I have found as I traverse this road of walking with Jesus that there comes new teachings that so profoundly upset my current worldview and theology that I cannot help but change and be transformed.
Jesus was often accused of bringing such controversial new teachings, ones that rocked peoples worlds and blew their minds. New teachings that went against all that they knew to be normal and right. He was really good at busting through the walls of the boxes a person’s mind could construct and demanding that a new paradigm be set up that didn’t have walls and often was completely upside down. How amazing, but at the same time, how disturbing.
I can look back down this road and see large craters in the earth where Jesus blew apart my theology and established a new direction in the road for me to travel with him. These craters have left such a lasting impact on me that I can never be the same. As a woman preached recently, “I have been ruined!”
New teachings…
The new teaching found in the three semester, week in and week out, Bible study where I encountered Jesus face to face in the Gospel of Mark. I felt like I got to tag along after Jesus in his fast paced, zip-zip, ministry trip, watching him, leaning up against him, seeing him tame the storm and feed the thousands. It was a close up encounter with Jesus that I had never, ever before experienced and he became quite real to me. Spending a summer in St. Louis among the urban poor in a radical (literally) church who taught the theology of sonship, an immersion in grace, grace and more grace. I attended a massive mission conference called Urbana and my small little box (aforementioned) was obliterated in one squishy movement as I began to see in tympanic and magnificent tones God’s heart and passion for the world, the nations and the poor. I took a risk and went by myself to a week long conference called Pastoral Care Ministry led by a powerful woman named Leanne Payne and came home with a whole new vocabulary and framework to live from. Christian Hedonism originally coined by John Piper and the theology course Lindsay graciously offered some of us students and InterVarsity staff as we read through Unity of the Bible by Daniel Fuller and discussed its deep Biblical truths. And finally, my time being in the Vineyard and learning how to pray and minister to others, how to interact with the Holy Spirit in a way that is naturally supernatural and just more of that grace soaking thing that happened in St. Louis. And I might add one last one that is not necessarily in the spiritual category of experiences but still a profound teaching that at the time felt like it saved my life: a book written for women who are preparing for birth, Birthing From Within. My birthing worldview shifted dramatically here, reorienting me to a place where I could process the birth of my first daughter and receive deep, deep healing and thus be empowered to give birth to my second daughter.
Forever I am changed. Forever I am grateful.
Each of these is a new teaching that at first appeared like a roadside bomb exploding before me and knocking me back but as time has gone on, they have proved to be priceless in all that they have taught me. They collect before me like special rocks you might collect off the lake shore on a winter day not knowing what beauty and power they contain but you hold on to them anyway. And as time goes on, more and more meaning is attached to that seemingly simple looking rock and you can’t seem to part with it.
Friends, I have encountered another new teaching this winter. My husband introduced me to a new-to-me preacher out of the UK named Graham Cooke. I have listened to a good many of his teaching CD’s and have found them to be like really amazing food that fills the stomach of a hungry heart. I feel so starved for deep and meaningful teaching that challenges me regularly and doesn’t allow me to keep living the status quo or worse, regressing. I feel malnourished in my intake of the Scriptures, lacking in the regular ways it debrides my soulish heart and thinking. Graham Cooke has been spoon feeding me a new teaching and I am eating it up.
If I had to break it down to what is at the core of his teaching it would be this: I am the apple of God’s eye. Oh, how He loves me. His affections run deep for me. I seem to forget this basic spiritual concept that is a necessity in a relationship with God especially during hard times that go on and on and on. And that is the second core truth to this new teaching: there is meaning and purpose behind and in and around all of my suffering, struggle, pain and loss. God is in it and he is producing something great and marvelous in me through it. And this “production” is entirely rooted in God’s deep, deep love for me. Graham calls it the process of maturity and it is a teaching not for the faint of heart but rather for one willing to take great risk in continuing to trust that not so safe but really good God of mine.
I feel sermons growing in me as I absorb and process this new teaching. Sermons for a later date when I have come up and out of this season of hiddenness, as Graham calls it, and rise up more whole and made true and pure, like silver. Until then, I will continue to eat of this new teaching, warmly welcoming it’s explosive nature on my insides, knowing that I am being transformed into someone strong, beautiful and quite glorious.