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For the past year, I have been making my way through the entire contents of the Spiritual Formation Bible, a wonderful introduction to the “with God life” from the Renovare people.  It is what you might call a tome: a really big and montrously fat book.  But I recommend it as a reading project for those who aspire to bigger ideals.  I recommend it with the caveat that you have to have the mind of a marathoner and not a sprinter.  Sprinters get off the line quicker, but marathoners cover more ground.  In the life with God, we are called to be endurance runners.

This morning’s reading and reflection included this introductory comment by Earl Palmer on Second Thessalonians:

We should not be surprised by the atmosphere of argument and dispute in the early church… Christians argue because they care and also because the Christian fellowship has always faced the problem of false or confused teaching.  It was the theologian Karl Barth who noted, “There are no New Testament letters that are written apart from the problems of the church”

For me, this comment stands as a particular illuminating place in my long reading journey with this particular Bible, a journey that has has paralleled the life issues I have been facing during this season of my life.  And somehow this comment represents for me a kind of “second wind” in the long race, that kind of mysterious ability which overcomes the labored breathing and breaks into new found energy.  If I sound too personal, I apologize, but our connection to truth usually begins that way.  I am beginning to see that what I have experienced and am experiencing may be bigger than my personal story — I am beginning to see (again) that what is most personal is also most universal.

Perhaps my personal story parallels what the church has felt over this last season of its existence in North America.  For we too (and I mean the whole church of Jesus in North America) are faced with issues and problems that are not only large and complex, but important enough to open up and argue for.  This is not bad because problems are (paradoxically) our friends, driving us to rethink and re-orient ourselves to the life we are called to.  If the church of Jesus has been “sucking wind” lately, it is because it has lived disconnected from the voice that sustains it.  If it finds itself again, it will not be because it overcomes problems but because it sees that Scripture engages problems, lives off of problems, is not afraid of problems.

For years now, I have felt that my calling as a pastor was not to merely comfort people, but to comfort them in the large truths of who God is and what he is doing in us and for us.  In other words, it was theology in the service of real life – God’s word for people right where they were.  The connection between the Bible and church life was all-important to me.  I have always believed that if we avoided Scripture, or failed to base our ministries out of Scripture, then we would fail to connect with people where they were.  I feel as I am there again.

I see a world of problems not only in the culture but in the church of North America.  And I see the Scriptures as fully immersed in the the problems of life as we experience them.  Somehow, because of this vital connection — the way our Scriptures connect to the large and seemingly intractable problems of our time — I feel as I am catching new breath.  Go figure.

I belive that the practice of prayer is the most unused and misunderstood gift of the gospel.  And so I am adding Insight into the Mystery, an exposition of Ephesians 3.  If it reads like a sermon it is because this was originally given to the Westside community last January 2007 at the launch of our annual prayer days. I hope that you find something here worth pondering.  And I hope that you are encouraged once more to enter the gift of prayer.

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit is no deceit.  (Psalm 32:1-2)

It is usually taken that humans are universally in search of happiness, and that this is an unqualified good.  A whole nation (our neighbor to the south) has built its common enterprise on ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” because their founders saw that these were self-evident goods.  Those who are aware of the classical underpinnings of this statement may assert that our contemporary view of happiness has changed from what the American founders meant (we tend to think of happiness as an emotion, whereas the classical view was to see it as a kind of virtuous well-being), but it is nevertheless true that the pursuit of happiness was considered something that every human would want to be involved in.  Few of us would want to quarrel with that idea.

But happiness to many of us is both elusive and confusing.  It is a pursuit that continually remains just that.  We know the usual list of happiness-helpers that we tend to resort to: consumer purchases, body image, life-style freedoms, fame and fortune, the list goes on.  But what if we keep missing the most important, and most basic ingredient of happiness?  What if happiness was deeply connected to a kind of soul freedom that is simply based in being free from corruption and deciet, a soul that is forgiven and knows it is, a soul that is deeply connected to the God of forgiveness.  Such is the view of the Scriptures and an important clue to happiness that I am beginning to see in more everyday terms.

I don’t want to be trite or cliche about this because some of you will think that what I am saying is a common place.  Everybody who follows Christ knows this.  But I am not so sure.  We pay lip service to the reality of forgiving grace but we hardly see the pragmatic importance of living in this happiness.  There are enough unhappy church people around to tell me I am not mistaken.  I have come to know — through life experience and practice — that a sin-burdened soul is miserable and a sin-relieved soul is joyous.  I have taken note of that as a pastor who watches souls, and I have come to know that for myself.  As a sinner, and as a forgiven sinner, I have learned the deep connection between the two states and how my soul feels in both conditions.  This is really a truth that you can empirically test out.

I began this morning by reading the above statement from Psalm 32 and I was immediately drawn into that blessed (read: happy) state that this happiness is real for me — I am forgiven, my sin is covered, and God holds nothing against me.  And somehow the Spirit helped me experience the joy of it all.  This is the gospel of course, but I am one who needs to experientially connect to it in order to live by it.  I took time to revel in the joy of sins forgiven and this joy became my strength for today.

How about you?  It is really difficult to live with a burden of guilt, or if you are not aware of your failiings, then the murky unclarity of a burdened and troubled soul.  Perhaps you are just confused as to why you are unable to be happy.  May I gently point out a deep connection that you probably need to make?  For there is a kind of misery that goes quite deep, and which cannot be solved by trivial solutions.  And there is a kind of happiness that is just as deep, for in the case of deep misery only forgiveness will lead you back to joy.  You can really test this out.  It is a practical truth.

“you became imitators of us and of the Lord… [you] became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea…”  (1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:14)

Paul’s letter to his friends in Thessalonica reminds us of a basic principle of spiritual formation.  It is the priniciple of learning by copying, of becoming by doing.  It is a way we all have experience with, not only as children, but also in the formation of our spiritual selves.  The principle is this: in order to gain some new quality of character, or to become something we are not, we copy a model or example that best represents what it is we want to become.  Once we see an example we admire, we do what they do.  And in the doing, we begin to take on the qualities of the example.

We might be impressed by a generous person.  We see how they give, repeatedly, without much fanfare, in all kinds of circumstances and situations.  And their life to us speaks of this beautiful deep abundance, a freedom we want for ourselves.  So we copy their way, and practice repeated and generous giving.  And what happens?  Over time, the behavior engenders the quality we seek.  We become increasingly generous of heart, with a freedom that emulates the model.  We become something like the example we have copied.

Of course, the key here is to have a model to imitate and that can often be the problem.  Sometimes our imagination is limited by a lack of examples.  In that case it is helpful to push away from our local group, gain a wider perspective on the world, become a reader, seek new circles of relationship, engage in cross-cultural experiences.  The models do reveal themselves if we look.

We may seek to be a good listener, or a courageous leader, a kind nurturer, or a diligent student.    Whatever it is that we seek to become, we first seek out models that we can emulate.  These models show us in living form how such qualities can actually be lived.  And then we do what they do.

CS Lewis famously talked about this principle in Mere Christianity when he talked about “dressing up as Christ”.  He called this the good kind of pretending:

where the pretense leads up to the real thing.  When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are.  And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were.  Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.  That is why children’s games are so important.  They are always pretending to be grown-ups — playing soldiers, playing shop.  But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretense of being grown-ups helps them to grow up in earnest.

We have much to learn as adults from this basic insight into the formation of childhood identity.  And it needs to be asserted that, as adults, we are not beyond the possibilities of growing into new ways of being.  The Thessalonian Christians practiced this way of imitation and became a living example for others.  Though they were steeped in a culture of violence and degradation, they were transformed by the gospel that came in word and power.  They turned from imitating the degraded examples of their idols to the maginificent example of Jesus and his follower Paul.

My intention today is to practice the good kind of pretending.  Because of God’s help, I can act graciously when I don’t feel like it, I can make courageous decisions when my anxieties seem to point in another direction, and I can learn to trust when I want to be in control.  The model I will keep before me will be my Lord Jesus.  I will also consider how his life is reflected in the example of people I admire, people like Paul the apostle and others.

Who do you know that you would like to imitate?  What qualities do you need to “dress up” in?  This is practical wisdom and not a trick of psychological conditioning because, as Paul said, “our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit”.  It is by this power that we can become what we see in Jesus.