jonathan stegall

For the next day or so (48 hours starting on Monday at noon), there is a premiere of a new video from Nooma about prayer. It’s brilliant. Watch it. Then buy it and watch it again.

In my life as of late, God will not shut up about prayer. He is drilling it into me. “Hey Jon, you don’t get it, and you’ve asked me for help. I want to tell you something! Shut up and listen to me!” Messages and thoughts about prayer show up everywhere lately. Church, my wife’s school, books I’m reading, random videos on Facebook, random blogs, and so on.

It’s a beautiful thing to hear the voice of God speaking in different areas of life. There is grace in that. Grace to say, “I know this is difficult for you. It’s ok. I’ll say it again.”

Over the last year or so, I have noticed a lot of interest in new monasticism. Blogs, organizations, churches, and so on have been learning about mysticism, hospitality, living in community, and embracing a simple life. They’ve been learning concepts of monasticism, and applying them to the emerging culture. Thus, they are learning to study, pray, and engage in social action as a real community.

Some of these include Missio Dei, The Simple Way, and to varying extents lots of other places.

I’ve watched these developments, and this week there was an article in the Boston Globe about new monasticism. It’s a great article. Worth a read.

More fundamentally, New Monastics consider themselves “monks in the world.” They are not interested in extreme isolation or asceticism (though there are stories about the occasional Protestant “hermit” living in the Mountain West). Nearly all have regular jobs and social lives. From the traditionalist perspective, many break the most essential monastic rule: they are married…

More importantly, these groups do not aim to separate themselves from society - on the contrary, they see New Monasticism as a means to better integrate core Christian values into their lives as average citizens. This is the fundamental difference between old monks and the new. New Monastics often quote one of their heroes, Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who captured the ambitions - and the ecumenical limits - of the movement when he wrote in 1935, “the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new kind of monasticism which will have nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the Mount in imitation of Christ.”

In watching and thinking about these kind of things, I find that it speaks to me, but I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. It’s entirely possible that I could end up living in community. I find the thought challenging. I want to learn to engage in solitude, hospitality, and prayer in ways that I don’t know. It, also, is challenging.

Regardless of whether I end up getting a house with a bunch of other people, it is essential that I, and the church, learn from this kind of thing. I believe there are ways to integrate this at my faith community, and ways that we are, and probably ways that we are not, called to this kind of life.

Brennan Manning is one of my favorite authors. When I was in high school, I read Ragamuffin Gospel for the first time. It changed my life. I re-read it every once in a while, teach from it, recommend it, and occasionally give it to people. It’s an amazing book. Since then, I have been amazed by this man’s words and thoughts.

Over the holiday, I was able to read Ruthless Trust, which was also written by Brennan Manning. I was lent the book some time ago, and had been unable to find the time to read it for a while.

Sometimes, when it takes me a long time to read a book it is just me being lazy. Maybe most of the time. But sometimes, I think there might be a purpose in it. This was one of those times. I needed a book like this. Right when I read it. It is another life-changing book, and it’s one that I will need to read again to really grasp the impact that its message can and should have on my life.

In essence, its message is about how a life can develop raw, authentic trust in Jesus. I was spoken to by a lot of things in this book, but I’ll provide this excerpt that especially grabbed me:

“Alas, another form of tainted trust is dishonesty with Jesus. Sometimes we harbor an unexpressed suspicion that he cannot handle all that goes on in our minds and hearts. We doubt that he can accept our hateful thoughts, cruel fantasies, and bizarre dreams. We wonder how he would deal with our primitive urges, our inflated illusions, and our exotic mental castles. The deep resistance to making ourselves so vulnerable, so naked, so totally unprotected is our implicit way of saying, ‘Jesus, I trust you, but there are limits.’”

I find it difficult to make myself vulnerable. I tend to be skeptical and cynical to a fault, and at times this extends itself to my relationship with Jesus. Things like this remind me of how important it is that I do not hide. That I examine myself, and honestly question whether I’m wearing a mask when I approach Jesus.

It’s also incredibly important that I evaluate whether I’m wearing a mask when I approach others. When followers of Jesus hide their struggles behind a mask of self-righteousness, or of hiding what is really happening, we are treating each other, and especially those who have not yet met Jesus, in a terrible way: denying them the freedom that is available to them, to become unprotected before the heart of God. We make it our message that it is not acceptable to be messed up when we come to the crucified God. That God is not interested in us unless we can wear the smiles and quote the slogans of institutional religion.

When we come to believe this, we are building walls between us and God, between us and ourselves, and between us and everyone else. Brennan Manning remains, in every book of his that I’ve read, one of the best at tearing down these walls and healing the wounds that they cause.

Chapter six of This Beautiful Mess is a reminder that, although the kingdom is here, it’s around for us to join and live in, it’s also not here. There is a tension. There is a “not yet.”

Somehow Christians have a hard time saying things like, “I don’t know why the hell this is happening or how this will end. You guys must be scared to death.” I guess we all need to be able to explain life down to every last detail even when the answers don’t mean anything to us. We just can’t stand the questions. But in the kingdom of God, I have come to believe, it is all right not to have all the answers, and I think Jesus likes it even more when we don’t make up ones that are safe and easy but hollow.

I have been blessed with a faith community that gets this, and refuses to make up safe and easy, but hollow, answers. Does it make it easier that when we don’t know what’s going on, we know it’s ok? No. But it does give us the freedom for it not to be easy. To admit that it’s not easy. To ask the questions, and to be confused.

That kind of freedom, I think, is the only way to be authentic before God. To really know that God knows us, and not to be afraid of what he knows. Can you imagine being entirely known, and yet not being afraid of the one who knows you?

Chapter five of This Beautiful Mess gets me right here:

When Jesus talked about building the kingdom, He never talked about us building it or advancing it. Never. He said, “The kingdom is…” He simply invited His followers to see it, embrace it, believe in the unfading reality of it - and join in what His Father was already doing in the world.

I’ve said here before that I’m a Pentecostal. Sort of. I met Jesus in a Pentecostal church, and I attended a Pentecostal college to earn a degree in Pentecostal ministry. I have a theology that is profoundly influenced by Pentecostal theology and experience. And that’s a great thing.

Pentecostals often talk about building the kingdom. Evangelizing the earth. And so on. It’s rare to hear Pentecostals talk about seeing the kingdom, embracing it, and joining in what Jesus is already doing. That phrase, join in what Jesus is doing, has gripped me for several years. I have been fortunate to know Pentecostals (and non-Pentecostals) who get what that means. I’ve talked about it. Thought about it. Prayed about it.

And that’s become my passion for life. To know what Jesus is doing, and join it. I remember reading in one of Brian McLaren’s books or articles that he was told by a mentor to always seek the forefront of what God is doing and just get involved with it. I resonate with this. It’s a difficult thing to seek, but it’s a worthy thing to seek.

It’s difficult to throw off the desire to keep doing things, and building things, and achieving things, and think about being things. And that’s what this chapter is talking about. It takes the focus off of me. It puts the focus on Jesus.

The chapter has me again when it says:

Choosing to live in the kingdom dimension creates some major shifts in our thinking. One of those is the shift from advancing to embracing.

Here, Rick McKinley is talking about that desire to move “to the next level.” I have prayed that prayer so many times. There’s a constant desire to reach a new level of whatever it is that we’re trying to achieve. Here, though, he’s talking about living in a new dimension.

The dimension of the kingdom, where Jesus has already placed us. There is something significant in that thought. If we live in that dimension, we don’t need to be constantly comparing ourselves and trying to achieve the next big thing.

I have to admit: I’m not a fan of Christmas music. I can pick out a very small number of Christmas songs that I like. But, today I can add another one.

August Burns Red is one of my favorite bands. Great music, great lyrics, great live show, great guys who are always willing to hang out and talk to people. Just an amazing band. Anyway, check out their purevolume page where they have posted a Christmas song. Very good song.

On a more serious note, Advent has been difficult for me as a follower of Jesus. By difficult, I mean it has been difficult to actually get anything out of it. To see past all the pansy angels, Caucasian wise men, jerky shoppers and customers (I spent enough time in retail to learn this pretty well), horrible music, and bad theology that surrounds the Christmas season and actually see the radical nature of the humanity of God has been hard.

Last year, I was fortunate to be part of a faith community that got it, and really understood how to engage with it in contemplation. This year, I’ve thus far neglected it again, being in a different situation with different issues.

On yet another note, I may be more sporadic in my posts for a couple of weeks. I’m having surgery on Wednesday, which will hopefully have a positive effect on my sleep apnea. Best wishes while I’m out.

I’ve been ranting about academics and theology and all those things the last few days. I have often had the fear of becoming overly academic and forgetting to actually do anything. In light of this, I want to quote Sherman on the Mount, who says it much better than I do:

When we philosophise our concepts of the Christian faith and try to work it out within the church and seminary walls, it’s called “theology”. When we work these out beyond the church and seminary walls, it’s called “charity”. When both are so integrated that they are expressed as a way of life, it’s called spirituality.

Chapter four of This Beautiful Mess begins the part of the book that is designed to teach us how to see the kingdom of God. It’s already here, but obviously there are many Christians who don’t appear to see it the way Jesus intended it to be seen.

The part of this chapter that gripped me starts like this:

One of the biggest challenges to following Jesus into His kingdom is not a lack of direction but a lack of desire. Most of us don’t really want to do it.

I’m often in that boat. I want to do a lot of things that I don’t ever actually start doing. He continues with some stories of the beginnings of his church, Imago Dei.

We had just enough desire to show up, pray, and get honest-and that’s what we told God… We told God that we wanted to care but didn’t-not really. We told Him we were afraid to follow Him completely because we didn’t want to look like idiots; we didn’t want to risk losing our comforts.

And this is where it begins. We begin to see ways we can engage with the heart of Jesus that we didn’t see before. We begin to want to do those things, and the things we saw and didn’t want to do.

Chapter three of This Beautiful Mess starts off like this:

“When I became a Christ follower, the sad truth is that I transferred Christ into my kingdom, into the context of my life.”

In this chapter, Rick McKinley talks about our tendency to create our own kingdom for Jesus to rule, or to simply leave him out of our kingdoms. Either we create our own kingdoms and expect Jesus to drive out or enemies and give us money and power and whatever else we want, or we allow him to be our Saviour but not our King. He can be King of the afterlife. Or King of something else that doesn’t matter, because we can take care of the things that do matter. In doing either of these, we miss the entire message of the kingdom of God: it is at hand. It is not of this world. It turns the world upside down.

The chapter finishes like this:

“From personal experience, I can tell you that he will let you live in your own construct if you choose. But He’ll never bow down to you or adapt Himself to your beliefs.

I believe that creating our own kingdom for Jesus to rule, or leaving him out of ruling anything important to us, is one of the easiest struggles for us in Western Christianity. We have it easy in this respect. If we want to baptize our preference of something, or our dislike of something, all we have to do is put Jesus into it. If we don’t want to deal with what he might think about something, we can just take care of it ourselves. But he doesn’t fit. People see right through our smokescreens.

Some time ago, I purchased The Practice of the Presence of God, and haven’t yet gotten around to reading it.

Understand that I have a massive list of books that are sitting around waiting for me to read them, but lately there hasn’t been much time to do so between the freelance work and other things.

Anyway. Recently, I received a free audiobook of The Practice of the Presence of God, and thought to myself, “I should listen to this in my car. I can’t be working while I drive.” So, today I decided to begin listening. The audiobook is slightly less than two hours in length, so it could be finished in a couple of days with my commute. Today, though, I listened to the preface.

I know a little bit about Brother Lawrence, from college and from the linked Wikipedia article, so I was already very excited about listening to this. The preface, though, blew me away. Brother Lawrence, in a summary, was a man who could commune as closely with God while working in the kitchen as he could praying at an altar.

I yearn for this. I yearn to be able to feel closeness with God as I design, or code, or drive, or walk through Wal-Mart. So I look forward to this book, and will post some things on it in the near future.