THE NOBILITY OF LIONS - podcast -- guest Bob Regnerus

Before you listen to the podcast below, watch the video.  Note:  This video is not for the faint of heart.  But it will help if you frame it in terms of the Kingdom, and the idea that we are living in the Great Battle.

New podcast:  THE NOBILIITY OF LIONS

After you have viewed the video, listen to the podcast I did with guest Bob Regnerus [Co-host of Renegade Christian Podcast].  Bob and I share our personal stories of how God has conferred nobility upon us through word-pictures given directly to us.  Explore the lessons we're learning about the nature of our noble identity, and how we're learning to live in a Kingdom at war.

What does 'calling' have to do with your heart?

You may be wondering why a guy like me, who typically speaks about the heart, is talking about 'calling' lately. 

The first reason is that the topic of calling is part of a book I'm working on.  Second, because you can't find your calling without believing Christ has given you a good and noble heart.  Calling flows from heart.

Within your new heart lie the clues to your place in the Story - your 'calling.'  These clues come in the form of your deep desires, as well as the story your heart has been living in.   Beneath the defining events of your life, the pattern of wounds, the activities that made you come alive, something was happening in your heart - shaping it, calling it up and out.  Your heart has a unique history and a story to tell.

If you believe your heart is deceitful and selfish, it will be hard to see your deep desires and to believe that there are now good and noble desires within your new and noble heart.

That's why I write about calling.  Calling flows from heart.

Badly underestimating a life

On NPR today, a man was being interviewed who had made it his year-long quest to bake the perfect loaf of bread. 

My first thought was, "This guy has badly underestimated the cosmic drama unfolding around him."  My second thought was, "This guy has a really lackluster sense of his own personal calling."

Don't misunderstand me:  I think freshly-baked bread is one of life's true pleasures.  In fact, today I enjoyed a sandwich made with a nutty garlic and potato artisan bread:  Nourishing and hand-crafted.  But taking a year of my life to learn how to bake the perfect loaf isn't something that strikes me as urgent or enduring.  Rather, it strikes me as a bit naive. 

He has miscalculated two things:  the unfolding Story into which he has been invited; and his place in that Story.  It's much like the journalist in the movie, Saving Private Ryan, who had never seen battle before.  He's been asked to join a rescue operation.  He wants to bring his clunky and cumbersome typewriter; but the Captain, played by Tom Hanks says, "Here, take this instead" and hands him a pencil. The journalist didn't know what to take because he sorely underestimated the unfolding circumstances:  He wasn't taking another desk job  -  he was about to engage in field ops, where he would get shot at.

Surely the man who took a year of his life to pursue the perfect loaf has much more to offer the world -- a more needed and substantial treasure to give.   If our naivete persists, we might as well bring cookies and punch to flood victims; and board games to the clinically-depressed.  Surely much more is needed than that.

Why you've been selected for Special Forces

Army Special Operation Forces

"They free the oppressed...They win hearts and minds...They assure support." 
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Would you rather have a police squad or a special ops unit protect you? 

It depends upon the context, doesn't it?  Each is appropriate for different situations:  You don't need Delta Force to protect your town, your local parks, or inner cities, generally.  You do need Delta Force to locate and take-down Al-Quaeda and insurgency groups who are able to exact large-scale destruction over mass populations, or who can infiltrate high-level targets within our borders.

The kind of tactical force you need depends upon the story going on.  If you believe we're living in Lake Wobegon, you need not be concerned with the hazards of living in that story -- save for the gossip flowing from the pulpit of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. 

However, if you believe the unfolding Story that God has invited us into more accurately represents Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, or Marc Bowden's Black Hawk Down, then you'll need a different missional vehicle -- you'll need Special Forces watching your back.  God has an enemy, and therefore you do. God's enemy is never people:  his Enemy is the one who fell from heaven, and the angels that fell with him. 
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Here's the unnerving news:  you've been assigned to Special Forces.  God could use the angelic forces, and he does; but he quite specifically chooses you.  Your unique capacities and the effect of your presence there is directly related to the needs of the unit, and to the outcome of the Story.

Furthermore, each gender has been selected, and every generation as well.

What do you bring?

Podcast - CALLING SERIES - part one - "Orientation" - special guest Gary Barkalow

ORIENTATION - Calling Series - part one - special guest Gary Barkalow joins Jim.

Many Christians love Jesus, but have no idea what their place in the Story is.

How do we become oriented to our location in the Story?  Gary talks about three points of orientation that keep us "alert and oriented" to our place in the story:  story - desire - journey.  (This is part one of a 7-part series Gary and Jim will do.)

Gary Barkalow spent 7 years with the Ransomed Heart mens' team and is well-known for his teaching on calling.  Visit his site:  www.thenobleheart.com. 
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Leave your comments below!

Video - "The Power of Your Story"

QUOTES for shaping your own story

In my last post, I told you about Dan Allender's book, To Be Told -- know your story, shape your future.  Here are some great quotes from the book that I think you may find helpful:

The unique glory you offer:

What about God am I most uniquely suited to reveal to others?

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Living by the wrong scripts:

They have lived less in the light of the story of God and more by the inevitabilities of life's demands.  In other words, they allow circumstances to write their story.
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We have permission to shape our story:

We are called to co-author the ending [rest of our story] according to the themes that the primary Author has penned for us.  We are called to take up our pen and follow him.  It is the enormous humility of the sovereign Author to give us a voice in the dialogue.  And not only does he want us to write, but he cheers us on.
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Discovering your calling:

But how in the world do we know our calling?  I've seen that our calling always seems associated with the name that God gives each one of us.
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Vicarious living:

Too many people are missing their story because they're watching the stories of others.
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Your unique role:

God has ... given us a role that will reveal something about him that no one else's story can reveal in quite the same way.

Know your story - shape your future

I'm reading a great book by Dan Allender called, To Be Told -  God invites you to co-author your future.  Discover how your tradegies to this point have shaped your story and "unnamed you," sabotaging your identity.

And then learn how God wants to work with you to shape the rest of your story; so that you can live in your true and glorious name.  What does God want to say to the world through you, your unique story?

For the sake of the Story

Since all the world is but a story,
it were well for thee to buy
the more enduring story rather than
the story that is less enduring.

(The Judgement of St. Columba of Scotland)

Here's another reason it's critical to get your heart back -- your good and noble heart: your contribution to the Grand Tale depends upon it. If you see yourself primarily as a mess -- a sinful and sorry creature whom God has to graciously tolerate -- you won't be offering your true self. And your true self is exactly what is needed.

You need the resources of your transformed heart to love well, live well, and fight well. Jesus has given you his own heart -- not a heart simply like his -- but his own heart. For the sake of the Story, take it. Nourish it. Live from it. Allow God's Spirit to awaken it.

Since this unfolding Story is about the God who is always up to something new, he will choose the new creation -- that is, your transformed heart -- as the means to advance his plot.

Without either knowing your heart is now good, or choosing it today and each day, you will remain disoriented and disconnected -- to both your grand and unveiled glory, and to the world's need for you to live from your restored and super-natural heart.  Allow this new super-natural goodness to radiate outwards, transforming you with the ever-increasing life and enticing goodness Jesus enjoyed.

The Story needs you. Not simply the forgiven you. But the unveiled you.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s
glory, are being transformed into his likeness with
ever-increasing glory; which comes from the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18