Resisting Growth

     "Author and Presbyterian minister Eugene Petersen was quoted in an interview as saying, 'The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.'
    This is the motivation behind waiting prayer. We place ourselves in postures of the heart, in the stillness that enables us to become aware of what God is doing so that we can gradually say yes to it with our whole being." (Kidd, p. 129)*

What do you make of this spiritual insight?  

Shifting the preferred, modern mindset of being in control to letting go and trusting God is often a difficult journey.  I suspect it was tough in ancient times too.  Take Daniel, for example.  A young man at he prime of life and with plans is suddenly taken captive and relocated to a foreign country and culture where he lived thereafter.  

Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr describes the spiritual transformation process as moving from order to disorder to reorder.  Often suffering triggers transformation.  Often waiting prayer is involved as we process, adjust, and eventually receive unexpected happiness.

Kidd, S. M. When the heart waits: Spiritual direction for life's sacred questions. New York, NY: HarperOne, 1990.

God's Kingdom Arrives

In N. T. Wright's How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, we are reminded that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell the same story.  They describe a new kind of king who changed the world.  Jesus is the suffering servant (Isaiah 40-55) and the son of man (Daniel 7) who completed the historical mission of the nation of Israel.  Jesus ushered in God's kingdom on the cross; heaven and earth met in Jesus.  God's kingdom differs from worldly kingdoms in the tactics it uses.  Telling the truth is God's weapon; whereas empires rely on fighting, violence, and injustice (p. 146).  On the cross, Jesus the king crushed the opposition.  

"Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." 1 Cor. 15:24-26

The cross, then, is mainly about Jesus as king.  Too often, Western Christianity has wrongly emphasized the personal aspect of Jesus atoning for our sins on the cross, so that believers can get into heaven.  Much more was going on than personal salvation.  

"The gospels were all about God becoming king, but the creeds are focused on Jesus being God." (p.20) The Christian creeds such as The Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed summarize theological agreement among early Christians on debated issues.  The creeds don't address what Jesus was doing between his "miraculous birth and saving death, resurrection, and ascension" (p. 20).  Jesus' teaching and public career, detailed in the gospels, are missing from the creeds.  

Invest time in reading and praying the gospels.  Place scripture above tradition.  Become an agent of renewal, making the kingdom a reality.

Wright, N.T.  How God became king: The forgotten story of the gospels. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2012.