dr. d blows my mind

Dr. Delamarter just finished a section in our Old Testament Survey class on Salvation theology, Creation theology and the difference between false and true prophets in the Old/First Testament.  He’s a master storyteller and word-weaver.  I am still blown away.

hangin’ with steve & heather

Since I get to spend a week in Portland at George Fox Seminary and get one day off to rest, I’m hanging out with my friends Steve and Heather Davis in Salem, OR.  Steve is the youth pastor at Court Street Christian church in Salem and Heather is about to become an OSU Beaver (sorry, Ryan Coffey).

entering

We’ve been studying personal transformation – what it is, how it happens – in one of our classes at George Fox Seminary this week. Mary Kate Morse developed what has often been the spiritual development model embraced by the church. It works in a linear fashion something like this:

1. The entrance to Christianity is first through Evangelism: someone outside Christianity is confronted with the good news

2. After making a decision to follow Jesus, discipleship (learning to follow) commences

3. After one begins following Jesus, the inner process of spiritual transformation begins – being transformed into Christ’s image

4. Finally, through all this, a relationship with God deepens.

In a nutshell, the process begins with making a decision (praying a prayer) and culminates in relationship with God; it starts with a decision and progresses into discipleship, resulting in a transformational relationship with God.

But more and more people are entering “the faith” through the inverse of the above process – experiencing spiritual transformation as a result of relationships with missionally-focused Christians: Christians who are not blinded to others because of an unhealthy emphasis on sealing the deal or making the sale to get a quick conversion; Christians who are willing to walk the long road of transformation alongside a seeker; Christians who trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance in their friends lives more than their own attempts at persuasive speech.

More people are meeting God through relationships with His people. They are experiencing transformation which leads them to a decision to trust Jesus. It turns the model on it’s head! Yet God is intimately involved in this process, quietly drawing people to him, transforming them even without their knowledge, bringing them carefully to the place at which they can trust Him.

That’s beautiful. That’s God.

real laughter

Waiting for my flight to Portland I kept hearing odd laughter behind me, erupting without provocation.  It was instantly recognizable.   One of two authentic, no-holds barred laughters in the world, neither of which do most people find comfortable:  that of the deaf and that of the mentally handicapped.

This laughter makes us uncomfortable for several reasons:

- it explodes for no audible reason

- it sounds strange as they exercise vocal chords unaccustomed to “normal” speech

- our immediate response is ignorant pity because they are different from us

But laugh they do, and no amount of yelling or attempts to silence them can quit them.  And beautiful is their laugh because it rises from genuine humor with no pretense – when was the last time you saw a mentally handicapped person worry about disturbing other people?  How about worrying what their laughter sounds like, carefully crafting a socially acceptable “work laugh” like Chandler on Friends?

It is authentic and beautiful because they neither laugh to hear themselves, nor do they hold back simply because the sounds they make are odd to their ears.

everyone who seeks

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis writes, “Everyone who seeks, finds.” Of Jesus, in Matthew 7:8, the same is quoted: “For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds.“

Notice that neither Jesus nor Lewis place any requirements on the seeker, the asker, the knocker. There is no list of do’s or don’t’s to keep. Neither are there any beliefs one must hold in order to approach that which one is seeking. The only requirement is the desire: asking, seeking. Seeking truth, asking for the way.

This is the beauty of God’s words – God in flesh speaking to people then and to us now. This is the promise held out to everyone, regardless of where in the world someone lives or what in the world someone believes:

the woman who seeks, finds.

Period.

the man who asks, receives.

End of discussion.

It is promise that is held out to every seeker in every age, every country, every religion, every creed. Jesus is only exclusive in that the ones who will find are those who humbly seek; the ones who receive are the ones who dare to ask; the ones to whom the door is opened are the very ones doing the knocking. It doesn’t presuppose that those who are seeking, asking or knocking know what they want – they only know that they want:

It.

Something.

“More“.

And it, something, more is held out to all – to us and to all who are far off. Everyone who seeks, finds.

communion II

Last month I wrote about communion/the Eucharist and I had an interesting conversation that enlightens the question of “partaking in an unworthy manner”. Just what is partaking in an unworthy manner? Is it receiving the body and blood of Jesus with unconfessed sin? With bitterness? With unforgiveness? Is it receiving the elements while denying the work of death and resurrection that God wants to do in us?

Two Sundays ago, while our congregation was participating in communion, I asked a friend if he wanted to receive it as well. His answer was at once mature and misinformed. Mature, because he was having trouble forgiving some people for some pretty blatent injury; misinformed, because he evidently had been taught some erroneous things in his past.

While I think it admirable to avoid partaking in communion in an unworthy manner, how unworthy is it to admit the struggle to forgive at the same time one is asking God for help? This is exactly what partaking in Christ’s death and life is. Admitting one’s shortcomings, sins, frailties, inabilities, and bringing them to Christ, offering them to God with a plea of help. If God is anything, He is Acceptance. If God sees anything, He sees our motives. If God knows anything, He knows our inconsistency. If God loves anything, it is the humble call for help: “Help me, for I cannot in my own strength forgive.”

shhh…don’t tell

Our church is currently working its way through the book of Matthew. This past Sunday, I spoke from Chapter 6:1-18. It communicates something vital to us about “spiritual transformation”, something that Diogenes Allen writes of in Spiritual Theology. Allen believes that the aim of spiritual transformation is to become more and more like God’s character and that, in order to get there (though it is not really an arrival) is to travel the road built of spiritual disciplines. Traveling this road culminates in what Allen calls, “love of neighbor”, the hallmark of following Jesus.

Matthew’s first 18 verses are divided into three passages, each dealing with a spiritual discipline contrasted against hypocrisy: Good deeds/giving (vs.1-6); prayer (vs.7-15); fasting (vs.16-18).

In brief, Jesus teaches his disciples (and the crowd that continues massing to listen) what it means to be a continual part of the kingdom of God (which is to be found within us, here on earth). When teaching these three disciplines, I find it interesting that Jesus uses the phrase, “When you give…pray…fast…” instead of “If you…” He implies that these are already, or should be, active in His followers’ lives as the way of developing a relationship with the Father.

After teaching on these disciplines, Jesus ends each with a secrecy clause – do it in secret, in humility. The kicker in each teaching is not the doing of the thing itself (for both Jesus’ disciples and the hypocrites participate in such), but the motivation behind the action: is it done for the Father or for personal recognition? Is it for a deeper relationship with God or for the admiration of others?

Perhaps the “reward” Jesus speaks of is personal/spiritual transformation. This transformation into His likeness continues to occur in disciples to the extent that the motivation is toward the Father.
Does following these disciplines with right motives enhance our relationship with God? Does it endear us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves? What is one of the most powerful indicator of this inward change? Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 6, verse 12: to forgive others the sins committed against one’s own self. This is “love of neighbor”.