Category: Wildman Journey (Page 75 of 85)

Do you often feel like a failure in prayer.  Listen to the words of a cistercian monk, Michael Casey, “Prayer cannot be measured on a scale of success or failure because it is God’s work – and God always succeeds.  When we believe we have failed in prayer, it is because we decided what shape our prayer should have and are now frustrated that there is nothing we can do to implement our ambition.”  In other words prayer become our effort; a matter of performace.  God is not looking for our performance.  He is looking for a real relationship.  He has already sought us out.  What a relief it is to realize that prayer is not initated by me, but rather by God.  He is more eager for us to know him, then we are to know him.  Paul tells us, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in ourweakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Rom. 8:26)

So prayer is more about our consent rather then our initiative.  We make room for God by being attentive to his presence with us and in us and cultivating an openness to his initiative. It’s like a dance, where he takes to lead, but we have to get out on the dance floor.  This kind of  openness can be difficult for us men, because openness demands trust.  Our natural posture is that of being guarded, having a difficult time trusting the goodness of God.   What God looks for us is posture of vulnerability and honesty.  He already know what is going on in our minds and hearts.  Nothing surprises him. He is simply waiting for us to become real. Jesus tells us, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:8).

Part of our problem as men, is that in our effort to please God, we have made reduced faith to beliefs and certain practices.  But prayer, if it is real and honest will  involves more of our hearts.  For the heart is where we really live.  The opposite of faith is not unbelief, but rather mistrust.  “Faith,” suggests David Benner is, “leaning with confidence into God.”  Picture yourself leaning against something.  You trust that it will hold you upright.  Your whole body depends on that fact.  Faith is like that.  We trust that God is good and are willing to lean into his goodness.

God will always hear the prayer that is expressed in honesty and trust in him.  Any other prayer, will not be communicating reality, that is, the way things are between God and ourselves.  So trust and faith need to support our prayer.  When there is trust in God’s goodness, we find ourselves surrendering to the mysterious inner dynamic as we submit to what God is doing in our hearts.  If we trust enough to let go, God will give to us a gift of prayer communion that comes from him, rather then our effort.  So I encourage you men, to lean into the goodness of God.  He is lovingly and mercifully desiring to have fellowship with you.  He will receive you were you are and share his heart with you.  “For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them?  In the same way no one knows the thoughts of Gold except the Spirit of God.  What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us” (I Cor. 2:11-12)

Within every man is an inner cauldron of desires, or as David Benner describes it a, “inextinguishing burning bush that is at the core of our being.”  Our desires keep us “molten.”  They are what keeps us moving and awake.  Like an unquenchable fire,  there is within a restlessness that keeps us from ever getting our deepest desires, passions and longings under control.  They will never allow us to be satisfied. Rather then trying to control or ignore our passions, our task as followers of Jesus is to integrate these desires.  Ronald Rolheiser observes that the spiritual journey is “about being integrated or falling apart.”  When I think of falling apart, I visualize myself being torn in various directions almost against my will.  Instead of being a flame for God, I so often go up in flames.

I know that it has taken years for me to become somewhat confortable with becoming aware of my passions and deepest longings.  For years I thought that these deep yearnings were sinful; something to avoid or to have crucified as part of my “old nature.”  But in these latter days I have been learning to befriend, accept, integrate and at times even rejoice that I am a man with deep, mysterious passions that are a natural part of being a man.  I ask each man reading this blog the questions, “What have you done with your passions?  How has they shaped of your journey?  Most of all, how have you learned to distinguish between godly passions and those passions that you know have gotten you in trouble?  I personally have come to believe that the deepest desires in my soul are those that come from God.  In my opinion, men need to come together on an honest basis to share their struggles with passionate longings. 

The Psalmist was a man who was in touch with this cauldron of desires.  For example in Ps 42:1-2 we read, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.  My soul thirst for God, for the living God.  When can I go and meet with God?”  Now I ask you, is not this a man who is in touch with his passions.  So I ask you as a man to consider the proposition that those deep, hidden, mysterious passions, that seem to influence your spiritual life more then you would like to admit, are to be befriended and integrated into your life with God.  If our passions are to be integrated they must first be accepted and known.  A healthy expression of life in God will help us to gather up all the disparate parts of self. A growing relationship with God will allow us, “to embrace rather than repress our deepest longings and passions and then to draw  energy from them to live life with abundance and resilence” (Benner)

Our deepest desires call us to greater heights and greater depths.  Desires point us to that which is outside ourselves, to God, while they also invite us to plumb the depths of our being to know the vitality of God’s energy flowing through our lives through the work of His Spirit.  Our desires challenge us to move beyond the small, cramped places where we have learned to be comfortable.  A healthy life with God is a life of zest and staying glued together, rather then living under control and then coming apart –  going up in flames.  “As we move toward an integration of our inner being that is based on channeling our vital energies into self-transcendent causes, we are more likely to avoid fragmentation under stress and our lives will possess passion and vitality” (Benner).  So men lets not be afraid or deny our passions, but with God’s help and those of other brother, learn to channel and integrate our passions.

The Christian mystic Hildegrad von Bingen thought of herself as being “a feather on the breath of God.”  I read  this quote in David Benner book “Soulful Spirituality.”  In this very helpful book on the spiritual life, Benner is making the point that the Spirit of God invites us to live “in the place of airy spaciousness and lightness of being.”  I personally was struck by the idea of  “spaciousness and lightness of being.”  Much of my spiritual journey as been heaviness, in which I have worked hard at being “spiritual,” while trying to understand what is going on in my soul.  I would say that a lot of men reading this blog are in the same place as I have been in for most of my life.  Your journey is one of “heaviness” rather then “lightness.”  The words of Jesus seem far from our experience, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28). 

It is not healthy for our spiritual life when our journey becomes to substantial, that is, weighed down with our performance and understanding.  We can become burdened by our need to cling to our understanding, our explainations, our experiences, our habits and disciplines, and our beliefs.  These all can weigh us down and close us off from the awarenss of God “real presence” in our lives.  This mayh produce a be a kind of heaviness that will discourage a man to the point of either giving up or “going into coast.”  

What we need to embrace is “a spirituality of lightness” in which we practice a detachment from our need to know and control our relationship and understanding of God.  “Real faith,” says Benner, “is rooted in being willing to acknowledge our fundamental inability to know much about ultimate things.”  We learn to become content with living in a “cloud of unknowing.”   A lightness is produced in our souls when we can learn to trust God as a little child.  Jesus tells us, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little Children.”   Our task is to let go and let God do his work, becoming like a weaned child.

Further, Benner makes this remarkable statement. “Authentic spirituality grows out of emptiness , not fullness.”   Because we often are so full with our own thoughts, experiences, and emotion, we are not aware of our deeper hunger for God. along with being aware of his still, small voice.  We are so weighed down with our own understanding of ourselves and God, that we are not able to experience “actual lightness of being.” There can be men reading this blog today, who have been trying hard to be a “spiritual” and “godly” man.  But it can be more of your doing, and not that of the Spirit’s work in your life.”  Don’t be afraid of seeming empty.  If your focus is on Jesus and your intent is to know him, he will keep filling you.  But the hunger and longing to know God more will always persist.  Beware when  you think you are filled spiritually.  That is an illusion of your own making. 

“Spirituality that supports the human journey,” observes Benner, “will always be rooted in a life that is open to the vitalizing and transformative breath of the Spirit and to the mysteries of life and faith.”  A posture such as this will leave room for mystery and the surprises of God in our lives.  So men, I encourage you to ponder the reality of lightness in your walk with God.  Embrace the reality of being empty.  Pray for a heart that can trust what God is doing in your heart.  Embrace the longing that produces that emptiness in your soul.  God will continue to fill you with his presence.

I have quoted from David Benner often on the blog site.  He has been a great help in my spiritual formation.  He helped me to see that personhood is not an accomplishment, but rather a gift.  It has been difficult to realize how much of who I have thought of myself to be, has been of my own making.  The whole business of self-making has been a lot of futile work for me.  But my true self in Christ is an identity that I have received from God.  Any other image I have of self is an illusion.  If God does not know me, then I really do not exist as a person, but rather as a image of my own making.

What was hard at first for me to realize that God knows me through and through, yet loves me as I am, not as I should be.  I have spent a life time bringing before God and presenting to others a “polished image of self.”  But as Benner observes, “Genuine self-knowledge begins by looking at God and noticing how God is looking at us.  Grounding our knowing of our self in God’s knowing of us anchors us in reality.  It also anchors us in God.”  In this knowing I have coming to experience the reality that God loves me for who I really am, rather then how I behave.  When my identity is truly grounded in God, “the first thing that would come to mind is my status as someone who is deeply loved by God”

This knowing has allowed me to welcomeand embrace those “unwelcomed parts of self” as Benner calls them.  These parts of self have remained hidden for years in shame and denial  They needed to be named and embraced.  Listen again to Benner.  “We need to be willing to welcome these ignored parts as full members of the family of self, giving them space at the family table and slowly allowing them to be softened and healed by love and integrated into the whole person we are becoming.”  I have been learning that for transformation to occur in my life, I must bring to the table these unwelcomed parts, otherwise I will continue to live an illusion. 

So men, I highly recommend the practice of looking at God and the image God looking at you.  It can be a significant spiritual practice, as you come to know that God loves you as you are with all those unwelcomed parts.  This is facing reality and not creating a spiritual illusion of denial.  I am learning to create a hospitable place for these unwelcomed parts of self, rather then been ashamed or living in denial.  The more I do this, the more I experience the unconditional love of God.   As Benner asks, “If God loves and accepts you as a sinner, how can you do less?”   Here is a final quote from Benner.  “You can never be other than who you are until you are willing to embrace the reality of who you are.  Only then can you truly become who you are most deeply called to be.”  For me this has meant a life of more authenticity and joy before the Lord and with others.

One of the author- pastors I admire is Tim Keller, pastor or Redeemer Presbyterian church in Manhattan, N.Y.  He has had an amazing impact on the secular minded residents of that city.  He was interviewed by ABC news journalist, Christiane Amanpour on ABC’s “This Week” aired on Easter Sunday.  He agreed with Amanpour that secularism and religiosity are both growing in our culture.  Keller made this observation. “What’s happening is secularism and devout religion is growing together.  And what’s going away is the kind of  ‘mushy middle,’ where people are just part of the synagogue, the mosque or the church because it’s expected.  So what’s actually happening is polarization.”  I would like to make a few observations about this very perceptive insight regarding us, wild men,  as it relates to this polarization. 

First, the need to move away from “the mushy middle”.  It seems to me that with the threat of Islam in our culture, along with other growing expression of faith, Christians are being forced to think through and reexamine their faith and practice.  We are no longer able to take our faith for granted in a pluralistic culture.  We cannot afford to be lazy in our thinking nor asleep in our spirit, thereby being a part of the mushy middle.  We have to be awake and alert.  Paul challenges us in Romans 13:11-ff, “But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God.  The night is about over, dawn is about to break.  Be up and awake to what God is doing”  (The Message).  God is calling men to be clear in their thinking and deeply alive in their spirit.  God is pouring out his grace so that we might be transformed and renewed for such a time as this.  It will take renewed minds and awakened souls.

Secondly, it critical that in our deeper commitment to Jesus and the gospel that we engage in civil discourse. The decline of civility in our culture is alarming.  As men, we need to be concerned that we are not contributing to the polarization that is occurring.   The church in our day has lost a lot of credibility because followers of Jesus have been too closely identified with a type of politics or some of the scandals that have happened in the last years.  I like to think that Jesus and his kingdom are part of a “third way.”  I keep reminding myself that I am one who desires to “humbly and lovingly follow Jesus.”  I pray every day that “his kingdom would come” and that ” his will might be done here on earth and it is in heaven.”  I know for myself that I have to keep my focus on Jesus and his kingdom or else I get discouraged by cultural conditions and become negative.  My focus on Jesus helps keep my positive and hopeful.  Wild men can be agents of loving and caring dialogue in our day.

Thirdly, I agree with Keller that our focus should be on serving others.  I really identify with his comment that “I’m loved by God but I’m a sinner.”  There needs to be a humility and graciousness about the way we express our faith and the way we treat others, especially in such a skeptical culture.  Listen again to the advise of Paul found in Col 4:5-6. “Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders.  Don’t miss a trick.  Make the most of every opportunity.  Be gracious in your speech.  The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out” (The Message).  My goal is to be a servant of Jesus, desiring to see beyond the difference in opinions and lifestyle.  A wild man in my opinion is secure in his identity in Jesus, allowing him to be open to others, giving them space to be who they are.  There is a desperate need to our day for men to practice “hospitablity” that welcomes the other, no matter what they believe or what their lifestyle might be.

I am writing this blog on Good Friday.  Good Friday is “good” because of what God did for us on the cross.  Good Friday brings us face to face with the great dilemna of our personal sin.  We are found guilty with no way to rid our selves of the guilt.  We cannot by our own effort make life right because of sin.  As men, we are wired to fix things – make thing right, by solving the problem. But we can’t fix our ingrained patterns of sin.  The effects of original sin will not yield to our attempts to make things right.  God had to suffer, making it clear that we are incapable of setting things right.  Remember you are powerless to set things right.  Only God, the offended party, could undo the mess we have created. The Message says it straight and simple, “God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God” (II Cor 5:21)

This process of becoming right with God will include times of forsakeness, due to the idols we create in our minds and experience of life. In this regard,  I read an article by Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today, entitled “Mercifully Forsaken.”  Using the cry of  Jesus from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Galli talks about our experience of forsakeness.  Be assured men, this will happen to you.  It was a difficult lesson for me to learn that times of forsakeness are part of the growth experience in following Jesus.  I am more accepting of these times now, but I still have a hard times accepting the occurance of forsakeness as I grown in my trust of Jesus.   Galli challenges us when he says, “If we would have eyes to see, we’d see that the goodness of God is actually most manifest in these moments of forsakeness.” 

Galli makes the point that the good experiences we have as a Christian can become an idol when we begin to consider them as the norm.  When we no longer experience only the “good” experience, we begin to question God’s work in our life.  On going disappointment, suffering, disappointment, etc cause us to wonder if God is still with us.  The silence of God becomes almost too much to accept. We can so easily take matters into our own hands, by either demanding God to come through or just fashioning a spiritual life on our own.  But says Galli, it is in these dark, dry times that God manifests his severe mercy.  Yes, we are experiencing severe mercy when prayer become empty and dry.  Scripture reading become an effort.  We find ourselves coping with difficulty and misunderstanding, while God seems distant and silent. 

Galli encourages us to remember that, “God has not forsaken us.  Our idols have forsaken us.”  Our props, those things that have held up our faith, these have been shown to be what they are: false gods. God has his timing in making us aware of these idols.  Be assured we all have them.  There will come times when the idols will have to go.  God will give grace and have mercy on us as we stuggle to let go of these idols.  At times our most chermished habits, experiences, and even beliefs will need to be seen as idols.  But in his severe mercy, God is asking us to see what is there and begin to let go. 

 Remember God has not forsaken us.  It is in the experience of forsakeness that God is revealing himself to us in new ways.  We are being called up to trust God.  I have found this to be difficult.  I want to know, understand and have some control over what God is doing.  I will cling to my idols that I have created in my mind, along with the spiritual patterns that have worked for me and which I thought were pleasing to God. But God uses forsakeness to point out my idols, so that I can let them go.  It is only in these dark times that I am actually able to see what I have been clinging to for so long.  It helps to see this as God “severe mercy” in the time of my forsakeness.

This may seem like a strange title for a bog about wildmen.  The idea of men not being the weather came to me as I was rereading a book entitled “Into the Silent Land” by Martin Laird.  Laird makes the point, which I have had a hard time to accept over the years, that I am not my thoughts.  Now that might sound strange to men who are continually going around and around in their heads, thinking this is who they really are.  No, this is not true.  We are much more.  There is a deeper place within where we are one with God.  Think it of it as the center, where you are one with Christ.  Listen, for example to these words of Jesus.  “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.  This being “in” is beyond our understanding and control.

So what about all our thoughts, feelings and imaginings.  What are they.  Well, listen to what Laird has to say.  “The marvelous world of thoughts, sensation,emotions and inspiration….are all patterns of stunning weather on the holy mountain of God.  But we are not the weather.  We are the mountain. Weather happens….this is undeniable.  But if we think we are the weather happening on Mount Zion the the fundamental truth of our union with God remains obscured and our sense of painful alienation heightened.  When the mind is brought to stillness we see that we are the mountain and not the changing patterns of weather appearing on the mountain.”

For me this as been a wonderful realization – I am not the weather.  All the junk that floats around in my thoughts and emotions is a product of who I am, in my fallen state before God.  I am a man who is getting more familiar with all that is buried within.  The result has been at times some unpleasant weather produced by my thoughts and feelings.  As I have been able to accept that these are a part of me, I am less frightened or resistant to the weather patterns.  But because “my life is hidden with Christ in God” I have also come to know that my true self in Christ is beyond the weather patterns.  Together with God’s help, the storms are lessening in my soul.  The storms that do occur I am able to accept as part of the growth process.

Men, I hope in some small way you are grasping what I am trying to say.  For me it has meant the difference between self-rejection and acceptance of who I really am..  Yes, I have all these storms in me that I keep facing.  Storms that have brought me shame, self-loathing and self-pity.  But in these last years, I have been able to look at the stroms and know that they are a product of my life, having lived in a particular manner.  God by his grace is allowing me to see the storms and the effect they have had on my soul.  As I come to him in humility and repentance, together we calm the storms.  The thoughts and feelings lose some of their intensity and I come to rest in who I am.  I am God’s beloved. 

So I hope you can remember that you are not the storm.  You are far more then the storms in your soul.  It is important that you acknowledge the storms as a part of your story as you journey into more and more wholeness in Jesus.  But beyond the storms you are someone who is in Christ.  That is the deepest part of you.  To become aware of this reality, is to learn to practice silence before God and to come into some inner stillness.  I can not stress the practice of silence to much.  Don’t get discouraged by the stormy weather you will encounter.  Face and accept the weather.  Endure the violent winds that will come.  As you learn to endure the storms as a natural part of the journey, you will more and more have times of sunshine and calm, as you rest in who you really are – The beloved of God

Recently I read the following two quotes from two of the spiritual guides from the past.  I want to comment on them in relationship to our becoming discouraged about our “habituated patterns of sin.”  The first is from Fenelon.  “Never be discouraged with yourself.  Despondency is not humility.  Actually, despondency is the despair of your wounded pride.  Your faults may be useful to you if they cure you of the vain confidence you have in yourself.” 

Men, I don’t know about you, but I can easily get discouraged with my continuing sin patterns.  We all have them.  If we didn’t we would no longer need God’s mercy and grace.  Often these patterns only show the depths to which God wants to take us so that we might be free of their influences.  I have to admit after reading this quote, that it is certainly pride and not humlity that cause me to be discouraged.  I am learning to accept who I am in all my faults and rejoice in God’s acceptance of me.  It has nothing to do with me and all to do with my ability to be able to receive his grace.  It seems the more I can live with my faults in the wide open space of God’s grace, the less power these pattern seem to have in my life.  My pride tries to bury that which is not pleasing.  But the acceptance of God’s grace expressed in his love for me encourages me to live with my faults in the light of his presence.  There they lose more of their power and influence

The second quote is from Francis de Sales. “You must hate your faults, but you should do so calmly and peacefully, without fuss or anxiety.  You must be patient when you see them and benefit from seeing your own lowliness.  Unless you do this, your imperfections of which you are acutely conscious, will disturb you even more and thus grow stronger, for nothing is more favorable to the growth of these weeds than our anxiety and overagerness to get rid of them.” 

There is something disarming about seeing my faults, even those that bother me the most, as “weeds.”  As de Sales points out, it does me no good to fuss and fume over my shortcomings.  That only adds fuel to the energy they already have in my soul.  While I need to dislike my faults, I need to do so with calmness and peace about my condition, for I never will fully be free of all my sinful tendencies.  While I dislike my faults I will need to learn to live with my condition,   In order to do this, I have to come to know that I can absolutely trust God’s goodness in my life.  My behavior does not change how God sees me.  I am still his  beloved.  As I have come to rest in God’s love I have been able to lighten up on my self-criticism.  With the focus of myself, my faults seem to have less influence in my thought, attitudes and behavior.

The psalmist talks of our soul being like a weaned child within us. “My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.  But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalms 131:1-2).  I thought of this passage as I was preparing for a devotion the I am giving this Saturday.  I want to get a short testimony of how I finally have begun to understand what it is to have my soul be more like a weaned child.  A weaned child is, of course, a content and satisfied child, looking into the eyes of a mother, while resting in her arms. I am learning to come to rest in the presence of the Father.

We men certainly have a more difficult time visualizing the reality of our soul being like a weaned child.  But there is much to learn from this metaphor of the soul.  I want to quote a 17th century Lutheran mystic named Gerhard Tersteegen in this regard.  “The mind of God and the light of God do not come in from outside.  They do not borrow their certainty and strength from our minds or our senses.  They make themselves know in the heart’s core and have both energy and certainty in themselves, although these become darkened and disappear when the soul begins to search after clear certainty in her depths.  So do not go out so much into reflections.  Do not seek merely by reasoned, external methods to find sure foundations, but close your eyes like a child and confide yourself to the hidden being who is so near to you inwardly”

I realize this is a rather long quote.  I share this quote because it has a history with me.  As I share my testimony, I will share about a rather dark time in my life over 10 years ago.  I first read this quote from Tersteegen in this darkness.  At that time it brought me comfort.  Back then I was only beginning to grasp what Tersteegan was attempting to share.  I started to visualize myself as a child, who could rest in the Father’s love.  I know that I was spending to much time simply going around and around in my mind, trying to come to peace withmy circumstances and myself.  I held unto the truththat the mind of God and the light of God were already within me in my “heart’s core.”  I was learning to simply trust that God would take care of my circumstances, without my having to worry and be filled with doubt.

Men, I can not stress how important it is for us to practice focusing our inner eye on the love of our heavenly Father.  Picture Jesus with you, bringing you into the presence of your heavenly Father.  This is the work of the Spirit united with your spirit.  You can learn to rest in his care and love for you.  As men we are naturally “wired” to climb up into our “control tower” and try to navigate our journey.  There will be times when this is impossible.  It will cause you to get on “worry and fear” wagon.  By simple trust, stop the wagon and practice the posture of a child looking trustingly upon your heavenly Father. 

Take to heart these encouraging words from The Message.  “Here’s want I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God.  Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage.  The focus will shift from you to God and you will being to sense his grace” (Matt. 6:6