The final section of Dan Allender’s The Healing Path calls us out of our individual journey to embrace the redemptive community. Though God works in us as individuals, he also brings us into relationship with one another so we can growth through mutual ministry, and engage in mission. We are not on the healing path for purely selfish reasons, but to love God and love our neighbor as Jesus has loved us. This last section calls us out of our narcissism. This is a message far too many of us need to hear.
“A radical life begins with the premise that I exist for God and for his purposes, not my own. … A radical life has eyes and ears for the deepest purposes of God. Yet to live for his purposes it not to forsake the passions and burden of our daily life; rather, we are to give them to him for his glory.”
The first is Christianity, as well expressed in the first answer of the Westminster Shorter Catchism; Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The second is the kingdom of me, where God exists to fulfill my agenda. And when we are suffering, it easily becomes all about our agenda.
I often talked about this in my ministry at Good Shepherd/Cornerstone. God is not asking us to add more to our list of things to do so much as seeing those things as part of his purposes to redeem people. We purposefully & creatively engage the people with whom we interact that we might enter into their stories.
“To follow Jesus is to disturb, draw, and direct others to the Father. … Disruption stirs the pot of complacency and brings to the surface the burnt pieces that we would prefer to sink to the bottom.”
I suspect we have such low expectations for our relationships. They are merely functional or if ‘evangelistic’ focus on getting a decision. That too settles for the functional. We have to come face to face with our expectations, which are so often shaped by our fears. Fears limit risk, and therefore expectations. A relative has no expectations so he will feel no disappointment. That is not how we were meant to live- as the Psalms surely attest. Those painful prayers our born from disappointment arising from expectations. We must find ourselves asking God to keep his promises, or ask ourselves why we don’t care if he keeps them.
“I’m called to live out the gospel in whatever sphere I wish to enter that enables me to use my gifts, talents, and skills to bless others and glorify God.”
This call reinjects the ‘secular’ with the ‘sacred’, or the ordinary with the extraordinary. Our gifts, talents and skills are employed to God’s ends as we go about our life and interact with fellow believers and non-believers.
Chapter 11, Inviting Others to Live, is about how to have these redemptive conversations that uncover peoples pains and passions. It isn’t about forcing the issue with people, but noticing open doors and asking to enter in. It honors the other person rather than coming at them aggressively with a self-righteous zeal.
“If we attempted to make every conversation deep and eternally important, we would get little don and be a nuisance to most people we meet. Instead, we are to live with openness (faith) and expectancy (hope), invested in giving and receiving (love) from others as God so moves us.”
As he walked through the process with a conversation, I found myself pondering the themes in my own life. I see some of the patterns, and talked to CavWife about some of those patterns. They can make life tough on her at times. They involve the push/pull or draw/distance that all of us find ourselves in.
“The people who draw you in often fear loneliness more than shame. Those who keep you at a distance usually fear shame more than loneliness. Most people will draw and distance simultaneously. To find a door that might be entered, all one needs to do is not ‘give in’ to the unstated instructions the person’s style dictates.”
This is part of object relations therapy- you recognize the pull/push and gently bring it out into the open. You refuse to act just like they want you to act. You don’t play by their relational rules so you can offer them a taste of life.
“Patience in conversation allows us to make small entries without demanding we proceed beyond the natural potentiality of the moment. The goal of redemptive conversation is not merely to move air or kill time, but to comprehend what the other loves. We all love someone or something. Resistance arises when we get too close to the scenes of the past that deeply matter.”
Feeling shame, the person will begin to deflect the conversation via anger, changing the subject or other means. Resistance is inevitable because we are trying to go to a place that is painful for the other person. It is then that we try to connect the dots, offering theories to them. We are trying to illumine the pattern. But we might not see it right. Or they may be in extreme denial.
But what we are doing is inviting people to leave the basic principles of this world, the worthless traditions handed down to them and enter into a new way of life. That is very threatening- like Abram most of us must “leave home and sojourn to a strange land” even if we never move. We do this as we live as missionaries to our communities. We fit in with them as appropriate, and call them out of sin as appropriate. We seek them in the places they live, move and have their being- on their turf.
The missional language wasn’t being tossed around much when Dan wrote this. But this is essentially what his is describing. It is a vision for a sojourning community that needs one another but does not necessarily serve together. We leave the community to enter into our neighborhoods and workplaces. We return to community life of interdependence.
“We need visionaries who plunge into the unknown and direct us into battle- they are kings. We need people who interpret the times and the soul in light of the Word of God- they are prophets. We need encouragers who remind us of truth, draw near to offer support, and teach new paradigms of life- they are priests. We need a diverse group of people whose life stories, burdens, and training facilitate different aspects of disturbing, drawing and directing others to Jesus.”
This is what I long to be a part of, offering my gifts to a community intent on disturbing, drawing and directing others to Jesus. This is what happens when we become more like Jesus. But the more we hide from him, the more self-absorbed and pragmatic we become in life and relationships. We miss out on real life.
Cavman Considers 
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