Restful Journey

Following our VIM pattern (we transform by fostering V ision, I ntentions and M eans) we must intend this and decide that it shall be in all we are and do. [Means: find resources and write down steps to fulfillment] We may need to write out what those feelings are in a “letter to the Lord,” or perhaps confer about them with a wise Christian friend who knows how to listen to us and to God at the same time. Journaling about progress with feelings can also help. It can bring to light the ideas and images or past events on which the destructive feelings are based. Those, too, will need to be replaced or revised. Many such details may play a role as we progress toward predominance of love, joy, and peace in that dimension of our mind and our self that is our feelings. We have noted how we go wrong in trying to manipulate feelings themselves without regard to their underlying condition. Feelings have a crucial role in life, but they must not be taken as a basis for action or character change

Far too often, however, we find such a separation to be something “religion” has accomplished. And that explains why “religion” as commonly practiced does not eliminate pride and fear, but routinely makes it worse. Pride and fear are the two roots of “the deeds of the flesh” described by Paul in Galatians 5:19-21 and elsewhere, governed by sensuality and malice and trailing clouds of other poisonous feelings resulting from them. So long as the will or spirit (heart) is governed by such feelings, life is simply hopeless. By contrast, it is the positive movement into love, joy, and peace, based on faith and hope in God, that eliminates the destructive feelings or at least eliminates them as governing factors in our life. We do not go at the change the other way around, trying first to root out the destructive feelings. That is the common mistake of worldly wisdom and of much “religion” on such matters. But we know that in being with Jesus the destructive feelings, with their actions, w

We must not be passive. We may allow joy to dissipate through looking backward at our sins and failures, or forward at what might happen to us, or inward at our struggles with work, responsibilities, temptations, and deficiencies. But this means we have placed our hopes in the wrong thing, namely ourselves, and we do not have to do this. It is our option to look to the greatness and goodness of God and what he will do in our lives. Therefore Paul, in jail, speaks to the Philippians of his own contentment “in whatever circumstances” (4:11) and urges them to “rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (4:4). We will be empowered by the Spirit of God to do this if we choose it and fix our minds on the good that God is and will certainly bring to pass. I am a beggar on my way through the world. When others do not extend the grace and mercy I need, I have to draw on the abundance of it in God. “Who is this that is condemning me?” I remind myself, “Jesus even died for me, wa

And first, what exactly is love? It is will to good or “bene-volence.” We love something or someone when we promote its good for its own sake. Love’s contrary is malice, and its simple absence is indifference. Its normal accompaniment is delight, but a twisted soul may delight in evil and take no pleasure in good. Pride is defined by desire, not by love. It is, above all, the presumption that my desires should be fulfilled and that it is an injustice, a crying shame, and an injury if they are not. Therefore, “love is from God” (1 John 4:7, PAR). And “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16). All other loves are to be measured by this standard (Acts 17:31). Now, as St. Augustine saw long ago, the opposite of love is pride. Love eliminates pride because its will for the good of the other nullifies our arrogant presumption that we should get our way. We are concerned for the good of others and assured that our good is taken care of without self-will. Th

IMAGES AND “MOODS” GENERALLY SPEAKING, FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS are fostered and sustained by ideas and images, though social or bodily conditions also factor in. Hopelessness and rejection (or worthlessness and “not belonging”) live on images—often of some specific scene or scenes of unkindness, brutality, or abuse—that have become a permanent fixture within the mind, radiating negativity and leaving a background of deadly ideas that take over how we think and structure our whole world. Such images also foster and sustain moods. What we call “moods” are simply feeling qualities that pervade our selves and everything around us. They are, of course, extremely hard to do anything about precisely because one cannot stand outside of them. Clinical depression is an extreme form of a “bad mood,” but dread, deprivation, and deficiency, as well as simple anger, fear, or pain, can become moods of the negative type because of the capacity of feelings to spread and pervade everything they touch. On

Self-control is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to do and be, even though you “don’t feel like it.” Self-control means that you, with steady hand, do what you don’t want to do (or what you want not to) when that is needed and do not do what you want to do (what you “feel like” doing) when that is needed. In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it. The mongoose of a disciplined will under God and good is the only match for the cobra of feeling. Once Oliver Cromwell, sitting in the midst of his bickering brethren, blurted out these wise words: “I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong!” One’s feeling of righteousness does not mean he is right and actually should alert him to be very cautious and humble. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. Feeling will then be sought for its

NOW, ONE THING QUICKLY becomes clear when you think about the power of feeling. No one can succeed in mastering feelings in his or her life who tries to simply take them head-on and resist or redirect them by “willpower” in the moment of choice. To adopt that strategy is to radically misunderstand how life and the human will work, or—more likely—it is to have actually decided, deep down, to lose the battle and give in. This is one of the major areas of self-deception in the human heart. The very “giving in” can be among the most exhilarating feelings known to man, though it can also be one of complete despair and defeat. By contrast, the person who happily lets God be God does have a place to stand in dealing with feelings—even in extreme cases such as despair over loved ones or excruciating pain or voluptuous pleasure. They have the resources to do what they don’t want to do and to not do what they want. They know and deeply accept the fact that their feelings, of whatever kind, do

Often a good starting point when trying to help those who do not believe in God or accept Christ as Lord is to get them to deal honestly with the question: Would I like for there to be a God? Or, would I like it if Jesus turned out to be Lord? This may help them realize the extent to which what they want to be the case is controlling their ability to see what is the case. The intention to be formed is to have the great God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ a constant presence in our mind, crowding out every false idea or destructive image, all misinformation about God, and every crooked inference or belief. Thus it is the intention to use divinely powerful weapons “for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Transforming Bible passages to meditate on:  Romans 5:1-8 or 8:1-15, 1 Corinthians 13, or Colossians 3:1-17

“I did it myyyyyy way,” Frank Sinatra sang, to the gratification of millions who took him to be expressing their own proper “American” attitude. But Christians often sing with misplaced satisfaction, “We did it ourrrrrr way!” Ourrrrrr way is not necessarily right or good or even “better.” Of course it is not necessarily wrong or worse either. But we must be aware of the special danger of holding onto the contents of our thought life mainly because they are ours and therefore “obviously correct.” Arrogance of doctrine or tradition is still arrogance. It is one of the things God hates (Proverbs 8:13), and not just in “others.” It was first on the list of sins of Sodom, and it was what made possible the “abominations” more commonly associated with that place (Ezekiel 16:49-50). A second danger, associated with the first, is that of simple ignorance of fact. A repeated story in Christian history is of those who have set out to prove the falsity of the way of Christ and wound up being his f

Am I undertaking some task? Then I in faith do it with God, assuming and finding his power to be involved with me. That is the nature of his kingdom. Is there an emergency? I will meet it with the knowledge that God is in the midst of it with me and will be calm in a center of intense prayer. Am I praised? My thoughts (and feelings) will move immediately to the goodness of God in my life. Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is supporting and helping me because he loves me and has a future for me. Am I disappointed and frustrated? I rest in the knowledge that God is over all and that he is working things out—that “all things work together for good to those who love God and are called into the fulfillment of his purposes.” And so forth.  ...But why a moral calamity? Because absolutely nothing can inform, guide, and sustain radical and radiant goodness in the human being other than this true vision of God and the worship based thereon. Only this vision can jerk the twisted condi

Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand. An old hymn contains these lines: In our astonished reverence we confess Thine uncreated loveliness. The first request in The Lord’s Prayer is, “Hallowed be Thy name.” It is first because it is the most important one. To the extent that God is exalted in the minds of people, and his very name is cherished with utmost respect, everything else goes right. You can verify this experimentally in yourself. “Your God is so small that you can fail to relentlessly worship and adore him.” “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.” (Revelation 5:12-

The prospering of God’s cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well. Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith. They do not realize that in so doing they are not honoring God, but simply yielding to the deeply anti-intellectualist currents of Western egalitarianism, rooted, in turn, in the romantic idealization of impulse and blind feeling found in David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and their nineteenth- and twentieth-century followers. They do not realize that they are operating on the same satanic principle that produced the “killing fields” of Cambodia, where those with any sign of education—even the wearing of glasses—were killed on the spot or condemned to starvation and murderous labor. We too easily forget that it is great thinkers who have given direction to the people of Christ in their greatest moments: Paul, John, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesle

Individuals who suffer from a poor image of themselves are caught up in self-rejection and have no defenses against group pressures. They do not see themselves as the objects of God’s love, and they have no place to make a stand. Henri Nouwen noted, “Success, popularity and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of a much larger temptation of self-rejection. We have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions” to our desolate condition. We accept it as a fact that we deserve to be pushed aside and rejected. We see ourselves that way. “Self-rejection,” Nouwen continued, “is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” But this profound truth will have little or no effect without powerfu

God is not going to pick us up by the seat of our pants, as it were, and throw us into transformed kingdom living, into “holiness.” Interestingly, you can’t evoke thoughts by feeling a certain way, but you can evoke and to some degree control feelings by directing your thoughts. Now, for all their importance to human life, ideas are never capable of definition or precise specification; and yet people never stop trying to define them, in their vain efforts to control them. They are broadly inclusive, historically developing ways of interpreting things and events, which, for all their power, often do not emerge into the consciousness of the individual. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for most people to recognize which ideas are governing their life and how those ideas are governing their life. From one essential perspective, of course, Jesus himself confronted and undermined an idea system and its culture, which in turn killed him. He proved himself greater than any idea sys

We must keep clear, however, that it is the worth of human beings, not their righteousness, which is tied to their nature. Things of great value can still be lost and often are; and to be of great value does not mean one is not lost, but is saved and safe. “Depravity” does not, properly, refer to the inability to act, but to the unwillingness to act and clearly the inability to earn. In fact, we consume the most grace by leading a holy life, in which we must be constantly upheld by grace, not by continuing to sin and being repeatedly forgiven. The interpretation of grace as having only to do with guilt is utterly false to biblical teaching and renders spiritual life in Christ unintelligible. Any successful plan for spiritual formation, whether for the individual or group, will in fact be significantly similar to the Alcoholics Anonymous program. What we are aiming for in this vision is to live fully in the kingdom of God and as fully as possible now and here, not just hereafter. 

The advice found in Thomas à Kempis is very good as an antidote to improper sensitivity: Choose evermore rather to have less than more. Seek ever the lower place and to be under all. Desire ever to pray that the will of God be all and wholly done. So, such a one enters the land of peace and quiet.  Mueller of Bristol, England, said, “There was a day when I died: died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends, and since then, I have studied only to show myself ‘approved unto God.’” Small wonder that one said of Mueller that he “had the twenty-third psalm written in his face.” However, if we are dead to self to any significant degree, these rebuffs will not take control of us, not even to the point of disturbing our feelings or peace of mind. We will, as St. Francis of Assisi said, “wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there

[Getting everything you want would NOT bring you the highest joy] Nor would even the conversion of all unbelievers to faith in Christ! By this point brother Leo is amazed, and he begs Francis to teach him “wherein is perfect joy.” The reply is that if, when they come to their quarters—dirty, wet, and exhausted from hunger—they are rejected, repeatedly rebuffed, and finally driven away by force, then “if we accept such injustice, such cruelty, and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring,” and “if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for Him, write, O Brother Leo, that here, finally, is perfect joy.” Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. The experience of heightened vitality fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyou

ONE OF THE GREAT DANGERS in the process of spiritual formation is that self-denial and death to self will be taken as but one more technique or “job” for those who wish to save their life (soul). Self-denial will then externalize itself in overt practices of group identity that may seem very sacrificial, but can leave the “mind of the flesh” in full control. We see this, for example, in many who wear what they regard as plain clothing or who abstain from certain foods. A well-known Methodist evangelist of other years, Sam Jones, used to say that a dancing foot and a praying knee do not grow on the same leg. This might prove to be a fairly good empirical generalization. It may be that as a matter of fact few prayerfully bent knees are on legs with a dancing foot at the end. Still, just not dancing would hardly prove that you had abandoned your life to God. Practices of “mortification” can become exercises in more self-righteousness. How often this has happened! This dreary and deadly “s

 WHAT IF MY WAY & GOD'S WAY WERE THE SAME WAY?!  DOING WHAT YOU WANT—GOD’S WAY: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? It means that they will then for the first time be able to do what they want to do. Of course they will be able to steal, lie, and murder all they want—which will be none at all. But they will also be able to be truthful and transparent and helpful and sacrificially loving, with joy—and they will want to be. Their life will be in this way caught up in God’s life. They will want the good and be able to do it, the only true human freedom. The mind set on the spiritual is in that sense “life and peace” (Romans 8:6), because it lives from God and, “sowing into the spirit, out of the spirit reaps the eternal kind of life” (Galatians 6:8, PAR). So—and this is of utmost importance to those who would enter Christian spiritual formation—life as normally understood, where the object is securing myself, promoting myself, indulging myself, is to be set aside. “Can I still think about such t

CHRISTIANS TALK OF THEIR "BROKENNESS." But when you listen closely, you may discover that they are talking about their wounds, the things they have suffered, not about the evil that is in them. Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me. Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. Indeed, it is most likely you will not know it, because it is inherently a condition of self-blindness. You need treatment nevertheless, if you are not to be lost forever; and being informed of your condition and what to do about it can help you find relief. Should I say nothing to you merely because you might find it insulting? I must think more highly of you than that. The reality of evil in the human heart is not something to be ignored or treated lightly. We should be very sure th

YOUR CHOICE--ONLY TWO FAITHS IN THE WORLD--1. Worship of one God, as typified in the Judeo-Christian tradition; 2. ANYTHING ELSE--atheism, new age, Hinduism, Scientology, etc., is SELF-WORSHIP. YOUR CHOICE: two ways to get to Heaven: 1. Inviting Jesus into your life and daily giving Him full control; 2. Live a perfect life! Dallas Willard: One should seriously inquire if to live in a world permeated with God and the knowledge of God is something they themselves truly desire. If not, they can be assured that God will excuse them from his presence. They will find their place in the “outer darkness” of which Jesus spoke. But the fundamental fact about them will not be that they are there, but that they have become people so locked into their own self-worship and denial of God that they cannot want God.  Their god, as Paul elsewhere wrote, is their “belly” (Philippians 3:19, KJV), the feeling center of the self. They are willing slaves of their feelings or appetites (Romans 16:18). They “w

LOST PERSONS, IN CHRISTIAN terms, are precisely the ones who mistake their own person for God. They falsely identify, and cannot recognize, what is closest to them—themselves. Then, as we have noted, everything becomes delusional. Such a one really does think he is in charge of his life—though, admittedly, to manage it “successfully,” he may have to bow outwardly to this or that person or power. But he is in charge (he believes), and he has no confidence in the one who really is God. As we have seen, such ones “do not see fit to center their knowledge upon God.”  (Of course by “denial” we mean to include not only rejection of what is the case, but also affirmation of what is not the case.) The outcome is a humanity “filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, un

IS YOUR GOD'S NAME "SELF"? Sex is far from being the only problem. The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, and downright meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. But as in the church, so in life generally, few are ready to deal with the realities of the deeper self, in themselves or in others. And those few are not exactly welcomed by others. Self-esteem in such a situation will only breed self-deception and frustration—as is now increasingly recognized, by the way. Fear of God, the proverb tells us, is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). Although not the end or outcome of wisdom, to be sure, it is the indispensable beginning, I believe, and the principle part. One begins to get smart when he or she fears being crosswise of God: fear of not doing what he wants and not being as he requires. Fear is the anticipation of harm. The intelligent person recognizes that his or her well-being lies in being in harmony with God and what God

                                             HONOR THE LOST OR FOUND SOUL'S HIDDEN MAJESTY The most hardened criminal as well as the most devout of human beings have had a spiritual formation. They have become a certain kind of person. In one of C. S. Lewis’s more striking passages, he challenges us to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. Strangely, it is precisely the intrinsic greatness of the person that makes it in its ruined condition “a horror and a corruption such as you

But the real Jordan, the spiritual “Jordan,” is not physical death, as has usually been supposed. We need not and must not wait until we die to live in the land of milk and honey; and if we will only move to that land now, the passage in physical death will be but one more day in the endless life we have long since begun. That is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, “If anyone keeps my words he shall never see or taste death” (John 8:51). DH: A song illustrates this: "I want to get so close to Him that there'll be no big change on that day that Jesus calls my name!"  SONG - CLICK HERE The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one. Psalm 14:2-3  STARTING FROM RUIN We must see the soul and the person in its ruined condition, with its malformed and dysfunctional mind, feelings, body, and social relations, before we ca

SOUL & BLOWING IT--Because the soul encompasses and “organizes” the whole person, it is frequently taken to be the person. We naturally treat persons as “souls.” But of course the soul is not the person. It is, rather, the deepest part of the self in terms of overall operations; and like the body, it has the capacity to operate (and does, largely, operate) without conscious supervision. Today one of the most common rationalizations of sin or folly is, “Oh, I just blew it.” While there is some point to such a remark, it is not the one those who use it hope for. It does not exonerate them. While it may be true that there are other circumstances in which I would not have done the foolish or sinful thing I did, and while what I did may not represent me fully, “blowing it” does represent me fully. I am the kind of person who “blows it.” “Blowing it” shows who I am as a person. I am, through and through, in my deepest self, the kind of person who “blows it”—hardly a lovely and promisin