Tag: care

Relation to Self

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 17 – Finding our place

Relation to Self

[Bible references: Psalm 8:5; 104:27-30; Micah 6:8; Matthew 6:26; 10:29-31; Luke 12:24; 18:29-30; John 13:35; Ephesians 1:7; 5: 21-33; Philippinas 2:1-11]

The second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” implies that we love ourselves. God loves us. He cares about us, even to the number of hairs on our head. We are His creatures. That makes us worth something. While the focus in the Greatest Commandments seems to be of us loving God and us loving our neighbor, we need to remember that the love we give flows out of the love we are given. We are neither loved more nor less than anyone else. This complementarity is woven together in Ephesians 5 where husbands are instructed to love their wives as much as they love their own bodies. In fact, we are best able to take care of others if we are healthy ourselves.

Our health includes all dimensions of our being: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual – If you will, our body, soul, and spirit. To be fully healthy, we need to pay attention to all these aspects of our lives. One problem area in the church as a whole is that it has commonly addressed all these aspects in an unbalanced way. It was due to that imbalance that a pastor, Peter Scazzero wrote, “Emotionally, Healthy Spirituality”[1] in response to the results of an unhealthily imbalance in his own life. Even within the field of medicine, there is a recognition of the connection of physical and spiritual health.[2]

Yahweh has created us with particular bodies in particular times and places, but our post-modern culture has added one more type of imbalance. When some of us experience a dysmorphic disorder, our culture encourages us to deny our embodied identity in Christ. Instead of grounding our being in the surety of our identity in Christ, we are encouraged to ground our being in an identity based on a broken self-perception.

This action replaces Yahweh’s authority with our own, centering our lives in our limited knowledge which is subject to fleeting emotions. This post-modern diminished focus on Yahweh’s authority strips the determination of truth from an all-knowing God and places the determination of truth on our incomplete (and sinfully corrupted) knowledge.[3] However, our primary identity should be based on our identity in Christ with all sub-identities being subject to that.

When we engage in other relationships both within and without the church, we need to be honest about who we are. None of us has it all figured out. We all fall short of what Yahweh intends for us to be. We all lack wisdom and knowledge and all of us are in rebellion. All of us, whether we claim we are children of Yahweh or not, are daily working our way to or from Yahweh. We all imperfectly “do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” We all need forgiveness.

In the end, Yahweh will be the dispenser of wrath to those who remain in rebellion against him, but it is his love that draws us to Him, and it is by His love that people will know we belong to him. The love and mercy we receive from Yahweh may be unearned, but we are loved, and therefore, we need to learn to love ourselves as well. From the security of that love, the love which Christ had towards us when were unlovable, we can then reach out in love with those with whom we disagree or find offensive. As we learn to fully receive the love of God, we will strengthen our ability to love others.

[1] Scazzero, Peter. “Emotionally, Healthy Spirituality”  Zondervan, 2017

[2] Cook, Alison. “The Most Important Gift” Alisoncookphd.com www.alisoncookphd.com/the-most-important-gift and “Saying Yes To Yourself” 2 Dec 2020 www.alisoncookphd.com/saying-yes-to-yourself/

[3] Groothuis, Douglas. “Postmodernism on Race and Gender: An Evangelical Response” Asbury Seminary, place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=asburyjournal

Reflect

Various businesses use our various media to try to make us dissatisfied with our bodies to create desires to buy services or products to make our bodies “more acceptable.” Our social media enhances that effort. While It is good to be

Observe

Read Psalm 8:5; 104:27-30; Matthew 6:26; 10:29-31; 12:11-12; Luke 12:24. If God cares about your needs, how should you care for yourself?

Fruits of the Disciplines

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Fruits of the disciplines

[Bible references: Ruth 3:11; 1 Samuel 13:14; 2 Samuel 11; 1 Kings 22:35; 1 Kings 16:33; 1 Chronicles 29:17; Job 2:3; Psalm 15:1-2; 78:72; Proverbs 4:23; 10:9; 11:3; 17:3; Nehemiah 7:2; Daniel 1:8-9; Matthew 5-7; 12:33; 15:19-20; 23”27-28; Romans 5:3-4; 1 Corinthians 15:10, 33; Galatians 5:22–23; Colossians 3:12-15 23-24; Philippians 2:12–16; 4:8; 1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9;2:7-8; 1 Thessalonians 4:1; 1 Peter 1:6-7;’ 5:1-4; 2 Peter 1:3-8] 

Forming our dependence on the Holy Spirit

Practicing the disciplines opens us up to the work of the Holy Spirit within us, transforming our very inner character (moral qualities, ethical standards, and principles) into the likeness of Christ. Christian character is the product of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that produces the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, long suffering, and self-control. Although it is the Holy Spirit who transforms us, we are still called to work with and not against the Spirit. It is by His grace that we are transformed, and it is also by his grace that we can work with Him as He brings His kingdom into the world. Because the Spirit of God lives in us, He provides the grace and power that make godly living possible. We are encouraged to make use of this great power.

Forming our character/integrity

People of character are noted for their honesty, ethics, and charity. Descriptions such as “man of principle” and “woman of integrity” are assertions of character. A person’s character is the sum of his or her disposition, thoughts, intentions, desires, and actions.

It is good to remember that character is gauged by general tendencies, not on few isolated actions. We must look at our whole life. For example, King David was a man of good character although he sinned on occasion. And although King Ahab may have acted nobly once, he was still a man of overall bad character. Several people in the Bible are described as having noble character: Ruth, Hanani, David, and Job. These individuals’ lives were distinguished by persistent moral virtue.

People of good character are often described with terms like integrity, honesty, strong moral fiber, care and concern for others, and the like. Although their character is demonstrated in actions, true character resides in the heart. True godliness includes both right actions and right motives.

Forming our choices

Character is developed by our choices. Daniel “resolved not to defile himself” in Babylon (Daniel 1:8), and that godly choice was an important step in formulating an unassailable integrity in the young man’s life. Character, in turn, influences our choices.

We can develop character by controlling our thoughts, practicing Christian virtues, guarding our hearts, and keeping good company. Men and women of character will set a good example for others to follow, and their godly reputation will be evident to all.

Observe

Read 1 Peter 1:5-9. Which characteristic gives you the most problems?

Living temples

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 3 – The image-bearers

Living temples

[Bible references: Genesis 1; 3:6; Isaiah 35; 54:10; 60; Jeremiah 29:1-23; John 2:19-21; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19-20; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21; Revelations 15:8; 21:22]

Although God’s first image-bearers had close, unhindered, intimate contact with their Creator, there was enough space given them to think freely, as if they were not being watched all the time. It was in this space that they – and we – were given several blessings: the freedom to procreate (be fruitful and multiply), to oversee God’s creation (subdue the earth and have dominion over its creatures), and to nurture God’s creation (work it and take care of it).[1] We were given the assignment to be fruitful, to fill all the earth, discover its possibilities and care for the world in the same way that God would care for the world.[2] Just as God continues to create more living things and sustain all that he has created, we as his co-regents[3], can join him in sustaining and creating those things entrusted to our care.

  “There are two ways in which God imposes his law on the cosmos, two ways in which his will is done on earth as in heaven. He does it either directly, without mediation, or indirectly, through the involvement of human responsibility. Just as a human sovereign does certain things himself, but gives orders to his subordinates for other things, so with God himself. He put the planets in their orbits, makes the seasons come and go at the proper time, makes seeds grow and animals reproduce, but entrusts to mankind the tasks of making tools, doing justice, producing art, and pursuing scholarship. In other words, God’s rule of law is immediate in the nonhuman realm but mediate in culture and society. In the human realm men and women become coworkers with God; as creatures made in God’s image, they too have a kind of lordship over the earth, are God’s viceroys in creation.” [4]

We were also given the responsibility to subdue the earth and have dominion over its creatures. When there is resistance, we still have the responsibility to bring the rule of God to the world. Then we are given the responsibility to work and take care of the earth, starting in the Garden of Eden and then expanding to all of God’s creation. Implied in all these things is that we should do everything in context of God’s love, to care for each other and to care for the earth and its creatures with the mind of the God who created us for love.

The work that we were designed to do was more than just tending the garden. In Genesis 2:15, we were given a mandate to “work” and “take care of” the garden God had created. These tasks in light of Ancient Near East culture, were more of a priestly nature, taking care of this temple where we reside with God.

“The verbs ʿbd and šmr (NIV: “work” and “take care of”) are terms most frequently encountered in discussions of human service to God rather than descriptions of agricultural tasks… ‘bd can refer to … work connected with one’s vocation, to religious service deemed worship … šmr is used in the contexts of the priestly responsibility of guarding sacred space, as well as in the sense of observing religious commands and responsibilities … it is likely that the tasks given to Adam are of a priestly nature: caring for sacred space. In ancient thinking, caring for sacred space was a way of upholding creation.”[5]

We were to take care of this place which was designed to be a “very good” place for us to flourish in, creating whatever structures we needed to “increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.” This task, this mandate, meant that we would eventually go beyond the capacity of gardening and create not just a bigger garden but cities, a flourishing civilization as pictured in Revelation 21 and 22.[6]

When examined closely, we can see the breadth of what was committed to Adam and Eve. Subduing the earth would entail many physical, social, and intellectual activities. In the gardening we can see cultivation and farming; in taking care of the animals, we can see shepherding and domestication; in the naming of the animals, we can see a cultural and scientific activity which required understanding the nature and attributes of the animals and establishing authority over them. We can see that God had created things to be beautiful and as his image-bearers we would be expected to also create beautiful things.

As we look forward to the new earth which will manifest when Jesus comes again, nature’s comeliness will reach its pinnacle; the wilderness itself will burst into blossom, and streams will gush in the desert. To complement all this natural beauty, human culture will flourish. All the great creativity of humankind-artistry in music, dance, painting, woodcrafts, sculpture, architecture and more-will be brought into the New Jerusalem.[7]

There is a sense in which we, as members of the Kingdom of God, now seem to be living in a foreign land. This puts us in a position similar to the Israelites when they were taken in exile into Babylonia. During their stay in Babylonia, God’s instructions were to settle down, build houses, get married, have children and to seek the prosperity of the city they were sent to, for “if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

But above all these things we can do, we should not lose focus on who we are. We are creatures designed by God to be like God to be in relationship with Him, the God who is a community in Himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything we do should be done in context of who we are. We should remember that we were designed to be human “beings,” not human “doings.” This viewpoint become clear when we compare the Biblical view of creation to the view of other Ancient Near East cultures. For the surrounding cultures humans beings were created to feed the gods and serve the gods who created them, whereas the Biblical viewpoint sees God being the provider for the people.[8]

Originally, we see Creation designed as a temple, a place for us to “be” with God. Later on, Jesus refers to himself as the temple, a human in whom God resides. Later on, Paul declares that our own bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. So here again, we see the mystery of perichoresis, where we are distinct from the Holy Spirit, yet the Holy Spirit becomes a part of who we are. In this we see the mystery of perichoresis unifying the persons within God, unifying the body, soul and spirit within humans, and unifying God and humans.

[1] Jacobsen, Eric O. The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment, Baker Academic, 2012, (Page 20 )

[2] Crouch, Andy. “What is the Cultural Mandate” The Village Church, 6 Jan 2017 www.tvcresources.net/resource-library/talks/what-is-the-cultural-mandate

[3] Walton, John H. “The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (Proposition 4) InterVarsity Press. 2015 Kindle Edition

[4] Albert M. Wolters. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview William B. Eerdmans Publishing 1985, 2005. eBook(Locations 203-208)

[5] Walton, John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate Edition(p. 105-106).

122 Buzenitz, Nathan. “The New Jerusalem”

[7] Sherman, Amy L. Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good. Intervarsity Press, 2011 eBook location 291

[8] Walton, John. “The Lost World of Adam and Eve,” I “Proposition 12: Adam is Assigned as Priest in Sacred Space, with Eve to Help” (p.104)

Observe

Read Genesis 1; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19-20; 2 Corinthians 6:16. What difference does it make if the universe is God’s temple or that our bodies are God’s temple?