Tag: spiritual formation

Formed with Virtue (Romans 1:8-15)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. (New International Version)

Gratitude, service, prayer, encouragement, and duty. These are the qualities which defined the Apostle Paul; he sought to embody them every day of his life.

These virtues can define us, as well. If we seek to develop and exhibit each one, then we will find true community and satisfying relationships. And these very qualities were what Paul longed for in the Roman Church – because the believers were too often characterized by ingratitude, serving only those who were like them, a lack of prayer, discouraging others, and a warped sense of duty.

Jews and Gentiles were together in one church. It wasn’t going to be easy to get along and work side-by-side, but Paul was absolutely committed to it. Since the Apostle was both a Jew and a missionary to Gentiles, his heart deeply desired a mutual ministry in which the Christians thoroughly loved one another and had each other’s backs.

Gratitude

For that to happen, the practice of thanksgiving is needed.

We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 4:14-15, NIV)

In truth, gratitude is a spiritual practice which requires cultivation and attention. One of the best ways, in my opinion, of doing this is to keep a gratitude journal – actually hand writing what we are thankful for each day. And, when it comes to others, developing the habit of saying the words, “Thank you,” “I am so grateful,” and “You are so kind, I appreciate it.”

It’s hard to be a spiritual curmudgeon and grump through life whenever gratitude shapes our relationships. Gratitude has the practical effect of curbing our critical tendencies; it helps us as value people by thanking them often and clearly for who they are.

Service

To serve God and others is a way of offering resources, time, influence, and spiritual gifts for the betterment of humanity. This is how we love our neighbor as ourselves.

“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.”

Jesus (John 12:26, NIV)

By orienting our lives around service, we begin to see other people’s needs and meet them – since we are taking the time and energy in getting to know them. As servants, we learn to “walk the talk” and embody what we profess. And, if we couple service with gratitude, we are able to whistle while we work and avoid bitterness.

Prayer

We all pray and pray for others. The real trick is to remember one another in prayer and persevere in it. For that to happen, we must allow God to heal our distracted selves and bring integrity to our fragmented lives.

“We should make a gift of our hearts, emptying them of ourselves, that they may be filled with God. Our almighty Father becomes one with us and transforms us, uniting Creator and creature.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582)

By centering our identity firmly in Christ, we open ourselves to remember and intercede for others.

Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. (Ephesians 6:18, NIV)

Along with gratitude and service, our prayers take a focused shape of supporting others in need of healing, care, courage, patience, etc. And we replace any tendency to control or manipulate with a prayerful trust in God.

Encouragement

The Apostle Paul had a deep longing to help others grow into their God-given potential. He sought to empower others by sharing his life with them. Paul desired everyone to give themselves for the common good of all.

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:12-13, NIV)

None of us can make it in life without the help and encouragement of others. So, we need authentic relationships for mutual help and support, to learn from each other, and garner wisdom from those who have walked with God many years.

Encouragement is greatly moved along when gratitude, service, and prayer accompany it, so that an encouraging community of people are a loving group of folks for whom others want to be around.

Duty

A sense of obligation is a good thing. It turns our privilege and power into a force for good in the church and the world. In reality, we are stewards of God’s gifts and resources given to us. This enables us to have a healthy practice of duty to our fellow humanity.

Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19-20, NIV)

Through infusing our duty with gratitude, service, prayer, and encouragement, it becomes a delight to freely give of ourselves and our stuff, without a begrudging attitude. Generosity becomes a way of life, and we avoid becoming unhappy misers.

“If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.”

C.S. Lewis

Conclusion

In the Roman Church of Paul’s day, the relational dynamic had not yet broken down to the point of Schadenfreude, that is, actively delighting in another’s misfortune – but they were on their way. To mitigate and stop this from happening, Paul modeled a genuine spirit of thanksgiving, loving service, remembering prayer, healthy encouragement, and generous duty.

We would do well to follow his example of virtue, and be shaped by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Generous God, I give thanks to you for the gifts you have given me – life, family, friends, time, talents, and possessions. All that I have comes from you. Help me to remember this and rejoice in your goodness.

Walk with me, my God. Help me on my spiritual journey, so that I may constantly renew my relationship with you and all the good people in our parish and beyond.

Renew in me your Spirit. Give me the strength and courage to become a better follower of Jesus, in whose name I am bold to pray. Amen.

Known by God (Psalm 139:13-18)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

You are the one
who put me together
    inside my mother’s body,
and I praise you because of
the wonderful way
    you created me.
Everything you do is marvelous!
    Of this I have no doubt.

Nothing about me
    is hidden from you!
I was secretly woven together
    out of human sight,
but with your own eyes you saw
    my body being formed.
Even before I was born,
you had written in your book
    everything about me.

Your thoughts are far beyond
    my understanding,
much more than I
    could ever imagine.
I try to count your thoughts,
but they outnumber the grains
    of sand on the beach.
And when I awake,
    I will find you nearby. (Contemporary English Version)

We don’t really know God, as much as we are known by God.

And God knows us intimately, down to each individual chromosome in our DNA strand.

For me, the incredible thing about this very detailed knowledge about each one of us is that God still wants to discover even more about us, as well as to be known by us.

Yes, the cosmic Ruler of the universe wants to share in a relationship with you and me – to be known and to know – and delights in the whole process of perceiving us.

Perhaps this is why my highest aspiration in life is to know Christ better. This has been true of me throughout the entirety of my Christian life across the decades. Which is why one of my favorite places in the Bible (which, by the way, is God’s self-revealing knowledge of the divine nature) is from a fellow believer who aims for the same thing:

“Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as garbage. All I want is Christ and to know that I belong to him…. All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised him to life. I want to suffer and die as he did, so that somehow I also may be raised to life.” (Philippians 3:8-11, CEV)

This sort of knowing is much more than intellectual understanding or cerebral information; it’s an experiential knowledge that requires the dialogue and interaction of a lived relationship with another. Love is the glue which bonds this kind of reciprocal knowing of two persons. Sheer learning, without love – which fuels relational discovery – is counterproductive.

“All of us know something…. But knowledge makes us proud of ourselves, while love makes us helpful to others. In fact, people who think they know so much don’t know anything at all. But God has no doubts about who loves him.” (1 Corinthians 8:1-3, CEV)

What we know about ourselves is weird and conflicting. Many of us know we are good persons doing good work in the world. And yet, we also know many of the dark places in our hearts, and this knowledge is a source of shame to us.

This was also true of the psalmist. He knew that he was a bundle of contradictions within a single person. However, he was willing to be vulnerable before God, knowing that the Lord sees him completely for who he is – including all of those shadowy places within.

Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Pucallpa, Peru

In fact, God does some of the best divine work in the dark. A masterful weaving of your body and soul was done in the deepest part of your mother’s physical self. Life truly is a hand crafted one-of-a-kind gift, given to us by God.

There are, of course, parts of us we really like – and parts of us we don’t like and maybe even despise – which may cause us to question the goodness and/or care of God by the way we were formed. It’s easy to fixate on what’s wrong, as if we have the right to a particular body. Yet, none of us are owed anything from the Creator.

But, my friend, I ask, “Who do you think you are to question God? Does the clay have the right to ask the potter why he shaped it the way he did? Doesn’t a potter have the right to make a fancy bowl and a plain bowl out of the same lump of clay?” (Romans 9:20-21, CEV)

Today’s psalm suggests to us that each individual human person, you and me, are God’s best work of art. There is no beauty quite like that designed and made by God. Beauty takes our breath away and elicits awe and wonder from us. We are made in the image and likeness of a beautiful God – so beautiful that if we were to actually see God, the sheer beauty would undo us.

God even treasures us at our worst. Although spiritual growth and development is a lifetime project, we don’t engage in it in order for God to take notice and accept us. It isn’t a self-improvement plan. Rather, our spiritual growth is to help us be in a position to know Christ better – just as flower opens to the sun for energy. God delights in spiritually forming us, as well as the creative process in physically making us.

The Lord’s thoughts of us are continual. God is immanently near and close to us. And this is the bedrock foundation of our faith – that we are known by a good God who cares about every hair on our head, or in my case, every molecule of my being.

The psalmist’s God is a God worth getting to know. This is a God who is with us when we fall asleep at night, and who is there when we awake, having kept watch over us throughout the dark after-hours. “I am awake. I’m still with you!” says the Lord as we are greeted for each new day.

So, may you truly know this God who knows you deeply and intimately.

May you come to know and love yourself, just as you are known and loved by God.

And may the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the abiding encouragement of the Holy Spirit be with you, now and forever. Amen.

Spiritual Dementia (Deuteronomy 30:1-9)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Now, once all these things happen to you, the blessing and the curse that I’m setting before you, you must call them to mind as you sit among the various nations where the Lord your God has driven you; and you must return to the Lord your God, obeying his voice, in line with all that I’m commanding you right now—you and your children—with all your mind and with all your being. 

Then the Lord your God will restore you as you were before and will have compassion on you, gathering you up from all the peoples where the Lord your God scattered you. Even if he has driven you to the far end of heaven, the Lord your God will gather you up from there; he will take you back from there. 

The Lord your God will bring you home to the land that your ancestors possessed; you will possess it again. And he will do good things for you and multiply you—making you more numerous even than your ancestors!

Then the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants so that you love the Lord your God with all your mind and with all your being in order that you may live. 

The Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you and chase you. But you will change and obey the Lord’s voice and do all his commandments that I’m commanding you right now. 

The Lord your God will help you succeed in everything you do—in your own fertility, your livestock’s offspring, and your land’s produce—everything will be great! Because the Lord will once again enjoy doing good things for you just as he enjoyed doing them for your ancestors. (Common English Bible)

The mind is a vast, glorious, and (un)explored territory. Although there is much we know about it, there’s even more we don’t know about the human mind.

The mind can be both a blessing and a curse. Anyone with depression, anxiety, or other mental disorders and diseases can tell you that, especially family members who have loved ones with dementia.

Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life. Professionally, I visit patients with dementia nearly every day. Personally, I watched my own mother’s faculties slowly erode and decline in the last few years of her life. In her final months, my Mom rarely remembered my name, only knew me once in a while, and never recalled the conversation we had thirty seconds ago. It was difficult to watch, this woman who once cared for me, needing to be cared for.

The biblical book of Deuteronomy is the retelling of Israel’s story as they were about to enter the Promised Land. It’s a book completely dedicated to memory care. If the people were to forget who they are, they would not know what they’re supposed to be doing. The Israelites strayed from the blessings into the curses of God’s covenant life because their collective mind slowly slipped into spiritual dementia.

The mind’s need to remember is not a new issue; it’s endemic to the human condition. The constant refrain of the author of Deuteronomy is to recall and to remember where the people came from, where they are going, and why. 

Moses reiterated the covenant and the law for the people before they entered the land. It was a fresh re-hashing, nothing really new, of what God had already communicated to them. God’s people were to remember that they were once slaves in Egypt and that God had delivered to be a people for his name. They were not to forget that they had provoked the Lord in the desert – with the result of an entire generation of people being lost because they had neglected and forgotten what God told them.

Memory issues continue into the Gospels. Jesus miraculously fed a great crowd of people not once, but twice. The second time, he called his disciples to remember what had happened the first time in order to understand the second. 

In the New Testament Epistles, Paul kept reminding the Jews in the churches that they should remember the ancient covenant, and called the Gentiles to remember that they were once estranged from that very same covenant. Both Jew and Gentile together needed to collectively remember the death of Christ that united them into a new covenant community. Like them, we are to “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.” (2 Timothy 2:8)

Like the ancient Israelites, Christians are to remember who they are and what they are about: blood-bought people of God, belonging to Christ, and given a mission to make disciples and participate with God in the redemption of all creation through remembering the poor, seeking justice, and being peacemakers in the church and the world. 

Think about where you have fallen from, and then turn back and do as you did at first. (Revelation 2:5, CEV)

There’s a difference between the disease of dementia and the church’s spiritual dementia. Folks inflicted with dementia will not recover but only worsen, whereas the church can recover its collective memory by listening again to the ancient Word of God and being constantly refreshed with the promises and covenant of God.

  • Why do you and the church exist? 
  • How do God’s words inform and influence your identity? 
  • Does the mission and practice of your church intentionally remember the risen and ascended Christ? 
  • Are disciples being formed around collective remembering of God’s covenant and promises? 
  • Are ministries, spiritual practices, and policies being established based on Christ and his commission, or on something else? 

Let’s continually work through answers to those questions so that we are not cursed but blessed, and continually built up in the faith.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord show you his kindness
    and have mercy on you.
May the Lord watch over you
    and give you peace. Amen.

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing (Galatians 2:1-10)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Fourteen years after that first visit, Barnabas and I went up to Jerusalem and took Titus with us. I went to clarify with them what had been revealed to me. At that time I placed before them exactly what I was preaching to the non-Jews. I did this in private with the leaders, those held in esteem by the church, so that our concern would not become a controversial public issue, marred by ethnic tensions, exposing my years of work to denigration and endangering my present ministry.

Significantly, Titus, non-Jewish though he was, was not required to be circumcised. While we were in conference we were infiltrated by spies pretending to be Christians, who slipped in to find out just how free true Christians are. Their ulterior motive was to reduce us to their brand of servitude. We didn’t give them the time of day. We were determined to preserve the truth of the Message for you.

As for those who were considered important in the church, their reputation doesn’t concern me. God isn’t impressed with mere appearances, and neither am I. And of course these leaders were able to add nothing to the message I had been preaching. It was soon evident that God had entrusted me with the same message to the non-Jews as Peter had been preaching to the Jews.

Recognizing that my calling had been given by God, James, Peter, and John—the pillars of the church—shook hands with me and Barnabas, assigning us to a ministry to the non-Jews, while they continued to be responsible for reaching out to the Jews. The only additional thing they asked was that we remember the poor, and I was already eager to do that. (The Message)

The former devout Jew, Saul, had become the Christian apostle and missionary, Paul. His ministry was as radical and dramatic as his conversion to Christianity was.

The Struggle

Keep in mind that the earliest church was predominantly made up of Jewish Christians. They had to struggle with the relationship between their historic Judaism and their newfound Christianity. For many of them, Paul was doing the unthinkable; he not only purposely sought to reach Gentiles (non-Jewish people) with the message of Jesus Christ, but he also did not require them to be circumcised. For Paul, one did not have to first become Jewish before becoming Christian.

Paul doggedly sought to preserve the core essence and spirit of Christ’s message, that is, to proclaim the good news of forgiveness and new life through the person and work of Jesus – and not by means of retaining Jewish customs or laws, including circumcision.

The Main Thing

Christianity is more than set of beliefs and practices; it’s a way of life which can be summed up in three important words: faith, hope, and love. 

Both new believers in Jesus and veterans in the faith know from experience how difficult it can be to live the Christian life. One reason for this difficulty, even when we want to please the Lord, is due to the confusion that occurs between our inner feelings and our outer actions.

The Confusion

The confusion starts with the creation and fall of humanity. In the beginning, God created humans as persons with a divine/human relationship as central to daily life. (Genesis 1:26; 2:16-25) 

What’s more, God created people with the capacity to receive divine revelation through our ability to think and reason. (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10) 

Before disobedience entered the world, in the original state before humanity’s fall, all human functions were under complete control with an inner experience of unity and harmony with one another and God. (Genesis 1:31; 2:7, 16-25) 

It is imperative for us to recognize the distinction between our personal being and our personal functions. (Romans 1:21-32; 6:16-22; 1 Corinthians 9:27; Ephesians 4:21-32)

If we don’t grasp how cataclysmic the fall of humanity was, we are going to have big struggles with living the Christian life – illustrated in the way that Paul needed to fend off a bunch of professing Christians who still seemed spiritually stuck. 

The Disobedience

In Adam and Eve’s original disobedience to God, the authority for life was transferred from God to us so that our sinful bent is to call our own shots without God. The source of authority also got whacky, transferred from a holistic and synergistic approach of body, mind, emotions, and spirit to a one-dimensional approach of simply how we feel at any given moment.

If we fail to understand this dynamic, we will be continually frustrated with people because they do irrational things. For example, many church pastors are flabbergasted that parishioners do not simply take what they teach them and go and do it. Yet, if it were that simple, there would be no place for the Holy Spirit!

Unfortunately, there’s more. In humanity’s fall, we lost control of our capacity to function well. We are all now vulnerable to manipulation, too easily swayed by the surrounding culture, and, of course, Satan. (Ephesians 2:2-3; Galatians 5:16-21) 

As a result, our inner conscience has become confused. We are not always certain of right and wrong. We misunderstand what life is really supposed to be all about. 

We lose sight of the main thing. And, in that state, there’s no way we can keep the main thing the main thing.

Instead, we become obsessed with feeling comfortable and secure; so, we pursue false gods – leaving usdisappointed and with a lack of fulfillment in life.

The Good News

However, the good news is that through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, new life emerges; the bondage of sin is broken in our lives, and we are legally reinstated in a relationship with God in which the Lord is central in our daily life and the final authority. 

In this new relationship we can again receive truth through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures. We regain control of our functions. 

Yet, unless we learn the Scriptures and growin a daily walk with Jesus, the practical experience of this relationship with all its freedom, joy, assurance,  power, and fruitfulness may be greatly limited. (Romans 7:14-25; 1 Corinthians 3:1-4)

Even though we have redemption and faith, it is still possible to regress and give in to our old ways of functioning. This is a big reason why Christians can experience conflict, doubt, fear, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, and confusion.

To live keeping the main thing the main thing means to grow in the experience and application Christ’s centrality and authority in our lives. 

The Awareness

We must, therefore, make daily decisions of faith, hope, and love based in who we are in Christ and recognize his authority in our lives. The following seven recognitions and awareness may be helpful for you in experiencing Christian freedom and unity:

  1. You are a person with the ability to function in faith, hope, and love as God’s beloved child in Christ (2 Corinthians 7:1; Romans 8:14-17)
  2. There is a difference between who you are and what you do (or don’t do).  Evil thoughts and emotions do not make you evil, anymore than fantasizing about being a unicorn makes you a unicorn.
  3. You can take charge of your actions and your life (Galatians 5:22-23)
  4. The key is the use of your will through living in harmony with revealed biblical truth. In other words, you really can make choices of faith, hope, and love, no matter the situation. (Romans 4:17-21; Psalm 56:3; Psalm 43:5-11)  
  5. Reject whatever is contrary to Scripture, reason, and conscience. Listen to your whole self. Unhealthy patterns of acting and speaking must be broken in Jesus’ name. (Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:5-9; Titus 2:11-12)
  6. Choose to obey the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures. Learn to think and act on the basis of truth. (Acts 27:25)
  7. Practicing the truth results in freedom, a re-patterning of thinking and functions, as well as the fruit of the Spirit. (John 8:32; Titus 2:11-14; Philippians 2:12-16)

The church is intended to be a supportive community of fellow redeemed people who worship and love Jesus together. 

Without sharing our collective learning of the Scriptures and daily struggles of faith, hope, and love, believers will inevitably be spiritually immature over the long haul. Instead, talk about your shared experiences of worship, Scripture reading, and Christian living. 

In doing so, God is glorified, the church is strengthened, and the cranky circumcisers are seen as the legalistic lunkheads they really are.