Our church leadership team had a retreat today and what I’m sharing here is part of what we covered. Not everyone is interested in healing, but if you are, this could be worth your knowing.
Three things we need to learn to let go of, one day, each moment, at a time in order to abide with God in faith, hope and love:
1. Understanding – we must be humble enough to recognise that our own understanding of what the truth is—what we think it is—is a stumbling block. We pretend that we can attain the knowledge of God, but we only need to read our Bibles to understand that our personal fixed view of what understanding is fraught with error. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, says the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We’re at our most dangerous spiritually when we think we understand something fully—the essence of pride. Let faith have its way by producing in us openness that we may be wrong, curious enough always to be open to learn new things, never so sure of ourselves to limit God showing us the new thing (see Isaiah 43:18-19). This is never more important than in our relationships. Humility is the key to a faith that renounces understanding that is tainted by ignorance.
2. Memories – these also form part of what becomes ‘our truth’ and it too is often a stumbling block to healing. We attribute so much judgment to our memories—they’re good or bad. Never are our memories neutral. Our memories form the greater part of what are or become our perceptions and these affect our hope. Memories are meaningful and they were formed through our attributions of what happened to us, and because we attach certain meaning to our memories, these become false hopes. Bad memories hold us back, because of fear, anger, shame and guilt—they threaten to break us again and again. They’re a reminder of how we were undone in life and the threat is they may undo us at any time we go back there. Good memories can just as easily be bad for us in that they enable false hopes and dreams—that will, of themselves, be crushed in time. What we’re to focus on is God’s loving gaze—the one and only source of hope. The fact that we’re objects of eternal delight. True hope is built on reality alone. We must let go of our memories when it comes to hope, only accessing our memories as we give ourselves permission to reminisce, for there is nothing wrong with reminiscing.
3. Wanting – those desires of our hearts are ever a stumbling block unless they’re conformed to Love. Bypassing wanting—identifying the wish list items of prayer, for instance—can only be done through going deeper into the mysterious and unfathomable rivers deep inside each of us. Into those unknowable abysses that leave us sitting still in the acceptance of a dark night reality. This is where we shall find the love we’re looking for—in just the place it would seem least likely to inhabit. Only when we cease our wanting will Love capture our imagination. Nothing can overcome us if our wanting is overcome. Our false desiring and our desiring of bad things or good things in the wrong ways will hold us apart from the love that will heal us.
If we hold space for faith by letting go of our understanding, and are open to relinquishing our memories for hope, and give up our wanting for the love that pursues us, then we face a healing only God can do.
Only as we embrace our dark night of the soul reality will we see that the keys to our healing are held in that seeming most miserable place.
Acknowledgement to Sandy Clifton and her use of Rowan Williams’ Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life.
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
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