Spirituality’s Magnificent Seven

“Today admit your need, seek God’s help, celebrate his love, live for his glory, study his wisdom, work for his kingdom, rest in his grace.”

 ~Paul David Tripp

What if we could formulise the spiritual life? Seven nuances of faith are presented above and explored below:

1. Admitting Our Need

The most important step in addressing any weakness is admitting our need. It’s certainly the first step in 12-step programs of recovery. Everyone needs God whether they admit it or not. When we begin each day by admitting our need we recommit to re-establishing our spiritual search. Such a search embarked upon in earnestness avails us to the answer; an answer that unlocks our day.

2. Surrendering So We May Be Helped

Admitting our need leads to seeking God’s help. And the only way we may be helped is by surrendering our weakness, and surrendering in our weakness, before God who is the only One that can help. The more we admit we need help the more secure we are in the truth of life. Life sorts us out. Only in God do we have an adequate response, overall.

3. Celebrating How Much We Are Loved

The One that helps loves us. We give up on God, readily, but God never gives up on us. There is much to celebrate in this unconditional love that refuses to let go of us. Whenever we bask in God’s love the Fruit of the Spirit is returned to us. We are blessed in joy, peace, patience, and goodness, etc. For love, we grow in virtue.

4. Living For God’s Glory

It seems easier living for God’s glory when we understand, afresh, how much we are loved. It’s a very normal response to love God back in recognition for just how much we are loved. When we live for God’s glory our sacrifice is for love; we need no credit. Our privilege and our pleasure become united in the quest for wisdom.

5. Studying God’s Word

The great condition of our spiritual growth is our ongoing immersion in the Word of God—toward growth in wisdom. This is our lifeline to a fervent spirituality that keeps us growing in the good times and stable in the not-so-good times.

6. Working For The Kingdom’s Cause

With all of the foregoing stowed, energising our spiritual efforts, working for the Kingdom’s cause is an abounding freedom. And with every endeavour toward the Kingdom’s end we are affirmed that God is blessed as we work in our humble way.

7. At The End, And Always, Finding Rest In God

Symbolic of day’s end, and of Sabbath, we learn to rest and we enjoy it. Rest is earned, but mostly, we work out of rest. Finding rest in God is the necessary process for energising future conquests.

***

Seven magnificent things God gives us: power at our admission of our need for help, nurture in his love, blessing to live for his glory, the ability to study his Word, the privilege to serve in his Kingdom, and the capacity for and enjoyment of rest.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Grieving As God Grieves

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

— Matthew 5:4 (NRSV)

Oh how we grieve in this life.

But we yet not grieve as God grieves, and we can learn a lot about self-care and the appropriateness of grief when we take counsel directly from the Spirit that meanders all through life, grieving eternally—not that God is only grieving.

When we grieve as God grieves, then we are comforted with a comfort only God can give: a very clean and succinct pain that heals as it cleanses us with a thrush of divine antiseptic.

***

But again, how common it is to grieve in this life, for we are continually losing things, whilst the things we gain lose their significance—their novelty—very easily.

Our losses, however, hit us on a grander scale.

Grief in this life—in this worldly existence—paralyses us two ways: we deny it because it’s too painful or we are angered by it and blame everything, including God. Neither results in healing, because neither is nestled in the will of God. These are maladaptive forms of grieving, because we grieve the right things in the wrong way.

We have the opportunity, though, to venture gently on a divine road, into the heart of God so far as true grief is concerned.

Here is our opportunity to know God, to think for a moment how God thinks, and to reframe our approach to grief.

***

God grieves many things that occur in everyday life. Like sin. Like a turning away from the truth. Like when people aren’t loved when they deserve to be loved. Like when innocent people suffer needlessly. The list runs on.

God is not opposed to us grieving our personal losses; he designed us and built us to grieve, because we cannot love and not grieve. Grief is one of the central costs of love. And we will suffer if we love; the name of that suffering is grief.

***

So we have the option and the opportunity to grieve as a worldly-focused person would, or to transcend those foci and surrender our sadness to God to be remediated.

God wants us to grieve in accord with the truth. He wants us to grieve the important things; the relational things that we get wrong and the relationships we lose. One leads to others’ healing, the other leads to our own healing.

Grief and healing go together as a hand goes in a glove. This is God’s will, but it can only occur when we go God’s way. The key is to grieve as God grieves.

***

The things of love we grieve appropriately when we lose them. We cannot help it. It is right to grieve them. When love is the datum point of our grief we grieve as God grieves. However painful such grief is, it is right and appropriate to grieve.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Seek God Persistently and You Shall Find

Wisdom says,

“I love those who love me,

and those who seek me diligently find me.”

— Proverbs 8:17 (NRSV)

Whatever we seek in this life, whatever we search for, we find. We may find God if we search diligently and long enough. Likewise, we will find everything but God if we do not seek the Lord of our lives.

The matter of seeking and finding is an essential truth. God does not isolate himself away from humanity; it is more the other way—us against our Lord. We may run and we may hide, but God stands eternally to be found if we would want to find him.

Many of us have run. Many of us have hidden. And many of us have not, for the life of us, despite our searching, found God in that dry time. It appears God remains hidden; yet we, somehow, have hidden ourselves.

Sometimes the season beckons for us to journey into the desert away from the matters of comfort and into the matters of pain. We wonder why when there seems to be no why. We are betwixt and between spiritually, neither at home nor away, beside ourselves and damaged in the present, perhaps without hope for the future.

We have gone from the truth that God remains to be found upon seeking, yet upon our seeking he is nowhere to be found.

Everything in life seems to be pushing us away from the Lord—the only one who can help us just now. When we have no Lord we have no help. Such a truth we take of the truth and it makes us angrier than ever toward God; we say, “God we believe in you, so show yourself this day, and make my belief in you real upon both your Presence and my experience.”

Still, God appears vacant upon our understanding.

We are increasingly angered, yet we feel guilty—and possibly ‘judged’—for feeling this way toward God.

But God is there!

But God is there by our knowledge. God is there by our visual cognisance; we see the things of God everywhere, even if we don’t feel him. We see God working in others’ lives and that is evidence enough for us. It is best for us, just now, not to panic. God is real, he is here, and he will reveal himself in the right way at the right time.

For this we have faith.

***

God says, “Seek me and you shall find me; wisdom to live your life.” But then God disappears upon our experience for a time. Such a time in the desert wilderness isn’t God turning his back; no, our faith is being refined, fortified, renewed upon the discrete resources of the Lord our God. We are not being weakened, but strengthened. And our search will not be in vain. Our faith experience is being elevated and a closer relationship with God is to be had. We have both a hope and a future; God is central.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

When Will the Help Come?

“I’m hoarse from calling for help,

Bleary-eyed from searching the sky for God.”

— PSALM 69:3 (Msg)

Times of despairing last so long that we are forgiven for contemplating how we might just simply give up. And many do. Many give up in the ultimate sense, just as we have all given up on important things far too prematurely. But just the same there are times when we can’t give up, no matter how much we want to. These times when we won’t give up, because, perhaps we have too much to lose, build our faith to hold on long enough to endure the next conquest; we only fight one conquest of time. That’s all there is. It’s called the day.

We need only survive the day, but the irony is, when the day is enough, in our desperation, we tend to take far too a long term view.

What truly helps us hold on when the answer from God seems delayed? It’s almost as if the final result we hope for is able to be lived without enough to let go of it. Fixating on it won’t bring it to us any faster or any more assuredly.

What we discuss here is the matter of irony.

When Faith Is Helped by Irony

What a benefit it is if we can manage to think of life as one giant irony. Better put, perhaps, is that we would imagine life comprising of a series of ironies, like upside down realities.

In such a way we would need to learn to let go of that thing that is most important to us, whilst learning also how to grapple with the things we hate.

We might learn to choose to leave behind our hearts desire in order to endure inwardly and wrestle with our pain. To wrestle with our pain is to enter into it patiently. And just as patiently we could consider how we are to leave the precious thing behind.

When we can imagine life as a requiem of irony we expect much less from life and we begin to notice much more of a natural blessing in the present day.

What we’re really doing is giving ourselves plenty of breathing space, and we need such space when we consider our realities of being completely disoriented. Moving into a period of reorientation we know we need space, so we allow ourselves every opportunity at that space.

Space is what we need, not more pressure.

***

When we have to wait for the help of God to arrive our faith is built stronger, but only if we don’t give up. Relaxing in the despairing time is helped by temporarily letting go our heart’s desire, so we can experience sufficient poise, peace and perspective to endure. We relax our grip and find the help comes almost immediately.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Faith or Doubting – Choices and Consequences

Pain endured now ensures good things to come,

For plying your faith is a good thing done,

Because faith is a thing tested, now beyond sight,

And only by faith will we retrieve the good Lord’s might!

***

When we do the hard things of life in what could be considered a responsible way, we ply our faith—a ‘good’ faith; a faith that holds up under the rigours of truth and is consistent and abiding with the laws of this life.

Faith could well be the most important thing as far as life modus operandi is concerned.

Because we will all fall on hard times we need faith to get us through from that horrendous position A to the new B that God has already designed for us.

Such a faith as this is always geared most opposed to our comfortable default—we desire comfort when we should prefer resilience under pressure; we want joy when that’s not possible in this new now; we entreat the value of a bygone day rather than look forward to a newer, brighter though less certain one.

Faith is about choosing past the doubting.

Faith is about noticing the loathing in life, but not going that way; not staying in that space. Faith moves on into and onto a higher place; a precipice of majesty for what might be, not what currently is.

Faith involves a risk, yet doubting brings home a certainty.

Faith’s Risk / Doubting’s Certainty

Faith risks for something better and, it, by its solemnity of intent, will not often be found wanting. Doubting, on the other hand, is easier, closer to our default way, and is never more certain—we have nothing good coming to us by our enacted doubts.

Faith is worth it—what’s the worst that can happen by risking in faith? Embarrassment, disappointment, a loss of faith. No, all these are covered by true faith, for God makes faith ever more durable than the result of what we hope for. Faith always takes us on, into a place of newness and an enduring vitality runs with faith.

Doubting is an abyss of eternal wandering. It seems we’re making progress but we never do. We keep coming back to the same place. We never venture far from the starting point with doubting. Doubting is time-waster and it takes us ever more spiralling into the chasms of frustration and fatigue.

***

Faith is always worth the risk. It delivers upon a promise and always produces a worthy result. Doubting retrieves nothing but frustration and fatigue. Faith seems the harder way, but in the end it’s the only way to a hopeful life.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Working Out Life So Life Works Out

“... work out your own salvation...”

— Philippians 2:12 (NRSV)

God gives us one life to work out—our own. We are responsible for no other life, unless we, for a time, in somebody else’s life, are a guardian. We are only responsible for children until they grow to be autonomous adults.

Now, there are no answers in life other than what we, in our own lives, work out. God blesses an ongoing search, done diligently. In fact, we regress in life when we don’t search.

Working out our lives or not working them out is our choice and diligence finds its legs in taking responsibility.

There is really no sense in not working our lives out, because we are the only ones that suffer, principally, apart from those who rely on us. And if those that rely on us suffer because we aren’t diligent enough, whose true fault is it?

We can take responsibility for these facts of life or we can choose to deny them. It doesn’t really matter, but we are blessed to know that working out our lives is about applying our faith. It’s about doing the work God sets us, by the challenges and opportunities that come our way; those that proffer us toward blessing.

Working Out Life – Making Life Work Out

None of us are passive in our own lives. Even if we are passive and we show little interest in leaving a legacy of who we were in life we actively choose to do such a regretful thing.

We either choose to work our lives out or we don’t—and many, tragically, don’t.

What it means to work our lives out is we earnestly do what we can to make them fruitful exercises of devotion to God, by discovering his will for both our moments and our overall lives and then by doing that discerned will. It’s no good not doing it.

We know when we are doing this because our lives are all about growth and opportunity; we are always open to what God is doing; we anticipate the challenges, or at least we receive them without lasting resentment.

***

A large part of working out our lives is also grappling with our pasts.

For every reason that we deny our pain we miss our opportunities at healing. Healing is coming home to the truth about our pain and emotional discomfort, in order that we can work out our lives for the better all the more. Healing is a journey and it always gets slowly better.

If we don’t grapple with our pasts the potential for working out our lives will always be limited. The past can be very important in terms of our future.

***

God gives us one life to work out—our own. We have charge over our lives alone. We have to work with what we have. Our lives are what they are, but they don’t have to remain the way they are. We can have our lives work out however we want. It’s up to us.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

 

Wearing the Wardrobe of Love

“So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline...”

— Colossians 3:12-14 (The Message)

Eugene Peterson continues that this new life of love compels us to be even tempered; content with second place; quick to forgive an offense; attempting to forgive is quick as the Saviour forgave us.

Love, he says, is the all-purpose garment for life that we ought never to be without.

***

Life or death, from the spiritual perspective, is what ‘life’ is all about. We make choices all the time about whether we venture toward the one or the other.

Love is central; love the modus operandi.

When love is chosen—and we all choose, whether we accept or deny it—we choose life. Love is the art of coming last in a two-horse race. It’s the astounding paradox of all time where victory is achieved from defeat. It’s an irony that works when all doesn’t work out. Love is an enigma that never has to compete; it wins from going against competition as it sees an agenda higher than others see.

Love is embodied by wisdom as wisdom is embodied by love. And love is depicted as a wardrobe of virtue, with garments and accessories perfectly designed by God to be worn in bringing heavenly realities to earth—“on earth as in heaven...”

Let’s consider this wardrobe for life. Let’s try the clothes on for fun. Then, let’s keep in the practice of wearing them.

Clothed for Life

We need underwear, our day clothes and suitable footwear as bare minimums for life.

The underwear for life is the humility and quiet strength outbound from the nexus of God working in us and through us constantly by the Holy Spirit. What we feel and think within is going to expand outward into daily life. We nurture a character of gentle solemnity. We govern ourselves and we allow God to speak to us, ever listening and discerning.

The day clothes for life are what people see—our kindness and compassion. These both are informed by humility and quiet strength. Kindness and compassion are how we love. There’s no other lesson needed other than to study these great gifts to others and apply them without hesitation.

The footwear for life is discipline. It’s the only way the rest of our wardrobe will stay robust for their roles. We cannot rove, move or be mobile for life without discipline, which is self-motivation from a purpose deeper than ourselves. Our purpose is love. Our agenda is God.

***

The underwear for life is the humility and quiet strength. The day clothes for life are what people see—our kindness and compassion. The footwear for life is discipline. Wearing the complete wardrobe avails us to love. Then we will be even tempered, quick to forgive, and happy with second place. Then we will have life. We have life when others have life.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Coming in Weakness to Go in God’s Power

“All God’s giants have been weak people who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them.”

— J. Hudson Taylor

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ And Moses said to the Lord, ‘If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here’.”

— Exodus 33:14 (NRSV)

We all know too well the sense for aloneness, as we’ve perhaps all had that sense of feeling like we belong. God’s Presence is like the latter, but without a single other soul around. Not that we cannot feel his Presence when others are around.

When we feel we belong—heart and soul—to the Lord our God—with no misconceptions clouding us in our doubting—we want to go with God and continue to go.

Going is our way. With pleasure we go. Even in the anxious desire for courage to step, we go.

But at times God does not comfort us with knowledge of his Presence; or, perhaps more correctly put, we just sense a dearth of all divine perspective—no assurance whatsoever that we are on the right path or have the blessing of God as we go.

When we lack this sense of directedness we wander and it’s not good. Desperation is the reality we may deny, but it is the reality. We need to know God goes with us.

Power Requires Weakness Which Gives Us God’s Presence

Weakness is central to experiencing God’s power—which implies God’s presence.

It is futile to go anywhere God does not go or will not go, yet we have all been there, having run not just too far ahead but completely off the trail. We go ahead of God or off the trail because we are relying on our own strength and we have departed from God's presence. As a result we are devoid of power.

Wise is the person that quickly detects the absence of God’s Spirit in their going out and coming home. It should be our constant spiritual sense, but the more we waver from God the less access we have to this sense.

Mixed with wisdom—and essentially part of it—is a catalyst of weakness. Wisdom allows us to open into our weakness. Weakness invites the gentle power of the Spirit of God into our situations. And in weakness we know God’s Presence, because the Lord will not leave us alone in our time of true need that comes with it the commitment to be with God.

***

If only we would go only where God goes and nowhere else. That requires weakness; to come to the end of our own strength, which is a weak strength at its best. When we come in weakness we can go with strength in God’s power by his Presence.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Compassion Makes Hurt Things New

Where does all the judgment and condemnation emanate from either in us to hurt others or ourselves or from others as it comes back to us?

***

Where does all the judgment and condemnation come from?

It’s certainly not from the Lord.

Could it come from the hurt within us?

When grace we cannot afford.

***

Judgment interpersonally is not of God, nor is condemnation. It runs cross-grain to the gospel that anyone would consider either of these a worthy ploy for the disposing of communicative sentiments.

But far too many people still speak from the hurt within them; in fact, we all do.

Only recently I was reminded that this voice of fear—the unhealed material fired from within the molten core of my brokenness—leaps out when we least expect it. Perhaps this is most due pride. Certainly as we begin to get ahead of ourselves, this caustic nothingness inside us rears its ugly identity and reminds us who we actually are, devoid of God.

Occasionally, however, we hurt people or are hurt in a transactional way: we hurt them because they hurt us or the other way around, with the cycle abounding. What are we to do to protect ourselves and the other from this whipping of the emotions?

Compassion, Compassion, Compassion... and then More Compassion

We all need this quality in abundance and I’m not sure what characterised Jesus more than compassion—perhaps humility, patience, wisdom and every other virtue in perfect order.

But compassion set the Lord apart.

And it is Jesus’ will for us in our lives that we would enrol ourselves to compassion; to learn of it, to apply it, to be committed to it beyond our hurt or theirs.

The point of judgment and condemnation is this: it’s not from God, but it is from the sore and sorry human being who is, themselves, bitter and twisted inside.

Because God’s inevitable and eventual judgment is perfectly just, it wavers not an iota from the truth. But ours is born of our frailties and fallibilities.

Abiding with compassion—which makes our frailties and fallibilities superfluous—makes all things new, because it loses sight of the things of this world and it sets its sights on the things of heaven.

***

Hurt abounds hurt and it produces judgment and condemnation. It’s never of God. Compassion is the way to make the hurt less relevant so far as our or their response is concerned. When we respond in compassion we melt away the fear that underlies the hurt, judgment and condemnation. Compassion makes all things new.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Where Satan Cannot Touch Us

In the realm of God on this Earth, within the sanctuary of the true spiritual life, a place serene with whispers of the Divine, there is safety—far away does the enemy of God dwell from that place. But this place of the heart—a geography of the soul—a locale of the mind—is safe, in this world, only for a select season.

This season is driven by intention; by commitment we have this power of God to sweep away potential for attack from the devil.

The place where Satan cannot touch us is in the very lap of God, and it’s not difficult to arrive there. But it is difficult for us to stay—we have spiritual attention-deficit disorder. Our minds wander and our hearts get lax. It’s just the way it is.

We last a few weeks in the strength of God by our genuine yet now fortified and thoroughly beautiful weakness... or perhaps it is days or hours.

At this place we know Power, and it’s beyond ourselves.

What we need do is we remain in him, who is our Saviour, our Lord, our King—the Majesty of Creation; him who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.

Remaining in Him

“Abide in me as I abide in you.”

— John 15:4a (NRSV)

Although we do have to face the thought that an ambush of the enemy is a present and real danger always, we do have the path of protection. And this is no ordinary protection.

Abiding in the Lord Jesus—per his red-lettered words above—is the single thing we need to do. Repetitively running back to the Lord via repentance is to be the theme of our lives. Now repentance isn’t about a silly little schoolboy or schoolgirl who has been rebellious; it is genuinely about just turning back to God. It’s a condition of our sanctity.

The Lord cannot help us from afar. Only as we draw near—as we abide in him as he abides in us, eternally—are we able to strangle the threats of Satan in the name of Jesus in one quick and truly easy move.

Remaining in Jesus, constantly recognising his Presence in our lives by the Holy Spirit, is the way we vouchsafe our sanctification.

Satan is not interested in fighting us when we reside with Power, because, quite frankly, there are easier picks for him to take right now—easier prey. The evil one will wait until we are weak again by our own volition to turn to things other than God.

***

The enemy of God prowls but doesn’t roar, until we give him a foothold. We are safe whilst we abide in Jesus—for Jesus has promised to abide eternally with us. Jesus has said, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Whilst we are there—abiding—we cannot be touched by Satan. There we are safe and we have Power.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.