Soul Cravings

This is a great lead in video to set up my thoughts as we continue to understand what it means to cultivate as followers of Jesus. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIaEVN2BHDI

 

As I watched Erwin McManus’ “Crave. The Documentary.” there were three things that really stuck out to me and that was his sense of narrative, destiny and intrinsic desire that leads us to understand that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that He is ultimately He is the one who began our story and ultimately the only one who can finish our story, He is our manifesto!

I also recognize how Jesus’ ministry to Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus is about spiritual hunger, a longing to find meaning and hope.  It is about destiny and intrinsic desire within all of us that when we seek Him with all of our heart, we will find Him.  It is also about the beautiful realization that God seeks us. “ Jesus Christ, God the Son, knocks at your door and asks if you can come out and play.”  Leonard Sweet

Luke 24:13  Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. ¹⁴They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. ¹⁵As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; ¹⁶but they were kept from recognizing him.

Narrative

What I love about this passage is that Jesus doesn’t come out right away and reveal his identity.  He doesn’t ‘show his cards’ so to speak.  He begins by helping these two men learn to find their place in the human story.  I think we may have this tendency to rush in, to ‘tell it like it is’ and miss what Jesus is telling us.  He begins by asking them questions about the journey that they are on.  Everyone has a story and we are called to listen, to understand, to appreciate that God has been on the scene for a long time before we even begin.  So, it is about learning where and how He is already doing His thing!

Destiny

Luke 24:19 "About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. ²⁰The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; ²¹but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

Destiny is the belief about calling, that tomorrow will be better than today and it really didn’t feel that way for these two men.

But we had hoped that he was the one…

 It has that ‘matrix’ like feel to their deep disappointment.  There has been this incredible sense of expectation that Jesus was going to fulfill their deepest need for the destiny they believed He would fulfill. Unfortunately that is the trouble with expectations because they are exactly that, ‘my expectations’ of how things are meant to turn out.  The problem is that when God moves and works outside of the box of my expectations that I have created, I can easily lose hope and meaning and purpose.  Better as one devotional so accurately pointed out, followers of Jesus need to live with ‘expectancy’ .  We need to live with expectancy that is fuelled beyond my definitions of how and when things should happen.  We get to the place where hope overrides even the worst of outcomes.

Intrinsic Desire

It is the desire to create a better world, the need to belong to someone, something, to be part of a movement, something that is bigger than me.  It is that desire not just to be loved, but know someone who wants to receive my love.    

Luke 24v32 “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” 

Jesus allowed the work of the Holy Spirit to bring them to a place of incredible revelation.  Their eyes were opened  and it was their ‘ah ha moment’. 

We need to keep praying that their eyes will be opened because for those who haven’t seen Jesus in all His fullness, there is a huge battle going on in the invisible world.  2 Corinthians 4:4 shows us that it is the god of this age who blinds and keeps understanding darkened.

 

The Takeaway

We need to stop arguing, stop trying to prove we are right and instead learn to come alongside them.

We need to cultivate love.

We are most alive when we find it, most devastated when we lose it, most empty when we give up on it, most inhumane when we betray it and most passionate when we pursue it.

Erwin McManus in Soul Cravings 

We need to cultivate intimacy.

We need to cultivate uniqueness.

This is especially true in a world that pushes us towards conformity.

Finally, we need to cultivate hope.  One of the most famous metaphors that has come from the early followers of Christ is the butterfly.  It is the realization that God is the one who continues transform our lives and the lives of those around us.

It is fear that keep us in prison and it is hope that sets us free.

Truth is about trust and eventually the truth about who Jesus is really come to the forefront.  We need to know what it means to gain the trust and respect of those around us.  When people see it in our eyes, we need to be ready to share!

The Spirit of Cultivation

A great video to set up this message is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7-NvQlqoI

                                                                

Cultivation first must begin in us before we are able to cultivate into the lives of others.  It is very significant in that it focuses on the outworking of our faith.  We are driven to be who we are and it so hard to let go of what we hold onto.  It is only as we truly release ourselves into the process of Jesus Christ’s conforming presence that we become who we have been created to be.

The first spiritual exercise I want you to practice is to start first by simply closing your eyes.

I want you to first grip your hands tightly and tell God all the things that you hold onto whether they are past mistakes or past achievements, past disappointments or past success, past relationships or present ones, bad habits, past and present, your reputation.  These are the things that we often hold tightly onto, the things we try to control.  Spend at least a few minutes doing this.

Now I want you to open your hands and release what you have tried to hold so desperately onto and pray this simple prayer, “God, I open my hands to release all this to you, everything I hold onto.  I now sit here with open hands and my prayer is to receive everything you have for me.

If you felt conviction, that’s good.  If you felt release and comfort through this exercise, even better.

John 16:8 tells us that it is the Spirit of God that convicts the world of guilt in regards to sin, righteousness and judgment.

You need to know that it is the Spirit of God transforms us and brings awareness that we will truly be led and not driven in the organic church!  

The Holy Spirit is like the sun and is the one that sheds the light on the soil in the process of cultivation.

The Leading of The Spirit   Romans 8:12-17

Those that are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  It is imperative that we follow the Spirit’s leading in our lives.  He must have the pre-eminence in that way that we pursue the process of cultivating and the cultivation has to first begin in us!  

I can’t stress it enough how important it is for us to listen for God’s leading in our lives because He is the one who initiates the work, He is the lays down the groundwork, the good works He has prepared in advance for us to do.

May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvellous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep his love really is.  Ephesians 3:17 NLT

The work of cultivation is a slow process, it is truly a work of grace.

Cultivate, plant and reap is the organic work of the church.  It was Katie Franks who also pointed me to a whole movement called ‘slow food’ and it is teaching is huge in the world of agriculture right to the plate.  The focus is on the realization that food was never meant to be done fast and it starts right at the beginning through the whole growing process of foods.  There has been so much done in this area to speed up the process from ripening fruit and vegetables to meat with the injection of hormones, pesticides everything done in the name of efficiency.  Now, the new movement is to slow it all down all the way to our meals together.  Too often, myself included, we just drop our heads and consume instead of enjoying the presence of those around us at our tables.

In the spiritual realm, we need to learn to listen for the Spirit’s leading and it takes time because we have to first experience the fullness of God’s redeeming love in our own lives.  Once the woman at the well experienced Christ’s love, realizing that He was there for her and willing to answer her questions, her perspective changed…’we are called to worship God in Spirit and in truth’ she couldn’t help herself but to speak of her amazing revelation.  She met Jesus and He met her right where she was at.

A Prayer of Cultivation  Ephesians 3:14...

• For this reason I kneel before the Father

Our best attempts at spiritual formation unless they are empowered by the Spirit of God.  Otherwise prayers just become spoken words, Bible study is just words read, worship music is just words sung and music played. Once Paul had emphasized and reemphasized the grace by which we stand, he now takes us another step downward in the evolution of worship and that is when we are brought to our knees.  In that day it was typical for the Jews to stand in prayer as we can see in Matthew 6:5; Luke 18:11,13.

Kneeling was significant because it showed an expression of deep emotion and earnestness.  We see Solomon kneeling at the dedication of the temple(1 Kings 8:54), Stephen kneeling as he was being martyred, Peter kneeling at the deathbed of Dorcas, Paul as he made his farewell to the congregations and most significantly, Jesus, as He knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

For us who find it natural to kneel in prayer, it would be the type of desperate prayer that would lead us to lie face down on the floor.

• From whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name

Paul is praying specifically for those who are part of the family of God.  This is not a prayer for just anyone, it was for those who had crossed the line of faith, those who had a defining place of giving their life over to Jesus as Saviour and Lord.

It was out of his glorious riches, that He is calling us to discover just how much confidence, power and resolve we have in our very being!

I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with lovingkindness!

 Jeremiah. 31:3 

Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, my love will never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the Lord, who has mercy on you.

Isaiah. 54:10 

But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.  Psalm 86:15

See what love the Father has lavished on us in letting us be called children of God! Yet that is what we are   1 John 3:1 

Love is a vital part of wonder.  It is  that condition of the heart that pumps emotional intelligence through the blood vessels of one’s daily life encounters.  It is the quiet confidence of belonging to someone other than oneself.  Ravi Zacharias in Recapture The Wonder

• Prayer request #1  going  INSIDE  - supernatural strength to dwell in Christ through His Spirit!

Dwell = It was a presence that He wanted to remain in us continually.  It was something for us to discover in its fullness; not sporadically feel  from time to time.  There are some of us who feel his presence stronger in certain places more than others

Because of your relationship with Him, there is not a single spiritual thing you will ever need that is lacking from your spiritual treasure-store!!  The fact is that you, as a believer, have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ!

I want you to write a letter of thanksgiving.  It can simply start, ‘Jesus I thank you because’.  Now, here is where it will become more stretching because as you share your heart and love with Him, you may sense a spontaneous flow of impressions coming back to you.  God may be telling you of His love for you.  

• Prayer request # 2 more INSIDE -  go to the very places where you can know the power to experience the depths of Christ’s love. 

to grasp (understand that this is hard work)  

The decision to remain still and be before God instead of ‘doing’ for God is a very difficult desire for us to wrap our minds and hearts around.  However it is often that in those extended times of stillness where we give ourselves over to listening to Him that He washes over us with His love.  For some of us it is doing something that we absolutely love that is of a pure heart and feeling His joy there. 

I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.       Eric Liddell

Here is the paradox: Paul prayed that we would “know” that which is beyond knowledge.

Realize this that as he prayed for his readers to have this experience.  He was unable to describe it nor was he going to try to teach it happening in a certain way.  He recognized that we are all unique in the ways that we feel our way to God.  We also know that true spiritual formation is caught rather than taught. 

Hearing The Voice of Jesus through the Spirit of God  John 10:14-18

This is my Son…Listen to Him!  Mark 9:7

‘I’ve come to believe that hearing the quiet whisper of the transcendent God is one of the most extraordinary privileges in all of life.’  Bill Hybels in The Power of A Whisper.

Be Still…slow down!  Psalm 46:10

Fix Your Eyes On Christ  Hebrews 12:2

Spirit revelation that lights up on your heart and mind  John 7:37-39

Journal…the Psalms, the Prophets, Revelation

Being still is the first step.  Stillness doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of movement because often it is movement takes us there whether that is through music, dance, running, walking as we have seen.

The second step is to fix your eyes on Jesus and ask God to give you a fresh awareness of Himself,  a vision, a picture.

Journal!  Write your thoughts down!

Ask your Heavenly Father that you will understand and know in a very real way the significance of Jesus’ love for you.

God’s words to us are often like spontaneous thoughts that light up on our mind.  However as we long to hear God’s voice, we first need to quiet ourselves in His presence and then fix our eyes on Jesus.

Simply begin this exercise by praying, “Dear Lord, what is it that you want me to know…speak Lord, for your son /daughter is listening…  just like Samuel” and write what you hear on a blank sheet of paper or in your journal.

Sometimes the page will be blank, sometimes it will be one or two words, a sentence, a paragraph.  It can even take the form of a conversation where we write down what we are saying and we sense His response.  I’ve often found that God will lead me to certain passages of Scripture as well.

The Takeaway

In cultivation, we listen to the Holy Spirit’s leading for clarity and confirmation.

Good cultivation takes time, it is a slowing down process.  In middle Eastern culture, to invite someone into your home for a meal was an invitation into your family, your life.  We need to first slow down enough to hear His voice and then slow down enough during our day to see our neighbours, our fellow workers as God sees them, a person born in the image of God, deeply loved by Him so much so that He sent His son, Jesus to die for them and to birth the Holy Spirit inside of them.