Speaker 1Hey friends, Tyler here to share with you that registration for our 9th annual Holy Spirit Conference is now open. The theme of this year's conference is the Wedding at Cana, and we'll spend time together in the text exploring the rich themes of Jesus' first miracle, turning water into wine. Join us in person at the Keller Auditorium in downtown Portland on February 26 and 27, 2027. I'm so excited that you'll be joining us in Portland once again and anticipating being with you all. You can register right now at HolySpiritCo.me.
Speaker 2As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command, this is the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1Thanks be to God. Every Tuesday night, I rush home from work to host dinner for 25. That's right, 25 every single Tuesday. Okay. And half of them are kids. Kids who, over the last 12 months, lowered my children's basketball goal to a dunking height and didn't let up until they had bent the rim thoroughly and somehow ripped the entire backboard off. My once pristine trampoline is now hanging by a thread. And my four-year-old Amos has learned some words that four-year-olds should not know, which I'm not blaming. I'm the Tuesday crew. I'm just saying he's not hanging out with a lot of other teenagers. Hosting a weekly dinner means I often return home from work to low-level stress from my wife channeled into agitation at me, which is entirely warranted. I am always 10 minutes late. We always stay up too late hosting and cleaning and then feel wiped the next day, and it's only Wednesday. Not to mention, I sometimes miss events. That's right. That's right. That's what I really care about, because concerts, games, invitations from friends, even work events are still scheduled for Tuesdays, and I'm booked. This is my Bridgetown community. A few, well, 25 fellow apprentices I gather around the table with each week to practice the way of Jesus together in Portland. So a week ago, we talked about the first half of that statement, practicing the way. We talked about the way of Jesus, and that just leaves the second bit together in Portland. USC philosophy professor and Jesus follower Dallas Willard famously broke down all human formation. That's psychological formation, emotional formation, or spiritual formation, according to vision, intention, and means. So you've got to have a vision for who you want to become. You need to have a desired destination. That is the essential beginning of every success. You need to have a very successful journey. But secondly, you're going to need to set your attention. And that's a really important step that a whole lot of people skip. Surely, you know by now about the historic court settlement involving Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Meta conceded that they intentionally created a dangerously addictive product, social media, and then also intentionally marketed that addictive product to kids and teens. It was the identical logic used in a court ruling that brought down big tobacco in the 1960s. So laws have now been put in place preventing users under 18 from accessing beauty filters, using the app more than two hours a day, or even opening the app after 10:00 PM or before 7:00 AM. Did you know this? That's a really big deal. Isn't it? What that means is that our society and justice system defined a vision for what leads to full life and human flourishing. And scrolling Instagram for a 16-year-old isn't just outside of that vision. It is a dangerous threat to it. But at the same time, the only thing that same 16-year-old has to do to work around those laws is fib about their age. And setting up their Instagram profile. It is the easiest fake ID in history. So even a socially agreed upon vision enforced by law still requires the intention of the individual to live in alignment with that vision. Do you see what I'm getting at? Plenty of people say things, say that they believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, while still cherry picking from his teachings. Right? I want Jesus as easy yoga. When it comes to my emotional landscape and I want his peace, but I don't really want his sexual ethics. Or I'm totally with Jesus when it comes to anger and rage, but I think he's too strict when it comes to gossip. Or I will absolutely take Jesus as radical promises of provision, but not his equally radical commands to generosity. But to experience the life of a vision, you have to actually intend to follow it. Whatever it costs, vision, intention, and that just leaves means. My family has a ski trip booked for this winter. We have a vision and we fully intend. We fully intend on exhausting ourselves on the slopes and nursing away our aches in a hot tub with hot cocoa in hand. But not a single one of us knows how to ski. So we need a means, right? We need lessons that are going to teach us how to live in step with our vision and intention. Means is what separates a wish from an intention. To wish that I could ski involves daydreaming about that upcoming vacation on the slopes while I keep on living the same life, which will inevitably result in a loss. And a whole bunch of falls and a torn meniscus. But to intend to ski means that I need a reliable pattern of transformation to convert me from a total novice to a decent skier by vacation time. You can wish to become increasingly peaceful, wise, and loving. But without the proper means, you'll never get there, which is precisely why some of the people you know are not willing to give up. The people you know who know the most about the Bible also seem to be the very people who are the least like Jesus. Vision, intention, and means, that's a map for who you become. Now, if we were to update that terminology, we might call it stories, habits, and relationships. You become whoever it is that you become by the stories that you believe, the habits you form, and the relationships you keep. So, let's take those one at a time. First, the stories you believe. In Spiritual Direction, several years ago, the wise God who has shepherded my soul for nearly a decade now said, "Tyler, the core question that you need to face is why do I always need to max out? Why is it that I believe somewhere beneath my conscious thoughts that life to the end to the full is a life so full that it stretches me to the very breaking point, and when did I start believing that?" I grew up hearing my dad and his brothers tell legends about the grandfather I never met. Teddy Staten was a Kentucky tobacco farmer, founder of the town's Little League program. He built the field right there on the family farmland, like a real-life field of dreams. I'd come home every night from his typical 10:00 p.m. dinner of pork chops and cigarettes before turning it in and doing it all over again the next day. Teddy opened a gas station down the street that still sits there, and he played catcher for my dad by the pumps between customers. He was my hero, I heard my dad tell me hundreds of times, and he, my dad, was my hero, making Teddy larger than life. My dad was the youngest of six and he was the only one that was still there living under Teddy's roof to watch him fall apart. That gas station eventually went into debt, forcing him to sell off half of the gas station of the family farm, and then, of course, the tobacco industry rapidly declined. That's about the time that Teddy traded pork chops and cigarettes for vodka and cigarettes. He stopped working so hard, started drinking just as hard, slept in a separate room from my grandmother for the last decade of their life together. And my dad has a few lesser-told stories about putting his own father to bed after helping mop his vomit off the linoleum floor. "Watch my hero fall apart," my dad told me a few times. And the story that my little developing brain heard, the way that I could make sense of such a juxtaposition, was an honorable man is one who works his hands to the bone, who grinds and grinds to provide, who does not indulge himself. That's dangerous, but expends himself. That's love. That's an interpretation of the stories that I heard. Not what was ever articulated to me directly, but the stories that we believe deepest, the ones that form us at a spiritual level, are always that: our unconscious interpretations, not what we are directly articulated. Jesus was a storyteller. He taught mostly in parables, fictional stories that are aimed at revealing sacred truth. So if you were God, and you were a Christian, and you were a Christian, and you were a Christian, in disguise here among your own creation to reveal the way back to Eden to restore all that had gone off the rails as the living fulfillment of a promise that's been building like a swell in the ocean for thousands of years, is that how you would have chosen to reveal yourself? Fictional stories aimed at revealing sacred truth. That does seem a touch cryptic, doesn't it? But if you were the maker, then you would also know that the imaginations of those that you fearfully and wonderfully made are disproportionately shaped by story. Story is the foundation of reality for all human beings. Historians are yet to find a single culture in history, no matter how remote or primitive, that did not tell stories and derive their life's meaning and purpose through story. As anthropologist Gary Bateson puts it, one of the distinguishing differentiations between the two is that the story is not the only thing that is of humans from all other animal species is the sentence, that reminds me of a story. Jesus taught in stories, especially when he was describing the kingdom of God. The primary aim of Jesus' teaching wasn't morality or ethics. That's in there, so don't misunderstand me. Jesus has strong opinions and plenty to say about morality and ethics, but the thrust of his teaching is vision. Jesus offers us glimpses of another world, that are intended to open our eyes and awaken our longing. As the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery famously said, if you want to build a ship, don't drum up men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. That's the teaching style of Jesus, to teach us to yearn for the kingdom, to start with a vision. Stories, though as powerful as they are, they're not enough to reshape us at the level of our character, which is why I didn't stop maxing out and filling my life so full it stretched me to the breaking point when I realized that the story shaping that behavior was a lie. That was a very powerful first step for me, but it was incomplete because I'm not just a brain on a stick. I have a human body with emotions and a will, and all of those parts of me had been shaped for decades by a false story. The mistake the church has made for the last hundred years or so has been to minimize spiritual formation to information transfer, which is, again, why some of the people you know who know the most about the Bible are, in fact, the least like Jesus. Because I might believe the true story of Jesus, but it's not the story that's shaping me into a person of peace, love, joy, and gratitude. The New Testament uses two distinct Greek words, which are both translated into English as the one word, knowledge. You've got gnosis, which is the Greek word for cognitive knowledge, the story that your brain believes. But then you also have epignosis, which is the Greek word for experiential knowledge. That's the story that your body, will, and emotions believe. And likewise, in the Old Testament, the word epignosis is also translated into English as knowledge, but it refers to more than just cognitive knowledge, but to experiential and relational knowledge as well. Ancient cultures and languages hold in very high regard a fact that we take for granted in the modern West, that I know what I know. I interpret truth and define reality by a whole lot more than just rational explanation. We all make sense of our lives and define ourselves within a story, and the story we believe in is the story that we believe in. And so, in the New Testament, we believe is the sum total of what we learn cognitively, experientially, and relationally. The story shaping who I become is the sum of what I think to be true and what I've experienced to be true, and who I've related to for good or bad, truth or deception. Story, that's where your formation begins. Do you know what story is forming you? Is it a good story? A true story? Is it the story you say you believe? Or is there some other story beneath that, informing who you become? So you've got the stories you believe, and then the habits you form. Practicing the way of Jesus is not a series of life hacks, but a process of learning how to do it. It's a process of learning how to do it. It's a process of surrender to the Holy Spirit, a process of conforming my will to God's will. Spiritual formation, as you'll hopefully recall from last Sunday, is like a ship putting out to port. It begins very intentionally, requiring a lot of effort, but just like rowing out against the ocean's current. At some point, you get out into the current, and less and less effort is the sail. Spiritual practices become spiritual habits, so that over the years and decades of the life of an apprentice, practicing the way of Jesus becomes increasingly automatic. Stanley Hauerwas says, Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined in such a manner that the worship of God is unavoidable. But of course, as we all know from experience, habits are really hard to form, and they're more than just a matter of deciding. Otherwise, you'd still be intermittent fasting, and waking up a half hour earlier, and reading instead of watching a screen before you doze off at night, or whatever insert last January's New Year's resolution here happens to be for you. And that's why habits involve not only a change of mind, but a conversion of mind, will, and emotions to the story that I believe. So habit formation is a process of learning how to do it. It's a process of changing your mind about the map you're following to the good life. The psychiatrist Gordon Livingston tells this really helpful story about his time in the army, when he was once trying to orient himself to new terrain, and he was studying the map intently when his platoon sergeant approached. Did you figure out where we are, soldier? Well, the map says there should be a hill over there, but I don't see it. Sir, the sergeant says, if the map don't agree with the ground, the map is wrong. That's where old habits die, and where new one begins, with the realization that the map I'm following isn't taking me where I'm aiming to go. But your mind is a whole lot less like an etch-a-sketch that you just slide and erase and start over, and it's more like a landscape. I've spent a pretty good amount of time in the last 15 years of my life in England, and pretty much every quaint English countryside village contains hollow ways. For instance, take a look at this one in the town of Devon. Hollow way is the English term for a sunken road. You see, when a path is trod by one person after another over hundreds of years, it actually creates a groove in the ground, a change in the landscape. Walk the same way long enough, and we can actually alter the shape of creation. Isn't that wild? Hollow ways are a natural expression of a psychological fact that you and I wear paths into our brain chemistry through repeated action. We cut neural pathways into our minds by reaching for the same source of reality, which means when Jesus comes to form us, he doesn't walk on a natural landscape. he walks on one filled with hollow ways. Or to put that more simply, habit formation is really hard because you've already got habits, good ones or bad ones. Habits that are so deeply ingrained, they've actually altered your very brain chemistry and mine too. Romans chapter 7, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. That's the Bible for. Habit formation is hard simply because you've already got a whole bunch of habits. A change of mind to become counter-formative against existing habits also requires then a change of will. When we decide to form new habits, we don't just begin with a blank slate. We must go through a process of habit breaking before or even while we are engaging the process of habit making. Spiritual formation then necessarily includes as much deformation as it includes formation. You and I are made up of a mind, a will, and emotions. And while the mind and will are equal parts in the cocktail of who you become, your emotional world is the straw that stirs the drink. Your brain is full of cognitive hollow ways and maybe even more profoundly, it's full of relational hollow ways. Early childhood development comprises its own field of psychology because who you become is most profoundly shaped by your relationships to the very people in your life you did not choose. Your early childhood caregivers. Experiences between child and guardian get chunked into shortcuts in the brain by piecing together patterns of experience. What makes me lovable? What makes me valuable? What parts of myself do I need to hide? What careful dance do I need to do to survive in this world? You decided on all of that based first and foremost on your experiences with whoever held you, fed you, and put you to sleep when you were a cute little ball of helplessness. And for the vast majority of people, those caught not taught childhood lessons, became the fragile false foundations upon which we build our lives. That's called attachment. And it is the psychological theory upon which all other psychological research rests. It is the solid foundation. Psychologists recognize four primary attachment styles within each individual person: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. Healthy human relationship is termed as secure attachment. Psychologist Dr. Todd Hall writes, "To be securely attached means that you are spoken for by your attachment figures. Secure attachment means someone in this world has signed up to look out for you. To always be for you." Amos, my four-year-old, he is a super social kid. A total extrovert, very friendly, effortlessly trusting. But if he bumps his head? Not so fast. Amos, my four-year-old, he is a super social kid. A total extrovert, very friendly, effortlessly trusting. But if he bumps his head? Not so fast. Amos, my four-year-old, he is a super social kid. A total extrovert, very friendly, effortlessly trusting. But if he bumps his head? Not so fast. social anymore. He will run past every familiar face like friend, neighbor, grandma, grandpa to find me or Kirsten. Why is that? Well, I hope it's because he's growing securely attached. He feels and knows that someone in this world is looking out for him. Now, this matters for us spiritually because it means that our emotional knowledge of God is not based primarily on the scripture that we memorize and the songs that we sing, but on our attachment style. In other words, those with a mother or father wound, like abandonment or neglect, tend to have a hard time knowing God without fearing the same abandonment or neglect from their heavenly father. And those with overbearing parents tend to relate to God like an overbearing parent, either by goody-two-shoes staying in between the lines or rebelling against the feeling of that authority. Those with performance-driven parents tend to relate to God like his love is a blessing for good performance. Does this ring true to you, to your own spiritual life? It's not really fair, is it, that someone else, someone I didn't choose, played the most pivotal role in my life? For how I show up to God, myself, and everybody else. It's not really fair. But check this out. John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, has observed that people who become attached in adulthood to thick communities, think university groups or teams or churches, can have their attachment patterns profoundly altered as adults in community. Community, among all other relational contexts, has unique power to redeem or to wound our image of God, to heal us or to hurt us in the very deepest ways. Our instinct, then, is probably to find the perfect community. Right? If the stakes are that high, I've got to find a group of people who are never going to hurt me or let me down. But there's more. Secure attachment, psychologically speaking, is cultivated more profoundly by a breach in relationship that gets repaired than never needing to repair a breach in the first place. Secure attachment is not the absence of trauma from a relationship. It is the repair of relational trauma by relational healing. So when it comes to attachment, repair, is stronger than protection. We practice trusting God by trusting God's people in the midst of vulnerability, which means risking pain. But it also means risking healing. And you're already in pain. And the way that God heals us deepest is by coming and finding us in community. And that is precisely why stories and habits on their own still aren't in community. Enough. Spiritual formation is also a matter of the relationships you keep. So back to that teaching text that Aaliyah read for us at the top. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Okay, great. Finally, Jesus, you're speaking plain and straightforward to me here. No more poems and parables. Keeping your commands is how I remain under the shelter of your love. How I be with Jesus. It's how I meno. Which commands you got in mind exactly, Rabbi? Well, let's keep reading. My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. How has Jesus loved you? Forgiving love. Sacrificial love. A stubborn, bear with you through thick and thin kind of love. I believe the best about you even when you show me the worst kind of love. I take up my cross, lay down my life, and you don't even know the half of it, but I'm at peace with that sort of love. And the way that you combat the lies of the serpent that forever are tricking you and I into believing. Love is found by striving. Love is kept by performance. Love is stayed in by moral spotlessness. Lie, lie, lie. And the way that you combat those lies, the way that you can detox from the dysfunctional deceptions of love that have gotten all the way into your bloodstream is by loving one another with the very same variety of love that you have received from Jesus. Jesus doesn't want you and I to pay his love back to him. He wants us to pay it forward to one another. That's how we meno. It's how we remain, stay, abide in the love of God. My son Amos, that four-year-old who comes to find me when he bumps his head, he spent the first month of his life in the NICU. He was born with a heart condition that came with a 100% fatality rate within five days of life until a breakthrough surgery was discovered approximately 30 years ago now that found a sometimes cure. So he was born, taken from his mother's arms within 10 seconds, pushed in a cart by a surgical team as I literally ran down the hospital hallway next to him as they prepped him for an operation. His first of three operations, this one a minor surgery that was aimed just to keep him alive for five days until his body had recovered from the trauma of birth enough to undergo the trauma of open heart surgery. Kirsten then recovered on the 10th floor of the hospital. She was born with a heart condition that came with the first five days of his life. I lived alone with little Amos in that room for the first five days of his life, and it was still near enough that COVID-19 made it impossible for me to get out of the hospital. I was in the hospital for the first five days of my life, and it was pandemic that no one else was allowed to visit us there, not even family members. Just me and little Amos for the most critical window in his developing attachment style. What is safe and who is safe? What makes me lovable, valuable, seen, known? It was all happening right there in that little room. And all I could think was, what would Kirsten do if she was the one here? Because she's the best parent I know. No offense to all of you other parents I know, I'm just saying. She'd sing to him, talk to him, interact with him as much as possible in all the ways possible because I wasn't allowed to pick him up or hold him. So I did all of that. I can remember eating Indian takeout and watching a Kentucky basketball game with him on my iPad, talking the whole time about how his family traces their roots back to their parents. I can remember that. I can remember this little tobacco farm. And so he's going to grow up being overly attached to the athletic performance of 19-year-olds because this is all the state's got, you know? And I can remember a whole lot of renditions of twinkle, twinkle, little Mr. Staten. Oh, hey, doc. I was just, never mind. But more than anything, I remember day five. I remember the final moments before they wheeled him off to surgery. The five-hour procedure that was going to determine if he ever lived to six days old. I'm sorry, I haven't told this story before to anyone. Kirsten sat next to me by that time. And I was so over myself. I was singing Hope on the Horizon, a song that we sing here in worship, like full blast in the room while the surgical team was prepping him. I was reading psalms over his little life. And I remember that I was so over myself. I remember just as they were about to wheel him off, the nurse in that room turned to Kirsten and I and said, I go to Bridgetown. I know who you are. And I'll never stop praying until the whole thing's done. I'll be in the room the whole time. And what did I hear when she said that to me? I didn't hear her. I heard Jesus. Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. Remain in me. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I forsake you. Never will The narrow way is walked with a smirk on your face and the harmony among all the people walking behind him is a chorus of laughter because we are entrusting our becoming, our redemption, our individual stories and the twist turns and eventual endings of our unique biographies to the divine author who knows us best, loves us most and only writes redemption stories. We are trading taking my life into my own hands for releasing my life into the safe, secure hands of God. We are dropping our nets. I'm dropping my illusion of control, dropping my over-attachment to ambition, dropping my compulsive productivity, dropping my need to be needed, dropping my incessant fixing and packing light for the journey, marching behind the only rabbi who says light. That's the perfect word for the... The yoke I'm putting on your shoulders. So like Bridgetown is one church living by two relational rhythms together. We gather as one big community here on Sundays and we gather in smaller communities in homes midweek around tables in every corner of our city and both are essential for apprenticeship to Jesus. So if you're not in a Bridgetown community, you should know that you're missing out on half and probably the very best half. You're missing out on half of who we are as a church and you're invited. The way in is through basics. It's a course we only run three times a year and apparently it begins today. Yeah? Man, I didn't even know. I gotta read the weekly. But apparently it begins today. You are invited and showing up to that is in no way committing to it. It's just going on a first date and then following up honestly after the fact. Okay? If you already are in a Bridgetown community, would you just pop your hand up really quick? Isn't that amazing? What a gift to be a part of a church where people are saying yes, not just to Sunday gatherings, but yes to a whole life of apprenticeship with Jesus in ordinary communities of people in the middle of every week. So if you're already in a Bridgetown community, I just wanna say this is an invitation to revisit that priority in your life. To ensure that it actually is a weekly ritual for me to choose formation again around that table and among those people. Every single Tuesday night, I rush home from work to meet the very people who broke my basketball goal, cost me at a critical hour of sleep, and I'm like, and stress my schedule and highlight my tardiness. Every Tuesday night, I rush home from work to meet the people that I call for last second help with my kids and the friends who taught me how to camp like a true Pacific Northwesterner and who hung a light in my living room because I am useless with a wrench and who dropped gifts and care packages off when Amos was in the hospital and who welcomed and loved the hostages of the church and the host of roommates that we've hosted over the years. I meet the people who attend my kids' soccer games and I show up at theirs who companioned me through chemotherapy, who go to the movies with me on Friday nights and laugh and jab at one another like siblings. This is the village helping me raise my kids. The circle around me who knows who I want to be and my struggles to become him, who's not very impressed by my sermons or books but is utterly devoted to my husband, is the people for whom I cried when their daughter went to college. With whom I've walked through the park on Christmas Eve when life was at its hardest just to lend a listening ear. The people that I've spoken too sharply to and had to ask forgiveness from. The people who talk to my kids like aunts and uncles and I did theirs. The people with whom I trade restaurant, reading and recipe recommendations. When the scroll rolls down it rolls up on this particular chapter of my life. This chapter of raising kids and pastoring a church and coaching Little League and befriending my neighbors and stressing out and getting sick and walking the dog and planning vacations. When this chapter ends and I'm saying a goodbye to a life stage or a city or who knows what. I do know one thing for certain and that is what I'll keep. It's those people on Tuesday nights it's how they shaped me who they made me and how I returned the favor. And you know that's actually not because of the Tuesdays. The standout moments will be the power of a community of fellow apprentices between the Tuesdays. It'll be the hospital prayers and birthday parties and the hard confrontations and sincere forgiveness, the prophetic words and shared memories, the miracles we shake our heads at in awe and the tragedies we hang our heads at in grief together. But you don't get all that happens between the Tuesdays without utter devotion to the Tuesdays. And that, practicing the way of Jesus together in community, that's what turned the Roman Empire upside down back in the first century. And it will do the same to the Western Empire in the 21st century if we'll let it, if we'll let Him. Local, ordinary, underwhelming, and committed for the long haul community of the most powerful force in the world. It always has been, and it still is today. The people you let in will shape who you become more than any other factor in your life. Community. The actively or passively chosen furnace of your formation. Community. You got one? Who's in it? Do you want to become like them? And are you offering your life that they might have more of the same?
Speaker 3Thanks for joining the Bridgetown family as we engage in this teaching series. To learn more about the life of our church and how you can get involved, visit bridgetown.church.com. If you're interested in contributing financially to Bridgetown Church and to our ministry, you can do that at bridgetown.church/giving. Wherever you're joining us from, we hope this resource blesses you and encourages you to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.
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