The Lord's direction in our lives is a gift. In other "Is the Shepherd Speaking?" blogs, I've covered some of the many forms His guidance takes. Sometimes this gift is tied up with a bow of circumstances that align "just right,"—but that is not always the case. So how do we recognize if God is saying something through our circumstances? Can the alignment of favorable events and situations be a reliable indicator of God's heart for us? Yes – and no!

James makes it pretty clear. If you and I want to reflect godly wisdom and understanding, we must live a life marked by humility, purity, peace, consideration, submissiveness, mercy, goodness, impartiality, and sincerity.

Does this sound countercultural to you? It is! The "wisdom" of the world looks and feels nothing like God's. Instead, it is earthly, unspiritual, bitter, envious, selfishly ambitious, chaotic, and even demonic. This tone is sadly familiar in the culture these days.

In my experience, some people find a random scripture and think God spoke to them but there is no humility, peace, submissiveness in the delivery. Sometimes, they find what they want to hear to self-justify or defend themselves. Instead of cultivating inward peace, submissiveness, and mercy, they try to use what they think they've heard to correct others or make them behave differently. They miss that the real problem is their tendency to self-justify. That's why James 3 is such an important test. The "word" becomes a weapon.

In the previous blog, we looked at how you and I can learn to hear God and test what we receive. High on the list of how to discern such things is to ask ourselves, “Does this pass the Shalom Test?”

“And let the Peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body; and be thankful.” The literal translation for the word rule is “to umpire.” Just as a baseball umpire determines when a ball is in play, God’s spirit will let us know if we are operating in His Peace. If we are connecting with God and feel peaceful, then game on! However, if we have no peace, we can be sure it is a foul ball—odds are we are out of the boundaries set by God.

Over the years, I find summer is an excellent time to revisit the goals and plans set out at the beginning of the year. It helps encourage me with whatever progress I'm making and determine the necessary adjustments required in areas where I may be stuck. This summer is no different; only life seems more complicated. This year, I must take many more options and considerations before the Good Shepherd. After all, He is the One leading and guiding my way forward. If I hope to venture in the right direction, I must connect with Him and ask.

Having explained the practices, pitfalls, and perils of talking things through to find "peace," let's turn our attention to resources that can help. These materials encourage the development of healthy grace-filled, joyful, and loving attachments in small group settings. Within such spiritual communities, healthy identities are formed, and sustainable transformation is experienced. Together, followers of Jesus can practice and share God's presence, grace, love, and peace.

Followers of Jesus are in the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus. We are born into an entirely new identity from the moment we receive Him. He knows our old identity is hopelessly marred by the 4Ps and our self-created avatars. Instead of trying to fix that false identity, God gives us an entirely new identity rooted in His life and image.

The word grace was around for hundreds of years before Paul used it in his epistles. Grace is a relational term that implies an ongoing, mutual connection between people. Historically, when a person of higher stature sent a gift to another, it signified the beginning of a relationship. The gift was called a "grace" and was a sign of great favor. The person receiving the gift understood the relational intent behind the "grace." Accepting the grace meant the recipient agreed to an ongoing relationship with the giver. The grace giver considered the recipient to be someone special. Today, grace continues to mean that we are someone's favorite and very special to them.

Looking back over the previous blogs, it is clear we have been misapplying what the Bible says. In a sense, we have been creating fog around the topic.

Most small groups operating by any of these misdirected methods are a little murky about grace. They assume the methods they've been using are actually biblical. It's easy to find Bible verses to justify this approach. Examples include:

Hurt and wounding is destructive. Such experiences fester within us. That is why it is blatant stupidity to deny or try to toss away wounds by claiming they didn't happen, weren't so bad, didn't hurt, or any other method of denying the natural world. Denial exposes an "it was only a flesh wound" attitude. What happened in the natural world happened and hurt. Sometimes the pain is increased by our own misperceptions. Peace about pain and wounds comes as we lucidly look into the spiritual world. The perspective of the spiritual world cannot be imagined or invented by talking through what hurts.

Our perception of reality is skewed by all the wounds and hurts we experience — whether they result from our sin or someone else's. Throughout every life, Satan is behind some things that hurt us. What are those sins that so easily pierce us — keeping us from freedom and resilience? Instead of focusing on what is wrong and talking about what has been done to us, we must look to Jesus to find peace. Through heavenly eyes, Jesus and his cloud of witnesses can clearly see these areas of sin grow.

God sees through heaven’s eyes — an infallibly gracious perspective. Until you and I are with Him, our objective is to cultivate peace in our lives by sowing grace. That means, we abandon our need to build a case, bond over pain, or establish sin-skewed identity by talking about — or through — the ways we have been wronged.

Shortcomings of getting our peace from others

At the core of talking it through is the goal of reaching peace by having someone understand why we are upset. We want to keep talking to get our version of reality validated or justified. This often takes the form of getting my peace from the person who upset me. When talking it through does not lead to peace and feelings of being understood by the person we feel upset us, we turn to our allies to find our peace. Reaching peace through my group of allies requires discussing the details of who upset me and why.

We will talk without peace regardless of who we are telling about our upset. Our pain spreads to a new person — the listener. We keep talking until the listener shares our upset and brings us peace. Those are somewhat opposite expectations. Peace is often poorly reached. Frequently, others do not see things the way the hurt or upset person does. Even when talking it through succeeds, the peace we receive doesn't last long or withstand the next occurrence of the same problem.

Getting to know each other by talking things through is often used in Christian circles to form spiritual community. We get to know each other by discussing as many details as possible about who we are in the natural world. This works to some extent but, in most cases, the shortcomings outweigh the benefits.

It is not uncommon for people to share what is commonly called their "triggers" after sermons and interactions. People often find others they trust and share what upset them about events, services, and interpersonal exchanges — including their fears about how they might have been perceived. Doing so collects old injuries and wounds — saving them for later conversations. Imagined and potential hurts add to the list. Later, these upsetting thoughts are talked through by friends

When what people say about us — or how we are treated — does not fit who we believe we are, we feel hurt and upset. It feels as if our motives, behavior, intentions, capacities, status, or image are somehow misrepresented. In short, talking it through is our attempt to restore our image to how we want our identity seen through the eyes of others — even though most of us know that how we want to be seen is not perfectly accurate. We want to make ourselves understood on our own terms.

By Jim Wilder and Ed Khouri (Part 1 of 10 from the article, “Through the Eyes of Heaven: Does ‘Talking It Through to Find Peace’ bring Shalom?”)

Life experiences and relationships shape us. For those who follow Jesus, it matters how we look at both — with earth’s eyes (a flesh perspective) or heaven’s (God’s perspective). If you and I don't know how to shepherd our thoughts about our circumstances and interactions with others, the sense of who we are and what we need easily becomes distorted. Those who care about spiritual transformation have three big questions to answer:

When I think of all the creatures typically associated with Christmas, reindeer, elves, and animated cartoons of happy woodland animals come to mind. I even remember how much my service dog, Tucker, enjoyed opening his Christmas toys. 

Every fabric of my being resists being boxed in. That is what the artificial constraints of misguided motives and self-imposed boundaries do to us. They govern our thinking, feeling, and actions for no good reason. We all know the sound of that little voice inside us. It whispers things like, "You shouldn't feel sad. Christians should be joyful," or "what will everyone think if you do that?" or "why can't you be like everyone else and fit in?" No matter how pretty the box is, our desire to please or perform for others is toxic. Such intentions suffocate the Life of the Spirit within us. Creativity dies. When you and I give into such ideas, we sacrifice our unique identity in Christ and His leadership on the altar of fear.

It seems we need to shift a few old-fashioned leadership paradigms. Setting aside the traditional overemphasis on strategic thinking and logical action, I say we opt in favor of what is best for the relationships we touch and the relational grace they require. Sure, the old approach works to an extent, but it is like putting low-grade fuel in a Scuderia Ferrari. A valuable Formula One car is not built to run on the cheap stuff. In fact, it will ruin the engine. Running on the GRACES of leadership, will show on the track.

The G.R.A.C.E.S. of leadership are essential core values that you and I can cultivate in our lives to model and enrich grace-based attachment to God and others. If they are part of our personal lives, our leadership will reflect it too. But when gaps exist between our values and actions, problems will occur. Our values must be integrated into our life, leadership, and ministry—the core motivation for all strategy and action, from the top down.

The Jesus Way of Relationships

Following Jesus is not a linear relationship for leaders or anyone else. It is all about our relating and relationships along the way. For me, Eugene Peterson sums things up for us nicely in his book The Jesus Way:

I want to counter the common reduction of “way” to a road,

a route, a line on a map—a line that we can use to find our

way to eternal life; such reduction means the elimination of

way as a metaphor, the reduction of way to a lifeless technology.

The Way that is Jesus is not only the roads that Jesus walked in

Galilee and to Jerusalem but also the way Jesus walked on those

roads, the way he acted, felt, talked, gestured, prayed, healed,

taught and died. And the way of his resurrection. The Way that

is Jesus cannot be reduced to information or instruction. The

Way is a person whom we believe and follow as God-with-us.

—EUGENE H. PETERSON, THE JESUS WAY

For better or worse, leaders have an air about them.

Those motivated by people-pleasing or performance will exploit people. Intentionally or not, this sets up a manipulative, codependent culture. A leader like this can look so good on the outside too—but their leadership style stinks. Basing their identity on highs born from image, success metrics, control, religious rationale, and problem mitigation, such a leader treats both those they lead and those they serve as nothing more than pawns in the game. If these characteristics turn up in the life of your leadership, call a spiritual hazmat team, quick!