The Rhythm of My Spiritual Life Is a Wheel Rolling Forward

(I re-post this periodically to keep it in play.)

When I became a follower of Jesus fifty-two years ago (!!!) I was an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University. I began to attend a campus ministry. I was asked if I wanted to be in a Small Group for Bible study and prayer. I was told this experience would be one of the keys to my spiritual vitality and growth.

That proved true. I've been in a Small Group all fifty-three years of my Christian life. Linda and I have been in a Small Group Community all fifty-one years of our marriage.

The early Jesus-followers met in small groups of Jesus-followers; in homes, in upper rooms, wherever they could find a gathering place. Small Group Community was essential to the explosive spiritual and numerical growth of the early church. It's also essential to my spiritual life and growth.

The rhythm of my spiritual life looks like this:

I meet alone with God. I spend time with God in "the secret place." 

This is the Very Small Group (VSG) - God and I.

I meet bi-weekly in a Home Group to study scripture and pray together. 

This is the Small Group (SG) - 8-12 people.

I meet Sunday mornings to worship and listen to the preached Word on Sunday mornings and other times.

This is the Large Group (LG). 

Today it's Saturday morning, and I have spent time alone with God in the VSG.

A week ago was the SG - Linda and I were there.

On Sunday morning I'll be with my LG.

VSG-SG-LG; VSG-SG-LG...  over and over again and again.

It looks like this:

Note: this is a circle rolling forward on a path, led by God, progressing in the spiritual life and the movement of God and his kingdom. (It is not "the eternal recurrence of the same.")

***
My book on prayer focuses on the VSG - Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

THE GREAT INVASION #16 Miracles Were Performed Through Jesus

 

(From my book. Chapter 16.)

THE GREAT INVASION

 #16

Miracles Were Performed Through Jesus

"For general purposes used here, 

a 'miracle' may be defined as an extraordinary event

with an unusual supernatural cause."

- Craig Keener[i]

I have witnessed miracles. Here's one that happened with us at Redeemer,  which Craig Keener records in his book Miracles, and Lee Strobel shares in The Case for Miracles. 

 Carl Cocherell was a long-distance runner. He trained for, and ran, marathons. He ran the Detroit Free Press Marathon and did well enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I remember being in Carl’s home. He showed me a photo taken of him running in Boston.

Your feet are important when you run like Carl did. His family told me a story about Carl’s obsession with running. One time Carl’s wife Sarah said to her husband, “Carl, we need to get some bread. We’re out of it. Would you run to the store and get a loaf of bread?” And he did. Literally. Carl ran a few miles, round trip, to get a loaf of bread.

I have never been able to run like Carl ran. But I admired him for his athletic abilities. And I felt sad when he broke his foot.

Carl was on a spiritual retreat in Branson, Missouri. He was checking the oil in his car, and stepped down, and heard a crack in his foot. He went to the emergency room in Branson. The orthopedic surgeon showed him the X-rays.

After setting the break, the orthopedist ordered Carl to stay overnight. He put Carl’s foot in a cast, and told him, “You will need months of therapy.”

I remember hearing what happened to Carl. At our church, on the Sunday following his accident, some of our people prayed, asking God to heal Carl’s broken foot.

Craig Keener writes about what happened next.

“Carl's wife drove them back to Michigan, and the next day his family doctor sent him to the hospital for some more X-rays. After receiving the X-rays, his doctor called him into the office and explained that there were no breaks, or even tissue indicating where the break had been. "You never had a broken ankle," the doctor explained. 

Carl pointed out the X-rays from Missouri. "That is a broken ankle," the doctor admitted. But now there was no sign that he even had one, so the doctor removed the cast right away. 

Apart from the ankle being blue for a couple of days, Carl had no problem with it. At church that Sunday, where he used no crutches or other support, he testified how God healed him. Carl provided me with the radiology reports from before and after the healing supporting his claim."[ii]

I have the radiology reports, before and after, in my office at home.

Jesus performed miracles. He healed people. Keener writes:

"Scholars often note that miracles characterized Jesus's historical activity no less than his teaching and prophetic activities did. So central are miracle reports to the Gospels that one could remove them only if one regarded the Gospels as preserving barely any genuine information about Jesus."[iii]

Western culture, influenced by David Hume's skeptical arguments, dismisses the possibility of miracles. Thomas Jefferson, architect of the "American Jesus," insisted that miracles "were an affront to the demands of reason and the laws of nature, and Jesus had performed not a one."[iv]

One of the innumerable strong points in Keener's book is a thorough debunking of Hume's argument against the possibility of miracles, thus clearing the way for their possibility and, in examples such as Carl’s, their actuality. 

 Miracles were performed through the Real Jesus. They were central, Kingdom-confirming signs and wonders. In my fifty-four years as a Jesus-follower I have seen several of them, which I have recorded in my journals, spoken publicly about, and written about.

Today, remember that all things are possible with God, as you connect with Christ. 

 

The blind will see

The deaf will hear

And the dead will live again

The lame will leap

The dumb will speak

The praises of the Lamb

“Mary, Did You Know?”

---

[i] Keener,  Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts - Vol 1, p. 110

 

[ii] - Ib.  P. 440

 

[iii] Ib.  Pp 23-24

 

[iv] Stephen Prothero, American Jesus, p. 23

 

Looking for a Joyful Person

 

                                                           (The Dime Store, in Detroit.)

To find a joyful person, look beneath the surface behaviors.

Henri Nouwen writes:

"Joyful persons do not necessarily make jokes, laugh, or even smile. They are not people with an optimistic outlook on life who always relativize the seriousness of a moment or an event. No, joyful persons see with open eyes the hard reality of human existence and at the same time are not imprisoned by it. They have no illusion about the evil powers that roam around, “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), but they also know that death has no final power. They suffer with those who suffer, yet they do not hold on to suffering; they point beyond it to an everlasting peace."

Nouwen, Henri J. M.. You Are the Beloved: 365 Daily Readings and Meditations for Spiritual Living: A Devotional (p. 383). 

Blessed Are the Mono-Taskers, for They Shall See God

                                                                         (Redeemer church, in Monroe)

My Payne Theological Seminary class is called Spiritual Formation. My main assignment is: set apart one hour a day, five days a week, for seven weeks. Use this time to pray and listen to God. Keep a record of the voice and activity of God in a spiritual journal. 

Needed: listening skills, ability to meditate, and focus, to allow God to dive deep in your heart. 

I taught, for seventeen years, three philosophy courses at Monroe County Community College: Introduction to Logic, Introduction to Western Philosophy, and Philosophy of Religion. The ability to stay on task is needed to learn philosophy, and to think philosophically. A philosopher must have the capacity to go inward, to ponder, to ruminate. 

Spiritual formation and philosophy are slow cookers, not microwaves. Both, if attended to, produce lasting fruit in a person’s life. Oak trees grow from the soil of slow thinking about life’s big ideas. (For one example of slow-cooked thinking, see Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.)

Deep, lasting, relationships are best when slow-cooked, too. This includes the God-relationship. Knowing God involves more than theoretical knowledge, just as one learns to ride a bike by actually riding it, by  spending much time with it.  

Kierkegaard told us that a pure heart, untainted by distractions, wills one thing. To “will one thing” is to focus on, attend to, be captivated by, be still before, one thing. What is the benefit of that? Nothing less, said Jesus, than the visio dei. (See here.) 

Blessed are the mono-taskers, for they shall see God.

(From my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.)

Should We Affirm Everyone's Worldview?

 

                                                          (Sterling State Park, Monroe)

Every moral judgment finds its residence in a pre-existing worldview. There are folks who do not agree with me morally. They don't accept my Jesus-formed worldview. OK. But if I have the opportunity to ask them, I say, "What is your worldview? Please explain."

I've been studying worldviews for five decades. I see no reason to discard my Christian theistic worldview. What might I replace it with? There's nothing on the horizon, as I see it. So, do not be intimidated by someone who doesn't like your worldview.

I taught logic at Monroe County Community College for seventeen years. I used two logic textbooks: Hurley, and Vaughn. Both texts, indeed, all logic texts, are about evaluating and formulating beliefs. A belief is a statement that claims something as either true, or false. To claim that something is true, or false, is to say that a certain state of affairs obtains, or does not obtain.

For example, The window in my home office is now closed. That statement is true. Which means, it is true for everybody, whether they agree with it or not. This is called "objective truth." 

Objective truth is not socially constructed. Or, at least, an objective truth cannot be fully reduced to a social construction. Objective truth has nothing to do with whether or not people affirm or disaffirm it.

This is how scientists think. To claim that The Moderna vaccine has a 95% efficacy against the coronavirus is to say that a certain objective state of affairs obtains. Which is to say, it either does, or it doesn't, and this has nothing to do with the social construction of reality. Should we affirm everyone's belief about the efficacy of the Moderna vaccine? Of course not. The scientist is interested in What IS the efficacy of the Moderna vaccine? The answer to this question is unrelated to what people believe about the efficacy of the vaccine.

Vaughn has some nice sections on worldviews. A worldview is a set of beliefs. Vaughn writes:

"A worldview is a philosophy of life, a set of beliefs and theories that helps us make sense of a wide range of issues in life. It defines for us what exists, what should be, and what we can know. We all have a worldview, and our notions about morality are part of it." (P. 422)

Worldviews differ. Should we affirm everyone's worldview? Of course not. We should love people, of course. But we should not expect those who hold to differing worldviews to affirm (agree with? Endorse?) differing worldviews. Here is why.

The statement We should affirm everyone's worldview is itself part of a worldview (postmodernism). This moral belief itself is not part of my worldview (Christianity), for example. It's also not part of a Muslim worldview. Nor is it part of a philosophical atheist's worldview. Over the years I have had numerous discussions with atheists. Not one of them has "affirmed" my belief that God exists.

Undergirding the false belief that We should affirm everyone's worldview is the belief that Reality is socially constructed. But if that were true, then the belief that Reality is socially constructed is itself socially constructed. If the belief that we should affirm everyone's worldview is itself socially constructed, then we need pay no attention to it.

Come, Now Is the Time to Behold Him

(Black-capped chickadee,
on our back deck)

Thomas Merton writes:

"If we are fools enough to remain at the mercy of the people who want to sell us happiness, it will be impossible for us ever to be content with anything. How would they profit if we became content? We would no longer need their new product. The last thing the salesman wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our affluent society unless you are always just about to grasp what you never have." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 86)

Come, now is the time to purchase. And be discontent.

On the other hand, Paul writes, in Philippians 4:12 - I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

He writes out of a simple, impoverished context. Paul did not have a closet full of clothes, a garage full of toys, a refrigerator filled with food, and a 401K. "Plenty" for Paul was our "in need." "In need" for Paul was our destituteness. But he had learned some things. One was "the secret of being content in any and every situation."

Contentment, for Paul, was not contingent on economic security or material possessions. He experienced contentment, whatever the situation. Real contentment is not circumstance-bound. I'd like that, wouldn't you? What's the secret?

It's an open secret that Paul found strength and contentment in Christ, the hope of glory, within. Having Christ within implies contentment and satisfaction. What could be greater than internalizing the Lord of heaven and earth? The world works hard to get us to forget this.

This season, remember.

Be not distracted.

Come, now is the time to behold Him.

CHRISTMAS AND THE POWER OF HUMILITY

This is two years old, so the dates don't line up with the present. Nonetheless, I am re-posting it for this Christmas season. Blessings!

The Joy of Living Without Things

 

                (Our grandchildren, Levi and Harper)

The biblical idea of contentment is circumstance-independent. As are peace, joy, love and so on. 

The "fruit of the Spirit" is circumstance-independent. Were this not so, things like inner peace would be conditional, and that's bad news for all of us. That is, "IF I have _________, THEN I will have inner peace."

This "If... then" mentality results in our being captive to our circumstances.

Philip Yancey shares this story In his excellent book on prayer.

"I remembered reading the account of a spiritual seeker who interrupted a busy life to spend a few days in a monastery. “I hope your stay is a blessed one,” said the monk who showed the visitor to his cell. “If you need anything, let us know and we’ll teach you how to live without it.”" (Yancey, Prayer, Kindle Locations 1012-1015)

Forgiving Others - Three Stages

 

Chicago

What is forgiveness? Lewis Smedes, in his paradigm-changing book Forgive and Forget, stages the process of forgiveness this way.

1) You surrender the right to get even with the person who wronged you.

You will no longer engage in ways of making them pay for how they wounded you.

You give whatever justice should be exacted over to God.

You let it go.

2) You reinterpret the person who wronged you in a larger format.

You begin to see the person as God sees them. 

This helps us avoid creating a "caricature" of the person who wounded us. "In the act of forgiving, we get a new picture of a needy, weak, complicated, fallible human being like ourselves."

We begin to see that we are "that kind of people" too, not in the details, but in the heart.

As you begin to view the person who hurt you this way, forgiveness is taking root in you.

Forgiveness will be securely planted in you when you experience stage three, as a matter of your heart.

3) You develop a gradual desire for the welfare of the person who wounded you.

At this stage you are like Jesus, who loved us even as we were his enemies and wounded him on the cross.

NINE ELEMENTS OF HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

 

 

                                                             (Monroe)

NINE ELEMENTS OF HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

-       Linda & John Piippo

(Linda and I preached this on Sunday morning, Aug. 16, 2020.) 

What we have learned about relationships. Surely there’s more to say.

This is for all relationships - family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, teams, and marriages.

 

9 Components of Healthy Relationships

1.    Love one another. With unconditional, agape love. (No “If-then” love).

 

2.    Understanding each other. Get a PhD in the other person. Don’t judge or evaluate without understanding. To understand is to love; to be understood is to feel loved.

 

3.    Submit to one another (this is life in the Kingdom of God)

         …  with boundaries. (Ephesians 5:21 - Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.)      

4.    Share core values. Have the highest values in common.

 

5.    Address anything that creates a barrier to relationship.

 

o   Don’t let the sun…

o   Nothing is too insignificant here…

 

6.    Be responsible for your own behaviors and attitudes. Don’t live like a victim.

 

7.    Keep your problems between yourselves. Don’t talk to others about the other person. Unless you’re sharing with someone who can guide you in repairing the relationship.

 

8.    Confess and forgive. If you hurt someone, confess (specifically) to them. If your friend confesses to you, forgive them.

 

9.    In all things, speak the truth in love. EPHESIANS 4:15 - Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

 

o   Feel anger, but don’t sin and respond by hurting back. Deal with your anger by caring and confronting.

 

 

Linda wrote these thoughts about how we have learned to do life together.

·      We choose to love.

·      We share almost everything.

·      We serve one another and look for ways to do that.

·      We pray.

·      We talk about hard things.

·      We read

o   Together

o   Alone

o   And share what we read with one another

·      We talk about hard Bible verses and difficult theological issues.

·      We share insights with others that we have learned ourselves.

·      We tolerate our weaknesses, but don’t let them hurt us.

·      We quickly forgive.

·      We welcome new experiences.

·      We love doing much together.

·      We hold each other accountable to our words and our spiritual lives.

 

EPHESIANS 4:15 - Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

HOW TO DO THIS!

 

Influence

Maumee Bay State Park (Ohio)

As I watched the beautiful twenty-one-minute film with Bono (U2) and Eugene Peterson (The Message, et. al.), and heard Bono speak of how Eugene writings have influenced him (especially The Message and Run With the Horses), I thought of the power of influence. 

Here we have the power of small. 

Peterson is a small man with a capacious heart for God who pastored a relatively small church. 

I want to be like him.

I want to be used by God to influence people. Don't you? 

I want to be part of a community of influence.

 Eugene Peterson has helped me with this. I have slow-cooked through his The Contemplative Pastor at least three times. I see #4 on the horizon. Maybe after I finish reading Run With the Horses. I can't even get past the Preface, because Peterson writes:

"The American church seems to have lost its nerve. Leaders are stepping up to provide strategies of renewal and reform. If the sociologists are right, more and more people are becoming disappointed and disaffected with the church as it is and are increasingly marginalized. The most conspicuous response of the church at this loss of “market share” is to develop more sophisticated consumer approaches, more efficient management techniques. If people are not satisfied, we’ll find a way to woo them back with better publicity and glossier advertising. We’ll repackage church under fresh brand names. Since Americans are the world’s champion consumers, let’s offer the gospel on consumer terms, reinterpreting it as a way to satisfy their addiction to More and Better and Sexier. 
The huge irony is that the more the gospel is offered in consumer terms, the more the consumers are disappointed. The gospel is not a consumer product; it doesn’t satisfy what we think of as our “needs.” The life of Jeremiah is not an American “pursuit of happiness.” It is more like God’s pursuit of Jeremiah." (Peterson, Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best, Kindle Locations 58-62) 

Wow. 

Everything in me resonates with this. 

Peterson is a crazy, prophetic bearded man typing on a computer overlooking a Montana lake. From his isolation come words for the world. Is anyone listening?

In America, masses of people say they believe in God and are "Christians." But in proportion to their size, their relative influence is miniscule. My college teaching experience and research tell me that "church" is not on the radar screen of most of today's young adults. 

You might be "small" as a person, or "small" as a church ("church"= a community of persons following after Jesus in his Kingdom-mission). There might only be twelve of you. Yet God could use you to influence the world. 

Remember the Twelve.

When I was traveling and teaching in central India I addressed a group of thirty medical students who were Jesus-followers. One of them asked me, "How can you start a revival?" My answer was, and still is: "When revival happens within you, then the revolution has begun." Historically this is how it always happens. Moves of God begin small. They don't happen in mega-situations. (For by far the most part, right?) God could do something in you, right now, that he could use to influence multitudes. 

Remember the mustard seed.

Could a mega-church have influence in proportion to its mega-ness? It's possible, but it would have to be muscular and lean. If a mega-church was the spiritual equivalent of one of the Biggest Losers, then we would have a huge, but flabby and non-influential church. It is a mega-task to maintain such a church with its massive size and massive couch-potato-ness (church with lots of spectators, with more criticism, since non-involvement produces critics). 

Remember the cost of discipleship.

Influence happens underground. God's Kingdom is an underground movement. It is subtle, subversive, revolutionary, and very powerful. This rarely (if ever) happens on TV or the Internet. We spectate and watch "revivals" happen on TV, but televised moves of God are not themselves moves of God (or rarely so). 

Remember the seed growing secretly.

Leadership is influence. Therefore everyone is a leader. Leaders for Christ are led by Christ. Therefore they hang tight with Christ, and the stuff that made for Christ's influence gets into them. 

Remember that we participate in the divine nature. (2 Peter 1:4)

Linda and I were sitting in a Subway, eating lunch together. She had just begun to read Run with the Horses. She said, "John, you have got to see this quote from Peterson, who is quoting William McNamara."

My grievance with contemporary society is with its decrepitude. There are few towering pleasures to allure me, almost no beauty to bewitch me, nothing erotic to arouse me, no intellectual circles or positions to challenge or provoke me, no burgeoning philosophies or theologies and no new art to catch my attention or engage my mind, no arousing political, social, or religious movements to stimulate or excite me. There are no free men to lead me. No saints to inspire me. No sinners sinful enough to either impress me or share my plight. No one human enough to validate the “going” lifestyle. It is hard to linger in that dull world without being dulled. 
I stake the future on the few humble and hearty lovers who seek God passionately in the marvelous, messy world of redeemed and related realities that lie in front of our noses.

"The few." The influencers. I want to be counted among them, don't you?

Frost & the Glory of God

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

- Psalm 19:1

I went outside to start the car early in the morning. The sky was blue, and there was frost on the car window.

I pointed the car towards the blue sky, then took this photo of my frosted window from the inside of the car. The brown thing on the right is a telephone pole.

Then, I cropped some of the detail on the left, and it looks like this.