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An Invitation to Dance

We are so pleased to be able to offer you our speaker from our Invitation to Dance Seminar--Kendra Long...

 Invitation to the Dance

Introduction

I once saw two dancers at a Jewish community center that took my breath away.  The man and the woman swayed in tandem, leapt like gazelles, intertwining with each other with the grace of dancers who knew each others rhythm.  I was awed by the beauty of it.  The joy of it coursed through me carried me beyond myself.  When we are in the presence of that which is truly beautiful, something of the eternal pierces our soul.  We catch a brief glimpse of something deeply real and it stirs a yearning within us for what is beyond it.  We are glimpsing the Eternal. 

The Great Dance

The freedom and grace of that dance, was, I believe, a hint of what the old Christian writers called The Great Dance, the eternal dance of love and perfect communion between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  That dynamic flow of love and perfect intimacy is the heart of all reality.  Every good friendship we have known is a pale reflection of this dance.  It’s a compelling metaphor.  Out of the overflow of their self giving love, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit created the world.

The creation account is lyrical.  There’s a sense of rhythm as God speaks the world into being.  Let there be, followed by his joyful response, It is good.  When the world was complete and ready for the man and the woman, he became intimately engaged.  He took the dust of the earth, and with his own hands, he formed man in his image and breathed into him his own breath of life.  Adam received life from him.

Now the Creator extended the dance to his created.  Each afternoon he came in the cool of the day to walk and talk with Adam and Eve.  There was complete intimacy between them (they were naked and not ashamed), and as they talked, the Creator named them calling them into being.  He caught them up into the dance of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

How long did this go on?  For months?  Hundreds of years?  Then came the fall, a rending,a break in relationship.  A great jarring reverberation went through the cosmos. The dance was over.  Adam and Eve knew for the first time that they were naked and they were ashamed.  For the first time they became conscious of themselves.  For the first time, they knew fear and they hid.  Intimacy was gone.  Separation from God had begun.

God came that afternoon and began a pattern that would continue through the rest of time.  He came looking for them and called them out of their hiding.  He provided a covering for them and promised that he would one day redeem and recreate them.

The rest of history has been a story of God’s passionate pursuit of his people, calling them back into the intimacy for which he had created them.  It’s hard to find a more passionate love story than is in the Scripture.

Attempts to reengage them in the dance….

• Covenants to bind himself to us.  Noah, Moses, David.

• Prophets reveal the tender heart of God his anguish over the hard heart of his people. 

• Hosea 11:3  It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms, but they did not realize it was I who healed them.  I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.  I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.  But my people are determined to turn from me.  How can I give you up?  How can I hand you over?

• Song of Solomon –words of a lover. 

2:8  Listen!  My lover!  Look!  Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills…

2:10  My lover spoke and said to me, “Arise my beautiful one, and come with me.” 

• Jeremiah:  What more can I do for the sins of my people?

• Ultimate gift of his son.   He came into the world that he had made, but the world did not recognize him. 

Poignant words  --He came unto his own, but his own received him not.  There were some whose hearts were longing for the coming of the Messiah and who had the eyes to see and receive him.  One of these was Mary, mother of Jesus.

As Protestants, in reaction to our split away from Catholicism, we’ve shied away from thinking too much about Mary, except at Christmas.  It’s a great loss, for she is a profound example and metaphor of receiving.   She carried the life of Jesus within her, and the early church called her “theotokos, God-bearer.”  We need to come back again and again and consider her deep and open heart to the presence of Christ, and the implications for us, as we too are God-bearers in this world. 

Mary’s Story

Mary’s story is one in the long line of love stories that describe God’s pursuit of his people.  She was the one he wanted to carry the life of his son. 

He had an inexpressibly valuable gift to give to Mary –it was a good beyond her understanding –the gift of himself.  Would she have the courage to receive it?  She would have the choice.  God always asks to enter –he never forces his way in.

God was the suitor.  He sent the angel Gabriel to propose to Mary and he began with these words, Greetings, you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you.

Mary was terrified.  Seeing her fear, the angel reassured her, Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.

That’s what we all long to hear from God, isn’t it?  He spoke her name –this was a very personal encounter.  Not with her parents, not with her husband-to-be, but with Mary alone.  He laid out his proposal.  You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end. 

At this point Mary asked an obvious and most logical question.   How can this be as I am a virgin?

The angel explained, The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.  Nothing is impossible with God.

These were strong words.  I will come upon you.  I, who called all of creation into being, will overshadow you, and call this child into being.

Women, put yourselves in her place.  It was staggering proposition.  There are a number of ways that Mary could have responded.  She might simply have run away.  How do you take in that kind of information?  Besides the overwhelming “otherness” of it, what about Mary’s dreams for marriage?  For life in the village?  Like any young girl, she had hopes and dreams.  If she became pregnant before marriage, what would come of her?  Divorce?  Penalty of death for adultery?

Astonishingly, Mary voiced none of these thoughts.  She simply made her choice.  It was a meltingly deep surrender to God’s proposal.  She could not begin to understand what it all meant, but her response was stunningly simple.

            Here I am.  I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.

She attempted no negotiations.  She could have asked, What will happen if I do?  Will you protect me?  Will you promise that nothing bad will happen?

What she said was, 

Here I am.  I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said. 

She could have said no.  She could have protested, Wait until I talk to my family.  Arrange things. 

What she said was, 

Here I am.  I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said. 

And as she opened her hands and released her hopes, her expectations for life, God in response entered her and Christ himself was conceived in her.  Mary’s surrender made space for Christ to come in.  Without her surrender, God would not have entered.  He waited to be invited.

What was it about Mary that God would entrust his son to her?  She had a tender and vulnerable spirit to God.  There were other voices to hear –surely she could already hear the confusion in Joseph’s voice.  Her spirit was wide open to the reality of God.  In his presence nothing else mattered.

And so Mary knew the surrender and the joy of carrying the life of Christ.  It was she that nursed, cradled him, comforted him when he was sick.  Track the rest of Mary’s life and you’ll see God calling her to that rhythm of surrender until finally it was she and John who stood near to the cross at Christ’s death.  God’s words to her then were, Will you release our son to me?

And still God calls us to himself.  He uses language that invites us to receive him into ourselves.

I am the bread of life.  Eat me.  Take me into your being. 

            I am the living water.  Whoever is thirsty, let them come, and whoever wishes, let them take the free water of life.  Open your soul, and drink me in.  I am joy itself and I sing my song of invitation to you.  When you truly taste me, you will desire nothing and no one else.

My Story

As a child, I knew God intimately.  He was intensely real to me.  Every evening before I went to sleep I looked for his personal words to me in the Scripture and when I went to sleep I held his hand.  I wept at the communion table for what he had done for me at the cross and I remember telling him I would go anywhere and do anything for him, so deeply did I love him.

Then I grew up.  I still loved him but more at a distance now.  He gave me so many of his good gifts –a good and tender husband, three beautiful children, meaningful work in his kingdom.  Somehow, over the years I let his good gifts begin to replace him.  Though I didn’t realize it, I had only one lover, and he was my husband.  Every now and then, I would sense a deep longing for something I once knew, but I was able to brush it away with the good things I was doing for him and the good things I had been given.

And then one day, God graciously invited me back to that place of intimacy that I once knew.  It happened this way.  He began to strip me, one by one, of the persons that filled my life.  Moved back to the U.S., our daughters went off to college, our son entered adolescence, separating himself from me, and my intimate companion took a job that required long periods of travel.  I was bereft.  I knew loneliness and it hurt.  I cried out to God to make it better.  I turned my anger on my husband.  If he really cared about how I felt, he’d look for another job. 

In the midst of my hurt, one July day as I walk on a beach, crying to God, he so kindly spoke to me.  I’m sure that he had tried many times before, but I had been nursing and rehearsing my hurt so long I couldn’t hear him.  What he said to me was, Kendra, I gave you this longing for companionship.  I want your loneliness to drive you back to me.  I want you for my own.  I want to be your lover once again. 

And I wept.  I wept with a joy that God was speaking to me, wanting me. I wept for what I had once known and wanted more than anything else.  This is what I had longed for all those months and didn’t know it.  It was a surrender to joy. 

The cross; great place of receiving

In a way, Mary’s story is unique; there is only one virgin birth.  Yet her story is replayed over and over in each of our lives as God comes present to each of us and asks to enter, to be born in us anew.  His song ever calls us to himself and only himself.  He calls us by name.  He calls us to the cross, that great place of receiving.

It is at the cross that God’s heart is bared most intimately to us. It is there I see afresh God’s love for me and it washes again and again into my thirsty soul.  It is there that he asks,  Will you let go of those things that are most precious to you?  In my case it  was, Will you release Meredith, your husband to me?  And then, Will you let me in?  As I gaze into his eyes, I find the power to let go of those things that have shut him out.  And as I let go,  I know his pleasure, his presence.  He ever calls to me,  Look to me.  Look only into my face and find your rhythm with me. 

God allures us with the promise of his intoxicating presence, his love, his peace and his joy, and when we are thirsty enough we invite him even into the dark, hidden places  of our being.  We were made to be known by God  --not generically known, but intimately known.  No man can fill the needs for intimacy in a woman’s heart  --and no friend can.  The well is too deep. 

I’ll never forget Olga, a beautiful and gifted woman who had served God faithfully for many years.  She was capable, committed, and she was burned out.  When she grasped God’s longing for her to come into vulnerable intimacy with him, a transformation took place in her relationship with him.  All this years, she said with disbelief,  I have served him as if I were his housemaid, and what he has wanted all along is a lover.  He didn’t just want my service, he wanted all of me, heart, soul and mind.  She leapt joyously into the dance.  The interesting thing is that her relationship with her husband changed as well; she became more present to him.

The Lover of our soul comes and invites us to the dance, into an intimacy that no one else can offer.  He invites us to him, not to some theological construct about him.  We’re so thirsty, but we’re afraid, too.  Some of come deeply wounded; intimacy brings only terror.  We ask…

• Is he safe?

            He is Love itself…love is patient, love is kind…it always protects, always trusts, always perseveres.  He will never force himself upon you, but waits to be invited.  We need not fear that he will violate our person or subjugate our personality.  As we learn to listen to his voice, to look into his eyes, we become more fully and uniquely the person he made us to be.   He gently woos us, sings us into being.

• What if I come and he is not there?    I stand at the door and knock...whoever hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with her.  (Revelation 3:20)      Lord, help my unbelief!

·      Will he accept me?  I’ve got to clean up first.   

 You who are thirsty, come.  You who are weary, come.

• Where will the dance take me?  As the children in the fantasy land of Narnia discovered, Aslan, the Christ figure,  is not a tame lion!  We don’t know what he’s going to ask of us, or where he will take us.  The dance may be gentle and slow. There may be times when the dance becomes wild; he may spin us faster than we had bargained for.   The point is, as our partner, he will catch us every time.  On the other side of terror is intimacy –to be known by the one who made us for himself.

• What will it cost me?   I want all of you, the Lord of the dance says to us. Abandon yourself to me.   In return I will give you an abiding peace, a self-giving love, an irrepressible joy, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s goodness, and the freedom to partner with me in the redemption of this world.  In short, I will give you myself.  I made you for the dance! 

The Spirit says,  Come!  Whoever is thirsty, let them come!  Let them take the free gift of the water of life!  Bring on the music!   Let the dance begin!


Reflective Questions:

Invitation to the Dance

How do you sense that God has been pursuing you?  What has been your response?  

 

What can you identify as the deep longings of your heart?  How might they be God's voice calling you to himself?

 

How does the notion of intimacy with God make you feel?  Do you reasonate with any of the questions expressed at the end of this talk?  Take a few minutes and express your concerns  to God.

 

 

 

Rhythms of the Dance

Has your relationship with Christ been more of a duty or a dance?  Why?

 

To which step in the dance (stepping up to Christ/receiving from him or stepping out in obedience) do you feel Jesus is calling you to attend?

 

What do you sense might be hindering you from receiving from God?  Can you identify barriers? 

 

What step of obedience is Christ calling you to take?

 

Fear and the Future

Where does your mind go when you think about your future? Sometimes we dream of vacation days by the ocean or redoing our living room or what will happen when the children are older. Some future pictures are idyllic while others plunge us into the turbulence of fear. I can say several words to you and one may open up the flood gate--such as economy, cancer, war, flying...we each have an area that ignites fear.

One wonderful thought is that about 99% of the things we fear will never happen. The second is that, as Christians, the Lord knows how to navigate us through scary times and He is equipped to give us all that we need in comfort and hope at just the right time. Maturing as a Christ-followerd means we hoe those skills that aid us in the midst of fear. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, the Lord tells us to take every thought captive and bring it under the authority of Christ. In my mind's eye, I see myself on horseback, winding up my lasso. With precision, I grab that negative scary thought and wrap it in my strong rope and bring it down. It may be wiggling about but my foot is on it. It is no longer racing around my mind--yelling and screaming out horrible things. I can drag it into the Lord's throne room and allow Him to quiet it and replace it with His truth.

The Lord is very matter-of-fact where He says that each day has enough trouble of its own. It is not a verse we decorate and place on our refrigerator--but it's a good reminder. This very day--this moment in time--has enough for us to bear. Running full steam into a future built by our imagination creates more imagined stress. We truly don't know what the future holds. This is true for our families, our health , our work...we simply do not know all that awaits us.

One exercise that helps me break away from "future" thoughts is a command found in Hebrews 12:2. We're commanded to fix our eyes on Jesus. Wow! What a privilege to stare intently at my Savior! What do I see? The one who dies for me--living and powerful--looking back with eyes of love and compassion. He is the Prince of Peace and the giver of truth.

So when you are tempted to walk down a long road marked "the future," remember that you are probably walking down a road that will never exist. God's grace is for this moment--not some dreaded event created in your mind's eye. You will not find God's grace in imagined future events. Why? There is no reality there. So many people live in the future that it seems to become their reality. Stop ignoring the "now"--step into it fully--embrace it.

What do you need in your present circumstances? Our Lord is there--willing and ready to give you whatever you need. BE ENCOURAGED!

The Word of God for the Women of God

Here at GEM we are so excited to announce our upcoming event! We will have more information here on the blog in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please stop by www.graceencouragement.org and click on events to learn more.

Exploring God’s Treasure

The WORD of God for the Women of God

Saturday, June 23rd 

9 am-12pm

Grace at Ft. Clarke, Gainesville, FL

Cost: $15--includes light breakfast and seminar materials

**Register at www.graceencouragement.org

click on “events”

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Hello to all of our Deborah's Daughters and friends! This is an exciting time in the life of the Deborah's Daughters ministry as we are joining the cyber-world with our new blog! We hope that this will be a place of restoration, information, and community for you! We will be updating weekly with devotions, testimonies, articles, photos, musings, and information to enhance your experience as a Deborah's Daughter. You can also always visit the GEM website at http://www.graceencouragement.org/  to learn more about Deborah's Daughters and what GEM is all about. And we welcome your comments and questions! May God bless our beautiful beginning as a blog...