a drop of water

This past Sunday at Coast Vineyard, Michelle Wilson gave a message from Ephesians 4 about valuing the unity in Christ that we have with our brothers and sisters.  Here is an excerpt from the handout:

Be completely humble.

Assume the best of people
Consider that you may be wrong.
Find a way to apologize.

Be completely gentle.

Be quick to listen.
Be slow to speak / become angry.
Ask yourself, “Will this build up or will this tear down?”

Be patient.

Put up with each other.
Forgive.
Make every effort to love each other.

I was very encouraged by these reminders and humbled by their simplicity and saturation of love for God and love our fellow man/woman.

-Be completely humble-

Pride easily takes over, when being better and best is often our cultural goal. We size up people against what we are capable of and often feel vulnerable when their ability exceeds our own, so we critique another aspect of their lives where we are better (or feel that we are better) than them.  But humility, empowers us to think the best of someone, despite their tendency and history.  Sometimes all it takes is someone’s expectation to propel someone above their tendencies.

When we pour ourselves into our creations, admitting that we made a mistake turns our work into a waste, and so we stubbornly ignore the possibility that we could be wrong.  But humility empowers us to realize that in a world with wide diversity of perspective and method, our way can be complimented and improved, and that it is the process of pouring our lives into our creations where value is found, and not so much in the creation itself.

Apology is empowering because it states boldly, “I value our relationship too much to put it in jeopardy over something (anything) I did to damage it.”  We typically want to wait till the other person apologizes and then we will apologize, and only then.  But if we assume the best of people (think that maybe they did not intend to do what they did) and if we consider that we may be wrong (think that maybe we were wrong in our reaction), we can find a way to apologize.

-Be completely gentle-

Listening is a discipline.  I find myself interrupting and cutting people off because 1. I’m impatient and can’t wait for them to finish.  2. I want to give them an answer or solution.  3. I want to convince and defend my point because theirs is inaccurate.  But what those reasons really are saying are 1. What you have to say is not worth my time.  2. Your issue is so simple, just do this.  3. You are wrong, and this is why.  It’s hard to have a relationship with someone who is saying those kind of things in between the lines.  Listening says 1. What you have to say is worth my time and I will honor you by listening completely and fully.  2.  I do not take your problem lightly and the solution is probably even harder, but I will listen to your story for as long as you will share it, and I will stand with you to find a solution.  3. Your perspective and unique identity has shaped you to have this perspective and draw these conclusions and I will spend the time to try and better understand where you are coming from.

On anger, Dallas Willard noted that everything that can be done in anger, can be done better without anger.

-Be completely patient-

Michelle shared a story about how she met with a friend to resolve a disagreement.  They met and the friend began the conversation by saying “If you want me to say that it is my fault and apologize, then I will, because this friendship is worth it to me.”  Friendships and relationships are shattered over disagreements and arguments.  I’m not lessening the importance and magnitude of the disagreements, but elevating the value of relationship and friendship.  I am guilty of this, I think, distancing myself from people who I do not agree with on matters of importance (in my mind), and I am lesser for it.

On forgiveness, Michelle pointed out that forgiveness is not conditional mutually, its not because they deserve it, or because they will reach our expectations, but because God forgave us.  It is from that context that we forgive.  Forgiving someone is not necessarily forgetting what they have done, but showing them the mercy and grace that God has shown us.  Mercy–letting go of any intent of retribution and Grace–giving the opposite of what you feel they deserve.

But–I reemphasize, because it is so important–the primary “learning” here is not about how to act, just as the primary wrongness or problem in human life is not what we do.  Often what human beings do is so horrible that we can be excused, perhaps, for thinking that all that matters is stopping it.  But this is an evasion of the real horror: the heart from which the terrible actions come.  In both cases, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices–in the inner life–that counts.  Profound transformation therefore is the only thing that can definitively conquer outward evil.

It is very hard to keep this straight.  Failure to do so is a primary cause of failure to grow spiritually.  Love, we hear, is patient and kind (1 Corinthians 13:4).  Then we mistakenly try to be loving by acting patiently and kindly–and quickly fail.  We should always do the best we can in action, of course; but little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself — the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others.  Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness wil be shallow and short-lived at best.

It is love itself–not loving behavior, or even the wish or intent to love–that has the power to “always protect, always trust, always hope, put up with anything and never quit” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8, PAR).  Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love.  It will make us angry and hopeless.

But taking love itself,–God’s kind of love–into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.  And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselve and others.  Indeed it will be, according to the promise, “a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)–not an additional burden to carry through life, as “acting lovingly” surely would be.

p.24, Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard

These questions are an attempt to create spaces where we can invite and allow God to speak into and guide our lives.  They are meant to lead to challenges to are methods of thinking, our habits, and our perspectives and let God redeem us from the inside out.  This is not intended to be a list to check off, in a “did-this, did-that” pragmatic approach, but instead to allow God’s guidance and leading to shape our decisions and the foundations they come out of.  You may discover that the issues and obstalces you are trying to face are in a completely different direction than the direction God wants you to head.

Questions…

1. Where and when do I feel most close to and most distant from God and where is God leading me through those times?

2.  What am I consciously dependent on God for in my life?  (aka, what in my life would change if God was not around?)  What can I be more intentionally dependent on God for in my life? (What areas in my life must I release my control of and my anxiety of into God’s hands?)

3. Where and how much am I giving and where and how much am I getting in my life. (Suggested categories: time / rest, hopes / dreams, relationships, sexuality, finances, social issues, knowledge, wisdom, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control).  How does does my heart match up with God’s on these areas?

The start of answers…

1. For me, understanding where I feel least close to God speaks louder to me than understanding where I feel most close to God.  This is because I’m realizing that when I feel distant from God it is my own fault.  I’ve either left him behind and run in the other direction, or have turned my back to him and have forgotten to acknowlege his presence in what I am doing at the moment.

2. Honestly and soberingly, I feel like a failure in answering this question, which is why I must ask it of myself more frequently.  Very little of my life is consciously or intentionally dependent on God.  I know that I like having control over as much as I can manage, and often try to control too many things, resulting in anxieties that make me forget God even more.

3. The suggested categories in is only the tip of the iceberg for this question.  A lot of times I wonder why someting I’ve worked on just doesn’t come out right and it’s usually because the pieces that made up the whole weren’t right.  I need to understand the simple relationship that what I put in my heart, mind and soul determines what comes out.

Building a Community that Loves the World [Part One: Loving Our Neighbors]

A Message from the Parable of the Good Samaritan

Sermon by Jamie Wilson @ Coast Vineyard on October 19th, 2008

Some Reasons We Fail to Love When It Matters Most

1. We think we lack the time.
2. We think we that we lack the resources.
3. Fear.

Compassion in Action

1. Compassion is always a risk.
2. Compassion is a commitment to care regardless of the cost.
3. Compassion is a commitment to care regardless of the results.

Build a Church that Loves our Neighbors

1. We will need a willingness to love people in their place of need rather than our place of comfort.
2. We will need courage.
3. We will need Spirit given expectation.

Jamie opened up his sermon acknowledging that our culture is one that “passes by on the other side of the road” in respect to crisis.  We come to the point where we all too often avoid and secretly cringe in the face of friends sharing their problems with us, evaluating if we really have time and energy to deal with what they are dealing with, on top of the pressures that society has already placed on us.  We are already so stretched and our resources so expended, that we fear an overwhelming crisis to which we have no answer or solution for.  But Jamie encouraged us that it is in that “effxiating weakness that we can give God,” if only we would have the courage to walk off the road into the crisis.

Compassion definitely has costs, emotional, phyiscal, financial, etc.  But I would dare to say that compassion and its associates costs are more like investments.  I do not believe that they are just costs, where what we give goes into some void and is never seen again.  Instead I hold onto the idea that our compassion and its emotional, physical and financial costs have great returns even when the outcome is not what we might expect or even hope for.

Jamie closed his sermon acknowledging that our culture is trending towards one where “No one will come to the church without being loved first.”  Or maybe it has always been that way, if you consider what church really is.  When we consider that to love, is to set to achieve what is good for the object of that love, we realize that loving people in their place of need rather than our place of comfort is common sense.  I’m guilty of not looking to God for a Spirit given expectation for the results from investing in the Kingdom with compassion and the costs associated with it.  But it is time to change my vision of compassion and God’s power in respect to that!

A neuro surgeon gave a brief testimony about compassion this week before Pastor Jamie gave the sermon Part One: Loving Our Neighbors in the series, Building a Community of that Loves the World.  He talked about how God was encouraging him to pray with his patients.  He explained how he was worried about being misunderstood.  If he prayed with his patients, would they think he doesn’t know what he is doing or didn’t study hard enough in his classes?  If he prayed with his patients, would they feel like he is trying to convert them?  If he prayed with his patients, would his reputation be muddled by people labeling him as one of those “weird” people who talk to God?  If he prayed with his patients, and the procedure was not successful, would he have done more spiritual damage than good?

But now he prays for his patients, “Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for always being with this person their whole life.  Please give me the wisdom and the success to repair their blood vessels.  In Jesus name, amen.”  He shared how he realized that Jesus said we will be misunderstood, because he [Jesus] was misunderstood.  The fear of being misunderstood is not a reason not to love.  By overcoming this fear of being misunderstood, he realized that the greatest form of authentic love for someone is to pray for them.  As his patients look to him to work miracles in the blood vessels of their brain, he is able to acknowledge the one true God and his power to heal.

I fear being misunderstood.  I think the root of that is the misconception that I “understand so much” that others will have a hard time understanding what I’m saying.  Or maybe that what I am trying to do is so complicated that others won’t have the background to understand what I am trying to say or do. But when did God’s love and a relationship with God get so difficult to understand?  Neither should be difficult to understand.  They may be difficult to receive, but that is not a sufficient reason to not love. Kingdom style loving is like sowing seeds on the rocks, the path, the shallow soil and the good soil.