I
had a friend just call me up this morning; he is back in
"same-old-place-again-not-understanding-how-he-got-there." You see, he
is a recovering addict just like me, only lately, he has not been in recovery if you get my meaning. We talked for a good long time; he is at wit's end because he knows all about "what to do" and what he should do, and yet that knowledge, in and of itself, does not seem to avail itself from keeping him out of "the pit" so to speak.
I
shared a good many things with him about the dangers of isolation and
how disconnecting ourselves from "the body" - whether we're talking
about the "church" or the 12-step rooms or simply other people - gives
the enemy oppurtunity to come in and cast shadows of doubt and gloom in
our minds (words to that effect) in order to launch an onslaught of
temptation against us that will successfully take us out.
The upshot of all of this is that he pretty much knows all of this and has been hearing it for years. But (just like me), internalizing
this knowledge is another matter. I then shared with him the Paul's
passage from Roman's 7 about how Paul himself knew to do the good but
found himself doing the evil anyway. To my complete non-suprise, he was not
familiar with this passage in the New Testament. (Or perhaps he'd heard
it once, long ago, and had forgotten about it). We went on to discuss
about how head-knowledge, in-and-of-itself, is not enough to save us; we
need some kind of catalyst if you will, to make the head knowledge into heart knowledge.
This was a lesson that was by no means wasted on me; I live in my head a lot!
(and sometimes that is a dangerous neighborhood for me to go up into
alone!). The way I abstract real things is incredible; Christ's love for
example; I would rather talk about it or read about rather than experience it! Part of the reason is, I am not sure I know how to do that! I am always trying to get the "tab A into slot B" formula right and then I can experience God's blessings in abundance!
I am convinced that the reason we go astray as Christians (and yes, my friend is a Christian as well) is that we do not know how to receive!
We are always trying to get our little spiritual and theological ducks
in a row before we think that God can (or will) do something for us. We
may even "know" that we cannot perform our way into God's blessings or
approval and yet find ourselves trying to perform anyway because what we
"know" has not been internalized; i.e. we still think there is
something we have "to do" and if we don't do it, then we can expect
nothing from God.
I wonder, what will it take for me, my friend
(and the rest of us) to finally and successfully internalize the word
"Tetelestai!" ("It is Finished!)? What more do we have to go through
before we come to the "heart knowledge" that what needed to be done has
already been done? How many times will I (and the rest of us) have to go
on bumping our heads up against that same wall of the law before we
come to the conclusion that only that pronouncement cried-out from the
cross is going to send that wall crashing down and bring us liberty?
What indeed? Why is it that we simply refuse to allow ourselves to be loved
into wellness? into being the thing that Christ intended for us to be?
They have a saying to newcomer's in the "rooms" that goes: "Your best
thinking got you here." Meaning, of course, that all of your best
machinations did not do anything but finally get you to a point of
utter defeat and despair. Is this what finally has to happen before
Christ can do anything with us? I am tired; I don't want to do it
anymore. I think I will opt for just being loved instead.
I
go to the Psalms for a reflection of the state of my soul and a
retuning of my emotional instability. There is a place of rest in the
shadow of His wings. But the place is defined and not just a place of
prayer. It is a place where the Holy Spirit speaks in such a way by the
state of our need to have the pain of our carnal disposition replaced by
a deep sense of His sufficiency and assurance. We are all very
misunderstood to ourselves by the communication of our anxious core so
that we dwell in the disposition of a misguided thought life. Its what
comes from the inside out, and what we think about by that introverted
deli ma. Our lack of the spiritual understanding is evidenced by our
lack of spiritual power to dwell in a heavenly frame of mind by our
different communications out of our frustration.
We have the
call to dwell in His power, that is to have a sense of it by an
understanding of having experienced it by His communication to us from
His word. We communicate to Him as if we had a friend who would listen
to us and respond with encouragement. The same goes with our need to
have our core hope in Him. We have a way to communicate to Him that deli
ma of feeling like there is no hope and with our being framed in the
Psalms to call on Him to be our hope, we not only have His assurance to
us, but we have it framed in such a way that we are releasing our lack
of hope in the psalm, and we are receiving by the cries a hope that is
supernatural. It is the same with fear. We have a way to release that
fear by His designing His word in such a way that we know we are
releasing it in the cries to Him through the language of the Spirit and
we are receiving His assurance by that Psalm. With each soul deli ma He
has given us a Psalm to reflect the inordinate affection, and having
done our singing in such a way that we have gained a spiritual
understanding of His driving that assurance deeper and deeper in our
inner man.
There are all kinds of different Psalms for healing
each part of that anxious core. We just need to find the one at a
particular time that has the medicine at the end of the needle to
penetrate the anxiousness and drive a promise into that lack of
understanding so that we know that we have been with the great Physician
in Him giving us a peace that we did not know existed far greater than
our horizontal relationships. There is a spiritual communication that is
like an alert mechanism that is communicated in such a way that it is
beyond our understanding to our natural thinking. But we will know that
it has done its work by a particular wisdom to us in a trial or by a
peace that we cannot muster up. We may not be aware of this but it is
promised to us in James. Most of the time we are very dull and dumb.
It
has been my experience that there are meditations of different psalms
that are having a different effect on my disposition by that
illumination of these different sort of funny bones in my core. At
different time the searching of the Psalms is finding the rite
medication to hit that spot. And then the Spirit will take it and fill
me up with peace and joy by that Psalm. What ever hurt we take in will
come to our attention by that particular Psalm, and the Spirit will
release it. That is what it means to have Him as our refuge. It is being
love first, always.
And some time i know i am called away to
mourning. It is not a sense of hopelessness but it is a serious minded
disposition that danger is near and there are workings that are not in
my control that need to happen. So that in the mourning paradigm there
is also a communication of His faithfulness to be a buttress in our
waiting on Him. There is a meekness to be learned by all of us, but it
is not out of the force of our will, but rather the quiet strength is
our getting strength from Him in our mourning. It is a very deep
communication.
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