Discovering Our True Identity Through God's Story

But we can begin to try to know our true story right now today and we're going to spend a few moments doing that. I want to look at this idea of the three stories through remarkable words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I had a conversation on a previous video you may have seen or you could take a look at it with Michael Wear where he talks about how he's been inspired by Bonhoeffer. [00:01:00]

When Bonhoeffer chose his field of theology, it came as a surprise to the family. They were not a churchgoing family. A friend of his said that he entered into Theology and only after that learned to become a Christian, to move from theology as an academic exercise to spiritual life as a lived experience, and crisis played a huge role in that because of what was happening in his country, Germany. [00:03:02]

Bonhoeffer knew that God could not tolerate that and he couldn't either. He went to study in the US for a while. He lived in New York. He actually attended African-American churches in Harlem, and the songs that came out of the African-American experience became a very important part of Bonhoeffer's spiritual life. He ultimately decided that he needed to go back to Germany and struggle with, for, and suffer along with his people and along with Jewish people. [00:03:36]

He led this underground seminary where he wrote a book, "Life Together," where he amazingly brought together great wisdom about spiritual formation, a way of life together largely from monastic communities in the Catholic church with a very robust Evangelical, in the best sense of the word, theology, and wrote his famous book about discipleship, "The Cost of Discipleship," with that haunting sentence made more haunting by his life: when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. [00:04:03]

But maybe his journal entries and letters that were saved and eventually retrieved from the concentration camp are some of his most remarkable words. Not long before he died, Bonhoeffer wrote a poem. It has a very different and much more haunting quality than what you find in "Life Together" or his works on discipleship or ethics. Here we see his struggling to come to grips with his own story. [00:04:42]

Who am I? They often tell me I step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from his country house. Who am I? They often tell me I used to speak to my warders freely and friendly and clearly as though it were mine to command. Who am I? They also tell me I bore the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win. [00:05:14]

Am I then really that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I myself know of myself, restless, longing, and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, flowers, the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, neighborliness, tossing in expectations of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary, empty at praying. [00:06:01]

Who am I? This or the other one? Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once, a hypocrite before others and before myself, a contemptible weakling? Or is something within me like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God. [00:06:46]

Very often it takes a crisis before we're willing to look hard to see reality. Think of the prodigal son, and as long as there's wine, women, and song, he's okay, but it's not till he's starving at the pig trough that he comes to himself, and it's like the scales fall from his eyes. Somebody's getting ready to end my life; it has a way of focusing my attention. [00:07:47]

The invitation is not to wait for the crisis to look at the truth of my story and to let go of, for a moment, the story that I'm trying to get you to think that's true of me or even the story that I want, and just say, God, you know, would you tell me, would you reveal to me what is the meaning of my life? Where am I on wrong paths? [00:08:20]

I want to invite you to pray an ancient prayer Bonhoeffer himself used to pray. This is from Psalm 139. Just take a moment right now to remember God is here, God is present. You can close your eyes if that would be a help to you, and in these words, search me, God, and know my heart, my deepest desires, what it is that I really long for. [00:08:51]

Lead me in the way everlasting. Help my story, God, to be fitted into your story. I know there are many parts of the script that I do not get to write. I'm not Bonhoeffer. I'm not in a camp. I'm just me. Would you lead me today, God? Would you help my story to align with whatever it is that you're doing? [00:10:32]