-
Define the concept of “holy tension”. What desires conflict in this battle? How does the New Covenant help us face this tension?
-
Holy tension is where I am currently and where my spirit long to be. The new covenant help me now know that I am covered by grace, have a new identity and can move by the power of God to help me become what God longs me to be.
-
‘Holy tension’ is the way God uses his Spirit to reveal to us where we are and move us further along the path to where we long to be. It is a state of genuine suffering because our own fleshly desires conflict with God’s way. It is only as we surrender to God’s way that what he has for us become our greatest passion. Holy tension is the place where learning and spiritual change occurs as we allow the Spirit to appropriate the provisions of the New Covenant in our lives.
These provisions help us because they keep our eyes on who we now are in Christ and what God has done for us and continues to do for us. This encourages us to walk the New Way rather than the way of our fleshly desires.
-
The tension come in the realization that who I am, is not who I long to me, and who God says that I am.
My desire to satisfy my longings in second things is the essence of where I am- vs the Self that is fully aware of my identity as a daughter of a trustworthy God that has full satisfaction in the relational grace with the Father that sets me free.
-
Holy tension happens when something in me realizes I am not who I was designed to be and long to be as opposed to who I see myself to be now. The battle occurs when the something inside of me long to be a different person that who I am. It is in the New Covenant that I can see who it is God designed me to be. It is through the power of the New Covenant that I can move from my current life, win the battle and become my true self in God.
-
There’s a tension between what I want as a self-protecting person and what I want as a new creature loved by God. The New Covenant that the gospel brings, that Jesus loved me so much that he gave himself for me and that the Father now sees me as righteous – those things give me hope that I am different and can live out of that different foundation.
