Searching for Eden: Understanding and navigating our culture’s cries for life

Searching for Eden
Understanding and navigating our culture’s cries for life
Distorted Spirituality: Living without limits

What are the costs of trying to keep up with the noise & busyness?
• Loss of identity
• Loss of intelligence
• Loss of intimacy

Embracing our limits through silence & sabbath
“When God called Israel out of Egypt, he affirmed they were sacred human beings made in his image. He then showed them how to live according to their God-given nature. In effect, God said, ‘It may feel awkward at first, but as a fish is created to live in water, I created you to live according to this design.’”
-Peter Scazzero in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

“Remember to dedicate the Sabbath day: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. You must not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates. For the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.”
-Exodus 20:8-11

What is a Sabbath?
• From the Hebrew word that means “to cease, to stop working”
• A specific day (Romans 14 gives freedom regarding which day)
• Not just a day…an overriding life principle of rhythm & rest

What benefits will you receive from Sabbath?
o Recognize & embrace your limits & God’s limitlessness
o Know when to say “yes” and when to say “no”
o Build up needed reserves
o Increase in ability to be fully present with others, with tasks, & with God

How do you start?
Count the cost
– We don’t rest because all the work is done, we rest because we were designed to do so…
– “But the news about Him spread even more, and large crowds would come together to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. Yet He often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.”
-Luke 5:15-16

Develop a Sabbath Formation Team
• Keep it small
– Director
– Companion

Start small & build as you go
• Experiment
– Choose a day in the next month
– Try something structured
– Try something unstructured

Our Longing for Intimacy

Intimacy
The mutual giving and receiving of all that we are.

The Dilemma
We have a deep longing for intimacy, yet we also have a deep fear of the pain inherent with intimacy.

How to deal with the dilemma.
• We can be alive and thirsty.
• We can be dead.
• We can be addicted.

Hope
• Isaiah 61:1-3, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness.”

Strategy
Hosea 14:1-3, “Return to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, ‘Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war-horses. We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made…’”

Strategy
1. Return to the Lord.
*Face yourself without denial.
*Face your woundedness.
*Trust God to satisfy your needs.
2. Examine motives of repentance.
3. Acknowledge that your strategies are worthless.
4. Ask for help to pursue healthy relationships.
5. Remember that change is a process.

Searching for Eden
Understanding and navigating our culture’s cries for life
Gender Wars: What does it mean to be female?

The Genesis
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness’…So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.’”
-Genesis 1:26-28

“The LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He placed the man He had formed…The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it…Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is like him…So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. Then the LORD God made the rib He had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man…This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.”
-Genesis 2:15-25

Womanhood: A call to rule by courageously unveiling beauty
• Haunting question ? Am I lovely? (Captivating by John & Stasi Eldredge)
• Ultimate fear is abandonment/rejection

How are women made to courageously unveil beauty?
• Release the tender strength of others
– “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper who is like him.’” (Gen. 2:18)
• Remind others of beauty & mystery
– “This one, at last, is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called woman, for she was taken from man.” (Gen. 2:23)
• Receive the heart of others
-“This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24)

Next Week
Our longing for intimacy

Searching for Eden
Understanding and navigating our culture’s cries for life

Gender Wars: What does it mean to be male and female?

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness’…So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.’”
Genesis 1:26-28

Manhood: A call to rule by offering tender strength
• Haunting question ? Do I have what it takes? (Wild at Heart by John Eldredge)
• Ultimate fear is failure

How are men made to offer tender strength?
• Wilderness exploration
– “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust (like the wild animals) from the ground…” Genesis 2:7
– “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it…” Genesis 1:28
– Wilderness = “Something characterized by bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion”

Reflection
– What most captivates your heart & imagination?
– Where are you most finding adventure, discovering the depths of faith, & meeting our untamed God?

How are men made to offer tender strength?
• Working and watching over creation
– “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.” Genesis 2:15

Reflection
– Men, do others…especially women…feel safer & more celebrated when they are in your presence?
– Women, what men has God used to protect & celebrate you?

How are men made to offer tender strength?
• Words of life & vision

– “So the Lord God formed out of the ground each wild animal and each bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.” Genesis 2:19

Reflection
– What men have wounded you through the presence or absence of their words?
– What men have spoken words of life & vision to you?
– Men, to whom do you need to speak a word of life and vision?

Next Week
Gender Wars: What does it mean to be female?