christ and true spirituality

What do visualization (Ignatian Examen or kataphatic prayer), silence, solitude, lectio divina, labyrinth prayers, Stations of the Cross, chanting, induced visions, centering prayer, centering down, and astral projection all have in common?  The answer is they are all forms of mysticism (spirituality) that has been flooding the evangelical world over recent years.  I can pretty well guarantee that if  you have not yet encountered these you soon will.

Now let me say up front that spirituality, or Christian experience of God, is very much part of what it means to be a Christian.  I am appalled by some today (such as Old Life Presbyterians) who have little or no time for Christian experience and dismiss it as mere emotionalism or pietism.  In fact, the pietistic movement in Germany in the C17 began as a healthy biblical reaction to the rigid dogma-driven orthodoxy of the Lutheran church married to a high ecclesiology that, not unlike modern old-lifers, discouraged devotional fervour in the faith of believers.

We must not dismiss Christian experience.  We are converted that we may know God, not merely know about him.  Salvation brings us not only into union with Christ but into communion with him.  We enjoy his presence.  We know what is to ‘dwell in God’.    We are called into the fellowship of the Father and Son, for all who love Christ and keep his word know what it is for the Father and Son to come and make their home in them (Jn 14:22).  Christian experience is abiding in God and God abiding in us (1 Jn 4:15,16).  This is much more than a proper standing, or a theological system, it is relationship and intimacy that brings us into all that God is.  Where the affections are not engaged Christianity is not realized.

However, while communion with God in Christ is what we are called to as Christians, like every other aspect of Christianity Satan is only too ready to corrupt and distort it.  C17 Pietism began well but in time was enticed into various spiritual experiences that had no roots in the gospel and belonged more  to mere mysticism with its emphasis on ecstatic visions of the soul and altered states of consciousness created by ‘spiritual techniques’ rather than beholding the glory of God in Jesus Christ (2 Cor 3).

Such mysticism did not originate in the C17.  It plagued the church from its inception.  We have been focussing in recent posts on various aspects of the heresy that harried the Colossian church.  We noted that this heresy was a hydran mixture of philosophy (human wisdom trumping revealed truth), Judaism (human religiosity and laws for holiness becoming a substitute for grasping what it means to have died with Christ to this world), and finally mysticism.  This mysticism was false and dangerous because it offered spiritual experience detached from a singular focus on the revealed Christ.

This danger Paul addresses in the Colossian church when he writes:

Col 2:18-19 (ESV)
Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

Some, it appears, were advocating religious experience through intermediaries (angels) and visionary states of consciousness, perhaps induced through bodily deprivation, that had nothing to do with looking at Christ.  However, these are man-made spiritualities.  They appear wise  but are really self-made religion (Col 2:23) for they are not about the simplicity of holding on by faith to the risen and reigning Christ.

The simple reality is, not all spiritualities are authentically spiritual.   Nowadays the desire for a Christian spirituality is leading some into rather strange places.  Modern mystics like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster promote forms of spirituality that have a lot more to do with Roman Catholic mysticism than genuine biblical faith.  Classic medieval mysticism was virtually unknown in Evangelicalism until popularised by Foster in his ‘Celebration of Discipline, the Path of Spiritual Growth‘.  Voted by Christianity Today as one of the ten best books of the C20, Foster introduced all kinds of dubious mystical techniques into the evangelical consciousness.

How do we stop genuine pursuit of God being corrupted by a false kind of mysticism?  Let me try to answer this question in terms of a few propositions.

true spirituality never divorces itself from objective truth

The Christian gospel is objective truth we are called to believe (Jn 20:31).  Indeed, we grow in the knowledge of God only as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ (Jn 17:3).  There is a tendency in Christian mysticism to pay only lip-service to revealed truth.  As one writer observes,

The essence of mysticism lies in this, that the seat of authority is transferred in the mind of the mystic from the external Word of God to the spiritual consciousness — the “spiritual man” — internal to themselves. Homage of quite an orthodox kind may be verbally rendered to the Scriptures, and yet they may be largely displaced.  It has little or no restraining effect upon the flights of his imagination. He quotes it of course, but only as supporting or illustrating or adorning his own conceptions of truth. His conceptions become the primary thing on which the main emphasis must be laid. Scripture must be interpreted in the light of those conceptions, and its words become of secondary importance.

Evelyn Underhill, a leading Anglo-Catholic mystic of the early C20  confirms the truth of this criticism in saying,

“Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience — one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge.”

Where quests to know God are not founded on what the God who has made himself known has objectively revealed for faith to grasp they soon wind-up as merely fanciful experiences. The subjective trumps the objective and the mystic becomes ‘puffed up with their sensuous mind‘ (Col 2).  The Quakers (or Society of Friends) are a classic example of where for many ‘inner light’ has replaced revealed truth; connection with the head is lost.

true spirituality focusses on an exalted Christ outside of self and not on Christ within

It is true, and wonderfully so, that Christ dwells in the heart of every believer by faith.  Yet it is equally true that we are told to focus on the exalted Christ outside of ourselves and not the Christ within.   The gospel does not encourage pre-occupation with what is happening inside of us.  Instead Paul exhorts,

Col 3:1-4 (ESV)
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

It is the risen and exalted Christ in glory who is the object of faith and adoration.  We look to Jesus who has triumphantly completed the life of faith and is now seated at the right hand of God. (Hebs 12:2).  Looking within merely leads to self-absorption the very opposite to the self-forgetfulness that the gospel creates.  The kind of mysticism that calls for navel-gazing is not biblical spirituality.

true spirituality has Christ as its object and not spiritual experience itself

The inclination of fallen humanity is to be self-absorbed.  Our human tendency is to make much of ourselves.  We like to be the centre of everything.  If we give in to this everything becomes false.  The flesh loves its own reasoning, its religious observance, and its own religious consciousness. The gospel, however, always takes the focus away from us and on places it on Christ.

False mysticism is interested in religious experience rather than Christ.  It deals largely with ourselves, and our own state and apprehension of the truth. It is occupied not with divine realities themselves, but with how we become conscious of those realities, and of the way they work out certain results in us.

Lectio Divina, meaning “sacred reading,” is a technique that moves beyond the normal reading the Bible. It aims at going beyond the objective meaning of the words  to that which transcends normal awareness.  One writer instructs,

‘As you attend to those deeper meanings, begin to meditate on the feelings and emotions conjured up in your inner self.’

Notice how the technique subtly turns us in on ourselves and our consciousness. It is not about God, it is about us.

Mysticism has about it an apparent profundity of thought and utterance. It promises a far greater depth of understanding, which is alluring, and especially to minds of a certain contemplative type, fundamentally disposed towards introspection and self-occupation.  We can be sure such self-occupation is not biblical spirituality.  As even the Roman Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton writes

‘If I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth… Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; anyone who knows anyone from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones… Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognised an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners’.

true spirituality is not merely aspirations after God in Christ but present enjoyment of him

A feature of much false mysticism is that it is about un-realised desire.  It pants for God but never seems to find him. It longs to know love but never experiences it.  Now we must be careful here for there is always that which is aspirational in faith.  Paul wishes to ‘know Christ’ and reaches out to what he has not yet attained, HOWEVER,  this is within the context of already knowing and enjoying Christ.  The love of God is already shed abroad in his heart (Roms 5).  He already ‘knows the love of Christ which is beyond knowing’ (Eph 3:19).  Yes we wish to be filled with all the fulness of God (Eph 3:20) but we are already ‘filled’ in Christ, the one in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells (Col 2:9).

We not only desire Christ, we have Christ.  He is the present satisfying object of our love and adoration.  We delight in him, enjoy him, and are complete in him.  In the Spirit he is already for us a spring of water springing up to eternal life, eternally satisfying.

John 4:13-14 (ESV)
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Desire and love are not exactly the same.  Desire is never satisfied.  It does not possess the object of desire, but love does.  Love supposes that we have full possession of the object of our desires.  Love does not so much desire as delight in the one loved.  Mysticism, absorbed as it is with self and feelings, never gets beyond desire; while simple Christianity, giving the knowledge of salvation, puts us into full possession of the love of God.  I know that I am loved and I know the one I love.  Indeed, my very love is self-forgetful, for that is what true love is. Desire turns one in on oneself while love takes one out of oneself and rests on the object loved.

In Christianity, I dwell in love, divine love.  In peace, I contemplate this love, and I adore it in Christ. I dwell in Him and He in me.  In God, and contemplation of him, I am deeply and completely filled and satisfied.  He satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry with good things (Ps 107:9).  Love, peace, joy and unspeakable glory are not elusive but enjoyed realities in Christ.  Yes, I long for more, but I do so from one who is satisfied.  He has already filled the hungry with good things (Lk 1:53).  This biblical tension is important to maintain.

true spirituality is not technique-driven but simply adores God in the risen Christ

A criticism that can be rightly levelled at many spiritualities ancient and modern (for the modern are only the ancient resuscitated) is the degree to which they are technique-driven.  All involve processes to create transcendence.  Now this immediately rings alarm bells, firstly because there is something contrived and manipulated about such techniques, and, secondly, because these ‘techniques’ are hard to find in Scripture.  Sometimes verses are cited in support but often these are asked to deliver much more than they are able.  We have to ask of many of these ‘techniques’ why they are not plainly exhorted in Scripture.

On so-called ‘centering prayer’ (focussing on a single word like ‘love’ or ‘God’ to clear the mind of other thoughts) Tony Campolo comments,

‘In my case intimacy with Christ has developed gradually over the years, primarily through what Catholic mystics call ‘centering prayer.’ Each morning, as soon as I wake up, I take time-sometimes as much as a half hour-to center myself on Jesus. I say his name over and over again to drive back the 101 things that begin to clutter up my mind the minute I open my eyes. Jesus is my mantra, as some would say.’

Letters to a Young Evangelical Pg 20

Henri Nouwen the late Roman Catholic mystic popular in Evangelical circles explains,

“The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart … This way of simple prayer … opens us to God’s active presence” (The Way of the Heart, p. 81)

Yet we are obliged to ask where such a technique is commended in Scripture?  Notice too, Nouwen, is taking us into ourselves rather than outside ourselves.  This is deadly, for immediately we ‘lose connection with the head’ (Col 2).

True spirituality or Christian mysticism is that which contemplates the truth of God revealed in the gospel of Christ.  It is firmly anchored in objective truth and arises from it.  It recognises that in holding fast to the head is the way of spiritual experience and reality.  Faith and love look without and not within.

More observations could be made.  We could consider the suspect role of spiritual directors in mysticism.  However, I hope what has been said so far gives cause for caution and reflection before buying into the ‘spiritualities’ on offer in the evangelical world at the moment.  Never fail to ask what is the central concern and focus – religious consciousness or the revealed and reigning Christ?

I suggest for further reading an article by D A Carson written some years ago.  Below are his opening paragraphs.

The current interest in spirituality is both salutary and frightening.
It is salutary because in its best forms it is infinitely to be preferred over the assumed philosophical materialism that governs many people, not only in the western world but in many other parts as well. It is salutary wherever it represents a self-conscious rebellion against the profound sense of unreality that afflicts many churches. We speak of “knowing” and “meeting with” and “worshiping” the living God, but many feel that the corporate exercises are perfunctory and inauthentic, and in their quietest moments they wonder what has gone wrong.

 
It is frightening because “spirituality” has become such an ill-defined, amorphous entity that it covers all kinds of phenomena an earlier generation of Christians, more given to robust thought than is the present generation, would have dismissed as error, or even as “paganism” or “heathenism.” Today “spirituality” is an applause-word—that is, the kind of word that is no sooner uttered than everyone breaks out in applause. In many circles it functions in the spiritual realm the way “apple pie” functions in the culinary realm: Who is bold enough to offer a caution, let alone a critique?

Carson is just the man to do so.

flesh and spirit in romans, and beyond (9)

There can be no doubt that the distinctive feature of new creation life is that it is ‘life in the Spirit’.  Christ’s enthronement began a new era, a new age, the age of the Spirit.  For Paul in Romans, and elsewhere in the NT, the Christian life is nothing if it is not ‘spiritual’.  Everything about it functions ‘spiritually’, that is, through the Spirit.  In one sense all believers pay at least lip service to this.  We all have a theology of the Spirit.  However, for many of us that is about all it is, a theology.  All too often we think of the Holy Spirit in terms of propositions rather than as a personal presence and power. We do not function consciously and deliberately in the realm of the Spirit.  We do not consciously seek to live in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, and walk in the Spirit, though Paul makes all three imperative in the Christian life.  We hear lots of exhortation to keep God’s Law and live by the Ten Commandments (an emphasis conspicuously lacking in the NT) but little exhortation to keep in step with the Spirit (an emphasis continually pressed in the NT).

I understand why some are reluctant to emphasize the place of the Spirit.  They are afraid of charismatic excess.  They are also afraid of a rampant subjectivity and individualism that loses sight of objective truth.  Yet in their fear of ‘spiritual’ excess they embrace a much greater folly, a failure to recognise and so realize the radical newness of the new covenant.   They speak as though members of the old covenant not the new, as if slaves not sons, as though instructed by Law rather than led by the Spirit.  And the problem is how we think and speak affects how we live.  It is all too easy to embrace views that functionally, to some degree at least cause, us to ‘fall away from grace’ (Gals 5:1,2).  Many believers in their thinking (theology) so champion the Law and sideline the Spirit that functionally they live as old creation advocates of the letter rather than new creation believers actuated by the Spirit; their sensibilities are alert to the commands of the OT Law more than the leading of the NT Spirit.

If we miss the absolutely pivotal and pervasive place given to the Spirit in the life of the believer we live very sub-Christian lives.  Again, and again, and again, in the NT, the Holy Spirit is presented as the source of all we have in Christ.

The following are just some of the verses in the NT that stress that if we miss Spirit dependence we miss everything.  I hope just the sheer force of biblical reference and deference to the Spirit will help us to place the Holy Spirit where he ought to be, at the centre of new creation living.

Life in the Spirit

The indwelling Holy Spirit is the distinctive blessing of the New Covenant.  His presence and power (Acts 1:5) is what New Covenant living is all about (2 Cor 3,4).  Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit who had been with them, as OT believers, would upon his exaltation be in them, as NT believers (Jn 14:17).  He would be their ‘helper’ when Jesus ascended to his Father and would be with them always (Jn 14:16; Acts 2:33).  And so we regularly read that believers are indwelt by the Spirit (Roms 8:2,9) both individually and corporately.  Our bodies are temples of the indwelling Spirit therefore we must not commit adultery – note Paul’s appeal to moral purity is based on the indwelling Spirit not the authority of the Ten Commandments (1 Cor  6:19).  The people of God are also unitedly the dwelling place of God by his Spirit (Eph 2:18; 1 Cor 3:16) an incentive to take care how we treat it for it is holy and those who destroy it will be destroyed (1 Cor 3:16,17).

The new age of the Kingdom which belongs to the last days is the age of the Spirit (Acts 2:17); this kingdom is not about ascetic rituals, matters of the Law concerning food and drink, but about righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit (Roms 14:17).  In the coming of the Spirit the ancient promise to Abraham was fulfilled (Gals 3:14).  Thus we discover that all aspects of new covenant life are in and by and through the Spirit.  If we are Christ’s we have been indwelt by him (Roms 8:29), that is, we have been baptized in the Spirit (Acts 1:4,5; 1 Cor 12:13).  The indwelling Spirit is the sign and seal of the new covenant.  That is, the Spirit within is the proof that we are God’s and the guarantee of future glory (Eph 1:13; 4:30; 2 Cor 1:22).  All in new creation is of the Spirit from first to last – we are blessed in the heavenlies with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph 1:3; Roms 15:27).

If we hear and believe the gospel it is by the Spirit (1 Thess 1:5; 1 Cor 2:4,13).  Indeed all hearing, believing and understanding received by joy at every stage of the Christian life is through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:10-12,14; 1 Thess 1:6).  He is for God’s people the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph 1:16,17; Col 1:19)  Thus we are enlivened or born of the Spirit (Roms 2:29,8:2; Gals 5:25; Jn 3; 1 Jn 3). That is, our initial cleansing and renewal is by the Spirit who has been richly poured out on us (Tit 3:4).

In fact, a truth seldom noticed, our justification is also through the Spirit (1 Cor 6:11) as indeed was Christ’s (1 Tim 3:16). Moreover, through the same Spirit we await ‘the hope of righteousness’ (Gals 5:5).

Furthermore, we are sanctified by the Spirit (2 Thess 2:13; 1 Pet 1:2), a truth that Paul counterpoises with the inability of Law to so do (Roms 7; 8:1-4). To repeat, anything of God that is accomplished in us or by us is through the Spirit: if we work miracles it is through the Spirit (Roms 15:19, Gals 3:5); if we experience God’s love it is because it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit (Roms 5:5) and if this love overflows to others it is also by the Spirit (Roms 15:30; Col 1:8); if we sense deep in our hearts that God is our Father (one of the signs of the seal of ownership) then this is by the Spirit (Gals 4:6) for the Spirit gives us the assurance we are God’s children (1 Jn 3:24, 4:13); if we pray then we pray in the Spirit (Eph 6:18; Jude 1:20) he makes our prayers articulate and acceptable (Roms 8:26).  It is by the Spirit we have access to the Father (Eph 2:18); if we worship it is by the Spirit (Jn 4; Phil 3:3) part of which includes singing spiritual songs (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16); holiness comes not through the law but by the fruit of the Spirit (Gals 6:22).  It is the produce not of following rules but of gazing at Christ and so by the Spirit being changed into his likeness (2 Cor 3:18).  Indeed, only by the Spirit can we put to death the misdeeds of the body and so live (Roms 8:13) or to put it another way, only by sowing to the Spirit can we reap eternal life (Gals 6:8); the Spirit gives courage (2 Tim 1:7), enables us to persevere through difficulties (Phil 1:19), helps us in our weaknesses (Roms 8:26), and strengthens us in our inner being (Eph 3:16; Roms 1:11); any zeal for God we have is generated by the Spirit (Roms 12:11); we are in life guided by the Spirit (Roms 8:14; Acts 20:22 We ‘live’ by/in the Spirit (Gals 5:25).  Indeed our whole future, including future resurrection is dependent on the Spirit (Roms 8:11) for what is sown a natural body will be raised a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44).  The same Spirit who is the firstfruits and guarantee of the World to Come and who gives us longings for the World to Come (Roms 8:23; Rev 22:17) causes us to abound in hope as we await its arrival (Roms 12:13) for those who through the Spirit are sons are also, through the same Spirit, heirs (Roms 8:16).

So far we have focussed more on the Spirit at work in us as individuals but the new creation is not merely individuals, it is community.  We participate in the Spirit with others (Phil 2:1; 2 Cor 13:14).  Baptism in the Spirit does not simply unite us to Christ, it unites us to each other (1 Cor 12:13). The Holy Spirit has made us one body in the Lord (1 Cor 12:13) and a temple in which God dwells (Eph 2:18-22; 1 Cor 3:16) a spiritual house where spiritual sacrifices are offered to God (1 Pet 2:5).  We are called to maintain this Spirit created unity (Eph 4:3).  We grow as a body as the gifts of the Spirit that we have been given by the risen Christ build us up in love (1 Cor 12:7; Eph 4:6-14).  As we strive for the gospel we succeed as we strive together in one Spirit (Phil 1:27).

Paul does not exhort believers to keep the Law but he does exhort them to be filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18), to live ‘according to’ the Spirit (Roms 8:4), that is, to walk by the Spirit or keep in step with the Spirit (Gals 5:16, 25).  Paul does not caution Christians concerning breaking the Sinaitic Law but he does warn them about grieving the Spirit (Eph 4:30) and quenching the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19) and of the consequences of walking by the flesh rather than the Spirit (Roms 8:5,6).  His emphasis is ever on the Spirit because in the new covenant our service is not in the old way of the Law but in the new way of the Spirit ( Roms 7:6).  If we meet the requirement of the Law in any sense it is only as we walk according to the Spirit (Roms 8:4). Thus, in Galatians, it is those who are ‘spiritual’ (as opposed to the champions of law-keeping) who are to restore stumbling Christians. The spiritual can judge all things and are judged by no-one (1 Cor 2:13-15). If we are dull and childish in faith it is because we are living as those of the flesh and not depending on the Spirit (1 Cor 3:1).

Of course none of this makes the Word of God redundant.  Both the OT and NT are Spirit inspired (1 Pet 1:11,12; 2 Pet 1:21; Acts 1:16; Hebs 3:7; 1 Cor 2:12,13).  Indeed for believers engaged in a spiritual battle the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit by which they fight the enemy (Eph 6:17). The Word of God is the Word of the Spirit of God.  The two are not in conflict. Indeed the Word of God enables us to recognise the voice of the Spirit of God and reject false spirits (1 Jn 4:1-6). Scripture is spiritual milk which his people like new-born babies crave (1 Pet 2:2).

To live in the Spirit is freedom (Gals 5:1; 2 Cor 3:17): to live in any other way, including putting oneself functionally under law (which is what happens when we see our obedience as submission to the Law of God rather than walking in the Spirit) is bondage to a yoke of slavery (Gals 5:1).  It is to live like a slave rather than enjoy the full freedom of a son (Roms 8: 14-16; Gals 3:23-4:11).  It will result either in a life lacking assurance and joy, or a sense of constant defeat, guilt, frustration and wretchedness, or worse a life of Pharisaic self-confidence and self-righteousness, or a combination of all three.

I have only referred to some of the references to the Spirit.  Acts alone speaks of the work of the Spirit in the church over fifty times.  However, I pray God, by his Spirit, will allow these references to the Spirit, so pervasive and persistent in the NT, to persuade us just how vital it is to live consciously in the realm of the Spirit, depending upon Him to mature us individually and collectively into the likeness of Christ – one new man in the Lord.

how do you raise a crushed spirit?

Prov 17:22 (ESV)
A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Yesterday, later in the day, I was feeling flat and mildly depressed.  Not clinically depressed, just the kind of normal depression of spirit that is part of life.  I had been speaking to a few friends who have troubles in their lives and something of their burdens weighed on me too.  One, in particular, has a hard life at the moment and is crushed by it. The Bible speaks truly when it says,

Prov 18:14 (ESV)
A man’s spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?

Many in life are crushed by circumstances.  Indeed, reflecting, even just for a few moments, on the accumulative suffering of the world is crushing.  Secularism, as a way of thinking about life, has little to offer the crushed.  Secularism is for the healthy, those full of life and vitality (the beautiful people of the adverts) but has few words that will lift the downcast.  It’s basic answer is ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’.  And so many rather desperately pursue pleasure as the panacea for personal emotional pain.  The ‘arts’ may offer some insight and consolation but they cannot offer hope.  Of course sometimes ‘time out’ in some form of relaxation is just what is needed if possible.  A holiday, a day walking, a picnic may well provide the change that will revive us.  But this tends to be true for lesser problems of life, not when the spirit is truly crushed.

What if you are living in a difficult situation from which there is no immediate escape?  What if you are housebound?  What if you are living in real poverty?  What if you are in an unhappy marriage?  When you lie down to sleep and your spirit is flat and ‘cast down’ within you making sleep unlikely, how do you raise your mood?  How do you find joy in desolation?

You may try to think of good times in the past.  But that is unlikely to help greatly for it only underlines the misery of the present.  You may take your mind away to a pleasant and tranquil place.  You may envisage yourself sitting on a sandy beach in the sunshine or such like.  This will help a little but the problem is the sandy beach has no ability to address your present circumstances.

I have found that the answer is that which the Bible regularly encourages us to do – to turn our minds to communion with our God.  This may sound like a rather advanced discipline in the Christian life, but it’s not.  It is really rather simple and open to every child of God.  Indeed it is what comes naturally to us as Christians.  It is simply to talk to God reflecting on who he is and his great power and love towards us.

Sometimes if I am really bruised and jaded and can’t think straight I may be able only to say ‘Father… Father… Father… How thankful I am that you are my Father’.  The conscious realisation that God is my ‘Father’ is reassuring, reorienting and restful.  It raises my spirit.  God is in control and God is my heavenly Father.  At other times I sing to myself, inside my head.  A favourite hymn can raise the spirit.  When I feel under attack I often sing a song drawn from the words of the Psalms, ‘Glory to the name of the Lord most High.  The name of the Lord is, a strong tower, the righteous run into it and they are safe’. It is a spirited tune which I sing better in my head than with my voice (in my head I have perfect pitch).  The tune and the words can considerably lift my spirits.

The point is we concentrate on some aspect of the faith that counters our mood and the problems that have caused our mood.  If plagued by accusations of personal failure I may say internally over and over again ‘Thank you Father that the blood of Jesus, Your Son, cleanses me from all sin’.  I may let my mind draw out the word ‘all’ in a restful, wondering and therapeutic way.  For the gospel is therapeutic.  If I feel crushed by circumstances I may say, ‘Thank you Lord that you are powerful and strong and I can do all things through you’.

Sometimes the communion may just be a word that I allow to linger in my mind.  I may not need to think beyond the word for all its rich implications are already embedded in my mind from former days.  ‘Grace’ is such a word.  Sometimes I may lie and reflect on great gospel realities in a little more detail.  I find it helpful to say, ‘Thank you Lord Jesus that you are in heaven today.  That you are past personal suffering and you are reigning.  You are glorious and majestic.  You are employing all your infinite resources to strengthen and sustain me… and one day soon you will return for me and bring me into your everlasting kingdom of joy and peace.’  Our spirits may not be raised greatly by thinking of the past but they are when we think about a hope-filled future.

We all need to find our own way in communing with God.  There are no heavy rules.  But I would say – do it.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Enjoy him.  Delight in him and he will satisfy your heart.  Let your thoughts dwell on him and he will raise and strengthen your spirit.

Ps 34:18 (ESV)
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

facing death with Christ mark ashton

Evangelicals Now has an excellent article on facing death by Mark Ashton who recently died.  This is an excellent article, not simply about death but about life.  I really hope many people read it and reflect upon it.

I, myself, and the gospel

Here is a quotation from a book written by MLJ I read many years ago. The book and the quotation have been very useful to me in my struggle to live by faith. I think all elders and pastors should read the book. It is as helpful today as when first published. A vital pastoral resource.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, pp. 20-21:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”

This is what faith is.  It is talking to ourselves in biblical ways.  Faith tells self what God is like and what he has accomplished in the gospel.   Of course we need an arsenal of faith-thoughts from which to draw.  We build this up by nourishing ourselves in God’s thoughts and ways.  We do this through meeting together as church and feeding on the various means of grace.  We do so privately by reading his words in Scripture, reading good books about the faith, singing to ourselves good hymns that express the faith, listening to good sermons and praise records, discussing our faith with each other and meditating on what we know, bringing it before God in worship and thankfulness.  Then, when unbelieving destructive thoughts begin to crowd our mind, thoughts of low self-worth, thoughts of high self-worth, persistent accusing thoughts, fearful thoughts about whatever, we resist them by faith-thoughts that we have stored in our minds and hearts. Refusing invading, unbelieving thoughts credence by speaking to ourselves believing thoughts is the essence of the fight of faith.

And as a bonus, what better excuse when caught talking to yourself?