You are listening to a message from Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.
Our passion is to experience and express grace. Join us.
Well, good morning. It is good to be with you. Not only have we had a long association awareness of Southwood,
Jean LaRue and I have been in a pastor's group for a long time.
I always told him, I said, you are the most interesting man in the world from the Dos Equis commercial.
And by contrast, I feel like the least interesting man in the world.
We have learned and wept and walked with each other through a lot.
So I'm grateful to be a part here with you this morning.
I asked Will, knowing you're going through the study of Ephesians, if I should just step in right where you left off.
He says, please don't. So he said, maybe it'd be good to do something different.
So we're going to do something really different and step into an Old Testament narrative.
The challenge is going to be we're going to step into the middle of the book.
So if I just had to stand up and read it right now, your brain would be mush by the end of the passage.
So it will help if we kind of approach it like a play and do a scene at a time.
So we'll look at the scripture in the body of the message.
Okay.
We'll be in Esther chapter 8.
If you want to turn here, turn there, it'll also be on the screen.
Let me pray for us as we come to God's word.
Father, you've been wooing and drawing our hearts through words penned by people weak and wounded by the fall of a hope that takes our breath away.
We've celebrated the sacraments, that mystery of your presence being manifest in an unusual way that we don't even fully understand.
Your scripture tells us that when we gather here, what's happening here, though much is pressing in on us from outside this room,
that it's a picture.
It's the closest that we get to the heavenly courts and the presence of Christ, the fullness of Christ's body,
worshiping in patterns that have been long established that mirror what's happening in heaven.
As we live in this already-not-yet season, would you touch and woo and take our breath away and melt our hearts by your story?
As we step into an ancient story, would we find ourselves there?
Would the dots connect to our lives?
And may we have a sense that you're wooing and calling, whether we've never believed before or have heard this story over and over again.
Oh, Spirit, would you be so present as to exalt Jesus in this story and meet us, we pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
Crazy busy pace.
24-7 connectivity.
Aren't you glad how technology has saved you so much time?
The insecurity, financial and otherwise, in a post-11 world equals overwhelmed.
Culturally, more than any other time that I've been an adult, I just sense, I'm here not just busy, I'm here, I'm completely overwhelmed.
Young families, young moms show up on this door just so glad to be in the doors because life can feel so overwhelming.
The pace just keeps ramping up.
And then you turn on Fox News or MSNBC.
And you discover we live in such a polarized culture, they're so afraid of one another, we can't even hear one another talk.
We're just screaming over one another and missing one another, and there's this huge cultural divide.
And then you think about being the church, where you know a big part of what we're called to be is outward facing, impacting our culture.
And overwhelm in the midst of a culture where we cannot hear one another leaves us feeling guilty and often not knowing where to turn as the people of God.
But what we're going to unfold as we step into this ancient story this morning is how an overwhelmed people of God live missionally in a culture where we can barely hear one another.
How can an already overwhelmed people who are called to live missional lives live missional lives in a culture where we can't hear one another?
Esther chapter 8 will unfold the story in four scenes.
It's a scene, just to help you remember, of a ring, a plea, a decree, and a party.
A ring, a plea, a decree, and a party.
Here's scene one.
Esther chapter 8 verse 1.
On that day, King Ahasuerus gave to Queen Esther the house of Haman, the enemy of the Jews.
And Mordecai came before the king, for Esther had told what he was to her.
And the king took off his signerine for which he had taken from Haman and gave it to Mordecai.
And Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman.
Now there's a tremendous backstory that's been going on.
Let me help you fill it in if you've heard it before or maybe have not heard it before.
Ahasuerus was king of Persia about 450 years before Jesus came to earth.
It's in present-day Iraq, Iran.
It was kind of his area, massive territory.
And he was the king on the block.
With incredible wealth, they had captured from all the nations.
And he decides to throw an incredible, world's most raucous fraternity party for six months.
And they don't go to class.
I know some of you went to school like that too, but probably not so much in Huntsville.
They partied for six months.
At the end of the six months, during the last week, he says,
let's let everybody in on this party because he was just kind of throwing a party
for his inner circle buddies who extended his role around his empire.
But they have a party for the whole people.
And he gets this great idea as he and everyone else is completely sloshed.
Let's have my, according to Ricky Bobby, smoking hot wife Vashti come and perform for us.
I mean, every girl's dream, right?
To come before a room full of drunken men and dance.
Queen Vashti says, I'm not coming.
I've got my own party with my own girls.
We're staying here.
See, you didn't tell kings no back then.
Telling a king no meant you're gone.
And that's what happened with Vashti.
She was smoking hot, but she was no more.
The king, to fill her place, decides, you know what we're going to do?
The first episode of The Bachelor.
We're going to invite the most beautiful women from all over my empire to come and try out to be my wife.
In the midst of these women from all over the empire coming like in all bachelor-like, you know, craziness,
to try out to be the queen.
There is one who is discovered.
She's a little bit undercover, but she is stunning.
Her name is Esther.
She's orphaned.
This is a time where the Israelites had come back to the land,
but she is still a part of a small minority who live abroad,
having been taken in the Babylonian empire.
She's being raised by an uncle who we saw about.
Her uncle is Mordecai.
Mordecai had great respect as a servant of the king,
but he instructed Esther to keep it quiet that they were Jews.
But Esther's beauty was such that she could not be ignored,
and she was invited into the contest,
and she replaces Vashti as this beautiful queen of King Ahasuerus.
Meanwhile, there's a prime minister that gets appointed.
His name is Haman.
Haman loved his power, and it was driven by pride,
and the king issued an edict at his request
that wherever he would go, people would have to bow.
Mordecai was a servant in the king's court,
and he was at the city gate one day when Haman walks by,
and he doesn't bow, and Haman could not get over it.
As his wealth and his stature and his power grew,
he still couldn't deal with the fact that Mordecai would not bow.
So he came up with a plot.
He came up with a plea that became an edict of the king
because he had discovered that Mordecai was a Jew.
And the edict with the king's signet ring that went out across the empire was this.
Every Jewish man, woman, and child were to be killed because they were a threat to the empire.
Mordecai hears about the plot and comes out dressed in sackcloth and public weeping,
and then he goes privately to Esther, who the king still does not know is a Jew.
And he says,
It is for such a time as this that God has appointed for you to go before the king.
Esther protested because she had kind of kept undercover Christian or undercover Jew working up till this point,
but also culturally working against her was for you could not request to come to the king's presence.
The king had to request you.
The only exception was if a golden scepter was extended,
then your life would not be taken.
Otherwise, it would.
She risks and she goes.
Meanwhile, Haman is thinking of all the glory he's going to receive because one night,
King Ahasuerus falls asleep and can't stay asleep,
wakes up and reads his chronicles where he discovers that Mordecai, his servant,
had exposed an assassination attempt against him and saved his life,
but Mordecai was never awarded.
Meanwhile, King Ahasuerus is planning to award him.
Haman is not knowing it.
Haman has a way to take the life by building a gallows to take Mordecai's life.
But at the second feast, when Esther comes clean on her identity as a Jew,
the edict that Haman has proclaimed,
his participation in a plot that would erase her people,
he's exposed.
And the very gallows upon which Mordecai was to die,
Haman is executed.
And so what we find here as we open up the storyline in this first scene in chapter 8,
is Mordecai becomes prime minister.
It's marked by receiving a signet ring.
Two Jews oppressed in the land with a signet ring,
a position of influence to do redemptive things in the kingdom for their people.
Scene 1.
Scene 2.
Let's look at the passage, the plea.
It's a ring, a plea, verse 3.
Then Esther spoke again to the king.
She fell at his feet and wept,
and pleaded with him to avert the evil plan,
Haman the Agagite.
That's easy for you to say.
The Agagite.
And the plot that he had devised against the Jews.
Here's what's interesting.
Agagite also means Amalekite.
Now if you, like, paid attention in Sunday school growing up,
you may have a little distant memory of Amalekites.
When Israel was going in the wilderness to enter the land,
they opposed Israel so dramatically that God had to show up through Moses holding his hands up.
And when King Saul came into power,
he was commissioned to completely, completely annihilate the Amalekites.
But you remember what happens?
It's where God's favor falls from him.
God's favor falls because he did not completely wipe out the Amalekites.
And here we have Mordecai, a Jew, a descendant of Saul,
facing an Amalekite in a foreign land again.
Interesting thing, Herod, who was in charge when Jesus was born,
was an Amalekite as well.
This ongoing conflict.
Look at verse 4.
When the king held out the golden scepter to Esther,
okay, she's going to be alive,
Esther rose and stood before the king,
and she said,
If it please the king,
and if I have found favor in his sight,
and if the thing seems right before him,
and I'm pleasing in his eyes,
boy, she's building a case, isn't she,
let an order be written to revoke or reverse the letters devised by Haman the Agagite,
the son of Hamadathah,
which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the provinces of the king.
For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming to my people?
Or how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?
Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew,
Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman,
and they have hanged him on the gallows,
because he intended to lay hands on the Jews.
But you may write as you please with regard to the Jews in the name of the king,
and seal it with the king's ring.
For an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's ring cannot be revoked.
He's actually saying two things.
I can't make Haman's edict go away.
But if you can figure out a way, Mordecai and Esther,
to preserve the lives of the people in light of that edict going out,
I will let you take my signet green.
And in her plea for her people,
because of the great effect of the curse,
living in a fallen world,
perpetrated by a fallen man, Haman,
she intervenes with a plea,
a need that moves her to tears at the feet of the king,
to intercede not just on her welfare,
but on behalf of the welfare of the entire people.
In response to her plea,
King Ahasuerus gives an okay for an alternate decree to be made.
In scene three, we see that decree.
Verse nine.
The king's scribes were summoned at that time in the third month,
which is the month of Sivan, on the 23rd day.
And an edict was written according to all that Mordecai commanded concerning the Jews.
So the satraps and the governors and the officials of the provinces from India to Ethiopia,
that's a stretch,
127 provinces to each province in its own script.
Can you imagine the translation work?
And to each people in its own language,
and also to the Jews in their script and their language.
And he wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed it with the king's signet ring.
Then he sent letters by mounted couriers,
riding on swift horses that were used in the king's service,
bred from the royal stud.
I like that.
Saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives,
to destroy, kill, and to annihilate.
That's in Esther chapter three.
That's a reversal of the command.
Israel, Jews were supposed to be destroyed, killed, annihilated.
And that they could do that against any armed force of any people or province that might attack them,
children and women included,
and to plunder their goods.
On one day throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus,
on the 13th day of the 12th month,
which is the month of Adair,
a copy of what was written was to be issued as a decree in every province,
being publicly displayed to all peoples.
And the Jews were to be ready on that day to take vengeance on their enemies.
So the couriers, mounted on their swift horses that were used in the king's service,
rode out and hurriedly, urged by the king's command,
and the decree was issued in Susa, the citadel or the capital.
You see what happened?
Esther and Mordecai penned a decree that would give Jews the right to defend themselves,
to thwart the decree that was made by Haman.
What are they doing?
They're reversing the curse.
The curse that had been pronounced upon the Jews,
that intersected their lives in a very profound, real way,
not just for them, but for all their kindred spread throughout the kingdom of Ahasuerus.
They reversed the curse.
So that instead of a decree of death,
the Jews, the people of God, could experience a decree that would bring life.
It's a ring.
It's a plea.
It's a decree that turns into the foreseen a party.
Look at verses 15 through 17.
Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white,
with a golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple.
The city of Susa shouted and rejoiced.
This is how Haman thought he was going to dress.
And now we find Mordecai as the curse has been reversed in his place.
Verse 16,
The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor.
They're restored from shame, restored from the curse.
And in every province and in every city,
wherever the king's command and his edict reached,
there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday.
And get this,
And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews they wanted in the party,
for fear of the Jews had fallen all on them.
You see the wonder of a story,
of a ring for such a time as this,
a plea that met the woundedness,
the fears,
and yet the hope for a reversal by a decree
that turned into a party for the whole country
to celebrate a reversal of the curse
so everyone else wanted in.
You see the beauty of this story in those four scenes
is it really helps us understand the whole gospel storyline
that's woven throughout the pages of scripture.
The ring corresponds to the story of creation
where we're made to flourish and exercise benevolent rule
that brings flourishing and shalom and wholeness to all of earth.
But the fall means we're all broken and wounded.
Despite having the image of glory in us,
we limp big time
because of the effects of the curse in our world.
The biblical story goes on from the fall though
as you open the pages of the New Testament to redemption.
of one who came to issue an edict and a decree
that would make all things new
and the good news of the gospel.
And one day there will be a party
like no other party before
when every tear will be wiped away from our eyes
and everything is made new.
Heaven comes down
and everything that's sad becomes untrue.
Esther's story was the gospel story.
Mordecai's involvement with Esther
in reversing the curse
pictures the gospel storyline.
And it pictures the storyline
of each of our lives as well.
Connect to that feeling of overwhelm.
Connect to that sense of awareness
if you're a part of Christ's church
and probably even if you're not a part of church,
you know the church is called to mission.
What does missional living mean
for an overwhelmed people
in a culture where we can't even hear one another?
Based on this story,
I would suggest missional living is this.
Missional living
is reversing the curse
right where you feel the need for it most.
Missional living is reversing the curse
right where you feel the need for it most.
Now because the church I'm at
at Oak Mountain Prez
and this church really treasure
the gospel,
we probably share some similarities.
Here's what we're finding out at Oak Mountain
that you may have experienced as well.
Coming to Oak Mountain for many people
has offered and I've just been there a year and a half
so I have like zilch contribution to this hardly at all.
It's just the faithfulness of the free gospel
being preached powerfully.
Most people have found in the church
a fresh drink of the gospel
that makes their souls say yes
after having been beat up and bruised
by the legalistic church for a long time.
Then we've also experienced real safe community
where you don't really have to pretend
and can come clean about the struggles in your life.
I mean, a fresh drink of the gospel,
a safe community where I can come clean
and hope in the gospel
and we're like, home run.
We're done.
We're here.
Ah, yes.
It's kind of like we've hit a triple
and hitting a triple is really exciting.
The whole crowd cheers.
You dust yourself off,
but you still got to get home.
The richness of the gospel that we experience
between us and Christ
and in community with one another
is the same power
that needs to bubble over in our lives
with the needs that we experience
right alongside real and normal people
with whom we do life.
Missional living
is where you feel the weight of the curse the most
and you begin dreaming
and moving to reverse it.
If you've read Jeremiah 29 before,
it talks about the commission
to the people of God
prior to the story of Esther
when the people were in captivity
and Jeremiah's in Jerusalem
and riding back.
I won't turn there for the sake of time,
but he says,
hey, people are saying
you're about out of here,
so don't invest in the city.
He's saying you're going to be there for 70 years.
You are exiles,
but here's how I want you to function.
Get jobs.
Build homes.
Cultivate gardens.
Have children.
Give away children.
And in the midst of just the normal stuff in life
that you're already doing,
seek the welfare,
the Hebrew word actually,
seek the shalom,
the fullness,
the wholeness,
the peace,
the world as it should ought to be.
Seek the welfare
or the shalom of the city
and you know what the promise is next?
And in it,
you will find
your welfare,
your shalom.
For a people
who have experienced
a fresh drink of the gospel
in a way that's transforming your lives
and the contents of your friendships
and families,
that good news
in the midst of your brokenness
is extended to those
outside the walls of this church
in breathtaking ways,
but in the normal stuff of life.
Thursday night,
I got together with a group
of college students
from our church
and we watched way, way back.
It's really weird
anytime Steve Carell
is in a serious movie.
the first line,
the first scene
slayed me.
Steve Carell's character,
I think he's Trent,
is dating
a woman
who has two kids.
I don't know
where they found
an old station wagon,
but do you remember
old station wagons?
If you saw the movie,
there's a back seat
that faces back
and there's a little boy
named Duncan
who's about 13,
as awkward
as he can possibly be,
shoulders slumped over,
who's just trying
to look out
to get away
from what else
is happening in the car.
He wants nothing of it.
Trent refuses
to let him be disengaged
and so he begins
conversation like this,
Duncan,
what are you?
On a scale of one to ten,
what are you?
Duncan,
like most adolescent boys,
says,
I don't know.
He doesn't want to answer,
comes up with a grunt.
Trent keeps pressing,
no, what are you?
Like ten being really good,
one being nothing,
what are you
on a scale of one to ten?
Duncan finally relents
and says,
I don't know,
like six or a seven?
Trent goes,
no,
you're not a six
or a seven,
that's way too high.
You're a three.
That's what you are.
You're a three.
I'm undone.
I know the feeling of shame
so powerful
where people treat you
as if you're a three.
It's like I may as well
have been in the back seat
with Duncan.
As the storyline goes on,
he finds his way
to a water park,
which is run by a guy
who probably did not win,
most likely to succeed
in high school.
His name is Owen.
Owen leads a group
of people
who are like an island
of misfit toys
at this little water park.
But every life
that Owen touches,
even in their awkwardness
where the world
would bring shame,
you know what Owen does?
he lifts their heads.
He treats them
as the image bearers
that they are.
His own story
filled with shame,
but wherever Owen goes,
he lifts people's heads
from the shame.
That's what the people
of God are called to do.
In a world
that feels like a three,
we lift their heads
to see the beauty
and wonder
of being created
in the image of God.
Here's what I've found
within the evangelical church
is we're really strong
on two of the four movements
of the gospel storyline.
We're big on sin
and the reality of that,
sometimes in really healthy ways,
sometimes in very judgmental ways,
and we're really big
on redemption as well.
But you know what we forget
in relating to people?
We forget stage one,
scene one, creation.
That everyone,
whether they name the name
of Jesus or not,
are image bearers,
but who are also fallen,
living with this deep-seated unease
of I'm not okay
with who I am.
The people of God
in every age
and every sphere
are people who bear the image
and treat people to the image
so that we are people
who call out the glory
and the wonder
of how one another
are made
in the midst of the world
that just presses
their shame,
calling you a three.
A people on mission
lift the heads
right in the normal stuff of life
from the place of shame
to a place of honor
and glory
so that that curse
is reversed.
There's a sociologist
from UVA,
Charlottesville,
who's really a fascinating man.
I've had a chance
to interact with him.
His name is James Davison Hunter.
He came out,
he's a follower of Christ,
he came out
of the evangelical movement,
but grew disappointed
in his development
at two main projects
of the evangelical church
in the past 30 years.
One was,
we're going to change the world
through sharing the gospel
with individuals,
and eventually
the grassroots of that
will just bubble up
and change our culture.
The other project
at work in evangelicalism
was the Christian right,
which had a political agenda
and created a huge culture war
that created and helped fuel
an MSNBC, Fox News
kind of culture today.
I might make you mad,
he said it,
offers research,
you get the book,
you read it,
weigh his arguments.
He's saying,
neither are ways,
neither are ways
to change the world
and change our culture.
Now he's not saying,
not arguing against evangelism,
okay?
He's not arguing against
some of the values
that the religious right
have advanced.
He's just saying
those approaches
on their own
will not reverse the curse.
Instead he argues,
what would?
which he terms
faithful presence
in key places
that God has called us
for such a time as this.
Faithful presence,
just in the normal arenas
in life
and platforms
that God has entrusted to you,
where you're CEO
of a company
or you're wiping bottoms
at home.
whatever the place,
faithful presence
over time
for such a time
as this
to reverse
the curse
wherever we are.
As I've been trying
to help people
flesh out
what this looks like,
I've thought of it
in three phases.
Normally,
if you think about
moving out,
you think of the third phase
of where you have to
announce good news.
Who,
if you're a church person,
has heard before
that you should
announce the good news
to others?
You heard that?
Who here feels
really guilty
for how little you do it?
And it's because
we think we've got
to start right here.
A great way
to think
in light of the story
in which we're
stepping into
in the gospel storyline
is to remember
the creation story
and to live
for the flourishing
of shalom
right where you are,
where you seek
the common good.
My experience
has been
that when I seek
the common good,
locked arms
with people in the city,
that because they have
the image of God
within them,
they're aspiring
for the same kind
of things
that we would want
to see when all things
are renewed.
And oftentimes,
the church
has not been
in the game,
but linking arms
where we're seeking
right where we are
the common good
creates an incredible
dynamic for establishing
common ground.
I had a friend
who I was on the
North Chattanooga
Chamber of Commerce
with who had
kind of one of the
wildest reputations
in town,
even in his mid-50s,
he was a handsome
looking guy,
and he went for it
big time in the city.
In the midst
of me just participating
and dreaming big dreams
for North Chattanooga,
we began to have
heart dialogue
that we could never
have had
if I had started
over here.
In fact,
he wanted to change
the motto
of the North Chattanooga
Chamber of Commerce
from where you live,
work, and play
to where you live,
work, play, and pray.
I said,
I'm not asking for that.
But his heart
was moving.
We were finding
common ground
as we began
to dream
for reversing
the curse
kinds of things
that he knew
his heart longed for
because he was
an image bearer.
And when we're
able to connect
and pursue
people's hearts
in common ground,
then we can unfold
the good news.
In every sphere
of life,
vocation,
neighborhood,
recreation,
just social
kind of things,
the gospel storyline
infuses it
with meaning.
I've been working
with a group
of lawyers
and trying to say,
okay,
what's the worldview
at work
within the
lawyering profession
right now?
Here was essentially
what it was.
Win at all costs,
now,
and build the most hours
was the worldview
in which many
who practice law
function.
I said,
how does that compare
to the gospel storyline?
I said this,
do you know
you're made to win?
Like to flourish
as a lawyer
in your vocation
pleases God?
It's the,
when I run,
I feel his pleasure
of your vocation.
It's great
to want to flourish
for the power
of justice,
for the welfare
of your clients,
for the welfare
of your family.
It's wonderful
to think of flourishing.
But the at all cost part,
that's fall.
Like the at all cost
really says,
justice is not
our ultimate goal.
The bottom line is.
And then build
the most hours now
essentially says this,
you're your own redeemer.
Go for it.
And the now says
there is no future.
So go for it now.
You know what
the gospel storyline
for law would be?
It's simply this,
we're made to flourish
with justice.
You know why
they're lawyer jokes?
Because everyone
deep down knows
that we were made
for justice.
You're traffic,
as a lawyer,
you're trafficking
in a commodity
of justice.
You're made
for it to flourish.
But you're redemptive.
You're not
when at all cost.
What you're trying
to do
is picture for people
justice
that's just
breathtaking
because it honors
both parties
as image bearers.
And you're picturing
what full justice
one day will be
when Jesus' reign
is fully established.
You see,
in our vocations,
in our neighborhoods,
we're to think
of the gospel storyline
to see how
our spheres of influence
are infused
with vibrant color
and rich content
that reverses
the curse
to take people's
breath away
with what they know
that they were made for.
When you get
from seeking
the common good
to establishing
the common ground,
what I'm trying to do
as I'm pursuing
people's hearts,
I'm trying to do
gospel storyline
in their lives
of what they were made for,
how they're weak
and wounded
by the fall,
what redemption
would look like
if Jesus
were to come vibrant
in that area
of their woundedness,
and what might
they look like
one day
fully redeemed
and glorified.
And then I share
my story
of how God
made me
of how I'm
weak and wounded
with shame
by the fall,
but how Christ
is redeeming,
and one day
those tears
and that shame
will be completely gone,
and then I can
unfold God's story
of creation,
fall,
redemption,
and the restoration
of all things.
Missional living
is seeking
to reverse
the curse
right where you feel
it the most.
Think about
Jesus'
embodiment
of the truth
of this passage.
Look at Colossians 2,
13-15.
When you were dead
in your transgressions
and the uncircumcision
of your flesh,
he made you alive
together with him,
having forgiven us
all our transgressions,
having canceled out
the certificate of debt,
that decree,
consisting of decrees
against us,
which was hostile
to us,
and he has taken it
out of the way,
having nailed it
to the cross.
When he had disarmed
the rulers
and authorities,
he made a public
display of them,
having triumphed
over them
through him.
What a beautiful summary
of a picture
of the ultimate
fulfillment
of the Esther story.
You have,
in essence,
an overwhelmed,
weeping,
and pleading son,
who gave his very life
to reverse the curse
so that you and I
might be invited
to the party.
What do you think
with me as we think
about the richness
of Christ
embodying this,
of what this might
mean for us?
What's the ring,
the station,
and life
that God has given you?
right where you are,
not signing up
for one more thing
in an already
overstuffed life.
What's the stamp
of glory
and the position
in life he's given you
in which you're called
to bring about
shalom
in the place
of shame?
What's the ring?
What's the place?
What's the place
of honor and position
that God
is burdening
your heart
with the most?
Second,
what's your plea?
How is the shame
of the fall
pressing in?
Like if you're
in survival
young mom mode,
it just might mean
you think you're
going to go crazy
if you don't have
a play group.
That would count.
The weak and woundedness
of the fall
and the station
in life you're in.
Maybe there's
an injustice
at work.
Maybe there's a need
in your neighborhood.
Maybe there's lack
of community
in your neighborhood
or in your kid's school.
What is a need
that would give you
great joy
to move towards it?
You know what
Frederick Buechner
called call?
It's where your
greatest joy
and culture's
greatest need
meet.
I think you could
also say it.
Call is where
your greatest wounds
and culture's
your sphere
of influence
greatest need
kiss.
It's not different
than that.
It's right
in that place.
And then
what's the decree?
How can the decree
of God's good news,
the decree
of the gospel,
go at work
in that particular
sphere of influence
that you're in
to reverse the curse?
What needs
reversing?
What if
if I approached
it
and brought
life,
would put
defenses
down
so that we
could hear
one another
and take
someone else's
breath away
as that need
was met,
both in my life
and those
I'm trying
to serve?
And then finally,
have a party.
Invite others
in to the beauty
and the wonder
of reversing
the curse
because when we
move to reverse
the curse,
right where we feel
it the most,
others want
to enter in.
Missional living
is reversing
the curse
where you feel
life's
hardness
pressing
most in.
Let me pray
that this story
would become
true of us as well.
Would you join me?
Spirit of God,
at the beginning,
I ask that you
would connect the dots.
Would you?
Would you move
the story?
Would you move
the conceptual
things that I
argued for?
Not just to
stay there,
but would you
cause them
to intersect
where we live?
Would you help us
see just the
relational spheres
in which we're
already engaged
and yet we're
experiencing
great need?
Would you give us
ridiculous
spirit-led
creativity
to move
towards those
simple needs
in ways that
reverse the curse
and take the
breath away
of us as we
do it
and those
to whom we
do it
so that many
others
can be
invited
to the party
where they
can know
the restoration
that's only
found in the
gospel story?
Would you
continue to
grow and
nurture
Southwood
Prez
to be a
people who
do life
missionally?
Not just
absorbed in
themselves,
but on the
move.
Not just
overwhelmed,
but diving
into the
midst of the
things that
overwhelm
others too,
so that gospel
hope might
dawn and
shalom might
be known in
Huntsville.
We pray this
in Jesus,
King Jesus'
powerful name.
Amen.
For more
information,
visit us
online at
southwood.org.