Sunday Service | Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: September 20, 2020
Brian prayerfully opened up our service today with a statement in regard to a social media post that confronts our pastoral staff’s response to one of our own who feels overlooked and unheard by them. Brian assured us that this is not something that will be swept under the rug, and invites anyone to reach out with questions or concerns to him or another staff member or elder.
Ryan Davis shared about all that God has done over the last 6 months to take care of him, his family, and his career, and challenged us to do the same: to look back and look for God’s faithfulness in our lives.
This week kicks off a new teaching series called “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,” from the book by Pete Scazzero. Through this series and our small groups alongside them, we will explore the importance of discipleship and following Jesus with our whole selves. The imagery of an iceberg will give us an analogy for how much of us & our lives often remains hidden beneath the service, causing disconnect or conflict between not only us and each other, but us and God, who created us to go beyond the surface, deep into discipleship and growth.
The tagline for this book is this: “It’s impossible to be spiritually mature without also being emotionally mature.”
To take this journey towards deeper maturity, we have to be honest with ourselves in these areas: are we emotionally mature? are we spiritually mature?
Whether we grew up in a good, bad, or neutral family environment, we all grew up learning coping mechanisms that aid in the disconnection we feel with God and others.
Then we meet Jesus, and our lives are changed...until it’s not.
Routines, even spiritual routines, take over and don’t give us life anymore. We are meant for more in this life, but we are often left only engaging with the tip of the iceberg: the 10% above the surface, instead of the 90% below the surface. This leads to the recent phenomenon of people leaving the church or walking through times of reconstruction in their faith.
In this, we’re only engaging the tip of who we are; we’re only giving away the tip of who we are, not opening the whole of our lives to Jesus. As a guy named Jay states in the book: “I was a Christian for 22 years. But instead of being a 22-year-old Christian, I was a 1-year-old Christian 22 times.”
This isn’t a completely new concept though. We can look in scripture and see this same disconnect in the stories and hearts there.
Let’s look at Saul’s experience of this in 1 Samuel 15.7-24
Saul, King of Israel, is given a command in this story to go to a city and fully destroy it and its inhabitants. But he only obeys this partially. He destroyed what he viewed as having little value, and did not destroy what he viewed as very valuable.
We tend to live in this same tension: we take the evaluation of value into our own hands instead of trusting Jesus’ revelation to us. We override the way of Christ according to our own value system.
Saul chose his own way, and, in response, he chose to set up a monument to honor himself. He greets Samuel pridefully, saying “Look at what I did!”
There’s the disconnect: Saul is more concerned with his image and the approval from his men instead of what life and purpose God had for him. Saul served himself.
As Samuel confronted Saul, he reminds him that it was never about what Saul brought to the table, but about the loving relationship with the God who chooses us no matter how we view ourselves.
Saul viewed himself as small and inadequate, not as chosen. And so that led him to justify his actions because of those self-perspective wounds. He was trying to fill up his inadequacy by taking honor and spoils of war instead of seeking the Lord for healing in these areas of insecurity.
We fall into this same trap, where the things under the surface come up, but we turn inward to fix and justify, instead of turning to the Lord for healing.
Samuel’s words to Saul are simple but powerful: The Lord desires obedience, not sacrifice.
The heart of the Kingdom of God is not about sacrifice, but about being in a unified relationship with God and being obedient out of that relationship. This is spiritual maturity, but often we get tripped up here because we are emotionally immature.
Jesus wants our whole selves to be in connection with him and with others--not just spiritually, but emotionally, mentally, relationally. We tend to ignore aspects of ourselves, even though we were made as our full selves in his image. In this study we will focus on the emotional side of us, opening it up to connect and find healing with God.
Who is this study for?
Let’s look at the Top 10 Signs of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality, and challenge ourselves to see if we fall into any of these. This is the first step to turning to God with our full selves, including our emotions, to receive healing and transformation.
Using God to Run from God
Activity > Areas of change
Self-satisfaction > God-pleasing
Prayers for my will > God’s will
Concerns for ourselves > surrendering to God’s truth
Applying Biblical truth selectively to avoid major change
2. Ignoring Anger, Sadness, and Fear
We view these as “sins” instead of opportunities to explore
We stuff, minimize, or distract ourselves from these,
and are unable to be honest with God and others
3. Dying to the Wrong Things
Luke 9.23 says to take up our cross daily, but we’ve equated that
to suffering must be the only thing that enables us to know God
We die to the good parts of who we are, instead of dying to sin
God never asked us to die to these things: pleasures and delights
are from him as well and are in his heart
Lack of vulnerability
4. Denying the Impact of the Past on the Present
Salvation makes us new, but we cannot neglect that our past will still find
ways to affect us; it can still cause disconnect
5. Dividing Life into Secular & Sacred Compartments
We live double-lives
Christian activities only, regulating God out of the majority of our lives
We lose what God is doing in all the areas of our lives
6. Doing for God Instead of Being with God
Duty takes the place of delight
Productivity > identity
Causes self-dependence instead of God-dependence
We cannot do what we do not possess
We evaluate our spiritual growth by our activity not our relationship
7. Spiritualizing Away Conflict
Myth: Jesus’ way is to smooth over disagreements -- NO
Jesus brought true peace by disrupting false peace
We blame, attack, tell half-truths, withdraw, avoid
“Cancel culture”
8. Covering Our Brokenness, Weakness, and Failures
We become dis-authentic
It’s not about being flawless, but about following Jesus
9. Living without Limits
Myth: To be a good Christian, we must always be “on,” ready to serve
This is an expectation we’ve made for ourselves
We carry so much guilt for “not doing enough,” then give out of lack, not abundance
“Self-care is good stewardship of the only gift I have.”
10. Judging Other People’s Spiritual Journey
“Us vs them” mentality
Perspective of others > self
Our timeline of other’s growth instead of Jesus’ timeline
We never tend to ourselves
Recognizing these will help us on the journey to grow deeper with ourselves and others. We will find the healing and transformation of God.
By joining Jesus in our emotional health and our contemplative spirituality we will find healing and transformational power of God. These are some of the goals these next couple of months: Learning to lean into emotionally healthy spirituality and growing in emotional health and contemplative spirituality together.
Emotional health is concerned with such things as:
Naming, recognizing and managing our own feelings
Identifying with and having active compassion for others
Initiating and maintaining close and meaningful relationships
Breaking free from self-destructive patterns
Being aware of how our past influences our present
Developing the capacity to express our thoughts and feelings clearly
Respecting and loving others without having to change them
Asking for what we need, want, or prefer clearly, directly, and respectfully
Accurately self assessing our strengths, limits, and weaknesses and freely sharing them with others
Earning the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the perspectives of others
Integrating our spirituality with our sexuality in a healthy way
Grieving well
Contemplative spirituality is concerned with slowing down to be with God, focusing on such practices as:
Awakening and surrendering to God’s love in any and every situation
Positioning ourselves to hear God and remember his presence in all we do
Communing with God, allowing him to fully indwell the depth of our being
Practice silence, solitude, and a life of unceasing prayer
Resting attentively in the presence of God
Understanding our earthly life as a journey of transformation toward ever-increasing union with God
Finding the true essence of who we are in God
Loving others out of a life of love for God
Developing a balanced, harmonious rhythm of life that enables us to be aware of the sacred in all of life
Adapting historic practices of spirituality that are applicable today
Allowing our Christian lives to be shaped by the rhythms of the Christian calendar rather than the culture
Living in a committed community that passionately loves Jesus above all else.
This is a good healthy life and we are after it all. A whole life inside with a whole life with God. A union. Communion with God, fellowship with one another, and ministry together.
This is a call to transformation. It’s a process. It’s hard to become a good neighbor. It’s work. But it is good work.
A prayer to close:
God, when we consider all of this, we can only say: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, a sinner.” Thank you that we stand before you in the righteousness of Jesus, in his perfect record and performance, not on our own. We ask that you would not simply heal the symptoms of what is not right in our life, but that you would surgically remove all that is in us that does not belong to you. As we think about what we have heard, Lord, pour light over the things that are hidden. May we see clearly as you hold us tenderly. in Jesus’ name. Amen.