Being With God...While Letting Him Be God (Part 5)

God's mystery can actually lead to prayer, surrender and trust. 

When we draw close to God as bigger than us, we actually learn more about the mystery in our own lives, and find confidence to trust Him in areas of uncertainty. 

In surrender to God's mystery our hearts are softened and we are actually opened up to Him. This is reassuring because His mystery is always paired with His goodness, control, wisdom and power. 

Being With God...While Letting Him Be God (Part 4)

God's transcendence was even more pervasive in the mindset of ancient church leaders, than those writers and thinkers driving the spiritual formation movement.

Since Jesus' day, those who encouraged a deepening devotional life, a rich prayer life, a life centered on being with God, have 

leaned on and worshiped God as transcendent and immanent. 

(see Being With God...While Letting Him Be God: Part 2)

Their understanding of God's transcendence shaped their prayer life, and so their beliefs of His closeness.  

Being With God...While Letting Him Be God (Part 3)

We can actually 

relate to God 

and 

be with God 

because of 

His beyond-us-ness. 

(see Being With God...While Letting Him Be God: Part 2)

It is the characteristics of God which are inaccessible and un-relatable that actually enable and fuel His desire to relate to us. 

Being With God...While Letting Him Be God (Part 2)

The Spiritual Formation movement, has emphasized the immanence of God:

a.k.a. being with God. 

Immanence is God's closeness, the truth and experience that He is always with us 


(see "Being with God...While Letting Him Be God: Part 1).
The practice of being with God is drawn from the major figures in Church history who communed with God in practical, everyday ways. These ancient sources of spiritual reform have been tapped into by the modern spiritual formation movement. 

The movement's goal is to see and experience God in the everyday, for Him to be relevant in daily activities. 

Being With God...While Letting Him Be God (Part 1)

Have you ever slipped into the pattern of a pocket Jesus? A little figurine who stays in our pocket until life gets tough. We pull Him out like a watch, and instead of checking the time, we check our conscience. 

For others, relationship with Jesus is like a Redbull or 5-hour Energy shot, just take a sip when spiritual energy gets low.  It is good for us to rest in Jesus as our friend, but if we neglect him like a friend, the something is amiss...

This is a crucial tension in the Christian walk, to walk with Jesus as a friend while allowing Him to remain our God.
A key to embodying this tension is knowing and experiencing God's transcendence and his immanence. 

God's transcendence is His bigness, His beyond-us-ness. A place you might experience this is on top of half dome at sunrise, or staring up at a night into a star studded sky.

His immanence is His closeness, His always-with-us-ness. A place you might experience this is in the answering of a specific prayer or or in seeing God's faithfulness in a personal struggle through a friend.





Recent spiritual formation in the church has emphasized being "with" God. I.e. "being with" God throughout daily activities, rather than "doing" more. A now common phrase is "we are human beings not human doings". 

This view which is pervasive not only because of it's catchy sound, but because it is meeting the need for rest, simplicity, and relationship which is at such a deficit in American culture.

parents and children spend only 14.5 minutes per day talking to each other. That is less time than a football quarter and certainly much less time than most people spend commuting to work.*

“The average workweek is now up to 47 hours, four more than two decades ago. A Gallup Poll found that 44 percent of Americans call themselves ‘workaholics.’”**

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 60% of marriages are dual-career. Not surprisingly, “lack of time” is cited in one study as the biggest challenge to their marriages.**

So, "being with" God has become a common way in the Christian culture to deal with the daily stresses of a frantic schedule. It also is a balm for the individualism which can hinder substantial relationship, even with those closest to us. And yet, this beautiful reality of being "with" God also needs to be paired with being "without" God, His mystery. 

This does not mean God abandons us. He loves us completely and is committed to caring for us. 

But consider this: 
"being with" God necessitates a God who can be with everyone at all times, in every way, without barriers, or borders. He must be a God who transcends time, space, knowledge, emotions, fears, hopes, etc. 


The immediate presence of God that a Christian hopes to enjoy while "being with" Him, must also recognize that this God's presence and life transcendent too. 

The Christian Scriptures and the church figures who have most profoundly influenced the faith have certainly experienced God in the present moment. They even encourage personal relationship with God. 

But their experience of God's closeness has arisen from the belief that God is transcendent and beyond us, and therefore able to interact and impact all places, at all times. 

And as we seek to emulate Intimacy with God in spiritual formation, we must remember that He is only so close and so loving because of His transcendence. 

Being with God requires letting Him be God: He is beyond us so He draws close to us.

We'll take a look at some of these church figures in the next post...



________________________________________________________________________________
*http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/time.html
**http://www.christianpost.com/news/you-can-win-the-battle-with-busyness-45145/

19 Ways You Know You Are a Graduate Student

This may not be true of ALL Grad Students, but since we are BOTH in Grad School, we have found these things to be true during this period of our lives. Some of them we have found ourselves to be silly, but others we have only discovered odd because of the reactions we have gotten from others. At the least, we have come to appreciate the little things in life in a period of time where little things come to mean a lot!

You know you are BOTH in full-time Graduate School when:

1. You run out of toilet paper often and revert to a kleenex box. 
When that runs out, you borrow a few handfuls from church before you finally make it to the store.

2. You save twist-ties off of bread or bagged goods just in case you can use them for something else.
Yeah, I don't think we ever used them for something else yet...

3. Date nights to the grocery store or the car wash are extremely exciting!
Oh, the little things...

4. You rejoice over a bottle of soap found deep underneath the sink because you've been without good soap for a few weeks.
He was really stoked.

5. All your conversations revolve around the books you are reading, the people you are investing in, and how to put what you are learning into practice.
Fun and exhausting.

6. You take turns checking out library books in order to save money on buying books for a semester.
Desperate times...

7. Paper towels are a great luxury. 
The gift of paper towels feels like a real present.  

8. You debate between buying groceries or paying to do laundry.
Thank goodness for frozen foods and old camp shirts.

9. You walk a lot more to save gas.
Good thing we live close to most places.

10. You realize loving each other means giving into bouts of "IASI"
Irrational acts of spontaneous irresponsibility 

11. Time to clean the house or make a meal seems like it would be a dream come true.
I literally daydream of these things while doing my homework.

12. The books you are reading are actually of interest, rather than simply work for a degree.
This is a great blessing of getting your Masters.

13. You realize you haven't spent much time with friends in…..a long time.
Ahhhhhhh!!

14. You use candlelight for 1 month to save on electricity the month of December. 
It really was for a better reason, but hey, it sure helped!

15. Your brain-work becomes balanced by watching tame TV.
Like watching the entire series of the Wonder Years & Dick Van Dyke show on Netflix.

16. You compensate intellectualism with extreme goofiness during down times.
Music videos, crazy dances, made-up songs, silly voices, spontaneous adventures...just to name a few. 

Party At My House from david and keri lippman on Vimeo.

17. You begin to see how much you really DON'T know and enjoy learning more and more.
Church History, Theology, Listening to others well, Philosophy, Psychology, oh my!!

18. Your excuse for everything is, "I have a paper to write." 
And it is legitimate.

19. All your best plans have the tag line, "And we can do THAT after Grad school too!"
And the list continues to grow, provided that we have means to follow-thru.

Prayer as Groaning

One would think, being in a program called Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, your prayer life would flourish. It's actually the opposite. It seems that right now Keri and I are asking a lot more critical questions about prayer and how it "works" in our Christian walk.

Sometimes this leads to frustration in our own walks with God. Oh, we want to be so committed, and would like to direct souls into a perfect Christian life. The truth is though, that Christians, just like anyone else, are very messy people. As a couple and individuals, we are at times messy, distracted, unreliable, confused, doubt-filled, immature, irrational, fearful, complain-y and tired. And, with Jesus' death and resurrection in view, this is where prayer must begin.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit,groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies...

Hiding Doubt: Part III

The third installment of Hiding Doubt (click here for part I and here for part II)

God roots our faith in our doubt, our bravery in our fear: it is in weakness that we experience His power. And it is in our sin that we experience His graceful presence. The strongest person is the weakest, the greatest is the least...

"humble yourselves in the sight of God and He will exalt you".

Hiding Doubt: Part II

The second installment of "Hiding Doubt" (click here for part I)

Often doubt is perceived as a bad or wrong emotion. Consider the word brave. What is the opposite of bravery? Most people would suggest that fear is the opposite of bravery. Yet, truthfully the opposite of bravery is cowardice. Cowardice is running away from fear. Fear is actually a component of bravery, an emotion that allows us to be brave. Fear must occur for the brave. Because of this mis-perception our culture has an aversion to feeling fear in order present confidence and bravery--yet it is in the face of fear that one actually is brave. This is true with doubt also.

Hiding Doubt: Part I

Commonly, we place a mask over our raw nature underneath. It is convenient to hide the parts of ourselves of which we are most ashamed. And the raw place eventually becomes something forgotten and unfamiliar. Though there are many arenas this occurs, but a recent and important one is the area of doubt. Can I doubt God? That He exists? The He is kind? That He is powerful, ruling, close, loving, wise, infinite etc? Is He angry at me? Ambivalent? Over it? Gone? Am I allowed to be angry at Him?

Retreat for Two

Keri and I just returned from our second silent retreat through our spiritual formation program (a program focusing on what sanctification looks like in a believer's life). This retreat piggybacked off our Intensive Journey and Inward Retreat class--which we've simply dubbed "Retreat". This class focuses on the dynamics of personal and group retreat.

To integrate our study we were to choose a partner for whom we would create a 48 hour silent retreat.  We used the dynamics we learned in class to draft a personal interview (see Retreat Questionnaire) and use that information to prayerfully structure a retreat for them to meet with God. We also spent time in prayer together, talking over areas through intentional questions of life-history, vulnerability and value. The interview incorporated things like:

• Temperament                
• Time 
• Transitions and New Experiences
• Health
• Social and Home Life
• Distractions
• Basic Needs
• History
• Focused Intimacy with God
• Assumptions/Expectations
• Experiential Knowledge of yourself
• Silence
• Defenses
• Direction

We chose a specific Retreat Location for them, that suited their needs (dry/wet, beach/mountains, cheap/expensive etc)  . We structured readings, questions, prayers, scriptures, activities (i.e. walking, sitting, journaling) to mediate interaction with God. If you are interested in going on retreat, please take a look at Keri's Retreat Brochure titled "Finding and Creating Space for Rest". 

Keri and I chose to be partners for multiple reasons, but the main one was that we wanted to press into these things honestly and deeply in our marriage (which is a big reason we're in this program at all). And, having someone who knows our struggles by experience, allows the issues prayed over on retreat to bear in honesty and practice in our daily relationship. Who else better to help you ask God the tough questions, and to be a place for the answers to be worked out than your spouse?

Here is a piece of our retreat and our reflections from our time at Mary and Joseph Retreat Center, in Rancho Palos Verdes....











Keri

A passage of Scripture written into my Retreat to meditate on was Revelation 2:4, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” Marriage has been a wonderful experience of drawing closer to Jesus and Him showing me His love in deeper and intimate ways. Yet, my devotion to Jesus as my first love has been challenging to grasp how to have “two loves.” Though I see how God has brought Dave and my union together, I have also wrestled with personal relationship with Jesus and relationship with Jesus through marriage. That being said, using a long set aside time to journal/process and discern with Jesus was so wonderful... Through the guided questions and “holy tangents”, God led me down various paths of discovering where my heart has been, where He has been, and some of the deeper issues lurking. Not realizing I was writing so much, I ended up with 24 journal pages of prayer, filled with questions, unexpected tangents, and times where He spoke. In the end, I did not feel like anything had been solved, or an answer was given that guided me towards the next step to take, but rather I received merely a peace “that surpassed my understanding” (Phil.4:7). I had a peace knowing that God knows my heart, He can handle all of me, He validates me as His child, and all He was asking of me was to just be. Simply going through the journey lifted some burdens, tuned little parts of my heart more to Him, and reminded me of the sweetness of extended time in His presence. As we learned in class, Retreat is a time of “rekindling the love of our first love.” What a blessing that this was my experience.

Dave

In the midst of my retreat, Keri planned for me to pray over the things that God loved about me and see what He brings up. I followed the pattern in her instructions—go to the first spot, seek stillness, pray over the options, see what comes up, then head back, pick up bible, pen, journal, and go to a new spot. The heavy fog of morning had lifted, but it was still a grey, damp day. My spot was in the garden, a lovely tan gravel path that looped through flowers, trees, stones and grass. The questions about God's love for me were extremely hard to engage on with Jesus. The prompts were wonderful, but immediately I felt dryness in my heart. Why isn't God affirming and loving me? Isn't this His chance? I wondered if I had expectations on Him. God spoke to me, but it felt, inconsequential, or somewhat meaningless—like He was there but wasn't. ... While praying I realized my expectations are a way that I avoid discipline through disappointment and instead enter a cycle of feeling unknown. .There was an immediate sense of relief—for the vice at the core allowed me to put up these expectations which kept me from God. I was putting up expectations to protect myself, i.e. “I hope you’ll love me like ‘_____’ because that is the way I really want to feel loved”... I had placed my own feelings of mistrust on God and smeared my image of Him—and I wasn't learning from Him as a result. This became a huge area of anxiety in my heart, and I feel the Spirit opening me to that area of discipline, learning, trust and freedom.

Week 1 Reflection & Week 2 Beginning

Week 1

Our Monday Classes went well!  We have all day monday classes: 10:30-11:30 (every other week), 12-2:30, 3-5:30, 7-9:40.....so it's a long day. 

For our first class with Dr. Coe, one of the books we are reading this week is Surrender to Love. It talks about how the definition of Love IS God. As His creation, made for experiential love relationship through Jesus, His redemptive presence moves toward us. Though sin and disfunction plague us from pure vision, He desires surrender to His perfect love. It talks about fear and how that affects our ability to be loved. Fear has many faces. God invites surrender and freedom, but we do not believe ourselves to be afraid (which ends up preventing freedom!). When we have experienced love that we've been hurt by (imperfect love) then Love can turn into the object of fear. But Love is the antidote for fear, so it becomes a cycle. He desires reverential intimacy recognizing His holiness (which we've failed to do)- for unconditional love demands surrender. Here are a few quotes from the book:

- "Take a moment and try a simple exercise. The results will tell you a great deal about the nature of your spiritual journey. Imagine God thinking about you. What do you assume God feels when you come to mind? When I ask people to do this, a surprising number of people say that the first thing they assume God feels is disappointment. Others assume that God feels anger. In both cases, these people are convinced that it is their sin that first catches God's attention. I think they are wrong-and I think the consequences of such a view of God are enormous..."(beginning of Ch.1)

Phantom of the Opera

We recently watched Phantom of the Opera. This was the first time I watched the whole movie. It was a beautiful story of a man who needed to be loved beyond his appearance. It was very moving for both Dave and I to watch, since we both feel like the Phantom. Marriage, thus far, has been a beautiful process of God giving us the gift of love and safety, found in each other, to love each other through the brokenness/sin inside that is coming to the surface. What an amazing gift God would give us.

Our devotional today reminded me of this similar idea. I think the poem is highlights from Charles Finn's poem.

"Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away (2 Corinthians 3:16)."

"For some people, pretending is a way of life. Consider these comments on the issue of hiding behind a veil:

Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear. I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks---masks that I am afraid to take off; and none of them are me.

Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don't be fooled. For my sake, don't be fooled. I give the impression that I am secure, that all is sunny and unruffled within me as well as without; that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water is calm and I am in command; and that I need no one. But don't believe me, please. My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, my ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.

Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide that...I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind---a nonchalant, sophisticated facade---to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation, and I know it. That is, if it's followed by acceptance; if it's followed by love.

Today, the blog begins

Well, after a wonderful and long week of many friends, interviews, home organization and shelf building, lots of cleaning---God is still God, He hasn't changed. My mind feels like mush, but my heart is really happy. Keri and I are looking forward to a short sabbath tonight (or "fika" as they say in Sweden) and the Easter celebration tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who came over, you each are such a reminder of God's creativity and thoughtfulness.

I cannot comprehend Easter. Since childhood it has been tied to egg hunts, pastel colors, chocolate in various forms, a rabbit/flowers, and some churchy symbols trying to compact an immeasurable message into a party favor. It still seems soaked with meaninglessness when I look at these things, and my taste for it's empty calories has died away. If I haven't emotionally connected to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus on a daily basis throughout the year--why am I trying to force it into one day (or even a few). (and are chocolates going to help that?) If Christianity, or any spirituality, is about a moment, if it is about a singular experience, some epic transcendent exchange,--it is not about the one we make with God sometime in our life--it is about the quiet moment when Jesus committed His life to God through death, holding you in Him. I cannot try to desire anything in Jesus without presuming His experience on Him, and through Him on me. I need to stop looking for my own, and let His be mine. What am I waiting for now? Jesus, I rest in You--You accomplish all that You've asked of me. This is so disconnected from tomorrow for me--I do not know how to celebrate it. It was Your moment, and You decided to include me. The ignorance of celebrating this with bunnies is contrasted to how impossible it is to give you my life. There, my friends, is a dichotomy God brings to the human condition--we are saved from a world that doesn't realized the lavish graced God's given--and instead of shouting miracle, we give chocolate candy. When God celebrates our obedience, we only celebrate our pleasures. Oh, God, You've worked the resurrection in me, work the same lavish grace around me--all Your experience is ours. And Easter, make it immediate in our heart.

Here's a list of all the wonderful people who stopped by this week: Brent, Ruth, Te, Nick, Liam, Lauren Brendan, Rachel, Connor, Sherianne, Riley...there may have been more, but those are immediately on my mind.