Dangerous Prayers (Week 2) - Break Me - Audio
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We're continuing our serious, dangerous prayers today, it's week two. And today the prayer is, "Break me, God, so you can fix me. Break me." We call this first dangerous because we serve a God who is not tame, who's not just easy sailing. God takes us on an adventure. That's why when C.S. Lewis wrote the line in the wardrobe and a lot of his works are stories of their adventures because that's what the life of faith, that's what a spiritual life is. It's an adventure, it's a journey, but it's not a safe or easy journey. But none of the good ones are, right? And so at the beginning of a line of which in the wardrobe, Little Lucy is talking to Mr. Beaver, and we read this about Aslan, that is God, the Aslan's the lion who represents God in the story, Aslan is the lion, the lion, the great lion, ooh, oh sorry, Susan, said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion, safe," said Mr. Beaver, who said anything about safe, of course he isn't safe, but he's good, he's the king, I tell you. And these prayers are dangerous because they're beckoning us into a life that is authentic, that is real, and that bears powerful fruit, that changes our experience, that gives us a quality and a joy that we can't have, unless we take dangerous steps. The legend has it that the great master of tea ceremonies in Japan in the 1500s, San Norikyu, was, he was traveling through Japan and he stopped and he was held at a very wealthy man's home, and the wealthy man had recently purchased a tea bowl that was of extraordinary value, it was made of the finest materials, it was beautiful, and in Japan I don't know if you know, but in Japan everything's done subtly, right, so he wouldn't, he wouldn't welcome him into the home and be like, "Hey, check out my new bowl, it doesn't do that," and instead he just has the bowl on display, and so if San Norikyu sees it, he might make a comment like that is a beautiful piece of work, and all the other people who are sitting at the table during the tea ceremony are just, they can't take their eyes off this beautiful tea bowl, but not the tea master, San Norikyu, instead he's distracted, it looks like, by a waving branch that's outside, and the tea ceremony ends, the tea master leaves, and the owner of the home is just devastated, he's angry, and so he takes this incredibly valuable tea bowl, and he smashes it on the floor, and he runs out of the room and then retires for the night. Well some of his people that lived with him were artisans, and they were distressed because they had spent all this money on this beautiful bowl, and now it was made out of wonderful things, and so what they did is they were like, "Well we've got to figure something out," and they had learned how to paint Nihong'a as the style of painting with precious minerals, and minerals were mixed together into paste, and into paints, and so they had a mixture that was sort of like glue, and it was made primarily out of pure gold, and so what they did is they took all of the shards of this broken tea bowl, and they mended the bowl using the gold paste, and so it ended up looking something like what you see on the screen, and the idea was that if you're going to have something valuable and you lose it, instead of just forgetting it and moving on and being over it, instead there might be value in salvaging it. The legend has it that send the Reiki again came through the village, and he again had tea with the wealthy man, and sitting in the corner of the home was this broken now repaired vessel, and send Nihong'a as he's pouring the tea, he stops, and he looks at this now repaired, obviously previously broken bowl and says, "What fine craftsmanship?"
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Coast Bible Church, PastorTom Bennett, San Juan Capistrano, CA, www.coastbible.org