09/05/2026
Here are our notes from this past Thursday's Bible get together.
Some excerpts from Michael Yaconelli's book " Messy Spirituality",
a book I highly recommend reading.
It takes our walk with Jesus and shows honestly how day by day we grow and the steps we take getting there, with an honest grace filled look at growing in faith.
The myth of fixing ourselves
For a period of time we were lucky enough to have a cleaner. She would come in once a week to dust, vacuum and clean every little out-of-the-way corner of our house. I dreaded the day the cleaner came, because my wife and I would spend all morning cleaning the house for the cleaner! We didn't want the house to be dirty, or what would the cleaner think!
We act the same way with God. We talk our way out of the spiritual life by refusing to come to God as we are. Instead, we decide to wait until we are ready to come to God as we aren't. We decide that the way we lived yesterday, last week or last year makes us 'damaged' goods, and that until we start living 'right' we're not 'God material'. Some of us actually believe that until we choose the correct way to live, we aren't choose-able; until we clean up the mess, Jesus won't have anything to do with us. The opposite is true. Until we admit we are a mess Jesus won't have anything to do with us. Once we admit how
Lost in my thoughts, I was sitting in a hotel ballroom with fifteen hundred college students participating in a college weekend faith conference. On the last day of the conference, with classes starting the following Monday, the students made it clear they wanted to prolong the conference as long as possible. They wanted to party, to dance the afternoon away, to celebrate the Lord of the dance - to resist going back into the busyness and demands of college life. The morning general session turned into a spontaneous celebration. Young men and women raised their hands, stood on chairs, shouted, cried and laughed, and suddenly a conga line broke out. Within seconds hundreds of students were weaving in and out of the room in long, raucous lines, praising their God.
An older man with cerebral palsy sat in a motorised wheelchair, watching while everyone else partied. (He wasn't a student. Technically he wasn't even supposed to be at the conference.) I was seated next to him, watching the students celebrate, when suddenly the wheelchair
'Cross the hills to God knows where —
They never came returnin'.
'Cross the hills to God knows where
The piper pranced, a-leadin'
Each child in Hamlin Town but me,
And I stayed home unheedin'.
My papa says that I was blest
For if that music found me,
I'd be witch-cast like all the rest.
This town grows old around me.
I cannot say I did not hear
That sound so haunting hollow —
I heard, I heard, I heard it clear. . .
I was afraid to follow.14
Pity the one who stayed. Cry a tear for the one who heard and was afraid to follow. Mourn for the one who didn't heed, the one who let the town grow old around him. Pity all of us who are surrounded by those who are afraid to follow the 'sad stranger', the one who came to get us all 'dancin', spinnin' and turnin'.'
But those of us who have heard the haunting sound of Jesus' voice, those of us who sense life and hope and adventure in the gospel, those of us who are willing to speak up, to question the deadness around us, to express our desire for life — we must not keep quiet even if everyone around us tells us we are crazy.
And the crowd will call you crazy. And the masses will try to silence you.
Lisa (not her real name) decided to try out for the track athletics team in her rural high school. Her school had so few students that anyone who had a go at a sport got a place in the team. Aspiration rather than ability determined who would make the team.
Through sheer desire Lisa became the anchor runner on the girls' 1,500-metre relay team. Because her school boasted the only girls' 1,500 relay team in its small league, Lisa and her running mates received an invitation to represent their league in the section finals. Everyone knew they had no chance to beat the more talented, experienced teams, yet before the race Lisa continually flashed a brilliant smile as if she were relaxed and enjoying herself.
Puzzled, a friend of mine asked Lisa why she was so calm. 'I love the relay!' she said. 'We're not very fast. I'm always the last one to finish, so when I come down the stretch the people in the stands cheer for me.'
Sure enough, during the final Lisa's team lagged far behind. As Lisa rounded the final turn, running hard for the finish line, everyone else had already left the track . . . but her smile lit up the course. The crowd was on its feet cheering as Lisa crossed the finish line.
'See,' Lisa later told my friend,'we always get a standing ovation, and we're last. I love it.'
Lisa's my hero.
She has rejected the values of a culture that worships winning. She refuses to listen to those who say 'second is just the first to lose'. Lisa has decided that last can be as good as first. In her unknown corner of the world, she triumphs over those who would call her a 'loser'.
I am reminded of a small group of'losers' who stood by the cross while Jesus died. Just a few days earlier thousands had cheered Jesus. Next thing you know, he's dying and alone, and a few of his friends decide they will stick with Jesus as he dies. I am also reminded of a list of
unimpressive unknowns' in Romans chapter 16 (except that they were impressive). Listen to Paul's description of their heroic smallness:
• Phoebe: a servant of the church
• Priscilla and Aquila: church meets in their house
• Mary, Tryphena and Tryphosa, Persis: women who worked hard
• Andronicus and Junias: been in prison with me
Godly people,'tested and approved in Christ', doing the tiny things Paul depended on for his survival. The Church was growing, spreading, adding thousands to its rolls every day, and yet Paul takes time to affirm and thank the people who had not forgotten him.
Sue: the woman whose silence silenced the anger
A group of us were at a spiritual retreat when an innocent late-night discussion exploded into a toxic disagreement that escalated into an extremely angry argument. Provoked and frustrated, we all went to bed upset. The next morning we requested help from one of our spiritual directors, Sue, who graciously agreed to mediate the situation. Early in the afternoon we gathered in a small room and started unravelling the events of the night before. As the discussion went on, the tension in the room escalated and ugly words shot back and forth. Anger again filled the room. Meanwhile our spiritual director remained silent, making no attempt whatsoever to mediate. What was the matter with her? Why wasn't she intervening? Our discomfort increased, until our director's silence became so loud we stopped arguing. One by one we looked up to see Sue silently sobbing, her eyes
reddened, her face distorted with anguish at our pain.
Without saying a word, our spiritual director broke through the anger in the room, silenced our shouting, connected with the deep cause of our bickering and put us on the road to reconciliation. Even though Sue did not understand the complicated, dysfunctional relationships among the members of our group, God used her silence and her tears to begin a process of healing.
What does messy spirituality look like?
This may sound shocking to some, but spirituality is a home for those who don't have life figured out, who don't know the Bible as well as they could, and who don't have their spiritual lives all together. . . the rest of us, who thought there wasn't a 'rest of us', Christians who are trying to follow Jesus the best we can.
A couple of years ago my wife and I sat across the table from a woman we highly respected, a deeply spiritual lady who had profoundly impacted our lives. This woman spent most of her life resisting the noise and activity of the world to seek God in silence and
Two of many couples who are facing mid-life crisis, empty nest syndromes and haunting questions of'is this all there is?' These couples are besieged with doubts about Christianity. (Again, in their previous church experiences they were reminded repeatedly that spiritual people don't
solitude. She had spent literally hundreds of weeks in silent retreat. This was a woman saturated with her faith. You could almost smell God when she came into the room.
We were talking about prayer. 'It's embarrassing to be sitting with you,' I blurted. 'You spend days, weeks, even months in prayer. I'm lucky if I spend ten minutes in prayer. Compared to you, I'm not very spiritual, I'm afraid.'
Her eyes caught mine, flashing with anger, and she fired back,'Oh, Mike, knock it off. First of all, you don't spend every day with me. You don't know me at all. You are comparing what you know about yourself to what you don't know about me. Secondly, I battle depression daily and it has won during several periods of my life. I never told you about it. I don't have a family, I like to be alone and silent. Trust me, I am just as "un" spiritual as you are.'
Then she said gently,'I take it you think about God all the time, right?'
'Well, sort of,' I said.
'Thinking about God is being with God. Being with God is spirituality. Thinking about God is praying. So shut up with this guilt stuff; you have been praying most of your life! You are a spiritual person!'
What?? I've been praying most of my life? What was she talking about? How could anyone accuse me of praying all the time when I didn't pray all the time? How could anyone accuse me of being spiritual when I wasn't spiritual?
I had no idea spirituality came in unlimited shapes and sizes.
Spirituality looks like whatever you and I look like when we're thinking about Jesus, when we are trying to find Jesus, when we are trying to figure out what real Christianity looks like in the real world. There is no room for pretending in the spiritual life,
MICHAEL YACONELLI MESSY SPIRITUALITY
