Tag: Theology

Spiritual Formation is NOT cool

This quote was on Doug McFall’s facebook status on July 11th.

‎”Spiritual formation isn’t like a quickly spreading fire; it’s like a tree with deeply descending roots, establishing a foundation for future growth and fruitfulness. Through the disciplines each one of us becomes a fruitful tree, a place for birds to nest, a resting place for others. So God uses our lives to bear quiet but abundant fruit.” ~Joshua Choonmin Kang

It seemed incredibly true. Like, the truth hurts, kind of true. What hits me the hardest is the season of growth mentioned. It. takes. so. long. It’s not Wifi fast and connected. It’s not even telegraph level. It’s watch the grass grow slow.

I spent almost 4 years in graduate school studying Spiritual Formation. As a theological conservative, Evangelical female, I probably couldn’t have made a more costly and career-limiting move. For instance, in half the time, I could have become a physician’s assistant and pulled in $120K a year. BOOM.

I have no aspirations to pastor a church, and paid leadership roles or positions are more rare “for my kind” than Squirrels at Bikini Bottom, under the sea. No, wait, a polkadot unicorn…under the sea…and wearing a business suit.

I’ll get my money back out of my investment…that is if I live to be 346 years old.

Besides all that $ and education stuff. Spiritual Formation is an extremely slow process. So slow, and messy, in fact, that I would venture that it is basically unAmerican. It doesn’t have a formula for quick multiplication of adherents, (so it won’t make maga-churches or bring in the greenback$) and it…get this… takes work. DOWNER!

To become a disciplined (trained) and a more mature follower of God, takes, well discipline. What is more uncool than that?

So, why bother? I must be such a fool.
But there is a great reason I sum up in one word: transformation.

Not the jackpot you thought?

God’s Holy Spirit really and truly transforms us. It’s a joy to see it, and be a part of it. I have to give up most of what I thought I could achieve to pick this path. But, it’s funny, or maybe even more foolish, but I just trust God about it. And that’s is exactly why I know a concentrated effort and a willing heart can lead to a richer love of God, and a fuller understanding of who he is. You see, I wouldn’t have felt this way 4 years ago. It’s been an active grace of God toward me. I would have been worried. I would have been more self-seeking. I have a long way to go and grow, but I see God’s amazing love. I see his work in this world, and I see it ( at least somewhat) in and through me, in ways I would have missed. I know I am more available to love others and care for them and their souls. (whole-being….care of soul)

Still, these are not cool qualities. At. All. Spiritual Formation, if it could ever be trendy, would fade out of vogue, much faster than silly bands. In a small sense, I think I can relate to the disabled community for these reasons. It makes the study of disability that much more interesting I think. There is something worthwhile in choosing “disability” so to speak (a weaker or lesser role, a susceptible path).

In this spot I think I’m set up to be more dependent and vulnerable. I don’t have clout. Few people listen to what I say. It’s a pilgrim’s way, and it can be lonely at times, because the vision I have doesn’t seem very shinny or sparkly. It doesn’t seem to have a primo payoff. It’s not glamorous. Quite the opposite. It’s not even upwardly mobile, and in plenty of suburban and rural areas, this isn’t just UNcool, it’s near-scandalous. The rewards don’t come instantly, and plenty of times they don’t come at all.

I’m getting better acquainted with my thorough uncoolness. Strangely, there is a slight but real hope that comes with that. And it feels like I’m wearing new shoes.

Have you somehow chosen the uncool, plain, or “lesser” way? (perhaps in your pursuits, your career, your role, your authority, etc)

Thoughts? Comments? Responses?

The Generosity Plexus

What can neither give nor take?

 

 

Our ability to give hinges on our idea of how the world is, does it not? If we believe we must hold tightly to what we have, our ability to receive will also be hindered.

If we perceive others, God, or even life in general to be sparse in goodness and blessings, we will develop a generosity gap. Something besides giving fills that gap, so we give less. The desire to give wanes too. Eventually, we will live thoroughly according to our purview –which  is a close-fisted plexus of Generosity, and a closed system.

Fear and mistrust are the guiding elements in a close-fisted worldview. The close fist builds the muscles of fear and mistrust, and these sinews burgeon into every area of our life. Where God’s people do not give generously, there is a culture and predominating sentiment of mistrust and fear, toward God and others. This is, sadly, also an attribute of spiritual immaturity. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfected love and grace spurs generosity–a very reflection of God’s nature.

Our behavior reflects our Theology. (i.e. It mirrors the way we have studied and apprehended the Supreme Being)

The temptation to withhold is a temptation to not trust in God. It will indeed effect our worship of God, and diminish our spiritual growth.

Is there a cure? YES. (Well, cure is  rather strong word…but let’s continue…)

In short, to be generous in deed and in spirit, remember God’s faithfulness. Notice the lavish displays of God’s generosity, even in his astonishing creation. The intricate details of his many designs, the lavish beauty everywhere in nature, are surprisingly needless–unless we consider God as a generous Being, par excellence.

Verse for Reflection:
II Cor.10-15

Now [God] who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Questions:

Do you think God is stingy? Do you feel your blessing are few? What treasure do you have that you must give more freely to God (time, talents, funds, other)?

Recommended Spiritual Discipling (training) to help galvanize Generosity:

Fasting.

(If you’d like to work on your generosity, with your ministry or small group, or use fasting as training to promote generosity, contact me.)


The Lord’s Prayer is…

This Sunday is my final lesson in the Route 66 Series (Adventures in Spiritual Formation). I will be reviewing the last 11 weeks (briefly), and then capping it off with an examination of the passage of what has come to be called, The Lord’s Prayer. And we will pray it communally as well. It’s a Christian unity thing.

Do you have any questions or concerns about the Lord’s Prayer?

Here’s a tiny excerpt from a seminary research paper I did of the theology, literary structure, and message of The Lord’s Prayer.

…The Lord’s Prayer comes as the centerpiece in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7:29) in which Jesus lays out what is vital for citizens in the Kingdom of God. Early in the Christian movement, the practice of saying the Lord’s Prayer before Communion (weekly) and [typically] praying it three times per day is documented. It formed a “token of their identity as Christians,” and was also called, the “prayer of believers”.1

The elements of adoration in The Lord’s Prayer propel us to appreciate God’s immanence and transcendence: a theological fundamental. God is hallowed, his kingdom heavenly, his earthly kingdom is both current and imminent. His kingdom will be forevermore.

The worship and adoration of God is crucial in prayer, and in this Prayer, not just because God is most worthy of it, but because we are spiritually formed by our saying, believing, and embracing those truths. We commune with God, and know him more fully as this reality is further congealed in our minds each time this is lived out.

Theologian Kevin Vanhoover contends that in praying the Lord’s Prayer we together experience our Father, our common sonship, and common our inheritance with Jesus. It is precisely the communal aspect of adoring that helps us to be ordered rightly. Furthermore, Vanhoozer states that when praying in this manner with Jesus, we participate in the family of God, and acknowledge God as Lord, while acknowledging oneself as contingent in the filial relationship made possible by the Son of God and the Spirit of adoption.2

1 Jeremias Joachim, The Prayers of Jesus. Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series 6 (Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1967), 63, 78.

2 Kevin J. Vanhoozer The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 225.

Literary Structure of the Sermon on the Mount (proposal)

Literary structure/pattern and use of the Lord's Prayer Matt. 6:9-15. (proposal)

©Lisa DeLay 2010

Here is the prayer:

The Lord’s Prayer
Matthew 6:9-13 (King James Version)

9After this manner therefore pray ye:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11Give us this day our daily bread.

12And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.

Amen.

Now it’s your turn:
Pick at least one question and respond.

What questions come to mind about the Lord’s Prayer?

When was the last time you said the Lord’s Prayer?

What are your feelings or thoughts about it?

 

What promotes growth?

For me, growth can happen through many means. Influence is one, trials are another (but, what a bummer!), and silence is one too (ditto from the last parenthetical sentence).

I’ve been struck lately by reading Richard Foster‘s excellent book on spiritual growth called “Celebration of Discipline” (In its 4 printing, starting in 1978!). One of his great encouragements is to remain silent as we allow God to do our “explaining”.

I have to admit. I’m terrible at silence. I’m a communicator. I say stuff. Plenty of stuff. I’m a writer, a teacher, a parent, a friend, etc. But, ya know, I should shut up more. The temptation to explain our selves and patch up misunderstandings, it seems, can hinder our reliance and dependance on God. Yes, that’s incredibly strange, and sort of hard to hear. But really, we want to fix stuff much too much, am I right? If only we can get in there and makes things right, or fix up a situation, we’ll feel so comforted. It’s a weird little addiction that points to a rather needless futility. We have so little control over how and what others think of us…let alone, the bigger things in our life (health, safety, many circumstances). Let’s be honest.

( I HIGHLY recommend Foster’s book.)

• Do you think Foster has it right?

What are surprising ways that cause growth in you?

Featured Writer: Dr Doug Jackson on Trinity Sunday

(Trinity)

I wanted to feature this fine Sermoneutics article because I’ll be bringing the concept of Trinity to my class this Sunday.

 

Sermoneutics is a weekly column authored by Doug Jackson. Before coming to South Texas School of Christian Studies, Dr. Jackson pastored churches for nearly twenty-five years. For more from Doug Jackson, check out his blog at djackson.stscs.org.
Click here for the Sermoneutics archive.

by Doug Jackson
Trinity Sunday,
2 Corinthians 13.11-14

The good news is that the Western church has conspired to disobey the clear command of Scripture. The bad news is that our disobedience obscures our doctrine.

Augustine warned that anyone who disbelieves the Trinity is in danger of losing his salvation . . . and that anyone who attempts to understand it is in danger of losing his mind! Actually the Trinity is one of those things, like fried crawdad tails or dancing or being in love, that one understands not by pondering but by experiencing.

“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.” Athanasius puts it rather neatly but perhaps leaves us wondering how to pull off the tricky business of inhabiting what we believe. The doctrine makes us psychological heretics whose nerves don’t connect with our confession.

Paul takes a more practical tack, perhaps because he writes as a pastor and not as a theologian. Just before rapping out one of the clearest Trinitarian statements in all of Scripture, he lays a command on us: Greet one another with a holy kiss. That’s the injunction I am so glad the Church exiles to the exegetical antipodes along with head coverings for women and not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.

I don’t like it when people hug me; you can imagine how I feel about kissing. And I claim apostolic authority on this one: C. S. Lewis shared my aversion. “It is one of my lifelong weaknesses,” he writes in his autobiography Surprised By Joy, “that I never could endure the embrace or kiss of my own sex.” But there it is, right in the Bible and everything.

See, the problem is that the Trinity states, not an abstract mathematical puzzle but a common-sense relational truth: God is love, and either the Almighty is the ultimate cosmic narcissist eternally self-involved, or God has eternally had Someone to love. And since only God is eternal it must be that the Father has eternally loved the Son, the Son has eternally loved the Father and the Spirit has eternally been that love. And therefore Christians can only study the Trinity by risking the sloppy business of loving one another. And because God makes us bodies we can only love with our bodies. Every hug that breeches my barriers brings me closer to inhabiting the unity of Trinity. Amplexo ergo creedo: I hug, therefore I get it.

In this light, it is interesting to note that this year Trinity Sunday falls on the same day as Juneteenth, a nationwide observance for African-Americans commemorating the day the Emancipation Proclamation actually took effect. Perhaps instead of breaking our brains over the complexities of cosmic calculus, we could study the Trinity by repenting of past segregations and handing out a few hugs across the barriers we have built throughout Christ’s body.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

-Doug

Collect

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, You are love from all eternity. Make us one as You are one, that in us the world may see the grace, love and fellowship of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May you be broken enough to help one another,
For wholeness comes from healing.
May you disagree enough to hear one another
For oneness comes from listening.
May you be lonely enough to hold one another
For touch defeats division and discord.
In the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
The love of God,
And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
Amen.

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