J-Curve Session 27: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 27)
Class Description: Session 27, Chapter 27)
Chapter 27: Becoming Human Again: The Emotional Life of the J Curve
Paul’s emotions rise and fall on good or bad news. The path of Christ doesn’t lift these Christ bearers above life; it sweeps them into life’s currents, fully alive to both their exterior world and their interior response.
Class Notes:
1. P 214 For the next 250 years, thousands of martyrs would pour out their lives on the sacrifice of the church’s faith. Martyrs were the celebrities of the early church.
a. Contrast this concept with what’s going on on the bottom of p 220-221. Why would the church be so much rightly-aligned to celebrate the martyrs?
2. P 215 Read through the entire account of Phil. 2:19-30. While we read, highlight/underline the words that PM has placed for us in italics.
a. Is there anything about these emotional highs and lows that gives you pause? Have you seen them before? Have you done business with them?
b. Interesting, these men are incarnating Christ, and yet they are experiencing real and strong emotions connected to their circumstances. If they’re incarnating Christ, then we have to ask whether Jesus himself experienced these same strong emotions. Look over at p 217 second paragraph. Read and discuss this concept.
c. What role did emotions seem to play in the lives of Paul, Timothy and Epaphroditus?
3. P 216 first paragraph under The Passions of Dying and Rising.
a. How are emotions like longing and distress a real and genuine part of coming alive?
4. P 216-17 Paul’s emotions rise and fall on good or bad news. The path of Christ doesn’t lift these Christ bearers above life; it sweeps them into life’s currents, fully alive to both their exterior world and their interior response. They don’t manage their emotions; their emotions reflect their full and honest participation in Jesus’s life. Joy is not a rule. Like sadness, it reflects Paul’s grip on reality.
a. What does it mean to be fully alive to the exterior world? What does PM mean here?
b. What does it mean to be fully alive to their interior response?
c. Respond to the comment that they ‘don’t manage their emotions’. If they don’t manage their emotions, how do they avoid being ruled by them? Where’s the line?
d. Interesting here the PM says that their emotions reflect their full and honest participation in Jesus’s life! Hmmmm, so incarnating actually means that we experience distress, anger, sadness, grief? Discuss.
5. P 218 look at the seven-step tapestry. Other than the emotions described here, what word is repeated in one form or another in all but one of these 7 steps? Paul, Epaphroditus, and Timothy give us a leaving, breathing example of what Jesus looks like embodied - an entire community swept up in a symphony of love. In every sense of the word, they are both in Christ and in one another.
a. Describe how they are in Christ.
b. How are they in one another?
6. P 220 Full paragraph: The character that previously embodied...
a. How convicting is this? Why is it convicting for many of us?