Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive
Chapter 11
The Way of the Heart: Fellowships of the Heart
Part Four: The Way of the Heart
Key Quote: If all of this is true (and it is true), there are some deep and urgent implications. Many of those have probably begun to occur to you already. But there are two I must unveil.
You might remember that the first Christians were called “followers of the Way” (Acts 9:2; 18:25-26). They had found the Way of Life and had given themselves over to it. They lived together, ate together, fought together, celebrated together. They were intimate allies; it was a fellowship of the heart. How wonderful it would be if we could find the same. How dangerous it will be if we do not.
Finally, let me ask you a question: How would you live differently if you believed your heart was the treasure of the kingdom? Because we are at war, the business of guarding the heart is a most serious business indeed. It is precisely because we do not know what the next turn of the page will bring that we nourish our hearts now, knowing at least this much: we will need our whole hearts for whatever is coming next. Above all else, you must care for your heart. For without your heart…well, have a look around. (Pages 183-184)
???—What is Eldredge getting at with these comments???
Fellowships of the Heart
Key Verse: All the believers were one in heart. -- Luke the Physician (Acts 4:32)
Pages 185-186 recount Elrond’s calling of Frodo and the “nine” members of the fellowship of the ring from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings.” In the end, the final two are chosen on the basis of friendship rather than wisdom.
WE HAPPY FEW
Once more, lend a mythic eye to your situation. Let your heart ponder this: You awake to find yourself in the midst of a great and terrible war. It is, in fact, our most desperate hour. Your King and dearest Friend calls you forth. Awake, come fully alive, your good heart set free and blazing for him and for those yet to be rescued. You have a glory that is needed. You are given a quest, a mission that will take you deep into the heart of the kingdom of darkness, to break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron so that your people might be set free from their bleak prisons. He asks that you heal them. Of course you will face many dangers; you will be hunted.
Would you try to do this alone?
Something stronger than fate has chosen you. Evil will hunt you. And so a fellowship must protect you. ….You must cling to those [friends] you have; you must search wide and far for those you do not yet have. You must not go alone. From the beginning, right there in Eden, the Enemy’s strategy has relied upon a simple aim: divide and conquer. Get them isolated, and take them out. [Next Eldredge recounts other bands of friends-teams who have worked together to conquer—Neo and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar from the Matrix; Dorothy and her friends in the Wizard of Oz; Prince Caspian and the Narnians; Maximus and the other gladiators; Captain John Miller and his team of eight to save Private Ryan] And, of course, Jesus had the Twelve. This is written so deeply on our hearts: You must not go alone. The Scriptures are full of such warnings, but until we see our desperate situation, we hear it as an optional religious assembly for an hour on Sunday mornings. (Emphasis added) (Pages 186-188).
???—Who do you see as your “team” your friends for facing the battle? Do you see the situation as so desperate that you have moved beyond the “optional religious assembly for an hour on Sunday mornings”? If so, how did you come to this understanding?
Think again of Frodo or Neo or Caspian or Jesus. Imagine you are surrounded by a small company of friends who know you well (characters, to be sure, but they love you, and you have come to love them). They understand that we all are at war, know that the purposes of God are to bring a man or a woman fully alive, and are living by sheer necessity and joy in the Four Streams. They fight for you, and you for them. Imagine you could have a little fellowship of the heart. Would you want it if it were available? (Pg. 188)
???—Would you?
THIS IS AVAILABLE
The story of Leigh is presented next—her gift of dance, her leaving it behind because of attacks of the Enemy. Her renewal of the pursuit because of friends—real friends who battled the Enemy with and for her. At the close of the story, Eldredge writes: “I could fill a book with stories like that one, involving each member of our fellowship and the way we live in the Four Streams on behalf of one another. It’s really quite normal, as ordinary as sending out for Chinese food or chatting on the phone.
???—Do you have a story of friends standing up to the Enemy for you, so that you could pursue a God-given goal, gift, or ministry?
IT MUST BE SMALL
When he left Rivendell, Frodo didn’t head out with a thousand Elves. He had eight companions. Jesus didn’t march around backed by hundreds of followers, either. He had twelve men—knuckleheads, every last one of them, but they were a band of brothers. This is the way of the kingdom of God. Though we are part of a great company, we are meant to live in little platoons. The little companies we form must be small enough for each of the members to know one another as friends and allies. Is it possible for five thousand people who gather for an hour on a Sunday morning to really and truly know each other? Okay, how about five hundred? One hundred and eight? It can’t be done. They can’t possibly be intimate allies. It can be inspiring and encouraging to celebrate with a big ol’ crowd of people, but who will fight for your heart? Who will fight for your heart? (Pages 190-191)
???—What is Eldredge’s point hear about the size of a “band of allies,” and why a Sunday morning worship service can’t be that band of allies?
How can we offer the stream of Counseling to one another unless we actually know one another, now one another’s stories? Counseling became a hired relationship between two people primarily because we couldn’t find it anywhere else; we haven’t formed the sort of small fellowships that would all the stream to flow quite naturally…..And what about warfare? Would you feel comfortable turning to the person in the pew next to you and, as you pass the offering plate, asking him to bind a demon that is sitting on your head? Where will you find the Four Streams? The Four Streams are something we learn, and grow into, and offer one another, within a small fellowship. We hear each other’s stories. We discover each other’s glories. We learn to walk with God together. We pray for each other’s healing. We cover each other’s back. This small core fellowship is the essential ingredient for the Christian life. Jesus modeled it for us for a reason. (Page 191)
???—Why do you suppose we Christians, have avoided living as Jesus modeled life for us—in small fellowships?
Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it’s how we’ve come to think of it…..Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term…not at all. Certainly the body of Christ is a vast throng, millions of people around the globe. But when Scripture talks about church, it means community. The little fellowships of the heart that are outposts of the kingdom. A shared life. They worship together, eat together, pray for one another, go on quests together. They hang out in each other’s homes. When Peter was sprung from prison, “he went to the house of Mary the mother of John” where the church had gathered to pray for his release (Acts 12:12) … “We have stopped short of being an organization; we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel a kind of respect for one another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary. A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray for ever other member, individually and by name.” The preceding is the wisdom of Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles into Communist countries for decades. It’s the model, frankly, of the church in nearly every country but the U.S. Now, I’m not suggesting you not do whatever it is you do on Sunday mornings. I’m simply helping you accept reality—whatever else you do, you must have a small fellowship to walk with you and fight with you and bandage your wounds. Remember, the path is narrow, and few find it. Few means “small in number” as opposed to, say, massive. This is essential. This is what the Scriptures urge us to do. First. Foremost. Not as an addition to Sunday. Before anything else. (Pages 192-193)
???—What is the most important statement/truth in the above paragraph? Why? How would you need to change in order for this to become part of your reality?
IT MUST BE INTIMATE
Of course small groups have become a part of the programming that most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are short-lived. There are two reasons: First, you can’t just throw a random group of people together for a twelve-week study of some kind and expect them to become intimate allies. The sort of devotion we want and need takes place within a shared life….I love this description of the early church: “All the believers were one in heart” (Acts 4:32). A camaraderie was being expressed there, a bond, an esprit de corps. It means they all loved the same thing, they all wanted the same thing, and they were bonded together to find it, come hell or high water. And hell or high water will come, friends, and this will be the test of whether or not your band will make it: if you are one in heart. Judas betrayed the brothers because his heart was never really with them….My goodness—churches split over the size of the parking lot or what instruments to use during worship. Most churches are not “one in heart.” Second, most small groups are anything but redemptive powerhouses, because, while the wineskin might be the right size, they don’t have the right wine. You can do some study till you are blue in the face, and it won’t heal the broken hearted or set the captives free. We come; we learn; we leave. It is not enough. Those hearts remain buried, broken, untouched, unknown. It is the Way of the Heart and the Four Streams that turns a small fellowship into a redemptive community. It is knowing that you are at war, that God has chosen you and evil is hunting you, and so a fellowship like Frodo’s must protect you. How many small groups have been a part of where what we did for Leigh is what happens all the time?
???—Consider the two reasons why small groups are for the most part “short-lived.” Has this been your experience of small groups? If not, what has made the group last?
Eldredge concludes this section by sharing how his group took the time to describe their life situations to one another, and then to have comments from one another. This was transformational, and he says can only happen when we have intimate allies.
IT WILL BE MESSY
“The family is…like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy.” G.K. Chesterton could have been talking about a little fellowship (our true family, because it is the family of God). It is a royal mess. I will not whitewash this. It is disruptive. Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known, and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger…. We have experienced incredible disappointments in our fellowship. We have, every last one of us, hurt one another. Sometimes deeply…. Seriously now—how often have you seen this sort of intimate community work? It is rare. Because it is hard, and it is fiercely opposed. The Enemy hates this sort of thing; he knows how powerful it can be, for God and his kingdom. For our hearts. It is devastating to him. Remember divide and conquer. Most churches survive because everyone keeps a polite distance from the others. …. We have settled for safety in numbers—a comfortable, anonymous distance. An army that keeps meeting for briefings, but never breaks into platoons and goes to war. (Pages 197-198).
???—What are the advantages/disadvantages of seriously sharing life together as followers of Jesus, and of not doing so?
However, there are two things you now have that you didn’t have before, and they enable this sort of fellowship to work. First, you know that the heart is good. That is the missing key in most fellowships. Your heart is good, and the other’s hearts are good. This makes is so much easier to trust and to forgive…. Second, we know that we are at war. The thought that says, Oh, brother, here goes Frank again. Why can’t he just drop it about his mother? What is it with these people? They’re not really my friends. I’m outta here.” That’s the Enemy. You must remember that the Enemy is always trying to pull everyone else to do to you what he is doing to you. (Pages 198-199)
???—How does knowing these two things make a fellowship more likely to work?
FIGHT FOR IT
A true community is something you’ll have to fight for. You’ll have to fight to get one, and you’ll have to fight to keep it afloat. But you fight for it as you bail out a life raft during a storm at sea. You want this thing to work. You need this thing to work. You can’t ditch it and jump back on the cruise ship. This is the church; this is all you love. Without it, you’ll go down. Or back to captivity. This is the reason those small house fellowships thrive in other countries: they need each other. There are no other options. (Pages 199-200)
???—How does most of our life experience in the church work against establishing small, intimate fellowships of the heart?
Suddenly all those one another’s in Scripture make sense. Love one another. Bear one another’s burdens. Forgive one another. Acts of kindness become deep and meaningful because we know we are at war. Knowing full well that we all are facing battles of our own, we give one another the benefit of the doubt…. We check in regularly with one another, not out of paranoia (“Do you still like me?”) but out of a desire to watch over one another’s heart. (Page 200)
???—How do the “one another’s” in Scripture make more sense if you are part of a fellowship of the heart?
…community can not survive without solitude. There is a rhythm to life together, as Bonhoeffer said. We first go to God, alone, so that we have something to bring back to the community. This is part of lifestyle warfare. I know my community needs me; everyone is coming over tonight. So I’d better bet with God this afternoon. I want to contribute. I want to play a vital role (Pages 200-201)
???—How does solitude and time in community work itself out in your life?
THE TIME HAS COME AGAIN
It’s the little platoons that change the world. This has always been true. Eldredge summarizes the movement in Ireland based in Iona, and also the early church – which had fellowships of the heart at the center, and brought life to the dead institutions around them. He concludes with these words: God is calling together little communities of the heart, to fight for one another and for the hearts of those who have not yet been set free. That camaraderie, that intimacy, that incredible impact by a few stouthearted souls—that is available. It is the Christian life as Jesus gave it to us. It is completely normal. (Pages 202-203)
???—How do you respond to this last challenge to us from Eldredge about “communities of the heart” as Jesus’ “normal” model?