“All true passion is born out of
anguish.”
— David Wilkerson
When God stirs our hearts
there is a movement beyond ourselves in our spirits.
Anguish
means extreme pain and distress and it is a nemesis that clings to all too many
of us.
There are many forms of
it. There is the anguish of a crushed heart seeking, ardently, the Lord. There
is the anguish of the one still running from God. There is the anguish of the
soul that ‘gets’ God and cannot help but connect with the heart of God who
reaches into us every second by his anguish for us; for us to live his ways and
to turn from the ways of the world.
Many forms... of anguish.
Then there is concern. I’m concerned about so many things,
but they hardly ever convict me; I relate but I don’t engage. I offer my polite
but pathetic encouragements, but there is no difference made for the glory of
God.
Converting Concern to Anguish
The reason many people don’t
experience intimacy with God is they have reached the level of concern for
their Lord, his Kingdom, and his Word, but they haven’t travelled to the
dungeon of anguish for the truth that lies exposed for all to see; that, in God’s
heart.
To see this truth, to
smell and taste it, we must get down into that deep and dark place where only
God can revive us; it’s a baptism in the truth—to resonate with the pain that
is literally everywhere. But to survive such anguish we need to be healed
sufficiently first.
How can we know God if we
don’t know pain, if we can’t connect with it, or if we’ve been protected from
it? This is good news for those who have known, or know, pain.
But pain is only half the
story.
We must find our own ways
with God in order for God to heal us of that pain; to bring the good out of our
anguish and convert it into the cogency of passion—for him, for the suffering
world, for the gospel, for our ongoing healing.
Taking ourselves from
concern to anguish is the deeper commitment to God—where we give God our whole
lives. Nothing’s held back. We die to the self, finally, so we might finally
live.
***
Our biggest spiritual problem
today is indifference; we are concerned about suffering in our world, but not
anguished by it. At a personal level we also need to convert our inner anguish
into something useful for both ourselves and God. We need healing so we can be
of use in the Kingdom of God. Anguish is the starting point—its energy takes us
all the way to Passion.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
Postscript:
if this article resonated for you, take the seven minutes and twenty-five
seconds to listen to David Wilkerson’s full message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGMG_PVaJoI
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