They say that if you are to going to learn to run a marathon, you have to learn to push through the pain. When you do this, they say (I have never done it), you get your second wind and can carry on. The physical is an analogy of the spiritual. There are rare individuals who in spite of severe odds, and extreme suffering, seem to find the wherewithal to rise above it all, and even to excel. And they are an inspiration to us all. I say in spite of it all, but actually I suspect it is at least partially because of it all. I keep saying it, the difficulties of life are crossroads. But where do they, where do we, find the strength and the courage, the wherewithal to take this less traveled road? It is not easy for anyone, but the Christian has resources the non Christian cannot know. In particular when we come boldly to the Throne of Grace we will find "Mercy and Grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16 quoted last day).
I have seen it over and over that suffering prods us into one of two directions. We can allow our suffering to build character, fortitude, integrity, grace, wisdom, love, hope and the like, or else we can allow it to leave us bitter, cynical abrasive and the like. To say this another way, we either allow these things to draw us closer to God, or we allow them to push us further away. We may vacillate between the two for a while, but ultimately we go in one direction or the other. And we choose. We choose to continue to see ourselves as victims, or we choose to see ourselves as over-comers. We need God's help to take the latter path. Well I at least need His help. I cannot do it without Him
The day that without doubt was the most difficult of my life, the Lord woke me up with an ancient hymn on my heart and mind:
Oh Joy that seekest me though pain,
I cannot ask to hide from thee.
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain,
that morn shall tearless be.
This was the day that my (now ex) wife took the four children and left. It was not the way I wanted to deal with our problems, but she had had enough. As conformation that the hymn was from Him, He next reminded me of the verse in Hebrews 12:2 “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame....” He was showing me that pain is a barrier the other side of which, is joy. But I did need to look to Jesus. He is (was) my strength and my song. He had earlier promised “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). There were many things He did for me that day (and afterwords) in addition to speaking to me from His Word, He sent people along to pray for and comfort me, and He gave me in my spirit, what I needed to get through it.
In one of His parables (the unjust judge - Luke 18:1-6) Jesus taught that we aught always to pray and not give up (verse 1). There were times, long periods in fact, that I was not able to pray, at least not in intelligible sentences. I am grateful for the teaching from Romans 8 that at such times “the Spirit intercedes for us in groaning that cannot be uttered” and my prayers were often little more than “Aggggggg”, or “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God!” or “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy (Abba - Father God). There were times when it all got too much for me and I fell, but He was always waiting for me to pick me up, and slowly but surely He built me up, and healed what I thought were incurable wounds. Indeed there were times I cried out with Jeremiah “Why is my pain perpetual And my wound incurable, Which refuses to be healed? Will You surely be to me like an unreliable stream, As waters that fail?”
In the days before running water on tap, an unreliable stream was one that would dry up at the time you needed it most. He did not tell us that we would never feel like we were abandoned, He did tell us that in reality He would never leave us nor abandon us. As the “footprints in the sand” poem illustrates clearly, in such times He carries us, though again we may not even be aware of it (Google "Footprints in the sand"). And the sun does come out again. It does.
The parable in Luke 18 ends with “When the Son of man comes again will He find faith on the earth?” (verse 8). Though we may stumble and fall, many times over and over and over, what is important is that we keep coming back to Him, calling out to Him from our darkness. Unless we do this, we will fail to obtain His enabling Grace (Hebrews 12:15), but if we have come to know Him, and have tasted His comfort, then like Peter we will ask ourselves and Him “Where will we go Lord, You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). As for me, I know that without Him I would quite literally be dead. Where will you go? Why don't you go there now?
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Enabling Grace, the wherewithal to live the Christian life I
"You've got to do the best you can”, my friend told me. “Sometimes my best is not good enough” was my reply. The picture I have of this is, of a village suffering severely from drought as the river dries up. Way back up stream there is a dam holding back much of the water. The keeper of the dam is aware of the problem. He has a hand pump which he is working furiously to try and pump the water over the top of the dam to supply the village. “I am doing the best I can” he says. “No one could pump harder than I am, no one”. True or not, the point would be mute if there was an electric pump he could turn on to solve the problem! We may fail to tap into resources beyond ourselves because of ignorance of their existence, or because of hurt or pain or stubbornness, but we will certainly be much less than we can be, if we do not learn to tap into His power to live the live He calls us to live. The Scripture tells us “We have not because we do not ask” (James 4:2). God will not impose His enabling grace on us, we have to come to the place where we admit our best is not good enough, and then we need to turn to Him and ask for Him to fill up what we cannot do.
This bears repeating, so let me say it again. When we have tried everything, done the very best we can and failed, there are two things we need to do. We need firstly to admit that we need His help, and secondly we need to come to the foot of the cross in humility asking Him for the help to do what we know is pleasing in His sight, and which without Him is impossible. Let's make no mistake about it, His standards are so impossibly high that we really cannot live up to them without His help. “The Law is our tutor to bring us to Christ” Paul tells us in Galatians 3. We know deep down that His standards are right, but they are so out of reach at times. But when He tells us “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23), it is not to condemn us, it is to help us see we need His help, His solution. If we think otherwise we are fooling ourselves and are likely to have a touch (or more) of self-righteousness.
It is said that there is no place that has more potential to generate anger, than a marriage. I believe this to be true. This being the case, there is no other relationship where sooner or later we will need His help if we are to deal with what needs to be dealt with, in a way that honours God and each other. These things are tests. Will we demonstrate that we are “mere men” (1 Corinthian 3:3), or will we with God's help (Grace), prove to ourselves and the World that there really is something to this Christianity stuff, that the Christian has something beyond him or herself?
The way it seems to work for most of us that that it is only when we come to the end of ourselves that we even start to do our part in taking hold of the resources God has made available to us through the Cross. And even then it is far from automatic. I have come to realize that these times are crossroads that we all come to sooner or later. In a marriage relationship it seems more often than not, to work this way: the things that attracted us to each other in the beginning become the very things that make us throw up our hands when the honey moon is over. I have seen it over and over, it is diabolical, and I mean that quite literally. The Evil one, the one whose agenda is to kill steel and destroy, intends it for our harm. But God intends it for our good, for our growth and the furtherance of the Kingdom. We can't do it without Him, I cannot!
They tell me that if you put an eagle chick with the turkeys they will never learn to fly. Apparently in teaching them to fly, the mother eagle will push the young ones out of the nest. When they do this, the young ones drop like a stone, well because they have not yet learned to fly. The mother will then swoop down and catch her chick on her wings, and she will do this over and over until the chick learns to spread its wings and fly.
I can't imagine that the chick enjoys this very much, well not at least until it learns to fly. I can't imagine the chick would understand what its mother was doing, at least in the beginning. What if it never learned to trust its mother, what if it never spread its wings as it fell? There are examples all over the Bible of the crossroads the trials and temptations of life bring. Some, in these examples, took the way of the World, others took the road less travelled (His way). Some grumbled against God, others poured out their complaint before him (see Numbers 11, and August posts). There is a big difference. In the Numbers passage, the children of Israel in their grumbling cut themselves off from God, choosing not to trust Him. They wanted to go back to Egypt where they had been slaves. Essentially they were saying to God “We were better off without You”. They said “This is too hard, we are going back to the old ways”. Moses reaction looks at first sight to be the same. He said “This is too hard, I cannot bear it” (11:14), but He said this to God. God was angry with the people, but He provided for Moses. He has promised to provide for us too. We are told in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that “No trial or temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able, but with the temptation (test) will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it”. In relationship with Him, He gives us the ability to do things that we cannot do without Him. It is His intention that we learn to “fly”, for “those who wait and hope and trust in the Lord will find new strength, they will rise up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The trials and temptations and difficulties are, as I say, crossroads. Peter tells us “Therefore let those who suffer .... commit their souls to Him ...., as to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). He will bring us through if we let Him. What will we do in times of trial? Will we turn to Him and find Grace to Help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16), or will we turn from Him go the way of the World? More to come.
This bears repeating, so let me say it again. When we have tried everything, done the very best we can and failed, there are two things we need to do. We need firstly to admit that we need His help, and secondly we need to come to the foot of the cross in humility asking Him for the help to do what we know is pleasing in His sight, and which without Him is impossible. Let's make no mistake about it, His standards are so impossibly high that we really cannot live up to them without His help. “The Law is our tutor to bring us to Christ” Paul tells us in Galatians 3. We know deep down that His standards are right, but they are so out of reach at times. But when He tells us “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23), it is not to condemn us, it is to help us see we need His help, His solution. If we think otherwise we are fooling ourselves and are likely to have a touch (or more) of self-righteousness.
It is said that there is no place that has more potential to generate anger, than a marriage. I believe this to be true. This being the case, there is no other relationship where sooner or later we will need His help if we are to deal with what needs to be dealt with, in a way that honours God and each other. These things are tests. Will we demonstrate that we are “mere men” (1 Corinthian 3:3), or will we with God's help (Grace), prove to ourselves and the World that there really is something to this Christianity stuff, that the Christian has something beyond him or herself?
The way it seems to work for most of us that that it is only when we come to the end of ourselves that we even start to do our part in taking hold of the resources God has made available to us through the Cross. And even then it is far from automatic. I have come to realize that these times are crossroads that we all come to sooner or later. In a marriage relationship it seems more often than not, to work this way: the things that attracted us to each other in the beginning become the very things that make us throw up our hands when the honey moon is over. I have seen it over and over, it is diabolical, and I mean that quite literally. The Evil one, the one whose agenda is to kill steel and destroy, intends it for our harm. But God intends it for our good, for our growth and the furtherance of the Kingdom. We can't do it without Him, I cannot!
They tell me that if you put an eagle chick with the turkeys they will never learn to fly. Apparently in teaching them to fly, the mother eagle will push the young ones out of the nest. When they do this, the young ones drop like a stone, well because they have not yet learned to fly. The mother will then swoop down and catch her chick on her wings, and she will do this over and over until the chick learns to spread its wings and fly.
I can't imagine that the chick enjoys this very much, well not at least until it learns to fly. I can't imagine the chick would understand what its mother was doing, at least in the beginning. What if it never learned to trust its mother, what if it never spread its wings as it fell? There are examples all over the Bible of the crossroads the trials and temptations of life bring. Some, in these examples, took the way of the World, others took the road less travelled (His way). Some grumbled against God, others poured out their complaint before him (see Numbers 11, and August posts). There is a big difference. In the Numbers passage, the children of Israel in their grumbling cut themselves off from God, choosing not to trust Him. They wanted to go back to Egypt where they had been slaves. Essentially they were saying to God “We were better off without You”. They said “This is too hard, we are going back to the old ways”. Moses reaction looks at first sight to be the same. He said “This is too hard, I cannot bear it” (11:14), but He said this to God. God was angry with the people, but He provided for Moses. He has promised to provide for us too. We are told in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that “No trial or temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able, but with the temptation (test) will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it”. In relationship with Him, He gives us the ability to do things that we cannot do without Him. It is His intention that we learn to “fly”, for “those who wait and hope and trust in the Lord will find new strength, they will rise up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The trials and temptations and difficulties are, as I say, crossroads. Peter tells us “Therefore let those who suffer .... commit their souls to Him ...., as to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). He will bring us through if we let Him. What will we do in times of trial? Will we turn to Him and find Grace to Help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16), or will we turn from Him go the way of the World? More to come.
Monday, September 12, 2011
When love and respect die
A friend of mine told me about the time his cat died. She had always been aggressive and far from affectionate, yet he went to quite extraordinary lengths to try and save her life. In the process of this she turned on him one day, quite viciously. He tells that he was very temped to give up. It was pivotal moment. Who could love a cat like that? It was decision time, and rightly or wrongly he chose to continue to love the cat, and to go to extreme lengths to save her! She died anyway, but the point of his story, was to tell me that after he had made the decision not to give up, he started to feel even more affection for his pet.
There is a principle at work here. When we choose to love in spite of the pain, the feelings of love will eventually follow (return). This is the reason we promise in the marriage ceremony to “love, honour and cherish, as long as we both shall live”. No one is saying that this is easy, but the Christian marriage councillor has the obligation to speak along the following lines to the Christian couple whose love has died “You say that you don't love her (him), but I say to you 'Love her (him)'”. I could imagine the conversation continuing. “Did you hear what I said, I told you that I don't love her”. The councillor should answer “Yes I heard you, you were stating a fact, but I was quoting a Biblical command”.
There are two immediate things I want to say. The first is that I am certainly not advocating that one simply put up with an abusive relationship. The second thing is that it is another Biblical principle, that God never gives us a command that He does not, with the command, also give us the wherewithal to carry it out.
With regard to the first point I do want to say that we far too easily give up on relationships when they become difficult, and we often fail to even begin to understand the role we each play in keeping the other stuck. I have said elsewhere that it is typical in the break up of a relationship for each part to blame the other 100% for the difficulties. At this point we are both blind, and (again as I have said before) we need to come together to the foot of the cross. It is probably the only place where we can come back into a realistic perspective on what is really happening (see “Living at the foot of the Cross” – July 2011).
The title of this post of course contains two things, love and respect. We need both of these things in our lives if we are to function well. That we need love is obvious, that we need respect is perhaps less obvious. It is interesting (to me) that the Lord specifically commands the man to love the woman, and commands the woman to respect the man (Ephesians 5:33). While we all need both love and respect, it seems to be the case that the woman is more undermined by lack of love, and the man more by lack of respect. What I know from my own life, is that when I sense lack of respect in a significant relationship, I feel undermined by it. I read somewhere that at the breakup of a relationship one or other of the parties develops a radical disrespect for his or her partner. Mother Theresa has a famous saying “Nakedness is not just for a piece of cloth”. To encounter radical disrespect from a significant other shames us, and robs us of our dignity. The resulting loss of self respect can significantly and negatively affect our behaviour, keeping us stuck in our dysfunction and reinforcing the disrespect coming down the line. So then we are commanded both to love and to respect. But there are times when this is only possible by the Grace of God.
I have said it before and no doubt will say it again, the difficulties we encounter in life are tests, they are crossroads. For the one who does not know Christ, the command to love and/or respect when he or she no longer loves or feels contempt, is a very tall order. It is this, because the one who does not know Christ does not have access to the resources the Christian has (see “Psychology without faith is lame” August 2010 and next day's post). I am not saying that it is easy even for the Christian, especially one who does not have a close relationship with the Lord. But it is at this point where we demonstrate the reality of our faith or not. If we acknowledge that it is good and right and proper to love one another and “in lowliness of mind ... esteem others better than himself” (Philippians 2:3), and we don't, then we will likely do one of two things. We will either decide that such standards are unreasonable and dismiss them as unrealistic, or we will throw ourselves on the Mercy of the Lord and allow Him to use our short comings as a vehicle to draw us to Himself, and into His Grace.
These are, as I say, difficult times. This may in fact be the time where we discover that “we have a form of godliness, but deny its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). It may be the beginning of the place where we understand how little of the Grace of God that we have manage to appropriate for ourselves. It is as I say a crossroads, one where we probably either place all the blame on the other party, or we will allow God to bring us (back) to the foot of His cross, where there is healing and power to do what He commands, and where there is restoration. More to come!
There is a principle at work here. When we choose to love in spite of the pain, the feelings of love will eventually follow (return). This is the reason we promise in the marriage ceremony to “love, honour and cherish, as long as we both shall live”. No one is saying that this is easy, but the Christian marriage councillor has the obligation to speak along the following lines to the Christian couple whose love has died “You say that you don't love her (him), but I say to you 'Love her (him)'”. I could imagine the conversation continuing. “Did you hear what I said, I told you that I don't love her”. The councillor should answer “Yes I heard you, you were stating a fact, but I was quoting a Biblical command”.
There are two immediate things I want to say. The first is that I am certainly not advocating that one simply put up with an abusive relationship. The second thing is that it is another Biblical principle, that God never gives us a command that He does not, with the command, also give us the wherewithal to carry it out.
With regard to the first point I do want to say that we far too easily give up on relationships when they become difficult, and we often fail to even begin to understand the role we each play in keeping the other stuck. I have said elsewhere that it is typical in the break up of a relationship for each part to blame the other 100% for the difficulties. At this point we are both blind, and (again as I have said before) we need to come together to the foot of the cross. It is probably the only place where we can come back into a realistic perspective on what is really happening (see “Living at the foot of the Cross” – July 2011).
The title of this post of course contains two things, love and respect. We need both of these things in our lives if we are to function well. That we need love is obvious, that we need respect is perhaps less obvious. It is interesting (to me) that the Lord specifically commands the man to love the woman, and commands the woman to respect the man (Ephesians 5:33). While we all need both love and respect, it seems to be the case that the woman is more undermined by lack of love, and the man more by lack of respect. What I know from my own life, is that when I sense lack of respect in a significant relationship, I feel undermined by it. I read somewhere that at the breakup of a relationship one or other of the parties develops a radical disrespect for his or her partner. Mother Theresa has a famous saying “Nakedness is not just for a piece of cloth”. To encounter radical disrespect from a significant other shames us, and robs us of our dignity. The resulting loss of self respect can significantly and negatively affect our behaviour, keeping us stuck in our dysfunction and reinforcing the disrespect coming down the line. So then we are commanded both to love and to respect. But there are times when this is only possible by the Grace of God.
I have said it before and no doubt will say it again, the difficulties we encounter in life are tests, they are crossroads. For the one who does not know Christ, the command to love and/or respect when he or she no longer loves or feels contempt, is a very tall order. It is this, because the one who does not know Christ does not have access to the resources the Christian has (see “Psychology without faith is lame” August 2010 and next day's post). I am not saying that it is easy even for the Christian, especially one who does not have a close relationship with the Lord. But it is at this point where we demonstrate the reality of our faith or not. If we acknowledge that it is good and right and proper to love one another and “in lowliness of mind ... esteem others better than himself” (Philippians 2:3), and we don't, then we will likely do one of two things. We will either decide that such standards are unreasonable and dismiss them as unrealistic, or we will throw ourselves on the Mercy of the Lord and allow Him to use our short comings as a vehicle to draw us to Himself, and into His Grace.
These are, as I say, difficult times. This may in fact be the time where we discover that “we have a form of godliness, but deny its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). It may be the beginning of the place where we understand how little of the Grace of God that we have manage to appropriate for ourselves. It is as I say a crossroads, one where we probably either place all the blame on the other party, or we will allow God to bring us (back) to the foot of His cross, where there is healing and power to do what He commands, and where there is restoration. More to come!
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