Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Raising Autistic Disciples podcast. My name is Lara Roberts and I am on a mission to learn how my autistic son Graham learns best for the sake of the gospel. And listen friends, welcome back to the podcast it is Welcome back to me, to the podcast. And you know, there are many of you who have DM'd me and be like, when, where's the podcast? You've dropped off the face of the earth. You know what? You're right. I have. um I'm going to try to be more consistent podcasting because I do love it. Like I do love long form content.
Speaker: um It just takes a lot of preparation, which I also love. And I'm doing a lot more ah speaking stuff and just kind of short form Instagram trying to encourage us all how to raise an autistic disciple um in the season that we're at. and so But I do want to use podcasting as a way of maybe more monologuing. I think I've tried to fit myself in a box and scheduling like interviews and stuff with people have been really difficult just on time issues. And so maybe I lean into more monologue what the Lord is teaching me. I do and I'm prayerful that in the next couple of weeks, um I may I want to start a series. I think series may help me better be consistent just the format of it um as I'm thinking through some things. And let me just tell you,
Speaker: Please, prayers out prayer warriors out there listening to this podcast. ah I'm like cannonballing in on this serious thing for the first one. And I'm not going to tell you the topic. I may unveil it on Instagram. But like, man, I chose a doozy of a topic. Or the Lord did because i do I do believe he's stirring my heart to talk about the topic. And so I'll give you a little little cliffhanger there. And so... Um, yeah, but I do plan and I have spent some time in the last couple of weeks over the summer getting really organized when it comes to podcasting and scripts, um, or topics and like talking points rather, ah to be able to offer you more consistent podcasts to listen to, because I know it is a medium of a communication lane that is very helpful. And I like long form content because short Instagram reels and with people's attention spans getting lower and lower,
Speaker: Like it just is, is just it just gets complicated. So I would, to if I'm quite honest with you, rather spend my time doing a podcast, long form, talking out, you know, keeping it to 20 minutes because who has time to listen to a 45 minute, an hour podcast. But, you know, I just, my aim is to always point us to be good students of God's word, open up God's word, raise autistic disciples, first be ah disciples ourselves before we can raise autistic disciples. But so with podcasting, that's my aim. So that's what want to today. i kind of want to just...
Speaker: jump in with with this being my first one in a long time and kind of just show you specifically a verse that most of us have probably heard a hundred times and asked a very specific question about it. And that verse is...
Speaker: John 10 10. Jesus says, i have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance and have abundant life. Some translations say, what does that mean? Right? More specifically, what does abundant life mean when your life includes disability?
Speaker: Because I think we can read verses, read those words specifically, through an American, very modern, very ah successful oriented definition of abundance, meaning a lot. without even realizing what we're doing and how we're reading it through an American lens. Right. And I know I have listeners from all over the world. So your context, just meaning abundant of like, it means like, look around what I got, you know, what I have kind of thing, abundant life.
Speaker: Okay. So what comes to your mind when you, when you hear that word, is it health Is it freedom? Is it independence or opportunity? Maybe it's a good marriage, successful kids, or um financial stability, a body that works the way we want it to work, right?
Speaker: Children who grow up and leave the house, get jobs, get married, have families, and become independent adults. Is that our view of abundant? Because if we're not careful, we can take all those things that our culture tells us makes life full and attach them to something Jesus said.
Speaker: John Tintin, right? Disability enters the picture. Your child doesn't hit milestones on time. Communication is hard. School is hard. Church is hard. Maybe you begin realizing that your child might need significant support in adulthood.
Speaker: Maybe there are things other parents take for granted that you simply do not know will be part of your child's future. And now we have a theological problem. Because Jesus said he came to give abundant life. So what happens when... When the life in front of me doesn't particularly look abundant. According to the definition I've been carrying around in my head all these years.
Speaker: When disability enters the picture. That's the question I want to sit in today. And I want to do it with an open Bible, an open heart, and a little help from my friend and theologian and who's gone on to be with the Lord many years ago. right his name is ah William Gurnall.
Speaker: Because I read something yesterday that made me stop. Gernal wrote about, um and and just for context, and I'll put this in the show notes, he wrote The Christian Incomplete Armor. um And it is it is it it has just stirred my heart and my affections for more Jesus every day that I read it. And so Gernal wrote about God building something more magnificent out of the ruins left by sin.
Speaker: His argument was essentially this. God was not scrambling After Genesis 3, Christ was not plan B. God's work of redemption is not simply an attempt to repair humanity and get us back where Adam started.
Speaker: I know. Can I read that again? can Just for repetition sake. Gernal wrote about this, about God building something more magnificent out of the ruins of sin. okay His argument was this.
Speaker: God was not scrambling after Genesis 3. Christ was not plan B. It was always in the plan. sending Sending Jesus was always God's plan. God's work of redemption is not simply an attempt to repair humanity and get us back to where Adam had started. In Christ, God is doing something even greater.
Speaker: And immediately my mind went to Jesus saying, I have come so that you may have life and have it in abundance, have abundant life. So here's where I landed.
Speaker: The abundant life Jesus promises is not a life untouched by the effects of the fall. It is life with God, secured by Christ, that the effects of the fall cannot ultimately take away.
Speaker: Gosh, that's so good. so So good. So the abundant life Jesus promises is not a life untouched by the effects of the fall, by how we, how we, we could feel the effects of the fall every single day through sickness, through paper cuts. That's usually my example. I, you know what paper cuts remind me of the fall. I am overall, you know, there will not be paper cuts. There there won't be on the other side of the fall, right? Um, on the other side of eternity, excuse me.
Speaker: Um, It is life with God, secured by Christ, that the effects of the fall cannot ultimately take away. I want to show you why I think that that what I just said is from Scripture. Because that distinction changes everything for families impacted by disability. it changes everything for us raising autistic disciples. Let's start where we should.
Speaker: Not with, well, what does that verse mean to me? but with what is it actually happening in the text, okay? John 10.10 does not just randomly appear in scripture, okay? Jesus doesn't walk into a crowd and announce, hey guys, I want every one of you to know that I came so that you could have abundant life.
Speaker: and then leave us to fill that definition. That's a so unlike Jesus. and I'm so grateful for it. John 10 is a part of a larger conversation. Okay, we're zooming out. Larger conversation. And really, you need John 9, which is honestly one of our favorite passages in the disability community, right? To understand what Jesus is doing in John 10 by telling us about abundant life. In John 9, Jesus encounters a man who has been blind from birth. And the disciples immediately asked the theological question, Rabbi, teacher, who said this man or his parents that this man was born blind?
Speaker: In other words, Jesus, we're going need you to explain the disability. Whose fault is this? Why did it happen? Give us a theological category for it. But Jesus refuses their assumption. Okay. He tells them that they are asking the wrong question.
Speaker: Then he heals the man. But the story doesn't end with the healing, okay? And I think this part matters enormously for those of us talking about disability in the church. The religious leaders begin interrogating this man.
Speaker: They question whether he was actually blind. They question his parents. They challenge his account. They insult him. They eventually, John tells us, that they throw him out.
Speaker: Now listen to what happens next in John 9, 35.
Speaker: When Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out, he found him. Don't you love that? They threw him out, Jesus finds him. that has so Listen, I could go so many routes with that, and I hope you do too. They throw him out, but Jesus finds him. And shortly after this, Jesus starts talking about shepherds and gates and sheep, about voices, about thieves, about people who care for the sheep and the people who exploit the sheep.
Speaker: Because that context matters. We need we need to take all that into consideration, right? That's why I was telling us, let's zoom out and look before John 10 and Abundant Life. Let's zoom out and see in context. Because when Jesus gets to John 10 and says, a thief comes to steal and kill and destroy... I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance. He is making a contrast.
Speaker: The thief takes, Jesus gives. The thief destroys, Jesus saves. The thief brings death, Jesus brings life. And then in verse 11, Jesus tells us how.
Speaker: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. There's the gospel. The abundant life in John 10, 10 cannot be separated from the good shepherd in John 10, 11.
Speaker: Jesus gives life by giving himself. So before we even get into disability, I think we have to challenge one assumption. Abundant life is not primarily a description of our circumstances.
Speaker: it It is a description of what Jesus gives his sheep. Life. And John has been building that argument from the beginning of his gospel. John 1 says, in him was life.
Speaker: Talking about Christ. Jesus tells Nicodemus about eternal life. He tells a Samaritan woman about living water. In John 5, Jesus talks about passing from life from death to life. In John 6, he says, I am the bread of life. In John 11, he says, i am the resurrection of life.
Speaker: And later in John 14, he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Do you see the pattern? Life in John's gospel is not something Jesus hands you apart from himself.
Speaker: Jesus is life. And when he says, i came so that they may have life, we cannot reduce that to, I came so your circumstances would improve.
Speaker: There's a lot of things we could go there with autism, right? He didn't come here so our circumstances would improve. He is talking about something much bigger. Reconciliation with God.
Speaker: Forgiveness of sin. Eternal life. Knowing God. Belonging to Christ. And ultimately resurrection. John 10 itself makes that difference. even clearer. A little later, Jesus says in verses 27 and 28, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
Speaker: That sounds a whole lot like Jesus explaining what he means by life in abundantly. My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. I give them eternal life.
Speaker: They will never perish. Meaning eternal, like never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. You can't take salvation away. That's abundance.
Speaker: Not because nothing painful ever happens to sheep, to his sheep, but because the sheep belong to the shepherd. And now I want to bring back Gurnall into this conversation, the theologian.
Speaker: The line that I read yesterday was this idea that God would not have allowed his original workmanship to be scarred by sin if he had not already purposed something more significant through Christ.
Speaker: Now, let me put a little theological guardrail around that. Gurnall is not making a theological argument. John 10 does not explicitly say, quote, God permitted the fall because he intended to create something better from it.
Speaker: So i don't I don't want to put Gurnall's sentence in quotation marks around the Bible and pretend scripture says explicitly what he says. But scripture absolutely does give us confidence in something underneath that argument.
Speaker: And this is it. God was not caught off guard by the fall.
Speaker: Christ was not plan B. Redemption was not God scrambling and going, oh, I got to recover from something that I failed to to anticipate. Nope, not at all. This is where i I go into, if you've read Letters to Lindsay's, where like, it did not surprise God that your kid is autistic. Okay, that's a whole nother episode. Okay, Ephesians 1 speaks about God's purpose in Christ as something established according to his will. 1 Peter talks about Christ being foreknown before the foundation of the world. Revelation describes Christ as central to God's redemptive purpose.
Speaker: God knew, God purposed, God saves. And the Bible storyline, meaning from Genesis to Revelation, the grand narrative of Scripture, the storyline, does not simply move from Eden to disaster and then finally back to Eden exactly as it was before.
Speaker: It moves from creation to fall to redemption to consummation. And there is something really important there. Adam knew God as creator, but believers in Christ, those of us today who have placed our faith in Christ, know God not only as creator, but as redeemer.
Speaker: Adam stood innocent before God before the fall happened. In Christ, we stand clothed in righteousness that's not our own. God walked with humility in the garden. Now under the new covenant, the spirit of God dwells in his people.
Speaker: And scripture's final picture is not merely Adam and Eve returned to Genesis 2. Revelation gives us a redeemed people, every tribe, tongue, people, and nation dwelling with God forever in creation where death will never enter again.
Speaker: Praise be to God. So Gernel's point is not that sin was good. Absolutely not. Sin destroys, it separates, it kills. The fall is catastrophic. But sin is not sovereign.
Speaker: God is. And redemption in Christ is not fragile. God is not merely rebuilding the same structure and hoping it holds this time. He is bringing his people towards something sin will never be able to destroy again.
Speaker: And this is where I think the abundant life becomes incredibly important for families impacted by disability, for us raising autistic disciples. Because what have we been taught an abundant human life looks like?
Speaker: Independence, productivity, accomplishment, communication, education, employment, marriage, one day, children, financial success, physical strength. emotional ease comfort and none of those things are necessarily bad hear me say that none of those things are necessarily bad but I want my gram to grow in independence I do I desire him to communicate well, whatever means that is. I want him to learn. I i pray for him to have meaningful relationships, to develop skills and ah and opportunities for him to to grow and use his gifts in the church, right? There are things that I pray for because I love my son and I want him to flourish.
Speaker: But I have to be extremely careful that I do not take my preferred outcomes for his life and rename them abundant life.
Speaker: Because if independence is required for abundance, what does that say about the Christian who will require law-flung care? If verbal speech is required for abundant life, what does that say about a non-speaking believer?
Speaker: If intellectual ability determines abundance, what are we saying about our brothers and sisters with intellectual disabilities? If physical health is evidence of abundant life, what do we do with the faithful Christian whose disease or or disorder has progressed?
Speaker: If successful adulthood, as our culture fined defines as abundance, then suddenly and an enormous portion of the body of Christ has now been placed to some second-class version of Christianity. And Jesus never does that.
Speaker: The entrance requirement for the abundant life is not ability. It is Christ. Let me say that again. The entrance requirement for abundant life is not ability or based on your ability. It is Christ and Christ alone.
Speaker: Jesus did not say, i have come so that independent may have life. He did not say, I have can't have came so that the healthy may have life. He didn't say, i came so that the people whose developmental trajectory looks typical may have life. He said he came for his sheep.
Speaker: And his sheep have life because they belong to him. Now, I also want to resist the swing of the pendulum so hard that we romanticize disability. I think that's a ah caution and ah and ah something we need to make sure we don't um walk into because that would be another error.
Speaker: Okay? Saying that someone can have an abundant life while living with a disability does not mean every part of the disability is good. It doesn't mean pain is good. It doesn't mean communication barriers are good or seizures are good or exhaustion is good. It doesn't mean that we ignore co-occurring medical conditions or refuse therapies or stop supporting skill development because, oh, Jesus is enough. He is enough. But that doesn't mean that we ignore those.
Speaker: That is not what I'm saying. Romans 8 tells us creation is groaning and we we do groan. We are waiting for what Paul's calls the redemption of our bodies. Christianity gives us permission to say two things at the same time. Suffering is real in this world and there is real life in Christ in the middle of it.
Speaker: Those are not competing contradictions. Which gives me another sentence i I want you and I to hold on to. The presence of suffering does not mean the absence of abundant life.
Speaker: I think sometimes we have been taught the opposite. We think that God is blessing me, hardship should decrease. If I'm living faithfully, doors should open. If God is working, progress should be obvious. If I pray, the circumstances should change.
Speaker: These are things that we think should happen. And then... And then if you raise a child with a disability and you learn fairly quickly that life does not fit ne neatly into that formula that I just mentioned. Sometimes you pray and the thing remains hard.
Speaker: It's not removed. Sometimes you advocate and you lose. Sometimes you find the right therapy and still have challenges. Sometimes your child grows tremendously in one area while needing enormous support in the other.
Speaker: And sometimes you don't know what adulthood will look like. You don't know the next 10 years. Sometimes you're watching other kids move forward in ways your child isn't. And your definition of abundant life is circumstantial.
Speaker: If it is, if your definition of abundant life is circumstantial, you will constantly wonder whether God is withholding something from you.
Speaker: But what if abundance was never primarily about having more control over the life in front of you? What if abundance is knowing the shepherd? Being known by the shepherd, hearing his voice, being held in his hand, receiving eternal life. then suddenly disability does not place someone outside the promise and neither does dependence that word dependence is worth sitting in for a minute because independence is one of those highest values in our culture we celebrate the child who does it by himself we we we praise the teenager who doesn't need help on on a math test the adult who moves out the person who supports themselves and again
Speaker: Developing appropriate independence is good. I'm not saying that. It's not not nothing bad about that. But Christianity has never taught that independence is the goal of human existence.
Speaker: Actually, Christianity says almost the opposite. We are creatures. God is creator. We are dependent on him for every breath. Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing.
Speaker: The mature Christian is not the person who eventually needs less of God. The mature Christian becomes increasingly aware that they need him completely. So maybe one of the things disability exposes is something that we already is already true about every one of us. We are dependent creatures.
Speaker: Some dependence is simply more visible than others. And that visual dependency does not make a person less capable of receiving the life Jesus gives.
Speaker: That it matters very important to our discipleship. Because if abundant life is fundamentally life in Christ, then the highest thing I can pursue for my autistic son cannot be normalization. It cannot be perfect behavior or independence. My assignment is discipleship.
Speaker: I want my son to know Jesus, to love him forever. I want him to know the voice of the Good Shepherd. I want him to understand the gospel in whatever ways. The gospel the gospel stays the same, but the message the method in which I teach may need to be different.
Speaker: The method I deliver it might need to be different for matching the how he learns for the sake of the gospel. Am I learning how my autistic son learns best for that sake, for the gospel?
Speaker: Because abundant life Jesus offers is available to him. That's 100%. Not after he learns to sit through an entire church service or after he his communication reaches a certain level or standard. Not after sensory needs disappear or he behaves a certain way that makes other Christians more comfortable.
Speaker: People impacted by disability are not exceptions to the Great Commission. They are simply recipients of his compassion and to all people. They are people that, that were evangelist. They can evangelize. They can be baptized, taught, discipled, equipped, and welcomed into the body of Christ. And they teach us so very much.
Speaker: And that means churches have to think differently about what abundance looks like too. Because sometimes church culture has adopted the same measurements as the world. Can this person volunteer? Can they sit quietly? Can they participate in the normal program? Can they contribute or be productive? Can they fit our nightly nicely like fit system in the church?
Speaker: But John 10 gives us much more of an important question. Do they know the shepherds? Are they helping them hear his voice? That's discipleship. That's what us as church leaders need to understand.
Speaker: Not fitting our neat system of of polished church worship. When somebody that's autistic yells out in a church service or sings louder than we would like them to. That, oh, all of a sudden that's not. No, it's a discipleship issue for us.
Speaker: here a few Here's a few questions I want to questions I want us to ask. OK, here's the first. When I hear the phrase, quote, abundant life, what am I assuming abundant means? Can I actually find that definition in John 10?
Speaker: Or did I inherit it from a American culture or social media, prosperity, theology, parenting expectations or my own hopes? OK, we have to ask these questions.
Speaker: Second question. Have I confused good gifts with gospel promises? Health is a gift. Independence can be a gift. Communication, education, a career can be a gift. Marriage is a gift.
Speaker: But has Jesus promised every Christian every one of those things? No. So I need to be able to desire good things without turning them into a standard by which I evaluate God's goodness.
Speaker: You want me say that again? I'll say that again. I need to be able to desire good things without turning them into a standard by which I evaluate God's goodness. And third, third question we're asking, what does Jesus himself say life is?
Speaker: Read John, all of John, not just John 10. Go back and trace the word life throughout the gospel. John, John one, John three, John five, John six, John 10, or in 11 and 14 and 17. Go read the whole book. Okay. Ask yourself when John talks about life, when he records, okay, about Jesus, about watching Jesus in his life. Okay.
Speaker: What keeps appearing? Okay, write it down. And then fourth, does my theology of abundant life have room for a faithful Christian whose circumstances never significantly improve?
Speaker: Because whatever theology we construct has to work for the whole body of Christ, not just healthy Americans or people whose prayers get answered in the way we want it, not just families whose children eventually become independent. my Does my theology work at the hospital ah hospital bedside? Does my theology work in a group home or a non-speaking adult? Does it work with an aging caregiver? Does it work in a body that's failing? Does it does it work at a graveside?
Speaker: If it doesn't, I probably need to go back to Scripture. And finally, am I discipling my child toward the abundant life Jesus actually promised or primarily toward the life I hoped they would have?
Speaker: o That one gets me because I want both, if I'm honest. I do. Of course I do. I want Graham to have every good thing God chooses to give him. But if I spend 18 years helping him become more independent and never teaching him dependence on Christ, I have missed the greater thing.
Speaker: If I fight for every accommodation at school, but I do not teach him the scriptures and how to bear fruit and live like Jesus, I have missed the greater thing. If I help him communicate his wants and his needs and never teach him to call upon the name of the Lord, I've missed the greater thing.
Speaker: The goal is not one or the other. We care for the whole person. We teach, we support, we accommodate, we build skills. And while we do that, we never forget our eternal ah eternal assignment.
Speaker: Make disciples. So if you want something to study after this episode, open John 9 and read straight through John 10. Open the whole book, rather. Don't start at verse 10. Start with the blind man. Watch how people respond to him. Watch Jesus find him. Then watch Jesus describe himself as the good shepherd. Circle every word related to life. Circle every place Jesus talks about knowing, saving, keeping, protecting, and laying down his life for his sheep.
Speaker: then go read romans 8 my favorite chapters in the bible pay attention to the groaning that we have on the side of eternity pay attention to the hope the resurrection hope we have in christ pay attention to the fact that paul does not deny present suffering in order to defend future glory and then go to revelation 21. look at where the biblical story is because one day it will end friends because our hope is not that we can somehow manufacture eden again before we die on this side of eternity our hope is resurrection our hope is christ and hope is that god will dwell and will dwell with his people and death will be no more
Speaker: And I think that brings me back to Gernal, the theologian. God does not merely drag sinners out of the rubble of the fall and say, well, they are fixed. He reconciles us to himself. He unites us in Christ and to Christ. He gives us his spirit. He adopts us as sons and daughters. He promises future redemption and resurrection.
Speaker: of us and our our bodies. He promises a kingdom that cannot be shaken. He promises himself the ruins of the fall are real and we feel the effects of of that every day. We have to live in this sin tomb, you know, where sin easily entangles us. But the ruins are not sovereign.
Speaker: God is. And this is the sentence I want to leave you with. The abundant life Jesus promises is not a life untouched by the effects of the fall. It is life with God, secured by Christ. The effects of the fall cannot ultimately the It's just a reminder of our future hope that we have.
Speaker: That means your family's life does not have to look typical to be full and abundantly full. Your child does not have to become independent to possess eternal life. Disability does not place someone farther away from the Good Shepherd.
Speaker: And suffering does not mean Jesus failed to keep his promises. He said, I have come so that you may have life and have it in abundance. That life has a name, Jesus.
Speaker: And friend, that is really good news for our kids, our autistic kids. And it's really good news for us. And it is the gospel It is the gospel we have been commissioned to give our kids.
Speaker: So open your Bible, study it, decide what you believe from scripture, and then let's get busy making disciples. Okay?
