Silent Spirituality

Have you ever been drawn to someone's spirituality? In those circumstances I think some are actually drawn to the Holy Spirit displayed in the individual saint, but other times I'm afraid we're drawn to the other person themselves. Call it mystery, wonder, adventure, the possibility of something better, some mystical spirituality that someone possesses that we want to be a part of. Some of that may hit or miss you, but the point is the vast difference to which you are drawn: to the person or to God.

The above perspective seems to focus on the observer and not the person on display...but I think it is just as important to look at yourself on the other end. If I have any "spirituality" worth sharing, it is the kind that puts others' focus squarely on God. The degree to which others begin focusing on me is the degree to which I am a distraction from God to them. The perfect witness or inspiration would be one where no one remembered your name, what you even looked like, or any specific detail about you...but instead they remembered the movement of the Holy Spirit in them and their revelation about God that was true and in their core.

Of course, as humans I think we find it extremely difficult to completely meet this picture of spirituality, whether from the observer or sharing role. But that doesn't change our aim: decrease me and increase you, Lord. John 3:30 - "He must increase, but I must decrease."

What is of equal or greater importance than the degree to which you achieve this pure, God glorifying witness, is the intent of your heart. When you share your spiritual thoughts with others, what is your motivation? Not 100% pure all of the time yet? You're a normal child of God...but be on your way...seek to grow in this area and pray in communion with God for it. God knows how to give good gifts, none greater than the Holy Spirit.

Luke 11:13
"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" (see also Matt 7:11)

Do you see someone whose spiritual insights inspire you? Try to see less of them and more purely the Spirit. Realize that the same God works in you and will work his perfect purpose in your life just the same as theirs. You need not wonder if you can hear from God like others: you can and you likely have without even recognizing it. Besides, we were all once sinners condemned to Hell for eternity, yet we now have everlasting Heaven through Christ. If this is possible in the fraction of a second when you accepted Christ, what might be possible through Him by morning?!!

Jesus in Matt 6: 3-6, 16-18 -
But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly. And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly...
...Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 17 But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly."

It happens most purely when no human knows of your impact, but God sees in secret. It happens when the slightest of circumstances gives glory to God in the eyes of an observer and you never know it until Heaven. And it even happens when you are unfortunately aware of your impact and are seen by others as spiritual. I say "unfortunately" because any self-realization can be a burden if you think that you are responsible for producing the next inspiration or witness, or if you take pride in what you feel you have accomplished. How hard for the flesh to be a silent anonymous witness and how much harder for that witness to be unbeknownst to you...but how pleasing and pure to the Holy Spirit inside of you.

Seek to be fulfilled by spending time with God alone, instead of on display and through things seen in the flesh. The mundane gives glory to God as much or more than the great things seen by men. For when men see, they often attribute some of the glory to other men. How glorious when all praise and glory is instead given to our Heavenly Father.

Are You Comfortable with the Human Predicament?

Being comfortable with a slight or a shortcoming can take a couple of forms, and it’s ironic that comfort itself can be either good or bad. Think about the following situation: you are overwhelmed with a workload or struggling to keep up with daily demands, whether it’s work or just life related. You can stay in this stressful state, or you can get comfortable with it and accept it for what it is. That comfort can go one of two ways. The unhealthy comfort takes the form of complacent familiarity and saying, “yeah, here we go again. I usually fall behind here, but it’s not possible to keep up with this and I shouldn’t be expected to…as long as I accept it, I won’t be stressed. I’m still doing better than some people.” Conversely, the healthy comfort takes the form of confidence and says, “yeah, I’ve been here before, I always feel this way and struggle, but somehow I pull through. I’ll get this right sooner or later.” Usually, our past experiences determine our “comfort” form. If we’ve repeatedly failed, we might take the first stance of getting too comfortable with failure to the point that we don’t even question it. We make excuses by comparing ourselves to others who have failed or sighting some unfairness in the situation. We accept the fate of failure as something beyond our control and try to find some sort of peace in it. That is one response to stress or setback. If our past experiences are more of successes, especially success in the midst of adversity, and even more especially if we’ve experienced success in the face of what we thought was certain failure, then we’re more likely to take the latter example of comfort and confidence. And of course, it is valuable to recognize when we need to seek additional outside help.

The above speaks to confidence or lack thereof in our own abilities and experiences. However, I would like to extend the idea of comfort to a much broader application: the problem with being human verses the holy perfection of God. The problem is that we are inherently imperfect, as sin entered human nature in the Garden of Eden.

Jesus in Mark 10:18 – “No one is good—except God alone.” Again, Romans 3:23 – “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We are not gods or demigods. We have no perfection in us ourselves, and any perfect moments that we aspire to experience are not from ourselves but from outside ourselves. So we have this constant conflict—a desire to be something we’re not. And when we do occasionally experience this perfection in doing good in God’s sight, we have to embrace it as beyond ourselves as we are, or we quickly find out just how imperfect we are—and thinking that we are independently perfect is actually just another confirmation of how imperfect we truly are, for cancerous pride has entered us in that moment.

But life goes on…imperfect life, life of struggle and failure. Life with successes and “perfect” moments, yet still riddled with tiny little failures or huge, life-altering ones. How do we cope? How do we go on without stressing out and worrying a hole in our stomachs? We cannot trust ourselves—most of us have proven that, and the rest will see it proven either sooner or later. I think we have to get comfortable with being human. I mentioned the practical example above as a caution of the contrast between a healthy and unhealthy comfort in being human. Extending the example, an unhealthy comfort says “I’m only human. I make mistakes and sin and it’s ok. I can’t expect to get it right and no one else can either, so what does it matter? I’ll probably always carry on this way and I better get used to it sooner or later. I will never get past it…besides, look at all those people who are even worse than me!” Be careful there—“those people” can be changed in an instant, reborn, and meanwhile you’re still the same or deteriorating. Try to realize that God sees us in our present, but He also sees our futures and our potential. Time does not bind Him, so seeing the past, present, and future looks the same to Him. You are not removed from your past or future in this present moment. This may be an uncomfortable thought, given our sinful pasts, or instead an inspiration, given what we hope to be…but I think it shows just how marvelous God’s grace is. He knows your past sins, present struggles, and future temptations—He sees all of these at the same “time” (if time meant anything to Him, a timeless being), yet He forgives you yesterday, today, and forever. Once you’ve chosen Jesus Christ as your savior, you are forgiven.

Romans 3:21-26: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

So what do we do? Do we take comfort in our humanness and let our desires run free? Or do we take comfort in our humanness with confidence—knowing that we’ve been tried before and God has saved us. That our failures don’t prohibit us from success. As in the previous example, we can grow confident that God has proven Himself faithful and full of grace to us countless times, and to our ancestors even more countless times. We can then get comfortable with the temptations that cross our minds…not that we accept them…no, that we know we have the power to reject them through the Holy Spirit. Not that we say, “well, here’s that temptation again and I’ll probably always give in…I’m human.” Instead we say, “ah ha…I see you, Temptation…you don’t own me, God does. Satan cannot have me. God has claimed me as His holy vessel.”

1 Cor 3:16-17 – “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”

At this point we stop being so scared of our deepest temptations or inadvertent “in the moment” sins…we instead recognize that we’re only human…and Satan the tempter is sub-deity…so temptation is either “only human” or another form of sub-deity…what power can it hold over Almighty God?

Can you gain this healthy comfort in your human nature? You can, and you’ll find more strength in it. It is a fruit of knowing just who God is, a confidence in Him and therefore in yourself, a reserved temple of the Holy Spirit. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13)

A Great Struggle: Trial vs. Complacency

From “My Utmost For His Highest,” May 19 -

"OUT OF THE WRECK I RISE"

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Romans 8:35
God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says - "I will be with him in trouble." It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man's life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We are "more than conquerors in all these things." Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus

Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.
"Shall tribulation . . . ?" Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may - exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you.
"Shall anguish . . . ?" - can God's love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
"Shall famine . . . ?" - can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?
Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God's character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it - the love of God in Christ Jesus. "Out of the wreck I rise" every time.

Does this speak to anyone else? There are two sentences that jump more than any other to me. The first is “I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.” At first read, that may seem over-the-head spiritualized, or alternatively you may think, “that condition is always met—there is always at least some little thing,” and therefore dismiss the statement. However, this hit me because…I have experienced it. I can think back to a specific period in my life where there was almost nothing that I consciously wished wasn’t there. And if you know what I know about it, then you would agree with O.C. that you are sorry for me in that moment. That period of time, the last time “everything in the world was right,” marked the beginning of a spiritually dry period in my life. You see, shortly following that period, it all started to crumble—most disturbing of all, my focus and relationship with Christ. I did not recognize my need of Him. I became an angry, self-centered, prideful, arrogant man…or something short of a real man of God. Though it is hard to purge every bad behavior or tendency from the flesh because we are in part just that—flesh—the point is that there was a noticeable difference in me.

Oh yes, on a given day without much sleep the night before I would probably complain that I was tired and needed a break. Ok, ok, yes, there were circumstances, minor to me, that I wished were different, to O.C.’s point…but I don’t think that’s his main point, after all. Overall, I was content…and complacent. And I never thought about it quite like this until reading O.C’s pity for a person in that situation. Perhaps you’ve experienced it and know exactly where he’s coming from. Perhaps you haven’t, but now I hope you can see it before it would happen to you. And we don’t become masochists that want trial to keep our soul’s awareness up…but we might perceive them differently, if such trials do persist. God is shown through our trials. If you reach a situation where for an extended period of time (I’ll say months), there is no major distraction that hampers your mind, body, or soul…nothing that troubles you…perhaps that is the moment we need to reach for God the most. Don’t get me wrong—there are seasons of great blessing. Thank our Good Lord that for most of us in America it has been the greater portion of our lives. But those times of blessing aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive from the trials. In fact, the past 2+ years of my life can be seen in two completely different ways, depending on the lens that the viewer uses.

If you know anything about polarizing lenses, you know that they can filter out parts of visible light. Use the right lens and the distracting light is filtered out, leaving the desired light. Use the wrong lens and the opposite effect is observed. If you remove the polarizing lenses from my recent life, then you can see the vastly different perspectives: one would say that it’s been the worst, most trial ridden and heartbreaking stretch of my life by far. A concentrated dose of hardship, both physical and emotional. And I’ll inform you that it has been spiritually trying, as well. All of that is true. The other perspective is also true: that it has been the most enriching, nourishing, wonderful 2 years of my life. I have been led to search my heart and search out God as never before. He has rescued me and restored me, and all the while taken great care of me, blessing me with a relationship with Him that far outweighs anything we could see in this physical world. And physical blessings still persist, as well (simply consider that I’ve had a job the entire time, for starters).

So the worst 2 years of my life have been my best and favorite 2 years. I use the word “favorite” and immediately begin to remember the times of no trials and wonderful abounding blessings with no perceived difficulties—and I am drawn toward them immediately. Perhaps those are my “favorite.” But then again I consider that I could not and would not choose to go back there, for it would take me away from my current relationship with God to a place farther from Him. Easier in the flesh, but devastating to the soul. These are things that I could only see after the fact, and I see them now.

Maybe we shouldn’t lament our circumstances so much, when you think of the alternative “easy life.” If you’re experiencing the “easy life,” thank God right now. Give Him the glory, live for Him through it, let it be your witness, making you even more keenly aware of His presence, instead of numbing you to it. But also realize that great transformation of individuals and of mass civilizations has come through great trial…great trial that purges evil, sets believers faces on God, and demonstrates all the perfect love and grace that is our perfect God.