It is challenging to know what to say in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and our reactions to it, both rational and panicked. I don’t have any answers or advice you haven’t heard elsewhere, but perhaps the Lord has something to say to you today. Here are three questions to ask yourself that may help you see where God is moving in your life in this time.
1: What is God inviting you to?
When we are knocked out of our normal, when our well-laid plans are in tatters, it is good to ask ourselves, “What is God inviting me to?” I do not believe that God has sent the pandemic to us, but I do believe “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28, [NLT]) When we are forced to let loose of our plans and our sense of how are lives should be we can ask Jesus, “What are you inviting me to? How do you want to use this for my good?”
2: What is my temptation?
The other side of the “invitation” coin is temptation. In times like these we are easily tempted to double down on our attempts to be in control of the situation. We may be tempted to fear and anxiety, greed and self-centeredness, and isolation. Perhaps our greatest danger is that we fall into our temptations without even realizing it. We don’t sit down and say, “I think my best course of action today is to be fearful and greedy,” yet that is often where we find ourselves. By being aware of our temptations we are less likely to fall into them. It is important that we ask God, who knows you best, to show you where are being tempted.
3: What can I learn about myself?
Times of stress can be times of great learning about ourselves. Take the time to reflect on what you are feeling. What activities and attitudes are drawing you closer to God and closer to his invitations to you? What activities and attitudes are leading me to slip unknowingly into our self-destructive temptations? Keeping a journal can be a great way to reflect over time. Pray for God’s assistance in knowing yourself and showing you the paths to being the person you are meant to be.
Ask these questions prayerfully.
I have not been regularly asking myself these questions and have not been praying as I now suggest, but I am starting today. I invite you to join me in pressing into these questions in prayer. Here is how I will be praying.
Father, I am more fearful and anxious than I should be. I lay those fears and anxieties at your cross. Forgive me. Give me the grace to be kind to myself and to others in this time of stress an uncertainty. Give me the grace to see and embrace your invitation to me; to join in the good you will work in this situation. I ask also for the grace to see my temptations and for the strength and wisdom to turn away from them. Give me the grace of self-knowledge and the courage to open myself to the power of Holy Spirit to reform me in the image of Christ, in whose name I pray.
C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters is one of my favorite books. From time to time I find myself in possession of a letter that appears to be from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, but was not written by Lewis. Here is one of those letters, dealing chiefly with how to neuter a Christian’s resolve to pray.
My dear Wormword,
I have received your letter where you raise your alarm about your patient’s resolve to pray regularly. I do have some advice for you, but first and foremost: get a grip on yourself! In your letter your panic is palpable. If I can detect it in your written (and presumably measured) words, it is very likely the patient will sense it as well.
As you know, we must remain anonymous until the patient is firmly and irrevocably ours. As I think of it, anonymous is too soft a word; we must remain invisible. The patient must never suspect our presence. The greater their ignorance, the greater our power. You are too young to have tasted much yet, but few delights surpass the exquisiteness of the patient’s anguish and horror when they realize that we have been there all along, whispering a thought here, offering a pleasant distraction there; now a convenient rationale to avoid a duty, then a reminder that he is not the sort of person to be taken in by spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Many a delectable morsel has been elevated to ecstatic heights by the soul’s dismay and horror when at the last possible moment, we reveal ourselves and the creature sees who really has been leading him and how firmly he is ours. But I digress (and make myself quite hungry).
As to practical advice, if you are panicked by some turn of events, such as your patient’s resolve to be regular in prayer, you are likely to over-play your hand and increase the likelihood of the patient detecting your presence and activity. You have already failed in that he has joined that infernal church. There is every chance that should he notice you now, the patient will go groveling to the Enemy, seeking His help to defang us. That would prove damaging, if not fatal, to your cause and yourself.
Assuming you can master yourself and not give away the game, the question remains: what to do about your patient’s loathsome lurch toward prayer? Your naïve suggestion that perhaps “do nothing” is the best course is fool-hardy. Do not forget that anytime one of these creatures sets itself to prayer; there is the very real possibility that it will recognize that it has actually come into direct contact with the Enemy. Should that happen, you are dire straights indeed. No, passivity cannot be your strategy here.
Your first strategy is to keep the patient’s heart and mind entirely out of his prayer. Teach him that simply mouthing flowery words is all that is necessary. Do not let him think about what he is saying, and certainly do not let him notice how hefeels while praying. In His pathetic love for these creatures, the Enemy will honor almost any attempt, no matter how feeble and half-hearted. So, you must teach your patient to say his prayers while encouraging him to not bother about attending to them.
It is a fine thing if the patient thinks of prayer as some sort of magic spell or incantation. Teach him that just saying the right words is the important thing. If you can keep him sufficiently distracted so that he does not notice the Enemy’s presence, your patient can easily be shown that “parroting a bunch of empty phrases doesn’t do one any good after all!”
A second strategy is to ensure that the patient does not come to understand that in the Enemy’s calculus, intent matters. It seems at times to be the only thing that matters to Him! Your game then is to keep the patient’s intent or expectation separate from his actions. For prayer, as for almost any overtly religious activity, he may undertake, teach him that it is a duty, something that must be done. If handled carefully, you can turn it into a bothersome and even resented obligation. Alternately, you can spin it up into a source of pride. Something he does to show his pious and religious nature. A man who brags about his prayer is a special treat.
The third card in your hand is to keep prayer distant from any sense of belief or expectation. These creatures have been carefully taught to distrust anything they cannot see, measure, and understand. As you know, this is due in no small part to our Father Below’s masterful work in what they call their “enlightenment.” Do not waste your time trying to understand how belief and faith enter into prayer; our best minds have been unable to solve that riddle. Nonetheless, you must teach your patient to wonder about “how it all works.” Show him that, since he cannot understand how something could happen as a result of his babbling, nothing is or even could be happening. You and I know that somehow what he believes about his prayers is essential; it is a key factor in his actually encountering the Enemy. Therefore you must keep the patient from any faith or expectations getting caught up in his prayers.
Taken all together, these strategies sum up to “settling.” Teach the patient not to expect anything; to settle. His church will teach him to be humble. You show him that humility means not expecting anything, settling for what you get. He must be taught that expecting anything to really happen is not realistic, certainly not in this modern age. Teach him that discontent is “sin.” Whatever state he finds himself in is what he should settle for, lest he is arrogant and proud! As long as the patient is content where he is, he is unlikely to take any serious steps that might lead to disaster for you.
Make no mistake, nephew. You have already badly blundered your assignment by allowing your man to become a Christian. (And don’t waste your time complaining that you did the best you could and that the Enemy isn’t playing fair.) Every move you make now is fraught with peril for your cause. This is nowhere truer than in the practice of prayer, where the Enemy inexplicably and unfairly offers to meet with his pets. Each time that is allowed to happen your danger multiplies. Diligently apply yourself to neutering his prayers in hopes that he will eventually find them tiresome and give up the whole undertaking. I need not remind you of the penalty you face should you fail in this. We will be fed. For my sister’s sake, I’d rather that our morsel be your patient.
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
If you found any instruction or encouragement in this letter, I highly recommend Lewis’s original: The Screwtape Letters.
Christmas morning has come and gone. Did you have a good Christmas? Did you get everything you wanted? When I think about those questions, I remember the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story,” one the most highly rated and best-loved Christmas movies. In my family, our long tradition was to watch it on Thanksgiving after our meal.
In case you haven’t seen it or don’t remember it, let me set the stage for you. The story is set in Indiana around 1940. Ralphie Parker, a nine-year-old boy, is maniacally focused on one thing: getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. But every time he has the chance to lobby for it, he is told that he shouldn’t have one because “you’ll shoot your eye out.” He hears this from everyone: His mother, his teacher at school, even from Santa Claus, tells him, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” In the clip below, it is Christmas morning. All the gifts have been opened, and there was no Red Ryder BB gun for Ralph.
I love seeing how Ralph’s father, “the old man”, delighted in giving his son what he wanted. Our Father, too, is delighted to give of good gifts that we have been asking him for. All through Advent, like Ralphie Parker, we were waiting expectantly for Christmas. We have been asking and waiting. One of the things we longed for though the Advent season was Love. Did we get what we wanted? Indeed, we have, each one of us, received the gift of God’s Love.
It is entirely possible that we overlooked that one present. In our times with family and friends, amid the piles of torn wrapping paper, did we fail to see the Gift of Love we were given?
God’s gift of love may be hard for us to recognize; we may not know that we have received it. Ralphie’s BB gun, that was easy. But we may not recognize the love we got at Christmas. What does the Gift of Love look like?
The Gift of Love looks like God incarnate. A newborn baby, lying in a manager. God made man, born in a stable among the animal feed and waste, lying in a manger, an animal’s feed trough. God’s gift of Love is the gift of himself, in the most unexpected and improbable way. [Luke 2:7]
The Gift of Love looks like eternal life [1 John 4:9] and a full life– the life we were meant to have. We don’t wait until heaven to experience eternal life. The life-giving Gift of Love is here for us, now. [John 10:10(b)]
The Gift of Love looks like the cross. This may not be our favorite thing to think about this time of year, but the cross is the reason Jesus came: to suffer and die for us, sealing our redemption. [ Hebrews 9:12, 1 John 3:16]
The Gift of Love looks like the love of the father in the parable of the prodigal son. A father who waits and watches for our return and runs to us to welcome us home. Our father doesn’t wait for us to measure up. As soon as we turn toward him he runs to us and embraces, loves and restores us. [Luke 15:20]
What does the Gift of Love looks like being accepted and cared for not because of what you have done, what you are doing, or what you will do, but because of who you are: a son or a daughter of the Father. [1 John 3:1 ]
What are you doing with your gift?
This may seem an odd question, “what are you doing with your gift?” We are loved and we are saved. We are given a full life – a real life. We are made sons and daughters. Isn’t that all there is? Isn’t it enough? Yes and no. It is an awesome gift, but that is not all there is to it. It is worth asking ourselves: What are we doing with our gift?
Some of the gifts we receive have an intrinsic value. You can open it up, say thank you, and display it on a shelf. Simply having them is enough. A work of art is an example here; anything decorative really. But there are other gifts whose true value comes from using them.
If someone gave me a new Porsche for Christmas, that would be awesome! But wouldn’t it be odd if I never drove it; if it never left my garage? You might wonder how much I appreciated that gift! I certainly would not be getting the full value of having a Porsche. You could say I was missing the point of having a Porsche.
When I was 17 years old I was really into bluegrass music, especially songs that featured the banjo. Earl Scruggs was the man as far as I was concerned! As Christmas approached that year, I let my parents know I REALLY wanted a banjo. And on that Christmas morning, I got my banjo!
I loved that banjo. It was a great gift. I still have that banjo, When I thought about “what was the best Christmas gift I ever got?”, I remembered my banjo. Yet as much as I wanted a banjo, after nearly forty five years I still can’t play a note.
As happy as I was to receive the gift of a banjo, the truth was I loved the idea of playing the banjo, but I didn’t love the idea of doing all the hard work required to actually learn how to do it. I bought some instruction books, and I’d give it a half-hearted try every now and then, but I didn’t really practice, I didn’t pursue lessons. My banjo sits unplayed and mostly forgotten.
My old banjo is s great example a gift that I have not made use of. I still have it – it is still it, but I am not getting the best out of that gift. Thinking again about the Gift of Love we have received, are we making use of it? Is it making beautiful music or is it sitting on display or perhaps relegated to the back of a closet or collecting dust under the bed?
When we make use of God’s Gift of Love, we can become sons and daughters who love others with the same outrageous unbridled love the Father has for us.
The Gift of Love is ours, whether we put it to good use or not. I still have my banjo. The fact that I don’t put it to use doesn’t mean I no longer have it. The gift of Love we have received is ours. We don’t have to earn our status as sons and daughters. We cannot earn our salvation.
It is our, but the Gift of Love is something we are meant to use. It is not meant only for ourselves. The Gift of Love is given so that we can be transformed by it; so that we can become lovers. It is a gift we are meant to pass on to others. When we make use of God’s Gift of Love, we can become sons and daughters who love others with the same outrageous, unbridled love the Father has for us.
In Paul’s letter to the early church in Ephesus, he wrote:
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Ephesians 5:1-2 (MSG)
God’s love is our gift. It is gift that should transform us and make us into people who love with Christ’s love. In the Bible we are given a succinct summary of what we are like when we have been transformed. We are patient and kind; We are not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. We do not demand our own way and are not irritable. We keep no record of being wronged. We never give up, never lose faith, and are always hopeful. (See 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.) I wish that described me, but it rarely does. I am still in the process of being transformed.
If we have not made full use of our gift, if we have not been transformed by it, what are we to do? The story of my banjo is instructive here. There is nothing wrong with my banjo. I just never applied myself to the sometimes-hard work of learning to use it. If we do not find ourselves loving with Christ’s extravagant love, there is nothing wrong with the Gift of Love. We need to apply ourselves to the sometimes-hard work of learning to use it. Here is where the metaphor breaks down. I can take lessons and practice the banjo. If I apply myself diligently, I could become at least a passable banjo player. Learning to love like Jesus is a different matter.
We can practice being loving. We can try to make ourselves act with the love described in 1 Corinthians 13. We may be able to pull it off, but only for a while. Sooner or later, usually at a really bad time, the act will fail, and we will find we are not nearly so loving as we’d like to believe we are. As hard as we try, we cannot make ourselves into the conduits of love we are meant to be.
But there is hope; the Lord never asks for the impossible. If we are to become loving toward others as he is to us, there must be a way for that transformation to happen.
When we practice spiritual disciplines, with the intent of allowing God to transform us into conduits of his extravagant, unbridled love he will do just that: he will transform us.
God will do the heavy lifting for us, if we let him. There is a spiritual equivalent to taking music lessons and practicing our instrument. It is employing spiritual disciplines. When we practice spiritual disciplines, with the intent of allowing God to transform us into conduits of his extravagant, unbridled love he will do just that: he will transform us. When we read or memorize scripture, when we pray, when we practice solitude, when we confess, when we enter into worship, when we fast, if we do those things with the intent of allowing God to transform our inner selves, he will. The practices don’t make us better, as they would with an instrument, but they allow God to make us better.
Richard Foster explained it this way in the preface to “Celebration of Discipline”:
We do indeed engage in practices— disciplines, if you will— but remember these practices earn us nothing in the economy of God. Nothing. Their only purpose is to place us before God. That is all. … God then steps into our actions and, over time and experience, produces in us the formation of heart and mind and soul for which we long.
Foster, Richard J.. Celebration of Discipline, Special Anniversary Edition (p. xvii). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
We have been talking as if the Gift of Love was given just last Christmas. The reality is it was given some two thousand years ago and is still ours today. One of the powerful things about observing the liturgical or church year is it can help us remember the past. Advent is a time of longing and waiting, waiting for the gift of the long-promised Christ. Each Christmas we celebrate anew the Gift of Love God has given us. Whether that was two thousand years ago or a few day ago, it is our gift. We should recognize it, celebrate it and diligently pursue the use of our Gift of Love.
Each of us can put that gift to better use that we have. Invite Holy Spirit to guide and correct you. If we press in and cooperate, God can transform us so that we can pass along his Gift of Love to the world, a world that needs it now as much as it ever did.
The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18: 9-14) is familiar to us. When we read it today we should try to put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ first-century hearers. We hear Pharisee and we immediately think “hypocrite”. That certainly was Jesus’ view, but was that true for most of his audience? I think we should imagine the Pharisee as the good guy, the one following all the rules; going above and beyond. He was the “good Christian” of his day.
On the other hand, we might how despised the tax collector would be. As much as we may not like the IRS, they have nothing on a 1st-century tax collector. In the parable we are about to hear, the tax collector is working for the Roman government, an enemy occupier of Israel. Not only is he a collaborator, but he is also likely ripping people off to line his own pockets. Tax collectors often collected whatever they could, above and beyond what was required by Rome, keeping the surplus for themselves.
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14 (ESV)
The Pharisee is doing everything right. He is toeing the line. We are given no reason to
believe the Pharisee is lying or exaggerating. We should take him at his word. As far as we know, he is the perfect model of
piety and piousness. He is following all
the rules and even going beyond them. I
think we can safely say that the Pharisee honestly believes himself to be
following all of the law. He must
believe that loves the Lord with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and
loves his neighbor as himself.
Yet he is not the one justified before God. What is the Pharisee’s flaw? Luke is very helpful here and telegraphs the answer at the beginning of the passage: “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.”
The Pharisee believes he is righteous, but he does not know his own heart. He believes he is following the entirety of God’s commands, but he is judging himself the same way he judges the tax-collector: by outward appearances. That is not God’s standard.
It is that state of our souls, not our words or actions that justify us before God. That is the contrast in the parable: the Pharisee, ignorant of his own heart, or at least ignoring it, and the tax collector who is tortured by his knowledge of who he is. The Pharisee could adopt the actions and pray the same words as the tax collector, but that would not change the result. The key is who we are, not what we do. The repentant sinner is justified, not the self-satisfied Pharisee. The Pharisee’s central problem is that he does not know his own heart.
How can we make sure we are not similarly deluded? How can we be sure we have an accurate assessment of our own hearts? John Calvin, the 16th-century theologian and reformer, began his masterwork, “Institutes of the Christian Religion” with these famous words:
Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.
Calvin’s profound insight is that we cannot know God without knowing ourselves and that we cannot know ourselves without knowing God. Further, they are intertwined: the more we know God, the more we know ourselves and the more we know ourselves, the more we know God. For Calvin this meant that when we know God and his righteousness the more we see how we fall very short. And, the more we realize how much we are in need of forgiveness, the more we know how good God is for loving and accepting us in spite of ourselves. To know ourselves we must know God and to know God we must know ourselves. But where do we begin? How do we start?
One way to begin to know God and ourselves is in community. If we can participate where is it safe to truly be honest about what we are doing and feeling and where we can accept candid feedback and probing questions, that community can help us see ourselves more clearly.
For many years in my Christian journey, I worked hard avoiding community. Now I seek it out. What happened to me? Through a lot of good teaching and prayer I began to understand the Father’s heart. I began to see that hiding my self-imposed cocoon of isolation was also keeping me from knowing the Father better. I need others to know him and myself.
As I began to engage in my local church community, I began to get a picture of myself that I didn’t like at all. I began to realize how little love and compassion there really was in me. I began to see just how full of myself, how self-righteous, I really was.
Outside of community I can go along believing all sorts of nonsense about myself. In community my delusions are quickly stripped away. Let me give you a concrete example of this, not in the context of church, but from my work life. The principle remains the same. It is when we move from the abstract to the concrete that we have any chance to understand ourselves. David Benner puts it this way:
Love is cultivated only in close soul relationships. We can probably learn something about love in interactions with strangers, but the transforming work of becoming the great lovers that Christ desires us to be demands the grist of more intimate relationships. It is in soul friendships that we encounter the greatest possibilities for progress in the school of love. Journeying together brings opportunities for discovering the magnitude of our narcissism and developing a heart of genuine love.
Benner, David G.. Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship & Direction . InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
As long as we are by ourselves we can sell ourselves all kinds of ideas about what we are like. I can convince myself that I am humble, charitable, patient, forgiving, and the possessor of any other virtue you can name – as long as I don’t have to put it to the test in community. It is in community that we see how thin and tenuous our facade of patience, acceptance, and selflessness is; we find out just how good we really are at loving real people, not idealized portraits we have of them.
For many years I avoided Christian community. Not coincidentally, I was very much the self-righteous Pharisee. Over time, as I have learned to embrace relationship and community, I have moved away from the stance of the Pharisee and more toward the tax collector. I am learning my shortcomings and those show me my need for God. I am no longer holding on to false, if comforting, ideas about the state of my heart. Learning about myself and about God as opened me to healing and renovation. I still have a heavy deposit of Pharisee, but I am less likely to persist in self-righteousness.
How
about you? Pharisee or tax collector? Self-righteous or self-aware? Are you moving in the right direction? Are
you entering into community, the one place you can reveal the depth of your
self-knowledge, where we can develop hearts of genuine love? If not, is it
something the Lord may be calling you to?
Before reading on, take a moment to read Galatians 5:1, 13-25. The link will take you the New Living Translation, but feel free to use whatever translation you like. When You’ve read the Galatians passage come on back and we’ll chat about it.
What do we make of this passage? In my experience, our natural approach (my approach, anyway) is this. We really only pay attention to the two lists at the end. We treat them as a rule book. Don’t do the bad things, do the good things! It can be very tempting to live the checklist life. We steel ourselves to avoid the bad, start or increase the good fruit, and congratulate ourselves on our spiritual progress. The checklist life is tempting, but it is not where Paul is trying to point us.
So, what is wrong with the checklist life? Quite a lot, really. To start with, it is the opposite of freedom, and that is the main thrust of Paul here. The reading began with 5:1: “So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.” But living the checklist life is doing the opposite. Living the checklist life is binding myself up in the “law,” not the law of Moses, but my checklist serves as my law nonetheless.
Next, the checklist life ignores the central thrust of Paul’s teaching here. He is describing what our lives look like when we are controlled by our sinful natures (all the bad stuff) and what they look like when we are controlled by the spirit (the good stuff). He is not talking about what we do, but what God does when we are controlled by the spirit. Verse 16, in the Voice translation, makes this very clear. “Here’s my instruction: walk in the Spirit, and let the Spirit bring order to your life..”
Not only Paul’s teaching, but adopting the checklist life ignores Jesus’ teaching, and he had some pretty strong feeling on the matter. Consider Matthew 23:25-28, in the Message translation. Here we find Jesus addressing the Scribes and Pharisees, the masters of living the checklist life:
“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. 26 Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
27 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. 28 People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.
Matthew 23: 25-28, Message Translation
There is no doubt: In Jesus’ view what we do is not nearly as important as who we are on the inside.
Now, if none of those arguments against the checklist life don’t convince you, I have one more. IT DOESN’T WORK! If we are living the checklist life we will, sooner or later, fail. Jesus used the metaphor of trees and fruit to talk about people. See, for example, Mt 12:33. If we think of ourselves as tree and we are living the checklist life, we will be about the business of trying to pluck off the bad fruit and somehow produce good fruit, or at least a close approximation of good fruit. We may be successful for a while, as long as things as going our way. But one day, we will be tired or frustrated or overworked and all our good efforts will collapse in a heap. We may justify ourselves, citing extenuating circumstances, but the truth is we will be revealing our true, unfiltered, unregulated self. As Jesus said, “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.” (Mt 12:35) Any change we seem to make is ephemeral and will eventually fail. How we are when our defenses are down reflects how we truly are.
No, The checklist life; the self-improvement road, is not the road we should be on. Both Jesus and Paul warn us off this path and our experience tells us that any success will be short lived. That leave us the question of how do we rid ourselves of the bad fruit and produce the good? The answer is pay attention to the kind of tree you are; to tend to the tree, not the fruit. Examine the fruit we produce, but good fruit is not the goal; aim to be the kind of person that produces good fruit.
“A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.” (Mt 12:35)
So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. (Gal 5:17)
We are not asked to “fix” ourselves (if that is even possible). Our part is to invite Holy Spirit’s ministry and position ourselves to receive it. That is where Spiritual Disciplines come in. Spiritual Disciplines, activities like prayer, meditation, memorizing scripture, and fasting are: ” Intentional practices that help as “keep company” with Jesus. “(adapted from Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, Adele Calhoun, p 19). Dallas Willard characterized Spiritual Disciples as direct actions taken to achieve indirect results. Disciplines do not, by themselves make us better; they open the door for God.
As we begin to practice spiritual disciplines, as we begin to “keep company” with Jesus, we will begin to change us. Soon, often we we least expect it, we find the fruit we used to strive for now spontaneously appearing. We begin to see the Fruit of the Spirit described by Paul.
Why not spend some time, now is as good as any, asking the Lord to show you what “bad” fruit He notices in your life. Ask Him too, what good fruit is lacking. Don’t be surprised if you He points out things that would not have occurred to you! Finally, see if He is inviting you to any Spiritual Disciplines, direct actions on your part to allow him to produce His results. Here is a paritial list of Spiritual Disciplines, if an unfamiliar one is brought to your mind, don’t write it off. Descriptions are easy to find!
If you have spent some time in prayer just now, you likely have a clearer understanding of the health of your soul and of what God may be suggesting you do about that.
If you begin a journey of Spiritual Disciplines, come back some time and leave a comment. I’d love the hear what the Lord is doing in you!
As I was preparing this message on Freedom and spiritual bondage, this letter came into my hands. It seems suspicously like what we read in C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, but I am certain this letter was never seen by Lewis.
My
dear Wormwood,
Reading your last letter, it seems I must remind you of what you should have learned in your first year at the Tempter’s Training College! One of our chief aims is to keep our patients in prison. Not in physical prisons that constrains them bodily, but in spiritual prisons that bind their souls. Your patient can be imprisoned by anything that makes him desire his will over the Enemy’s will. There are any number of prisons he can be persuaded to enter. Pride, drugs, prestige, relationships, physical health, career, pornography, wealth, alcohol, can all make excellent prisons; the possibilities are nearly endless. Most likely you will find your patient already in a prison. Most of them, well estranged from the Enemy, naturally find their way into spiritual bondage. Anything that serves to keep your patient’s attention away from the Enemy can become his prison. What does he rely on? What does he find himself drawn to? Those are your candidates for his prison. Anything that pulls him into himself and away from the Enemy, that becomes his prison.
Once
he is in a prison you must keep him from suspecting that he is indeed in bondage.
He must believe that he can walk out of prison anytime he wants to. As long as
he thinks he is in charge, he remains safely in our tender care. Never let him
feel the bars of his prison; never let him know that he has no freedom.
For your position is still not secure: The Enemy will be trying to free your patient. Unlike our Father below, he foolishly desires to preserve the free will of his wretched creatures. He won’t compel his creature to come out to him, but he will contrive to let a little sliver of light into the dungeon, to make your patient aware of his bondage. That is the most dangerous time for you, when your patient begins to realize that he is in a prison and cannot get himself out. Should this be the case, your strategy is simple: as soon as he begins to sense the hopelessness of his situation, let him out! Let him have his victory! It will be easy enough to ensnare him again, likely in the same cage he thinks escaped, especially if you encourage his sense of self-sufficiency in managing his “escape.” Does he fancy himself clever? Help him believe that his cleverness got him out. Does he think his will is especially strong? Let him believe that it is by strength of his will that he escaped. Perhaps the most amusing: if he thinks himself righteous, help him believe that his self-righteousness was his salvation.
The
key thing is to ensure that your patient maintains the delusion that he is
managing his own life, that he is his own man — in charge of himself. If he should realize the hopelessness of his
situation, he may throw himself at the feet of the Enemy. Your goal must be to keep his focus on anything except the Enemy and his
dreadful cross, a power we have not yet been able to overcome. If your patient
ever avails himself of that power and claims the Enemy’s so-called “mercy and
grace” our case may be badly damaged, if not utterly lost. I need not remind
you the penalty you will pay should you fail in this most basic of temptations
and your patient is lost to us.
The process of spiritual formation, the internal transformation of souls, is a life-long pursuit for Christians and can be a difficult and confusing journey. As with any journey, we need to know two key things: where we are and where we are going. If we do not know where we are now, it may be impossible to find our way to our destination. If we do not really know where we are going, then any progress we make will likely be haphazard and could just as easily move us farther away as move us closer to our end point.
For our spiritual journey, knowing where we are now is largely a matter of knowing who we are and, to a lesser extent, knowing how we got to be where we are. I earlier wrote about knowing ourselves and the importance of being known.
Knowing where we are going, is not really very hard, but it is something many of us either don’t think about or assume some generic, vanilla version of christian maturity. But the reality is that each of us carries within us a God-given spiritual longing.
I recently had occasion to contemplate my destination. The Lord pointed me to Psalm 1’s description of a Godly person, focusing me on verse 3:
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Psalm 1:3 (ESV)
As I thought and prayed about what this verse might mean to me, as a spiritual longing, here is what I came to perceive what I am being called to.
I long to be a tree:Strong, alive, providing shelter and shade Planted: Immovable, unshakable,deeply rooted in the knowledge of God’s love for me By streams of water: Drinking deeply of living water— love that flows from the heart of Jesus. Flowing — always new, continually refreshed and refreshing. Yielding fruit in its season: Not forcing fruit out of season, but content in times of fruitlessness. In season, obediently yielding Godly fruit to feed and nourish others. Whose leaf does not wither: with growth and life even when there is no fruit, unaffected by the hot and dry seasons. Prospering in all that I do: Prospering not for personal enrichment or gain, but being aligned with the Father’s heart, prospering in kingdom purposes.
That is my longing, my aspirational state. What is yours? I encourage you to take the time, perhaps with a Spiritual Director or other trusted spiritual friend, to prayerfully consider where you have been with God, where you are today, and what you are being called to.
In the beginning the way is broad and easy. The road is smooth and the ascent is barely noticeable. I walk happily and easily along the gentle slopes. I have my pack well-stocked an and on my back. I also have my wooden two-wheeled cart, loaded with my most cherished possessions. Even loaded as heavily as my cart is, it is smooth and easy to push it along in front of me.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the path narrows a becomes a bit less smooth. The incline seems to increase with each step I take. As I round a bend I can look back and see that I am indeed climbing more rapidly. The way ahead seems even steeper yet. I can still manage the journey, but it is no longer easy. I must stop and rest more often.
Soon my times of rest become more frequent and longer, comprising the majority of my time. My arms and shoulders ache from the weight and strain of pushing my cart before me. The path is becoming less smooth and my card lurches from side to side and crashes down into ruts and over ever larger rocks in the path. Despairing at my lack of progress and worried that I may lose a wheel or snap the axle of my cart, I decide to lighten my load. I sift through mounded cart, discarding what I think I can do with out. It saddens me to leave behind the things I worked so hard to provision myself with, but there is no other way.
With my burden lessened, my trek is once again easy; my strength is once again sufficient.
As I resume the assent, the way becomes every narrower. The once broad avenue is now a narrow foot path. Shrubs and low tree branches grab at my cart, trying to stop my progress. I push on through them but soon find that huge rocks on my left form a virtual wall. On my right, a once gentle slope down has become an alarming precipice. The sides of my cart scrape and catch on the rock wall, threatening to push it off the edge to the right.
In a rare wide and level spot I stop to assess my situation. My cart has taken a beating. I am exhausted trying to keep it from going over the edge. The way forward seems even more treacherous and narrow. If I am to go forward I must abandon my cart. Yet I have worked so hard to gain my possessions and to bring them this far up the mountain. I sit in that spot for a long time. My things are so dear to me!
Eventually, I make up my mind. I will give up my cart but contrive to keep as many of my things as I can. Casting my cart aside, I sift through my belongings, judging what I hold most dear and what I’m willing to let go of. In the end, I repack my backpack, adding some of my most cherished things. Still other things are added to the outside of the pack, lashed in place with make-do straps.
With my burden lessened, the way again is easy. My strength is once again sufficient. The narrow places are no longer such a challenge.
No sooner have I found a comfortable pace and start to be content with my progress then the terrain changes yet again, becoming more and more difficult. The path becomes steeper and the footing less sure. At times I am climbing as much as walking. The weight of my pack, combined with some nearly vertical climbs threatens to pull me over backward. As before, I find my need for rest stops coming more and more frequently.
I know what I must do. I pare my pack down, leaving behind everything I dare, leaving only the essentials — food, water and the few things I am sure that I will need for my journey. But soon even that is not enough. The path is too narrow, too steep and too treacherous. Soon I am forced to abandon my pack entirely, trusting that somehow I will reach the summit before I succumb to hunger or thirst.
Unburdened, the climb (for it is not now a hike) becomes easier. Then, unexpectedly, the nearly vertical path slowly begins to level off. As it levels, it broadens. The boulders that hedged me in for so long become fewer and smaller. The harrowing precipice also ends. The change is subtle and revealed only over time. Yet soon I find myself on a smooth broad road.
Looking back, I spot my backpack, left far below. Even further back, so far back that it is hard to believe I can spot it, is my abandoned cart, a mere speck. Looking ahead, the path remains broad smooth, slowly climbing upward. Not very far ahead I see cool streams of clear water and fruit trees in abundance. It is a natural garden. For a moment I wish I had my cart, it would be perfect here. Then I laugh at myself, realizing that I have neither need nor want for the things I once prized so highly but left behind along the way.
I know that I have not reached the summit, but here, in this garden, I know that I am close. Any sense of urgency I once had is gone. I am free to tarry or proceed. Each step forward now reveals new delights: an especially beautiful flower, an exquisite new fruit to enjoy, a warm and sunny spot to sit and hear the music of a stream flowing over cataracts.
I do not know what is next. I feel neither urgency to press on nor a desire to linger. In my freedom I continue on my way at a pace dictated by God, enjoying the beauty of his mountain.
Have you found that God seems to begin some good work in you only to have it seem to evaporate, to disappear, as if it had never been there at all? He may have begun some emotional healing, restoring some relationship, or bringing some fresh awareness or understanding in your life. Then, some time later you discover that what you thought was being born in you seems to have been illusory. To use the metaphor of grapes growing on a vine, we see the small, round new grapes appear on the vine, but then, as time goes on, instead of maturing to ripeness, the grapes have withered and died.
All of us, at sometime or another, have found ourselves hurting, scared, and not knowing where to turn. Finally, we cry out to God. We find that God is good. We find that things start to change. Or perhaps our understanding and acceptance starts to shift, perhaps God speaks to us in our pain and starts the processes of healing and formation.
As our pain starts to subside, we carry on with our lives and one day we find ourselves in distress again. We turn back to God, looking for that nascent fruit we had seen before, only to find it is nowhere to be seen. It has evaporated like the dew. What has happened?
Jesus gives us an answer in John, chapter 15.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (ESV) John 15:1-6
Too often, when we first see fruit start to appear, the baby grapes on the vine, we declare victory and move on. Without even thinking about it, with our pain assuaged, we take a step back and disconnect from God. Rather than abiding with God, we detach our branch from the vine. Little wonder the fruit withers and fails!
When the fruit fails, rather than wondering what happened to it or if it was ever really there, we should make sure that we haven’t broken ourselves off the vine. God cannot mature the fruit (and us!) if we do not abide in him.
For many of us, coming to believe in Jesus as Messiah and the son of God was a hard, hard, thing to do. I know it was for me. Indeed, Scripture tells us that we can’t come to belief on our own, it is only through God’s grace.
“For it was only through this wonderful grace that we believed in him.” Ephesians 2:8(a) (The Passion translation)
And yet, it turns out that believe is relatively easy when compared to the day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second work of discipleship, that is, turning away from what we want and toward what God wants.
Consider Mark’s account of Peter’s confession of Christ (Mark 8:27-38). Jesus ask his disciples who do people say that he is and then who do they say that he is. Upon Peter’s identification of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus tells his disciples what it means for him to be Messiah: betrayal, injustice, and death. Peter is unwilling to accept this and rebukes Jesus, who cutting to the heart of the matter, rebukes Peter:
But Jesus turned around, and glancing at all of the other disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, “Get out of my sight, Satan! For your heart is not set on God’s plan but man’s!” Mark 8:33 (The Passion Translation)
Peter believes, he had just confessed Jesus as Messiah, but is heart is not set on God’s plan. Jesus goes on to explain that we really have only two ways open to us. We can give up our lives for true life or continue holding on to our own lives, which leads us to death. We are not given the option of a third way.
Surrendering to Jesus’ ways, taking up his cross, and disowning our own lives is the necessary, continual work of discipleship. It can be hard — very hard. All of us do imperfectly. Most of us do it very imperfectly. The good news is that we don’t have to reshape our own hearts. God does the hard work. We just have to remember to let go and get out of the way so that he can have his way with us. He will, if we let him, keep our hearts set on his plan and not mans.
Are you on the road of discipleship?
This post is derived from a sermon I preached recently. You can listen to that message, if you want more on the hard work of discipleship.
From Pops' Workshop 