Crosswalk - Grow in Faith with Daily Christian Living Articles

Notes Chapter 1: What Are You Seeking? 1. snap him water-soaked footballs: This story was told by Rick Reilly in his column, “Life of Reilly,” in Sports Illustrated, February 12, 2007, p. 78. 2. triangle of transformation: I have borrowed and modified the concept of a triangle of transformation from Dallas Willard. Dallas’s triangle consists of The Spiritual Disciplines, Ordinary Events of Life and the Action of the Holy Spirit. My triangle is different, but contains some of the same ele-ments. 3. “the central function”: Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), quoted in Alan Parry and Robert E. Doan, Story Revisions: Narrative Therapy in the Postmodern World (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), p. 24. 4. “dream in narrative”: Attributed to Barbara Hardy, quoted in Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral-Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), quoted in Parry and Doan, Story Revisions, p. 3. 5. But the Holy Spirit is not often the focus of our lives: The exception being our charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters who remind us of the role of the Spirit in our lives. 6. our relationship with Jesus as Lord: See Tom Smail’s book The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf &amp; Stock, 1994), p. 13. 7. “we need rest more today”: Arch Hart, quoted in Siang-Yang Tan, Rest (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 2000). All of the data in this paragraph and the next come from his chapter titled “Sleep,” pp. 109-23. 8. tips to help you fall asleep: These tips are a condensed and modified version of a set of suggestions in Dr. Tan’s book in which he offers a list of ideas taken from Archibald Hart’s book The Anxiety Cure (Nashville: Word, 1999), pp. 204-6. Chapter 2: God Is Good 1. “punishments of love”: Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1966), note on John 9:2-3. 2. God’s 9/11 punishment: Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson took this position within hours of the attacks. They were soon heavily criticized and later recanted. 3. Study of conservative Christians: Funded by the Templeton Foundation, the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion conducted a survey of Americans’ religious beliefs and attitudes. Their findings began to be released in spring 2007. 4. “you will all perish just as they did”: Jesus’ words do not refer to some impending physical harm or death that will come to people who do not shape up morally. “The death in view here is spiritual, not physical” (Earl D. Radmacher, ed., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999]), meaning something worse than death can happen to a person, namely, living without God. 5. sin in the womb: New Testament scholar Merrill Tenney notes, “If a person suffered from any ailment, it must have been because his parents or grandparents had committed some sin against God. To this they added the thought that perhaps he might have sinned before birth, whether as an embryo or in a preexistent state. Such a concept appears in the rabbinical writings” (Merrill C. Tenney and Richard N. Longenecker, John and Acts, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 9 [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981], p. 101). 6. Blindness, it was believed: Adam Clarke states, “Most of the Asiatic nations believed in the doctrine of transmigration . . . and profess to tell precisely the sin which the person committed in another body, by the afflictions he endures in this.” Another example, a person who suffers from headaches must have “spoken irreverently to father or mother” (Adam Clarke, The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, vol. 1 [Nashville: Abingdon, 1911], p. 584). 7. Tenney and Longenecker, John and Acts. 8. “We do not know why”: Augustine, quoted in James Walsh and P. G. Walsh, Divine Providence &amp; Human Suffering (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1985), p. 95. 9. “Rather we must seek out”: Ibid. 10. “When we come to Judgment Day”: Augustine City of God 20.2, quoted in ibid. 11. “become deeply absorbed in creation”: Maureen Conroy, Experiencing God’s Tremendous Love: Entering into Relational Prayer (Neptune, N.J.: Upper Room Spiritual Center, 1989), p. 23. Chapter 3: God Is Trustworthy 1. I invited him to tell his story: Those in the field of narrative therapy refer to this as “externalizing the story,” wherein a person is able to look at the story as separate from him- or herself. In doing so the individual discovers that the story has an origin and a history, a life of its own. This is an essential step in deconstructing false narratives. 2. Abba: Abba is an Aramaic word. Even though our New Testament is written in Greek, Aramaic was the common language of the Jewish people of Jesus’ day. That is why scholars believe when the Gospel writers tell us that Jesus addressed God as Abba, we are hearing the exact word he used. And because the Gospel writers intentionally used this Aramaic word even though they were writing in Greek, it is likely that Jesus used the word so much so that they could not exclude it. 3. “Dear Father”: Thomas Smail says that C. F. D. Moule and Joachim Jeremias, two leading New Testament scholars, “both agree that the best English translation of Abba is simply Dear Father” (The Forgotten Father [1980; reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf &amp; Stock, 2001], p. 39). 4. “The intimate word”: C. F. D. Moule, quoted in ibid. 5. “proper fatherhood resides in God”: Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (London: SCM Press, 1949), p. 43, quoted in ibid., p. 58. 6. In Jewish cosmology: In Jewish cosmology there are several layers of heaven, sometimes as few as three or as many as seven. The first level of heaven is the atmosphere around us. In Jesus’ baptism, the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7) and Peter’s vision (Acts 10), the “heavens” were opened, or, to be more accurate, the invisible heavenly realm around them became visible, even audible. 7. “At the heart of God”: Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), p. 125. 8. “The Father that Jesus addresses”: Smail, The Forgotten Father, p. 37. 9. “Our thoughts are not Your thoughts”: The prayer came from a book called For the Sick and the Suffering, comp. Thomas Hopko, trans. David Anderson (Syosset, N.Y.: Orthodox Church in America, 1983). The actual prayer is called, “A Prayer for a Child in Great Suffering and Pain,” (p. 31). Father Paul (who is now Right Reverend Paul Hodge) and I did not know we would be going to a hospital that day. The fact that he had this book with him was one of the many provisions of God we experienced that day. 10. a metanarrative, which is the story: I use the term metanarrative in two senses. First, I use it to represent a larger narrative, which is the story God is writing. Second, the prefix meta means “change,” and thus a metanarrative is also a narrative that leads to change. 11. “A lecturer to a group of businessmen”: George Buttrick, Prayer (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1942), quoted in Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), p. 101. 12. If you are having trouble getting started: Jan Dargatz, 10,000 Things to Praise God For (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993). 13. “When good is found”: David Crowder, The Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunshine and Sushi (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2004), pp. 13-14. Chapter 4: God Is Generous 1. “The process of spiritual formation”: Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), pp. 101-2. 2. the major narrative of the Bible is grace: I want to be very clear that I do not believe in “universalism,” the belief that all people will be saved and go to heaven, and no one will be sent to hell. Universalism is not a biblical narrative but is a humanly constructed narrative. Jesus spoke about hell, and it was clearly a part of his narrative. 3. God is good, you are bad, try harder: Henry Cloud said this in his talk “Action Steps for Monday” at the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek Community Church 2006. 4. the struggle of some of the Jewish Christians: One Bible commentary notes that “the passage concerns true believers in Jesus, who are Jewish, and under persecution are tempted to mesh in with the Jewish religion and its rituals from which they had been freed in Christ” (Earl D. Radmacher, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999]). 5. You are about to hear Jesus tell a story about God: Many Bible scholars believe that the quickest way to understand the teaching of Jesus is to study and reflect on the parables, which are succinct stories that reveal a great deal about God and his kingdom. 6. eighteen thousand men out of work: This is according to Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 20:219. 7. a similar parable was told by Jewish rabbis: Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1954), pp. 138-39. Jeremias notes, however, that it is difficult to know if Jesus’ parable was told before or after that of the other rabbis. If the rabbinical version precedes, then Jesus was taking a familiar story and adding a shocking ending, though Jeremias doubts this. Either way, the important thing to note is how different their interpretations are. 8. “In the parable of Jesus”: Ibid., p. 139. 9. “Jesus reveals a God”: Brennan Manning, talk given at Hilltop Urban Church, Wichita, Kansas. 10. “One morning this past spring”: Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), p. 150, quoted in Peter Van Breeman, The God Who Won’t Let Go (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria, 2001), p. 23. 11. “What comes into our mind”: A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper &amp; Row, 1961), p. 9. 12. God even prepares a “table”: The rule of hospitality was to guarantee the safety of a guest. If a person evaded his enemies, he was safe while dining in the tent with his hosts. It may be that the psalmist is imaging a situation where even one’s enemies are invited to the banquet. I doubt that is a correct interpretation, but in light of Jesus’ teaching about loving and blessing and praying for one’s enemies, I like to imagine that everyone is included—even those who don’t deserve to be. Chapter 5: God Is Love 1. when they catch him eating with sinners: The Pharisees are often depicted as “the bad guys” in the Gospels, but in truth, they, like all of us, were simply living out their narratives. They believed a narrative which said that only a strict adherence to the Mosaic law by God’s people would bring the Messiah and restore Israel. 2. “Here is the revelation bright as the evening star”: Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah Books, 1990), pp. 19-20. 3. “For God so loved”: I am crediting this famous verse to the actual words of Jesus and not to the Gospel writer John, though it is difficult to know exactly who is speaking. Many translations, including the New American Standard Bible, have John 3:12-16 in red letters because it seems likely that from John 3:10 to 3:21 Jesus is the speaker. 4. parable of the father’s love: This is the title New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias suggests in his book The Parables of Jesus (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1954), p. 128. 5. a stunning and disrespectful request: The second son would be entitled to only one-third of the land, and in this parable he doesn’t keep it as an investment but sells it. In so doing the entire family would suffer because the estate would be sold off. The father was not required to grant this request, and Jesus’ hearers would have been shocked by this outrageous act of disrespect. 6. He asks for his servants to bring: The robe signifies honor, the ring symbolizes authority, and the shoes indicate freedom (slaves did not wear shoes). 7. Jesus’ primary storytelling aim: Jeremias refers to this parable as an “apologetic parable” designed to respond to those who criticized him for comporting with sinners (Parables of Jesus, p. 132). 8. “the judge judged in our place”: A phrase made popular by Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics 4.1. 9. reading select passages of the Hebrew Bible: The selected passages were Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41. This is explained in “Lectio Divina,” in The Upper Room Dictionary of Christian Spiritual Formation, ed. Keith Beasley-Topliffe (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2003), p. 167. Chapter 6: God Is Holy 1. “a God without wrath”: H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), p. 193. 2. “The concept of God’s wrath”: Albrecht Ritschl, Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (The Christian Doctrine on Justification and Reconciliation), vol. 2 (Bonn, 1889), p. 154. 3. “the wrath of Yahweh”: “Wrath of God,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Gary A. Herion, Astrid B. Beck and David Noel Freedman, vol. 6 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 989. 4. “God’s wrath must be understood”: Ibid. 5. “God’s wrath in the Bible”: J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove., Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1973), p. 151. 6. “Would a God who took”: Ibid. 7. “love loves unto purity”: George MacDonald, “The Consuming Fire,” in Unspoken Sermons, first series (Eureka, Calif.: Sunrise Book, 1988), p. 27. 8. “He is always against sin”: Ibid., p. 38, italics added. 9. “Would a God who did not care”: Packer, Knowing God, p. 143. 10. “It is not a question”: C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 127. 11. “The conditions of modern-day living”: Richard Swenson, Margin (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1992), p. 32. Chapter 7: God Is Self-Sacrificing 1. Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria: Athanasius was present at the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), where the standard doctrine of the incarnation (Jesus was fully God and fully human) was defined. The later Nicene Creed is the orthodox (correct) understanding of the person of Jesus and the nature of the Trinity. During his lifetime Athanasius maintained that the doctrines established at Nicaea were correct, and firmly held his position against great opposition. He was exiled five times for his beliefs. 2. I turned my questions . . . into a dialogue: The following dialogue is, of course, fictional. But the answers Athanasius gives are taken straight from the book On the Incarnation. In the interest of making it sound like an actual discussion, I have added some dialogue. But this was actually easy to do because Athanasius raises the questions I ask. 3. “Why did the Father will [the crucifixion]?”: Edward Yarnold, “The Theology of Christian Spirituality,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright and Edward Yarnold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 15. 4. “The key, then, to loving God”: Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p. 334. Chapter 8: God Transforms 1. “What could be more frustrating”: David C. Needham, Birthright (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah Press, 1979), p. 69. 2. “To be forgiven by God”: L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 159. 3. This is why we struggle: Regeneration is a theological term used to describe the infusion of new life into the person who has been “born again.” 4. The word flesh (Greek sarx): I am intentionally using sarx instead of flesh because “flesh” is too closely associated with our physical bodies, which can lead to a too negative view of the body. I have also avoided using the NIV’s “sinful nature” for sarx, because the idea of a “sinful nature” can lead people to assume that sarx is fundamental to our nature. 5. The battle between sarx and spirit: Before coming to Christ we have no real conflict between sarx and Spirit—sarx is in complete control. But when we give ourselves to Christ and are indwelt by the Spirit the battle begins. Now our new identity is in conflict with the old identity. Even though we are new, the remains of our old identity are still very much with us. 6. “Every babe in Christ is holy”: John Wesley “On Sin in Believers,” in The Works of John Wesley 3.4.3, 7, ed. Albert Outler, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984). 7. “For so long as we remain”: John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.15.11, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960). 8. “inseparably linked to”: Needham, Birthright, p. 79. 9. “cuts off all watching”: Wesley, Works of John Wesley 13.5.1. 10. “‘Christ in me’ means”: James S. Stewart, A Man in Christ (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1935), p. 169. 11. Country dogs and city dogs: I am indebted to Bob George and his ministry, People to People, for this illustration, which I heard at a Classic Christianity conference in 1993. 12. “The spiritual life is not”: Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), p. 136. 13. “The question is not”: Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (New York: Crossroad, 2002), pp. 37-38. 14. “When we go into solitude”: Dallas Willard, foreword to Invitation to Solitude and Silence, by Ruth Haley Barton (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 10-11. 15. “We need to find God”: This quote is taken from Jan Johnson’s wonderful little Bible study Solitude &amp; Silence (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 27. 16. Bible verses about identity in Christ: Many of these verses are excerpted from Neil Anderson’s Ministering the Steps to Freedom in Christ (Ventura, Calif.: Gospel Light, 1998), p. 38. I have added a few. Chapter 9: How to Make a Pickle 1. “We are a nation in love”: Jeremy Rikfin, Time Wars (New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 1987), p. 71. 2. “It is ironic that”: Ibid., pp. 19-21. 3. The clock was invented by monks: Sebastian De Grazia, Of Time, Work and Leisure (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 44. 4. “Idleness is the enemy of the soul”: The Benedictine Handbook (Norwich: Liturgical Press, 2003), p. 69. 5. clock time began “gaining the upper hand”: Carl Honoré, In Praise of Slowness (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), p. 22. 6. We “invented the machine”: Ibid., p. 16. 7. “In the past, man has been first”: Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, July-August 2008, p. 62. 8. “ ‘Taylor’s system’ is still very much with us”: Ibid. 9. “tyranny of the urgent”: See Charles E. Hummel, Tyranny of the Urgent (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994). 10. In 1967, futurists told a Senate subcommittee: Richard A. Swenson, Margin (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1992), p. 148. 11. In a lifetime today’s average person: Ibid., pp. 149-50. 12. the average working parent: Honoré, In Praise of Slowness, p. 9. 13. One-Minute Bedtime Stories: Ibid., p. 2. 14. “Hurry,” said Carl Jung: Quoted in Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper &amp; Row, 1978), p. 13. 15. “In every waking hour”: Robin R. Myers, Morning Sun on a White Piano (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 67. 16. “Life is really nothing more”: Richard Bailey and Joseph Carlson, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) pp. 80-81, 164. 17. “Spiritual renewal is”: Taken from Miles J. Stanford, Principles of Spiritual Growth (Lincoln, Neb.: Back to the Bible Broadcast Publication, 1974), p. 13. 18. “A student asked the President”: Quoted in ibid., pp. 11-12. 19. “The emerging picture”: Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), p. 40. 20. Mozart “developed late”: Ibid., p. 41. 21. “The deepest part of the soul”: Robert Barron, Heaven in Stone and Glass (New York: Crossroad, 2000), p. 149. 22. “Today the combat is not the same”: Paul Evdokimov, Ages of the Spiritual Life (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), p. 64, italics added. 23. “It seems that most believers”: Stanford, Principles of Spiritual Growth, p. 11.