Renovation of the Heart
Transforming Our Social Dimension (2|4)
Pages 189-195
• Love Deeply Rooted in Human Nature
• God Is Love
• Spiritual Formation in Christ Would Make It So
• Thoroughly Understanding the Wrongness
TOGETHER read the devotional and the scripture.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out.
1 John 4:8-12 (NIV) Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Matthew 5:46-48 (NIV) If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Romans 14:7-9 (NIV) For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your devotional notes and pray.
Love Deeply Rooted in Human Nature
“To merely welcome another, to provide for him or her, to make a place, is one of the most life-giving and life-receiving things a human being can do. They are basic, universal acts of love. Our lives were meant to be full of such acts, drawing on the abundance of God, and they achieve their greatest fulfillment precisely when, like Jesus, we ‘lay down our lives for the brethren.’”
Have you experienced either being welcomed or being the one welcoming (or both) someone(s) in an act of love - including, extending an invitation into a loving relationship and/or community?
“The call of ‘the other’ on our lives is a constant for everyone. It is the basic reality of a moral existence, which we retreat from only into a living death of isolation. If we make it our purpose to save our lives by withdrawal, we lose them. So Jesus said. But this is not only a revealed truth; it is also a testable fact of life.”
This is, in a way, the opposite of the first question - have you experienced isolation (not necessarily from rejection, although that can happen) but loneliness from being isolated? And/or do you know someone who has lived/is living life in isolation - who can you seek out - to extend an invitation into a personal connection?
God Is Love
“Community is formed not by mere love and requited love, which by itself is exclusive, but by shared love for another, which is inclusive. - Human beings are really together only in God, and all other ways of ‘being with’ fall short of the needs of basic human nature. - The secret of all life-giving relation to others, and of all that is social, lies in the fact that the primary other for a human being, whether they want it or not, is always God.”
What does this mean and what is your response?
Spiritual Formation in Christ Would Make It So
“The visible church, which anyone can look at if he or she wills, is - with all her imperfections - the outward manifestation in history and society of the invisible church, which God alone sees. - This invisible church body of her risen Lord, comes when we place our confidence in Jesus. He takes us in and forms a circle of sufficiency that is real and ultimate. It is first in relation to him that we begin to see how the flow of loving presence from Jesus extends through others to us and from us to others. - This must happen within the imperfect communities and congregations available to us now.”
How do we as a community of Jesus followers live this out?
Thoroughly Understanding the Wrongness
“The progression of redemption in our relations to others depends upon what we do as well as what God does for us and in us. And in order to do our part in the process of spiritual formation of social relations, we must deeply identify and understand what is wrong in our relations with others (whether that wrong is coming from us or toward us) and how it can be changed.”
What are healthy ways this can be done?
“Spiritual formation in Christ will mean becoming persons who would not, and therefore do not, assault those to whom they stand in relation, those whom they are with. - There are many ways of assaulting people, and these merge into our other category of wrong in relationships, that of withdrawal. - So far from assault and withdrawal, the social area of our lives is meant by God to be a play of constant mutual blessing. Pain and dysfunctionality result from the lack of this. Of course, there are degrees of ‘withness’ or involvement that human beings have with one another, and these make a difference in the precise character of the ‘mutual blessing’ appropriate in the given case. But every contact with a human being should be one of goodwill and respect, with a readiness to acknowledge, make way for, or assist the other in suitable ways.”
How do assault and withdrawal find their way into our lives? Are efforts with diversity, education, and tolerance creating a better path forward? Why or why not?
EXTRA READING:
“I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me. If you want me to leap with abandon, you must intone the song. Then I shall leap into love, from love into knowledge, from knowledge into enjoyment, and from enjoyment beyond all human sensations. There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.’’
- Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207 - 1282)