A Rule of Life: Cultivating Rhythms for Spiritual Transformation Part 2 By Ruth Haley Barton

John Coe:

Why don't we just take a moment to pray as we open our heart tonight. Father, we come to you, and Father we want to open our heart to what is true. What I'd like you to do is you have your eyes closed, and just opening to the Lord, I just want you to ask your soul, take counsel in your soul and with the Lord and just say, God, where have I been this day? What has been on my heart and mind? What have I loved and attended to? Just to be open to the truth with the Lord for a moment. For he loves you and cares for you. And just in that place, whether your heart is scattered or collected with him, just tell the Lord, Lord, I need you. I need you tonight. I, I open my heart to you tonight. Just ask the Lord, teach me by your Spirit tonight. I want to learn of you. Just be open to your failures today. Your successes. And God, I need you. And now, just to open your heart to the people around you, I want you to, just in your mind, take the person on your left and even if you don't know them, just ask the Lord, Lord, teach this brother or sister tonight. And open their heart. And take the person on your right. Lord, teach this one.

This is your child. Open their heart. Father, we come as we are. I just pray that you would collect the scatteredness of our soul, that your Spirit might teach us tonight. Father, bring up elements in our heart that you wish to instruct us with. God, encourage us to listen with one ear to our speaker and another ear to you. Bless our speaker tonight. Open her heart to what you want to teach her. May she, even during this time, by your Spirit, be open to new places of her experience of herself and with you. Teach her things beyond herself. Watch over her and bless Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 her. And we bless her and we ask for your blessing in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to have Steve

Porter come and share, and introduce our speakers, uh, Dr. Porter is a professor at the Institute for Spiritual Formation. He's a, uh, another philosopher theologian with myself. And, uh, he had the honor, though, of studying with uh, Dallas Willard at USC. And his task is to teach courses in spirituality and theology, and he'll introduce our speaker. So Steve, come on up.

Steve Porter:

Well, about a year and a half ago, I was uh, speaking at a retreat, um, in Iowa, I think it was. And the, the person who had invited me, uh, shoved a piece of paper in my hand a couple days before and he said, Steve, um, this is an excerpt from a, from a book. Have you seen it? And I said no.

And he said, well, we've, we've used this excerpt in some of our, uh, retreats just to kind of uh, give it to the people who are coming on the retreat, just to kind of get conversation going about the spiritual life. And he said you might, you might want to take a look at it, you might want to use it for this retreat. So I read it, and it was this, I actually have the, the piece of paper that he gave me. And it was a, it's an excerpt from this book by someone named Ruth Haley Barton, who I hadn't heard of. And the book was called Invitation to Solitude and Silence. And I read it and I thought, oh yeah, that's good. And, and so I passed it out and there was only, there's probably a group of about fifteen of us. And um, and I was this is, you know, expecting this to be a, a discussion starter. Just kinda get the ball rolling. Well, we spent about the next hour, over an hour, uh, engaging with this little excerpt from this book. These people so deeply resonated with these words. I'll just read you the the first couple sentences. "Truth be told, it was desperation that first propelled me into solitude and silence. I wish I could say that it was for loftier reasons,

Page 2 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 pure desire for God or some such thing. But in the beginning, it was desperation, plain and simple. There were things that needed fixing in my life, longings that were painfully unmet. And

I had tried everything I knew to fix what was broken and to fill what was lacking, but to no avail."

And Ruth goes on to describe a little bit about her own journey. And, and people just deeply resonated with what she was describing. And they, and they really, uh, went with it. And so after that, I, I bought the book and I read it and I had a, a deep sense that this person who, who was writing this not only had experienced Christ in her own life, but, but had reflected on that, and understood a lot of the dynamics of Christ's work. So when we were thinking about ISF, uh, speakers for this year, I did some investigation on Ruth and I found out she had written another book called Sacred Rhythms. And I took a look at that one, it looked pretty good and found out she had worked at Willow Creek with John Ortberg for several years and had a, had a ministry there and now had co-founded this uh, uh ministry called The Transforming Center. And some of you have a brochure that, that we put out, uh, that describes some of what, uh, Ruth is doing with

The Transforming Center. But I also like to check out people before, and ask other people about the people we invite. So I was at an occasion to be with Dallas Willard. And so I said, Dallas, have you ever heard of Ruth Haley Barton? Now, Dallas isn't, is eternally gracious and generous with his recommendations. So you never know really what it means when Dallas says, oh, yes, yes, she's a good person.

And so, but I've, I've learned that if Dallas just says something very kind of mild, that probably means it's, it's not a, it's not a very strong endorsement. But when he says something kind of over

Page 3 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 the top, that means it's, it's pretty good. And so, you know, for some people, he'll, he'll just say something like, well, well, I've heard very good things about that person. And I go, okay, well then, that doesn't mean much, right. Um, but with Ruth, I remember he said he said, Steve, Ruth is one of a kind. And he said, I don't think there's too many people out there who understand the essentials of spiritual formation like, like Ruth does. And, and when he said that, I thought, well, that, that's saying something because Dallas doesn't say that about just anybody. So I thought we, we probably have someone here that would be good to invite. And Ruth has a very, uh, busy schedule. She lives in Wheaton, Illinois with her husband and uh, three daughters, though it sounds like at least two of them are out of the house by now. But she has a very busy speaking schedule, so we were very glad that she was uh, able to, to really squeeze us in. And so thank you, Ruth, for coming, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Ruth Haley Barton:

...very much.

[applause]

Thank you. Thank you so much. Could I move this since I'm wired, because then we're, we won't have anything between us, which would be great. Well, I am very pleased to be here among you, and thank you for being so good to me. Those of you who invited me and have hosted me throughout the day, it's been a great joy to be here and to meet like-minded folks. And it's been an encouragement to my own soul to be here as well as, I hope there's something that gets given

Page 4 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 back. I um, I do spend kind of a lot of time um traveling and speaking and that sort of thing. And the message of tonight is one of those places that I always really enjoy coming back to, and tonight we want to, I know that you're finishing up a wonderful lecture, sip, ship, lectureship series. And I want to honor that and know that you all have already been on a journey of a few weeks before I have even arrived. And so tonight, I do hope that we can gather up so much of what's been stirred in you and kind of bring it on home and say, well now what? After all that we've heard and after all that we've experienced, well now what? How can we gather it all up together in such a way that it might make a difference in our lives ongoing. I remember sitting in a church staff meeting of a church that I was serving a few years ago, and it was a meeting that was for the purpose of trying to decide how we could invite more people into the church. How could we attract more people into the church? Have you ever been a part of a meeting like that?

That's, that's often the kind of meeting people who lead churches have, you know.

And in this particular meeting, I remember somebody being wise enough to count up the, the number of commitments that are, were already required of people who were members at this church. And we counted up somewhere between five and nine time commitments a week that were required for membership, depending on how you count it, but I know there are at least five, because there was the weekend, coming on the weekend, there was a midweek service to come to, you were supposed to be in a small group, you were supposed to serve with your gifts, and you were supposed to be involved in outreach. I know there were at least, at least five commitments, if not more. And I remember sitting in that meeting saying, who would want to sign up for this? [laughs] I was already very aware of Christian fatigue syndrome in my own life.

Oh, I hear some amens already! And I had already really faced in to my own levels of exhaustion

Page 5 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 relative to my Christian life. I am a pastor's kid, um, I was saved in family devotions when I was four. I was hit with the fear of going to hell one night and didn't want to be without the Lord.

And so I gave my life to Christ that night when I was four. My dad's a pastor, so I've been raised in that milieu. And then eventually went to Christian college and all of that and have been in vocational Christian ministry ever since, and had really begun to face into some of the realities of

Christian fatigue syndrome in my own life. I remembered going to my first retreat and it was during seminary, and some of you are in that very place yourselves.

And it was the first time I had been invited to truly unplug completely. I'd been practicing shorter periods of time of solitude in my life, but this was the first time, in my early thirties, when someone had invited me to unplug completely and go away on retreat. And the morning was kind of similar to what I had experienced in my own times of solitude, but at lunchtime, something new began to transpire. We were instructed that we would be taking our lunch in silence. And I'd never experienced a silent lunch before, and I remember going into the dining hall and it was quiet. Nobody was talking. The food had been prepared, it was a lovely dining room with windows and chairs that were all facing to the outside wooded area. And as I walked into the quietness of this lunch room space, it was as if something broke open inside of me, and the tears just started to flow down my face. It was like something truly broke open, something I hadn't known was there. And it was a really good thing that we weren't allowed to talk to each other, because it meant that nobody could rush in and try to fix me. It meant that I couldn't run away into conversation with anybody else. It meant that I had to stay with what I was feeling in

God's presence, who was my lunchtime companion. And so I stood there snuffling, you know, no

Kleenex in sight, not knowing what to do to my, do with myself. And I stayed with that

Page 6 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 experience all the way through lunch, could hardly hold it together. And I've had other experiences like that with other people as well, where there's something about taking a meal in silence with others that just breaks something open within them, and some of us just sob through a lunch like that.

I think it touches something in us that's such a deep longing and desire. And at that particular lunch, I had to really start to face what had become of my own life as a Christian, and what had become of my life as a person in Christian ministry. And it was, it was quite disturbing. I had been a Christian all of my conscious life, and I was involved in really good stuff, good vocational Christian ministry, but I had to recognize that my life in Christ had been reduced to weighty expectations. Lots of to do lists, lots of performance, so many places to be. And I was utterly exhausted with the whole thing. That was the first thing. The feeling that went along with that was a feeling of sheer relief that for once, my life in God was not going to be managed by somebody else. Nobody else was going to tell me what I had to do in that moment with God.

There was no conversation or social interaction for me to figure out. Do you ever get just so tired of trying to do that networking and figure out what to, how to talk to this person that you don't know very well and all the ways in which our human mechanisms kind of kick in, the ways in which we perform even for each other in the most simple interpersonal interactions. So there was sheer relief that there was going to be none of that that I would have to manage during this lunch.

And then as I worked my way through those feelings of exhaustion and then acknowledging my exhaustion, the relief that I felt at not being required to do anything for a few moments, then I began to acknowledge underneath a deeper place. And that was the place of my own longing and desire for God.

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And it was deep, and it was wide, and it was overwhelming, and I had no idea that in the midst of all of my Christian busyness, there could be a longing that was that real. There could be an emptiness, a longing for God, a feeling of, God I just miss you. Have you ever had that feeling,

God I just miss you. Someone has said that you'd be surprised at what your soul wants to say to

God. You'd be surprised at what God wants to say to your soul. And in this case, it was that feeling of God. I've been so busy working for you, but I miss you. I miss you and me together.

And so that was a very important moment for me of not only becoming very self-aware, but also realizing that my life in the Christian community wasn't doing a lot at that point to help me live my life sanely, and it wasn't doing a lot to help me to pay attention to the longings deep within.

Sometimes we would talk about longings, but I would sense that the longing would be used in kind of manipulative ways, like they would touch longing. But then they would try to get us to go do something for them out of the longing that they just touched in us. Um, if you're in tune at all, you can recognize those kind of manipulations. Or sometimes different, people would touch the longing, but what they would offer in relation to the longing never did really meet the longing. It was just more Christian busyness. But it wasn't anything that really meant the deeper

Christian longing of my heart. One of the things that still surprises me this far along the way in the spiritual journey, is how and when and with what power my spiritual longing stirs.

There are some of those times that are, you know, fairly predictable times when I'm away from home and tired or times around the holidays where you long for meaning or those sorts of things.

And I know what to do with those, but there's other moments when longing and desire for something more just ambushes me. And I'm sure that if you pay attention, you might notice some

Page 8 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 of those places within yourself as well. I remember one time in particular a few years ago when our daughter Bethany, who was fifteen at the time, she was turning sixteen, or she was turning fifteen actually, so she was a freshman in high school. Her birthday's in September and so it was the first kind of birthday of the season, somebody in her age group turning a new age. And all she wanted for her birthday was a big party with seventy-five of her closest friends.

[Audience laughs]

She and I went through that list fine tune, with a fine-tooth comb, trying to cut it down. We did get the list down to fifty of her closest friends, but it's who Bethany is and it was all she wanted.

And so our whole family rallied to pull off this party for her. Her older sister, Charity, who is a senior in high school at the time, rallied some of her friends to organize a karaoke competition.

That was very cool for the freshmen. Um, my husband was the one taking care of, you know, barbecuing the hamburgers and all that sort of thing. He was also patrolling the property to make sure that unwanted substances didn't come and go since this was kind of a, a large, out-of-control party, and I was the one serving the food. And there was a moment in that evening when my soul stood at attention, when I realized there was something going on here that's far beyond just a fifteen-year-old birthday party. I was serving food to the kids and they were walking through the line, they were all very polite. But there was one young man in particular who looked me in the eye with so much sincerity and he said, thank you for letting us do this, Mrs. Barton. This is so much fun. And his expression of gratitude was so heartfelt that I stopped what I was doing. And I looked him in the eyes and I said, well, you're welcome. We really enjoy having you. And he looked back at me, stopped mid-ketchup and said, really? As though he was not accustomed to

Page 9 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 being enjoyed. And in that moment, there was something in me, the un-guardedness of his response, the sweetness of it, the wonderment that, that he was experiencing and I was flooded with an awareness, a moment when I saw my life more clearly for what it was.

And I said, this is my life, this is my life as I am meant to be living it. This is what it's like when

I'm all the way here rather than longing for something else. This is my life as it's meant to be lived in God. And that moment passed very quickly. But later on in the evening, as our family was sitting around rehearsing what had gone on and we were talking about the gifts Bethany had received, we were talking about the competition and who could dance and who couldn't and who could carry a tune. And that was the moment when my desire and my longing ambushed me, and

I realized, this is my best self. This is my most authentic self in God. This is who I want to be more and more, someone who is present in the life that she has been given. These are the moments that I'll remember on my deathbed and say that was what I was meant for. And the desire that ambushed me was, oh, God, give me more moments like this. Give me more moments when I have the sense to know where to be, where to bring myself and how to be there in your presence with the people that you've given me. And so a deep prayer welled up and it was one of those moments that nobody else even knows about, but you know it. There have been other moments as well, the moments, the perilous moment when I turned forty and I realize that all I wanted for my birthday was just to be with the people I love and to say something loving and real to them and to have them do something similar back to me. That was really surprising to me, that when I turned forty, a very mature person, you would think that your life longing would be something more profound than that.

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You know, like some career aspiration or something like that, some big bash. And it wasn't what

I wanted at all. So we canceled the party that we had planned, and I spent time meaningfully with the people that I loved. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, everything in between, and it was a great birthday. There was another moment as well. And this was a moment when I was aware of my own brokenness and my longing for real and fundamental change in my life, which is what spiritual transformation is all about, by the way. It's about real change. And it was a, a time in my life when I had experienced a betrayal that was so deep, that for quite some time I was almost paralyzed in relating to anyone outside of my most intimate circle of family and friends. Maybe some of you have had an experience like that, I wouldn't be surprised. And there were the normal feelings of anger and outrage and sadness and grief. But there was an even deeper longing, and it was the longing to be healed. I knew that I had turned inward. I knew that I had closed my heart.

I recognized distrust and suspicion that had made me hard-edged and withdrawn. And I found myself crying out to God to do something in me that I was not capable of doing myself, something that would enable me once again to be given over to God and to others with the kind of trust and abandon that I had experienced before that betrayal. And I knew that regardless of the pain I had suffered, and the pain was real and what this person did was real. And so part of the healing was to acknowledge that, to be very honest about their part in it. That didn't go away.

But I also had to acknowledge my response to it. My hardened and broken state, and for the first time, the Jesus prayer, that prayer that has been uttered by the blind and the broken in Christ's day began to pray itself in me unbidden. I didn't look for this prayer, I didn't grasp for this prayer, I didn't go rifling through the Scriptures to find a prayer to pray. This prayer came up from the gut and it was Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. And I knew that whatever

Page 11 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 was to be done in my life relative to this brokenness, God would have to do because I was incapable of fixing myself. And that, my friends, is the deepest longing of the human heart, to come to a place of wholeness and healing to the extent that we can give ourselves over to God with complete abandon as he calls us, and to give ourselves over to others in love as he calls us.

So I have a question for you tonight, and it's a brave question, and I have come to believe deep in the bottom of my own soul that in the area of spiritual formation, the questions we're willing to ask ourselves, or the questions we're willing to allow God to ask us, are more important than the answers we think we know. The questions we're willing to ask ourselves are more important than the answers we think we know. And so I'm going to ask you a question tonight, and it's an important one. And the question is, when was the last time you felt it? Your own longing, that is your longing to be present in your life, the way it was meant to be lived in God. To settle, to settle into yourself in your life and to live it well. When was the last time you felt your longing for God? That, I miss you. I miss you God, for your own sake.

Not for all that I can do for you or you can do for me, but just for you and me. Just for the intimacy of it all. I miss you. When was the last time you were in touch with your own brokenness, that place in you that is stuck or wounded, and you felt your own longing for healing and fundamental change growing and groaning within you. Do not rush past this question. It may be one of the most important questions you ever ask. But this is hard, I know, because in the religious circles that many of us are a part of, we are more accustomed to silencing our desire and distancing ourselves from it because we're suspicious and we're afraid of its power, because it is powerful. Human desire is powerful, and I do believe it that in the end, the human soul will do what it most wants to do. It might wait twenty years, you know, but eventually the human

Page 12 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 soul will find a way to choose what it most wants. So this question of desire and allowing God to to be with us in that place is one of the most significant questions we can ask. We might wonder, isn't there something better we should be doing with our time? Something better we should ask ourselves, isn't there something a little less dangerous, a little less unpredictable, something more selfless, something more spiritual? And besides, desire is such a volatile thing. Aren't my desires shot through with sin and human deception? Worse yet, what if I were to touch that place of desire and that place of longing within me? What if I were to let myself really feel how deep it goes, only to discover that those desires cannot be met?

You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Some of us have had very painful experiences of wanting something and not getting it. Some of us, in fact, in our families of origin had experiences where when we said what we wanted, we got slapped or we got shamed. You shouldn't want that. Oh, that's stupid. You can't have it. And so many of us in a very deep place have a, very, very mixed feelings about whether or not we're even allowed to want anything, and let alone whether or not we're allowed to say it. And let alone whether God even wants to hear it.

So we might wonder, what if I do go all the way into my desire and I find out that I can't have it?

What will I do with myself then? How will I live with my desire all awake and alive rather than asleep and repressed? We're in the deep end, folks, aren't we? [Laughs] This is the deep end, and they are some of the deepest questions of the human soul. And they are questions that defy any attempt at simplistic answers. And I've been uncomfortable with these questions myself. And in the midst of my discomfort, I needed to find a place in scripture to land. I needed to find a biblical story that would help me to understand the meaning of these kinds of questions, and I realized and discovered that Jesus himself routinely asked people to grapple with this particular

Page 13 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 question. He often brought focus and clarity to his interactions with those who were spiritually hungry by asking him, by asking them some version of the question, what is it that you want me to do for you?

It's the most asked question in the New Testament. And it's the question Jesus posed a lot. And it had the power to elicit deeply honest reflections in the person to whom the question was asked. It had the power to open them to a way of being with Christ, where Christ could lead them into deeper levels of healing and transformation and truth. Jesus' encounter with Blind Bartimaeus on the Jericho Road is one example of this question and how Jesus utilized it as a spiritual question.

If you remember the story of Bartimaeus in Mark ten, he was a blind beggar, had been blind all his life, born blind I think in this particular story, and he had been begging by the side of the road all his adult life. But on this particular day, somehow he knew that Jesus was passing by, and somehow he had a sense that this was a day of spiritual possibility for him. Perhaps Jesus could do something for him that he had never been able to do for himself and no one had been able to do for him. Perhaps Jesus could do this thing that he had been hoping for and dreaming of all of his life. But it was noisy and it was crowded on the road that day. It was hard to get anyone's attention, let alone someone like Jesus, who was always surrounded it seemed, by followers and those pesky disciples who were always tight and, you know, you never could get past them. How is he supposed to get Jesus' attention on that day? Well, he got Jesus attention by reaching way down deep within himself to that place of human longing and desperate need, and he said, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

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And another strange thing happened in this story. The crowd around him tried to silence him. I wonder about that. What was going on inside them that they tried to silence him? I imagine perhaps they were a bit embarrassed maybe, embarrassed by such a raw, honest expression of human need. It is embarrassing. Have you ever been around someone who is very needy and they let it show and it leaks out all over the place and you kind of want to distance yourself from that person because it's awful. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to see them acting that way and then it probably touches something in us. It's uncomfortable about us being needy as well, so we want to get as far away as we can from that. I wonder, too, if there might not have been some jealousy or competition that he had the courage to to yell out, a courage that they didn't have and maybe he was going to get something that day that they weren't going to get, some kind of attention that they weren't going to get. Well, we don't know what the crowd was thinking and why they were reacting this way, but it didn't work anyway because they tried to silence him, and what did Bartimaeus do? Yeah, he just reached down deeper and he cried out louder, Lord Jesus

Christ, son of God, have mercy on me. And it was his cry from that deepest place within him that caused Jesus to turn around, that caused Jesus to hear him above the rest of the crowd. The honesty, the desperation, the humanness of that cry was completely arresting. And so Jesus stopped and he stood still in the middle of the road and he said, have that man come to me.

And the, the people said to him, Jesus is calling for you. And I like this part, too. I like so much about this story, but I like this part, too, because it says that Bartimaeus sprang up, he threw off his cloak and he sprang up. And sometimes I wonder, do we have that kind of abandon when

Jesus is calling us, when Jesus is calling us and we know it, do we have that kind of an immediate response to throw everything off and to say, yes, I'm coming, I'm coming? But that's

Page 15 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 what Bartimaeus did. And so there he and Jesus were, standing in the middle of this crowded road face to face. And as they stood facing one another, Jesus asked that penetrating question:

What is it that you want me to do for you? Now, if I had been in Bartimaeus' shoes, I think I might have gotten a little impatient with the question because I had such an obvious answer. It's like, what do you mean? What do you think I want? I've been begging by the side of the road all these years, I want to be made, I want to be made to see for crying out loud. I would have been a little impatient, I think. But on the level of spiritual unfolding, it's so important. I don't think

Jesus knew this was, which is why he asked. It was why he was always asking this question. It was important for Bartimaeus as to say it clearly and to say it out loud and to say it to the right person, to say it to Jesus. Now, at that point though, the journey is getting a little personal, you know, to have to start naming those things, it's kind of personal. So I think if I had been on the road, I might've had something else to say to Jesus. I might have said, excuse me, this is a little personal. Could we go over there, please? [laughs] I don't want to do this right here out in the open.

But no, you know, this is the moment that they had, and it is very personal and it does bring us face to face with our humanness and with our need and our vulnerability. And if we let it, this question strips away the layers of our pretense and our superficiality to expose what is truest within us. And this is a very tender place indeed. So I'd like to give you a moment right now.

Gonna take just a minute or two, and just to see if you can't imagine or envision yourself in that story. Can you imagine yourself crying out in that place of your own need tonight. That place where you're aware of your blindness, your sickness, your need to be healed. Maybe it's something that's been with you for a very long time. And imagine that you have the opportunity

Page 16 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 to be face to face with Jesus, because you are. And Jesus says to you, what do you want me to do for you? And don't force anything in the quiet. Don't force anything at all, just find yourself in the story. Let yourself be there, let yourself be with Jesus. See if you even hear the question tonight. And if you do, say something honest. Let yourself be surprised at what your soul wants to say to God. Breathe deeply. It'll help you. It'll help you to relax into the moment, to get in touch with the spirit of God who is closer to you than your breath. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Hear the prayer that is tears behind our eyes. Hear the prayer that is a longing deep within. Hear the prayer that is a tightness in our gut. Or an emotion that has surprised us. Hear the prayer that is a question that we're barely able to be brave enough to ask. Lord, in your mercy, hear that prayer, we pray, amen.

Well I'm here to tell you tonight that your desire for more of God than what you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation, whatever it is that you touched in that moment, is getting closer and closer to the truest thing about you. Because it is your desire for more of God than what you have right now, it is your capacity to reach for more of God than what you have right now that is the truest thing about you. It is the soul of you.

And the soul of you is the part that existed before you were here on the Earth in physical form, and it is the part of you that will exist after your body goes into the earth. It is the truest thing about you and it deserves your attention. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you. If you're another kind of person, you might think that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as a husband or a wife or a mother or a father, that those things are somehow the most real thing about you and define you essentially. But in reality, those things are one step removed from your truest identity. Your

Page 17 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 truest identity is that longing for God. And when you pay attention to your longing and you allow the questions about your longing to strip away the outer layers of self definition, which this question does, then you are beginning to tap into the deepest dynamic of the spiritual life because the spiritual life begins in this most unlikely place.

It begins with a longing that stirs way down deep underneath the noise and the activity and the drivenness of our lives. For myself, those moments that I shared with you earlier were part of a much larger calling of God upon my life, a time in my early thirties, one when no matter what was going on externally, I was a very busy person at the time with lots going on in my ministry life, but these were the realities that were deeper and more essential. And they, these were the ones that required my attention. And these were the ones that called me and compelled me into a different way of ordering my life so that I could order my life around these desires. And we'll talk about that more in the second half tonight. But tonight, for this moment, I want you to settle into this place because this is the fuel. This then eventually becomes the fuel that fires and drives your whole spiritual journey. But it's not always comfortable to acknowledge such longing and the direction that such admissions take us sometimes take our lives in whole new directions, and that's the scary part. The other thing is that there are more dynamics that take place in this dynamic of desire than, than just the one where Jesus comes in and heals a person right away.

That's one of them, that's what happens to, to Bartimaeus. But there are other things that happen as well in this journey, in this willingness to engage this question. When James and John and later on their mother, they had an interaction with this particular question as well.

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In fact, uh the mother of James and John came marching into Jesus' presence one day and she actually took the bull by the horns and said, I want you to do whatever it is that I ask. Can you imagine the presumption? And so Jesus, being the gracious person that he was, he asked her the question back. He said, okay, tell me, what is it that you want me to do for you? Is that beautiful?

He didn't shame her for the question at all. He didn't, like, get up on his high horse and say, well, how dare you? He just repeated the question back. And she, of course, expressed the desire that her sons would find favor with him and be on the right hand and on the left in Jesus kingdom.

And Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink this cup? So for the mother of James and John and for James and John themselves, when they ask the question, there was another kind of activity that went on. There was another kind of stripping.

There was an awareness then of the false self. There was another question back, you don't have any idea what you're asking. Can you really drink this cup? Are you really up for what you think you're up for? And so we begin to see that there's many ways that this question can go in our own lives when we're willing to be honest enough with God. He might come back and ask us a question that really penetrates and services that with which is false within us. And that's a good thing, too. But he does it gently I can almost imagine the gentleness in Jesus' voice. I don't hear him being accusing or cynical or anything like that, but in a very gentle way, saying, can you really drink this cup?

And the compassion, real compassion. And so the disciples' ability to be honest with Jesus about this deeper dynamic of desire opened them up to a new kind of intimacy with Jesus that really began the process of making right that which was not right. This question about desire brought up some of the ugliness within them, and then Jesus could gently guide them in a new way. So

Page 19 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 opening up our desires in Jesus' presence is a little bit unpredictable for sure. And yet it opens up new elements of spiritual journeying. And then there are other possibilities as well, and this is the one I'll leave you with before we break. The other possibility is the one that happened in John five when there was the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda. You remember that story, don't you?

It was a paralytic who had been laying there, for thirty-eight years he'd been ill, and he was waiting for his moment of healing, a little bit like Bartimaeus. Only in this case there was a dynamic that was there all the time. There was a pool, a special pool that sometimes would get stirred by an angel. And legend has it or whatever, that if you could get into the pool, if you were the first one to get into the pool, you could be healed. So the paralytic had been laying there waiting for thirty eight years to be the first one to get into the pool. And so on this particular day,

Jesus comes up to him and asks him an even more pointed question. Do you want to be mad well? Again, getting at the same dynamic of desire. And what was so interesting about this one is that in this case, there was something for the man to do first.

And so the naming of desire actually brought out the sick man's excuses, all the excuses that he'd been using all of his life for why he could not make it happen. And Jesus, in effect, said to him,

You've got to really want it, buddy. How bad do you want it? I sit on the sidelines of lots, lots of soccer games. I'm a soccer mom in my other life and I have heard a lot of obnoxiousness on the sidelines of soccer games. Never me, of course. I'm always very controlled. Just want you to know. Um [ laughs] and one day in particular, I think the girls were in about fourth grade and there was this one dad on the sidelines who was just screaming at two girls who were converging on the same ball, trying to win it for their team. And he was saying how bad do you want it, you got to really want it. Of course, I want to turn to him and say, see if you could get out there and

Page 20 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 even run a half as fast as they're running. I wasn't feeling very gracious at the time, but as I reflected on his statement, I thought, there is a truth in that. And the truth is that human desire has a very important role to play in whether or not people get what they want in life. And I'm going somewhere with this. I'm going to the place where Jesus was going with this paralytic saying, if you really want deep and fundamental change in your life, there's got to be something you're willing to do. How bad do you want it? And so that's the question for the paralytic. The paralytic was full of excuses. I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I'm making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.

And Jesus' response in effect was this. It was, never mind all that. Just stand up and take up your mat and walk. So again, the paralyzed man reached way down within himself to that place where he wanted something really, really badly. And it made all the difference in the world. And he did get up and he did take up his mat and he did walk. And his willingness to reach way down deep and do something out of that desire opened up a place for Jesus to meet him in that place. Jesus does not come in where he is not utterly and absolutely invited. And it was the action of this man that invited Jesus to come in all the way and heal him. And so that's the question for us, and that's the question I'm going to leave us with now as we go into the break. The question is, how bad do you really want it? That desire that you have touched throughout this lecture series? I imagine that for those of you who have been here for the whole series, there have been moments when something in you stirred so deeply and you said, that, that is what I want. Sometimes when

I'm around Dallas Willard, just being in his presence makes me feel that way, you know, because he is such a cleared out human being. And when I'm around him, I just think, oh Lord, I, that!

That's what I want to be like! I want to be that kind, I want to be that affirming, I want to be that

Page 21 of 22 Barton: A Rule of Life Part 2 believing. I want to be that smart, but that kind. You know. That! Maybe you've had moments during this lecture series when you said, that's what I want.

Or maybe in the moment we shared here, you were able to touch some place in you that wanted something, and my question to you as we go into the break is how bad do you want it? Are you willing to change your life? Are you willing to take up your mat, so to speak, to do what you can do so that Jesus can meet you in that place of your willingness? So I'd like to close this portion with a word of prayer to gather this part up, because we're gonna take quite a different direction in the next half. Um, but this, this is important stuff that needs to be gathered up in Jesus' presence, and I don't want you to lose whatever it is that you're aware of right now. So, Lord

Jesus Christ, we know that we are treading on very sacred ground when we allow you to approach us with questions of this depth and meaning. And so we pray tonight that you would help us to be careful and gentle with ourselves and with each other. That you would help us to listen way down deep, that if we do begin to touch desire, that we won't be afraid. That the story of Bartimaeus will comfort us and show us that to go there in your presence, to open up our desire in your presence is absolutely essential for spiritual journeying. And then we pray that you will prepare us to take that desire and ask the question then later on, what are we prepared to do?

How are we prepared to change our lives towards that which we most deeply want? Lord, in your mercy altogether. Hear our prayer.

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