The Big Picture:
Walking By The Spirit
Bible Reading:
Galatians 5: 16-25
Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
PREPARED BY
KEN GEHRELS
PASTOR
CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH
NEPEAN, ONTARIO
Anthony was caught in a gulf between two worlds.
He had come to Canada to study commerce, intending to return home to Singapore and go into business. On his return he was to marry a girl he had had a relationship with for some years. Although they were not officially engaged, it was assumed within their cultural setting that they would marry.
But something happened. In his second year in Canada Anthony became a Christian through a group on campus. He began to grow as a person in ways he had never anticipated. As often happens during such periods of growth, old plans began to change. Anthony concluded that he was not in love with his friend back home, and he began to cool the relationship in his letters. Finally it became necessary to go home and make a clean break.
His friends in Canada were impressed with the moral integrity of both what he had done and how he had done it. Now that he had returned, however, Anthony was a broken and depressed young man. Because he had ended this relationship, his family had rejected him. "You are worse than an animal," his father had said. "Even animals show gratitude."
In his parents’ eyes and in the eyes of his former girlfriend’s parents, Anthony had committed an unpardonable sin. He had dashed the hopes and expectations of his family by being disloyal to a whom to whom he had been betrothed. In Anthony’s home culture, loyalty is one of the highest of all moral duties.
[told in The Transforming Vision Walsh & Middleton p.15]
In its deepest places cultures of Canada and Singapore clashed - seeing the same deed from two very different perspectives. The result being that in one culture Anthony was honored. In the other he was despised.
That there was such a radical difference was not because of misunderstanding on the part of one society or the other. Both understood most clearly what Anthony had done.
The difference came because of vastly different values and priorities. The Canadians were impressed by his honesty and integrity in dealing with changing circumstances, and by his open sensitivity in dealing with the former girl friend. The relatives in Singapore saw those things, too, but gave them very low value when compared to loyalty and gratitude.
Then tension ran deep.
Anthony could not escape it. The battle raged deep inside him.
Ways of looking at the world - at what matters most, what is of value and what is not, where our priorities ought to lie and what is disposable.
Pull all of this together, wrap it in a package, and we call it -
- Worldview
We all have one.
Every culture and community has a way of looking at the world.
The teachings, the practices and activities of the people gather over time to shape an underlying way of understanding the world and living within it. They become, as it were, filters that direct and affect what our eyes see, how our hearts respond, and what our minds process.
Worldview - you can’t shake it. Even if it’s not written in bold print on your forehead, it’ll be there inside - quietly at work, shaping and directing everything. Sometimes it leaps out, front and centre - like it did for Anthony.
The way you build relationships and form family units - we’ve seen how different worldviews affected that dynamic for Anthony.
The way you relate to the environment - if you are First Nations person, seeing nature as your Mother, from whom you draw life and with whom you need to live in harmony; or as a Western white person, seeing nature as something to be harnessed, conquered and exploited.
How you provide health care - is it something that is an individual’s concern? That’s what the person might say who is raised with the pioneering spirit of America and the shaping influence of the Enlightenment, both of which celebrate the self-reliant individual. Perhaps it is a communal concern; that’s what you will say if you are from a society whose worldview places highest value on community and the group.
Loyalty to the state, and politics - what drove the Kamikazee pilots of the Japanese air force in WWII, or Palestinian Hamas suicide bombers today? Basic filters on how they see life, the world and eternity, shape their actions.
Art - its value and place
Religion, education and the institutions associated with them.
The filters of basic values, principles and priorities - the worldview stuff - affects how all of these areas get acted out.
And when you bring people together who operate with different worldviews, sometimes the same action gets interpreted in totally different ways. Sometimes people can’t understand each other.
Which was one of the big problems with teachers from white cultures going into northern communities to teach First Nations children. The basic ways of seeing life were totally different, and communication simply didn’t happen.
The gulf was too big.
Worldview - not talked about very often, but fundamental to all our lives.
Today we’re beginning a series here at Calvin that will consider that whole issue of worldview, and will ask the question -
"So, what’s your worldview?
What are some of the basics that control your life?
And where do they show themselves?"
Someone asked me, "Why bother with a series like this? Isn’t it a little dry and a little thick, a little heavy?" And you know, he’s probably right. There may be moments where it seems like hard work. And as everything begins to wind down for the summer and we put our brain into beach mode, we could, perhaps, not bother to think about this sort of thing. We could, I suppose, just go with the flow.
Except that, well, this kind of "just go with the flow" type of living isn’t very stable, and isn’t something that the Bible recommends anyone be stuck in for too terribly long. In fact, in Ephesians 4:14 we read that letting yourself ride whatever happens to come along, without getting too worried about it or thinking too much about it, is an immature, infantile attitude.
Strong language!
God’s challenge for us is to be deliberate, fully awake, both hands on the wheel when it comes to setting the direction for our lives.
Understand what we’re doing, in what direction we’re going, and why.
It is worldview that lays behind the teaching of Galatians 5 -
"So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other..... Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."
Live by the Spirit. Keep in step with the Spirit.
The Spirit of Jesus Christ - calling the tune, setting the dance steps.
Calling us to follow.
So - let me ask again:
What directs, what controls your life?
What are the most important elements in your existence that colour everything else?
Could you put down a summary of it in two or three sentences?
.........
If you could, where would your Christian faith enter into the picture?
If someone were to look at the way that you
- build relationships and form family units
- relate to the environment
- think of matters such as health care or political involvement
- engage in the arts
- participate in institutions of education or religion
if someone were to look at these things, what might they conclude about the filters through which you see and order your life?
Galatians 5:25 challenges us - "walk by the Spirit"
Make the Spirit of Jesus the compass to your existence;
submit all of your life in obedience to God your Creator.
It’s a lifelong process, such submission.
It’s an ongoing process of figuring out and marching to the drumbeat of a Christian worldview. And one that will present constant challenge.
It will change us because it will demand from us constant renewal, constant change, constant resubmission. Which isn’t easy.
It isn’t easy when we are younger and, as one might say, full of beans. Because in those years we have trouble taking direction. We figure we know it all.
It isn’t easy when we get older because we become less resilient; the cement of life begins to set; we figure we deserve a rest, to have things go our way.
And yet the drumbeat of the Spirit beats incessantly.
The Lord’s call to obedience, just like His holy forgiveness and grace,
never quits.
In coming weeks we’ll consider how a Christian worldview:
- is based on creation
- is rooted in the image of God
- faces challenges from other very strong worldviews
- finds hope in the Cross
- demands interaction with the world
- challenges us to live prophetically.
Today, though, let me simply point us to the fact that this whole thing, the whole call to live by the Spirit, is a call to daily choosing, daily surrender and daily renewal -
daily......
and
deliberate.
Just as deliberate as the call that came to the Israelites when they heard the call of God come to them through Moses - (Deut 30:19-20)
19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live
20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers...
And that call to deliberate, no holds barred, nothing off limits to Christ sort of living comes to us as we prepare to head to the Communion table.
For there we are confronted by One who came to earth to live in a deliberate, no holds barred, nothing off limits manner as our Redeemer and Saviour.
Jesus came to earth with a very specific focus and view - to save the lost, to redeem creation, to shatter the chains and curse of sin.
As we handle the bread and drink from the cup we remember the body and blood that He sacrificed for us -
His death that we may live;
live renewed, focused, devoted lives in every moment and corner of our walk here on earth.
Jesus - take, eat & drink, remember and believe that He gave all for you.
What, my friends, then, are we willing to give in return to Him?
