Restoring the Shack | Episode 1 | An Invitation | William Paul Young | Stephan Blinn

my name is paul young and i'm the author of the shack i want to invite you on an adventure with me and with the book a lot of you have read it you have questions some of you have just heard about it and you have questions this is a book that allows us to explore relationship with the father son and holy spirit questions that we have about hurt and loss and grief questions about wonder and beauty and joy what does it mean to live a life of faith what do we do about death why do tragic things happen to us these are the questions that we want to explore and i would love you to come with me this is an invitation [Music] in the course of this series you're going to learn a lot about me you're going to learn a lot about mckenzie and the characters in the shack but i promise to be honest with you about my history the good and the bad and the ugly i wrote a little book for my kids for christmas the shack who knew i didn't my family didn't nobody did and it became a centerpiece for a massive conversation let me say this i think we are on the cusp of a reformation not just a revival where we're trying to put life into old systems and institutions but a massive change in the way we think as a human race we have to find a way forward and i think it's centered right in the relationship of the father son and the holy spirit [Music] the shack and most of my writing is trying to reinterpret theologians so that what they're saying is accessible to the rest of us three of the major themes you're going to hear repeatedly is that god is good all the time the god is good all the time and we're going to hear that god is a relational being and therefore we who are made in the image of god relationship is at the center of our transformation we're designed to be relational beings and this god who is good is involved in our relationships and in the details of our lives the third of these themes is that the one matters this is something that is unique i think in the landscape of religious ideas that the one matters you remember those three parables there's a woman who is seeking a coin it's her coin and she's lost it inside the house and she searches until she finds it and then throws this huge celebration all the language about the light that she lights it's all language that is used for the holy spirit and then the next parable is about the shepherd who goes searching for the one he leaves the 99 and goes looks for the one the shepherd is jesus and then it talks about the father the father who waits for the son to return and also the invitation to the religious older brother to come and join the celebration a father who's not interested in someone's confession but runs down the road to embrace and in that story it's the religious person who has the hardest time accepting the full-on frivolous relentless careless grace of god [Music] this is a god who pursues every single human being who climbs into our world and ignites the things that matter to us so that we can participate so that we can become fully human and fully alive [Music] i often get asked how autobiographical is the shack i don't think a writer can write much fiction without putting themselves in it but i'm writing a book a story for my kids and i'm wrapping up my history in it i had a writer from nashville who sent me an email shortly after the shack came out and she said you know i don't know anything about you nobody did i have no clue who you are but my sense is that missy represents something murdered in you as a child and mckenzie he's you as an adult trying to figure out how to wrap himself around this loss she nailed it i'm mackenzie i'm missy and that's another story i want to read you something out of the forward it comes early on in the book mack has been married to nan for just more than 33 mostly happy years he says she saved his life and paid a high price to do it for some reason beyond understanding she seems to love him now more than ever even though i get the sense that he hurt her something fierce in the early years i suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing and i know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside story is powerful we know that we can feel it i think we have an affinity for story because every single human being is a story you don't just have one you are one i think that's why jesus loved parables because they were stories you would remember them and parables are true even though they're fiction even jokes are stories especially if they've got a great twist in them this guy gets to heaven peter who seems to be the guard of the pearly gates comes over to talk to him the guy says what do i do peter do i just like walk in peter says well it depends it depends on something he said oh yeah so what does it depend on well it depends on how many points you have well how many points do i need well you need a hundred the guy thinks a hundred okay he said well for the last 15 years i've been saturday nights you know down at the soup kitchen helping out and working with the poor peter goes oh yeah i'll totally give you a point for that a point he says oh yeah totally worth a point he says well i was a i was a pastor for 35 years i mean i married people but i preached and i and i buried people and peter goes i don't know it's 35 years okay i'll give you a point for that now the guy's a little worried it's like that's sort of my whole life i've got two points just then he spots another fella from the same town as him nice guy he has a little coffee shop downtown he's a cne christian you know comes to church on christmas and easter and the guy walks right past them and in through the pearly gates and he says peter are you telling me that that guy he's got a hundred points and peter says ah nah he just doesn't play this game you see we love story and a story like that kind of pushes the point past our as c.s lewis would call them are watchful dragons a parable has a way of climbing into our hearts in a way that sometimes somebody telling us face-to-face data and information and theology and doctrine just doesn't do we have this inclination toward certainty and i think that's why we like religion more than we like relationships we think that doubt and questions are somehow wrong relationship is full of mystery those of us who grew up in the church like i did we knew it was about relationship but we were actually then given doctrine and theology and we knew there had to be more there had to be more than just a list of things to do and not do this is the value of story we no longer consider someone as a category believer or unbeliever all of us are moving in terms of our relationship with god with ourselves with our families with our community with our enemies and when we enter into the story of another human being or the story of god's activity even in our own lives we enter something grander something more elegant something that we've been longing for this is about relationship this is about story relationship is at the center of everything it's estimated in in this world right now that 75 of the entire population of the human race have experienced either direct betrayal loss trauma or accidental loss trauma and almost all of our losses center around relationship god is a relational being why does that matter it means that god has never been alone and we're made in the image of god and that means we have never been alone in fact loneliness as opposed to solitude which is a very positive thing that's taking a break to begin to think about our world ourselves our family others solitude has a place it's a place of rest it's a place of recharging a place of enlightenment in the sense that the holy spirit teaches us in the quiet that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about loneliness the sense that nobody cares and that nobody thinks that i matter loneliness that i am alone the truth is you've never been alone god has never been alone god has never done anything alone this is the beauty of the trinity that there is a relationship that has always existed between three and none of them has ever been alone but none of them has ever been diminished or absorbed either that's the beauty this is a great dance of mutuality and we're made in the image and nature and likeness of god and we're not alone the first not good that you will read in scripture is that adam believed he was alone he'd never been alone he wasn't created alone he was surrounded inside the love of the father son and holy spirit but that's the first not good and anything that is not good cannot originate in god so one of the greatest lies that we have to deal with is that we're alone my whole life because of shame because of the things that i've been through it drove me toward isolation even in the modern world right now we've begun to understand that addiction is empowered by isolation it's within community that in a person becomes a person this is why the idea of a community of faith or a community of family a community of race a community of ethnic culture those things matter to us family matters to us friendship matters to us it matters deeply because we are relational beings made in the image of a god who is a relational being we don't think there's anything deeper about the character and nature of god than relationship [Music] i had a big man come and slip me a note at one of the places that i was speaking in and he's a big guy and he doesn't look at me and he gives me a hug on the side slips me this note and leaves and i don't remember it until the next day and i pull it out of my pocket and i read it on one side are two pages of all the reasons that the shack is heresy but on the other side is a handwritten note and he says paul i didn't come here tonight expecting to run into the love of god i came here to warn god's people about the wolf in sheep's clothing i need some help i don't know what the love of god is i've been in the ministry for 42 years and i don't know what john 17 is talking about when it refers to the love of god that's the situation a lot of us are in when you write a book you never know how it's going to impact my kids and then how it spilled over but i made a little turn of phrase that became really significant we've all heard that well god loves you but it's kind of like well god loves everyone and i changed it i moved it from the subject god who loves to the object you and i turned the phrase and it came out i'm especially fond of you that was a game changer because we know god loves us but we think we're one of a mass of billions of people the one matters he'll leave the 99 for the one and you're the one i'm the one papa's especially fond of me and papa's especially fond of you [Music] i have a friend i have a lot of friends but i didn't used to but i have more friends now as i've allowed people into my world as i've moved away from isolation and i have a friend named scott and scott is the first man in my life who told me i don't care what a mess you make of your world i'm not leaving that was incredibly powerful for me to have a man say in my life i'm not leaving i had never experienced that before and he will always have that special place of being the first person that told me that i would never be alone i've come to understand that i've never been alone period that any sense of being alone was a lie i just had to learn to take the risk of trusting that i wasn't alone and then as i've done that and opened up my world i found that i was swarmed inside a community of relationships we get hurt by relationships no doubt about it and it's kind of a bummer that our healing is going to come through relationships we'd rather that god heal us without anybody else finding out about it but the dynamic of relationship becomes the crucible for transformation this is where we're going to change and i'm welcoming you into the world of the shack get to know mackenzie who is me who is broken and missy get to know nan and willie and papa and jesus and sadio welcome to the world of the shack so most of our hurt comes through relationships and most of our healing will also come through relationships we have an opportunity in each episode to step back a little bit we need to do this i know the world is screaming at you from all directions there's agendas there's all this activity and demands on your life and we need to step back and think about who we are and who god is to us and what matters to us think about the three things that are most important to you in your life and how you are feeding those or giving space for them relationships are at the center of everything and we've all been hurt so who right now in your world is part of that hurt and be open listen to the holy spirit say a prayer in the only way you know how a prayer is just a conversation with god anyway and just say help what do i do now what's next and listen for the nudge the idea the thought that's what i'm going to leave you with this first episode and we're going to talk about this and a lot of other things over the episodes to come thank you for honoring me to be a part and participate in your journey as well [Music] you

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Keywords: movies, Jesus, trailers, God, Restoring the Shack TV Series, Restoring the Shack, William Paul Young, Movie, bridgestone multimedia BMG, christian, Stephan Blinn, Restoring the Shack TV Show

Id: tkyEb7svkeE

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2020