Audio Recording
So, you’ve had a lousy day.
Actually, it’s just been one more in a chain of lousy days. And it didn’t take long for things to get old
quick and it’s all “Gloom, despair and agony on me. Deep dark depression excessive misery. If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck
at all. Gloom despair and agony on
me.” And you’re thinking to yourself,
“Things have got to change. Tomorrow has
got to be different.” Well, you go to
bed and you sleep and then the next morning when you wake up things have indeed
changed. You’re new life is here. What would it look like?
In the world of emotional therapy they call this Reality Therapy. A person’s life is not what they want it to be
and they are miserable. So, the
therapist gets the client to imagine what their ideal life would be like. Then
the therapist then gets the client to identify the obstacles that stand between
their present reality and their desired reality. Then, helps them devise a plan to address
those obstacles and provides support as the client carries out the plan. Reality Therapy seems very empowering in that
it gets a person to take responsibility for their life and make it what they
want it to be. That’s just ideal…if
you’re a narcissist with the resources and wherewithal to go and be Napoleonic!
The problem with Reality Therapy is that it doesn’t take into
account how warped reality really is as the result of sin. Sin isn’t a very popular word these
days. Its been abused for sure by Bible
thumping moralists. Yet, the Greek word
we translate as sin, hamartia, is really
an archery term meaning to miss the mark.
It is not a word meant to describe moral badness. Sin has its ill effect on things even when we
are doing our best to be morally good.
The mark that we miss isn’t moral perfection. It is living up to our created purpose of being
created in the image of God. Sin is
simply that we humans who are created in the image of God have an inescapable
problem in our hearts and minds rooted in our relationship to God. We, the image, try to be the God whom we are
created in the image of. In this twisted
reality, people find themselves controlled and compulsed by all sorts of things
because we believe lies about God, about ourselves, about other people, and about
reality. When we compare ourselves to
the reality God portrayed to us as Jesus Christ we find we are delusional,
delusional to the extent that we crucified him.
Therefore, in Reality Therapy, the new happy and whole reality that the
therapist invites the client to imagine and pursue is as much a lie as the
broken, painful, lousy reality he seeks to change.
Let us thank God that he has created a way out. In our passage from 2 Corinthians Paul
presents us with a new reality to pursue.
“If anyone is in Christ, NEW CREATION!
The old has ceased to exist, the new has become.” Reality, our very existence, has changed with
the death and resurrection of Jesus, God the Son become human. N.T. Wright who is probably the biggest name
in faithful New Testament interpretation today once said that at Jesus resurrection
a shockwave went out through all Creation.
He meaning was that since Jesus’ resurrection the existence of all things
has fundamentally been changed. In the
wake of his resurrection all things are being made new.
This fundamental change in all things, this New Creation, can be
seen in something new that is happening among the followers of Jesus
Christ. There are those who by God’s
doing, not their own, are finding themselves compelled, compulsed, controlled
by the love of Christ; the love of God for each of us that drove Jesus to take
up the cross and die the death for all that put death to death. This New Creation can now be seen among
Jesus’ followers in that they find themselves no longer living for themselves
but rather for him. They no longer see
people the way they did in the old reality, but rather with the love of Christ
eyeing what others can be if they know the love of God in Christ. People of the old reality say those who are of
the new reality are out of their minds because we strive to know Jesus and the
power of his resurrection even if it costs us wealth and honour and prestige in
the old reality that surrounds us. We
just simply want to live faithfully by this compulsion he gave to us through
the Holy Spirit to love as he has loved us, sacrificially giving of ourselves
for other’s benefit rather than our own.
Now, I don’t know if this new reality describes the
reality in which you find yourselves. It
describes mine at times. Regardless,
here’s a path to walk to help you discover and live more fully in the New
Creation. It is a Twelve Step Program to
help you deepen your compulsion to live according to the love of Christ:
We admit that we are powerless over our compulsions to
be our own Gods and have made our lives unmanageable.
We have come to believe that only the Triune God of
grace by his grace and power can restore us to the sanity of living according
to his image in us.
We made a decision to turn our lives over to the will
and care of God as he has revealed himself to us as Jesus Christ.
We made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves.
Admitted
to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our
wrongs.
Were
entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly
asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made
a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made
direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would
injure them or others.
Continued
to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Sought
through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and
the power to carry that out.
Having had a
spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message
to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
You cannot change yesterday and you cannot control
tomorrow. You only have this day, today,
to deal with. Live by these steps and
you will find your reality has been made new in Christ. Amen.
