A PATRON BONUS
My talk from last weekend's healing prayer retreat + what do you want to see in the Lent Daybook?
Patrons, I’m heading out for a 48-hour planning retreat to prepare this year’s Lent Daybook, and I’d love to hear any suggestions or requests you have for this year’s offering. Read to the end of the post to leave your comments!
Dear friends,
Occasionally, I have the privilege of speaking in person at retreats and conferences. Last weekend, I offered one of four talks that anchored a healing prayer retreat we hosted at our church. I wish you could have been there, and I wish you could have heard all four of the talks. The next best thing I know how to offer is my outline. Mind you, this is no transcript. I added and subtracted liberally as the Spirit moved and as time allowed. But, hopefully, you get the gist.
I’ve put my talk behind the Patron-level paywall in order to preserve some privacy and to hold space for content that may or may not make it into a future book. I’m grateful to this top tier of supporters who want to help sustain my writing and work a little more closely with me on the ideas I’m trying to articulate here.
An important note: Confession and forgiveness are such an important part of our lives as followers of Jesus and, in other contexts, something that we teach in much more theological and practical detail. This talk was meant as an introduction only to the gift of confession and forgiveness so that participants could reflect and then begin the process of praying with our prayer leaders
Naming as the first act of confession and forgiveness
On the first night of the healing prayer retreat, Brian spoke to us about the powerful love of the triune God demonstrated in the creation of humanity as made in the image of God. Brian reminded us that human needs are part of our original glory. When God said this is good, our human needs were blessed as good. That powerful love then redeemed all of the broken ways we’ve tried to meet our own needs. When Jesus entered humanity at the Incarnation, he blessed our needs as good a second time by experiencing all of them with us and then, ultimately, by surrendering all of those human needs at the cross. In his death, Jesus suffered the deprivation of every human need—physical, emotional, relational, and psychological—and in his resurrection, Jesus embodied the new humanity, restored, whole, fully healed, no longer vulnerable to deprivation and death. The cross and the empty tomb offer a final and forever blessing on human needs.
In this new, resurrected body, the reminders of death and deprivation don’t magically disappear; instead, they become powerful touchpoints of God-given authority. The scars on Jesus’ hands and feet and his side didn’t get buried, never again to see the light of day. No. They rise with Jesus, the firstborn of the new creation, as holy reminders of God’s powerful love made visible in Jesus, strong and kind. The scars were resurrected to become entry points for others who are still suffering death and deprivation—a place to say it is good to have needs and to meet needs. In the marvelous light of resurrection, scars become part of the image of God.
Isaiah 53
Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
4 Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
9 They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with affliction.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
11 Out of his anguish he shall see;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out himself to death
and was numbered with the transgressors,
yet he bore the sin of many
and made intercession for the transgressors.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
True and False Self
With Isaiah’s vision, we find ourselves again at the foot of the cross. And also in