Becoming Mature

Poatina Morning tea devotion given today

Had a really pretty special time in South Africa…we have been invested in S Africa for 3 years now and the task this time was to leave this team at a point where they didn’t need someone from the outside to be there. We did a 2 week training block, now they are having this week off and then 4 weeks with Claire B and Steffi . Their job is to stand with them and support them. They’ve got Kids Clubs running strongly. Want to get daytrips on a regular footing and to have a team structure in place.

We met with lawyers while we were there and are close to be a Public Benevolent organization. Grant submissions already written. It’s hard for us in Australia to understand. There are parts where you’d swear you were in Australia – beautiful coastline. And then 400 metres away there is a bunch of shacks where it is not safe to walk – even in the daytime if you’re white. Every house has multiple locks. Every school is surrounded by razor wire. The challenges are different to ours. And it was important for me to understand that.

I’ve been tracking through Ephesians in devotions. Picking up where we left off – last time we talked about how God gives us all gifts and then it says why he give us gifts: “To equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

Then there is a picture of what maturity looks like:

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

I’ve been thinking about maturity while in South Africa. We started by looking at Nehemiah as a framework to preparing the team to respond to the real needs of SA. They are a young team. Derrick a remarkable person, the leader with skill and experience. Has talks about a festival where he”got it’. He said, I went and grabbed your dad and asked him to explain me what was going on. That conversation meant that from that point on he knew he wasn’t about running festivals but was about changing community. From that point he was committed. There are many warm supporters of the work but Derrick has remained steady through because he had a picture of what he was aiming for.

The book of Nehemiah has a picture of maturity. There’s a link between how we manage emotions and maturity. When an infant is upset it just cries. And that is an appropriate response. The human baby has no other way of coping with life other than letting others know. The mother starts with a baby completely dependent on her and her job is not finished until they are no longer dependent. Maturity doesn’t mean you don’t experience emotion. Nehemiah was deeply depressed by what was happening but didn’t actually speak to the King at that time. He managed his emotions until he had an appropriate response to the king. It’s ok to be emotional. One of my favourite psalms is Ps 77 –“ It’s not fair God – all the evil people flourish! But he concludes, “If I had spoken thus I would have betrayed a generation”. If I’d just let my negativity out, I would have damaged people. A sign of maturity is to know what is, and what is not, going to be appropriate in a moment.

You can come at life like an infant and let everyone know when you’re upset – you can control people by your emotions. As we grow up we all get hurt in different ways by different circumstances. When Dan was a little boy a dog jumped up on him and for a while he was scared of every dog. He wasn’t seeing the dog in front of him then, but the one that originally jumped on him. So you can live life through a rear vision mirror. Emotional responses to what’s happened in your history, thinking it’s the present is not helping toward maturity. And we have to do the work to discover the appropriate response in this moment. If you’re living in the past, changing the external reality won’t fix the internal experience. It’s not wrong to feel fear when your life is under threat, but it’s an inappropriate response when your life is not under threat.

Part of the journey toward maturity is separating what is an appropriate response to this moment and what is my history drawing me away to another story.

A mature and independent response is being able to respond to what is happening in this moment, appropriately. But Paul says more… He says, it’s about God being included in this reality, saying, “God What are you doing?”

I think sometimes we have a selfish approach to faith. We say, “Come to faith and you get to go to heaven; Come to faith and life will be ok and less painful.”

Nothing I see in Nehemiah suggests that coming to God makes life less painful and that is our experience. But there is an assumption that Jesus is there and from him the whole body is joined and held together and grows together in love. There is a plan, there is a head. I think we’re in a good phase in the life of Fusion and Poatina as we move into the future.

I’ve had to face things in my leadership when I have encouraged people to be too dependent on me. The job is to help people to get to the point where they don’t need you. So it was interesting in SA, having that as a very clear goal. We did training in Transactional Analysis where you look at your history and see what the stuff is that holds you back and means you have inappropriate response. We did training on Self Management and setting goals. We talked about group life and did trust games. In Fusion, the value is “we” have the mind of Christ, not one of us. And that’s not simple. Working with people is infuriating. Scott Peck says: Some want to blame everyone else for everything –that’s a character disorder. Others want to blame themselves for everything, and that’s a neurotic disorder. A massive over simplification but useful.

The disciples a ragtag bunch but they did the work to be able to have fellowship and Jesus said, “By this people will know you are my disciples, that you love one another”. It’s much easier to write people off, but you can’t do that and have a life of faith. Jesus gives no justification for that at all. He keeps boundaries firm and firmly makes the link between God’s Glory and us being one, as love.

We finished out training in S A by working through a consensus decisision about whether to tithe their money or not. (Consensus means working to a point where everyone reaches the point of trusting the group. It’s possible to reach a consensus decision and it not be God’s will. But I love that we try. In SA there is a very strong parental culture so giving people space is not so normal. I was left with much more hope when I flew out of SA than I had when I arrived. They need our prayer. Some from many difficult backgrounds. They are mainly coloured and that is the group that feels they are not being seen in the society. But they are ready to take on SA. Many would love to visit Poatina. They know they are part of Fusion. They are standing with Stella…she has cancer.

There’s a little black township at Molweni and two want to go back and work there. The young crew there are a very special group. One is a world record holder in the Paralympians. She’s going to be the team secretary in Athlone. Pray for Claire and Steffi. Drug use there is more common than in W subs of Sydney. When you have no hope, it’s the escape. They need our prayers.

There is a leadership that says you need me to get it right. Another says, you need God. Ultimately the key to becoming interdependent is to trust that there is a God. Because of Jesus there is a life that you can trust that isn’t another person. Ultimately every other human being will let you down. The more we trust him, the more we have fellowship with one another.

As a movement and village have work to do to have real fellowship and to face the historical stuff that means I’m not responding to this moment but to my history. We need to be able to separate these. As you separate the precious from the worthless…Jeremiah, says. Never bend the truth. Keep the boundaries in the right places.