This happens to me on a becoming-regular basis…I guess it’s one of the ways God decided He’ll use to get my attention on something specific: I pick up two books at the same time, each of disparate themes, and within the first chapters of both books, God hands out a lesson that fundamentally shifts my understanding of How Things Work--Things being matters of practical application of Christian faith.
A couple years ago it was The Absolutes of God by Ronald Ricley, who spent a great deal of his life teaching in West Africa and Central America and then came home to continue ministering and start a family and die in the Covid madness, versus Desiring God by John Piper, whose writings are variously described as both mind-hammering and heart-warming by Os Guinness. These two served to run me up against the reality that God is absolutely unchangeable in His character and in His expectations of how we are to pursue Him. The lesson for me was how much I operate soulishly, that is, out of my mind, will, and emotion, rather than by the leading of the Holy Spirit. Truthfully, getting the two to separate is all still a little fuzzy for me, but I’m aware now that there is a difference and I have work to do there.
Anyway, it’s happened again. Francis de Sales was a Roman Catholic Bishop of Geneva whose influence came to bear in the reformations of the monastic practices that followed the Protestant reformation in Europe. The Art of Loving God is a compilation of a series of talks he gave while ministering to the Annecy Visitation convent in the early1600s. Assembled by Oswald Chambers’ wife after his death, If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer is similarly an arrangement of several week-night talks at a 1915 WW1 military camp in Egypt where Chambers served as YMCA chaplain.
The lesson from these two books: how prayer creates opportunity for Christ to be formed in me.
In this season of poetry writing, one of the things that darts through my head often is “what I really want to say is...”. When beginning to write--poetry or otherwise--what the writer starts with is usually not what really wants to be said. It takes a bit of rambling and weeding to get to the point. “What I really want to say is...” is my prompt to skip past the presenting phrases and boil it down quicker, more ruthlessly. I peel off what good poetry should look like, what makes me appear put together or like a proper Christian should, and just start with bald language. What I really feel, what I really think, what I really want. Then I have something to work with. Messing around with just the surface stuff results in blather nobody wants to read.
Lately, I’ve brought this phrase to prayer with me.
“What I really want to say is...”
Why should my impulse still be, after all these years, trying to look good in my prayer closet? As if Holy Spirit has no idea, as if Jesus isn’t slightly shaking His head saying “Come on, girl, try that again.” But it is. I’m still trying to position myself.
But here’s why I need to drill down to what I really think, really feel, really want.
These core urges tell me where my heart is.
What I really think about that slimewad of a money-hungry, compulsive liar, when I pick apart what’s behind my self-righteous victimhood, reminds me that the best justice for me is in God’s hands, that reparations on this earth are temporary and powerless, and hasn’t God has taken care of me with abundance, despite the slimewads? All slimewads will someday stand before Him and answer for (likely) a lot more than this case of dishonesty. While I stand right beside them answering for my own cesspool of stuff.
I start with as honest as I can get, and keep digging. Why do I really think that? OK, why do I think that? What’s the outcome I was expecting? Why is that the answer I need?
If I keep telling myself the truth, I am able to see--in clear light of God’s unchanging holiness--my selfish attitude, my efforts to self-protect and self-exalt, my active lack of trust, my walking by sight. And there’s my opportunity to bring everything back under faith and obedience.
I’m learning the new ability to live with two selves--the self that can justify any self-serving rationalization and usually dress it up in good Christian trappings, versus the self that is covered by the blood of Jesus and righteous before God and bearing good fruit, but is also still very much caught in the flesh. It’s like the suckers that persist in growing up from the stump of a tree--I just can’t of myself chop deep enough to shut off that flow of sap.
As long as I’m on this plane, I’ll never finish reckoning with the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil. God’s standards for my holiness remain, towering, promised and provisioned, yet so far away inasmuch as it depends on my own ability. What I can do is keep trying, keep finding ways to expose the rottenness and persist in choosing the response of faith.
That’s what I really want to say.
Toward the promise,
Lana
#411
Ivory Crest Suave
Ten pack
Two pack
Two large bottles
I reflect how interesting it is
that my father’s and my
beauty requirements
are the same
Basic inexpensive unchanging
and buying in bulk is
the practical thing to do
As I shop in my father’s pantry
sorting through his things
closing up his life
Ivory Crest Suave
5-13-23
Here’s the link to last week’s issue Thank you
As you said, Keep trying. Stay in the race.