Discipleship Letters 71-72

Discipleship Letter 71                               Jan. 24^th, 2010

“Stewardship appears in our life as our discipleship leads us toward new responsibilities and greater personal authority. But we do not experience these invitations of religious maturity in a social vacuum. The structures of our families and our churches can foster this religious development or frustrate it.” [Evelyn E. Whitehead and James D. Whitehead, Christian Adulthood: A Journey of Self-Discovery (Liguori: Liguori, 2005), p. 56.]

In Christian adulthood, we have to deal with the context that we are in. it either fosters or frustrates religious maturity. For me, I start to realize that in order to foster religious maturity, any form of frustration that we experience in life or ministry is part of God’s nurturing process.

Learning to deal with frustration itself is a formational process. Stewardship means managing the property of others. Christian stewardship means that Christians manage God’s properties that have been entrusted to us. Thus, as God’s stewards, we must learn to manage frustration as God’s “property” that we receive from Him through the context and the people within it.

When Jesus sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival, the people of the village did not welcome Jesus. “When James and John saw this, they said to Jesus, ‘Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?’ But Jesus turned and rebuked them.” (Luke 9:51-55) At the end of 9:55, some manuscripts add—“And he said, ‘You don’t realize what your hearts are like’” or “And he said, ‘you do not know what manner of spirit you are of.’” In a context that either fosters or frustrates, God wants us to realize what our hearts are like.

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Discipleship Letter 72                               Jan. 31^st, 2010

“…Flaws and faithfulness do not supplant each other but coexist. We all bear wounds. His [Henri Nouwen] came from anxiety over sexual identity and a hypersensitivity to rejection. Mine come most form family and church. Others come from chronic illness or deep pain. We can live as victims, blaming God or someone else for our misfortune; or, following Nouwen, we can allow those wounds to drive us to God.” [Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 307.]

Everybody bears wounds. We live with them; we grow with them; we deal with them. Philip Yancey’s wound comes from the church. “Every writer has one main them, a spoor that he or she keeps sniffing around, tracking, following to its source. If I had to define my own theme, it would be that of a person who absorbed some of the worst the church has to offer, yet still landed in the loving arms of God. Yes, I went through a period of rejection of the church and God, a conversion experience in reverse that felt life liberation for a time. I ended up, however, not as an atheist, a refugee from the church, but as one of its advocates.” (pp. 7-8)

To a certain extent, I consider Philip Yancey is a very cynical person. But his cynicism does not destroy his faith. Rather, it has led him to a higher ground. Because of his theme, he discovers more of God—a unique aspect of God. His voice makes me think that I should not downplay your theme and make it irrelevant regarding with your soul searching.

Discipleship Letters 109-110

Discipleship Letter 109                                              Oct. 24^th, 2010

The tabernacle is the movable place of worship representing God’s presence with His people; the temple, the stationary place of worship representing God’s presence with His people. Jesus became flesh and “tabernacled” among us (Jn. 1:14). The tabernacle is replaced by the temple; the temple, by Jesus as the tabernacle; Jesus, by the Spirit as the temple of God’s people. In the Bible, we see that God is a mobile God. God said, “I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling” (2 Sam. 7:6).

God traveled along with Israel. In the desert, God’s pillar of cloud signified the presence of God in the place where there was no sign of progress. In the desert, did Israel progress or regress? Could God regress because of Israel’s regression? Perhaps when God determined to travel with Israel, His primary concern was not progression, but formation. It was in the desert they were instructed to build the tent of meeting. From there, God spoke to them (Lev. 1:1-2).

John Calvin viewed that the world is “the Promised Land—that is to say, the Promised Land can be found wherever the Word is preached.” In the desert, God is “a moveable pulpit.” “Where the Word of God is preached, heard and practiced, there is the Promised Land. There, in fact, is heaven on earth.” [Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life. Translated by Albert Gootjes (Downers Grove: IVP Academic; Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2009), p. 43.]

In the desert Israel learned to focus not on the journey, but the formation. Geographically, Israel might be at the point of stagnation. However, it was at this point of their journey they learned to listen to God’s Word and to turn the desert into the Promised Land.

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Discipleship Letter 110                                              Oct. 31^st, 2010

“We writers are not Nouns, he [C. S. Lewis] used to say. We are mere adjectives serving the great Noun of truth” [Philip Yancey, What Good is God? In Search of a Faith that Matters (New York: FaithWords, 2010), p. 100.].

Pastors are not Nouns. We are mere adjectives pointing the congregants to the great Noun named God. In pastoral works, it seems that I am always at the center of attention: I teach. I preach. I open and end with prayers. I hold the church keys. But I am a mere adjective. In other words, I am always on a periphery and yet with pastoral functions. I am on the side to protect the center from being invaded with false doctrinal teachings and relative moral standards. Once the center is invaded, the congregants become vague regarding with Christian belief and living. I am on the side to make sure that the congregants are in tune with the center. However, once again, I am not and should not be the center even though I want to.

Who wants to be the attachment instead of the centerpiece? It’s a hard fact we must swallow. It’s life. “Clowns are not in the center of the events. They appear between the great acts, fumble and fall, and make us smile again after the tensions created by the heroes we came to admire. The clowns don’t have it together, they do not succeed in what they try to do, they are awkward, out of balance, and left-handed, but…they are on our side. We respond to them not with admiration but with sympathy, not with amazement but with understanding, not with tension but with a smile…The clowns remind us with a tear and a smile that we share the same human weaknesses” [Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation (New York: Image, 1979), p. 3.].