Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Vol 2:27 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus – Loving God with all our strength

This is the fifth installment of six focusing on living centered in Jesus. As previously blogged, I stated that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center of all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of all our living and in all we do.

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our strength.

It always amazes me that in North America, especially in the United States, that so many of us express belief in God, even Jesus Christ, but Jesus seems to have little impact on the way we live. In fact, it seems that we live in ways that expresses the notion that Jesus may serve American ideals more so than our ideals being brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Allegiance to the American empire seems to be the prioritizing allegiance. Loving God with all our strength challenges this state of affairs.

One thing that keeps me from becoming an American citizen – I live here as a permanent resident – is the oath of allegiance that every new citizen needs to take. I know that it relates to temporal matters, but I cannot in all good conscience express denouncing all other allegiances in order to give allegiance to the United States. All other allegiances, even my allegiance to Canada (I am a Canadian citizen), is secondary to my allegiance to Christ Jesus and his reign.

So in stating this, my confession is that all my desires, my choices, my living, my actions – my loving God with all my strength – grow out of centering my life in Jesus Christ and his Lordship. I confess I do not always get this right – at times I live in ways which displace my allegiance to Christ as the first and foremost allegiance in my life, but yet, as I grow as a follower, disciple, and worshiper of Jesus Christ, I actively seek to realign and reorient my life around living life centered in Jesus Christ.

Giving allegiance, rather than mere assent or belief to Christ, reframes every aspect of my life. It calls into question all that I do, all that I am, all that I hope for, plan for, seek to accomplish. It calls me to examine for what reason I do or for how I am all aspects of my life. I have to admit it is easy in our American lifestyle to relegate Jesus to Sundays, or to times of need – in order to pray for help. Yet, to have every aspect of my life shaped by giving allegiance and worship to him alone, is to find ways of keeping not only my life centered in him, but for him to be the primary focus in all I am and do.

Living in Christ, loving God with all my strength, calls for me to be intentional about my living, my actions; it provides a different perspective for living out my life. It is not primarily about my comfort, my success, my advancement – but rather it is about giving expression and giving presence – through acting and being – to the purposes of God in the world.

I guess what I am getting around to is asking myself the question as I begin my day everyday or examine my actions at the end of the day – is whether I am intent on living my life in such a way that it is not Roland that is magnified, but rather God’s purposes, God’s redemptive mission is being manifest – in fact God is being magnified.

What this requires of me – though I do not always do it well or with consistency – is to engage in a daily office of beginning my day centering myself in Jesus Christ and throughout my day seeking to realign myself to Jesus and his ways. This takes intentionality, this takes developing practices which keep my life focused on Christ, open to the Spirit of God, keeping myself attuned to God.

These practices include beginning my day reading Scripture, meditating and praying. I often use an online resource developed by Irish Jesuits entitled sacred space at www.sacredspace.ie . I engage in reading and spiritual conversation which keeps me attuned to God and God’s purposes. I also pray, read Scripture at times throughout the day – often linked with times of confession in order to realign myself to God’s purposes.

I find that not only does this centering myself in Christ transform my attitude and perspective during the day – but also shapes the way I am and the way I act – enabling me to love the Lord my God with all my strength.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Vol 2:26 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus – Loving God with all our soul

As previously blogged, I stated that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center for all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our soul.

For me the crux of the question of “soul work,” as some persons have expressed it, is who or what is at the center of the spiritual work we are trying to do in our lives. In conversations over the years I have discovered that Jesus is often seen as merely a resource for the work of spirituality and meaning making we are doing in our lives – indicating that in fact we are at the center of the work we are doing in our lives. Spirituality then becomes our work, rather than what God is accomplishing in our lives. Such a spirituality is shaped by our interests, is more rooted in psychology, in which we make the determination of what we open ourselves to in shaping who we are as people. Therefore, rather than being a spirituality that is rooted in God, it is in fact more rooted in ourselves.

What does it look like then for Jesus to be the center of our spirituality, for Jesus to be the center of our meaning making in our lives?

For one, it means that we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ where Jesus shapes the spirituality of our lives, where Jesus shapes us. In being a follower of Christ, we seek to be shaped and oriented around ways of living that exemplify the purposes of God. I.e., we seek for our lives to be shaped by what is important to Christ, rather than merely what is important to us.

Second, it involves us participating in this relationship with Christ as his disciples – ones who learn from him, ones who are open to Christ setting the agenda in our lives, ones who seek to live in obedience to him and his ways, recognizing that in doing so we ultimately discover who we are more than any agenda we may develop for ourselves. When we are in charge of our own spirituality, we seek to discern on our own the meaning and direction of our lives – and I have discovered that I am my own worst master. There are too many things in my life that distract me from living into that which Christ desires for me.

Third, it involves learning to see myself the way God sees me. It is through serving God in Christ, in worshiping God through Christ, that I begin to catch glimpses of the meaning and purpose that God has for me in loving me. Rather than thinking that I am enslaved and less human in serving God, I indeed have discovered that I am more enslaved and less humane when I seek to serve myself and be the sole director of the direction of my life. In serving God, in worshiping God, I am indeed liberated, more so than I can ever imagine.

I once conversed with a friend who was going off for a few weeks to do some soul work in his life, to sort through some inner child issues, to come to grips with some relational problems he was struggling with. He named the kind of work that he needed to do in his life as spiritual work. Now I recognize that we cannot compartmentalize our lives and all the work we do in our lives is indeed spiritual work, but the question I raise is who is doing the work in us – is it work God doing in us, or work we are doing relying on God as a mere resource along with other resources? I asked him a question as he was describing the work he was seeking to do in his life – I asked, “where is the ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ self or soul work he was seeking to do?” or “where is the ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ self work that he was purposing to embark upon?” We need to do psychological work in our lives, but it is not spiritual work unless it is work that we yield to Christ to do in us – for sure in partnership with us, but it is work that we the direction of over to Jesus.

When Paul talks about in Philippians 2 that we are to work out our own salvation, it is not meant to work out our salvation on our own – but to be intentionally in relationship and in discipleship with Jesus who is accomplishing the work of God in us.

There are probably more things I could say on this, but the point I want to get at is that immersing ourselves in Christ is probably the best soul work we can engage in – it is work which yields ourselves to the transforming work of the Spirit of God in us, and equips us to be active participants with God in God’s redemptive mission in the world.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Vol 2:25 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus - Loving God with all our heart

I am back from my month-long reading sabbatical and grateful for the time granted me by my congregation for time for reading, reflection, and a little bit of relaxation as well. In future blogs I want to focus on how some of my reading is shaping my on-going missional engagement, but I realize that I was in the midst of a 4 or 5 part blog on living centered in Jesus – but I am sure some of my thoughts generated from this sabbatical will find their way into my comments.

I mentioned in a previous blog that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center for our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center for all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our heart.

What or who we place at the center of our lives has a way of shaping everything else that we are and do. If Christ is compartmentalized in our life, then he serves whatever we have placed at the center. This language of loving God with all our heart is language of worship and it is in a worshipful attitude that we need to explore what it means for Jesus being the center of our purpose, our focus, our direction in life.

Another voice in this exploration comes from one of the books I read during my sabbatical – Walter Brueggemann’s Praying the Psalms. He talks about the Psalms as being disorienting and reorienting. The Psalms challenge our old orientations in which we rely upon ourselves, we trust in ourselves and as a result see the difficulties or vanity of life all around us. This challenging of our old orientations is mean to disorient us, to knock us off of what we hold as centers in our lives in order to see the inability for such centers to sustain us as human beings. In response, the Psalms reorient us to a new center – a center that is God, trust in God, reliance upon God – the One who alone is God (YHWH) – who alone can lead us in ways that shape us to be who we were created to be.

When something or someone else besides Jesus is the center of our lives, our lives will continue to be disoriented – we will come face to face with life’s struggles and not know how to get passed them in a healthy way. In centering our lives in Jesus our lives are reoriented to the things of God and around the things of God. Our lives are reoriented to notice what God notices, to see what God sees, to see what God is doing, to hear what God is saying. In our lives being centered in Jesus, all of who we are and what we do is reoriented around the purposes of God – which guides the living of our lives in radically different ways, than when something else has been the center.

Being missional is more than being about the task of engaging in mission, or being incarnational – it is first and foremost about loving God with all our heart. Such a loving is founded upon a reorientation of our lives that only happens as we are rooted and centered in Jesus Christ.

May we live in such a way that we are always open to the reorienting love in God shaping and directing our living.