The End of Suffering’s Impact

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

—Paulo Coelho, Alchemist

Suffering, it can be argued, is a highly subjective state, and it means so many things to so many people. Suffering, it could be said, is the stimulus of all religion—besides aspects of the divine underpinning religion itself. Certainly within the Christian context the scope for suffering is central to the gospel message.

The Christian is called to suffer well, in living after their Lord.

Perhaps we can view Christian theology in this way: with our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and the Perfector of our faith, we live connected to the eternal hope—we are, after all, redeemed. The ultimate Christian dream is eternity.

And yet, we can touch eternity, even momentarily, when we transcend the fear that lies within the suffering, by accepting the opportunities to draw on God’s grace to carry us through many trials.

The Value of a Godly Vision for the Abundant Life

Our dreams we can call visions, and these are nothing strange or weird, because they are simply our creative imaginations melded with the passion of our hearts.

Our passions were always meant to offset our suffering.

In other words, we quell the negative power within our suffering by flushing our spirits through, and immersing our souls in, the powerful positive Presence of the living God—through the Holy Spirit living in us... Salvation is now.

When we explore for our vision for life we become open, more and more, to the capacities of God to speak through us, from our hearts into our minds such that we can become aware.

A vision for life beats the threat of death—the spiritual death of being physically alive whilst being emotionally and spiritually immobilised in our fear-ridden suffering.

Jesus went to the cross in order to defeat the powers of sin and death over us; and because salvation is now, whilst we are saved now and for eternity, salvation living really is a ‘now’ prospect. It begins and continues through the nurture of a vision for life beyond the fear in our suffering.

***

The end of suffering itself is relative. When we purge ourselves of the fear in our suffering, our suffering takes on a resplendent divine quality, and we begin to become less impacted by it. Suffering well is a capacity that the gospel makes as a specialty.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Rare Care and Uncommon Respect

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others.”

—Luke 11:42 (NRSV)

There are all sorts of ‘love’; some truer than others. For the case of simplicity in this article we contrast two forms of love: love of doctrine versus love of relationship, or love of the law versus love of grace. We can suspect where this argument is heading. Love is a very passionate thing. Our key test is, do we devote ourselves pridefully to fighting doctrinal arguments or do we devote ourselves to the rare care and uncommon respect of others?

This is the true Jesus test.

I don’t think Jesus ever wanted us to be perfectly adroit regarding our doctrine; it was always more important, in his day, that his disciples would exemplify mercy, justice, and humility—in the tradition of Micah 6:8. It is important we believe in the right things, but more important is our demeanour toward others.

Do others see salt and light in our lives? Do we really treat others with rare care and uncommon respect?

By the way we treat others, perhaps most of all, we worship God.

Going After a Life of Love

Our first living priority within the regenerate life, having been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, is our devotion to God through loving others. In many ways we cannot actually love others until we have allowed God to heal us enough to love ourselves.

Many well-intentioned believers—some who perhaps have it right via the perfection of doctrinal understanding—with such an acute focus on the theological framework—seem to become deceived, and miss rare care and uncommon respect, in their zealousness. We can usually tell by their lack of love in their treatment of others. They may be easy to criticise; to find fault. They find it less easy to find the credit in people everywhere. They find it less easy to enjoy the grace of God as it is reflected in other people. They may find it less easy to enjoy the peace of God in their own lives.

Perhaps the root cause of their lack of love is they haven’t received yet the healing hand of the Lord in their own lives. Perhaps they are locked into transference and counter-transference—where unconscious processes come into play. A lack of personal love flows out of the heart into others’ lives.

We all suffer this, to greater or lesser extents, because none of us are perfect.

Going after a life of love is seeking the experience of God’s love in our own lives first. What is implied is access to worship. And having been filled afresh with brimming portions of God’s grace we cannot help but love others. Rare care and uncommon respect have become our biding influence. We are won to it.

***

The true Christian life—the life of real love—is about rare care and uncommon respect. Mercy, justice, and humility: these are our guiding principles. There is no gain for God if we cannot first love others.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Living the Full Spirit-Filled Life

Jesus said, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”

—Luke 11:24-26 (NRSV)

The principles that Jesus discusses above can be applied to the breaking of any habit, besides the exorcism of unclean spirits, many of which may have inhabited us—whether by addiction, mental illness, or some other spiritual possession, etc.

The issue of unclean spirits is ever pertinent, and the fact that Jesus devotes teaching about it shows us that the spiritual life is critically urgent in every person’s life. We cannot experience true life without moving forward by progressing in growth. The moment that we get satisfied about where we are at—when pride enters us—is the moment we begin to backslide.

Wherever God does a work of sanctification in us—purging us of an addiction, for example—we must replace the voided negative energy with something positive, or that negative energy may ultimately return sevenfold stronger. (In practical worldly terms, think of times when we have attempted to give up smoking, drinking or tried to keep weight off, only to recommence the old bad habits when our resolve came undone.)

Our task is to fill the voided spiritual space with the Spirit of God.

No Neutral Ground in the Spiritual Life

True spirituality in the name of Jesus Christ is a black-and-white reality.

We either grow forward with zealous vigour and sustained pace or we slink backwards—usually ever so slightly—into an oblivion of compromise or worldliness. This might sound unreasonably harsh and polar dichotomous. Surely we can get away with a pleasant spiritual journey? But the more we read the Gospels, the more we experience the pick-up-your-cross-and-follow-me Jesus.

Jesus calls us to a full submission, with no neutrality in our hearts.

This is always a tough call. Whenever we underestimate such a call we delude ourselves. Picking up our crosses and walking in obedience is no harder thing. But the moment we truly live by faith, life is hence ours. With the negative life removed, and with our inner houses sorted, we then have the critical ‘obedience’ task of filling our houses with Spirit-anointed spiritual disciplines that will keep those unclean spirits out.

***

There is no neutral ground in the spiritual life. We either go forwards or backwards. We obey Jesus wholeheartedly or not at all.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Psalm 23 – I Will Fear No Evil

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”

—Psalm 23:6 (NRSV).

It can happen any day. Fear grips us as we walk into a meeting, get ready for breakfast, or drive to work. Fear has a way of clouding our judgment and constraining our vision.  It robs us of our hope and joy.

The truth is we walk many corridors of fear during our lifetimes; it’s not just in the realm of death—its traditional setting—that this particular psalm provides meditative benefit. As we progress through its six verses we read a sort of reflective benediction that echoes to us an eternal comfort.

A Prayer of Comfort in Culmination

Verse 1 commences in summative fashion. The Lord is the psalmist’s Shepherd—a supremely faithful Provider in times of dire want. It is the signature of trust that David, in this case, can say in times of fear, “I shall not want.”

Our Shepherd God is provider of those green pastures and the still waters of life and these are a bequest, again, waiting for a trusting heart. These images are metaphors for peace; the restoration of tired souls.

The name of the Lord is surety for the right path in verse 3. The ancient path of the Lord is light in darkness.

Verse 4 highlights the Presence of the Lord as light for the path that dims. Even when things, and circumstances in life, become as dark as pitch we can still note with assurance the rod and staff of God, reassuring and comforting us, as we traverse the dark way.

Ably assisting us in verse 5, all the accompaniments of the way are prepared for us by God in advance; we have this advantage over our enemies.

All the foregoing culminates in the final verse, profiled above—that quiet confidence of trust; that the goodness and mercy of God shall prevail, following the servant all the days of their life, as they continue to dwell in safety along the full journey of life’s path.

The contemporary significance of this prayer

Set in an eternal frame, but one always honouring momentary significance, this psalm supplies hope and reassurance in fleeting worry and genuine despair—and all between.

Perhaps this is the day—speaking in strictly 21st Century terms—where there are more concerns for our safety and longer-term wellbeing than ever before. Psalm 23, therefore, is ever pertinent today.

It reminds us the God is an eternal God, shielding us from the woes of our sin and from the terror of fear as it enfolds our minds and hearts, sometimes without reason or warning.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that the joy of the Lord is available almost continually, even when we may struggle with worry, sadness, loss, or be in despair.

In a day when worries are just as relevant as ever before, we can know the safety in God as we reflect over these words—the beautiful, majestic Psalm 23.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Living the Easy Yoke of Jesus

Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

—Matthew 11:29 (NRSV)

“The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our total lives, how to invest all our time and our energies of mind and body as he did.”

—Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

We have all wondered what it is about the Sermon on the Mount that makes it so impossible to live. Was Jesus just trying to make things hard for us? Was he setting us an impossible task in loving our enemies, in turning the other cheek, in going the extra mile?

There is a simple answer to these questions.

It is only impossibly hard for us to do these things when we bolt them on to our worldly lives, disconnected from the disciplines involved in living the true Christian life. Such a life is only hard if we make it hard. But such a life is easier to manage when we are able to achieve a categorical surrender.

Incongruence and unauthenticity are killers in the spiritual life.

Identifying Our Lack of Integrity

Wherever there is a lack of integrity between our spoken and felt devotion to Jesus and the lived reality, we will find living the Christian life difficult, even impossible.

When there is a lack of integrity between the life we attempt to lead and our actual lives we struggle all the more in our hypocrisy. Certain things in the Bible just won’t make sense. And when we observe other people getting it right we will wonder how they do it.

The truth is we all have such a lack of integrity somewhere lurking in the deep crevices of our lives. And it is Jesus who asks us to identify these areas that block the path of his Spirit of anointing.

When we understand that Jesus wants our total lives, and that we cannot live the real Christian experience—the lived experience of grace within our relationships, for example—when we haven’t first given ourselves absolutely to the Kingdom, we know we must commit fully and keep recommitting.

Our goal is to become integral with the gospel—to live through a consistent gospel worldview.

Our goal isn’t to simply reject the worldliness that so interrupts our spirituality; we must do that, and more. We must be prepared to actively give ourselves to the disciplines of both engagement and abstinence. We must be prepared to engage in study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission. We must also be prepared to abstain through solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, living in a certain secrecy to the Lord, and sacrifice.

***

Nothing less than the full commitment to Jesus is required to experience the easy yoke of the Lord. There is no halfway ground with Jesus. But when we give ourselves wholeheartedly the true Christian life is easier than we previously thought. This is because the art of surrender has been mastered.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Love of the Pure Hearted

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

—James 4:10 (NRSV)

Oh how difficult it is to be appropriately and diligently spiritual!

In becoming spiritual we must necessarily negate the flesh. In drawing near to God we must pull away from our egos. A selfish desire cannot coexist in the Presence of the Holy Spirit. Surely having read the Bible we would know this. Surely this is preaching to the converted.

The trouble is, whilst we know this information, and we appreciate the theology, we have much more trouble applying it with consistent ardour.

Where our relationships falter with the Lord is in devotion. We can devote our time and our energy and our mind to the things of God, but if our devotion doesn’t penetrate our hearts, little effect for God will be made.

Going Low to Get High

Achieving the dizzy heights of the Presence of God is paradoxical in that we must be authentically humble. The moment we get ahead of ourselves the Spirit of God scurries. And because we are destined to get ahead of ourselves—going high—we get low. Pride comes before a fall.

To get high regarding our relationship with God we must intentionally, and gleefully, go low. We must detach from our wants and needs, trusting God to provide by blessing us according to our true needs, and seek to fulfil the needs of others in our midst.

The more we are able to think of others, without denying the truth of our own realities, the more we are able to draw upon the humility of Jesus.

When we go low regarding our own needs and desires, we get high in the divine pecking order. Love is endearing to the world because God has constructed creation as implicitly a social environment. Love is rewarded, whereas selfishness becomes despised. It’s the law of life.

The more we think in these ways of going low to get high the more we will actually behave in those ways. What we pray for, always, is for a heart transformation to take place. We should want to genuinely feel loving toward others.

Our hearts are the spiritual organs tested most when it comes to others. How we behave by instinct, without thought, is how we tested. The heart speaks through instinctive action. A pure heart will love without thought.

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When we are humble enough to exalt others, God notices our humility and exalts us. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted (Matthew 23:12).

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Joy When a Miracle Occurs

A miracle occurred the other day,

I woke in tears but decided to pray,

Then my Lord came to me,

To give me hope and set me free.

I said to my Lord, “Thanks for that,”

For, in joy, there I sat,

A lovely revelation over me swept,

The bliss of God’s presence there I kept.

Instantly I arose from depression’s sleep,

A horrendous mindset that had taken me deep,

As I ascended to realise my joy,

I knew it was God’s design for me now to deploy.

A revived spirit embodied my life,

A spirit that now enables me to endure much strife,

From that time on I began to see,

What is destined always to set the faithful free.

This Miracle of Revelation

We ought never to dismiss the power of God to raise us from our deepest lament.

It is most often the person who has never experienced such grace who dispels such miracles, but those who have experienced such miraculous grace attest to a power beyond life itself. This miracle of revelation—God making himself known through love, joy, and peace—is tantamount to the supernatural. This miracle of revelation is what we pray for, but we hardly conceive just how wonderful it actually is.

When we are at our depths we vacillate between desperate attempts at hope and moments of giving up. There is very little joy in between.

But when we go to God in faith enough to pray, we open up our chances to be delivered by a miracle. And the longer our prayers endure, the more faith we show, and the more our spirituality bears resilience. A resilient faith is more likely to be rewarded through the miracle of revelation—God coming in and lifting us out of our mental, emotional, and spiritual quagmire.

Getting Through Difficulty – It’s About Faith

Getting through any difficulty is about faith, and we operationalise our faith through prayer. This is an active and vocalised pattern of thinking and speaking to our Lord, and waiting upon our God by listening through his Word. We allow God to speak.

Taking our difficulties into our own hands via prayer is about relying on God.

God can deliver us out of the harshness of our difficulties by transforming our perspective. We ask and God gives, and he gives generously (James 1:5).

***

A miracle occurred the other day,

I woke in tears but decided to pray,

Then my Lord came to me,

To give me hope and set me free.

... that pretty much sums it up.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Martin Luther’s Rudiments of Faith

“Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favour that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God’s grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures.”

—Martin Luther (1483–1546)

Faith and works, according to Martin Luther, a pillar of the Reformation, are so implicit of the true believer’s modus operandi that they cannot but love. This is a radical concept. This faith can only be lived, not discussed or written about (please forgive me for writing about it) or pondered... it has to find traction within the lives of real people and real situations.

Faith must give itself away. It throws itself into the life of living so as to avidly perceive needs and it fulfils them. While others are busy standing around and talking, wanting to make themselves look good, faith has already plunged into the situational mix and has discerned what is necessary. It does it.

This picture of Faith is the image Martin Luther describes in his introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans. Faith and works, thus, are indivisible in the manner that faith cannot be faith without works.

Faith operates by love, full of hope, and love is always action-oriented. Any time we love by giving ourselves away graciously we are working in faith.

The Coherence of Faith and Works

Works can occur without faith but faith cannot occur without works.

Every believer has presumably run ahead of God and engaged in works that were faithless. That is, we have operated under the guise of love without the purity of love energising our works. Evidence of faithless works is complaint in the mode of delivering those works, where love would have no conception at all of complaint. Faithlessness looks for acknowledgement, for recognition. Faith looks for no such thing.

Faith runs ahead of the flesh and it gives without thought of recompense.

Faith is thrilled with the idea of grace—the very fact that life presents with limitless opportunities to bay in the Presence of God within loving human interactions. These opportunities for loving human interactions compel the person with faith to work joyfully, without regard for the menial realities comprising the work.

Faith has no self-interest. The person presenting faithfully has their heart right for God. Rather than keep themselves, they give away whatever they have to reasonably give of themselves.

Faith must operate via works and is visible by works, implicitly loving, but works alone—without faith—are a blight on the ‘dreamer’ (as Martin Luther describes the works merchant) and an offence against God’s grace.

Truly, works can occur without faith but faith cannot occur without works. These faith-held works are love offerings of hope-ventured action—for want of no return.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

When Dark Night Brings Love’s Light

“When the soul enters the dark night, it brings these kinds of love [love of God and love of sensuality] under control. It strengthens and purifies the one—namely that which is according to God—and the other it removes and brings to an end.”

—St John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

The refining fire of suffering, the dark night of the soul, brings each of us afflicted to the precipice of ghastly experience. At such a place where times are dire, and we are anxious and fearful beyond where we have been before, we desperately clamber into the arms of God.

Pleasantries of gallant and mischievous fellowship are no longer any help to us. We implicitly know the old way is ineffective. What no longer serves any good is therefore despatched. Change now becomes us.

The dark night experience has hastened us to truth; it has quickened us to salvation.

The Glorious Reality of Rock Bottom

None of us really wants to experience the rock bottom depths of the abyss—a slinking of obliteration into a graceless pit of disbelieving and stark realism.

But it isn’t until we arrive in such a place that we instinctively run to God.

God is seen to raise us, but only once we have died. It is impossible to raise the living. There must be death to self, first.

It is a wonderful reality, then, if those who reach their rock bottom, their dark night of the soul, surrender to such powerful overtures of suffering. In such vagrant incapacity and lack of spiritual agency we might be tempted to end our lives or run to God—sometimes choices are that dreadfully polar. Further options present in many levels of spiritual numbing.

Rock bottoms are never pleasant at the time, but from later aspects they are marvellous because they push us into spaces of spiritual conformity. That evening of the dark night the Spirit is felt summoning our will to join the divine will. We feel cornered and unable to go any other way. But later, we are credited for having the faith at the weakest of times to make the right choice and go that way.

Two One-Way Streets

The fact is that two loves mentioned above—love of God and love of sensuality—are totally incompatible loves running opposite ways on their own one-way streets.

We can’t go both ways at the same time. We can’t drive up a one-way street the wrong way for long before we have a crash.

In consideration of such incompatible roads we make an early choice.

Love of God or love of sensuality?

We cannot go both ways.

The dark night of the soul brings a fortuitous crossroad; one etched in pain. It strengthens and purifies our love for God. It renders void the darker, sensual way. God hones our characters no better than through the agency of loss. So often, only when we become fully enamoured to grief will we fall headlong into the arms of God.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Fosforix.

Warring With the Flesh Within

“For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

—Romans 7:18-19 (NRSV)

The world has named the flesh, the ego. I guess it doesn’t matter what we call it, but we should name it for what it is. It is that thing, impelled by fear, which drives us to achieve—goals, status, privilege, etc. When we are threatened by the competitive spirit of others it is our flesh that speaks through our annoyance. When we have lost power, authority, our dominions, our egos are crushed.

There is loss and there is loss. To lose someone dear to us is different to losing power, authority, or control. Whenever we lose someone dear to us, or a marriage, or a career, we go down into an abyss of grief, according to the depth of our loss.

But when we lose control in this world, with our egos shrieking, we rail against those things that have occurred. Rarely do we surrender within the moment humbly, meekly.

In Defeat of the Flesh

There is only one way to sustainably defeat the flesh: we melt the ego in the situational perfection of love, which we can only achieve through the sponsorship of the Holy Spirit.

Differentiating complaints is a big test. Some complaints are ingeniously authentic; they are based out of rampant injustice, for instance, loss we could not have induced. Other complaints, however, which are worldlier in basis, reveal our sore and sorry egos.

When we are warring with the flesh within, we rally with love in defeat of the flesh.

What this looks like is a joyful surrender. We could laugh at our flesh. We could also respect it, whilst moving on in love. Many times the defeat of the flesh will involve humiliation on one level—but it’s only humiliation when our egos are still involved.

We know that love drives us when we can still be joyful as things are going against our otherwise self-willed agendas.

When love inspires us we are happy to become nothing in order that God’s glory may become everything. We don’t enforce a single thing by our self will, but we work for truth despite the personal cost. Such love requires courage, discipline, and devotion to the Lord.

When love inspires us we actively work in the Kingdom without thought for credit so the grace of God may be magnified. We carry within our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible through our labours of love (2 Corinthians 4:10).

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.