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December 31, 2018 - February 2, 2019
these people had begun their journey in Christ in an even larger, more vigorous, more dynamic church whose worship was leading-edge contemporary, whose focus was strongly charismatic and whose corporate life centered in highly emotional expressions of faith in God. These people would stay in this church for about two to three years and then the novelty and excitement would become ritualized and dry for them.
We should note that when Jesus prays that we may all be one, he is not praying for some kind of sociological or theological or ecclesiological or liturgical unity. He is not asking for a homogeneity that levels all diversity and brings plurality into a single "authorized" manifestation of the Christian life or community
Jesus is indicating that the purpose of the Christian life is a life of loving union with God at the depths of our being.
All this suggests that when Jesus says that he has given to us the "glory" that God has given to him, he is indicating that he has made it possible for us to once again be formed in the image of God, to share God's nature as we were intended.
Union with God results in our being a person through whom God's presence touches the world with forgiving, cleansing, healing, liberating and transforming grace.
Think of itJesus says that God loves you in exactly the same way that God loves him! To respond to such love with the love of your total being draws you into that loving union with God for which Jesus prays.
To be like Jesus, then, as it is portrayed in the New Testament, is a matter of both "being" and "doing." It is being in a relationship of loving union with God that manifests itself in Christlike living in the world.
I hope you are beginning to see that the Christian life in its fullness is far more than being active in a Christian community, affirming a certain set of beliefs or adopting a particular behavior pattern. These are a secondary result of the primary reality of a life engaged in an ever deepening union with God in love.
Prayer itself becomes the experience of loving union with God.
loving union with God is the essence of the Christian life in the world.
He reveals there are two fundamental ways of being human in the world: trusting in our human resources and abilities or a radical trust in God. You cannot be grasped by or sustained in the deeper life in God-being like Jesus-until you are awakened at the deep levels of your being to this essential reality. You might describe these two ways of being in the world as the "false self" and the "true self."'
"Repentance is not being sorry for the things you have done, but being sorry you are the kind of person that does such things."
God's purpose for us was not simply to forgive sins but to transform our false self-to cleanse all its unrighteousness, to make us righteous, to restore us to our true self in loving relationship with God and in being Christlike in the world.
The temptation to take over God's role in our life is the essence of the false self. The false self is a self that in some way is playing god in its life and in its world.
Fear is the alternative to being a child of God, one whose spirit is in union with the Spirit of God.
our false self knows the roots of its identity are firmly planted in midair. There is no anchor for its being in something that is ultimately real.
One of the ways our false self tries to compensate is to find our identity in performance. "I am what I do" is one of the pri...
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The problem is that in its primal fear our false self sinks the roots of our identity into these activities-activities that were never intended to bear the weight of our identity as children of God. God alone is capable of bearing the weight of our identity
the only way we can know the true nature of our gender, sexuality and roles is by being in loving union with God at the core of our being.
The false self is so subtle in the ways it sinks its roots into things other than God, especially when you are engaged in God's work.
A secondary aspect of our false self's fear is anger. When we find ourselves unable to maintain a satisfactory matrix of identity, meaning, value and purpose in a world that constantly threatens to deconstruct that matrix, our false self is frequently angry at anyone or anything perceived to be thwarting our agenda.
A corollary of our false self's fear is our protectiveness. When we rely solely on our own resources for our identity, meaning, value and purpose, our false self, like Cain, constructs a "city" for itself.
Our false self is a master manipulator, always seeking to leverage its world and all those in it in ways most advantageous to our own security, prestige and, especially, agenda.
Having lost the true ground of our identity in loving union with God, where our real purpose in life is found, our false self must generate its own purpose.
When we operate as a false self we become destructive to ourselves, to others and to the world in which we live.
When we take the place of God at the center of our life and world, our false self always promotes us and our agenda above all others. Even our most noble actions are undertaken with one eye on those who observe the actions and the other eye on the benefits the action will bring.
Having lost our center in the One in whose presence is fullness of joy and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Ps 16: 11), our false self must find joy and pleasures elsewhere.
Often our false self's primary purpose in life is the gratification of our desires.
Our false self almost always treats symptoms rather than addressing the cause because to address the cause calls into question the viability of our false self.
Finally, our false self is characterized by a need to categorize others in ways that always give us the advantage.
None of the grounds we choose for rooting our identity are sufficient. None of them in and of themselves are necessarily bad, but they are not created to bear the weight of our being. When we seek to root our being in something other than God, we are a false self.
