respond – Dancing In The Kingdom

Created as parts of a body

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

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

Created as parts of a body

[Bible references: Romans 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4:1-16]

We were created to be connected. We have individual identities and desires, but we were created for love by the God of love. As God’s image-bearers, we are intended to love one another just as love is shared between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. We are told that the world will know us by our love.

Through a process we cannot understand, the Son of God, Jesus, the Christ, appeared in the flesh two thousand years ago. After His resurrection and He “returned to heaven,” He then sent the Holy Spirit who entered into His disciples. His disciples then, as Christ’s ambassadors, became His body, creatures filled with His very Spirit who were then His feet and hands, even His voice, on the earth. And it is through His body that we and others may come to know about Christ. Sometimes we come to know Christ directly through a member of His body or indirectly by what someone recorded for us. And when we respond to His call through the body of Christ, we also become part of that same great body.

We come to Christ in response to His Spirit connecting with our spirit. But the means of that connection is through the Body of Christ. As we understand how even the set of writings, we call the Bible, was written and compiled by that great body, we can grasp the dependence that we have on His body to even to come to Him. That dependence does not end after we respond to Him but enters us into an interdependence with each other: We are dependent on each other to more fully learn how to love God and love neighbor, we are dependent on each other to build each other up.

Reflect

How can you foster the need that the church has for us to be interdependent with each other?

Observe

Read 1 Corinthians 12. If someone tries to be a “part time” church member, how does that affect everyone else?

Discipline of Worship/Celebration

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

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

Discipline of Worship/Celebration

[Bible references: Deuteronomy 12; Isaiah 6:1-13; Matthew 6:25-34; John 4:23-24; Psalm 29; 95:1-7; 102; Romans 12:1-2]

“Authentic worship will impel us to join in the Lamb’s war against demonic powers everywhere—on the personal level, on the social level, on the institutional level. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is our Commander-in-Chief. We receive his orders for service and go …”^{^[1]}

“The pervasive sinfulness of human beings becomes evident when contrasted with the radiant holiness of God. Our fickleness becomes apparent once we see God’s faithfulness. To understand his grace is to understand our guilt” ^{^[2]}

God does so many things in our lives, and when we build up worship as a spiritual discipline, we learn to identify what He has done and honor him in appropriate ways. The first step it to give glory to God for all things in our lives. When we have privileges, they come from God. When we are bountiful, it comes from God. When we see something beautiful or good, we need to thank God for those things. God shows us His ways through others, and by giving Him the glory, we are worshiping him.

Another way to respond to God is to sacrifice. Sometimes honoring God means giving up things we think we’re enjoying but may not be edifying. We sacrifice our time by volunteering, and we sacrifice our money to help those in need, we sacrifice our ear to those who need us to listen. Sacrifice doesn’t always mean grand gestures. Sometimes it’s small sacrifices that allow us to worship God in our actions.

The spiritual discipline of worship can be beautiful and fun. The obvious form of worship, celebrating together and singing in church, can be a great time. Some people dance. Worshiping God can be both fun and serious. Laughter and celebration are ways to worship God.

As we practice the spiritual discipline of worship, we learn to experience God in His Glory. We easily identify His works in our lives. We seek out our time with God in prayer or conversation. We never feel alone because we always know God is right there with us. Worship is an ongoing experience and connection with God.

Worship is probably the most familiar of the Spiritual Disciplines. What does it mean to practice worship as a Spiritual Discipline? We all worship something; it’s only a question of what it will be. The number one topic of the Bible is our worship of God. The Israelites were constantly getting into trouble because of one thing — idolatry — the worship of something other than God. If we really believe that God is who he says he is then we will worship him, not out of a sense of duty, but because of who he is — then our worship will overflow into all other activities.

The celebration of worship is great when it just flows out of the moment we are in. The discipline of worship is necessary when we don’t feel the overflow but begin by forcing ourselves to begin to worship anyways. It might be that as we begin to worship our spirit will respond in earnestness. But even if our spirit does not seem to respond at the moment, we may continue the discipline because God is worthy despite how we feel.

Observe

Read Psalm 95; 102. These two Psalms begin from two different experiences. What do they have in common?

Discipline of Gratitude

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

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

Discipline of Gratitude

[Bible references: Psalm 118:1-29; 136:1-26; Philippians 4:4-8; Colossians 3:1-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18]

“One of the most important—and most neglected—elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us.”^{^[1]}

But a true Christian experience would find, during some part of every day, the soul in a condition to love and praise God. To be in a praising state one must be in a most unselfish condition of mind; he must live relatively humble as before God; he must be sensitive to his obligations to God; he must have a faith that shall enable him to see God in the events which are transpiring about hi m. “a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.”^{^[2]}

“Dr. Atkinson writes that scans show that when people share positive emotions there is a natural sync up process … research shows tremendous benefit to the one who is expressing gratitude, in the manner of it is better to give than to even receive.”^{^[3]}

“You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.” ^{^[4]}

“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the views they take of them.”^{^[5]}

Gratitude is the affirmation of the good things we have received from someone else. That feeling of gratitude results in the desire to either repay the giver or to pay forward to someone else with good things. Basic gratitude is a simple response to what we have received, but the spiritual discipline of gratitude is pro-active; it calls us to not depend on external circumstances but to train ourselves to intentionally look for reasons to be thankful in all situations; it calls us to pursue gratitude not just because it makes us feel good but because it is good for one’s family, community, and society. It is a virtue that is practiced, not just a feeling. The discipline of gratitude calls us to seek greater mindfulness and awareness, to be more present in the moment, to sharpen our powers of observation, to notice what others miss, to develop humility in recognition that the good in one’s life comes from outside the self, and to actively seek to reciprocate these gifts, returning goodness for goodness. Therefore, the goal of Gratefulness is to develop our ability to recognize and appreciate God’s provision.

The discipline of gratitude will be on guard against the various obstacles to feeling gratitude: our busyness and distraction, our ingrained penchant for noticing the negative over the positive, our tendency to adapt to the feelings of gratitude and allowing ourselves to become numbed to the reasons for our gratitude, and the possibility of feeling envy as we tend to compare what we have to what others have.

Counteracting those obstacles will require us to focus on things that will enhance our ability to keep alert, to see familiar things in a new way, to recognize the abundance of what we have rather than what we lack, to not forget all the good we have in our lives and to remember where it came from and how it made us feel.

^[1] Merton, Thomas. No Man is an Island Mariner Books 2002 (pp. 33-34)

^[2] Beecher, Henry Ward. The Life of H. W Beecher. Chapter 4. Plymouth Church (p. 77)

^[3] Green, Barbara J. “Open your heart and focus on gratitude: Feel connection, share connection” BJgreenphd.com 2 Feb 2016 www.bjgreenphd.com/open-heart-focus-gratitude-feel-connection-share-connection

^[4] Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning Beacon Press 2006

^[5] Epictectus. Enchiridion. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ed. Chapter 5 www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0237%3Atext%3Denc%3Achapter%3D5

Reflect

The marketing done in our consumer culture is designed to make us discontent, to make us desire things we don’t need. What desires are creating discontent in your life?

Observe

Read Psalm 136. This Psalm shows gratitude for what Yahweh had done for Israel in the past. Could you make a list of gratitude for what Yahweh has done in your life?

Spurning love

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 4– Retreating to chaos

Spurning love

[Bible references: Genesis 3:1-7]

God created His image-bearing creatures so that they could receive love and respond in love. He provided those creatures with an ideal environment in which to thrive. These creatures knew the One who created and loved them and yet they chose to reject that love. As the descendants of the original image-bearers, we know that impulse all too well, the compelling urge to distrust others and to rely on our own resources, the desire to clutch power to ourselves and reject any claim to another’s authority over us. These urges and desires seem to overwhelm the opportunity to receive the love offered to us and thus removing our ability to respond by offering love.

We are marked by our continued failure to resist the temptation to grab what we want instead of waiting to receive what we want from God. In spurning God’s love, in rebelling against His authority, we break the bonds that hold us to each other and to God, and in doing so breaking what bound the Kingdom of Heaven to Creation.

In all of human history, Jesus was the only one able to successfully resist the temptation to grab for himself instead of waiting for the Father to provide. His success began the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, a restoration that will not be complete until He comes again to fully reunite Heaven and Earth. Until heaven and earth are fully reunited, we will not fully experience the overflowing shalom that God has intended for us. Until that time, the broken earth will be separated from heaven and allowed to sink into disorder and chaos. Until that time, the overflowing goodness and shalom that God had provided will be masked by the brokenness of not just Creation but also by the brokenness of the co-creators. Look at what we have done!

We were meant to be in communion with each other and with God. We were meant to be “gardening” with God to make our place, a place of thriving and abundance in concord with the type of thriving and abundance with which God originally made the universe. God intended for us to be connected to Him and to be filled with His Spirit so that we would be fully enabled to be co-creators with Him of good works. But until then, we are in a state of rebellion, separated from the one who is the source of goodness. In that sense, we are less human than we should be.

Reflect

It seems to be part of human nature, to be suspicious of those things or those people who are different than us. The question is, when does doubting someone else’s motives become an act of sin?

Observe

Read Genesis 3:1-7. What hidden desires may cause us to distrust someone?

Breath to breath

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Breath to breath

[Bible ref: 2 Timothy 3:16; Romans 15:4; Hebrews 4:12; Psalm 19:7-11]

We say that the Bible is inspired, God-breathed. That is, God breathed His words to the human writers of the Bible, who then wrote down what “God breathed” into them. But how is that revelation, that communication, of God which was written by human authors, breathed into us so that we can respond to the hearing of God’s inspired word and live it out, breath it out if you will, out into the world around us as we participate with God in bringing His Kingdom into the world?

Old Testament authors used scrolls made of papyrus reeds to record his inspirations from God. But making copies of manuscripts was labor intensive and would take a long time, so most people did not have written copies of what Moses wrote. Most people only heard as others read it out loud. Reading out loud in community was the normal way to read until the invention of the printing press.

The people hearing the inspired word then learned to memorize and meditate on what they heard. The Hebrew word for “hear” is “shema.” Shema implies not just passively hearing or listening but also implies obedience. So, to “shema” the inspired Word is not just to hear it but to obey it.

When the New Testament manuscripts began to be produced, the copies could now be put into a codex, which is similar to modern-day books. The codex manuscripts were then more easily stored and carried. But again, few people had written copies and most people still relied on hearing the word and memorizing and meditating on it. The codex technology did allow for the integration of such things as parallel columns and reference notes for the few people who had access to the written Bibles.

The invention of the printing press in the 1400s now allowed copies to be easily and cheaply mass produced so that more people could now have access to the written Bible. It was at this time that the Biblical writings were now divided into chapters and verses. This allowed the average person to more easily refer to specific passages. Before the chapter and verse notations were added to the Bible, people could only refer to particular passages by quoting them – which was manageable if people were in the habit of memorizing those writings. Printed Bibles with chapters and verses now allowed people to use the Bible without as much need for memorizing Bible passages.

The Protestant Reformation’s rebellion against the authority of the (Roman Catholic) church was enabled by the availability of the Bible to the common person. In addition to Bibles, Bible reference books such as concordances and Bible dictionaries were produced, allowing the average person to study the Bible on their own.

When home computers became available in the 1980’s, electronic version of the Bible and Bible references were produced, making those resources more available to the average user. Access to the World Wide Web began in the 1990’s which made even more resources easily available. Mobile devices even added more convenient access beginning in the 2000’s. All these new technologies make it possible to learn and use the Bible in different ways.

In this digital era, I would encourage you to mix old and new, memorize not just search, meditate not just share, listen not just read, do not just hear. As you use different forms of media to encounter Scripture, reflect on them with others in your faith community and work together to make choices out of conviction rather than convenience alone.[1]

We now have many options available for connecting with the Biblical text. But knowing the Bible is not the same as engaging is spiritual disciplines to open oneself to being transformed and to better know God and it’s not the same as participating with a community of believers building up one another.

[1] Dyer, John. “Bible Apps are the new Printing Press” Christianity Today www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/december/dyer-bible-apps-software-screen-printing-press.html

Observe

Read 2 Timothy 3:16. How does the definition of the Hebrew word, “shema,” fit with the statement in 2 Timothy 3:16?