Christian formation is character formation. It's about growing in the fruit of the spirit, not just trying hard to do the fruit of the spirit. Let me ask you something, how is the holy spirit forming your character to be like Jesus these days? What is the spirit of God seeking to cultivate in you in terms of the fruit of his spirit? And a pretty good way to draw back the curtain on our own formation and peek into who we are, is to sit down with potentially disruptive questions, and just let them work on us a bit. Not to feel shame, not to feel guilty, but just simply to let some things percolate and see what surfaces. What am I talking about? I'm talking about questions like this, what rises in me, and at times flows out of me, when I don't get what I want? Or this one, what activates the volcanoes within me? Am I learning to recognize my false self when it starts talking or acting or posing? Or this one, what is my relationship with anger? Am I growing in the art of encouragement? Am I growing as a forgiver of those who have hurt me? Or how about this one, what good and beautiful character quality is the holy spirit currently crafting in me?
One thing I can almost promise us, almost with certainty, I'm not a fan of certainty, but almost with certainty, I can promise every one of us this, that if we take the time to tune in and listen it is highly likely the spirit of God wants to craft some good and beautiful character quality in us, that is not yet fully developed. Do you know what that is? Can you point in some direction toward it, even if you can't name it specifically? Let me put it in kind of goofy ways, what is the “da Wan” God wants me to toddle toward as it relates to my character formation? Where is the spirit inviting me out of the chair and out of the shallows and into deeper water?
Your intentional presence and mine in these gatherings is our way of remembering God is the audience, we aren't. This is for him not you or me. This is about him not you or me. Or to get back into the football analogy, which I don't like using football analogies, but it's here. We, you and I, are the players in this Gathering. And when we come to this Gathering as a player not a fan we soon find out how big of a player God is in these gatherings.
The Hebrew word for worship literally means, work or serve, it's not a passive thing. In the words of one commentator worship means, and these are his words, “to expend considerable energy and intensity in a task or function.” Think about this, have you ever left here on Sunday exhausted, because you expended considerable energy and intensity in what we're doing? Using the language of this author, “to worship God, is to expend considerable energy and intensity honoring and adoring him in this Gathering.” Note the intentionality that's embedded in Psalm 100, “worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs, enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise His name.” In short, be intentional, show up, engage your whole self, in worshiping our good and great King.
This particular service is different than most in that there was no sermon on this day. Instead, we had an extended time of interactive prayer, Sonos Divina, “interacting with the Holy Spirit through music”, and worship. We invite you to find a quiet place as you enter into this space and listen to this podcast with us.
We'll use guided prayer and musical prayer to simply hang out with God; meaning, converse, commune, communicate with God. So, we'll hear from him at first by taking a look at a passage of scripture together. And then we'll take a trip into whatever God is saying to each of you individually. So, you'll be in conversation with God. You'll be speaking to him. You'll be listening to the Holy Spirit trying to see what God is showing each of us about whatever we're bringing before him. And my role is to guide you towards those things.
Grace has much to say about these things, but Grace encompasses more than sin and forgiveness and post-death destinies. Grace is the beginning, middle, and end of the biblical story. In John 1:16, Jesus said, “out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.” Now I don't really know what that means. It's kind of confusing, but it seems to imply Grace is the start of the story, the point of the story, the theme of the story, and the end of the story.
Throughout his letters Paul describes the power of Grace actively at work in the details and particulars of life and hardship and difficulties and relationships. Grace is a dynamic force in other words in the real-life stuff we deal with. So, Paul had some sort of weakness in his body. Literally some kind of weakness, brokenness, something or other in his actual body. Some think it was bad eyesight. Others think he had a bad leg, and he walked a certain way. Maybe he had a proclivity toward depression or discouragement, so it was emotional or psychological. Or some other kind of persistent Frailty plagued his mind or his body or his circumstances and the point is he was burdened by this pain. So, we read in our reading, he earnestly prayed that God would heal him by removing this, “thorn in his flesh”, as he calls it in our passage, but God didn't heal him. God didn't heal the Apostle Paul of this thorn in his flesh. I think it's good to pause here. If all this Grace talk feels nice and churchy, but its tad bit removed from reality. We are now standing at a door that leads into the real lives we actually live in this broken and fallen world. Paul experienced pain and he prayed fervently for it to be healed, but it wasn't. Now who of us sitting here can't relate to that?
Now my prayer of asking God to search me turned to one of repentance. I saw how easily I felt superior as the wronged one and saw the other as one dimensional in terms of their offense. I remembered how I appeared to offer mercy but sometimes knew it was self-righteous mercy. How perhaps I'd made a little comment or remark here or there in the guise of warning people or me seeking Sympathy by sharing my hurt. And I saw how sometimes these little hurts were as much about my insecurity and wounded pride as they were about the actual perceived wrong.
I drew a big cross over the list the names and I asked for God's help to truly forgive. In Luke 17 when the disciples were told they were to forgive 70 times 7, meaning indefinitely, they cried, increase our faith. I needed to pray that over and again. See we can't just start with prayer we must live in prayer. That is part of becoming the kind of people who readily forgive. Only as I live in continual communication with God can the words of Matthew 5 earlier in Christ's Sermon on the Mount, become not just a dream but a reality. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That's not easy, there is a price. And on my own forgiveness will usually only result in empty words while I replay the recordings of the wrong. I need the cross. I need Jesus.
Our wealth isn't just the money that we have, right? Our influence, our connections, our voice, our position in society, yes even our vote, all these contribute to the worldly wealth that we have. And it's interesting to me that Jesus refers to this concept in terms of the mammon of unrighteousness, unrighteous Mammon. It makes me think of this phrase, that we have dirty money. You guys heard of that phrase? Like money or wealth that is acquired in unjust or unrighteous ways. Some of you, other people I've talked to over the years, maybe because the industry that you're in or the cutthroat win-lose nature of the business that you're in, like when you're working for the man, right? Sometimes it feels like what we earn is dirty money, unrighteous mammon. Or even when we take an honest look at our nation's history. An honest look at what we've done over the centuries to become the wealthiest nation in the world. How we've subdued the competition, unjust nature of a society, white privilege, you know stuff like that. It can feel sometimes like the wealth that we have, unrighteous mammon. What do I do with that knowledge? Well, it would appear that Jesus has an idea. Jesus says, make friends with your unrighteous mammons so that when it is gone, when it fails, when it burns out, when it ceases to exist, they, meaning the friends that you made with your unrighteous mammon may welcome you into heavenly dwellings.
Now, in the midst of Hebrews describing Jesus as the ultimate high priest. The author pauses, and says this, we're going to start from Hebrews chapter 5:11. The author says this, We have much to say about this, regarding Jesus as our high priest. But it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk being still an infant. Is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from Evil. Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God instruction about cleansing rights, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and the Eternal judgment. And God permitting we will do so.”
Now I don't know if you caught it, but there's a tone of frustration in the author's voice here in this letter to the Hebrews. Like, he would really like to dive deeper into the significance of Jesus as our high priest, which is a very significant image for folks, that coming out of the Jewish tradition. And it would really, really help them in their life with God to understand how Jesus fills this role as the high priest. And how the role of the high priest had always been to pointing towards Jesus and the author was really, really excited to talk about this. But he feels like he can’t because he's stuck. He's stuck going over what he calls basic things. He feels like his readers are still hung up on stuff that the author feels like they had explained over and over and over and over again. Again you teachers in the room might be able to relate with some of this frustration. And one of the basic things that he is trying to get past is talking about repentance from acts that lead to death. Now this little phrase is actually key to help us understand what he's referring to later in verses 4-6, so here comes the tactical part.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church; the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's son that we will be mature in the Lord. Measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
One of the things we talk about regularly here is, at least to me, one of the signs of a healthy congregation and a healthy church. Where people who come, see themselves as priests and pastors to one another. So this idea of people up front do the stuff and people in the chairs consume the stuff is not at all what I think the Bible emphasizes. When it comes to the church or to what ministry actually is, but rather that we are priests and pastors to each other, so in that sense all of us are ordained if you will. All of us are set apart. All of us are called. All of us have gifts and all of us are to pour those things out for the sake of God.
“It is within the church, within the Ecclesia, that Jesus Christ is affecting what he wants to do in the world and that's not a small statement. You guys all know that statement, but it is only really through the church that we're going to have the Holy Spirit as one body communicating out into the world and so Ecclesia became very important. Why I decided to be ordained after that was because it is through the Gathering of the believing people that one can be raised up into service for God. It is the collective people, especially in the Baptist tradition, which you all are. It is you all who I would serve, not literally here, but serve by the consent of the believing people. So it became so apparently clear to me at that point that ordination was absolutely going to be part of who I am and you were going to be the people who I was going to approach to do that. Because no matter where else I go as a servant of God it is you people who have confirmed me and there's very good reason for that and it is because you're my people.” ~ Allison Carlos
Do I believe my life depends on hearing from God? Wow! Like we all believe that we need food for our body to survive, right? This is why a regular part of our daily life is, run around scrounging for food. We plan our day around it. We get up early to make sure we have time for breakfast. Our school or our job will actually let us stop working so that we can go and eat. We gather with friends and family for dinner, so that we can make an experience out of filling this very basic need for food. We follow a diet plan to make sure that we’re getting all the right kinds of food. We plan menus for the week ahead and on and on and on we could go talking about all the ways that our belief, our conviction, that our body needs food to keep functioning, affect how we plan and go about our days.
Do I do the same for my spirit? What can we do to put ourselves in a position to regularly hear from God? And while of course there are many different habits or spiritual disciplines that we could develop, and help us in that area, and we talk about a lot. There is one that throughout the history of the people of God has really served as the anchor, as the foundation to hearing from God.
Certainly, the Garden of Eden was not some place where Adam and Eve strolled around going, oh my gosh look how pretty that tree is, I'm so sick of looking at that! There's none of that. There's a sense of renewal and growth and they worked with their hands. They took care of things. It seems to me the future involves discovery and learning and working. The Bible calls it reigning with God. The perishable will put on the imperishable as in 1 Corinthians 15, but I don't see anything in the Bible to indicate we instantly get a brand-new character, and all the crud Gets zapped out. Again, maybe that's what happens, but since that's where we're heading it makes more sense to me to start now. And perhaps, some seem to think so, who we are becoming and who we will be when all is said and done is part of our offering of worship to God. We offer him the life that we have lived and the person that we have become. God the Holy Spirit at work in us to form his character in us is preparation for an eternity with him. Life before death matters. What we read, what we watch, how we spend our time, who we become and are becoming, life is the practice field for eternity. Heaven before we die, and Jesus is our example.