The Balance of Hard Truth & Incredible Love
// Last night at the INN, Willow talked about the incredibly delicate and difficult balance between truth and love. When it comes to our relationships with other people, we can often find ourselves drawn to one or the other:
“Excessive Love w/o Truth” - We watch our friends and family make destructive choices and slowly dig a hole for themselves, all under the idea of “who am I to judge.” We think our job is to be there when they come home, listen when they ask, and let them make their own decisions because we love them. Who are we to tell someone that what they’re doing is wrong?
“Excessive Truth w/o Love” - From a distant position of authority, we proclaim truth into situations where we’re not welcome. We are seen as putting ourselves on a pedestal of rightness, pointing down at the world around us, caring more about upholding “what’s right” than the people involved.
But God calls us to remain in the middle, one hand on his powerful, life-changing truth and the other on his unending, undeniable love of all people in this world. Paul, the writer of the book of Ephesians, understood this idea, saying in chapter 4:
…so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Ephesians 4:14-16
In Willow’s talk, she gave the image of a table. We are neither called to crawl under the table in fear of upsetting the world, nor are we called to stand on the table, yelling down vitriolic, unloving statements of truth. Rather we are called to sit down at the table, face to face in our relationships, facing the issues the people we love face, speaking into situations that require speaking into. Because, above all, people matter. So we strive to love deeply with a love that says, “I care about who you are and what you do.”
Where have you landed on the sliding scale between “excessive love without truth” and “excessive truth without love”?
What scares you most about remaining in the middle?
How can you practice this in your current relationships?
(For further reading on this idea, look at the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel, chapter 11, especially the role of the prophet Nathan in response to David’s actions. His position in David’s life as the loving truth-teller leads David to write Psalm 51.)
My Story: Erin Hawkins
My Story: Elliott Snyder
My Story: Rachel Smith
My Story: Emily Matson
Overcoming Through Freedom
// Last night at the INN, we heard from INN staff member Seth Thomas for the third time. He talked about the freedom we have in Christ. Now, we can often think about “freedom” and “liberty” and bring up images of the freedom we have to do anything we want, whenever we want, our “rights” as human beings in a free society. We can think about freedom as a God-given gift to not be encumbered by any rules or laws and live in a world outside of restrictions. But this isn’t God’s freedom, this is our made-up freedom. It’s true that Christ has set us free, but this is freedom from addiction and bondage. It’s freedom from the things in life that enslave us and stop us from fully living. In Christ, we are brought into a life that allows us to live outside and beyond those barriers. But with this freedom comes responsibility. In the book of Galatians, Chapter 5, Paul wrote about our freedom in Christ, saying,
For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:13-14
So what kind of followers of Christ will we be? We have the choice to exercise our freedom in a way that is self-serving or in a way that serves one another in love. The latter is what God is calling us into. It is a story where we are not the main character, but we get to act out God’s love on the world around us, moving His story along, one act of selflessness at a time.
What does “freedom in Christ” mean to you?
How might you change the way you interact with the world around you to better reflect Paul’s vision of this freedom?
Overcoming Through Joy
// This Tuesday, we had the privilege to hear from two women, Jenn and our dear friend Jean. Jean is our most faithful attender, an older woman who sits on the side (and has for over 10 years) and prays for the INN every week. This week we got to hear her story of finding God in her 30s and walking into First Presbyterian Church and finding a congregation that she’s been a part of ever since. A big part of her story was a longing that she felt before finding Jesus, a sense that there was something more than setting your life up in the right way.
Jenn spoke after Jean, and talked about our lives and the idea that God’s ultimate goal for us is not for us to be happy. While this may sound shocking, it is not a concern that God has for us. But it is our concern for happiness has us perpetually looking toward the future. We say to ourselves, “life will be great when…” From one stage of our life to the next, we put our happiness and good feelings on a pedestal, longing for the next stage that will bring the ultimate fulfillment of our happiness, a state of “everything being right all the time for me.” And in doing this, we wish our lives away, and eventually they’re over.
While God doesn’t wish happiness for us, he longs for us to experience a part of himself: joy. Joy and happiness can often be confused in terminology, but an easy differentiation is that happiness is based on differing life circumstances and joy comes from God despite our life circumstances and in the midst of them all. The Apostle Paul prayed for this kind of joy for the Romans whom he wrote to, saying:
“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:13
Joy comes from God and is an out-flowing of trust that we put in Him. Doing things on our own brings worry, stress, and anxiety, but trusting in God to provide and carry our weight brings peace and joy, leaving us with a confident hope in the future. We are then freed to live in the present moment, joyful in any circumstance, hopeful for the future.
What in your life stops you from finding joy? What creates worry and stress and a “looking forward to” mentality in you?
What characteristics of God can you remember and dwell on to bring you back into the reality that God is in control of your life and wants you to experience his overwhelming peace and joy?
Overcoming Through Curiosity
// Last week at the INN, Seth talked for the second time this year, this time about books. Ok, it’s a lot more than that, but he did unearth his inner librarian to make a point. We have lost our curiosity when it comes to our relationship with God. Too often we have turned out faith into a weekly lecture from the all-knowing learned person on stage and have not chosen to interact on our own with the BIble and with books and with other things outside of the church setting that could help us mature as Christians. The writer of Hebrews felt the same way about the not-so-new Christians he or she was writing to, saying:
“There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.”
Hebrews 5:11-14
Solid food. Real food. This comes when we actively pursue a relationship with God that involves learning and curiosity; a relationship that is not afraid of questions and seeking answers. If we say we are Christ-followers, it is going to take some effort on our part to grow and mature in our faith in Christ. And there are myriad ways to do this, from reading books and articles to seeking out conversations with people who have sought the same answers before. It’s just going to take some effort.
Do you feel spiritually dull?
What could you do to start infusing life and maturity into your relationship with Jesus?
Loving Our Enemies
// Last week at the INN, we dove into a topic that’s not always easy to talk about: our enemies. Willow spoke and dove into “who are our enemies?” In a part of the world where we are not faced with war or violence on a regular basis, we can often think that we have no perceivable enemies. Yet we continue to shoot daggers across the room at people who have hurt us and go years without talking to people who have let us down. Sometimes in very big ways, we have also hurt people that have caused broken relationships. It’s easy to love those who love you back. It’s not easy to love those who despise you. (Matthew 5:43-48)
And for whatever reasons we have, we have all had relationships that end up this way. A unforgiven hurt has grown into a block that stands in between relationships that once existed but are now non-existent. But this isn’t how God operates with us. When Jesus was asked about forgiveness, he told a story. Found in the book of Luke, chapter 6, he details a story about a servant who owed an unimaginable debt to the king. With every reason to put the servant in jail and sell his family to pay off his debt, the king has mercy on the servant who begs on his knees for just a little bit more time to pay off the debt (a still impossible task). In his mercy, the king forgives the debt completely. But the servant has not learned…
But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Matthew 18:28-35
God has chosen to forgive us of everything we’ve done wrong; everything that creates distance between us and God in our relationship with him. When we don’t forgive others around us for far less grievous things, we are like the wicked servant. We have learned nothing from the unending mercy and forgiveness that God gives to us. Loving our enemies goes beyond a prayer. We are called to reconcile and forgive and stop building up barriers in relationships because of pain and hurt. We have a chance to re-write the end of this story. As the servant forgiven by God, we have the opportunity to extend that forgiveness to others and be image-bearers of the God who forgives.
What relationship in your life seem irreparably broken?
How could you actively pursue forgiveness and reconciliation in those relationships?
Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross, Follow Me
// As we walked through “Holy Week,” Jenn talked last Tuesday about Jesus. As people seeking to follow Jesus, we have to pay attention to who he was and how he lived. We also have to pay attention to the things that he told people who would be his followers. In the lead up to the period of his life that would become known as the “passion,” he told his followers,
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Mark 8:34-38
This teaching is a three-part imperative. A three-part process to fully giving our lives over to Christ.
1. Deny Yourself
In this, we acknowledge that we are not capable of saving ourselves. In all of our efforts and attempts to do the work necessary to be redeemed and in right relationship with God, we eventually have to have a face down moment, a realization that none of it means anything. We can’t do it on our own.
2. Take Up Your Cross
We then admit that our sin causes separation from God and therefore shame. “Taking up our cross” is us participating in the shame of the cross that Jesus bore for us, a reminder that God’s view of us matters most, not what the world thinks of us for following Jesus and going after the things that God has for us.
3. Follow Me
We rely on Jesus to make us new, restore our relationship with God, and to see us as whole. In following Jesus, we give ourselves up to him in every way. Our hopes and fears for this life are put in his hands as he brings us into right relationship with him. The beauty of love as it was made to be.
Which of these directives is the hardest to participate in?
Where are you hung up in the process of following Jesus fully?
Overcome
// It’s the start of a new quarter! The brightest, warmest quarter: Spring. This quarter at the INN, we’ve decided to focus on what it means to our lives that God has “overcome the world.” We started that discussion on campus on Tuesday with painted boards (pictured above) that said “Overcome, (verb) to prevail over. What do you want to see overcome in your life?” and we put blue pieces of paper and pens up on the boards, inviting people into a response about their lives and what they desire to see overcome. There was an overwhelming response from the Western student population, answers ranging from fear to addiction, cynicism to oppression. Basically, everyone, no matter our life circumstance, is facing hard things, things that have the ability to consume us.
Doug Bunnell, pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Bellingham (where the INN meets) was our guest speaker this week. He talked about these things in our life and the reality that life is difficult. No bones about it, life is hard and the optimist who tries to believe otherwise will eventually get beaten down by it. It was the POWs in WWII who faced the hard truth that they could be interned for several years who eventually walked out of the gates. In the same way, Jesus doesn’t pull punches in talking about life to his disciples. In the book of John, chapter 16, he says, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” When we face the truth that life will be hard, we are free to trust in God’s ability to care for us and overcome our trials. We can’t do it on our own, but we have hope that the things that life throws at us are not too big for Jesus, who has overcome them already.
What would you like to see overcome in your life?
What is stopping you from putting those troubles into God’s hands?
The Greatest Calling
// For the last INN of the quarter, Jenn focused on a passage from Matthew, chapter 28, that is traditionally called “The Great Commission.” She started by talking about her love for baseball (started as a kid playing softball in Florida, pictured above), and how she thought for so long that softball would lead to an eventual transition to playing real baseball. In essence, she went into it with expectations that it would be something that it was never meant to be, and this eventually lead to her ditching it completely. And we do this with “The Great Commission,” too. While this seems a little cookie-cutter topic for the week before Spring Break Mission Trips, Jenn challenged our traditional perception of Jesus’ last words on earth, which were,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
The only imperative (or command) in this passage from Jesus is to “make disciples.” So what does it mean to make disciples? Well, you would have to start by answering the question, “What is a disciple?” Our only example of what Jesus is talking about are the interactions in the Bible that we see between him and his own disciples. If we look at that relationship, “making disciples” was no short task. It took years. He called them. He taught them. He showed them how to serve and care for the people who were seen as the lowest and least worthy. He lived with and traveled with them. He knew them and they knew him. He forgave them and gave them chances to act out what they had seen, and then he taught them some more. Whatever we think “make disciples” means, it has to look something like this. It starts with us first being disciples of Jesus before we try to make them. Then, when we do, it begins with a relationship. It’s no quick proposition. It’s not just one prayer, and it isn’t a tally of numbers and accolades for bringing the most people to a belief. It’s living life together with people as you collectively learn more about what it means to live like Jesus. As we leave for mission trips on Saturday (whether you’re going with the INN or somewhere else, Jesus is in that place through you), we know that our time with the people we meet will be brief and that our personal impact may be small, but we’re learning how to live life together and serve others. And most of all, we’re getting a taste of what it looks like to live more like Jesus.
What do you think of when you hear the word “evangelism”?
How might this view of discipleship change that initial perception?
Downward Mobility
// A little late on this one, but here’s a recap from 2 weeks ago at the INN! Willow talked about the world that we live in as a place obsessed with upward mobility. Climbing the ladder of success to better jobs, more money, more accolades, rewards and recognition. But, like the trophies and semi-creepy painted graduate in the photo above, these things pas away. They’re fleeting. Yesterdays awards become tomorrow’s thrift store novelties. They used to matter, but their worth has faded. Yet we still march on towards the next thing because that’s what we know. But the example of Jesus is different. Speaking out of the book of Philippians, chapter 2, Willow talked about how Jesus chose to humble himself instead of glorify himself,
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8
Jesus was a lot less about upward mobility and accolades, and a lot more about “downward mobility.” Though he was God, he made himself nothing, became a servant, and was obedient to the worst kind of death, crucifixion on a cross. If we’re to be Christ-followers and act as we see Jesus acting in the world, then our ultimate model is that of service and humility. If we want to be first, we must be last. If we want to be the greatest, we have to put ourselves behind everyone else.
What would “downward mobility” look like in your life?
How might you serve those around you in an attempt to put yourself last?
This quarter at the INN, we’ve been sharing the stories of students from our community. This is Brenton’s story.
This quarter at the INN we’ve been sharing student stories on Tuesday Nights. This is Anne’s story.
