Christ-Shaped Character E-Book

Helen Cepero

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 258

Beschreibung

Honorable Mention for Classic Christian Spirituality, from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore "Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love."—1 Corinthians 13:13 What are the pathways that lead us to God? This is a book about what happens when we find those pathways. You will discover the values and virtues that grow out of our experiences, and practices that encourage us to be with God in specific ways. Spiritual director Helen Cepero writes: "I've seen that when I reflect on my own life experiences, when I am alert to God's presence, and alive to Christ's love, I grow as a Christ follower, and as a human being living in God's world. This book is an invitation for you not to follow me, but follow Jesus into the stories of your own life. You too, will need to wake up and be willing to walk . . . through your own life." We will follow the journey to God by beginning with three ways of love, then three ways of continuing in faith and lastly, three ways of living in hope. These nine pathways will lead you more deeply into life with Christ.

Leseprobe

CHRIST-SHAPED CHARACTER

Choosing Love, Faith and Hope

HELEN CEPERO

www.IVPress.com/books

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web:www.ivpress.comEmail:[email protected]

©2014 by Helen Cepero

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website atwww.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Parts of chapter 5 appeared in the February 2012 volume of Covenant Companion as “Embracing Vulnerability.”

Parts of chapter 6 appeared in the December 2004 volume of Covenant Companion as “The Dead are Still with Us.”

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple

Images: boardwalk through dunes: ©drnadig/iStockphoto; jungle boardwalk: © andrearoad/iStockphoto; farm road: © konradlew/iStockphoto; forest path: © Nikada/iStockphoto; forest path: © borchee/iStockphoto; boardwalk in dunes: © PPAMPicture/iStockphoto; pathway to beach: © Turnervisual/iStockphoto; dirt path in the woods: © tiburonstudios/iStockphoto; winding pathway: © InCommunicado/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-9592-2 (digital) ISBN 978-0-8308-3582-9 (print)

To my husband Max Lopez-Cepero for his unfailing loyalty and support

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

Contents

Introduction

Part One: Choosing Love

1. Choosing Life

Living as God’s Beloved

2. Compassionate Hospitality

Receiving the Other

3. Forgiving as We Are Forgiven

Learning to Love the Unlovable

Part Two: Choosing Faith

4. Following Jesus

Learning the Language of Desire

5. Embracing Vulnerability

Finding Strength in Weakness

6. Living with Integrity

Sustaining a Life of Commitment

Part Three: Choosing Hope

7. Paying Attention

Watching for God

8. Seeing Blessing

Living in Possibility

9. Trusting Christ

Improvising a Life

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1

Journeying Together Along the Pathway of Love, Faith and Hope

Appendix 2

Bibliography

Notes

Praise for Christ-Shaped Character

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Introduction

It is about 2:00 a.m. when my feet hit the soft grass under the bedroom window of my ranch-style home. I walk down the silent street of the small Wisconsin village until I am able to go “cross-lots” through backyards with their still swing sets and empty lawn chairs. Then I follow my own path under the goalposts of the high school football field until I am standing before the door of a church. Sunday mornings I arrive at this same church in my “good clothes.” But tonight as I open the heavy oak door with its brass handle, I am a thirteen-year-old barefoot supplicant in cutoffs and a T-shirt. I walk down the aisle and sit in a pew, finding in the darkness what I long for—a transcendent Presence that I somehow misplaced during the daylight hours of home and high school and church.

In the night’s shadow, the space is both empty and full to me. It is empty of all the whispering judgments of this small community, but full of a sense of belonging that has held me since my birth. It is empty of the fearful sermons about a God who seems always on the edge of anger. But it is full of the God of the Bible and all its colorful, storied characters. Melodies of “blessed assurance” and “leaning on the everlasting arms” echo through the ceiling rafters high above me. But there is something else too. I hear whispers in the “sounds of silence,” an utterly new sound to me but one referenced in my favorite radio song. Though only moonlight visibly floods this austere sanctuary, in those prophetic whispers the presence of Christ’s Spirit is tangible.

That Presence surrounds me and fills me. In the spaciousness of what is and what is not, I am able to rest. The Spirit of God is welcoming of all that is and has been and will be, all that threatens to overwhelm my insecure teenage self. Here I experience God’s love, and even God’s hopeful liking of who I am.

Though my time in the church is short, I stay long enough to sense that this Something, and this Someone, is missing from my daytime world and yet a part of it as well. For a few blessed moments I even feel the peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7) holding my mind and heart. Then I retrace my steps, walking back across the football field and the backyards and down Main Street, until I noiselessly crawl back through my bedroom window and finish my night’s sleep.

As a teenager I felt that such experiences were utterly unique to me. My own family, even my closest friend, was unaware of my nightly sojourns during that summer. I never spoke about them with anyone, convinced that people might think me a little off my spiritual rocker. But now I’ve heard and read enough to know that I was not and am not alone in my experience. This sense of spiritual awareness, even mystical presence, is extra­ordinary in one way but also meant to be an ordinary part of everyday life. It is as if the Cloud of Unknowing1 is thinned at those moments and we see this oneness with God in our life, the really real of all that is.

What I know now from my own life and listening to the lives of others is that there is always a path that goes “cross-lots” through our lives. There is always a doorway. This book is about finding those doorways into life with God, and about exploring what we find when we open those doors. It will help you see how values and virtues grow out of our experiences, and it describes practices that encourage us to be with. I’ve seen that when I reflect on my own life experiences, when I am alert to God’s presence and alive to Christ’s love, I grow as a Christ-­follower and as a human being living in God’s world. This book is an invitation for you not to follow me but to follow Jesus into the stories of your own life. You, too, will need to wake up and be willing to walk cross-lots through your own life, to open the door and enter in.

This journey follows along the way of love, faith and hope. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). He calls love “a more excellent way” to begin our life in Christ because he knows that without a firm grounding in love, faith will falter and hope will be lost. So we will follow the journey through, beginning with three ways of love, then three ways of continuing in faith, and lastly three ways of living in hope. I plot out these nine pathways of living in Christ through love, faith and hope in reference to stories from my life; I hope they will resonate with you as we travel together.

You will want to put a few helpful things in your backpack as you begin this trek with me. One of them is a journal, whether it be pen and paper or a computer file, or maybe a sketch pad if your responses are more visual than worded. Each chapter will have a stopping place with a suggestion for reflection on your own life. You might pause there, or you might continue on instead in the chapter, returning later for a closer look at how what you read might speak into your life. If you have a tendency to get lost, as I do, this stopping place will help you to locate the “You are here” spot on your life’s path.

You might also want to pack a bit of time to experiment with prayer. Each chapter suggests a practice designed to help you grow into deeper life in love, faith and hope in Christ. Remember that prayer practices can be awkward or even difficult when you first try them. With a new tool or musical instrument, it often takes time to get the knack of using it to repair furniture or play a melody. So it is with prayer. I encourage you, then, to keep at it for a number of days, so that a prayer melody can be discerned or this prayer tool find its usefulness. My second suggestion is equally important. Playing an instrument long enough to discern a melody or finding just the right tool to accomplish a job can be fun and surprisingly satisfying. Allow space for this feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment to be part of your growing life in Christ.

Most important of all, you will need to bring your own story. Each chapter of the book begins with a story from my life, as does this introduction. Sometimes I wrote the story first and then saw the way it illustrated an underlying value or an enduring purpose. Other times I was aware of wanting to write about an aspect of love or faith or hope, and I remembered a story that somehow reflected that particular virtue. My goal is not that you would simply enjoy my stories, although that would give me pleasure; nor do I primarily want to teach you insights into life, although if that happens I will be delighted. A more fundamental goal as I tell my stories is that they help you remember your own stories—the stories of love, stories of faith, stories of hope in your life—and that my insights, or the insights of others, give you insight into how you might live each day more fully alive in Christ. The listening suggestions at the end of each chapter are written to personally engage you in remembering and naming your own stories of love, faith and hope.

Living fully alive in Christ is about claiming an identity. An identity is formed not just by doctrine or prescription, or even insight and stated values, but by stories that we live and those that are told to us. Daniel Taylor writes: “We tell stories because our lives present themselves to us in story form: setting, characters, plot. . . . We tell and listen to stories obsessively because nothing else so compelling organizes the disparate bits of our lives. . . . We don’t simply hear stories, we live within them.”2 Certainly we see and share this in the Bible’s stories of love and faith and hope. But if we are to live in Christ, fully alive, it must be articulated in our story as well.

Understanding and living our stories of love, faith and hope is a calling for us personally and in our communities as well. The psalmist invites us to this same storied reflection when he instructs, “Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story.” Then he tells story after story of God’s redemption through desert, darkness, rebellion and shipwreck, finally ending with this call: “Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the LORD” (Psalm 107:2, 43 NIV).

PART ONE

Choosing Love

1

Choosing Life

Living as God’s Beloved

The percussionist in the back of the Beginners’ Band is only rarely, and then almost by chance, hitting the snare drum on the beat. But nobody could miss in his wide, toothy smile the pure joy he finds in hearing the drumsticks make that reverberating racket. The band members in front of him don’t seem to notice or care about the lack of any consistent beat; they concentrate on their own instruments. The woodwind players are seriously intent on getting recognizable notes out of their squeaking clarinets, flutes and saxophones while trying to hear a melody somewhere nearby. The trumpets play loudly, though only occasionally producing sounds that seem connected to the notes on their music stands. The frustrated band director stands in front of them all, wearing the look of one who must endure to the end what cannot turn out good or even passable. He audibly hums the theme while directing large, each and every beat, but no one in the Beginners’ Band is paying much attention to him. And neither is the raptly attentive audience of parents.

I am sitting near the front, my gaze fixed on a ten-year-old girl in the obligatory white blouse and black skirt, her face red with the effort of playing the trumpet. Awkwardly trying to hold the trumpet up, she enters on the wrong beat with a honking sound where there is a clearly meant to be a rest. But her face is a study in concentration as she tries to count out each measure and sends an occasional passing glance toward the conductor on the podium. At home this same girl can seem irritatingly careless about living out her life’s details. But now I see a glimpse of the poised, knowing woman she may become, and I am mesmerized. I’ve fallen in love yet again with my own child.

Next to me, another mother’s attention is similarly focused on just one student, though with all the students sitting so close together it is difficult to see which child is holding her gaze. But as the band finally finishes its first number, her excitement spills over to my seat, and she turns to me with tears in her eyes. “That’s my son Darrin in the back, playing the snare drum. Isn’t he just great?” I see that she too has fallen in love with her own child. She is certain that her son stands out clearly, not just loudly, as outstanding to me as he is to her. My eyes fill with tears as well as I whisper, pointing out the trumpeter in the fourth chair of the second row: “And that’s my daughter, Leana—just look at her.” The other mother hands me a tissue, and we both wipe our eyes, eagerly awaiting the next raucous number the band will play.

I admit it. I have always loved the Beginners’ Band concerts. I love the heroic effort of all these beginners trying to play something together—the serious intention of it all. I love the peek it gives us all into what might be—the possibility of actually making harmonious music together. It is both the fruit of (at least some) practice and the promise of what might yet be. I also admit that no one except parents usually hears the prescient musical possibilities at these concerts. But we mothers do not miss the recurring theme of a beginning attentiveness to the music that is both within our own child and beyond her or him. We know just taking up an instrument and joining a band is a commitment to the possibility of creating music, alone and together, that is a gift to the audience as well as themselves.

In the matter of Christ-shaped character, we are much like the students in the Beginners’ Band. We can see the music, but actually knowing when to play and when to rest, landing on the beat and doing this alongside others, can seem daunting. Whether we come with a longing to hear music above the needy cacophony of our lives or in the numbing absence of any meaningful sounds, we have joined the band of faith to try to hear the tune and find the rhythm of our lives. Some of us work so hard at our character that we miss the joy in the music; others deal with the task of living in Christ so casually that we never come to understand the music at all. Perhaps lurking behind both our hard work and our inattention are questions we fear to voice: What if all the others manage to get in tune readily but I stay stuck in this place of discord? What if others can find rhythm and I’m left behind?

Most of us have the idea that in this drama of the life of faith, God plays the role of the surly and impatient or stoic and resigned band director who is frustrated at his students’ inability to make proper music or even find the beat. Sometimes we do not even begin for fear we will play a wrong note and then be silenced or made to play alone in front of everybody else. In the end it is only the urgent need to hear some overarching melody in our life, or some rhythmic beat, that keeps us from putting our instrument down on the chair and walking away from the band altogether.

But what if God is really more like the parents who sit in the audience and listen with rapt attention, their eyes focused on their own son or daughter? This One is watching with tears in those holy eyes, seeing not just the careful concentration but the posture and poise and possibility of living into another way of being. Just showing up with our intention to play music with God is a commitment to the melody that is already within us. Even the beginning of this sound is a gift not just to us but to the surrounding world. Finding the holy courage to enter into life with God in community is the way home to our true selves, as well as to God; it is a way of attending to the sound that is within us and beyond.

Trying to please God, rather than live as God’s beloved in Christ, leaves us dependent on our own effort, our own striving toward our idealized picture of ourselves. We are comfortable with our holy to-do lists of what we believe will make us acceptable to ourselves, to others and to God. The truth is that much in the Christian culture supports these vigorous attempts to seek significance or security on our own or to earn God’s favor. But these efforts at self-realization are inevitably motivated not by love or a sense of identity in Christ but by guilt or even fear. Ultimately they will fail.

In Invitation to Love, Thomas Keating tells the story of his own performing self. After taking vows and joining the Trappist order, Keating resolved to be the best monk he could possibly be. When his community was fasting, Keating fasted longer and with more asceticism than anyone else. When the brothers went to prayer, Keating remained in the chapel long after the others had gone to bed. But when he went to his superior expecting to be lauded for his dedication, he was disappointed to find that the abbot was not impressed. Instead he was disturbed that Keat­ing, for all his effort, had entirely missed the point. His coming into the monastic community was not about going deeper into his own striving. It was instead an invitation to trust in God’s love for him, not his ascetic expectations for himself.1

What gives the development of Christ-shaped life meaning and purpose is God’s look of love toward each of us. This is not first of all a place of doing but a place of being, where we listen and receive God’s love for us. It is in this gaze of God through Jesus Christ that we realize nothing we do will make God love us more; nothing we do will make God love us less. When we are rooted in this place of transforming love, we don’t push toward a goal that is beyond our circumstances or abilities; rather, our actions move toward the hope that is already in us.

Eight months after listening to my daughter and the rest of the Beginners’ Band attempt to play publicly together for the first time, I return to hear the same band, dressed in similar white-and-black attire. Now they are no longer the Beginners’ Band but officially the Intermediate Jazz Band. There is Darrin again on the snare drums, with the same wide, toothy grin, only this time there are braces on those teeth. And now this young percussionist is able to follow the beat while paying careful attention to the band director, offering rhythmic continuity to the whole band. My own daughter, taller now and holding her trumpet at the ready, watches the director, plays and then counts out the rests in between the notes so that she can enter the music when her next turn comes. But then something surprises the audience and brings us to our feet.

After they play their first number together, the band members step out from the band one at a time and walk up to the microphone to solo. Still following the chords and the beat of the song, these young musicians are able to improvise a unique movement and melody while the band plays the rhythmic theme behind them. Even when mistakes are made, they are woven into the larger jazz melody. Each soloist soars to find new notes connected to the musical chords and then returns to the original tune as the rest of the band joins in. We clap loud and long for each courageous student who comes forward to solo, including Darrin and Leana.

Perhaps living fully alive in Christ, like playing in the jazz band, is not about following the rules and doing everything right but is about learning to soar. It is about taking a risk, finding your own jazz melody and not being afraid to step up to the microphone and let yourself be heard. Maybe this is what the apostle Paul meant when he invited us to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). When we are living out of our true identity as God’s beloved, we can improvise out of who we are in Christ. And we do this not only as soloists but with others, as we listen and receive a theme, play it out in our lives, and hand it back to others and God.

Finding this melody is the way into the arms of a God who loves us and yearns to hear our unique melody, the voice of our imagination, the depth of our silent pauses, the surge of our feelings or our tentative insights. We are created to find in the very act of living every day a way to play that loves us into expressing our transcendent self. When we step up to the microphone and risk our own jazz melody, all God’s angels rise up, spread their angelic wings and clap loud and long.

Taking a Closer Look: Caring for Our Inner Critic

Many of us have an inner critic that seeks to be the motivating force in our lives. Sometimes we hear its voice when we get defensive and say, “It isn’t fair,” or “I’m right,” or “It wasn’t my fault.” When we are stressed, that inner critic can be a bully, threatening and blaming others. At other times the inner critic blames or even condemns us, saying, “It’s all my fault,” or “I’m no good,” or “I know I can’t do this,” and we nod in resigned agreement. Whether we blame ourselves or defend ourselves or ridicule others, the inner critic will always seek to motivate our actions out of fear or guilt or anger or pride. While the inner critic claims to be our friend, to be on our side, its words are never words of love. If you follow its advice, you will find your life self-focused: your character will be not be formed in love but in effort and striving. It will inevitably lead you toward the performing self and away from God’s love. It will be up to you to succeed or fail on your own.

Perhaps as you’ve listened to yourself you can easily identify your inner critic, the one who accuses rather than loves. For some the critic even has the name of a parent or teacher or friend that hurt or betrayed you; others of us might not identify the inner critic so quickly. But if you think back to a time recently or in your childhood when you felt attacked or as if you failed in some way, you will hear the rant of the inner critic.

Take your journal and simply listen to the inner critic without judgment; just record what you hear as a journalist might quote a particular source. If it helps to give the voice a specific name, you can do that as well. Now take a look at the past twenty-four hours: Which of your actions were motivated from the voice of that inner critic? Which of your actions were motivated by a response to God’s love? Each time our desire and actions are formed out of the inner critic’s voice, we are moving away from God and his love. Every time we are responding to God’s love, we are moving closer to our true identity as God’s beloved.

Now ask yourself: What is the longing I hear underneath the critic’s negative message?

The truth is that the inner critic is the most unloved part of us—and it is the very heart of where God most longs to live. The psalmist describes this with the Hebrew word hesed: the love that cannot stop loving, even during times when we feel most afflicted, as did the writer of Lamentations: “The steadfast love [hesed] of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’” (Lamentations 3:22-24). The deeper desire of the inner critic is one with God’s own desire to accept and love, to choose and free, to offer a sense of belonging and home. What might it be like to allow even the inner critic to live as God’s beloved? Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). This was not just for part of us, but a love offered to all of who we are, even the parts of us that we find unlovable.

Prayer Practice: Breath Prayer

The spiritual practices that will call us forward into living as God’s beloved are practices that teach us to loosen our tight grasp on own abilities or talents, our securities and status. One of those practices is the breath prayer. Because the act of breathing itself is unconscious, it requires us only to pay attention to life at its most basic and elemental. I remember childhood contests to see who could “hold their breath” the longest, but we could not force ourselves to stop breathing without passing out, fainting and then breathing again. To pray the breath prayer, we pay attention to our breath as I did as a child, not to “hold our breath” but to be attentive to the breath and rest in the nearness of God’s Spirit.

Breath is the first gift of life for each of us when we leave our mother’s womb. And it was from the very beginning of life itself. When our Maker and Creator formed the first person out of the dust of the earth, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). And it was also the first gift that Jesus gave his disciples after the resurrection. When the disciples had gathered fearfully behind a locked door, “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you. . . . As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:19-22). Both the gift of life and the gift of the Spirit within come not out of our effort but as unconscious actions that ground all of our lives. Perhaps that is why the gift of breath comes with the gift of Christ’s peace.

Remembering that Christ is within you, his Spirit as near as your breath, begin by repeating any name of God that expresses your love, your relationship with God. As you inhale, breathe in that name of God for a minute or two. Now remember a deep desire of your heart, perhaps that desire that is underneath your inner critic. When you exhale, offer up the desire of your heart, keeping it simple and expressed in a few words. It is the simplicity of the prayer that allows it to be prayed over and over again throughout your day. Some simple examples of this prayer:

breathe in “Shepherd,” breathe out “bring home your child”

breathe in “Abba,” breathe out “I belong to you”

breathe in “Lord,” breathe out “here I am”

breathe in “Jesus,” breathe out “have mercy on me”

2

Prayer teacher Richard Foster describes this as a prayer that is “discovered rather than created.”3 Another way of discovering this prayer is to say your own name aloud followed by the question Jesus asks so frequently: “What do you want?” Perhaps a single word comes to mind, “faith” or “trust” or “strength,” or just a short phrase, “live in freedom” or “trust your grace.” Sometimes it takes a bit of time to really name our core desire, what we want most deeply; at other times we know immediately.

The breath prayer is meant to be prayed during times set aside for prayer, and it is meant to be remembered in the middle of one’s daily activities. Each breath is meant to be a reminder of the constant presence of God. It can be the prayer that takes you to sleep and awakens you in the morning. It is simple enough to retrieve during times of pain or anxiety, suffering or grief. It can sit on the surface of your awareness or held in the depth of your heart. When it lives with us at this existential level, Foster writes that “sometimes—we reach a point beyond this prayer where we are stilled within and without. Christ is before us; Christ is behind us; Christ surrounds us and is through us. This is a point where we let go of our labor [to] simply be with God.”4

Choosing Love

When the apostle Paul writes to the church in Ephesus, he prays that Christ might “dwell in [their] hearts” and that their lives would be “rooted and grounded” in love (Ephesians 3:17). For a beginning church, this was the point of beginning—in the love of Christ. Throughout the letters of Paul, “in Christ” becomes a place of identity, a place of transformation in love, a place of coming home to God. Living in Christ is a home, a way of being where we lose none of our uniqueness but instead discover a new life in the midst of the very center of who we are and where we live: