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June 16 - A Wide Open Heart · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  Well, good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever time you are tuning in and listening
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  with us today on the episode.
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  Welcome back to the Daily Ripples podcast.
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  I am Pastor Mike, and I'll be flying solo today and for perhaps the next couple of days
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  trying to fill in some of the gaps in our recording and production schedule here.
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  But don't worry, because in a few days, we will be back with myself and Corey and a special guest co-host as well.
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  And so just look forward to that.
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  But in the meantime, it's just going to be us today.
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  So hopefully you are ready to dig in.
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  Today is June the 16th, and our entry for today, our Daily Ripples devotional, is titled A Wide Open Heart.
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  The Stone.
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  Growth requires openness.
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  When my mind is closed, I limit what I can receive.
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  When I remain open, new understanding becomes possible.
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  Ripple 1. Practical.
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  Today I will listen without quick judgment.
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  I will stay open to ideas, perspectives, and experiences that differ from my own.
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  Openness does not mean abandoning truth but allowing room to learn and grow.
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  Ripple 2. Spiritual.
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  As I seek the Father with sincerity,
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  the Holy Spirit meets me where I am and leads me to where I need to grow.
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  Following Christ, I discover that God's invitation is not narrow or distant, but wide and welcoming.
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  Over time, openness deepens my faith, opens my heart, and connects me more fully to others.
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  And as always, we will save our prayer for the end.
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  So this morning, since it's just us sitting here together,
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  I thought that I would start with a confession this morning, and it's one that might surprise
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  some people because, you know, I'm a pastor and all, and the assumption is that I've always
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  been this, you know, open and welcoming and easygoing kind of guy, you know, when it comes
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  to faith and other people.
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  But no, that's not who I always was, because when I came into the Rooms of Recovery, well,
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  let me back up a little bit.
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  Before I came into the Rooms of Recovery, maybe this was back around 2010, I was an active
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  but I was also, and I've probably talked about this a little bit on the show, I was also an active
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  atheist. Now, you may wonder, well, what is an active atheist? And I don't just mean that I
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  didn't believe in a higher power or God or the Christian faith or anything. I mean, I was a guy
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  at work who liked to argue about it. I would corner, you know, the Christians and ask them,
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  hey, you know, where's your evidence? You know, where's your proof? You know, I thought that I was
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  smarter than all of them and all of it. And in my mind was, you know, well, or my mind was,
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  I'll be honest, you know, slammed shut. You know, it was locked and bolted from the inside. And
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  there was a lot of good reasons for that. Well, maybe not good reasons, but there were a lot of
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  reasons for that based upon my childhood and my upbringing in a overly, you know, religious home,
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  I would say. But there was this coworker. And I've talked about this before, but I think it
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  probably bears repeating, but this coworker asked me one simple question. And she said,
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  what makes you so smart that you know more about this than the billions of other people throughout
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  history? And, you know, I didn't have a good answer for that one. For the first time in a long time,
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  you know, I didn't have a comeback. I didn't have a witty response. But that question, that one
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  little question, now it didn't, you know, convert me on the spot. It wasn't like the clouds opened
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  dove descended. There was holy strings and music playing in the background. And it was a
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  kind of moment. No, no, no, no, no. It wasn't any of that. But what it did was it cracked the door
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  just a little bit, created an opening where there had never been one for probably the past
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  at least 15 years before that. And that's what really this entry is talking about too,
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  because it says in the stone that growth requires openness. When my mind is closed, I limit what I
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  can receive. And here's the thing that we have to be careful about because the Ripple One makes this
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  distinction, and I think that it's important. It says that openness does not mean abandoning truth,
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  but it means allowing room to learn and grow. And there's a big difference in that because,
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  Sometimes people can hear, be open-minded, and they think that means that you can't have any convictions, that you have to be wishy-washy about everything, that you can't actually believe anything is true.
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  But that's not what this is saying.
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  That's not it at all.
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  Being open-minded doesn't mean that your brain falls out.
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  It just means that I'm not so defensive, I'm not so locked up that I miss what God might be trying to show me through another person,
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  or through another experience or through a perspective that's different from my own.
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  And I was thinking about there's a line in the book as Bill sees it. And Bill Wilson is talking
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  about the realm of the spirit. And he says that it's broad and it's roomy and it's all-inclusive,
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  never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. That broad and roomy language,
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  I love that because the spiritual life is not this narrow little hallway that you've got to
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  squeeze through, you know, it's wide. And that lines up with how I've come to understand the
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  gospel too, because the ripple too says God's invitation is not narrow or distant, but wide
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  and welcoming. Now, the invitation is wide and welcoming. And I know that Jesus says that,
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  you know, the way is the straight and the narrow path, you know, that, and even when he's talking
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  about, you know, a rich man, that it'd be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
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  for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven. That being said, he also says that,
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  you know, with human beings, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And that
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  brings me right back to God's love, God's invitation that is not narrow or distant,
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  but very wide and welcoming. So, backing up, I got a little bit of, huh, moment when someone asked
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  me why I thought I was smarter than billions of other people. And that turned into, and it took a
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  while, but that next year, I guess this was around 2011, I found a church. It was a place where my
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  journey of faith and recovery really began. My journey of faith really began before my journey
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  of recovery did. It was a church that it made the news, but not the kind of news that churches usually
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  make. I'm thinking of the old, you know, around that time, what was it, Westboro Baptist or
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  something like that, whoever those, you know, cultish, extremely conservative, you know,
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  anti-everybody churches was. Well, this church that I found was the complete opposite of that.
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  They had opened their doors and let the Muslim community next door use their building for prayers
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  while that community's own facility was being built. And the pastor there had built a real
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  friendship across that line. But here's the thing, and I didn't even know that it was a Methodist church
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  when I walked into it. I just knew it was the kind of place where that kind of thing happened,
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  where the heart was wide open. And that openness, that wideness, that's the thing that drew an angry,
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  locked up atheist, alcoholic in off the streets. Well, in July, I'll be taking on a new appointment
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  as a pastor now. So fast forward all the way to today and through recovery, through conviction,
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  conversion, whatever you want to call it, I'm fully a United Methodist at this point. And so
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  But in the United Methodist Church, you know, we every July, at least in this state, in this area, is a new appointment season.
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  Well, I'm taking on a new appointment in July.
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  I'll be keeping my current role out in Braden, Tennessee.
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  But I have a second church in East Memphis, and it shares a parking lot with a Jewish synagogue.
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  And I'll tell you what one of my first goals is, is to go and find the rabbi, to introduce myself, and start to build a relationship with him.
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  Not because I'm trying to water down what I believe in, because at this point, I know exactly what I believe.
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  but because an open heart is how faith actually grows. It's how connection happens.
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  There's this passage in Romans 15, 7, where Paul says,
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  Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
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  Accept one another just as Christ accepted you. And you know, I got to thinking about that.
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  Because when did my higher power, Jesus Christ, accept me?
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  Well, it wasn't after I got my act together.
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  It wasn't after I had all the right answers and all the right beliefs.
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  No, he accepted me when I was that angry and locked up and arguing with everybody,
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  and that acceptance came first.
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  You know, the openness came first.
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  And in fact, it wasn't even me that created the openness in me, I don't believe.
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  Because here in our Methodist tradition, we believe in something that we call pervenient
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  grace, which is the grace of God that goes before us, reaching out to us, trying to get
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  our attention and call us home.
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  And God's pervenient grace on that day, all those years ago, worked through a coworker.
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  And any growth that I experienced came after that.
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  See, that conviction, that calling, you might say, that pervenient grace led me to a renewed
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  confession and acceptance of my faith and my belief in Christ. And I knew that God forgave me
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  for all the time that I strayed away. And we in the Methodist tradition call that justifying grace.
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  That's the grace of God that forgives us when we go wrong. And then the sanctifying grace,
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  that's the third part of our Wesleyan heritage, that that's the grace of God that continues to
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  grow strength, endurance, faith, and hope in me as I continue to follow along in this life of faith.
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  There's this passage in the book of Isaiah in the 55th chapter.
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  My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
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  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.
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  And that's a humbling word.
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  It reminds me that I don't have it all figured out.
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  The God that I'm seeking is bigger than my understanding of him.
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  It's bigger than Corey's understanding of him.
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  bigger than anybody's understanding of him. And if God is bigger than our understanding,
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  if that's true, if God is that much higher and wider and bigger than any little box I could
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  create, then staying open to growth is not a weakness. It's just being honest about the size
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  of who I'm dealing with. It's a critical component of another aspect we talk about a lot in the rooms
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  of recovery, and that is humility. So today, here's the practical piece. Today, I'm going to
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  be sure to listen without quick judgment. When somebody comes to me with a perspective that I
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  don't share, my first job isn't to argue. My first job is just to listen, to be a listening ear,
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  to stay curious, to leave room for what God may be trying to teach me, show me, or lead me to in the
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  midst of even uncomfortable conversations, because the Holy Spirit meets me where I am and leads me to
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  where I need to grow. And that phrasing is a line from the senior pastor at Heart Song Church when
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  I first went there back in 2011. He said, Jesus meets us where we are and leads us to where we need
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  to grow. And I can't get led anywhere if I'm standing there with my arms crossed and my mind
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  locked shut with a couple of padlocks and chains around it. Over time, the entry says, openness
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  deepens my faith and opens my heart and connects me more fully to others. And that's definitely
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  been true in my life because the most closed off version of me was also the loneliest version of me.
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  And the more open my heart's become, the more connected that I am, the more connected I am to
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  God, to the people He keeps putting into my path, to my family, to my friends, to everyone around me.
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  It's only with God as my helper that I'm able to move forward in faith and be of service to Him and to others today.
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  So let me close us out with today's prayer.
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  Father, give me an open heart and mind.
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  Through Your Spirit, guide me into deeper truth and help me walk in the grace and understanding shown through Your Son.
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  Amen.
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  And thanks, everybody, for spending a little bit of your day with me.
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  And we will see you back here tomorrow.