20: Kingdom Worldview: Sacred Romance

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail Podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Wow! Episode 20! We are continuing today with a look at one of the three pillars of the kingdom worldview: Sacred Romance.

Hello, Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:33] Stephanie: I have an important question. Be warned, for many, there is a wrong answer. The BBC 1995 Pride and Prejudice or the 2005 Pride and Prejudice?

[00:46] Marcus: I’ll be honest. I like the 2005 one better, but the nice thing about the earlier one is you can just live in their world longer, and so you get a little bit more attached to the characters.

[01:02] Stephanie: Okay, acceptable.

[01:04] Stephanie: I have to choose the BBC 1995, hands down. But I do appreciate all that the 2005 was able to accomplish within the length of a feature film.

[01:13] Marcus: I loved the music in the 2005.

[01:17] Stephanie: Definitely,that’s good study music. I love it. I think it was super well done. I shouldn’t even bring up Pride and Prejudice and zombies. This is going too far. All right, so …

[01:31] Marcus: Okay, here we go.

[01:32] Stephanie: Now that I’ve sown some controversy, I bring up Jane Austen’s famous love story because we’re talking about sacred romance, and this romance is in the context of kingdom worldview. So in Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie Bennet starts off with a very poor view of a certain Mr. Darcy. She has a horrible first impression of him and immediately writes him off as cold, aloof, and arrogant. Then she meets the charming Mr. Wickham, who spins horrible tales about Mr. Darcy, making Lizzie believe Darcy is the very last man she would ever marry. Meanwhile, Mr. Darcy is falling more and more in love with Lizzie. By the end of the story, Lizzy is able to enter Mr. Darcy’s world and see him as he truly is and not as his enemies would have her believe. She falls completely in love with him, and they, of course, live happily ever after. I give this crash course summary of Pride and Prejudice to ask a more serious question. How, Father, is God like Mr. Darcy?

[02:31] Marcus: Yes. That is where we start the chapter on sacred romance in Toward a Deeper Walk. One of my favorite book titles is called The Hidden Rift with God. The idea is that a lot of us, even as Christians, have something that we hold against God that keeps us from being as intimate with him as we would otherwise. A lot of times, because we’re trying to be good Christians, we are in denial about it. That’s why it’s a hidden rift. We sort of don’t even admit it to ourselves that it’s really there.

I’m thinking about a person I met who has a story very much like this with God. As she had grown up in the church, she decided that the last thing in the world she was interested in was Christianity. So she went into New Age and got heavily into a very occult sort of spirituality. Then God spoke to her one day and she was like, “Okay, God, who are you?” And then she said, “Please don’t tell me you’re Jesus.” She had already made up her mind that the last person she could ever trust, or ever love, was the God of Christianity, because she’d been wounded in the church and had these negative experiences.

I think that’s a little bit like Lizzie Bennett. She had made up her mind about Darcy, that he was the last person that she could ever love, the last person that she would ever want to spend her life with, but it was because she was believing lies about him. And Wickham plays the devil character perfectly – the angel of light who comes across as somebody we would really like and want to hang out with.  But he has an agenda, and that agenda is simply to keep us away from that sacred romance with Christ.

There are a lot of parallels here. The good news was that when this lady did hear from God, he did reveal himself as Jesus. And today she is actually leading a Christian ministry,  and has a wonderful ministry introducing other people to that sacred romance.

[04:46] Stephanie: Huzzah!

The idea of living with and being in a loving relationship with God is called by many “abiding in Christ.” A pastor we greatly respect, Dr. Joseph Sohn, calls it “union with Christ”. We’ve talked about that a little bit. John Eldridge calls it the “sacred romance” and that’s what you’ve chosen to go with in your teaching. I love all those angles.

The best way of understanding love, short of experiencing it yourself, I think, is not through a list of facts, but rather through story. Another story I grew up with you telling, which you heard Dr. Sohn retell, and I think you’ve read it in other books as well, which I think was also originally told by Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.

[05:32] Marcus: Absolutely.

[05:33] Stephanie: It’s called “The King Who Loved a Humble Maiden.” Could you give a quick retelling of that?

[05:37] Marcus: Certainly. Let me give you a little Kierkegaard first, because he was the one who wrote the story. Part of what was going on in the background was that Kierkegaard lived in a time when Christianity was a state religion. He just despised the lack of authenticity in that religion, and the fact that people had lost the sacred romance, and were just going through the ritual, just going through the motions. So he told several stories about this, and one of them was “The King Who Loved a Humble Maiden.”

I’m going to give my own spin on it to make that story fit the purposes here. There’s a young man who is the king of a small country, and he knows that he could essentially make any woman that he wanted to be his wife. Nobody was going to tell him no. So he wanted to marry for love. He wanted this to be reciprocal. There have been a lot of movies based off of this kind of theme of somebody who disguises themselves, goes undercover and tries to win someone.

In fact, there’s a famous story about Henry VIII where he did this, and it backfired. He thought he was going to disguise himself and woo the maiden, but she was completely repulsed by him. So he ended up pulling rank and making her marry him anyway. Thankfully, that is not our Jesus.

So, back to the story, the king does go undercover. I like to tell the story like this:

He comes to a town, and he meets the young lady, and he realizes that this is the one, and there’s something about her. So he’s looking for excuses to spend more time with her, he realizes their family needs carpentry work done. So he comes back the next day with the tools of a carpenter, and sure enough, gets hired by the family to do some work there.

At first, she’s just rolling her eyes at him and doesn’t trust him. There are some walls there. Eventually, she begins to notice that he’s not like other young men, that there’s something about him – he has  a very different bearing, a very different character. She finds herself looking for excuses to figure him out. So they’re hanging out, spending time together, she’s bringing him lemonade on their breaks. Before you know it, they’re taking walks together and they’re spending more time together. Kind of like Lizzie Bennett, she finds herself falling in love with somebody that she had originally not had any interest in.

Meanwhile, her parents are not happy with this young man. They have a conversation where the parents say to her, “We don’t know anything about him. We don’t know his family, we don’t know where he’s from. The only thing we know for sure is that he’s poor.” Which, of course, is not true. He overhears her saying to her parents, “I don’t care if he’s poor. I love him. If he asks me, I’m going to marry him.” Well, that’s his cue.

So he leaves and he comes back, and word begins to spread that the king is coming to visit their town. Everybody’s decorating and getting things cleaned up. Sure enough, the king comes in his royal carriage, and to everyone’s surprise, it’s the carpenter who steps out of the carriage, now in his royal robes, and everybody kneels.

Now, a lot of people who weren’t thinking highly of him are now kneeling before him. He walks over to her and lifts her to her feet, and then he kneels and says,”Will you marry me? I needed to know that you loved me for who I am.”

I think that most fairy tales and most of these classic, almost archetypal stories are anchored in the gospel. They are anchored in the gospel reality that is reflected in a lot of these stories. The gospel truth is that Jesus came into the world as one of us with nothing to really set him apart or commend him other than his own character and his own deeds, and to offer himself to us.

The reality is that the young lady could have rejected the king. She could have taken offense. She could have done a lot of things. But the idea of the sacred romance is that we are responding to God, in a sense, emptying himself and becoming one of us and becoming a servant for only one reason.

[10:32] Stephanie: Yes. He loves us. He’s so gentle. He does not want to wield his power over us and make us do things.

[10:40] Marcus: I often tell people, one thing God will never do is make somebody love him. He can blow up obstacles that are getting in the way. But love isn’t love if it is forced. If I can give you a magic potion in your drink that makes you fall in love with me…

[10:59] Stephanie: It’s not love.

[11:00] Marcus: It’s not love, right?

[11:03] Stephanie: I wish our listeners could see the twinkle in your eye as you tell the story I love. Anyway, maybe sometime we’ll get visual.

[11:19] Marcus: It’s a great story. Who doesn’t want to be loved and to know that somebody went to all that length for them? I think that I grew up knowing God loved me, but at an emotional level, to say God loves you was a little bit like saying the sky is blue. Well, of course that’s true, I know that’s true. But there’s a difference between knowing that and taking time to enjoy a blue sky, taking time to enjoy the contours of the sky and to really enjoy that.

Part of what we’re talking about with the sacred romance is moving beyond the theological statement, “God is love” or “God loves you,” and into the experience.  What are the obstacles that are getting in the way of me really enjoying that love and experiencing it at a deeper level.

I found it interesting that the apostle Paul, in Ephesians three, when he talks about knowing how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is, he talks about the need for power. He goes, “I pray that you will have the power to know.” Why do we need power to know something?

I think it’s because we have an adversary that’s actively working to keep us from that kind of knowledge, that kind of experience. And so it does take power, because there are obstacles that are going to need to be torn down, and there are experiences that are going to need to be pursued. That’s what we’re looking at with sacred romance.

[12:54] Stephanie: How epic is that? The sacred romance we are invited to joy, to enjoy. Wow.

[13:03] Marcus: That’s right. Joy is a good word.

[13:06] Stephanie: I was thinking about joy. The sacred romance we are invited to enjoy is rooted in grace. Let’s talk about that.

[13:15] Marcus: Joy and grace are actually anchored in the same Greek word. I think one is the feminine and one is neuter. I always forget which one’s which, so I’d have to look it up.

The idea here is that part of joy in relationship is knowing that we’re special to somebody, and the idea of grace is that I am special to God, unrelated to my performance. That’s kind of the key concept here. For most of us, we are trying to earn love, or we’re trying to perform in a way that is good enough to be accepted. The idea of grace is that God’s taking care of all of the performance stuff. He’s taking care of all of that so that we can just begin the relationship. And as we go further in the relationship, we begin to change like we would in any relationship.

The more time I spend with somebody, the more bonded we become, the more it begins to change me a little bit, for the better or for the worse. So in this case, we’re looking at experiencing the joy that comes from knowing that I am special to God, and that I am special to him independent of my performance, which is super important, because the time we need God’s grace the most is when we fail.

If I’m doing everything right and the only time I feel happy to see God or believe that God is happy to see me is when I have performed well and I’m on top of everything, then when I need him most, in some ways, I don’t have access to him because I have believed this lie. I’ve got a bad worldview, a worldview that is not rooted in grace, but in law. That’s why grace is so important.

[15:09] Stephanie: Let’s keep talking. I don’t want to end our time together without talking more about how Jesus Christ died so we could experience intimacy with God. Let’s talk about that.

[15:22] Marcus: Yes. Jesus is God made flesh. Why did God become flesh? I go back to John 1:14, “The word became flesh.” So just unpacking John a little bit here: Why call him the word, because it sounds a little abstract. “The word” is this abstract thing, it’s an idea, it’s  theological.

When you look in the Old Testament, where do we see the word of God? We basically see the word of God in two contexts. One is in creation. The word of God speaks and things are created. The other is prophecy. The word of God came to Elijah, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. So we have both of these contexts.

I find it interesting that John says that the word was life, (creation), and the word was light, (prophecy). The word became flesh so that we could experience life and we could experience light. And I think that light is largely about our worldview. Getting our worldview in sync with the kingdom of God.

Jesus came because he loved us and wanted us. We understand now that our abiding in Christ is going to increase life, and it’s going to increase light. Our wisdom should grow and our experience of life should grow. That’s why Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly”. Sacred romance is that we get the beauty of a relationship with Jesus and get to know him better. Then out of that comes these two wonderful things of life and light.

[17:08] Stephanie: I just want to talk about the Holy Spirit now.

[17:11] Marcus: Sure, let’s do that.

[17:15] Stephanie: Whenever we talk about Christ dying, I always want to immediately say, “and then he rose and sent the Holy Spirit.” And this isn’t all just grounded in history, true history, but it is a continued relationship, a continued walking with God. Can you talk about that?

[17:36] Marcus: Yes, we talked about in the F.I.S.H. Series, this idea that we die with Christ, we’re raised with Christ, we’re born of the Spirit, and we’re brought into a heart-focused community, a heart focused family, if you will. And we see the same things here, that Christ died for us, he was raised for us, and he gave us the Holy Spirit.

I love the fact that the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ in Romans chapter eight, where it says, “If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he doesn’t belong to God.” It’s not an intellectual thing, it is an experience that comes through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

That’s why it’s a relationship. That’s why we experience the sacred romance through a relational connection. Our relational connection at this point comes primarily through the Holy Spirit because he is the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us. The way Christ dwells in our heart by faith is through the Holy Spirit.

I think sometimes when we talk about the Holy Spirit, people focus almost exclusively on power, the Holy Spirit’s power to do miracles, to heal people, to give words of prophecy and things like that. But there’s also this sense of the Holy Spirit giving us wisdom, especially as we have to make decisions in life. Probably even deeper than those two things is that the Holy Spirit is how God pours out his love into our hearts.

Romans five says that God pours out his spirit into our hearts because he loves us. And that’s how we begin to experience that love. We have to train ourselves and learn along the way how to better connect to the Spirit’s voice in our hearts and the Spirit’s presence. It’s a big part of how we experience the love of God.

[19:25] Stephanie: Indeed. Thank you.

Next episode, we’ll be looking at the second pillar of a kingdom worldview, Sovereign Lordship. For now, any final thoughts?

[19:37] Marcus: Well, you can see why this sacred romance is the anchor. Recently I heard the song about God’s reckless love, how he knocks down walls and comes pursuing us. I love at the end of Psalm 23 this idea that goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. I’ll unpack that a little bit.

Goodness is this Hebrew word, tov. It’s such a rich word because it goes all the way back to Genesis and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that God wants what is good for us. And then there is the (Hebrew) word for love which is actually the word hesed, or mercy is his hesed. It’s this idea that we belong to God and therefore his heart for us is good, at least this idea that “God is for us who can be against us?” This idea that these things don’t just follow us, they are pursuing us is probably a better translation of that Hebrew word.

The sacred romance plays out like that. We have a God who initiates relationship with us, who pursues relationship with us. We are the ones who tend to want him to just fix our lives and make it easier. But he is less interested in fixing our lives and making it easier than he is in meeting us in whatever we’re going through and deepening our walk with him. Hence the name of the organization.

[20:54] Stephanie: So good. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us on the trail today. If you want to keep going deeper with us in your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk Podcast and share with your friends. You can find more at our website, deeperwalk.com

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.