Help arrives

Here is an article that a friend sent me and I thought others might appreciate it too. She also reminded me of a couple quotes from Saints in the past that are helpful.

Saint Augustine said in 4th century,"God you created us, we can not rest unless we rest in you."

Missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, in 19 century said once in his book, journey of faith, "True faith is to be at rest, just branch rest in the Vine."

Right Now Counts Forever
The Dark Night of the Soul
by R.C. Sproul

The dark night of the soul. This phenomenon describes a malady that the greatest of Christians have suffered from time to time. It was the malady that provoked David to soak his pillow with tears. It was the malady that earned for Jeremiah the sobriquet, "The Weeping Prophet." It was the malady that so afflicted Martin Luther that his melancholy threatened to destroy him. This is no ordinary fit of depression, but it is a depression that is linked to a crisis of faith, a crisis that comes when one senses the absence of God or gives rise to a feeling of abandonment by Him.

Spiritual depression is real and can be acute. We ask how a person of faith could experience such spiritual lows, but whatever provokes it does not take away from its reality. Our faith is not a constant action. It is mobile. It vacillates. We move from faith to faith, and in between we may have periods of doubt when we cry, "Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief."

We may also think that th e dark night of the soul is something completely incompatible with the fruit of the Spirit, not only that of faith but also that of joy. Once the Holy Spirit has flooded our hearts with a joy unspeakable, how can there be room in that chamber for such darkness? It is important for us to make a distinction between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness. A Christian can have joy in his heart while there is still spiritual depression in his head. The joy that we have sustains us through these dark nights and is not quenched by spiritual depression. The joy of the Christian is one that survives all downturns in life.

In writing to the Corinthians in his second letter, Paul commends to his readers the importance of preaching and of communicating the Gospel to people. But in the midst of that, he reminds the church that the treasure we have from God is a treasure that is contained not in vessels of gold and silver but in what the apostle calls "jar s of clay." For this reason he says, "that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." Immediately after this reminder, the apostle adds, "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" (2 Cor. 4:7–10).

This passage indicates the limits of depression that we experience. The depression may be profound, but it is not permanent, nor is it fatal. Notice that the apostle Paul describes our condition in a variety of ways. He says that we are "afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down." These are powerful images that describe the conflict that Christians must endure, but in every place that he describes this phenomenon, he describes at the same time its limits. Afflicted, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. S t r uck down, but not destroyed.

So we have this pressure to bear, but the pressure, though it is severe, does not crush us. We may be confused and perplexed, but that low point to which perplexity brings us does not result in complete and total despair. Even in persecution, as serious as it may be, we are still not forsaken, and we may be overwhelmed and struck down as Jeremiah spoke of, yet we have room for joy. We think of the prophet Habakkuk, who in his misery remained confident that despite the setbacks he endured, God would give him feet like hind's feet, feet that would enable him to walk in high places.

Elsewhere, the apostle Paul in writing to the Philippians gives them the admonition to be "anxious for nothing," telling them that the cure for anxiety is found on one's knees, that it is the peace of God that calms our spirit and dissipates anxiety. Again, we can be anxious and nervous and worried without finally submitting to ultimate despair. This co e xi st ence of faith and spiritual depression is paralleled in other biblical statements of emotive conditions. We are told that it is perfectly legitimate for believers to suffer grief. Our Lord Himself was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Though grief may reach to the roots of our souls, it must not result in bitterness. Grief is a legitimate emotion, at times even a virtue, but there must be no place in the soul for bitterness. In like manner, we see that it is a good thing to go to the house of mourning, but even in mourning, that low feeling must not give way to hatred. The presence of faith gives no guarantee of the absence of spiritual depression; however, the dark night of the soul always gives way to the brightness of the noonday light of the presence of God.
Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is author of the book Truths We Confess.
For more than thirty years, Dr. R.C. Sproul has thoroughly and concisely analyzed weighty theological, philosophical, and biblical topics in Right Now Counts Forever, drawing out practical applications for the Christian in his own engaging style.
© Tabletalk magazine

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you do not make more than 500 physical copies. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred (where applicable). If no such link exists, simply link to www.ligonier.org/tabletalk. Any exceptions to the above must be formally approved by Tabletalk.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy:
From Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul. © Tabletalk magazine.
Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk. Email: tabletalk@ligonier.org.
Toll free: 1-800-435-4343.

Thanks Be To God

I have a confession to make, this last week has been in a word difficult, to add three more words, sometimes painfully unbearable. This seems to be what happens when we are forced to face our weakness. And as many of you know I hurt myself recently, and my foot looks more like an oversized sausage than my foot these days. Yet, it has become a symbol of my need to wait on God, even in the midst of the pain and process it takes to heal. In that I think of this place the Rez, and I think of my own life and the ugliness I must face their too. As I've been injured some of my deeper struggles have surfaced, thankfully God has really been gracious enough to love and care for me in the midst of my own prideful stupidity. I feel like a child coming to her father bashfully asking Him to help me out of this tough spot I got myself into. Its been hard to sit around without entertainment and admittedly I've broken the rules of our fast more than once. But, when you can't walk you crawl and whey you can't crawl, you ask someone to carry you. I can say with certainty that the Lord is carrying me along with friends (Christine, Emily, etc.) or at least carrying my clothes and food to various places around the house ;) I really have appreciated Emily's last entry and the words of that song. I am ever reminded that we are not simply made to be people unto ourselves, we were created to abide in God's perfect way to exist with Him and in Him. It is a sad dark place without that light shining in us. "But, this poor woman called to the Lord and he heard her cry. He saved her out of all her troubles"

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lords great love we are not consumed. For his mercies never fail, they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Filling the space

I think I'm tending to replace entertainment with productivity instead of devotional focus. I've picked knitting back up and have been practicing my guitar much more frequently in the past couple of weeks, which means I havnt really felt the need to entertain myself with television or I-net. I believe Satan is trying to rob me of my position on this battle field by filling my life with things that are good but not the best, and right now, now even really the point. So we're (me and God, that is) not gonna let it happen. We're gonna make the space to focus on our relationship and His agenda/desire for the valley.

...hmmm

Today during my fast sabbath Hans and I went to see a movie called "Persepolis". Its this animated foreign film, the memoirs of an Iranian woman. And one note, foreign films in Yakima get really small audiences because we almost had the theater to ourselves. I was pretty taken back by the film, and it sort of punched me in the gut as I've been thinking about it. About all the death that happens in wars and the senseless stuff we do to each other. I had to ask God, if he was so powerful how come he lets us shoot each other and torture each other and shit like that. Does he really have power over death? Death is a subject I've been thinking about lately because Elissa recently had a dream that I died. At first it didn't weird me out, but then I thought about it. She said she hoped that her dream didn't come true, I started to try and assure her that it wouldn't but I knew I couldn't do that in clear conscience. I don't know that I won't die, I cannot assure anyone of how long I'll live. Its weird to be all the sudden faced with the possibility of your death. I feel very fragil thinking about that, and also I want to live, but more than that I want a good life. If I had to die though I'd want it to mean something for other people. I would want to have loved deeply enough to make an impact on the face of the earth, or maybe I'd want to help a couple people believe God is real and he's good. I have nothing to complain about, but I'd like to live stronger in love than I do, to give more freely and not be afraid of death. Not just death literally, but death of myself, hurt and pain. I'd like able to hear the Lord and tell others. To be sanctified and to believe with my life the Lord is, and was and is to come. That he did triumph over death and that we can have victory over evil in the name of Christ Jesus. This fast if anything has given me opportunity to see the ugliness in myself, the dead stuff in my heart. It's a little embarrassing to say that all this over not watching TV. One of the things that has bubbled to the surface, partly thanks to Hans(thanks Hans), is that Grace is hard for me to understand and accept. Therefore, I get really mad all the time when things aren't "right" and its pretty much my fault I'm so mad. Yet, God really is always ready to lavish his love on me any time I mess up and am humble enough to run to him, or cry out for help. wow, God really does have power over the death in me, and so I must believe he has power over death, period.

...i would be frail

Two words have been the recent topics of discussion between God and I: fear and joy. For me, this fast has come at a good time. Brenda and I studied James 1, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds." (James 1:2) But what is joy? I realized I didn't really have a good grasp on what exactly joy was, and how we're supposed to have it, especially during trials. The very next day, I happened to pick up a book that was given to me for graduation, called "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." It goes over the Psalms of Ascents. I had read some chapters on and off before, but hadn't really gotten much out of it. I opened it up the other day and the bookmark happened to be at the chapter titled "Joy." The past couple weeks leading up to lent, God had been trying to get my attention about some hard things, but I, of course, was doing my best to ignore/escape it. My coping mechanisms for dealing with internal stress pretty much involve harboring it in and resisting help for fear of losing control over the situation. But that always leaves me feeling really gross, to the point where even I can't stand myself. There is always this limit I have of what I will offer up to God. But being here has caused some deeper parts of my heart to resurface, parts that God wants of me, that I'm going to grab on to as tight as I can. And of course, that feeling stems from fear. Fear of the unknown.

But God is good, and He has been telling me things that I need to hear when I need to hear them. Although it is hard for me to accept what God is asking me to do, I am reassured by God's promises.

For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning. -psalm 30:5 (nkjv)

It says in the book, "We come to God because none of us have it within ourselves, except momentarily, to be joyous."

"The enormous entertainment industry in America is a sign of the depletion of joy in our culture. Society is a bored, gluttonous king employing a court jester to divert it after an overindulgent meal."

I know joy doesn't mean constantly being happy and having a smile on your face. But I think it does mean, that whatever state I am in, I can still harbor a peace that surpasses all understanding. And that joy comes from simply engaging with Him and being a part of what He is doing. And in saying "okay, God, you win" to the things that He is asking of me, there is a realization that my fears were unfounded. There is nothing that I needed to know that I didn't know. God is cool like that in pretty much laying it all out on the table, so I think I'm making an okay trade.

Exposed beyond the shadows
You take the cup from me
Your dirt removes my blindness
Your pain becomes my peace
-jars of clay

Steve's first Blog

Ok this is my first time to Blog ever (pause to take in this historic moment). At this point I don't have a ton of time or content to post however I wanted to break the ice.



How is the lent fast going?

Well I didn't spend that much time engaged in entertainment before the fast so I am not feeling a large surge of time or energy to focus on prayer. It feels more like a little poke in the back of my mind when I day dream about what I would rather be doing at that moment. I start thinking about how nice it would be to chill out on the coach with pop corn and a Lost DVD and then realize that oh I can't do that...oh yah I need to be praying. Karen and I are also cutting out excessive sugar, I know it sounds vague but she and I know what we mean, (no pop, sweets, supper sugary foods, but I have been putting a tiny bit of brown sugar on my oatmeal.) Anyway that has been helping me become aware of the ways my body gets addicted to stuff. It feels like I asking God to purify my heart by trying to reject some of the more addictive substances in my world. See you all tonight.

Why it is good to for go...

The recent days have been busy and full of struggle, part of this is because for some reason, perhaps because I have had less junk filling my mind, I've been able to actually hear my own thoughts. At first, this was scary because I realized I'm sort of not that interesting and also super super apart from God most of the time. I was reading a book about confession in which a monk proposed that he didn't love God because he couldn't spend even an hour with Him every day, and any time spent with God was laborious. This sort of got me thinking about my own heart and if, in fact, I loved God more than the monk...after some thought I decided the monk probably loved God more. So, in my lack of love I've been wondering why it is good to for go entertainment. We said our purpose was to pray for MW, and that it is. But, selfish person that I am, that reason alone didn't suffice. In coming to these conclusions about the reality of my own depravity the muddy waters of my mind started to clear and realize that God is super good at mutli-tasking. Not only would he honor our collective desire for vision and the furthering of his Kingdom through Mending Wings, but He is also refining, correcting, loving, admonisthing, teaching, loving, loving and loving us. So if your insides start to feel like ash, like the dust that we are, or if you can't stand anyone including yourself, perhaps this is an encouragement that it means you are engaging with the Spirit and Word of God more than normal. So, it is good to for go entertainment because it brings us closer to our Heavenly Father. And actually right now that sounds like a really good reason, I guess I might love God some after all.