#24: Break It Down!

The QSC Mission

QuadShot Coaching strives to point clients toward an active, growing relationship with Jesus Christ in every aspect of their lives.

Core Values

Scripture-based Authority: Everything I do, believe, and present as a coach comes through a Scriptural hermeneutic. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
Truth-Seeking: The coach/client relationship must be transparent, authentic, and honest for the sake of growth and forward movement. (1John 5:20)
Authentic Witness: Authenticity will draw people to Christ. (Philippians 3:12-14)
Life-Altering: QSC pushes clients to explore their comfort zones to expand outward as they grow deeper in their life purpose. (2 Timothy 1:6-7)
Humility: All ministry must be clothed in humility. (1 Peter 5:5-6)
All-Encompassing: Living a full life encompasses a whole-person approach; mental, emotional, personal, and physical transformation (Luke 10:27).
Sanctuary: QSC provides a safe place for clients to question, brainstorm, and grow. (Psalm 27:1)
Intimacy: Our relationship with Jesus is our youth ministry. (Psalm 139)
Awe-Inspired Wonder: Ministry must allow us to regularly rediscover the astonishment of the vastness of God and His infinite love for us, compel us to seek answers from His Word, and leave room for His continual work in our lives. (Philippians 3:7-16).
Creativity: QSC coaches clients to be free to discover and express their God-given creativity (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Coaching Objectives

The QSC objective is to help clients establish the following five components in their lives:

Purpose: Centering God in their lives rather than centering their lives upon themselves.
Understanding: Growing more and more like Christ, and less and less like the world.
Success: Seeing people through the eyes of God, with the heart of God, and with a desire to share God with others.
Fellowship: A time of communal growth for the Body of Christ. It can display itself in different aspects of the Christian walk.
Service: Taking what the Lord has taught us (internal) and expressing it into the lives of others (external), both believers and non-believers.

#24: Break It Down!

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”
~Ephesians 2:14-16

Hostility and strife are inherent in our flesh and within our sinful nature. We cannot have peace without the Trinity, and Jesus is that specific agent of peace for us. It is noteworthy that the text does not say that Jesus gives us peace, but that he is our peace.

When Christ came to fulfill the Law, he destroyed the judgment it holds for those who are rescued from condemnation and blessed us with the grace and peace he desires for us to have, to operate under, and to experience when we experience the Trinity.

The old has gone, the new has come… so why do we cling to the old? Commandments and regulations are a form of religiosity, just as traditions are, and when we become ‘set in our ways.’ Elsewhere (Romans 12), Paul invites us to discard these patterns in favor of becoming transformed into the new humanity created by the Trinity; willed by the Father, paid for by the Son, and made alive and maintained through the Spirit.

One body. Reconciliation. Death to hostility.

Our culture rapidly moves us away from unity, reconciliation, and peace. ‘Social’ media tends to do less by way of bringing people together and allows more platforms for us to soapbox or criticize others. We are groomed to celebrate our individuality, our ‘rights’ as Americans, and our voice to drown out all others. Our culture embraces hostility. There are times when our church culture is not unlike that culture from which the Trinity rescued us and invites us now to live apart from…

The first six words of this passage remind us there is only one way to experience freedom from hostility. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) all share accounts of when Jesus boiled down the heart of worship into easy-to-understand terms. There is no room for religiosity in the following passage (Luke’s account):

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

Dive More Deeply

OK… Who is it?

Who is the person that comes to mind when you think 'dividing wall'?

It's not a question of coincidence. We all have SOMEone with who we bear grievance. When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church to spur them on to a deeper spiritual walk, he reminded all that as New Creations, we are ministers of reconciliation. We are agents for positive change. The band Kerosene Halo has a great song about the tension of knowing and doing what is right concerning broken or disrupted relationships.

God—in His great love, because of His great love, and through His great love (*)—made the first move to reconcile us to Him, and is inviting us to do the same redemptive work.

This Week

Up to this point, much of the weekly homework has been about internal transformation; realizing your identity in Christ, opening your spiritual eyes to the unending spiritual blessings and riches God is inviting us to participate in, and the continual development of gratitude.

It's time for the rubber to meet the road a little differently.

After your morning time of reflection (Bible reading, morning intentions, etc.):

Identify the person(s) with whom you bear grievance. Perhaps it is a coworker or friend you have had a falling out with or experienced a rupture in your relationship.

IMPORTANT: I'm not asking that you dive in too deeply by naming someone who has brought severe harm, trauma, or abuse! These circumstances are delicate and require time and counsel—and possibly therapeutic assistance—to navigate successfully and without bringing further harm.

Allow yourself to name the particular acts done to you that brought enmity.

Be kind to yourself by allowing and experiencing whatever emotions you feel when you think of this person and situation.
Pray for the person, and the situation, and for wisdom to act graciously and make decisions that usher in reconciliation. At this time, interaction with the individual is not required. The idea is to invite a change to your heart.
Include Romans 12:9-21 in your daily reading. Read it when you wake up and before you go to sleep.
Allow forgiveness to become possible, even if the actions to accomplish this elude your mind.