s agenda bows to his own. No doubt you know both sorts of men.

Discipline teaches us obedience, and immediate and unquestioned obedience is a great gift to endow a boy, a quality of character that will serve him the rest of his life. For it is an essential truth of life to know and appreciate the fact that the universe does not find you at its center. Rather, it demands things of you, requires you to live within its limits. No matter how much you wail and bellow, the rain will fall, summer will pass into winter, and a two-by-four will hurt you if you drop it on your toe. Welcome to reality. Learn to live within it. How much more true this is for a man before his God. You are loved immensely, and you must obey. That is the secret to Lesson One in the Christian book of spirituality. You are loved; you must obey.

If a child is allowed to “get his own way,” that child learns he is more powerful than his parents. And that is a frightening place to find yourself at three or four years of age—to discover that you are the strongest person in your world.

Maybe this is what the writer of Hebrews was getting at when he encouraged us to see God’s discipline as an expression of his love. He cares. (Heb. 12:5–11.)

Which brings up a very important point—are we disciplining our sons to shape their hearts to love goodness, or, are we just trying to get them to do what we want them to do so that our lives are easier?

(The Way of The Wild Heart , 71, 72)