Seminar | IV. “Creating Space for God” | Bill Haley

On the first Sunday of the next 2 months, we will share a series of talks Rev. Bill Haley offered Christ Church Austin during a retreat they hosted entitled “Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action.” Taken together, these talks offer a powerful invitation into an integrated and transformed Christian life. 

In this fourth talk, Bill offers four resources to help us bring his big-picture vision of spiritual formation down to the mundane realities of our lives.

Explore Previous Keynotes:

I. Contemplatives in the Heart of the World

II. The Kingdom of God & Shalom

III. Formation Towards Spiritual Maturity

inthecoracle.org  |  @inthecoracle

Transcript

Drew Masterson: 0:16

Hello and welcome to For the Journey, a podcast offering formation and inspiration to Christians longing for more of God in their lives and in the world. For the Journey is presented by Coracle, a ministry committed to inspiring and enabling people to be the presence of God and the brokenness of the world through spiritual formation for kingdom action. We want to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God so that you can go further into the world with God's loving, healing, redeeming power. For the Journey is a space where each week we hope to help you encounter God and live a more integrated life of faith in the world by offering a regular rhythm of reflections, guided spiritual practices, thoughtful conversations, and more. On the first Sunday of the next two months, we will share a series of talks Reverend Bill Haley offered Christ Church Austin during a retreat they hosted entitled Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action. Taken together, these talks offer a powerful invitation into an integrated and transformed Christian life. You can find links to Bill's first three keynotes in the show notes. In this fourth talk, Bill offers four resources to help us bring his big picture vision of spiritual formation down to the mundane realities of our lives. Here's Bill.

Rev. Bill Haley: 1:48

Right? And come down a little bit to where we can actually do something with what we've been talking about. What have we been talking about anyway? Ready? Let's say it together. Changed lives for a changed world. Operative word being for, right? So how do we do this? How do we do this? Um I wanna I want to uh offer four things. Um I want to offer some big chisels, some very simple things, a specific, and a surprise. Okay. Um you might remember, I think it was Michelangelo talking about um sculpture and what he was doing when he was sculpting something out of marble, and he said something along the lines of basically all he was doing was he was was releasing what was embedded in stone so that it could be seen. Have you ever heard that? It's a beautiful image, isn't it? You know, you think about the Pieta, which is this gorgeous marble statue of Mary in love and sorrow holding her son Jesus. Happened to have a chance to see that, and it is just stunning. You know, it's hard to believe it's actually rock. Has anybody else you're nodding your head, you've seen it? It's hard to believe it's actually stone, and yet it is. It looks literally like flesh. You you know, you expect them to start breathing. Um so you think of Michelangelo, you know, looking at a probably a chunk of marble saying, I see Mary holding Jesus in that stone. And then he, what does he start with? Starts with the big chisels, right? Um, to release what is there. So I want to offer some big chisels, some very simple things, a specific and a surprise, as it relates to how are we formed? How does spiritual formation happen to us? Okay. So, some big chisels. We have these all sound so fun, don't they? Suffering, failure, marriage, celibacy, and risk. It seems like God when God wants to really get serious, he allows some of these things, one way or the other. Now, with regards to the first one, suffering, um, God doesn't cause suffering, but he sure does allow an awful lot of it. And we probably all have our conversations that we look forward to having with him about why. But the good news of Christianity, the good news of Jesus, the good news of the gospel is that suffering doesn't have to have the last word. This is a really big deal. It is so different than Buddhism, so different than Islam, so different than any other religion. Um is that our God redeems. You make beautiful things out of dust. Um and so suffering, it turns out, if we can receive it appropriately, turns out to be one of the major pathways that we are spiritually formed. Same with failure. Um how many of you have ever had a dramatic failure and been able to look back on it and thank God for it? Yeah? Because because what happened? He uses it, right? To shape us. Um marriage? Um this is for my brothers. How many of you had no idea how selfish you were until you got married? Right? So, probably enough said. Um I'm sure that marriage has its role to play in the spiritual formation of women, but I'm much more familiar with its role with regards to the the more base of our species. Um But yeah, um the Lord, you know, the Lord uses marriage fundamentally to um, especially for those of us who think something of ourselves to lead to the death of ourselves. Um and um and for others, it's where he uses that place to for them to encounter the um the assertion of themselves, right? But marriage is a profound chisel in God's hands, so also a celibacy, um, especially the older we go or the older we are. Um because what it does is we trusting the Bible, trusting that God has an intent for our sexuality and our bodies, and we we know that God is quite clear that um that um intercourse and other sexual intimacies are to be reserved to a covenantal relationship because of the sacrament of it, we know this, and so we try to hold ourselves to it. And um, and what it does is that the older we get, the more the ache increases for togetherness, for companionship, for um the vulnerabilities that that sort of thing can offer. And so we are forced to find our deepest longings met in God, which turns out to be the only place that any of our deepest longings are met anyway, married or single. Uh it's just that um the challenges perhaps are very quite sharp when we uh remain celibate. So it's a big chisel. Um and then the last one, risk. Um because risk puts us in a position where we have nobody to trust except God, right? And sometimes risk leads us into places that is quite difficult and where we really have no other option except for the faithfulness of God. Chip, I was thinking about our story that you were sharing with me earlier. So does this make sense, the big chisels? How God uses these things to do some of the big work of uh of spiritual formation, of making us more like Jesus, of making us more uh into who we are to be, who we are. Um, many of us have uh many of us have have pursued lives that are not our own. Does that make sense? We've pursued lives that were somebody else's dream for us, or somehow it were communicated to us that this is how we ought to be, or if I'm to be somebody, then I need to be like that. And so often God in his mercy allows that life to crumble so that so that we can emerge out of it, so that who we actually are can emerge out of it. So those are some big chisels that God uses in our spiritual formation, and I guess I guess um I would say the only way the only way to navigate these things in in any sort of way that they are livable, whether it be suffering or failure, whether it be the challenges of what we see about ourselves in our marriage, or what the challenges that our marriages naturally face, or the challenges of celibacy, or the challenges of risk. The only way to navigate these things are to embrace them and to trust God in them. And to say, you know, have your way with me, shape me, form me, use this, don't let this have the last word. Um but allow it to turn me into somebody who looks more and more like your son. And it is amazing. It is amazing the the way that that road feels so different when we're able to adopt a different posture on it, you know? So much of the suffering that we encounter, we don't get to change it. We don't get to change it. We we get to walk it. And the only way that we can sometimes walk it is to know that Jesus is right there holding our hands and even using it to make us more like himself. Not that not that uh not that he's causing it, but he's redeeming it. And there's a big, big, big, big difference. Suffering comes to us all. It's just a matter of form, just a matter of when. So some very simple things. So we talked about some big chisels here, some very simple things, but spiritual disciplines for our spiritual formation. So um we had this um, you know, what in what in Texas is barely even worth mentioning. We have 17 acres um in the Shenandoah Valley. And where we come from, uh in Northern Virginia, that's quite a bit. Um but uh we have a small plot of land, and um when we bought it, um there was a big old backyard, and and we knew that one of the things that we had done while we were in the inner city was organic gardening. So the whole deal that you guys are doing with that, just love it, get it. Makes sense to me. Um so we had had this small little organic garden in the backyard of our place in the city, and and so all of a sudden here we have this big old backyard and and um and we wanted to have a garden. And um what were the sorts of things that we had to do when you're looking at lawn? What do you have to do to make to make a garden? What do we do? What what was the first thing we did? Yeah, well we had to get the grass up, right? We had to get rid of the grass, and then we started rototilling, right? And then we took out the rocks, right? And then we rototilled some more, and then we measured the pH of the ground so we could amend the soil so it would be conducive to growth. Um we built fence, we did indeed. Rabbits and chickens love our garden. Deer haven't been an issue quite yet. Um and then we planted seeds in the ground, right? And um, and then as and then we watered them. Um and then we weeded the garden. Um but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, who made that garden grow? Why? What three things were required without which we would not see a garden happen? Sun, rain, and the seeds. And the seeds, right? So at the end of the day, we did an awful lot of work, but at the end of the day, the growth was not dependent on us. Now, what would have happened if we did not? What happens if you don't weed? You get choked out, right? You don't get fruit. What happens, what happens, um, what happens if you don't put the fence up, right? Something else eats it. Um what happens sometimes if you don't prune? All right, you don't get as much. It's a very, very simple illustration. I think you probably you probably know where I'm going with this. Let me read to you from this classic Inner Varsity book. How many of you have ever read The Pursuit of Holiness? Yeah, Cliff, you probably had to memorize it. Right? Um just, or this is Navigators, isn't it? Such a good, good book. It's an oldie but goody, classic. Um, called The Pursuit of Holiness, page 13. He uses this illustration really well. He says, A farmer plows his field, he sows the seed, he fertilizes and cultivates, all the while knowing that in the final analysis, he is utterly dependent on forces outside of himself. He knows he cannot cause the seed to germinate, nor can he produce the rain and sunshine for growing and harvesting the crop. For a successful harvest, he is dependent on those things from God. Yet the farmer also knows that unless he diligently pursues his responsibilities to plow and to plant and to fertilize and to cultivate, he cannot expect a harvest at the end of the season. And in a sense, he is in partnership with God, and he will reap its benefits only when he has fulfilled his own responsibilities. Farming is a joint venture between God and the farmer. The farmer cannot do what God must do, and God will not do what the farmer should do. That's helpful, isn't it? So, spiritual disciplines are simply this. They are simply this. Are we doing them so that God will like us? I need to hear a better no on that. Are we doing them so that God will like us? You know, since we're Anglican, we can probably swear a little bit. Thank you. There it was. There it was. I don't know that I'll invite all of us to lead in that. However, that's the right sentiment, right? Do we do spiritual disciplines so that God will love us? No, we don't. No. Spiritual disciplines are simply this: we are creating space for God to do his work in us. That's it. We are creating space for God to do his work in us. We could take that a little bit further and say spiritual disciplines are also creating space for us and God simply to be together in each other's presence. And there's a lot to that. In fact, well, there's a lot to that, not for today. So here's some good news from Thomas Merton. I'm gonna give you some good news and I'm gonna give you some bad news. Okay? It's like the, you know, it's like the guy whose doctor calls him and says, I've got good news and bad news. Um, you know, um, you're gonna you're gonna die in two days. And uh the guy says, Well, heaven's sakes, if that's the good news, what's the bad news? And the doctor says, Well, I tried to call you yesterday, but I couldn't get through. Um sorry. All right, you think that's bad? You think that's bad? I just learned this one the other day. Yo, you know, you don't know who the meanest, the meanest bachelor in the Bible is, right? Boaz? Why? Because before he got married, he was ruthless. Woo! There we go. We'll take it, we'll take it. All right, that's it, I promise, no more. No more. So here's the good news. Here's the good news. This is from Thomas Merton, it's up there. How does an apple ripen? It just sits in the sun. A small green apple cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes, and tightening its jaws in order to find itself the next morning miraculously large and red and ripe and juicy beside its small green counterparts. Goes on to say, we must wait for God. And we must be awake, and we must trust God's hidden action in us. So I don't know if those songs that we just sang were chosen specifically because of what we've been talking about, but they were so right on, and especially that line from the Gunger song, You Make Beautiful Sings, you make me new. You are making me new. I just want you all to know that if you are here this weekend, it's probably because God's making you new. It's probably because God is doing hidden action in you. It's probably because you've taken a weekend away to simply sit in the sun of God's presence and allow him to ripen you. You know, there's a sense in which you probably don't need to go home and do anything. Because God's doing something already. Isn't that encouraging? Like the best thing that we can do for our own spiritual formation and our own spiritual growth is simply to say yes to God. Whatever you're doing, do it. I give you liberty to change me and to make me into who you know that I can be and am to be, to make me into the image of your Son. Yes. And when we say yes like that, we take our place with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, don't we? When he said, I don't want this this way, but not my will but yours be done. When we say yes to God in this way, we take our place with the Virgin Mary, don't we? When she said yes to God, I, you know, to Gabriel, I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea what this means. But be it done to me according to your word. You know? The wide open yes to God allows him the freedom to do his work in us that he wants to do and that we want him to do. So, yes to God. Um, and then we do our part, you know, like the farmer plowing his field, the farmer planting the seeds. The effective spiritual disciplines are not rocket science, they're old. And you know most of them, I'm sure. The disciplines of prayer and study and reflection, silence, accountability, affirming one's faith regularly. I think one of the coolest moments on a Sunday morning is when we say the Creed. You know, it's you know, it's one more time in a given week to say, this is what I believe, this is what I'm about, this is who I am, this is my identity, this is where I find my identity. You know, we I don't want to ever underestimate the power and the needfulness of saying the creed, and the Anglican Church allows us to do it, right? It's part of our liturgy, and it's a good part of our liturgy. Um, confession, another part of our liturgy that really matters, right? Um every Sunday, we like most Sundays, I imagine, we get to do that. Um serving others, especially the marginalized, those in the margins, all within a community of those people who are doing the same thing. This is not rocket science, this is classic. This is as old as the church itself, and these are effective spiritual disciplines to create space for God to make us into different sort of people. They are as old as Acts 2 and as old as Acts 4. These spiritual disciplines are individual, we do them alone. They're corporate, we do them together. They're contemplative, that is, we're not concerned about our doing, and they're active, that is we do something. Spiritual disciplines that we adopt, they of they are not, as I think you can now gather, they are not an end to themselves, are they? We we don't do Bible reading because we should do Bible reading, and having done Bible reading, that's what we did. We did our thing. I don't know about you all, but me growing up, um, I was growing up in a culture that really valued a daily quiet time, and that's a really good thing. But what it cultivated in me was a sort of a checklist mentality for my spirituality. That is, you know, if I get up early and I spend some time in the Word and I spend some time in prayer, then I can kind of check that off my box and I've done my spiritual disciplines for the day. I've prayed. Yikes. Because what that then means is that I get to, you know, if I've prayed in the morning and I've done my spiritual duty, as it were, it means that then I don't have to pray the rest of the day. I don't have to keep on listening, right? Because I prayed. I did my quiet time, right? Check. Well, that's not what the spiritual disciplines are for. Um, and again, that is kind of an immature way of viewing them, and we all probably start there, but then we grow, like we were talking about, and we begin to embrace what their real purposes are. Spiritual disciplines, they are a means to an end of leading us closer to God in order that we might be more godly. They are the means to an end of creating space for Jesus so that we might become more like Jesus. They are a means to the end of being more and more filled on a regular basis with the Holy Spirit. The disciplines are tools, but they're nothing else. And they're nothing more. They are a means, they are the means to an intimate, interactive relationship with God, wherein we put ourselves in a position of being more available to Him and put ourselves in a position of where He can actually do something in us. So, I gave you the good news, right? Sitting in the sun, allowing God to ripen us. Well, here's the bad news. And um, that is that the spiritual disciplines imply effort. They are disciplines, right? A little bit of good news here. Spiritual practices, well, we practice them. This notion that spiritual disciplines imply effort is consistent with various New Testament imagery, training ourselves to be godly, bringing our bodies into submission to Christ, fighting the good fight of faith, making every effort to be righteous, counting the cost of following Jesus. Without consistent effort, though, it will be very hard for any of us to see growth. And there's just a very natural principle of why this is the case, and it's on our next slide. This is from Dallas Willard. A baseball player who expects to excel in the game without adequate exercise of his body is no more ridiculous than the Christian who hopes to be able to act in the manner of Christ when put to the test without appropriate exercise of godly living. The secret to the easy yoke involves living as Jesus did in the entirety of his life, adopting his overall lifestyle. Following in his steps cannot be equated with behaving as he did on the spot. To live as Christ lived is to live as he did all his life. The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our total lives, how to invest all of our time and energies of mind and body as he did. So we take on spiritual disciplines daily as a way of life so that our overall lives will look more and more like Jesus. And so that Jesus can take up, as I've said many times, more and more residence in us and live more fully through us. So, those are some simple things, the spiritual disciplines. Um, I would not serve you well if we spent a lot of time talking about spiritual formation and we didn't spend any time talking about spiritual disciplines. They matter. Um, some big chisels, some simple things, and here's a specific spiritual discipline that I want to offer, and that is this one. Delicious Sabbath. Delicious Sabbath. So you might already feel it, even in just me putting it up there on the screen, mentioned Sabbath to many of us, and and too quickly the response can be, ah, yeah. That just feels like an impossibility. There is no way in my life that I can figure out this one. It feels like another thing to do. It feels like something where it's going to take some time from me when I actually don't have enough time already. Um, I'm too busy, and frankly, it stresses me out. I don't find it restful because I'm very aware of all the things that I'm supposed to be doing or I have to do tomorrow, right? These emotional resistances betray what I would think is an anemic understanding of what Sabbath is and what it's for and who it's for. Who is Sabbath for? Us. Right? Jesus is explicitly clear about this. Um Sabbath rightly understood, and like every other command of God, is for our joy. It's for our thriving. So Sabbath is for, and we'll unpack these a little bit, Sabbath is for enjoying God, enjoying creation, enjoying blessings, enjoying people, enjoying yourself, enjoying everything because of God, mindful of his presence to us, his loving presence with us. And when we do it well, when we do Sabbath well, we live deeply into our very purpose of why we were created in the first place. Right? To be image bearers, to be those who look like God because their lives somehow smell like God's does. And we claim our deepest identity as image bearers. So I find, and I'm sure you're familiar with this language, this language for the whole story of the Bible in four words: creation, fall, and redemption and consummation. You're familiar with this? That when, you know, when we when we want to tell the story of the Bible, God's story in four words, we can do it with creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, or new creation. We can also do it with ought, the way things ought to be, the way things are, is, ought is, the way things can be and the way things will be. So it's a helpful way of thinking about the redemptive story of the scripture. And we've spent a little bit of time, quite a bit enough time, talking about creation, haven't we? Um We've talked a little bit about the fall, not so much theologically, but much more anecdotally. We've talked quite a bit about redemption, and we haven't talked at all about new creation, and that kind of makes me sad, but we just don't have time. Um we haven't had a chance to talk about how there is continuity, continuity between the world that we see now and the world that is coming that we would call heaven. Okay? That heaven will be as physical as our earth is now, and that in fact it is not so much that this earth is destroyed, never to be seen again, but rather it is this earth refined and made to work. And that inasmuch as we have physical bodies at the resurrection that will have some sort of continuity with what we've got now, um, that in fact those bodies will actually have a place to inhabit that does not subsist of moisture, i.e., clouds. Right? But actually that's that that exists in a physical place, which is this place made new. Now, this is a massive thing to explore, but what that does for us is it reminds us about um the importance of a good anthropology, knowing why we were made, what's the reason for us being made, and having a really good eschatology, which is knowing where things are. And when we have a good anthropology and a good eschatology, it really helps us know how to live. Um, and part of the problem with American Christendom is that for several decades we were fed a really bad eschatology, right? Which basically said the world gets evaporated, never to be seen anything like that again. So at that point you say, well, then why conserve it? What's creation care all about if it's all just gonna go go up and smoke anyway? Right? In fact, if we can degrade the earth a little bit faster, maybe that'll hasten Jesus' coming. Right? I've heard this, you've heard this. Um, so you know, toss the can out the window. Um I am in Texas, I'm not gonna talk about oil. Um, but I share this to say um one of the things. I love about what your church is doing is that is that I don't know if you know this, but you have a really good foundation of our fundamental role to be image bearers, people who live in the image of God, and how that relates to a lot of different areas, but specifically taking care of creation. So you've got a couple of events coming up, right? Is it next week, Cliff? There's an event coming up next week with a with a good friend of mine named Peter Harris with Orocia and another friend of mine, I don't know if Evan Loomis from Treehouse is part of this or not. Is Evan going to be there? So another friend of mine, Evan Loomis, talking about the opportunity that we have to assert our identity as image bearers of God by taking care of what God has made. That is creation. How cool is that? I just feel like so much of our Christian life has to do with us discovering, remembering, and reasserting our fundamental identity as being those who bear God's image in the world so that the world will know what God looks like. Make sense? So I hope that you'll come out for that because that should be really cool, and it will remind you of some of these talks. But this thing about Sabbath is in that same family. You know, that when we do Sabbath well, we are doing nothing more than um exploring, discovering, remembering, reasserting our dignity as those who bear God's image in the world. Why? Because what did God do on the seventh day? R Rested. Right? You can easily picture God, can't you? Surveying all that He had made. You know, if God was in the hill country of Austin, Texas on the seventh day of creation, he probably would have done what I did this afternoon, which was to take a walk down to the lake that could be a little fuller. And uh and just and just enjoy it. And be, you know, just appreciate the beauty of it and let it do its work without having to do anything else except to receive the good gifts of his own hand. So Dorothy Bass reflects on this and she says, Resting, God takes pleasure in what has been made. God has no regrets, no need to go on to create a still better world or a creature more wonderful than the man and the woman. In the day of rest, God's free love toward humanity takes the form as time shared with them. Isn't that beautiful? So God rested, God took a Sabbath, he even consecrated it. He even makes it holy. And if we want to reveal God in the world in all of his splendorous, diverse character, then we too will take a Sabbath. We'll take a stretch of time. We'll take a stretch of time. And we'll lay down our labor, we'll lay down our work, and we will reorient ourselves to our creator and also to our own design. We'll enjoy God and the good things that He's given us and the good things that He's made. And we'll remember, we will remind ourselves that we are the created, we are not the Creators. In other words, we'll remind ourselves that we're not God and that it all doesn't hang on us. So I have a dear sister. Her name is Ruth Haley Barton, and she's written many books on the themes of spiritual formation and spiritual practices and so on, and this is how she puts it up on the screen. The first order of things is that we creatures, and that we are creatures, and God is the creator. God is the only one who is infinite. I am finite, which means that I live within physical limits of time and space and bodily limits of strength and energy. There are limits to my capacities. I am not God. God is the one who can be all things to all people. God is the one who can be in two places at once. God is the one who never sleeps. I am not. Can I get an amen? I am not God. This is the first statement that Sabbath makes. And following right on its heels is I am made in God's image. I am not God. I am made in God's image. And Sabbath and rest is one of the ways that humans reveal God. But there's a lot of reasons why we find this difficult. And so I think that's precisely the reason why the command to keep the Sabbath holy is shot through the Old Testament. There's barely a book in the Old Testament that doesn't remind us about the importance of a stretch of time where we rest, right? I think that God knew that this would be hard for us, therefore Jesus talks about it all the time. Have you noticed how much Jesus talks about Sabbath? It's interesting, isn't it? And I think it's because God knows that this is hard for us. And so He is quick to remind us in a lot of different ways in the Scripture that it really, really matters. I would say that this is probably our biggest barrier to keeping the Sabbath, that underneath the protests of I'm too busy or I've got too much work to do is a deep, deep self-reliance that's rooted in a lack of trust in God. Make sense? That's what keeps us busy. What keeps us really busy is a deep self-reliance that is rooted in a lack of trust in God. If I don't do it, who will? If I don't get it done, it's not going to get done. Dorothy Bass again. She says, to act as if the world cannot get along without our work for one day in seven is a startling display of pride that denies the sufficiency of our generous Maker. I can't tell you how many times, and I'm not very good at this, so make no mistake, I'm not some Zen master about Sabbath. But I will tell you this that when I have gotten serious about it, I have seen my work get easier. It's been the strangest thing. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me, to where I've been stressed out about a sermon because the ideas weren't there yet, you know, and I'm working and I'm studying and I'm so on, to when I just put it down and pray and let it sit. And invariably, some somewhere in that space of rest, God gives me the hinge that turns the sermon, right? That unlocks the sermon. And so I've just I've begun to learn that when I'm getting stressed out about a sermon, I just need to put it down, right? And let God reveal it. To let God do the work as opposed to me doing the work, right? And then I come back and I do my work. Um that hat that has happened many, many, many times. So um, so we miss out, I think, when we when we don't do this well. Let me just unpack a little bit about what I think Sabbath is for, because it's for us, right? It's ought not to be a burden. If Sabbath is a burden, we're not doing it right. So let me just talk about Sabbath. Um, and I think I've given you in this list, right? Yeah, there it is. Sabbath is enjoying, is for enjoying God, enjoying creation, enjoying the blessings, enjoying people, enjoying yourself, enjoying everything because of God and mindful of his loving presence to us. Is there a is there a word in there that pops up more than once? So enjoying God. We spend time with God just like we would a good friend. Um walking, talking, sharing, just being. We might join with others to do the same in some sort of worship service like we do on Sundays, prayer and sacrament and word. We think about his goodness, we think about his grace to us, we say thank you, we take time just to listen to him like we would if we were going out with a friend. Um it's a great day to experiment with different spiritual disciplines where we are creating space to be with God, creating space for him to do stuff in us. Um we do anything that not only reminds us that God is loving us, but that um but that encounters that love in some way. Enjoying creation is another great thing to do with our Sabbath, right? It makes sense, doesn't it? Um because the natural world is one of God's greatest gifts to us. And so however it is that we can do that, we we get out. Um I mean, so you know, you've heard it said, I, you know, my church is in nature, right? You've heard that said. I don't go to church because on Sundays I go out in nature and that's my church. Well, you know, if only we could connect those dots. Those things are not mutually exclusive at all. Um, it's just very limiting. Um we enjoy the blessings. We think, what has God given me? What has God given me? And then we enjoy them. Um perhaps receiving them a little bit more slowly so that we can remember the one who gave them to us. So, where you live, do you have anywhere that it's a particular beautiful place for you to sit? Yes? Wouldn't it be nice just to say, okay, what has God given me? You know, he's actually given me this beautiful place to sit. I think I'm gonna go sit there because that was a gift. You know? So to take stock of the good things that God has given you. One of the great things that God has given you, um, well, I'll just go a little bit more on that. You know, we reflect on, we we reflect on God's provisions for us. We reflect on the fact that God somehow one way or the other provides us with food, and so we receive it, right? A little bit more slowly, a little bit more mindfully. Maybe we make a special meal, maybe we go to food heads. And we say, you know what? God has given me so many gifts. He's given me, He's given me food, he's given me drink. You know, you know how the Jews do this on Friday night? What do they what do they break? The bread, the hot, the sweet bread, right? A special, a special meal, actually. To where they're putting themselves to enter into Sabbath to say, God has given me great things. God has given me great gifts, like food, like drink, like family, like friends. Um, enjoying people. Gosh, this is a big one. Sabbath is is a is a great time to discipl to exercise the discipline, I would call it, of mindful enjoyment of the gift of people that God has put in my life. Um I think that's kind of self-explanatory, so I'm not gonna go into it. But to slow down and to pay attention to who it is in our life that God has given us. Um, here's a fun thought. Um, there's a wonderful book called The Mystery of Marriage by a guy named Mike Mason. Have any of you ever read this? Best book on marriage that I know: The Mystery of Marriage. Um, it's not a how book, it's not a how-to book, it's a why book. I'm a much bigger fan of why books. Um, I'll figure out the how-tos. And in it he writes, he just reflects on saying, you know, why is it that there's nothing in the New Testament about how gorgeous the sunset is or how beautiful the mountains are, but there's a lot in there about people. And he says, because it's very simple, he said, you know, when you are in the presence of another person, you are closer in the presence of God than you are in any place in creation. Why? Because you're right next to somebody who is bearing the image of God. And that's just very powerful. It's not to denigrate getting out in the woods to see the Lord, but it is to remind us that when we are with other people, we are with other image bearers, aren't we? And that we are in contact, we are in contact with a very, very special being. Um, and if they've been given to us, even if they haven't been given to us, on Sabbath we look at them differently and we say, You are who God has given to me for this moment, and I'm gonna receive you as a gift. And then enjoying yourself. One of the best gifts that God has given you is you. So, how has God made you? Go do that. Right? Like for me, a perfect Sabbath would be to go fly fishing because I love it. Right? Um, you know, some of you like like my Sudoku. I hate Sudoku. Can't even say it right. But some of you might like it, and it might actually be relaxing for you to do that. Well, do that, right? Because God's given you a brain that enjoys numbers and enjoys patterns, and you know, maybe you're creative. Maybe Sabbath is a great time for you to pay attention to the fact that God's given you gifts of creativity. Do that. But here's the thing: do it because God has made you that way, and then do it with Him. Um I just want to finish this little section on Sabbath with a quote that I missed along the way, but it's such a gorgeous quote, and it puts a fun thing on the screen for us. Wayne Mueller, uh, gorgeous book on this called Sabbath. Um, kind of self-evidently titled. Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves too. And if we are lost, we can find our way back to the center. Basically, the center of who we are and the center of God Himself. Remember the Sabbath means remember that everything you have received is a blessing. Remember to delight in your life, in the fruits of your labor. Remember to stop and offer thanks for the wonder of it. In Sabbath time, we remember to celebrate what is beautiful and sacred. We light candles, we sing songs, we tell stories, we eat, we nap, we make love. It's time to let our work, our land, our animals lie fallow to be nourished and refreshed. And within the sanctuary, we become available to the insights and blessings of deep mindfulness that only arise in stillness and time. We become available, I would say, to the presence of God, who loves us and who delights in us. Gosh, that feels different than a just do it, doesn't it? So if I have a book to recommend to you, um, it would be this one. If I have one book to recommend to you coming out of our weekend, it would be this one. And it is by my sister, uh Ruth Haley Barton. It's called Sacred Rhythms, in which she goes through a number of different sorts of spiritual disciplines and helps us experiment with them and helps us become familiar with them. And her chapter, particularly on Sabbath, is just great, where she talks about how, you know, when she finally understood what this is and how to do it, that she finds by the end of the week her soul craving it, you know, longing for it. But she also throughout the week finds herself able to be a lot more productive because she knows it's coming. That makes sense. She's able to handle a lot more because she does know that there is going to be, in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great Jewish mystic, there is going to be this sanctuary in time. A sanctuary in time when we encounter God and are blessed by God. So here's the surprise. I've given you, um, I've given you some big chisels about how spiritual formation, I've given you some very simple things. I've given you a specific, delicious Sabbath, and here's the surprise. Hmm. Here's the surprise. How are we best formed? How does spiritual formation happen in us? Surprisingly, knowing God's love. Knowing God's love for us is, I think, probably the deepest way that we are spiritually formed. It just also happens to be one of the hardest ways. It takes us a long time to receive this. But let me read this to you from Thelma Hall. It's in a book about, well, it's Thelma Hall. Book doesn't matter. This is very interesting. It says, um, there remains within us a love that can be awakened by the sheer grace of his love's desire for us if we fully accept it. And yet, as we all know, we find this incredibly difficult. Perhaps this is why the observation has been made that most of us seem to assume that union with God is attained by laboriously ascending a ladder of virtues, which finally fashion our holiness and make us worthy of God. But in truth, the reverse is far more accurate. The great saints and the mystics have been those who fully accepted God's love for them. It is this that makes everything else possible. So on Jesus', essentially his deathbed, which is John 14 through 17. Jesus has some more hours with his disciples before he knows what's going to happen later on that night. And he uh, you know, like any of us would, he tells them the most important things. He tells them what he really wants them to know. He tells them what he really wants them to remember. And that's what John 14 through 17 is. Um and right in the middle of it, right in the middle of it, is John 15, where Jesus says something so amazing. He says in John 15, 9, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. You know, and there's there's a couple of different ways for us to try to, you know, as it were, increase the force of gravity to get this notion of God's love for us from our head into our hearts. It's a long 18 inches. It's a long 18 inches. And frankly, I've come to I've come to wonder and almost believe that that for us to fully grasp how much God loves us, actually, that it actually requires revelation. That is, that that it is something that the Holy Spirit reveals to us, you know, because we just can't get our head around it. It's too much. We want to, we can easily understand it, but it's really harder to understand it. And so there are a couple of ways of getting at how do how much does God love me? And this one's very, very valuable, although I don't know that it's well, this one's very, very viable. It's like, okay, well then if Jesus says that the Father that he loves us as much as the Father has loved him, well then we read through the Gospels and ask the question, how did God the Father love Jesus? And when we do that, as a you know, it's a wonderful exercise to engage Scripture with, to read through the Gospels, and especially John, just limit yourself to John and say, okay, in the Gospel of John, how does the Father love Jesus? And we take that very long list, and it is a very long list, and then we say, that's how Jesus is loving me. Because that's what he said. And that's one way to get at this, but I'll tell you, I think even a more powerful way to get at this is um how many of us, one way or the other, have kids who have been given to us? Maybe biological children, it might be adopted children, it might be nieces or nephews, it might be godkids. And for those of you who have been on the receiving end of a child, one way or the other, you know, godchild, biological child, adopted child, you know, um, niece, nephew, whatever. When when when you hold them for the first time, what happens? Like you gush over them, don't you? Like you are shocked at how deep the well is of this love that all of a sudden you have for this little being. Like you didn't even know you had such capacities for this, right? And and there is nothing that you wouldn't do for this little thing. And it hasn't done anything for you. In fact, it's been perhaps a nuisance. I slept really well last night in that little cottage, it was very quiet. Thank you for your prayers for my wife. Her night was longer. Yeah, you know, but you know, even when our kids give us the hardest time, do we love them any less? Is there anything that can change our love for them? You know? And what do they do? What do they do that has made us love them like this? Nothing. They just are. And it was when I had my first child, when I finally, that's where it's where it was revealed to me. Oh my gosh. If this is how I love my son, and I know that this is somehow sacramental, this is teaching me about what God's love for me is like, I I think I can get it more, you know? And I need to remember when I doubt God's love for me, I need to remember that I love my son and nothing will change that, and that is a shadow compared to how much God loves me. And man. As Thelmahal said, it's as we dive deeper and deeper and deeper into the knowledge of God's love for us, changes begin to happen in us. You know, and we begin reacting out of gratitude and responsiveness and desire as opposed to duty and obligation and ought. And so there's a sense in which, um, there's a sense in which we conclude this afternoon where I started in the middle of the morning. And remember how I said we were gonna come back to this when I talked about Paul in Galatians 2.20. Do you remember when I said I'm gonna come back to this? I'm coming back to it right now. Because he he said it. He got it. It's Jesus living in me. That's reality. It's me, it's my changed life because Jesus is living inside of me, and then him through me changing the world. It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me. He got it and he wrote it, and he put it simply and clearly. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. Who loved me? Who loved me and gave himself up for me. Isn't that amazing? That the ground, the foundation, you know, that the tender conviction about Jesus living in me and through me into the world is based on the love of God for a man. So some big chisels, some very simple things. Um a specific, disciplined, delicious Sabbath, and a surprise. A surprise. The importance of knowing God's love for us. These things, and I'm sure there are others, but for today today this is enough. These things are how spiritual formation happens. These things create very, very, very fertile soil for God to pour the reign of the Holy Spirit on us so that the seeds that have been planted can germinate and grow and bear fruit, in Jesus' words, fruit that will last. So my encouragement to y'all, and let's take a few times, some time for some questions. We have some time for questions. My encouragement to all to y'all is I'm telling you, you know, um, if you if you've heard something that I've said and say, yeah, that sounds really good to me, I want to go do that. Go do it. That's cool. But uh, but more than that, I just want you to know that you I'm not telling you to go do anything. Because I believe that this weekend that God has been planting seeds in your heart. I don't know how many and how fast, but I bet it's been a lot. And because you're here, you're saying, yes, God, grow those seeds and he will do it. And I just want to encourage you that just know that on this retreat that the Lord has been doing work in your heart, putting seeds in there, and that as you abide in him, as you stay present to him, he'll do some work. He'll do some work. And you can walk out of this place feeling like, oh, God's doing some work in me, and I can trust him. Mine is to be with him. Mine is to be with him, mine is to say yes. Amen.

Drew Masterson: 55:22

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