From Pops' Workshop

Tag: Spiritual Freedom

  • Fear Not

    Fear Not

    Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Jesus

    The Bible repeatedly tells us not to be fearful or anxious.

    • Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.1
    • The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.2
    • And [Jesus] said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”3
    • So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.4
    • Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.5
    • Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.6
    • Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.7
    • Therefore do not be anxious, … but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.8
    • Cast all your anxiety on [God] because he cares for you.9

    How do you feel reading those verses? If you skipped over them just now, go back and read them again, paying attention to how they make you feel. Are you comforted by them or are you convicted of your inability to trust God? It depends on how we are reading those verses. The lens through which we read scripture will greatly influence how we interpret what we read.

    Most of us were taught to view the Bible as a divine instruction book. If you do what it says, God will be pleased with you. If you fail to follow the instructions, God will at least be disappointed or, more likely, will be angry with you.

    If we view the Bible as a rule book, “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” we will see these verses as commands to not be afraid. Then, when we are afraid or anxious, we take it a sign of spiritual weakness and a lack of faith; we are not doing what God commands. With this mindset we believe that when we are anxious and afraid, we are going against God’s commands; it is a sin to be anxious and afraid.

    I used to think that way. I believed that when I was anxious or afraid, it was as a marker of how weak my faith was, of how little I trusted God. Believing my anxiety was, at best, a sign of spiritual immaturity, I would slather on a thick layer of guilt and shame. Of course that guilt and shame would just make me more anxious, believing that I was displeasing God.

    But as I have learned about the triune God and experienced his love for me, and as I have studied spiritual formation and sat with others in spiritual direction, I am convinced that the Bible is less about following the rules and is more about understanding God’s loving desire for us. In particular, the New Testament is not laying down a new law book to proscribe our behavior. Jesus is not Moses 2.0.10

    Jesus is the full revelation of a Father who loves us and wants us to be happy and well. What if we looked at those verses on anxiety and fear as the wisest of wise advice and as encouragements from someone who loves and cares for us and wants us to be happy?

    Instead of reading “do not be afraid” as a law to be obeyed, can we hear it as comfort and encouragement from a loving God? Can we hear a father, grieved not by disobedience, but by our unnecessary fear and anxiety. Consider the story of the storm-tossed boat in Matthew chapter 8. Read it slowly, imagine the scene with your mind’s eye. Pay particular attention to how you perceive Jesus.

    And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”11

    How does Jesus seem to you? Is he frustrated with his disciples? Angry perhaps? If that is the case, I invited you to sit with the passage again, this time, imagine Jesus feeling how you might feel if your child was unnecessarily frightened by a storm; not angry, but a little sad that loved ones are needlessly distressed. Can you hear “O you of little faith” as a gentle chiding? Don’t hurry; stay with this reading a while.

    How you see Jesus in this parable is likely how you expect him to be if you come to him with your fears. What we perceive about God from our scripture reading has more to do with our preconceived image of him than with the words on the page.

    If you have learned that “fear not” is a command to be obeyed, and not an encouragement to a freer life, consider this exercise. Pick two or three of the scripture passages that you read as commands to greater faithfulness. Read it over slowly. Sit with it. Chew on it. Ask Holy Spirit to help you see words of love, encouragement, and even instruction, in place of commands to be brave (or else!). The Holy Spirit loves to show us the true picture of God, the God who does not condemn but loves, saves, and restores.

    1. Joshua 1:9 (NIV) ↩︎
    2. Psalms 118:6 (NIV) ↩︎
    3. Matthew 8:26 (ESV) ↩︎
    4. Matthew 10:31 (NIV) ↩︎
    5. John 14:27 (ESV) ↩︎
    6. Luke 12:32 (NIV) ↩︎
    7. Philippians 4:6 (ESV) ↩︎
    8. Matthew 6:31(a), 33-34 (ESV) ↩︎
    9. 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV) ↩︎
    10. And neither are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. ↩︎
    11. Matthew 8:23-27 (ESV) ↩︎

  • Chapter 22: The Lake

    Chapter 22: The Lake

    “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
    John 4:13-14 (ESV)

    Another thread that I find woven through my experiences in my Pops’ Workshop is water. Those experiences culminated in a vast lake that lies beneath my Pops’ Workshop and which became the scene of a powerful vision.

    Water, Water, Everywhere

    I am not surprised that water was an important element of my time in my Pops’ Workshop; it is a common motif in the Bible. Begining with Genesis, where river flows out of Eden to water the garden,1 water is woven through Israel’s history: Moses is drawn up out of the waters of the Nile;2 the Red Sea is parted to allow Israel’s escape from Egyptian bondage, and it rushes back to crush Pharaoh’s pursuing Army;3 God provides a miracle of water from a rock in the wilderness;4 and the Jordan river is miraculously parted to allow Israel to cross.5

    The psalmist tells us that a man who delights in the Lord’s instruction is like a tree planted by streams of water,6 and Ezekiel’s exilic vision of the new temple describes a miraculous flow of water from the temple that brings life and abundance wherever it flows.7

    The image of water continues in the New Testament. Jesus’s messianic destiny is revealed as the Spirit descends on him at his baptism in the waters of the Jordan River.8 Jesus describes the water he gives as a spring of water welling up to eternal life,9 and he promises that if we believe in him, rivers of living water will flow out of our hearts.10 The final chapter of the bible describes a river of life that flows out of the throne of God.11

    The Water motif has already been central to my time in the workshop and the healing and renewing that my Pops was unfolding in my life. When I was warned, in the vision of venomous snakes, that the enemy would strike me, I was also shown a stream of healing water.12 Water was a central image of the inner healing I didn’t even know I needed. The stream below the workshop, which should have been a torrent of God’s love, was barely a trickle until Jesus guided me to bring my real self and my whole self to him for healing.13 That stream was also the home of my nemesis, “Pride Rock.”14 And, finally, the stream running through the meadow behind the workshop.15

    Even with all those water images and references, there was one more yet to come.

    The Lake

    I was in a season of learning that seeking the workshop, or any other particular expression of God, is usually not productive; seeking the Lord is. When we chase after a particular expression of God, we are looking for something to scratch our spiritual itch. God is not generally in the business of scratching our itches. He wants us, and I find that usually means that when we approach God for what we can get from him, materially, emotionally, or spiritually, we are likely to be disappointed. It is when we approach him empty-handed and offer ourselves to his care that we are most likely to experience his presence, often in surprising ways!

    In that season, after futilely seeking an experience of the workshop, I instead simply waited on the Lord, surrendering myself to his presence. Unexpectedly, I found myself back in the well — that is, down the hole at the back of the workshop, where I had experienced so much healing.

    The stream there was now flowing, no longer obstructed and fouled. I had never thought about it before, but now it occurred to me to follow it to see where it went. I don’t know how long I followed it, but eventually I came to the mouth of the stream. It emptied into a sea or vast lake. Due to darkness or the size of the lake, I could not see the far shore. The shore where I stood was rocky, and the “beach” was smooth stones. I could not see the sky, and I had the impression that I was still underground, in a vast cave. The water was calm and sparkled beautifully with reflected light. I had the impression of moonlight, but couldn’t reconcile that with the feeling that I was in a cave.

    The lake had no immediate meaning for me, except to underscore that I couldn’t expect that everything in the Workshop made sense as it would in a physical world. That was not the purpose of the visions I was experiencing in prayer. It made no sense that a stream running through a cave under an old workshop deep in the woods would empty out into a vast sea, perpetually bathed in moonlight. The purpose of this vision was to catch my curiosity, to make me wonder about this vast body of water that was somehow connected to God’s stream of live giving water.

    Part of the answer came to me in the writing of C. S. Lewis, where he talked about going to the sea, but only dabbling in the shallows, being careful to stay anchored to the land.

    This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea…and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal…Our temptation [in Christian discipleship] is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle… We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope — we very ardently hope — that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on…There is no parallel [in our life with God] to paying taxes and living on the remainder. For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves…He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls .16

    God does not intend for us to give only so much of ourselves; the way of life is to give him all.

    Months later, the imagery of the lake was still very much with me when I found myself praying about swimming and diving down deeper and deeper in the water, so deep that return to the surface would be impossible. This was not suicidal ideation; it was praying about what it could be like to join God in total surrender, reserving nothing for myself.17 In that time of prayer, my thoughts turned to the lake in the cave under Pop’s Workshop.

    I realized that swimming out, away from shore, would have the same effect as swimming down. If you swam out, away from shore, not stopping until you were utterly exhausted, you would have reached a point of no return. You would have nothing left to give.

    So, in that time of imaginative prayer, I swam out, under the starlit sky in the dark, cool water lake. As I reached that point, where I really couldn’t go any further, I saw a “hole” in the water. Like so many things in the workshop it defied the rules of logic and nature. It was not a whirlpool. It was more like swimming up to the edge of a waterfall, except the edge was circular. From every point water flowed down into the hole. I realized that I could swim “down” the waterfall, which I did. Soon I realized that I didn’t need to swim anymore. The force of the water carried me down. I did need my own strength. I stopped swimming and could be carried to where God wanted me to be.

    I have since learned that is how it is with God. He does his best work when we surrender, when we cut the lifeline that holds us to all the things that would pull us away from him.

    We like to say that we are “all in,” but we aren’t. We hedge our bets:

    • “Certainly God doesn’t care about consumerism; I tithe, that is good enough.”
    • Or, “Jesus could not have had my neighbor in mind when he said, ‘love your neighbor.’”
    • Or, “Sure, I lose my temper and say somethings I shouldn’t, but I never hurt anyone, so that’s okay.”
    • Or, “God doesn’t expect me to be perfect,18 that isn’t realistic.”

    We exhaust ourselves trying to make sure we are “good enough,” and realize the folly of trying to simultaneously be who we want to be and who we think God wants us to be. When we stop rationalizing and finally let go and let God have his way with us the real transformation happens. God’s indwelling Spirit can do his truly miraculous work. He can remold us from the inside so that we care about consumerism, we love even the vilest neighbor, are filled with God’s peace, and, yes, he loves us enough to perfect us.

    The lake was a picture of the refreshing vastness of God, and it became an invitation to let go of my old life so that God could give me my real life.

    1. Genesis 2:10 ↩︎
    2. Exodus 2:4-10 ↩︎
    3. Exodus 14:21-29 ↩︎
    4. Numbers 20:11 ↩︎
    5. Joshua 3:14-17 ↩︎
    6. Psalm 1:1-3 ↩︎
    7. Ezekial 47:1-12 ↩︎
    8. Matthew 3:13-17 ↩︎
    9. John 4:14 ↩︎
    10. John 7:37-38 ↩︎
    11. Revelation 22:1-2 ↩︎
    12. The Promise of Peace. ↩︎
    13. Down a Hole ↩︎
    14. Pride ↩︎
    15. A Place of Rest ↩︎
    16. Lewis, C. S.. “A Slip of the Tongue” in Weight of Glory (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (pp. 188-190). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
    17. This thought of swimming in water being a metaphor for union with God was also explored in my post, “Swimming.” ↩︎
    18. Matthew 4:48 ↩︎
  • The Unlooked-For Good

    The Unlooked-For Good

    Christmas is nearly here. This year, the approach of Christmas leaves me with mixed emotions. I long for a Norman Rockwell Christmas: a loving family gathering around a fragrant balsam, feasting, good-natured ribbing, games, laughter, making new memories, and sharing remembrances of Christmases past.

    That fantasized Christmas is rarely, if ever, anyone’s reality. I have come close to it a few times. But the truth is that our dream of the perfect family Christmas, a wistful melange of Rockwell, Hallmark, and Hollywood Christmas classics, is not likely to be realized. Nonetheless, we look for it, we hope for it, and we may even convince ourselves that it is”normal” and anything else is a letdown.

    This Christmas, it will be just my wife and me at home, as it was last year. This is not a bad thing. Our children are grown, with their own families and busy schedules. They should be building their own traditions and their own memories. But the truth remains: our Christmas will look nothing like my idealized version of the Holiday.

    The massive gap between what we expect and what we get can become a hazardous space. We can be like a child who had his heart set on a pony for Christmas and, when he doesn’t get it, angrily rejects the gifts he did receive, gifts which would have delighted him had he not been consumed by the wrath that came from not getting his desired pony.

    This phenomenon is not limited to our holiday experiences; it can infect our spiritual lives as well. We can set our hearts on one particular good, which we eagerly await, straining to discern its advent. Focused on that one Good, we run the risk of not noticing the good that God does offer us. Or even if we do notice it we may reject it because we are too busy chasing the good we want and expect or because we are sulking and angry that we didn’t get what we wanted.

    C. S. Lewis noted this tendency.

    “It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good. Do you know what I mean? On every level of our life – in our religious experience, in our gastronomic, erotic, aesthetic, and social experience – we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we’re still looking for the old one. And of course we don’t get that. You can’t, at the twentieth reading, get again the experience of reading Lycidas for the first time. But what you do get can be in its own way as good.”
    ― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

    The same sentiment found its way into Lewis’ novel “Perelandra,” where a pre-fall “Eve” contemplates the temptation of wanting what we expected and despising what we received.

    One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or a setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”
    ― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra.

    I find myself in this state more often than I like to admit. I have decided what is good for me, what will make me happy, or how God will come through if he really loves me. And when I don’t get what I want or expect, I miss the good I am being given.

    When my Christmas does not meet the Norman Rockwell/Hallmark fantasy I carry in my imagination, can I set aside my disappointment and embrace the good I am being given? Or am I like those in Jesus’ day who were expecting and looking for a liberating King and so missed the presence of Love incarnate?1

    What are you looking for? What is the good you are expecting? How do you want God to show up in your life? Now, in the Christmas season, and always, when you expect a particular good, and when your cherished dreams don’t materialize, look for the good that is given, even as you lament the good you were expecting. Quiet your soul, take your lament to God in prayer, then ask him, “What is the real good you are giving me now?”

    1. Thanks to Torrie Sorge for this inspiration on Threads. ↩︎

  • Swimming

    Swimming

    The Lake is immense, deep, and still. I cannot guess its size or its depth. I am drawn to it; I desire to somehow be “with” the Lake and be as close to it as possible. Initially, I get only as far as the shore; I am content with being near the Lake. I see its shimmering surface. I hear the gentle sound of waves lapping up against the shore. I smell its watery scents. My desire is not satisfied, but I am not ready to get any closer.

    I want more. I take a boat and experience the Lake, albeit indirectly. I experience buoyancy and the unsteadiness of the boat on the water. The air is different out on the Lake; it is more still yet alive with things unseen. I strain my ears, trying to hear whispers of invitation that seem to be around me. Leaning over the gunnels, I peer into the depths of the Lake. They are at once clearer and more mysterious. I am closer to the water but still apart from it. I will not lean over far, lest I fall in and am lost in it. Neither will I row out too far from shore, fearful of losing the way back. I row back to shore.

    The more time I spend near the water and on the water, the more I want to be in the water. I wade into the water, experiencing contact with it and feeling its wetness. I feel the gentle tug of eddies and currents around my legs. Not content with wading, I try my hand at swimming: I go fully into the water. The water surrounds and upholds me. I dive down, wanting to be as fully in the Lake as possible. It is exhilarating, but soon, I must come up for air. I cannot swim for very long; my limbs tire, and I must return to the shore. My time swimming leaves me wanting an even closer communion with the Lake.

    I return to the water time and time again. Then, all at once, I notice a remarkable transformation has taken place. Somehow, I have become liquid. I do not know when or how it happened, but where I was once flesh and bone, I am now liquid. I have not lost my shape; I still have arms and legs and hands and feet. My body and my face are still “mine,” but now they are liquid.

    Entering the water, I join with it; I become of the same substance. The Lake is not a place I visit; it is my home. I become one with the water, yet I am not dispersed or diffused – I do not lose my identity. In my liquid state, I am never chilled or tired; I never need a rest. I am still “me,” and I am also part of the Lake.

    I can dive below the surface and never need to come up for air. I move naturally and easily with the flows and currents in the depths of the Lake. I can exercise my “self-ness” and go against the currents, but the more I am “liquid,” the less I find that appealing. If I chose to, I could return to the land as a solid creature, to only look upon the Lake, apart from it, no matter how close I got to it, but why would I?

    This work, “Swimming,” by David Hammerslag, is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

  • Spinning Plates

    Spinning Plates

    If you are old enough, you might remember variety shows like the Ed Sullivan show.  These shows featured singers, comics, dancers, and one my favorites: plate spinners.  The plate spinner starts plates spinning, one after another, atop flexible rods.  To keep each plate spinning he had to manipulate the rod before the plate slowed down to the point that it came crashing down.  As the number of spinning plates increased, the performer had to rush from place to place, giving each rod a little jiggle to keep the plate going.  He was barely able to keep each plate going.  Here is a video clip of a plate spinner in action.

    It can be entertaining and a little exciting to watch, but many of us live our lives as plate spinners.  We have many “plates” we are trying to keep going.  For example, we might list  spouse, job, children, friends, and so on. Each of these can become a plate we need to attend to—to keep spinning. When we think we’ve got these under control…..we might be tempted to add a few more, for example: hobbies, volunteering and fitness.

    Our lives can become a frantic rushing from plate to plate.  We give each enough attention to prevent a disastrous crash, then we rush off to the next plate that is in danger of falling.  We make our lives more and more frantic, hoping that with this one last plate spinning in its place, it will finally be enough — we’ll be happy and satisfied.

    Do you ever feel like a plate spinner?  Maybe you hear yourself saying or thinking things like:

    • I really need to spend some time this weekend getting this project at work caught up!
    • My wife and I haven’t been out together in a long time.  If we don’t get away soon I don’t know what will happen.
    • I am starting to feel like I don’t know my daughter  I need to spend some more time with them.
    • I am really getting out of shape! I have got to carve out some time to get the gym.

    IF those sound familiar, you might be a plate spinner! We think if we can just manage to keep all the plates spinning — make sure none of them come crashing down — then we will be happy and contented.  Yet, even when we do manage it, usually for only a very short while, we end up feeling exhausted and unfulfilled.  We realize that our “win” is temporary at best.  Soon some of the plates will start to slow down and wobble, demanding our attention again.

    The plates become our masters.  We become imprisoned by the need to keep the plates spinning.  They command our attention.  We can feel like we have no choice but to keep them all going. But let’s suppose we have managed to reach some kind of equilibrium, we’ve got all of our plates spinning along nicely, we have it “under control”.   We are tired at the end of the day, and sometimes some of those plates are getting pretty wobbly, but we’re managing.

    And then…we realize that God wants something of us as well.  Oh great!  One more plate to keep spinning! We make our lives a little bit more frantic by trying to work our “God obligation” in along with everything else.  Daily devotions, Bible reading, volunteering at church: More plates to try to keep spinning. Needless to say, we generally end up a more stressed and frazzled and tired!

    Is that what Jesus had in mind?  Does he come to us so that we can feel more hectic, more scattered, more worn out?  No.  Of course not.  Jesus says just the opposite.  He said following him will give us rest for our souls.  In the Gospel of Matthew, 11:28-30, he says:

    “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
    Matthew 11:28-30, Message Translation

    Something isn’t adding up here.  Adding a few more spinning plates, albeit “God” plates, does not feel like a real rest.  It doesn’t feel like I’m living freely and lightly.  I am still running around trying to keep all the plates going.  It feels like anything but an unforced rhythm of grace.

    We approach the “God plate”   the wrong way.  We often look at it as another plate or set of plates we have to keep spinning along with everything else.  We need to come to grips with the idea that the God Plate is really the one worth attending to above all else.  It is not another plate – it is THE plate.

    In Chapter 6 of Matthew, verses 33 and 34, Jesus says:

    Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

    Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.
    Matthew 6:33-34, The Message.

    Jesus is not saying that all the other things, all the other plates, aren’t important.  What he is saying is that we should soak ourselves in that God is doing, right here and right now.  We ought not to be particularly concerned with all those other plates.  We should trust that the Lord will take care of them.  We should trust that our Good Father will give us the good he intends.

    Don’t take me wrong.  I am not suggesting that you not neglect your spouse and children or you not bother showing up for work tomorrow.  Jesus is saying we should not worry about those things.  We should not wear ourselves out frantically trying to make sure everything is going just the way we think it should.

    Only one plate that matters.  That is where we get stuck.  Do we really trust God to take care of us and our needs or do we rush away from him so that we keep all the other plates spinning?

    Whether we think much about it or admit it to ourselves, we usually act as if any good is going to come out of some situation, we have to get out there and keep those plates spinning.  We rarely look at a situation and say, “hmmm. I wonder what God might be up to here.  I wonder what he wants me to do.”

    I am quick to throw off the gentle and easy yoke of discipleship and jump back into the hard and difficult yoke of works. When God tells me he has something good in store for me, I am quick to doubt, unless I can understand how that good will come to pass and, most importantly, what I NEED TO DO to make it happen.

    As an example, I believe God wants me to write a book; that it is important for me to do so.  But I find myself asking the Lord things like:

    • Really, important? How so?
    • How will it be important? How important will it be?
    • Is it important that I write it or that people read it?
    • Will it be important for one person?  Ten people?  Thousands of people?
    • How will it impact me personally?

    God does not seem inclined to answer my questions. In fact, he reminds me that my desire to know all the answers is not faith.  Wanting to see the whole path I am to going walk and the specifics of the destination is not faith.  It is me wanting to choose.  It is me wanting to evaluate what God is planning on doing so I can decide if it is a good plan, if the path is one I want to walk, and if the destination is one I would choose.  If it all looks good to me, I want to make sure I know how to “Make it Happen”. I want to decide if I want to start spinning one more plate or not!

    I want to apply my reason and judgement over and above faith. I want to apply my reason to decide if I should start spinning one more plate. It may seem that faith and reason must oppose each other, but that is not the case.  We are created to reason and to have faith.  Indeed, faith requires reason.

    In the book Interior Freedom, author Jacques Philippe talks about the relationship between faith and reason:

    Faith cannot do without reason; and nothing is more beautiful than the possibility given man of cooperating in the work of God by freedom, understanding, and all our other faculties. Those moments of our lives when our minds grasp what God is doing, what he is calling us to, how he is teaching us to grow, enable us to cooperate fully with the work of grace.

    That is as God wants it. He did not create us as puppets but as free, responsible people, called to embrace his love with our intelligence and adhere to it with our freedom. It is therefore good and right that we want to understand the meaning of everything in our lives.
    Jacques Philippe, Interior Freedom, Kindle Ed. Loc. 527

    So, maybe it is OK for me to want to understand everything?  But Philippe is not saying we need to understand everything and every detail.  We need to recognize and be able to cooperate with what God is doing.  So I may be on shaky ground with my application of reason:  wanting all the details, so I can decide if I like the plan or not.

    Philippe continues…

    The motives behind our desire to understand may not always be upright. The thirst to know the truth in order to welcome it and conform our lives to it is completely in order. But there also is a desire to understand that is a desire for power: taking over, grasping, mastering the situation.

    The desire may also spring from another source that is far from pure: insecurity. In this case, understanding means reassuring ourselves, seeking security in the sense that we can control the situation if we understand it. Such security is too human, fragile, deceptive—it can be wrecked from one day to the next.
    Ibid.

    In other words, it is good, even necessary, that I can use my reason to hear and understand what it is that God is calling me into, writing a book in my case, and I can choose to cooperate freely in his plan, using my reason.  Using our reason is not the problem.  Why we use our reason can be the problem.  Do I want to choose what I think is best for me, or will I trust that God’s good is best for me.  Do I want to understand so that I take control of the process, to make sure it goes the way I want it to, or do I want to understand so that I can fully cooperate with God’s purposes?

    In my case, the desires to know all the “whys” and “hows” and “wherefores” of God’s plan is exactly what Philippe warns against.  I am seeking to understand so that I can I can control how the plan unfolds. I want to be the one calling the shots and making the decisions. I make God’s plan one more plate I have to spin and I want to decide if I should even bother to start it spinning.

    Being in charge is very distracting.  Trying to keep all those plates spinning necessarily pulls our attention away from God, away from what he is doing right here, right now.  We become disconnected from whatever it is God is up to at that moment; and he is always up to something!

    The only time we have any control over is the present.  When we are concerning ourselves too much with the future, wondering which plates I need to attend to next, we remove ourselves from whatever is happening right now.  Yesterday could have been a disaster and tomorrow may look pretty dicey, but the only time we can connect with God is now.  We need to break out of our prisons of spinning plates.

    It may sound counter-intuitive, but the desire to be the one that keeps all the plates going, the desire to be the one making all the decisions about the course to follow is really something that limits our freedom. The more we try to take on for ourselves, the less free we become. Taking the reins limits us to what we can imagine and work out for ourselves.  We reduce God’s initiative, the good he plans for us, to our size.  That is a pretty small size for God.

    Make no mistake, it is hard work, this trusting God to give us the good he intends for us—especially when we are in a hard place.  It requires us to realize that most of the plates we have spinning are not really vital and pale in importance when compared to God’s desires for us.  If they should fall they can be taken up again if need be.  There is that one plate that matters.  If we don’t attend to God, to our interior lives, if we don’t attend to our souls none of the rest of it really matters. We will continue our exhausting and frantic lives as plate spinners.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

  • The Trouble with Vows

    The Trouble with Vows

    Have you ever made a vow?  Most of us have.  If you are married you made vows to God and to your spouse.  If you have ever given legal testimony you made a vow to tell the truth.  If you served in the military you made a vow to protect and defend the constitution.  In a few days I will be commissioned into the ministry of Spiritual Direction in my church and will vows to God about how I will function in that ministry. These are a few simple examples, you may have others in mind.

    These vows are not bad things, when entered into soberly and intentionally.  Quite the contrary, they can be very good things. A vow to keep yourself “only unto” your spouse may make it easier for you to remain faithful in the face of temptation.  Our legal system would quickly fall apart if we couldn’t count on honest testimony.  My vows as a Spiritual Director can help keep me grounded and pointed in the right direction.

    But there are other vows we make, often without sober consideration and sometimes without realizing what we are vowing.

    I will never be like my father!
    I won’t treat my kids the way my mom treated me!
    I’ll never hurt anyone the way I’ve been hurt.
    I won’t let myself be hurt again!

    These are vows that we make to ourselves. We make them when we are angry, hurting, and vulnerable.  Often we make them when we are young, when we lack perspective and don’t realize the power these  vows can claim. We repeat them over and over to ourselves.  They become part of our internal wiring, exerting control over us long after we have forgotten we even made them.

    Still, you may be thinking, “what’s so bad?”  Indeed, if you are trying not to carry forward hurtful behaviors that is, on the surface, a good thing.  But here are a couple of reasons why they may be hurting you spiritually today.

    First, the enemy can use them against us.  The vows we make to ourselves are very hard to keep.  We will almost certainly fail in them, at least to some degree.  When we do, Satan, the enemy of our souls, is quick to jump in and remind us that we are failures and are doing the things we vowed we wouldn’t; we are failing ourselves and failing others.  If we are not well connected to the heart of the Father, Satan will likely be able to convince us that our failure to keep our vow is an affront to God, above and beyond any sin we may commit, even though the vow was one we made only to ourselves.  Those rashly made, often broken vows become needless sources of accusation and condemnation.

    Second, they cause us to limit ourselves. One of the threads that is common to many of the vows we make to ourselves is that vow what we are not going to do or become or allow to happen to us.  When those vows we’ve made, that have been entrenched in our psyches, they tell us only what not to do, not what to do.  We pay so much attention to what we don’t want to do and limit what we will do.  We fence ourselves in.

    In our spiritual growth terms, those vows limit our spiritual freedom.  Spiritual freedom, means that we desire nothing above knowing and following the Lord’s will.  The vows we make, ingrained as they are, become our primary focus, over knowing and following the Lord.

    An example from my own history of vows may help here.  My father had many good qualities but he also had some not so go qualities.  Like many people with challenging parents,  I vowed that I would never be like him.  Part of that meant that I vowed to not be manipulative.  My wife and children could easily attest that my failure to live up that vow was epic.  However, as I matured in my faith and became more aware of my own sinful adoption of my dad’s ways, those vows kicked in anew.  My vow to not be arrogant or manipulative to shape as a desire to melt into the background. I so wanted to not be arrogant I actively rejected much of what I was being called to do and become.  I was hesitant and reluctant to engage in the preaching and teaching I was called to.  Being in the background is not inherently bad, but it was not what I was being called to in this season.  My vows were limiting my spiritual freedom.

    What is the solution?  It is to learn to pay attention to your interior life, to learn what it is that motivates you.  Where you find vows that are not appropriate to your growth and freedom, take them to Jesus.  Acknowledge them, disavow them, and ask Jesus to guide you into the freedom he desires you have.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.