Session Notes

This is from Dan Allender’s book — The Healing Path — which I read years ago. (One of my clients was just so incredibly gracious as to type out and email me the key part this evening…) It’s been the foundation of my thinking with respect to activism for years.

What are the basic principles of the world? They are the lists of dos and don’ts that rule most every social engagement and establish the boundaries for acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They are the conventions of respectability that announce you as a full member in good standing or, in their absence, mark you as a philistine, a poseur. Whether we are in third grade, at a trade convention, in the foyer of a church, or on a tennis court, we hate to wear the wrong clothes, say the wrong thing, or be dismissed for being different.

We all know that the rules are seldom (if ever) written and announced. The most powerful rules are unstated and assumed. We long to fit in. We feel awkward when we are outsiders and shame when we were once inside but now are no longer accepted. What gets us in and keeps us inside? Following the rules – approving of those who are impeccable in their performance, viewing with derision those who are not. As long as we align ourselves with the power base of whatever group we wish to enter, we receive the benefits of membership and avoid the liabilities of being a stranger. But as Christians we are called to follow our father Abraham and by faith depart from our country, class, race, subculture, and family. We are to be in the world, but not wage life according to the basic human principles that determine good and bad, in and out.

“In but not of” requires we belong while always retaining an awareness of our first loyalty. Does this involve a “leaving” that calls us to give up our very identity as constructed in the matrix of citizenship, class, race, subculture and family? Yes. Does loyalty to Christ call us to be prophetic and disruptive to every group and person with whom we engage? No. We are called to a particular time, place, group, family, and person. Without an ability to enter the world of the particular others God has placed in our lives, however, we will never gain access to disrupt them and offer them a taste of the bounty of Christ.

We should strive to “fit in” almost every way that gives us access to those we are called to love, but without ever buying into the basic rules required to be a full-fledged, 100-percent, card-carrying member of a particular group. We should never blindly support any group or person – no matter if what brings the group together is a theological flag, moral issue, counseling orientation, or church denomination.

Why? There is something wrong with every culture and group, and to affirm any as the basis of identity and the substance of life is to find a home rather that to live as a sojourner.

In my mind, this is one of the most eloquent declarations of war ever written.

It’s a covert war — a guerrilla war — of the highest order. Its mission, to infiltrate every aspect of society, to learn its ways, to understand how it thinks so clearly that you appear to be one of them — while always waiting for the moment to strike a lethal blow destroying the fabric of evil that places the minds and hearts of its members in bondage.

Its goal? No, it’s NOT to make them stop sinning. Its goal is to replace their legalistic bondage with that which terrifies both religion and society equally: a double punch of real live intimacy with the living God and the all-inclusive liberty He died to make their inheritance.

Oh ya — reread the above. What is Dan implying is its first target? That’s right — so called, “Christian culture,” and the rest of what passes as the Church.

What if Starbucks marketed like the church???

It’s nausea inducing — and it’s starkly true.

What is even more disturbing is that this video is itself actually a marketing tactic for a company that MARKETS CHURCHES called BeyondRelevanceDotCom. (No, I will NOT provide a live link to them…)

I’m not sure which is more nauseating…

Perhaps, instead of marketing churches, we could fix them so they don’t need to be marketed??? Perhaps we could actually introduce people to a Life Changing Power so dramatic that their friends will want to come and see? Perhaps we could look at the mess that makes up the church and the broken hearts that cause such so that it’s real love that greets people as they walk in the door?

Unless this is an admission that it can’t be done — that both this company and the churches it works with really are permanently beyond relevance and marketing is their only hope…

(In that case, we really have a problem because it’s not like the general public hasn’t already figured out that if you need to market it, it’s likely garbage…)

Got this emailed to me today — and I have to post it.

…Is there anyone in our midst who pretends to understand the awesome love in the heart of the Abba of Jesus that inspired, motivated and brought about Christmas? The shipwrecked at the stable kneel in the presence of mystery.

God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. On a wintry night in an obscure cave, the infant Jesus was a humble, naked, helpless God who allowed us to get close to him.

The Bethlehem mystery will ever be a scandal to aspiring disciples who seek a triumphant Savior and a prosperity Gospel. The infant Jesus was born in unimpressive circumstances; no one can say exactly where. His parents were of no social significance whatsoever, and His chosen welcoming committee were all turkeys, losers and dirt-poor shepherds. But in this weakness and poverty the shipwrecked at the stable would come to know the love of God. The shipwrecked at the stable tremble in adoration of the Christ child and quake at the in breaking of God Almighty, because all the Santa Clauses and red-nosed reindeer, fifty foot trees and thundering church bells put together create less pandemonium than the infant Jesus when, instead of remaining a statue in a crib, He comes alive and delivers us over to the fire that He came to light.

The shipwrecked at the stable are the poor in spirit who feel lost in the cosmos…finding it not only tacky but utterly absurd to be caught up either in tinsel trees or in religious experiences. They have been saved, rescued, delivered from the waters of death, set free for a new shot at life. … what are the shipwrecked saying? Let go of your paltry desires and expand your expectations. Christmas means that God has given us nothing less than Himself. Don’t order just a piece of toast when eggs Benedict are on the menu. Don’t come with a thimble when God has nothing less to give you than the ocean of Himself. Don’t be contented with a ‘nice’ Christmas when Jesus says, ‘It has pleased My Father to give you the Kingdom’. ..Anything connected with Christmas that is not centered in Christ Jesus–tree, ornaments, turkey dinner, exchange of gifts, worship itself, is empty gesturing. Blessed are the shipwrecked for they see God in all the trappings of Christmas and experience a joy that the world does not understand.

Don’t be so preoccupied with the purity of your heart. And once you’ve turned to Jesus, don’t turn back and look at yourself. Don’t wonder where you stand with Him. The sadness of not being perfect, the discovery that you really are sinful, is a feeling much too human, even borders on idolatry. Focus your vision outside yourself on the beauty, graciousness and compassion of Jesus Christ. The pure of heart praise Him from sunrise to sundown. Even when they feel broken, feeble, distracted, insecure and uncertain, they are able to release it into His peace. A heart like that is stripped and filled–stripped of self and filled with the fullness of God. Holiness is not a personal achievement. It is and emptiness you discover in yourself. Instead of resenting it, you accept it and it becomes the free space where the Lord can create anew. To cry our, ‘You alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord’ that is what it means to be pure of heart. And it doesn’t come by your Herculean efforts and threadbare resolutions. Simply hoard nothing of yourself; sweep the house clean. Sweep out even the attic, even the nagging, painful consciousness of your past. Accept being shipwrecked. Renounce everything that is heavy, even the weight of your sins. See only the compassion, the infinite patience and the tender love of Christ. Jesus is Lord. That suffices. Your guilt and reproach disappear into the nothingness of non-attention. You are no longer aware of yourself…even the desire for holiness is transformed into a pure and simple desire for Jesus.

For the shipwrecked, becoming a little child means accepting oneself as being of little account. When Jesus tells us to become like little children He is urging us to forget what lies behind. Children have no past. Like little children the shipwrecked don’t bring the baggage of the past into the stable of the present moment…the single most important consideration during the sacred season of Advent is intensity of desire. An intense inner desire is already the sign of His presence in our hearts. The rest is the work of the Holy Spirit. The only explanation of why the shipwrecked exist is the personal magnetism of Jesus and only he who has experienced it can believe what the love of Jesus is. You could more easily catch a hurricane in a shrimp net than you can understand the wild, relentless, passionate, uncompromising, pursuing love of God made present in the manger. The shipwrecked preserve the meaning of Christmas in its pristine purity–the birthday of the Savior and the eruption of the messianic era into history.

by Brennan Manning

Think about it — no, meditate on it. It’s the Gospel in it’s most straight and simple form — so simple, in fact, that Evangelical Christendom usually misses it entirely. It’s not a cute little prequel to a morality tale — it’s the savage annihilation of any lie that told you that the God of the universe could ever do anything but love you. It’s the God of the universe laughing at the idea that you could ever do anything about what separated you from Him and the the cosmically insane plan He hatched to make sure nothing in the universe could ever separate Him from His kids again.

If you’ve ever wondered if anyone out there wants you, you have your answer.

Steve McVey:

“The new Christian who has all along been glorifying Christ through his behavior without even thinking about his behavior now stops focusing on Christ and starts focusing on his behavior. The face of Jesus fades into the background and a list of religious rules emerge as the focal point of the new Christian’s life,”

This is a good brief article on starting in faith as you began. Our continued victory can only be received by faith not by following rules. In marital conflict when feeling powerless/blamed/afraid/shame and needing control. Wait, relax, vent to Jesus, and focus on His control/power/blamelessness/promise to make a way through grace, in us believers. Give truth, after receiving His perspective when it can be heard/let it surface, in us believers.

Steve McVey:

” know you’re expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he’s gonna keep saying this. So what you’re left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase.”

This is an excellent commentary on the role of conflict/protection in the Good News. Father make it crystal clear to all of us.

Steve McVey:

“it is only when you understand how deeply you are loved that you will be released to pour out agape on others. 1 John 4:19 says ‘we love because He first loved us.’ We don’t just love Him for that reason. We love everybody for that reason. When my grandchildren visit our home and dip their beach pail into the Gulf of Mexico, the pail can’t contain the Gulf so the water spills over the edge on every side. That’s how it is when we have received God’s love. It’s just too much for us, so everybody around us gets wet too. This is where grace becomes practical. When we have fully experienced the loving grace of God, we will faithfully express it. As He is, so are we in this world. Jesus loved. He loved the down-and-outers (the Samaritan woman) and the up-and-outers (Matthew). He loved the unrighteous (Zaccheus) and the self-righteous (Saul of Tarsus). He loved the rogues (Peter) and the religious (Nicodemus.) He loved the horribly immoral (the woman taken in adultery) and the highly moral (the rich young ruler). Jesus just loved. He said, ‘I and my Father are one’ (John 10:30). He shares the same DNA as the One who is love. What else could he do? “

This is an excellent reassurance that unconditional grace will motivate/move us, especially to love as Jesus.

Steve McVey:

“As Jesus said, the greater our understanding of forgiveness the greater the love. The obstacle that most people have trouble getting past in accepting the reality that all their sins have been forgiven is the idea that future sins could already be dealt with, even before we commit them. I remind you though that when Christ died for our sins, He died for all of them and we hadn’t even been born yet. If Christ could take every sin we would commit upon Himself at the cross before we had committed a single one of them, why couldn’t he forgive them in the same way? He can and He did. Your sins are forgiven. Not just some of them, but all of them. What if every sin of our lifetime is already forgiven? What difference would that make in how we lived from day-to-day? I can tell you the difference: it would free us to take our eyes off ourselves and put them on Christ and on others. It would deliver us from self-consciousness and sin-consciousness. The fact is that our sins have all been forgiven. That won’t cause anybody to run wild. The Apostle Paul answered that objection when he said, ‘If all this about grace is true, does that mean we just sin like crazy because we know it’s all covered by grace?’ He answered his own question, ‘God forbid! How can we live in sin if we have already died to it? Or don’t you understand that every one of us who have been placed into Jesus Christ were with Him when He died? The reality is that when somebody dies, they are free from sin and we died!’ (See Romans 6:1-7) We can relax when it comes to the fear that grace will cause people to sin. It won’t do that. Instead it will cause those who understand the scope of forgiveness to love Jesus more and to take their eyes off themselves and live freely in grace.”

This is an excellent discussion of the looming question, fear of license, and vision for us. May it be so.