Spiritual Life of the Leader - Lesson 17

Dr. Stephen Martyn
Spiritual Life of a Leader
sf502-17
Christian Anthropology (Part 1/2)
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome back, everyone. I want to shift gears a little bit right now and discuss issues that I think are largely absent from the church today, yet are incredibly important to understanding who the Lord made us to be. I mean, we we do not have in large measure, we simply do not have a Christian anthropology yet is the Lord who is fearfully and wondrously made us. It is the Lord who has made us in his image, giving, give, giving us all sorts of reflections in our in our own life of who he is and of how he intended for us to be. And yet we we just don't give a whole lot of attention in the church today to to an understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God, why that is important. And and really, it's I'm telling you, it's it's the largest of God's redemption in our lives that moves me to speak into this. What I want to do is recommend a text for you. This text is called Understanding Our Story The Life's Work and Legacy of Adrian von Calm in the field of formative Spirituality. Here it is. This text is was written coauthored by Rebecca Letterman. She teaches spiritual formation at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester. She's a Wesleyan scholar. And then by Susan Muto. Now, Susan Mehta was one of my mentors, still is one of my mentors and a professor in in graduate school. Susan is the head of Epiphany Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now, I think things like this are incredibly, incredibly important, and I want to share some of the richness of it. I'll actually pull out some some quotes here and we'll talk about it. But I want to start out, first of all, by by looking at a basic outline that'll help us to jump into understanding or at least getting a handle on some Christian anthropology that that all of us can grasp.

[00:02:58] And so what we're going to look at are von comps dimensions first, the human life dimensions. Now the human life dimensions are simply going to say that, you know, when you look at the incredible beauty of any person created in the image of God, there's there's depth there. There's there's layers to this. This this is something that has all sorts of meanings and areas in which God works in our lives. We're going to talk about different dimensions. Of course, we're not going to slice the human person into little areas to study one area or qualifier, quantify any area. We're not going to do that. We're going to look, the human person is is a whole. But but just as you look at different facets on a diamond and you see different reflections, the diamond still remains a hole. So let's take a look at this and and see how the Lord's Redemption seeks to work throughout the whole of who we are. So let's start over here and look at this business down below of what it means to be a person who was born at a certain historical moment. In redemption history and what it means to be born into a certain society. Now, let me just give you an example. For example. I was born in the kind of the westernmost part of the state of Texas, which is in the United States. Yes. Texas is actually a part of the United States. And for those of you in other parts of the world, yes, when I grew up, I wore cowboy boots and blue jeans. That's about all I had to be honest with you. I had a pair of gym shoes and then we had one pair of nice shoes to go to church on Sunday.

[00:05:19] I was born as a fifth generation Methodist Christian. I actually think generationally we go back a lot further than that, but I know I'm at least a fifth generation Methodist, so that means that I come from that kind of influence and that kind of theological background. I was born in a part of the world that's of a dry and arid part of the world, and it promotes on a sociological level, it promotes a sense of rugged independence to where you are taught to be self-sufficient and get by on your own. And those can be very, very good things. But it also kind of promotes an idea of a false sense that you can control the elements as long as you work hard and as long as you really depend on the best that you are. Now, do you see what I'm doing? So I was I was born into a family that happened to have very strong political opinions in one area. My my, of my both of my grandfathers were military. My father was military. My father fought in World War Two. My grandfather fought the entire duration of World War Two, and the other grandfather was in World War One. Now, those things influence you. They shape you. So I grew up in a time where there were good people and there were enemies of the United States. And and that influenced how we thought, how how I was taught the values I held. So I was given both formative and formative values when I was growing up. It's a very sad thing for me to look back and and and report this sociologically. Historically, there were two sets of restrooms in the town where I grew up. There were one there was one set for whites only, and then there was another set for everybody else.

[00:07:47] When I was growing up, I went to an all white, an integrated school. There was no no person of color was allowed into that school. I was there when integration was forced, and rightly so. So naturally, when you grew up in a situation like that, you grew up with prejudice. I grew up both with solid family values and some not solid families, family values. Do you see what I'm doing? There's both. There's good things that we are thankful for that are formative. And there are some negative things that we're not thankful for that are the formative. And this happens in literally all of our backgrounds. For instance, I can at least make light of one thing. We were what's called would be called rabid Dallas Cowboy fans. Now, for those of you overseas, the Dallas Cowboys are an American football team. Some would say America's football team. We were slightly prejudiced anyone. And our arch enemy, the enemy of all enemies, was the Pittsburgh Steelers. Now, of all things, when the Lord called me to go to graduate school. Guess where he called me to go? My heart sank when I realized I was going to go to downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I actually pastored, was associate pastor at a church there. And lo and behold, there were Pittsburgh Steelers in the congregation. I even performed a wedding ceremony for a Pittsburgh Steeler and they gave me tickets to go to the games. Well, lo and behold, I found out the Pittsburgh Steelers are pretty good guys after all. And we loved western Pennsylvania. You see what I'm saying? You know, a Texan grows up thinking that the great center of the world in the universe is in Texas. My apologies to any fellow Texans. But it's not.

[00:10:11] They're really friendly people in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in fact, just as friendly as anywhere else. In fact, wherever I've been around the globe, I've been blessed by people. So these this area can leave us some some really good, solid values. The value to Christian values may be that we're implanted early, but we've got to understand this whole social historic thing can put in some non Christian values. It can sit people against people that the Lord never wanted to happen. It can sit. It can fill us with prejudice. And and when we're dealing with people and leading and shepherding people, we've got to go beyond any kind of populist understanding or get to understanding where people were given values that are simply not right the wrong and will end up with up in oppressing others. So I think you're getting it. Let's let's move on to the vital. Now, look, the vital is the whole physical dimension of the human life. The Lord created us is physical people. We are incarnated souls. We're given time, space where we're placed in a certain region. This is good and right. Even the incarnation of our Lord himself. What does he do? Comes down. He's He. He is both fully God and fully human. He. He takes on human flesh. That's incarnation in a nutshell. That's what that means. He's he's born to a virgin. And he he comes into the world with with a real physical body in a real time place. And in an actual time, he steps into our world with all the limits that that he was willing to take on. He descends into our world. Now, of course, still, the Lord is the creator of the body. So the body is good. The body is absolutely a blessing to us.

[00:12:48] How else could we be about his work? How else could we enter into ministry for him without being an actual physical person? The physical dimension allows us to move and have our being. It allows us to have science and perception, and it allows us literally to be the hands, the feet, the love, the voice of Christ, our Lord. These are these are these are right and good. Now, the problem is, is that the whole vital dimension can readily devolve or degenerate into what could be called vital ism. Now Vitalism is where I would make this part of my life preeminent. And what really, really counts here are the physical experiences that I'm able to accumulate or the pleasures. And what can happen is that this thing can really then degenerate into sheer hedonism. Hedonism means I live for physical pleasure. Well, of course you fall off that wagon and you're not going to be very interested at all in following someone who says no. You've got to restrain physical appetites that the end all and be all is not you having pleasure, though? The Lord is the author of pleasure. We don't we don't want to get that confused at all. It's when it becomes primarily about pleasure, then that's hedonistic. We're not that's not what we were ultimately created for. Now, here's a key, key issue for us as we go to the next dimension. And by the way, Von Comm holds that these are hierarchical, not separated, but we've got to understand them. Hierarchically are functional. When you look at the functional, this is like the executive side of who we are. This is the the roles we are called to take on the tasks, the responsibilities. Well, just think about it. The disciples were sent in on Holy Week and they were given a task, you know, find the guy with the the the donkey and all of that.

[00:15:56] And then before that. So they brought the donkey back. Then on Maundy Thursday there said, hey, you know, go in and follow the guy with the water jar, get the upper room. It's a right and good thing we are given roles and tasks. Now, for those of you who are in pastoral leadership, you've been given a specific role either as a pastor or a minister of discipleship or or whatever area you are called to function in in a local church. All of us, you know, have to have specific roles in which we are called to function and know I've had grandchildren who would rather not function in any role and let life serve them, but they'll grow out of it. We love those kids as well. The problem the the the the the real issue here in terms of where this can go is if we allow our roles and our tasks and our responsibilities to be to define us. In other words, who in my value is defined by what I do, then that is going to sink this whole thing into what's called functional ism. Keep in mind, we're not saying roles, functions, responsibilities are bad. Not at all. They are very important. It's when I am defined by what I produce or by the the title I carry. Then what in the world happens if that's taken away from me? But moreover, what in the world happens when this just expands and begins to lead everything else? In other words, life begins to wrap around the specific job responsibility. All of life. All of life becomes oriented by what I produce or don't produce, by what I manage or don't manage by. And then all of the things that are associated with that.

[00:18:33] Like, what do I accomplish? In other words, my self-worth is is listed by boom, boom, boom, boom. And boy, if those things are not in place and I am not of much worse. So functionalism today is a fairly serious issue. Why is it that not in all parts of the world, but why is it in Asia? And why is it in North America that work in more and more and more hours pressing, pressing, pressing, huge numbers of hours with less and less sense of true fulfillment in life? All right. Now, as we go up, we see also that the Lord has put a longing in us. This is the longing. For the more than now. What is the more than listen, this is the what we call prevent. Isn't grace that's at work in this. Even before you may know Christ, there's that move saying, Boy, there's something more here that's longing. It said, it's that urgency that my life is fulfilled. And I sense of I sense vacancy. I sense lack of fulfillment. Now, of course, this thing can really nosedive quickly. It nosedives quickly when that longing for the more than is mistaken by said, All right, I need more. And then you just start filling in the blanks only with a bigger house. For instance, would I feel fulfilled or only with a bigger whatever? Would I feel fulfilled or even worse? The sense of longing will start playing itself out. You know, I really need another husband or I really need another spouse that are, you know, we miss it. And so just because we have this longing for the more than doesn't take away the fact that this thing can be very readily short, it can be short circuited. I mean, it can go it can go downhill quickly when it is short circuited.

[00:21:25] But trying to fill that God sake vacuum with something that is never going to fulfill anything. All right, then what it's meant to do. This transcendent longing for the more than is actually meant to move us to be in a dynamic, ongoing relationship with our Lord. That's the ultimate purpose of this. This is why when you're dealing with people who are bored, who are restless, who are longing, you know, this is this is what's going on for Vincent Gray. So go ahead. We got a question. I just was thinking, as you're talking about that you look at the how strong the pressure is inside of us to get more at a physical level or a financial level is in a sense. Is it? Those are. Is that why it's idolatry and is it tapping into the God's put a strong desire for himself into us? And so the strong desire when it doesn't go to him is that was pushing us so hard to get more of. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to spill it out, more mature, reflecting in a real way. And I love thank you for bringing up the bill, for bringing up the term idolatry. Yeah, it goes south really, really quick into full blown worship of that which will never, never bring ultimate satisfaction, never, or fulfillment. All right. So when we talk about the nomadic ecclesial level here, this is the capacity that the Lord God has given each of us to both here and respond to the Holy Spirit. They actually referred to this earlier. But this is this is where there's built into us. I can hear the invitations of God and I can I can sense and I can be able to pick up on how God is seeking to build and work through his church, the body of Christ.

[00:23:53] So this whole pneumatic pneumatic simply, you know, it's the spirit, the Holy Spirit. This is the Holy the realm where the Holy Spirit, Big Capital, is speaks to my spirit, the Holy Spirit. And it's not just a matter of hearing now, but this is the area where I cannot only hear the word. But I can obey the word. What's a Stewart official. Well in this in this in in von comes understanding he's simply talking about the Lord also speaks in and through the church. Now let's just not put anything under under the table. Of course, this is a classical Roman Catholic understanding of of who we are. So I can I'm alright. I'm okay with that because the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work. And I believe that I can be obedient to the Holy Spirit and walk in the ways that He wants the body of Christ. So that's where I'm going to take it. This is the body of Christ being obedient as a body to the Lord. All right. So. We're at a we're at a first level. Now, let me just let me just fill in. Keep filling this in. And I'm actually going to refer here in the Letterman and meter book to a chart on page 27. And so what they're what they're going to do here is say that this whole area, then every area of every dimension, every level of this dimension has both dynamics. The dynamics are this is this is something that pushes on me. For instance, you go out and you run through a whole bunch of radio channels or television channels. You've got people speaking into your life. Now, sometimes people speaking into your life is something you need to hear.

[00:26:29] Many, many, many times people speaking into your life is not a single thing you want to hear. People trying to sell us something, people trying to pressure us into a into a certain way of living. Classic example for me is a certain program I run on my computer that automatically or tries to automatically correct grammar for me. Well, you know, here's the deal. That program is not always right. And it's actually going, by some standards, more contemporary standards that I don't hold to. I actually even think is dead wrong in some places. But there's that continual pressure coming to do it the way that that particular company says it should be done. Well, that's kind of one way you change society. But so we're going to we're going to stand against that. So when you think about dynamics, dynamics are those directives that are coming out. And then when you think about expressions, then this is. How. If you followed them, this is how it would be played out. All right. So socio historical in terms of dynamics, there's all sorts of what are called pulsations coming out from society. What's a pulsation? Pulsation is saying this is how you need to live and act and think. Now, for instance, I didn't have a cell phone till 1999. I life was good without a cell phone. Didn't worry about it. When I became the pastor of a church in 19, a certain congregation was moved to that congregation. I was handed a cell phone. So this is your cell phone? Oh, no. But since then, I've been far too attached, I think. Or it's kind of like an opioid, you know, a little bit at first and then a little bit more. And then before you know it, it's got you by the throat.

[00:29:08] So a good neutral tool that can be used for good, definitely. But the pulsation there, the pulsations that come out are if you're really cool, you're going to have a cell phone. And then before you know it, you see little four or five, six year old kids with cell phones. And I'll never forget the first time I had a two year old granddaughter got ahold of the cell phone within a matter of about 12 seconds. She had a Disney movie playing on the cell phone. I couldn't even pull up a Disney movie playing on a cell phone, but the child was sitting there watching a Disney movie. So it works itself into society where this is what everybody does. This is what everybody thinks. This is the proper way of moving. You see where I'm headed with this? Now, this can be both good and this can be incredibly negative. This whole business, even of nationalism, can work its way in here, too, where the selfish interests of one group of people trumps the whole human rights of anybody else. Oh, my. Anyway, pulsations it might be how to wear your hair. At least for those of you who have hair, it might be for how? What kind of clothes you wear. Colors of clothes, shoes, cars you drive. Expressions of speech. The way you sing. The way you dance. You see what I'm saying? It's culture seeking to set trends and it works itself out. Then how does it express itself? Let me tell you, it fled pressures, absolutely pressures people within that culture to not conform. Huge pressure to conform. Now vital, the vital puts out physical pulsations. Now, what in the world am I talking about? Physical pulses. Well, here you go.

[00:31:34] I am hungry. I need to eat. Is there anything wrong with that? No, not in the least. Unless I allow that hunger to trump everything else in my life. And so my eating becomes paramount and takes over precedence in my life. So just go through every physical need, every physical want, every physical desire you have. And how this thing tends to work itself out is through impulses and through compulsions. What do you mean? Well, an impulse is. I'm hungry. Got to take care of it right now. Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's. Let's. Let's move it right now. But compulsion is you kind of get hooked. You kind of get compelled. In other words, I've got to have this much at this time. It's it's got to be on demand and then chains start setting in. All right. Let's take it up to the functional. What is how does the functional work itself out? Are the functional works itself out dynamic wise into what we could call ambitions? Now, actually, I don't think there's this thing wrong with ambitions. It's probably a neutral term. Like a lot of things, the Lord puts desires in our heart, does he not, to serve him in a certain way to see He puts dreams, he puts visions in our heart. So an ambition in and of itself is not necessarily wrong. All right. If the Lord gives me an ambition, then that works itself out into the projects. This is how I'm going to work this out. Now, every one of you listening to me have had maybe the ambition to train, have yourself trained, or just sit under a proper mentor. I think wouldn't it be wonderful ambition to learn coding in a Greek? And I bless anybody who has the capacity to learn coin.

[00:34:12] And I agree it kind of failed with me. But anyway, you might have the ambition to really love the Lord by Sir serving as a pastor. If if that's a true vocational calling, you might have the ambition to take a mission trip or organize a mission group or to take on a big missional outreach. And so when that happens, then you've got to work it around. Vision, mission, dreams, all of that. So all of this can be good, except when it gets disconnected from the directives of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Paul What do you mean? Well, then ambitions can be all about self promotion. That's when it degenerates. All about self-promotion and projects then can be all about bringing in the kingdom, according to me. So in other words, I'm building life. Around my project, my vision without reference to the Holy, without reference to God. That's when this this whole functional thing collapses. Now, let me tell you a lot. There are a lot of projects coming from a lot of ambitious people that are. It's all cloaked under the cloak of mercy. It's all cloaked under religious garb. Poor. We have to be careful here. Oh, my heavens. Is what I'm doing for God's kingdom. Or am I building a personal kingdom? And, boy, we can. We can ride. We can walk in edge. It's a it's a sharp edge. You can fall off really, really quickly. All right, now, let's keep let's let's keep rolling this off. So transcendent means that we have both aspirations. And so the dynamics are I really got this longing for this transcendent ideal in my life. And then, of course, it expresses itself as an ideal. And I'm turning sometimes here, though, you're going to think I'm, again, speaking out of both sides of my mouth.

[00:37:13] But but the Lord does give us visions. He does call us to the more than and and we He enables us to see needs in his body. And he does give this deep aspiring move, this urge to see this thing addressed in whatever it is. Then finally, when you look upon the pneumatic ecclesial level, what does the Holy Spirit do? Oh, spirit's always going to point to Christ. The Holy Spirit is always going to send inspirations. That are going to work itself out into the expression of it is going to be. And in the tasing. So a lot of times when I'm dealing with my students, particularly when I'm giving spiritual direction to my students, I try to move them away from this driving sense. There's a driving sense in the community, in the Christian community, I got to do this. I must start doing this, particularly when we when they're trying to get disciplines in place and when they kind of feel that they've been defeated by a number of things anyway. So you're after it's very, very common to hear. I must I must do this. I must put this in place. I turn back them up and I say, Now look, you're really coming back down when you're talking about this. I must I must you come back down here on this level, on the functional level, and say, I've got to do boom, boom, boom, boom. Yet in the Christian life, we've got to hear the word. Our running and our willing are never enough. I can't fulfill the law. Well, then what in the world is enough? Well, what's coming is an invitation. And so what I try and get from from the Holy Spirit, I try and back them up and I say, look, what is the living word? Who is Christ? How is he inviting you now to respond in faith? Hope in love to his goodness? Do you see that? Do you see the difference? It takes the subject.

[00:39:49] It changes the subject of the sin. Is this not what I must do? It's what he is inviting me to respond to. And it takes it away from others trying to impose on someone and puts it back in their laps. What's the discernment here? How is the Holy Spirit inspiring you? What is the Holy Spirit saying to you? And indeed, what's the invitation to you here in terms of concretely following Christ? Now, I want to add a couple more dynamics here that are going to speak in to our culture. And I'm going to I'm going to put a red warning in here, and that is that there is a great, great danger in all of this. And that is when we lapse into an area that's kind of halfway between here and here called functional. Transcendent. What am I talking about when I talk about the words functional, transcendent. I'll never forget Adrian Volcom speaking to me in the 1980s, and Adrian saying, Luke, the greatest danger before the church today. And he included my church as well. It's an amazing thing that in going to a Roman Catholic graduate school, I was actually reconnected with my own tradition. And it came in and through a Roman Catholic priest who gave me an immense, immense appreciation for my own tradition. But I didn't want come looking at me and say, Look, here's the greatest issue facing the worldwide church today. He said, We've got an explosion of knowledge taking place in all of the human life sciences. We've got an explosion of knowledge that in the medical science is keeping people alive and better and well over a longer period of time. And he said, we thank the Lord for that. He said, We've got an explosion of knowledge in every aspect of science.

[00:42:40] He said, We thank the Lord for every genuine discovery of what it means to be a creation and how God is using that. He said, But here's the danger. In fact, here's the greatest danger facing the face in the church. So the danger is, is that we'll pull down this longing that we have for God, and even that will pull down some of the the real insights that God himself gives us about what it means to be a human being. But we will keep it mainly on the functional level so that we will function better. You said, Well, what's wrong with that? I mean, what's wrong with functioning well? Well, here's. Now follow me. Follow me. Nothing. Listen, when I get on an airplane, every time I get on an airplane, I lay hands on the airplane. I say, God, let this brother or sister get it up and let them get it down. I just pray, Lord, I'll hold it together. Oh. Hoo hoo! Who wouldn't want to go to a doctor? A surgeon? A physician? You pray they're competent? You absolutely pray that they are competent. In fact, in fact, in terms of competence, you are called to well handle the things of God. Absolutely. If God's given you a tour of pastoral ministry of teaching. If God's given you a chore of serving as an administrator in his church, whatever chore he's given you, if he's given you to be, if he is called you to be a public school teacher and he wants you to be a competent, a well informed public school teacher, so. So there's nothing wrong with well, with fulfilling the functional tasks and responsibilities that we've been given. Well, because when we do that, people will be blessed.

[00:44:54] Why? So you see. Well, it's not making sense. Why is that the greatest danger of the church? Here's what's the greatest danger of the church. Or what can be the greatest danger to the church. God becomes subservient. To us. In other words, God is there. To make me a more successful person. You get it? You see, it's the wrong hierarchy. It puts me at the top. And what it works into is me using the things of God for Self-gain. I get it. I'm not talking about. Oh, I'm not talking about being incompetent. No, I'm called for to for competence. But it's not about me being having the whole world. It's not about me increasing my influence. It's not about me increasing my level of wealth. Listen, it's not about me. I got to pull me out of the subject of the sentence That's again, putting a big fat capital me at the center of the world. A lot of people are getting this wrong now. A lot of people. Well, boy, could we go here? So what are we after then? What are we after? What? What's what's the way that Christ would would have for us? It cannot be functional transcendence where I'm using God to get ahead in life. It just cannot be that. Then what is it? It's got to be that I am called to live then not a functionally transcendent life, but a transcendent. Functional life. What? I mean. Of transcendent function of life in the Christian life is this. The values of Christ as revealed through the written the miracle of the written word as lived out in the blessedness of the body of Christ. The values of Christ determined they set the values of my functional life and world.

[00:47:57] You see the huge difference there. It's a matter whose the subject of the sentence. Who sets the agenda? Who leads the whole movement of my life. We don't need more people moving into ambitious ego projects in the church. All that ends up doing eventually is imploding. It just collapses and people get wiped out in ministry. Normally when you get wiped out in ministry, it's like a train wreck and it takes a whole bunch of people along with you. No, we need women and men who are filled with God's spirit and are subservient to God's Word and who truly love God's church. And the place themselves is allowed themselves to be servants within God's church who listen who here in order then to fulfill whatever role and responsibility and task the Lord gives them. These are huge, huge issues for the body of Christ now. All of this. All of this. This whole thing here is talking about and you read it in the book, How do we concretize life in the Holy Spirit? You know, what is what is real life look like for us today? What does it look like as a member of society? Whatever society I've been placed in, how do I function as a responsible member of society? What does it look like in my own physical life? How do I reflect the goodness of Christ in my own physical person? How in my own roles, my responsibilities, my task? How do I reflect the glory of God in a void using God and in a selfish way? How do I let the longings of my own heart be grounded in the longings or in the true plan that God has for my life? Both, both here and in the life that is to come? And how do I attain this whole.

[00:50:22] All of this underneath comes it's going to be subservient to the Word of God, hearing the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. That's part of the reason we got to stay in the Word. The word can't be casual. It's not a matter of one hour on Sunday mornings. And how how are we listening and then responding to those invitations? I highly recommend this text for you. It's very readable. You can you can look and dive into the depths. Now, we're going to take a break now, let you talk about this and discuss it, and then we'll come back and look at another aspect. So bless you in the name of Christ. And I thank you. Hey, Matt, I've been trying to think about at a very practical level. Yes. How this is going to affect my pastor. Good. Good. And my from my own experience, you spend so much time focusing on the functional. Yes. And almost play. Pay lip service to the transcendent because it's the tyranny of the urgent. The weeping person on the phone to the board meetings. And there's so much in a pastor's life that says function, function, function. And what happens then is that we start being fed by the transcendent. It's like we draw a dotted line right across there and say, Well, if I can get above to those top two categories. So that that's a good thing. But most of my time is down below. Yeah. And what I'm understanding from this discussion of anthropology is that we function in these five different levels, but we have to start at the top. Absolute. Absolutely. And that and then from that it trickles down. And we recognize that each of these lines in your chart are affecting us and at different times in our lives.

[00:52:24] Perhaps we have to do emphasize one of those lines, of course, but it has to be transcendent. First. It has to be our inner life, our spiritual life. How that trickles down. Is that an accurate way to say. Absolutely. I mean, where does it all start? It all starts in the life of God and in his purpose for his church. And so this this is the big rock. This is the rock. Who is Christ? You're you're 100% right on. This has got to inform the rest of it. But if you invert, it's where the rest of it leads out in front. Then that's when you get the whole destruction in society. That's when you get vitalism, that's when you get functionalism and that's when transcendent, you know, devolves into just more of something. Yeah. Excellent. Understood. All right. I'm remembering a talk I heard John Piper give once. Yeah. And I. I can't remember the actual question, but he was asking about priorities and what's important. And and pastors were going through and listing them, and. And he commented that, um, where's God in all this? And the answer was, Well, that's taken for granted that we're here to fight God. Right. And Piper stopped, and he looked at us all. He said, God doesn't like being taken for granted. Yeah, yeah. And, boy, 1400 people just went dead quiet. Yeah. And because what he was pointing out is that so many of us are in the middle of the chart, and we're supposed to start at the top. Yeah. My field research, along with field research of others colleagues over the last five years, I mean, almost full time, five years of going and going, going all over, talking, talking to pastors, said a huge amount is being taken for granted but is in fact, absent.

[00:54:32] So part of what this is saying is we have got to recover first things first. It's hierarchical. It is hierarchical. The Christian walk is hierarchical. It just doesn't work any other way. All of this has to bow in submission. You call me your teacher and your Lord remember, and you are right. So let it be right for us. They, man.