Fear and Desire (Revised)

The past week was a busy week for me. Lots of reading and preparing for yesterday. Yesterday, Bill was outta town, so it was up to me to preach the Word and lead the adult Sunday School.
The services went very well, and as usual my sermon in the second service was better than first...I need to really work on that more than anything with my sermon deliveries. Not that it was overly noticable, but I'd like to see more consistancy in my sermon deliveries. I preached on Mark 2:1-12, where Jesus healed a paralytic. I hit home on the desire aspect of the four men that brought the paralytic to Jesus and used that as a transition to talk about our own desires.
Some would say that desire is bad. I am going to have to disagree. Now, when I was in college, I probably would have said that desire was bad...I was also a bit of a puritan at the time, thank God that changed! I think that God has given us desire to see beyond the walls of this life. When we desire, we believe that the same old thing is not enough and we would also say that "getting by" is not right either. But in the Christian life we should desire more! If we didn't, and even looking back at our Christian forefathers and if they hadn't desired, would we be saved? This is not a question of our own merit, but would have the Gospel spread without desire? Shouldn't there be a desire in each heart of the Christian to want the world to know about our Lord and Savior? I think so. And desire is what makes the faith grow. Desire to see a changed world, desire to see our children and children's children growing up in the faith. God desired for us to be a part of His Kingdom and He works that in and through us through the Sacraments (Baptism and Communion) and through His Word. When we look at how or why some churches grow, isn't it the desire of the people that worship there that their churches grow? And when people desire that, when they don't stop at the door of the church to welcome people in, God's family grows...He uses His instrument of the Church to bring into His family those whom He desires.
This idea/talk of desire I got from John Eldredge's book "The Journey of Desire." Some might call him a heterodox guy or a flat out heretic, but couldn't some of his stuff provide learning opportunities? Yes. From this book, I'm not so sure that he would have either of those two labels. It is a very Christ-centered book, looking to the desires that He has put into us. (And a whole lot more than that!) One quote, that I used in my sermon yesterday, is this: "Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are. It's message is for those who hunger and thirst--for those who desire life as it was meant to be. Why does Jesus appeal to desire? Because it is essential to his goal: bringing us life." I don't think that it hits any bit closer to home than that. Jesus restores our life, sure not completely as it were before the fall, but our standing before God as most certainly changed. Jesus even said that he came to bring us life. (John 10:10) There are many people out there who think that they are happy with their life, but deep down they are hurting and have patched over the hurt with "things" in their lives to make everything seem okay, but the reality is without Jesus, no one can truly be happy. Heck, the Christian life isn't easy nor always happy, but Jesus does restore the life of a Christian

For Adult Sunday School yesterday, I contiuned the series from the book, "If you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat." It's a pretty good book...I've only read the chapter that I taught, well and the one before that. I taught chapter six, which is all about fear. Before reading this book, I had an idea of what some of my fears were, but afterwards, I was able to pinpoint where some of my greater fears are and what they really do to me! There are 5 areas that fear effects- loss of self-esteem, loss of destiny, loss of joy, loss of authentic intimacy, loss of availability to God.
With self-esteem, the issue is fight or flight. If you fight, you will boost your self-esteem, if you take flight, you will not.
With destiny, in fear you will never experience the potential God has for you- if we are always running from the challenge, how are we to grow? Growth always takes risk and risk always involves fear.
With joy, fear destroys joy. One of the issues that arises here is the "what if" factor. "What if I get hurt...what if I get rejected...what if, what if, what if...?!" This is where I am the worst! In the book, and I used this in class, it talked about those who have higher than average IQs, those who are then more creative, have a huge issue with this...which is me (not to sound like a jerk, but I do have an above average IQ...about 144). So, yeah, all week long I was thinking about how to present this part of the book...instead of doing it in a good way (?), I decided to open mouth and insert foot...I made an ass out of myself! I pretty much said that I have a high IQ...oh, man, it was more funny than embarassing. So, I actually said it twice...the second time after I said it, I was like, "I need to go repent!" Everyone got a good laugh out of that!
With authentic intimacy, it goes back to Adam and Eve and really we've been hiding ever since then...behind smiles and greetings we don't mean and holding back on things that we really want to say.
With availability to God, we get tricked by fear in thinking that God won't really be there to help us. And if we never trust God and take a step of faith, many "what ifs" become "what may have beens." The class went very, very well in my estimation.
So, going through this whole lesson, brought one of my biggest fears to the surface that I just needed to attack head on. Which I was able to accomplish this past weekend. For keeping things a little anonymous here, I'm not going to dive into what I did...you can email me (or comment me and I'll email you) about that one. But let's just say that some words of wisdom that were Jason Berbs' blog pushed me to do what I needed to do: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain. I've done just that...

Ed. Note: I was having some diffuculty with the pictures on the first go around...this one obviously has them!

The Matrix has you!

So, last night at youth group we talked about The Matrix. Yeah, I know that movie is so 7 years ago (nearly), but who hasn't wondered about that movie? And, when they found out that that's what we are doing, they were rather enthused! I think that most of them had a good time.
To help me understand some of the spiritual things to The Matrix, I read "The Gospel Reloaded" by Chris Seay and Greg Garrett (©2003). It was a pretty good book. The authers let the readers know off the bat that there are a lot of different religious ideologies that can be found throughout the movie, which is obviously true, but something that we Christians can do is utilize the Christian influences that the movie has/represents. (Which in all reality, utilizing something of one's culture to share the Gospel or to dig deeper in ones faith, is not something new for the Church to be doing, in fact Paul did that at the Areopagus: Acts 17:16-34.)
I thought that I'd share some of my thoughts from the book (my thoughts mixed in with what the authors wrote) and somethings that we talked about as well. It was a really good time!

Something that the movie The Matrix does for us is that it defines faith. The faith found in Morpheus, Trinity, and eventually Neo. We also see a lack of faith found in the likes of Cypher. Genuine faith is about living in an alternate reality—rejecting the embrace of the physical realm in exchange for a higher plane. The trick, of course is that the physical world desires our complete attention and it seduces us with things that we can own: cars, technology, money, emblems of status, and so on. Even in our faith, we try to use the things of the physical realm to help define our faith: using scientists and archeologists to help prove some of the mysteries of faith. (Noah’s Ark, the parting of the Red Sea, the Shroud of Turin)
We can find evidences of the supernatural on this mortal plane, but it’s not found in a laboratory or in some ridiculous mathematics equation. No, it’s in the beauty of things that we smell the scent of the Creator that has made life. And in the powerful things of nature we can see the divine at work. God is manifest through the laugh of a child. We can actually feel his power in our awe of nature.
The matrix is an illusion, providing blinders for our eyes that hide the true reality. We do not want to see what is real; we rush past it. Atheists deny their faith in the spiritual realm and settle for the wonder of the world they inhabit, while many Christians make the opposite mistake. They hide from the culture and create a fantasy world around themselves. God has given us this planet, this place of dwelling, for our pleasure. Sure, we are going to have to work for things in this life, but we are supposed to enjoy life. And it’s the enjoyment in life, living for God that we can get past our own matrices- one being the captivity of sin, and really see the world that God created and further than that, seeing that God (in Jesus) came to fix our "matrix."
I believe that we are presented with choices daily. We can choose to come to youth group, we can choose to have jobs, and we can choose to love people. I don’t believe that we can ever move away from the realm of choice. It’s not simply cause and effect, because that is too narrow of a sense of what it means to be human. That is why I love the analogy of the pills. You take one and you stay in your current state of reality. You take the other and a whole, new world waits to be explored. But it is up to you to choose, it’s also your responsibility to choose as well. This goes right into Christianity. You hear about the Good News that Jesus brings to us in His Word. You have a choice. You choose to accept it or not to. And guess what? You will be held responsible by God for that choice and how you choose to live your life. (And of course, the question is then, if I "choose" God, is that me or the Holy Spirit working in me? ...the obvious answer is the later of the two.)
Something interesting to think about is Neo’s worldly name: Thomas A. Anderson. Anderson literally means “Son of Man.” In the Gospels, there was a man named Thomas, who doubted in JC’s resurrection, until he was able to actually see it for himself. As with the whole series of The Matrix, it could be said of Neo, corresponding to his name, that “my character as a doubter is part of my becoming, and I am one of many possible messiahs.” (And corresponding to the actual series of movies, he is the one and he just needs to believe that.)

One question that we posed is: What do you see as a “real Matrix”? Why? And then… Who is Neo? Who is Morpheus? Who are the Agents? Who would Agent Smith be? Who is the Oracle? Who is Trinity? Who is Cypher?
When we take that question and really apply it to real life, our "matrix" is the fallen world that we are in! Think about it, before we ever come to faith (regardless of age) we are stuck to and bound to the reality that we are born into sin! So, in a loose connection to the movie. Our "Neo" is Jesus- "The One" to come and save us from the bondage of sin (the bondage of the machines). Our "Morpheus" is John the Baptist, the one who laid the path before Jesus came onto the scene. Our "Agents" are demons, trying to eradicate us, the faithful. Our "Agent Smith" is the Anti-Christ. Our "Oracle" is any of the OT prophets. Our "Trinity" is the Holy Spirit- the connection here lies at the end of the first movie when she gives life to Neo (after he'd been shot), as, in a sense, the Holy Spirit did with Jesus when He was in the grave. Our "Cypher" is atheists, non-Christans, doubters, and a Judas Iscariot figure.

There really is a lot that can be taken out of this movie series!