6. Here and Now: Living in the Spirit- Henri J. M. Nouwen

I. Living in the Present
"A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises." p.15
our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives...The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: 'You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will be just another repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best as you can.' There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: 'There is nothing new under the sun...don't let yourself be fooled.' p.15
Rev 21:2-5
Without 'oughts' and 'ifs'
Here and now-the most important ; "Prayer is the discipline of the moment. When we pray, we enter into the presence of God whose name is God-with-us. To pray is to listen attentively to the One who addresses us here and now. When we dare to trust that we are never alone but that God is always with us, always cares for us, and always speaks to us, then we can gradually detach ourselves from the voices that make us guilty or anxious and thus allow ourselves to dwell in the present moment. This is a very hard challenge bc radical trust in God is not obvious." p.18
"Listening to the voice of love requires that we direct our minds and hearts toward that voice with all our attention. ...prayer." p.19
"One of the discoveries we make in prayer is that the closer we come to God, the closer we come to all our brothers and sisters in the human family. God is not a private God. The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being." p.20
"We often wonder what we can do for others, especially for those in great need. It is not a sign of powerlessness when we say: 'We must pray for one another.' To pray for one another is, first of all, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, that we belong to each other as children of the same God. Without this acknowledgement of human solidarity, what we do for one another does not flow from who we truly are.' p.21

II. Joy
Joy & sorrow. "Joy is essential to spiritual life. ... Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing--sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death--can take that love away." p.25
Joy is not the same as happiness. We can be unhappy about many things, but joy can still be there bc it comes from the knowledge of God's love for us. ...sorrow and joy can exist together. ...when we think about some of our deepest life experiences, such as being present at the birth of a child or the death of a friend, great sorrow and great joy are often seen to be parts of the same experience. Often we discover the joy in the midst of the sorrow." p.25
"Joy doesnt simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us." p25
"It is important to become aware that at every moment of our life we have an opportunity to choose joy. Life has many sides to it. There are always sorrowful and joyful sides to the reality we live. And so we always have a choice to live the moment as a cause for resentment or as a cause for joy. It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom to love." p.26 at the end of the day decide to remember the day as a day to be grateful for. increase our heart's capacity to choose for joy. As our hearts become more joyful, we will become a source of joy for others.
Joy is contagious
"He is a realist, but his deep faith allows him to know that hope is more real than despair, faith more real than distrust, and love more real than fear." spiritualrealism p.27
Surprised by joy instead of sorrow (news)
Hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, p.32

III. Suffering
Jesus shows, both in his teachings and in his life, that true joy often is hidden in the midst of our sorrow, and that the dance of life finds its beginnings in grief. ...It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain." p.37  Jn 16:21
Our desire for communion
Be faithful to our vocation

IV. Conversion
The Spirit of Love: "The Spirit of God is soft and gentle like a small voice or a light breeze. It is the Spirit of love. ...Maybe we still distrust the Spirit, afraid to be led to places where our freedom is taken away." p.51
Set your hearts on God's kingdom first...and all other thgs will be given you as well' summarise best the way we are called to live our lives. ...God's kingdom is, first of all, the active presence of God's Spirit within us, offering us the freedom we truly desire. p.52
How to set our hearts on the kingdom first when our hearts are preoccupied with so many things? Somehow a radical change of heart is required, a change that allows us to experience the reality of our existence from God's place." p52
Jesus answers from above to questions raised from below. e.g. Matt 20:22, Acts 1:7-8
the reverse mission
being freed from the burden of judgement-Only when we claim the love of God, the love that transcends all judgements, can we overcome all fear of judgement. p.61

V. Disciplined Living
Living for the one clear goal: What is our prize? Is it the divine life, the eternal life, the life with and in God?
Eternal life starts now, it is not the afterlife. It is living in communion with God p.68
Spiritual reading: books that have spiritual content or reading the news of today with a spiritual reading (not to master knowledge or info but to let God's Spirit master us." p71

VI. The Spiritual Life
Matt 11:28-30
God is eternal love
Fatalism vs. faith. Faith is the deep trust that God's love is stronger than all the anonymous powers of the world and can transform us from victims of darkness into servants of light. p.78

VII. Prayer
'Well, when you spend one hour a day adoring your Lord and never do anything which you know is wrong...you will be fine!'-Mother Teresa to Nouwen after he explained all his complicated problems p89
from worrying to prayer.
Contemplating Psalm 23

VIII. Compassion
be compassionate, as the Father is.
Being the beloved.
downward mobility Jn 12:25, Matt 18:3, Matt 20:25-28
"Compassion means to become close to the one who suffers. But we can come close to another person only when we are willing to become vulnerable ourselves." p.197

IX. Family

X. Relationships

XI. Who We Are

Dec 13, 2016-Jan 3, 2018
London: St Pauls, 2002.

Veni, Creator Spiritus -Rabanus Maurus (776-856)

Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest, 

and in our souls take up Thy rest; 

come with Thy grace and heavenly aid 

to fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

O comforter, to Thee we cry, 

O heavenly gift of God Most High, 

O fount of life and fire of love,

and sweet anointing from above.

Kindle our sense from above,

and make our hearts o'erflow with love;

with patience firm and virtue high

the weakness of our flesh supply.

Now to the Father and the Son,

Who rose from death, be glory given,

with Thou, O Holy Comforter,

henceforth by all in earth and heaven. Amen

(quoted via How Would Jesus Lead Worship p. 107)

16. How Would Jesus Lead Worship? Biblical insights for today's church -- Sam and Sara Hargreaves

Worship (summary of the biblical perspective on worship):
-Worship is about reverently drawing near to God.
-being obedient in service to God's design for our lives.
-offering God the praise and glory that he alone deserves. p. 9-10

1. Jesus is my worship leader?
-Heb 13:15 'Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that confess his name."
Jesus is the fulfilment of OT worship, which was centred on the sacrificial system and was led not primarily by the musicians but by the priests.
The central chapters of Hebrews "show how Jesus fulfils all that God set up for worship in that first covenant and goes beyond it to allow everybody access to worship their heavenly Father God."(p.21)
-"When God created humanity, his plan was always for us to worship him and live in his presence. but we sinned (Gen 3) OT worship's central problem: 'if an unholy ppl come into contact with the holy God, the result can only be certain death (Exo 33:20; Leviticus 10:1-3; 1 Chron 13:9-10) p.21
"we are 'infected' by the disease of sin, which leads to death (Rom 5:12). God's holiness is a 'consuming fire' (Heb 12:29), obliterating any unholiness it encounters. p. 22
Atonement-Heb 10:19-22 the blood of Jesus, a great priest (the representatvie of God's ppl in their worship, closest figure in the OT to a worship leader p.24; Heb 4:15). 'It is all too easy to be casual and glib about coming into God's presence in worship, forgetting that we can do so only because we have been saved from death. Luke 23:44-46-curtain torn, made possible for us to enter the heavenly reality of which the OT system was only a picture--coming into the presence of our loving Father. p. 24
How is this possible? the incarnation and the Trinity.

2. Humble servant

3. Leader with authority
how Jesus was with his 12 disciples, spent time with them, he picked those for their character. "How much do you value prayer and the creation of space to listen to God when you recruit ppl to be in your team?" p.75 Jesus began by allowing the disciples to observe him as he ministered (7:11); "make it a habit to pray specifically & regularly for our team members and those we mentor" (Lk 22:31-32) Jesus prayed for Simon's faith.
-what we can hope to express in worship:
Gathering ppl (Ps 95:1-2)
Praising God (66:1-4)
Remembering God's deeds in recent & personal experience (40:1-3), and in our corporate life and long ago (78:1-4; 136: 1-26)
Giving thanks (92:1-4)
Placing trust in God (25:1-3)
Recognizing God's holiness and majesty (29:1-11; 93:1-5)
Coming quietly to hear his voice (95:6-7; 131:1-2)
Contemplating how nature reveals and glorifies God (19:1-6; 104:1-32)
Intimate adoration (63:1-8)
Lament, expressing sorrow over disappointment or tragedy (22:1-2; 137:1-4)
Confession & absolution: personal (51:1-17) & corporate (130:1-8)
Intercession: for justice (58:1-11), for the world (67:1-7) & for ourselves (80:1-3)
Reflecting on and responding to God's word (119:9-16)
Remembering what God thinks of us (139:1-18)
Pronouncing blessing (121:5-8)

4. Creative communicator
-"The Bible is full of creative engagement with God. ...God's beautiful, symbolic design for the tabernacle and its furnishings (Exodus 25-28), the singing and dancing of the Israelites (Exodus 15:2-; 1 Chron 25; 2 Sam 6:13-15) or the dramatized actions of hte prophets (Eze 4; Jer 19:1-13)" p.86
-Jesus used parables-relating everyday life things to the message & to different audience
-limitations of music: only hearing & some ppl can't sing. multisensory: illustrations with props, visual aids, audience participation. e.g. write lament prayer, art corners for reflection/express themselves before God.
-Lk 7:36-50: "the extent to which we have been forgiven, and that we are 'loved much' by Jesus, do we respond by 'loving much' with extravagant offerings of worship?'
Jn 12:1-8 Judas complains that the money the woman who poured perfume on Jesus. Have we ever been guilty of scrimping financially or in the use of our gifts in our worship of Jesus?" p. 89
-Celebrating the Communion: "to encounter Jesus as he offers himself and us to the Father, by the Spirit; to join around the table as brothers and sisters, as equals, to proclaim his gracious death for us until he comes again." p.97

5. Reliant on the Spirit
Lk 10:38, 5:17, 24:19
power 'dynamis' of the Holy Spirit. Pray. Allow space for the HS to reveal truth so that congregation can response in worship.
-"all Christian worship must be empowered by the Spirit (see Philippians 3:3)
-Lk 11:11-13 our Father longs to give us his Holy Spirit, bc he loves us as his children. Jesus promises that the Spirit will well up within us (Jn 7:37-39); The real test of being Spirit-filled is if we are empowered to live and worship more like Jesus (Gal 5:22-25). Lk 11:5-10 keep asking and seeking.

2015-21 Feb 2017
Abingdon: The Bible Reading Fellowship, 2009

2. Gifted Response: The Triune God as the Causative Agency of our Responsive Worship-Dennis Ngien

-"how worship is our participation in God's causative agency... how the creature redeemed by grace is a passive recipient of God's grace that enables our response in worship."
-"It is not incidental that a Greek Father, two Latin doctors, and two Reformers all identify trinitarian agency as central to Christian worship."--foreword by Ralph Del Colle

Introduction:
"Much of the contemporary Church's emphasis on worship has been concerned primarily with what we do in the act of worshipping God. The focus has been on the 'how-to' aspect of worship and the discussion has been largely devoid of theological underpinning." (p. xv)
-Analysis of the theo-logic of worship in the major thinkers of each period.
-The unifying theme: "worship is God's gift, in which we participate. It is primarily God's causative action in us, and secondarily our corresponding response to him, the former being logically prior to the latter." (p. xv)

I. Basil of Caesarea's De Spiritu Sancto: not only is the Spirit the legitimate object of worship, the one who receives our praise, but also the perfector [of our worship], the one through whom worship offered in the Son joins with the heavenly choir of angels." (p. xvi)

II. Anselm's Proslogion: God is "that than which nothing greater can be thought" (the divine superlative) and must be worshipped as such. "The moment of understanding is precisely the moment of doxology."
-rational reflection and meditative prayer-Prayers and Meditations: "to stir up the mind of the reader to the love or fear of God or to self-examination." "Anselm habitually places more emphasis on I-thou encounter with God, without undermining the I-it aspect of knowing God...His intent is to issue a transposition from faith seeking understanding to understanding seeking worship, the latter being his chief end." (pp. 43-44) "the unsurpassable perfection...-demands a fiduciary response that is necessary, natural and proper to a being like God." (p. 44)
-a relationship of wonder, not a friend because of the hidenness of God. Anselm: "The truth is, I am darkened by myself and also dazzled by you. I am clouded by my own smallness and overwhelemed by your immensity; I am restricted by my own narrowness and mastered by your wideness."(p. 46)
-"Just as our knowledge of God is hindered by sin, so it is with our worship. The worshipping experience as ascent to God is rendered ineffectual, unless by the intervening grace of God the 'Re-creator'." (p.46)
-God as the object of faith->object of adoration/delight. John 16:24 not the joy that the Lord has but "a subjective one: the joy that the Lord is." (p.60) "joyous entrance into the superlative fullness" "to know God is to love him; to love him is to enjoy him. The more he knows God the more he loves him; the more he loves him the more he rejoices in him" --enabled through the counsel of the Holy Spirit (p.61).

III. Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons on the Song of Songs: "worship is comprehended in the groom's kiss, which is shared with the bride in the efficacy of the Spirit, the unitive kiss between the Father and Son." [thinking about God in these pictures is quite foreign to me and so I find it difficult to comprehend-unfamiliar concepts...]
-3 kiss: 1. feet (repentance of sin and forgiveness) 2. the hands: liberality bc it gives generously & fortitude imparts the power to persevere and adorn with virtues (contrition, thanksgiving and pious deeds are the 3 ointments of worship by which the bride is anointed, which please the groom." (p. 71) growth in His grace, intimacy
3. mouth-"The kiss that the Bridegroom offers is the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which the bride is drawn into the infinite sweetness or embrace between the Father and the Son." "The Holy Spirit as the Bond of Love" (Augustine in De Trinitate); "the kiss of the kiss (the Spirit)"-for the bride, participated kiss instead of the constitutive kiss, which belongs to God's divine life (intra-Trinity) p.80
-"We learn to accustom ourselves with the gift of redemption and praise God through the merit of the cross, for making possible all intimacy with him." (p. 93)
-meditating on the groom's wound "while the kenotic movement (kissing humanity) of the Son sent by the Father to die constitutes the motive of worship, the ascending movement of Christ's resurrection and ascension is the completion of worship, as the bride reaches 'that holy hiding place, that hidden sanctuary, to look upon the Son in th eFather and the Father in the Son.'" (p.100)

IV. "the theme of worship is ontologically constitutive of Luther's theologia crucis... The creatures, of their own reason and strength, cannot ascend to heaven, obligating God and causing him to be gracoius. Thus..god alone must begin and lay the first stone (grace, we are passive recipients; God is the causative agency of our responsive worship of him)". "our worship reaches the heavenly sanctuary not by means of our response but by Christ's efficacious response (imputed to us through the Holy Spirit.) Worship then is a performative action in which God is both subject and object." (p. xvii)
-the 'performative authority' of the Word of God being preached (p.119) "For Luther, 'to hear God's Word and believe it,' Hughes Oliphant Old writes, 'is the essence of worship.'" (p.121)
-"Because hearing and believing God's Word is worship at its highest, ... God reveals himself in a hidden manner, under the visible, earthly means of creation in order to effect his presence for us." [Lord's Supper] (p.122)
-"True worship is communion with God, which therein includes a humble, reverent, thankful appropriation of his sacramental provision for our need of him." (p.125)
-Christ the Mediator, priestly role, the representative (p.133)

V. Calvin's theology of worship in his Institutes (1559): "Christ's mediation is the theological basis of the believer's active response to God: in his person, in his Name, our worship has access to God." As Basil, the double-movement in worship: "the God-humanwardness, in which God first descends to us in his Son, reveals himself by the Holy Spirit as the object of our worship; and the human-Godwardness, in which the Spirit elevates us to Christ's Ascension, to participate in the incarnate Son's communion with the Father" (p. xvii)
-God is the Giver of all" (p.139)
-"The true knowledge of God is always accompanied by reverential acknowledgement of him in that there is no speech about God without worship." (p.143) to know God and yet not worship him is idolatry, or using our own efforts to worship him is wrong too.
-"Christ's mediation does not derogate human agency, but inspires it." (p.156)
-"A proper theology of worship takes into consideration the two divine movements in Trinity: the God-humanward movement-God from the Father through the Son by the Spirit to us, and conversely, the human-Godward movement - we by the Spirit through the Son to the Father. This is not an ordo essendi, of essence, but an ordo cognoscendi, of experience." (p.162)

7-8 Dec, 2016
Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008.

-Q: What is 16th century Protestant magisterial theology?
-Meditate on what Lex orandi, lex credendi (prayer and doctrine) means.