Faith arise!

The power of stories

"Now that we are on our way, Satan will do everything he can to steal the Romance. One way he does this is to leave us only propositions, or worse, "principles". The heart cannot live on facts and principles alone; it speaks the language of story and we must rehearse the truths of our faith in a way that captures the heart and not just the mind."

"We cannot escape the fact that the Scriptures are given to us in the shape of a story."

"Our acts of remembering (the good God has done) must involve both essential truths and dramatic narrative. I believe we need to hold the creeds in one hand and our favourite forms of art in the other. There are films, books, poems, songs, and paintings I return to again ad again for some deep reason in my heart. Taking a closer look, I see that they all tell me about some part of the Sacred Romance. They help wake me to a deeper remembrance. "

"We were to remember together, in community. We need to tell our stories to others and to hear their stories told. We need to help each other with the interpretation of The large story and our own. Our regular times of coming together to worship are intended to be times of corporate remembrance. How different Sunday mornings would be if they were marked by a rich retelling of the Sacred Romance in the context of real lives. This is a far cry from the fact-telling, principle-listing, list keeping that characterizes much of modern worship."

Lately I've awakened to see the power stories have in our lives. It's actually quite incredible which impact movies like Lord of the rings have on our generation. Stories and narratives are one of the most foundational elements of any culture and the element as they maintain the corporate knowledge. A story we can identify with is so much more powerful than any theory on given subject. In a way, you can see a captivating story as your teacher. The stories of unconditional love, redemptive analogies, biographies of the saints of the old...they are all written for us to understand that God has a hope and future for us as well. We are to live supernatural life because we are LIVING OUT HIS STORY. Just try looking at your life as an unique, captivating love story between you and your Creator and Redeemer, who designed this place for you to live in it, and wrote your adventure in his book well before you were born! But what makes it even more intrigueing is that you never walk this way alone, but continually your path is crossed by others whom God has written into your story.       

My longing is not only to hear testimonies of what God has done, healings and blessings, but also to hear the everyday stories of beauty of life, meaningfulness of casual encounters, warmth of friendship and so on that are available stories to those whom God has taught to see and to listen with a heart of His child. I guess that's also one of the reasons I blog.

The wildness of God

Some time ago Heidi blogged about the super heroes, which links to a book (that was recommended by a dear friend) I've been reading and digesting lately. It also links with the process I wrote about earlier, when I noticed that I really understand people who seek life elsewhere when they haven't found it in church (which is sad in every way). But I think a person that seeks life, adventure and spirituality (even when he seeks in wrong places) is fundamentally ... ALIVE and there's nothing wrong with that (though we might not be prepared for that :) )! The book speaks about and is called The sacred romance. It's about daring to see LIFE WITH GOD as a wild adventure that our heart ultimately longs for. "Our heart is made for a great drama, because it's a reflection of the Author of that story, the grand Heart behind all things." After all, we were created to be super heroes in works prepared for us by God. "The Sacred Romance calls to us every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, nvites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love."

Most of all, the book speaks about the arrows that have hurt us and made us cynical, unable to look forward to adventures in our walk with God and believe that life with him is the fullfillment of our deepest desire. It's easy to react to live's disappointments with a thought like "There is no real Romance and I'm nothing but a fool."

Through the arrows we reject the Sacred Romance, the larger story and start to live out our own "smaller stories" with the "less-wild lovers" of this world. And we end up living as practical agnostics, like a lover who have been wronged, we guard our heart against future disappointments. 

It's pretty much about daring to live from the place of vulnerability having trust in the Romance in God. "While our heart grows in its capacity for pleasure, it grows in its capacity to know pain. The two go hand in hand. What, then shall we do with the disappointment? We can be our own enemy, depending on how we handle the heartrache that comes with desire. To want is to suffer; the word passion means to suffer. This is why many Christians are reluctant to listen to their hearts: They know that their dullness is keeping them from feeling the pain of life. Many of us have chosen simply not to want so much; it's safer that way. It's also godless.Sanctification is an awakening, the rousing of our souls from the dead sleep of sin into the fullness of their capacity for life. I can let the ache lead me deeper into my heart and higher toward heaven."

What I like about the book is that it's so painstakingly honest. Yes, there is a lot in my heart that longs for real life and adventure of a holy, perfect, life long romance with the Creator and the world He made. "The redeemed heart hungers for beauty."

Highly recommend this book. Started to read it the second time myself. I would love to hear your stories and thoughts on this?

The revival outside the church

Marc posted a very foundational article on so called neopaganism in his blog. As far as I've noticed the understanding of the whole issue of neopaganism leads us to more relevant ways of reaching the spiritual people among us for Jesus. You find the article here.

Passed!

I know the reformation of the church is taking place, but today I have something else to report: I got my license for motorbike riding today! Wow, I'm happy.

Now all I need is to get a bike...Gladly it starts to snow in Finland soon. And maybe I'm wiser next spring... In picture there is the bike I've been riding.

In between

Last weekend we gathered with some 15 people to an old farm to process what would the church Jesus is building look like. Because there were some "older" types with us, we decided to structure the weekend to three parts; what has been, where are we going and how to get there. I think the weekend was an important opportunity to process stuff with some more mature people in Finnish context, people who have seen "the whole nine yards" of church culture here. On the other hand, as the weekend went on, I got confirmed that in general it's our generation, the younger generation that God has given special grace to shake up things to come and model something new/ancient.

To me God especially stressed the extreme mobility that is needed in this season. And to enable this mobility, new level of corporateness is required. God will give such longing to see his Kingdom come in certain places that people will make huge corporate sacrifices to help each other to make it happen where God has opened the door. But we need to learn to understand times. And we need to learn how to move quickly, because sometimes it will be required.

Other thing God made me to realise during the weekend was how big a part of "the new paradigm" sharing life with each other is. We found ourselves in a situation where we had to admit that we don't know how to be a family, organically respond to each others vulnerabilities and dreams, though we speak about it. As much as we long for it, all we've known this far is behaving "the churchy way" instead of the way "the body of Christ" functions. So learning to live and function as the body, we don't need to became more spiritual but become more human, in many ways. Become down-to-earth, learning to live out our faith in the everyday situations with each other. To be sincere, to be fully alive in Christ. That way-communicating Christ to each other on the basic level- we might eventually learn to communicate Christ to the world also.