Transformation: Unhurriedness, The Cornerstone of Spiritual Life

John Ortberg asked his mentor Dallas Willard what it would take to live the kind of life Dallas was always talking about—a life caught up in the goodness of God, a life lived from the Kingdom of God, an abundant life of prayerful love.  In short, the life of a disciple.

Dallas paused for a moment and said, “John, you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

John wrote that down and said, “Okay, I got it, what else?”

Long pause.

“That is all.  There is nothing else.”

And that’s Dallas Willard for you.  But…how can that be all there is?  At the risk of trying to speak for Uncle Dallas, perhaps what he meant, in part, is this: All of God’s abundance is there. The grace, the power, the resource of God has already been given. You simply need to become aware of it.  And you become aware—and you become transformed—by slowing down.  You must slow down into the life of God.

Discipleship starts with hearing the whisper of God’s Spirit which whispers “yes” and “draw near.”  The whisper of adoption by which God reveals that, in Him, we're "in,” and He is with and within us.[1]  But there is little hope of staying grounded in this whisper, let alone growing in our hearing of it, if we have no quiet in our souls to receive it.  It is like seed, and if the thorn of our inner life is over-grown with stress and anxiety, the seed will get choked out.  Or, it will find no place to land in the first place. 

Similarly, if we can’t hear the whisper of God, there will be little energizing power from the Spirit of God filling our lives to love others as disciples.  And we will have little resource left for hearing and responding to Jesus’ guiding voice in our lives.  In other words, we can’t live into the three pictures of discipleship if our souls are constantly in a hurry.

Each picture becomes a reality only when we have space to hear the whisper of the Father’s love, the whisper of Jesus inviting us to make present the Kingdom for others, and the whisper of the Holy Spirit, empowering us to listen and respond.  Without The Slow Life, we have a hard time hearing these whispers and thus, experiencing the transforming goodness of God.  The Slow Life is, quite simply, the cornerstone of spiritual life and the foundation for all other spiritual practices. 

[1] See, for example, Galatians 2:20

Transformation: Confession and Vulnerability, the Heart of Community

Jesus lived out his life in community.  For us, as his disciples, we can both love and encourage others while fueling our own transformation by making our confession and repentance communal.  We can see our confession as a powerful way of giving—the sharing of our story and our struggle, for our benefit and the benefit of another.  When we give ourselves permission to share vulnerably, we give others permission and empower them to do the same.  Haven’t you experienced that if you go first, people will often (though, yes, not always) follow?  We are always, through our own posture, giving people green lights or putting up “stop” signs. 

This is the beautiful two-way street of confession and repentance.  Through it, we empower ourselves and those we love to live in freedom.  Paul tells us to bring into the light that which has been in darkness, and James tells us to confess our sins to one another, that we may be healed.[1]  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, conversely, that “your sin wants to be alone with you.”  If it’s in the dark, where it stays safe because of your shame or fear of exposure, it can control you.  This bondage is released by light, and this must be communal sharing of light.  Have you ever noticed that talking about something can lessen its grip?  Similarly, I’ve learned to not try to come up with answers for people, even thought that makes me feel useful, because usually what they need is simply someone who will listen without obsessing about how to respond.  

But the word "sin" may keep us limited in our understanding of confession.  Confession extends far beyond sin and just the things we deem "morally bad."  It's about a posture of sharing our struggles, our fears, the places we want to hide or are embarrassed about.  The more light we are willing to let into those places, the more freedom we will enjoy.  The spiritual life always takes great courage, which is why it far transcends mere religion, which is always about covering up and hiding.  

Living in community, on the other hand, takes vulnerability and humility.  It is this posture of humility which can become habitual, until you are giving not only your confession but also your time, energy, money, and resources away to others.  This is exactly what Jesus desires for us!  In this posture, we are open to fully receiving and taking joy in the coming of the Kingdom of God, right here and now.

So…will we have the courage and the characters to live in the light?  What are the things you want to keep secret or hidden?  Are we willing to bring those things to Jesus and to others, and to see what happens when we bring them into reality?  

[1] Ephesians 5:11-14 and James 5:16

[2] Romans 2:4

Transformation: The Posture of Generosity at the Heart of Confession

Grace is more than just forgiveness of sins, as Dallas Willard consistently taught.  How tragic that we have reduced it down to just the forgiveness of sins (though how wonderful that it includes that). “Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.”  It’s true!  And it’s also true that grace is also a power that fills our lives to do what we could not and cannot do on our own.[1]  It is power to live in a new way.  But we can only live in this new way if we have a sense of who we are in God.  An orientation to being must always precede an orientation to doing.  The religious game is doing (go to church, don't drink, and so on and so forth) with the goal of ultimately arriving at a place of being.  This is paradigmatic for our human minds: if I can do things correctly, I can be, with doing preceding being.  But God starts in exactly the opposite order, adopting us in before we have ourselves sorted out, or even any sense of how unsorted we are!  It is only awakening to this reality can truly and authentically transform what we do, in a way that mere religious efforts never can.  Ultimately, we have to learn to locate ourselves within a relational universe, in which we have been approached before we feel worthy of it.

Whenever I struggle with temptation, for example, I have to remind myself who I am.  I have been sober from pornography for a good while, but the temptation to dive deep back into it has never gone away.  (We each have our black holes, different in form from person to person, and we need to be aware of our unique ways of potentially falling off the cliff.)  In any moment of temptation, I have to remember my relationships: I am an adopted child of God, husband to Rebecca, father to Charlotte and Leifton.  My actions do affect my family and my friends and really, every one I meet, whether they know what I do or not.  Selfishness and sin are always communal realities, as much as we would like to pretend that they affect only us.

It is a posture of remembering others that helps me maintain an ongoing posture of confession and repentance.  That is, of humility.  A continual confession of awe and wonder that I have been included by God.  We are relational beings, and the way we thrive is by remembering relationships and becoming committed to give, in whatever ways bring life, in these relationships.  And to recognize and move away from (or fight our way free from) anything that harms these relationships.  This is how we love in action, not just in word or theory.  Truth must always be embodied, which is surely why God was embodied in Jesus.  Relationship, founded on a relationship with God, the core relational reality of the universe, ultimately tell us who we are.  We can't find ourselves outside of this context, which is yet another reality to humble our ego: We aren't strong enough to have an enduring sense of self outside of some communal reality.  Of course this must be the pattern, for God's own Self is located within a relationship, which we call the Trinity!   What frees us from our doing struggles is knowing who we are in the core of our being.  It’s no accident that Jesus’ entire ministry began with a being statement, declared over him by God the Father: “This is my beloved son.”[2]  Until we grasp the reality of being with and "in Christ," to use one of Paul's favorite phrases, we will struggle with we do.  Until we have a clear vision of who we want to be for others, we will probably be left floundering.  And the reality is that when we get clear on being and identity, all of our struggles with what we do tend to take care of themselves!  As Paul says, "Love is the fulfillment of the law."[3] 
 

[1] For an example, see Galatians 2:8, in which Paul says he had been “given grace” and that God had worked within him to be an apostle to the Gentiles.  This is point which Dallas Willard consistently made in his attempt to undermine the “Gospel of Forgiveness only.”  See Conversion and Discipleship: You Can’t Have One Without the Other by Bill Hull.  Zondervan Books, Grand Rapids, MI.  2016.  See chapter 1, ‘The Gospel.’

[2] Matthew 3:17

[3] Romans 13:10