Renovation of the Heart
Transforming Our Social Dimension (3|4)
Pages 195-200
• Our Current Coldness Is Not Normal
• The Centrality of Families
• Marriage
• The “Market” Approach to Marriage
• The Devastation of Children
TOGETHER read the devotional and the scripture.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out.
Ephesians 5:22-33 (NIV) Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Matthew 15:13-20 (NIV) “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” - “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person...”
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your devotional notes and pray.
Our Current Coldness is Not Normal
“Could the epidemic of addictions and dysfunctions from which the masses suffer possibly be related to the fact that we are constantly in the presence of people who are withdrawn from us, who don’t want to acknowledge we are there and frankly would feel more at ease if we weren’t - people who in many cases explicitly reject us and feel it only right to do so? Isn’t the desperate need for approval that drives people so relentlessly today - causing them to go to foolish and self-destructive lengths to be ‘attractive’ or at least to get attention - nothing but the echo of a lost world of constant mutual welcome and blessing in family, neighborhood, school, and work? - This is the world we now have. To do anything of substance about it will require a grace and wisdom that are at no individual’s disposal and a long-range plan of personal and social development is required. No doubt God has one in mind.”
Must we accept coldness between people now? What might “God’s long-range plan” for rescuing the world from itself look like?
“We who follow Jesus must understand that a couple of hours per week of carefully calibrated distance in a church setting will be of little help and may only enforce the patterns of withdrawal that permeate our fallen world. What could we do in our fellowships that would really help make a difference?”
Do you agree with this statement? Why/why not?
The Centrality of Families
“It is especially in our families and similarly close associations that we must identify the elements of assault and withdrawal that defeat love and right relation to others. By insight and practice, we must break away from them and reverse them, first by learning a calm but firm noncooperation with those poisonous elements, and then by initiatives of goodwill and blessing in the midst of them. What we do in our meetings as Christians should be focused on enabling us to do this effectively wherever we are.”
What can we do for our part to make this a reality? What are practical actions that can be done?
Marriage
“To be married is to give oneself to another person in the most intimate and inclusive of human relationships, to support him or her for good in every way possible - physically, emotionally, and spiritually, of course, but in every conceivable dimension of his or her being. - The mutual submission to each other in awe of the Lord, which is the vision of marriage in Christ, eliminates both assault and withdrawal from this most basic of human relationships. - The mutual submission to each other in awe of the Lord, which is the vision of marriage in Christ, eliminates both assault and withdrawal from this most basic of human relationships.”
Do you agree that redemption of the marriage relation is central to any hope for transforming our broader social situation today? Or is that too much to put on man-woman relationships? What does this mean for people who are single?
The “Market” Approach to Marriage
“Individual desire has come to be the standard and rule of everything. How are we to serve one another in intimate relations if individual desire is the standard for everything and if what we desire can be acquired from many competing providers? - What, then, does devotion to another mean when one or both parties are constantly shopping for ‘a better deal’ or constantly appraising one another in the light of convenient alternatives? Withdrawal, rejection, and assault will naturally become a constant factor in the most intimate of human relations. This is what Satan has always used to defeat God’s plans for human community on earth.”
What is your response to this statement? Do you agree?
The Devastation of Children
“Marching onward in life, these little people become big people and move on with their malfunctioning souls into workplace, profession, citizenship, and leadership. From them proceeds the next generation of wounded souls. Many of these now ‘big people,’ perhaps ‘the best and brightest,’ try hard to rectify the situation. They sponsor sickenly shallow solutions to the human problem, such as ‘education’ or ‘diversity’ or ‘tolerance.’”
How have you seen human solutions used to “fix” a sin problem? How/where have you seen wounded children grow into adulthood and the effects of the childhood wounding drive the adult? How/where have you seen wounded children grow into adulthood and be set free, healed, and transformed by Jesus?
EXTRA READING:
An excerpt from the journals of Catherine of Siena (1347 - 1380)
“Beloved daughter, everything I give to you comes from the love and care I have for them. I desire to show my mercy to the whole world and my protective love to those who want it. My care is constant. I did all this so that they will know me and rejoice to see me forever.”