78: Preparation

[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. Season 1, episode 78. Today we are wrapping up our conversation inspired by Advent and the Incarnation.

Hello, Father.

[00:31] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:32] Stephanie: Merry Christmas!

[00:33] Marcus: Merry Christmas!

[00:36] Stephanie: We are in our final episode of the year. We’re going to take a break for Christmas itself. So yes, I had to say it, “Merry Christmas.”

[00:45] Marcus: Yes, for your British love: Happy Christmas.

[00:47] Stephanie: Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. It is a joy. Hey, and I want to pause and just thank everyone, all of our listeners for your support. So many of you have been with us from our very first episode, and more and more are joining us on the trail. It is a privilege to be on the journey with you. As we head into the close of this year, I want to make you aware of two things. One, coming up in January, we have a free conference, and we’re going to tell you more about that soon.

Once we get into January we’ll tell you all about it. But I wanted to put it on your radar and hype it up a little bit. This is a Freedom conference. For several years now we have provided a free online conference in January as a resource to anyone who needs it around the world. We’ve done Spiritual Warfare conferences with Neil Anderson, Karl Payne and more. Last year we had our free Resilience conference with John Eldridge, and all of these are still available to you. You can go back to them on the replays at our website.

[01:53] Marcus: They’re in the Learning Library.

[01:56] Stephanie: And yeah, we’re able to provide these free conferences and this free podcast and webinars and more because of the generosity of our donors. So number two, we are inviting you to pay it forward. If you have benefited from the Deeper Walk resources, would you prayerfully consider making Deeper Walk a part of your year end donations so we can continue in this work? You can find multiple ways to give at deeperwalk.com. Thank you so much. And one way or the other, we hope to see you at the Freedom conference in January.

All right, my father, we have been meditating on Advent and the Incarnation. Digging into forming and filling and high priest theology and our walk with God. And now we’re coming to preparation. So this concept is a two way street. Preparation isn’t one sided, all on us or all on God. There’s a relationship as we’ve been talking about. So would you bring us into this discussion?

[02:59] Marcus: So let’s start with God’s street, if you will? His preparation for us. And that’s really why we started in Genesis 1. God’s been preparing this world for a relationship with us and with him. We see this modeled over and over and over again in scripture. My mind goes to the Torah, which is the anchor and the foundation for everything else in the Bible, and the Exodus story. In fact, the way I like to teach the Book of Exodus is BC, battle and covenant are the two keywords.

The first nineteen chapters are about the battle, the next twenty chapters are about the covenant. I call it the battle for the bride. And what’s happening here is like, Pharaoh is the evil villain, and Israel is the bride to be who’s imprisoned and being abused by Pharaoh. And then the hero Yahweh comes to the rescue and rescues his bride. He defeats the villain, he rescues his bride, and then he takes her off where they’re going to go get married. But the bride doesn’t know him all that well yet.

So they spend this time in the wilderness and they go through a test, and a test, and a test, where he provides for them, and provides for them, and provides for them. And they’re getting to know him. Then by the time they get to Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai, where the wedding ceremony takes place, there’s Moses at the base of the mountain and God at the top in Israel. And it’s a wedding ceremony where Moses says, do you, Yahweh, take Israel to be your bride? And he says, Israel, do you take Yahweh to be your God, forsaking all others?

And at this point, Israel’s like, yeah, I’m all in. And God’s like, yes, this is what I want. So right there is at the heart of what the Torah is all about, this covenant connection, a covenant relationship. And that shows us what God has been preparing creation for and what he’s been preparing all this for, he wants there to be a relationship between him and his people. And so as you continue through Exodus once that covenant is beginning to be unpacked, this new covenant relationship, he builds essentially a house for them to live in, the Tabernacle.

And the way he organizes the camp is that the Tabernacle is right in the middle. It is central to life. It is portable, so it can move with them wherever they go. It can always be in the center wherever they’re at, and his glory and his presence are there. And it’s a picture and a model for the kind of walk he wants to have with us, the kind of relationship he wants to have with us. And it just builds out from there. The temple in Solomon’s days is the idea of when we have wandered from God, and we have gotten ourselves in trouble, God says, look to me, look to the temple, if you will. Ask for mercy, I will hear from the temple and I will answer.

So you get the classic Chronicles passage. “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, seek my face, turn from their wicked ways…” The whole idea there in this repentance text is God knows his people are going to mess up. He knows his people are going to fail. There’s some of us even in this holiday season, we’ve had good intentions and we’ve totally messed up. And God’s saying, you know what, though? This relationship is a mercy based relationship. And so when Jesus comes in the Incarnation, now this is a lot of theology in one quick answer. But when Jesus comes in the Incarnation, one of the names that’s given to him is hilasterion.

In Greek, it’s the mercy seat which is the seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant that is in the tabernacle in the temple. And we see this tabernacle temple theology carried over in its core to the whole incarnation of Christ, and what he came to do. And his title means mercy seat. It’s the idea of atonement cover. It’s where Christ came to make atonement for us. So that all of our mess ups, all of our screw ups, all of our good intentions gone awry, and all those times when we weren’t having good intentions, he gets it. He sees it, and he can do something about it. So he’s been preparing, and preparing, and preparing for us to experience reconciliation, and to walk in reconciliation. Reconciliation is all about the relationship. He wants a restored relationship. It’s been his plan. It’s been his purpose from the beginning. It’s been his plan throughout.

And I could expand on it because there’s like a hundred other ways the Bible talks about God’s preparation for us, his reaching out for us. And the gospel itself is explained as God’s invitation to be at peace with him, to be reconciled to him and to enter into that relational walk with him. Being filled with his spirit, guided by the scripture, and because of what Christ has done. So it just all kind of comes together when you look at what God has done in preparing, it’s all there.

[08:44] Stephanie: Prepare the way. Prepare the way.

[08:46] Marcus: There is John the Baptist.

[08:48] Stephanie: Yes.

[08:49] Marcus: Or “Crazy John” as on The Chosen.

[08:56] Stephanie: All right, so let’s look at, how do we prepare for him?

[09:00] Marcus: Before we do that, let me give you one more thing on him. I’ve been talking about theology and the Bible, and whatever in our practical everyday lives. One of the things that God does to reach out to us, to draw us, reminds me of what the Gottman Institute says when it talks about marriage, it talks about bids. In a relational setting, like, even with you and me. If you put out a “bid” that said, oh, I found this thing really fascinating, and I was like, oh, that’s nice. And if that was it, that’s all the reaction you got, that would not be satisfying. But every time that you put out a “bid”, like, oh, I just love this, or I like that. Isn’t that cool? What you’re really doing is inviting me to experience that with you. It’s a “bid” for relationship. It’s usually talked about in marriage terms, but this is any relationship, there are always “bids”.

And like, do you want to join me in this? Will you share my joy in this? And God does that with us, I think, all of the time. And there are “bids” in our lives throughout the day where God does something, and he’s waiting to see if we will pause and appreciate it, and share the moment with him and say, oh, this is really cool. Thank you, God. And one of the ways we build our relationship with God is by recognizing these “bids” he sends our way and responding to them, and pausing to experience signs of appreciation and joy in his presence.

So one of the ways that we transition to preparing ourselves, is we need to get in the mindset of learning to recognize those “bids”. Learning to recognize those things that God does in our lives that are invitations. And there are some that are just basic and happen every day, like the sunrise and the sunset. The beauty of the sky, the beauty of nature. There are things all around us all of the time where God is kind of calling us to himself, saying, hey, want to share this with me? Want to share this with me? And so we just expand from there and we build from there. And we notice the other opportunities that he gives us on a constant basis to say, hey, share some time with me. Share this moment with me. I think about my own relationship with your mother.

And honestly, the health of our relationship largely comes down to how well we respond to each other’s “bids”. Like when she’s really excited about something and I don’t respond, it hurts her. When I’m really into something and she doesn’t respond, it hurts me. So it’s that way in any kind of relationship, I think. And so it makes sense that it would be part of our relationship with God and that we have this opportunity to connect.

[11:49] Stephanie: Yeah. It just goes straight back to what we were talking about in the last episode. Walking with God and the importance of understanding that it’s not just about us striving to get to him, but that he really is entering into our lives and he does give us “bids”. It’s good for us to know how to recognize them.

[12:10] Marcus: Yeah. And then on the further extreme of that is the concept of “The Hound of Heaven.” That classic old English poem from the 1800’s that talks about that even if I’m not seeking God, it doesn’t mean he’s not coming after me. I’m talking to the people who are seeking God. But most of us have people in our lives who are not seeking him and we wonder.

But the reality is God is orchestrating things to get them into situations where they’re going to be confronted with their need. And some of the situations that look the most hopeless simply become the most dramatic when they finally do resolve. And so we are confident that God is pursuing us. He pursues us every day. And our part of it begins with learning to recognize those things that he does to pursue us. It’s also learning to recognize the obstacles that we have allowed into our lives that are keeping us from maybe even recognizing what God is doing, from even seeing and sensing that he’s there.

[13:21] Stephanie: We have to look at the lenses that we’re looking at the world through.

[13:24] Marcus: Right.

[13:25] Stephanie: Our worldview is so important. What we believe is possible is important. Our vows will get in our way.

[13:32] Marcus: You’re right. All that. And so I go back through all this, that on our end part of our preparation is pausing and taking time to quiet ourselves. To practice appreciation, to meditate on things of the Bible, the things of God. But also asking God to start showing us, where is the next obstacle between us that needs to be addressed? We can’t fix all of them all at once. Chris Coursey and I wrote a book on marriage called The Four Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages.

[14:16] Marcus:. But the key concept there is a joy gap. In any marriage there is a gap that is defined by how long has it been since you experienced joy with this person? Well, that concept of a joy gap applies to every relationship. In other words, I am going to feel more bonded with somebody the more that gap is closed. And I think even in some of our long time relationships when we aren’t connecting with them regularly, when our last connection was a joy connection, we can go back to that quickly when we connect with them. So I think in our relationship with God one of the things that helps us and one of the things that we can do to prepare, is to be aware of the joy gap that exists between us and God. Taking time to practice appreciation and interactive gratitude. We not only practice appreciation toward him, but we pause to see what thoughts are coming our way afterwards to help establish that connection with him.

[15:24] Stephanie: Beautiful. I’m trying to balance out our time for the episode here. I’m going to say right now, this is going to be our final episode of 2023. Next Monday is Christmas Day, and we are going to be practicing some rest in the Warner household. Hallelujah! And we hope you will too. Father, I’m going to give you kind of a three tiered closing thoughts here. One closing thoughts for this episode, and then closing thoughts for the Advent series as a whole, and then just some closing thoughts for 2023. So for this episode, anything more you want to say about preparation?

[16:08] Marcus: Well, the idea of preparation is important because when you go back to Joshua, and God said, tell the people to prepare themselves because tomorrow something big is going to happen. And preparing our hearts, preparing ourselves for things always involves cleansing, purifying, and getting rid of things out of our lives that don’t need to be there. And one of the big things that we do as we’re wrapping up this idea of preparing ourselves for relational connection with God and for the incarnation of God in our own lives, is asking, what is it that kind of needs cleared out? You know, what do we need to prune? What do we need to cut back? What do we need to get rid of? Because it’s clogging our connection.

So I think when we’re talking about preparation, a lot of preparation has to do with cleansing, and that has to do with getting rid of things. And also then the pouring of water, the washing, and then the resting. I think as we bring those things together you have to do some of that in order to get the kind of connection that you’re looking for with God. So that would be my wrap up for today.

That’s point one of the three point sermon you just asked for. Okay, here we go. So, point two, the wrap up to the whole series. I’m also reminded that the final Sunday of Advent, or the final candle of advent, is always joy. Like, in every tradition, it’s about joy. It’s the Christ candle and it’s connected to the idea of joy. And I’m just reminded again that sometimes we look to Christmas to give us joy. Like, please, I hope this is a happy Christmas. I hope this Christmas will fill me with joy. And the reality is that it rarely works.  It rarely works to ask for something to fill a hole in my heart.

What I need to do instead is sort of practice finding joy wherever I can find it, recognizing joy when it’s there, and practicing and sharing joy whenever possible. So what I want to do is try to find ways to insert some joy wherever I can. I find frequently that If I’m like, oh, this thing will make me happy, It rarely does. But if I’m like, I want to find a way to inject some joy into this and to share some joy, that is its own reward.

[18:44] Stephanie: Joy amplifies.

[18:46] Marcus: Joy amplifies.

[18:47] Stephanie: Yeah.

[18:47] Marcus: And so as we’re wrapping up an Advent series, I think the ultimate sign of a love bond with God that I am lovingly attached in relationship to God, is that it does produce joy. It does produce peace. And so we’re preparing ourselves for the connection because it’s the connection that brings those things.

[19:13] Stephanie: Thank you.

[19:15] Stephanie: Part three, 2023 has been quite the year. You even made a nod to your book release inadvertently, because it was actually the year that The Four Habits of Joy-Filled People came out. Huzzah! So, 2023, any thoughts as we are turning from one year to the next?

[19:38] Marcus: Well, my mind goes back to the purpose and idea of A Deeper Walk. And it started back when I had just wrapped up seven years as a pastor and I was asking myself the question, kind of in prayer,  how many people experienced a deeper walk as a result of the last seven years of ministry? And God brought names to mind of people who are having a deeper walk with God. I’m like, what about the people who didn’t? What’s different between those two groups?

And I felt like God was bringing some ideas to mind. The way that all culminated was that God desires a deeper walk with all of us, but there are obstacles that get in our way. And if we could identify what those obstacles are and give people strategies for overcoming those obstacles, then we could help more Christians have a deeper walk with God. Well, that’s the birth of the ministry.

That’s the birth of at least my branch of the ministry. Obviously, Mark Bubeck was already teaching people how to walk in freedom, and live with spiritual warfare and that kind of victory. But my journey started kind of with the idea of, what if we could help people identify what’s got them stuck? What if we could help them identify the obstacles more accurately, with greater precision? You think this is what’s in the way, but actually this is what’s in the way. So now here’s the strategy you need in order to deal with that. And if we could help people do that then they can live with greater freedom. And that freedom is removing the obstacles that keep us from a deeper walk with God. And so that’s the whole ministry, right?

That’s not just this year, that’s why we exist. It’s what all this is about. It’s what the podcast is about. Everything ultimately keeps coming back to the same idea that God loves us. He wants to be in a deep, meaningful relationship with us. And to get there we’re going to have to identify and overcome those obstacles. And Deeper Walk is here to help people do that. Let’s be precise about what that is, and let’s be precise about what the solution is in getting to that next level.

[21:47] Stephanie: Huzzah! All right, thank you Father. It has been a pleasure doing this, this year with you and everyone. Thank you so much again for listening and for being on this trail with us. We are so appreciative and we love being here with you. And Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next year. Happy Christmas!