J-Curve Classes, Chapter 23: Looking through a Resurrection Lens

Class Description: Session 23, Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Looking through a Resurrection Lens: The J Curve Transforms our Vision of Life.

What if you and I could actually learn to view the deaths we suffer through the same lens as the apostle Paul viewed them? Perspective can change everything. It can even transform anxiety into joy.

Class Notes:

1. P 186 first paragraph of the chapter. I’ve seldom been tempted to memorize a paragraph from a book that is not Scripture, but this paragraph gripped me...

a. The trials I face in my life tend to be far less dire than what Paul endured in prison, and yet the apostle tended to be far more buoyant than I am. Can you relate? What is PM pointing to as the difference? What made the difference for the apostle Paul?

b. Stare at the final sentence of the paragraph.

i. Do you experience this ‘modern commitment to anxiety?’

ii. Did you long for ‘reflexive joy’ to more a part of your own narrative as you read this?

2. P 187 consider the two paragraphs of Phil. 1:12-14 (the first being PM’s mock paragraph).

a. We can easily recognize how two different people would produce each of those paragraphs having lived through exactly the same experience.

i. What is the only difference between paragraph 1 and paragraph 2?

ii. When we’re experiencing hardship how can we train ourselves to slow down, take stock, and evaluate our perspective?

3. Pp 187-88 Here we find PM unpacking four remarkable perspectives:

a. Paul isn’t focused on himself: This is avoiding the mindset of the manager or therapist. He rejects the view of the fragile self and the victim mentality. Instead, he embodies Christ. He’s self-forgetful.

b. Paul is entirely focused on Jesus and the advancement of the gospel: Fear, self-protection, and anxiety completely suffocate in the atmosphere of Paul’s love for the Savior who bought him.

c. His imprisonment is in Christ: He’s embodying, incarnating, taking on the character of Christ, participating in the divine nature.

d. Instead of limiting the gospel, Paul’s imprisonment accelerates it: He rejoices in the fact that people are seeing Jesus!

In the midst of his own dying, he’s on the lookout for resurrections. But it’s not a ‘happy lens.’ He hunts for resurrection-like activity because he experiences the Spirit bringing life out of death. Paul’s location in Christ’s dying and rising shapes how he views his chains cutting into his wrists and ankles. He looks at the dying (chains) through the lens of resurrection (the gospel going out even more). Dying no longer has the last word.

i. Can we pause long enough to concede what a radical way of thinking this is?

ii. Let’s be candid, how much do you and I actually want to learn how to view suffering through this lens? If we want it, why do we want it?

4. P 189 top. If you don’t view your circumstances through a resurrection lens... (they) can bend your soul to the pain.

a. Interact w. that statement. Where do we land when we refuse this lens?

5. P 189 halfway down “Nik Ripkin” Read paragraph and look at Colossians 1:24.

a. Does Dimitri’s story fill up Colossians 1:24 a bit for us? How so?

b. What do you think might have been going through Dimitri’s mind when the other prisoners began singing?

6. P 191 1stparagraph under ‘Seeing Resurrection in the Middle of Death’

a. PM discusses viewing hardship through a resurrection lens as a conscious choice - one that Matt can make as he sits next to his ex-wife.

i. Clearly the Holy Spirit has to be involved if any of us are to make a conscious choice like that, but to what extent is this a skill that can be learned and cultivated?

ii. How much of an uptick in the quality of life would it be for any of us learn to exercise this kind of perspective. What do we have to gain?