Jesus on Location: Purgation Overcoming barriers to intimacy with God March 5&6, 2016 John Ortberg Welcome Welcome to Session 2 of Jesus on Location. Each of the sessions in this study is designed to be completed in 90 minutes. If you have just one hour for your meeting, you will need to choose fewer questions for your discussion, or make some other modification. If you are a newly forming group, be sure that you greet and re-introduce yourselves to each other before watching the small group video found at http://bit.ly/mcpurgation. Connect 1. What do you most identify with in this story about a lake, a boat and a man? 2. If you were to make a call to 1.800.GOT.JUNK what are some of the barriers to intimacy with God that you might ask to be hauled off? Engage Read Luke 5:1-11 Why did Jesus get into the boat? Jesus is a carpenter, and Simon Peter is a fisherman. Why does Peter respond the way that he does to Jesus request in verses 4 and 5? What happened next, and what would have been your response if you had been one of the fishermen on the boat? Why did Simon Peter respond the way that he did? What did his physical posture indicate? How did Jesus respond to Simon Peter s confession and why? Key Assessments Our goal of living more and more moments in pursuit of intimacy with God (shared experience) takes effort. There are consistent barriers that get in the way of this. Both 2,000 years ago and today, there are exactly the same number of hours in the day and a very similar list of distractions from living in awareness of God presence. Very common barriers are busyness, fear, ambition, guilt, shame. The consequential tendency is to be distracted from the reality of God s divine presence and to move away from God instead of toward him. Whether in Jesus time or now, we need the same things to overcome those barriers - practices such as deep self-awareness, confession, and ongoing examination and repentance. Let s start by looking at a typical day and then taking a tried and true, fearless moral inventory. Assessment 1: Looking at a Typical Day Take a few minutes and sketch out the events in a typical weekday of your life. When you are done, consider how each event helps you to move toward or away from God. * Use the worksheet at the end of this study guide to help you do this assessment. 1
Assessment 2: 12 Steps to the Bottom of the Boat and Back Up Again What follows are the twelve steps of the AA (alcoholics anonymous) model presented as a prayer. Please take a few moments to pray the steps. 1) Lord, apart from you, my life becomes broken and I don t know how to fix it. Please help me. Do for me what I cannot do for myself. 2) Father, I believe that your son, Jesus, can restore my soul. Jesus, please be the physician I need. I invite you to enter my heart and bring healing to any disease you find there. Only you can make me whole. Dissolve all that keeps me separate from you. 3) My will is yours, Jesus. Although my fingers are probably crossed right now, I do want you to make any changes in my life that are needed (especially in my thought life and the way I imagine you) until I no longer want to be in control of my life. As you prayed in the garden, Your will and not mine be done. 4) While it seems more than I can stomach, whisper to me about the times and places where I caused pain to those you love those I should have loved more. 5) I confess to you now, Jesus, my sinful patterns of thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interactions with others that have resulted in so much pain and suffering. 6 & 7) Jesus, I am ready to become whole, and by your presence, holy. Forgive my sins, I beg. Be a powerful presence in the deepest parts of me. Teach me how to cooperate with you, until I have taken on your mind. Let my character be your own. 8 & 9) Reveal to me, Jesus, the names of all the people I have harmed and also how you would like for me to pursue reconciliation with them. 10) Lord, remind me each night to sit with you and ask myself how the day has gone. If I have slipped back into old patterns of behavior that are harmful to myself and others, reveal it to me and show me what I should do. I want to keep a short account, Father. Please help me to do so. 11) Help me to put activities in my life each day that enable me to better sense your presence. I want to enjoy time with you and conversations that become deep and intimate. Fill my day with little reminders that you enjoy this too. 12) Thank you, God, for healing my soul and inviting me to participate in your community of love. Use me to help others enjoy what you and I enjoy together now. Application: Moving Toward or Away from God (For both Group time and later At-Home practice) James Martin, SJ, in his wonderful book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life, presents a modification of Ignatius of Loyola s classic exercise for a review of each day called, Examen (found in The Spiritual Exercises). What follows is a slight modification of Martin s adaptation. 2
Group Activity The Examen in Five Steps 1 This prayer can be practiced at any set time of the day, but many enjoy using it in the evening, just before going to bed, as a way of reviewing the day. The Examen is a helpful practice to both remind yourself that you are in the presence of God and that the aim of this examination is to become progressively more aware of that presence and available friendship as you go through each day. Walk through these five steps as a group. 1. Gratitude: Recall events from your day that make you smile with gratefulness. Enjoy the memory and then breathe a Thanks. 2. Review: Recall events from the day where you felt most aware of God s presence and the desire to be moving toward and with him. 3. Sorrow: Recall times during the day when you felt distracted by barriers to awareness and intimacy; times when you felt you were away from God and running your life on your own. 4. Forgiveness: Like Peter at Jesus feet, humbly ask God to forgive your times of distraction from his presence, especially if during those times you may have caused hurt to anyone, including yourself. 5. Grace. Ask God for the grace you need to live more moments tomorrow with the ability to feel the reality of God s presence and love more clearly. Closing Take a moment to allow everyone in the group to silently consider what they discovered during the key assessment time and the Examen prayer activity. Invite a volunteer from the group to close this study with a prayer for the group, giving thanks for God s forgiveness and grace and asking for an increased awareness of God s presence as each person walks with God this week. Going Deeper Spiritual practices or exercises The following exercises are optional. They are provided to help you further explore how you can overcome barriers to intimacy with God. 1. Daily examen Resolve to set aside time each day to walk through the five steps of the Examen as presented above. 2. Confession with a Psalm Read Psalm 51 as a confession to God at least one time this week. 3. Confession with an empty chair Sin always splits the self to some degree, yes. You know that you have harmed yourself and others, but you probably are not going to come to terms with that because you re carrying on a charade of righteousness, even if you don t believe it. So confession is very deep in the process of discovering the soul. 2 1 See page 97 of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin. 2 See Living in Christ's Presence: Final Words on Heaven and the Kingdom of God, Dallas Willard. 3
There are several things necessary for giving a good confession. 1) An examination of conscience: Inviting God to show us when we are moving away from his Kingdom and into the kingdom of our ego and self-will; 2) Sorrow: Like Peter, falling to the bottom of the boat with deep regret and abhorrence; 3) Determination to stop the movements away from intimacy with God; and 4) Avoidance of non-godly sorrow. [Note: Godly sorrow leads to a restoration of relationship and lightness of being. Non-Godly sorrow can lead to self-condemnation, despair, pity, and self-indulgence.] Exercise: Place an empty chair near you so that if a person were in that chair they would be facing you, close enough to reach out and touch your knee. Now imagine God is sitting in the chair. Read aloud the descriptions below that describe a person who is becoming a Child of Light. Then confess to God where this description is not reflective of at this time. If these are good descriptions of your current level of intimacy with God, wonderful; it is a cause for celebration. If they sound more like aspirational statements than descriptions of present reality, then turn the time into a confession. i. Thoughts: Children of light think constantly about God, dwelling upon His greatness and loveliness. ii. iii. iv. Feelings: Love is the dominant emotion of a child of light. Will (spirit, heart): They are habitually devoted to doing what is good and right. The will is habitually attuned to surrender and obedience. Body: Their bodies have come over to the side of their will to do what is good and are constantly poised to do what is right and good. v. Social Relations: Children of light are completely transparent in relations with others. vi. Soul: All of the above are not just at the surface, they are deep and effortless. Thank you to Dr. Gary W. Moon and the team at the Dallas Willard Center for Christian Spiritual Formation at Westmont College for their partnership in creating the materials for the Jesus on Location series. To learn more about the Center, go to http://dallaswillardcenter.com/. 4
Worksheet for Assessment 1: Looking at a Typical Day Take a few minutes and sketch out the events in a typical weekday of your life. What activities are you most likely to be engaged in during the following times? 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. 10:00 to 12 noon 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. 8:00 to Midnight Now, go back over the events of a typical day for you and label each with one of the following sets of letters: MT for activities that are helping you Move Toward God (becoming more aware of Divine presence and love); MA for activities that are causing you to Move Away from God (less aware of Divine presence and love). N for neither. 5
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