WHOLEHEARTED LIVING

Reading through the scriptures, it seems that the Gospel’s concern is not first and foremost about life after death, but instead it is on life before death. Following Jesus is about learning to be, in practice, who we truly are. 

In the creation story found at the beginning of the scriptures, the author describes the first human beings, living in paradise, by telling us they were naked and they knew no shame. They were so at peace with their Creator, with themselves, and with each other that they could be completely exposed and totally vulnerable and feel absolutely no shame. Unfortunately the story takes a sharp turn when these first humans buy into the lie that God was holding out on them. In the story, the lie opens their eyes to their nakedness and they hide. 

The thing about these stories is that we are meant find ourselves in them. This story is our story too, isn’t it? We know all about hiding.  

Dallas Willard once said that growing up is really just a matter of learning to control your face. For the most part kids aren’t very good at controlling their face muscles. If you want to know what they are thinking or feeling, just look at their face. They haven’t learned how to hide what is going on inside, but tragically, they will learn, won’t they? They will be hurt, betrayed, misunderstood. They will experience rejection and abandonment. They will be praised for their accomplishments and ridiculed for their failures, and as a result they will learn to hide.  

We know all about hiding. 

In light of this, we want to take up Jesus' invitation to what we call wholehearted living. The most concise definition of what we understand wholehearted living to be is simply life as an open book. It’s a life lived with nothing to fear, nothing to hide, nothing to prove, and everything to offer.  

We do this through a life rhythm of looking up, looking in, turning toward and reaching out. 

Looking Up—nothing to fear

Wholehearted living springs from grounding ourselves in God’s unwavering love and acceptance. There’s a lot of talk about the importance of loving yourself—we are all for that, but in our experience we aren’t very good at it. We tend to be way too hard on ourselves and/or sometimes we aren’t hard enough. The most foundational practice for a follower of Jesus is to regularly reorient ourselves around the truth of who Jesus reveals God to be, and who this God says we are.  

This helps to inform what our weekly gatherings are all about. It’s a time for us to all come together and attune ourselves to the truest thing we know—God is good and we are loved.  

At the same time, we want to be a community that encourages and helps to inform a practice of LOOKING UP on a daily basis. It doesn’t take long for us to become distracted and disoriented and so we need more than a weekly check in. In the Gospel of John, Jesus invites us to abide in him and to abide in the love God has for us. The word here means, "to dwell in” or,  "to make our home in.” Can you imagine how different our lives would be if we could learn to live from a place of love and acceptance? Yeah, that would be something wouldn’t it?  

At Emmaus Church, we are convinced that committing to intentional spiritual practices is one of the primary ways we partner with the Spirit of God to make the truth of the Gospel more and more real in our lives. We want to come along side of you in your commitment to take on a more contemplative and rhythm-ed life with God through practices such as Scripture reading, prayer, fasting, and intentional community to name a few. 

Looking In—nothing to hide

LOOKING UP and LOOKING IN really go hand in hand. Once we ground ourselves in God’s unwavering love and acceptance, we find that we are then able to turn our attention inwards and bring to light all of the various places we haven’t allowed God’s grace to go deep enough. The scriptures tell us that God’s grace is meant to lead us toward repentance; toward change. We are convinced that one of the healthiest things we can do is be honest with ourselves about ourselves, and one of the unhealthiest things we can do is believe our own b.s.  

We want to be the kind of community that encourages healthy self-awareness through practices of introspection, confession, and story telling.  

Turning Toward—nothing to prove

Think for a moment how a regular practice of LOOKING UP and LOOKING IN would begin to influence the way we interact with one another. That would be pretty great, right? One of the fruits of living from a place of acceptance by God and honesty with ourselves is that we enter into relationships knowing we have nothing to prove. Our shared life is one of the primary ways the Spirit of God continues to work in us, and it also is one of the primary ways we demonstrate to the watching world a new way to be human. 

All of this fleshes itself out practically at Emmaus Church through Life Groups. In a Life Group we commit to intentional relationships that are centered on vulnerability, compassion, and truth telling.  

Reaching Out—everything to offer

Wholehearted Living ultimately leads to waking up to the fact that we have something to offer the world. Ephesians 2:10 says that we have been handcrafted to participate with God in shaping the world into the kind of place God intends it to be.  

We want to be the kind of community that encourages and challenges you to leverage your life and everything about it for good because here’s the truth...you really do have so much to give. Your abilities, your passions, your successes, your failures, your strengths and your weakness are not yours to sit on, but they are yours to offer up as a gift to the world around you.