Teapot Theology

‘Spirituality that is solely focused on the inner life becomes dead and lifeless.’ So said Steve Chalke, in a stunning evening  with input from Cathy Burton & others, hosted at Oasis HQ as part of The Apprentice Tour Launch. It was a spirited, stimulating and soul-searching night. All were sign-posted to an active-spirituality, a hands-on discipleship and a renewed commitment to indulgence or distraction by obtuse greek!! I felt stretched in my heart and commitment to follow Jesus best I can. Pure & simple.

There was so much put out and swirled around to urge us beyond ‘the smoke and mirrors living’ that dominates Christianity so easily and so very often. Permissive, authentic and provocative it surely was. UK Christendom needs many more events like this to stimulate greater reality in making-accessible and true how we follow and connect Jesus to all of our living. It was content-rich, conversation-real and a refreshing-catalyst to the dust-gathering-obedience of life with rabbi Jesus.

The apprenticeship is always calling…. Discipleship, in the truest sense is what calls people to a fullness, health and wholeness in life with Jesus. Catch this tour on the remaining dates. Chalke is compellingly clear; insightful, reflective, dynamic and….an activist! Long may we grapple with living out this invitation.

‘All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.’

— cslewis.

So often as Christians we are locked into a ‘judgement cycle’.  Our primary default position is that we judge others. This leaning toward judging is the direct result of the outworking of original sin in our lives. Our desire to be like God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has given us a predisposition to divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be  well less than good!!  An intriguing writer called Greg Boyd says, this ‘judgement is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created and saved us to do, namely, love like he loves.’

One of my commitments this lent is to trace God’s ways in these forty days.

So often we get stuck in the eternal-conundrum with our God-life! He loves me; He loves me not!?
We don’t need to be wobbled one bit about God’s love – yet we are. He is constant, faithful and true. He is unconditional, unswerving and always eternally loving in His heart toward you and me…. He simply cannot and will not change!!

So I’m going to believe this with all my heart, this Lent. God loves me!
If we believed it and lived it, how we would be changed.

Here below, was one of the evidences today of this truth!!

Following Jesus calls for all of us. He engages our emotions.

In Luke 6.13-16 Jesus names the disciples and the list includes Judas ‘who became a traitor’.

Today, name again your desire to follow Christ.

Following Jesus is active; name the ways in which you sometimes betray your best desire.

Lent is the 40 weekday period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Day. It invites a time of humility, repentance, and soul searching as we draw closer to the passion of Christ.
But having said that, I often feel really apathetic about how vogue it is to give something up during Lent. And particularly when it’s usually something like chocolate!! I don’t knock those who give stuff up; more to the point I commend you but I want to know why. Does self-denial of whatever make you more mindful of Christ and His Way?

So, I ask the simple question:

Are you giving something up for Lent? What and Why?
For me, I don’t want to think of it as a giving up but rather a season of more deeply growing my life in God. In what way am I more compelled to grow in the ways of God?

I’d never want Lent to be reduced to the stuff we give up, more that I grow in Jesus. So over the next 40 days or so, I’ll trace 40 ways in which I’m growing with Jesus…… Feel free to share yours too!
And as for some of the specifics of my lent….. it’s basic stuff!….. more water, more sleep and more study!