Week #19: Practice Submission of Will.

In his book, The Making of an Ordinary Saint, Nathan Foster writes about a time where he decided to submit to his children.  For one whole day he allowed his children to define the games that were played, the food that was eaten, that parks that were visited.  Foster engaged in this experiment in order to lean the discipline of letting go, of laying down his 'oppressive desire to have [his] own way' (pg.32).  Foster writes:

" Jesus knew that as humans, we are by nature slaves - slaves to power, slaves to approval, slaves  to escapism.  So instead of leaving us bound to our selfish  desires, he calls us to chain ourselves to his rule of love.  Freedom through submission. " (pg. 33)

We often like to say 'Let God and Let God', yet this phrase is most often spoken of in times where we are pushed beyond our own competencies and prowess.  Submitting to God's will becomes the last resort.   Let go and let God, but only after you have tried everything in your own toolbox!  It is as if we are arguing that God will only step into our lives after we have been drained of all our power and effort.

And in fact, that is exactly what we are arguing.  'God helps those who help themselves' we say.  It's sounds good, but it is a lie that has seeped deeply into the contemporary religious ethos.  It subtlety suggests that faithfulness exists in following our own wishes and whims.  If God only helps those who helps themselves, then we are saying that God expects us to be leaders, controllers, and managers of His kingdom.  Divine help is only found in the context of getting our own way.

This, then, becomes the beginning of the 'heath and wealth' gospel that is so prevalent in the affluent west.  This undoubtedly breeds competition, because if God's power is understood as us 'getting our way',  then every interaction with another becomes a battle for divine favour.  Life becomes you vs. me, us vs. the, winners vs. losers. The  thought of submitting ourselves to God, then, begins to take on association oppression or weakness, or the wilfully allowance of someone to exercise dominance over us therefore abdicating our chance at divine favour and power.  We end up training ourselves to see the life of faith about nothing more than the fulfillment of our selfish and self-focused desires.  It keeps our eye on ourselves as that which is most important.

Submitting to the kingdom of God, and the Lordship of Jesus is not to be a last resort after we exhausted all possibilities. Neither is it about claiming a blessing in that which we have created by ourselves, or muscled through by our own effort.  We lay down the desire to get our own way - not because our way is necessarily bad or wrong but because it always pales in comparison to the plans of God for us.  God spoke to Jeremiah that words 'I know the plans I have for you'; those plans became the framework for Jeremiah's life and ministry.  In submission we remind ourselves that we are, ultimately, not in control.  We are not Saviour, or redeemer, or creator, or the one on whose shoulders rests all the things of heaven and earth.  In submission we take our eyes off of the self and reverently place them on Christ our Lord.

The decision to lay down the desire to push through our own will, voice, or plan becomes a place where we live this out.  It may be uncomfortable, but it ultimately becomes formative as it expresses the deep heartfelt prayer 'Thy kingdom Come.'  We lay down our kingdom in order to be found in his.  This doesn't mean that we are called to submit our will or desire in every and all situations. There is no 'door-mat theology' at work here.  Remember, submission is not about weakness or powerlessness. Ultimately it is about strength in the Spirit of God.  It is when we see a dominating spirit of competition being to rise within ourselves that we wilfully, gladly, and humbly lay down our will not to another - although practically speaking someone else may 'get their way' - but to the Spirit that is present with us.  Instead of ourselves, we focus ourselves in following where we feel the Spirit lead. There is incredible freedom in this.

Ultimately, we cannot seek first the kingdom of God and yet remain locked in the 'oppressive desire to get my way.'  We must lay ourselves down in totality, without reserve.

Week #18: Spend time in Spiritual Friendship

We sometimes mistakenly assume that the discipline of simplicity is an entirely solitary discipline.  We see it as something pertaining only to our selves, relating to how we inwardly focus our lives on an ever deepening emersion in the Kingdom of God.  There is truth to this.  Simplicity is about living amidst the Kingdom of God.  We focus on the presence of Christ and we strive to live our lives in step with His Spirit.  Yet it is also true that our lives are lived in the midst of a myriad of relationships.

Simplicity does not call us to isolated caves.  It does not require us to cut ourselves off from those with whom we have established relationships.  Cultivating a single hearted focus upon God involves seeing the friendships that we have in light of God's presence and the call of the Kingdom

This should not be surprising if we consider that our Lord relational in nature.  The incarnation of God was an incarnation into social relationships.  Jesus never stood aloof or removed, but entered into the deepest elements of humanity.  Jesus himself expressed his mission was one of friendship.  "No greater love has anyone than this, that they lay down their life for his friends."  He further describes those who focus on his presence and will in their lives as his friends. (John 15:13-15) More profoundly still, even in the shadow of the cross, at the very moment of betrayal, Jesus still referred to the one who rejected him as 'friend.' (Matthew 26:50)

Because friendship is central to life with God our friendships therefore become central to our life in God. Aelred of Rievaulx, a twelfth-century abbot, wrote a book called 'Spiritual Friendship', in which he observed that 'I am convinced that true friendship cannot exist among those who live without Christ.'  This is because, as James Houston puts it in his book The Transforming Friendship' that the Gospel calls us to 'show self-giving love to everyone' (pg.205).  True, authentic, self-giving love, indispensable to friendship can only be rightly understood in light of Christ's sacrifice for us.

Is it possible to see friendship as its own spiritual discipline? Instead of observing our spiritual disciplines by ourselves, alone in our inner chambers, what if we involved our friends?  Of course, a little introspection is in order.  Who would consider your deepest and closest friends?  Is there a spiritual component in your friendship?  Do you ever share your faith or your spiritual experiences with your friends - or is your spiritual life completely and utterly privatized?

Houston remarks that friendship has been undervalued in contemporary religiosity (219).  We simply do not see our friendships and constituting the tapestry in which we live out the Kingdom of God.  Because of this, the decision to involve our friends into our life of faith can seem daunting and scary.  We are afraid that we will come across as spiritual zealots or that our faith will become a wedge between the previously held relationship.  Yet true friendship must embrace the deepest things of the soul, unreservedly.  It is both in the risk of full self-disclosure and the grace found in acceptance where the Kingdom of God is lived out in our friendships.

This week is filled with plenty of time to touch base with your friends.  Find a time to connect.  Go for coffee.  Go for a beer, or glass of wine.  Go golfing, or bowling, or simply sit and watch tv together. What matters more than what you 'do' is the spirit in which you engage with your friends.  Move deeper in your relationship by sharing the deep things of your spirit.  Share your faith, your prayers, and your spiritual experiences. Offer to pray for your friend; ask them to pray for you.

There is a big difference between social companions, casual acquaintances, and rich and satisfying spiritual friendship that is rooted in the presence of God.   It is this friendship that Jesus himself modelled, and that we are called into.

Week #17: Take your 'off' time.

I like to pretend that I am good at honouring my day off.  I have tried to be diligent in my refusal to answer work emails, along with an overall reluctance to make my way to the church in order to ‘pick something up’.  I even use the language of ‘taking my Sabbath.’  This may sound great, even spiritual, but the secret is anything but.  The fact is, the way I avoid drifting into work demands on my day off is simply to jam my day full of other activity.  I structure the hours of my day so that every minute is taken up.  After dropping my son off at school I attempt to plan my day in away where I will be able to maximize all the things I want to ‘do’ during the short few hours I have to myself.  Sure this may involve a walk down to my nearest coffee shop for coffee, yet this occurs after the planned activities of clearing up the dishes, spending 40 minutes reading; watching a movie and fixing some lunch.  I then go for coffee all the while knowing that if the walk takes me 30 minutes, I can then spend an hour at coffee before needing to walk back to the house so that there is just enough time for me to get into my car, do some shopping, and then get home by 4:00.  Frankly, I find my day off rather exhausting, and it sounds as if it is exhausting for my friend and for any who recognize the same trends in their own lives.  Isn’t the operative word supposed to be ‘off’?

If simplicity is about turning our attention to God then this must effectively change the way we approach our downtimes.  It is easy for us to think that we need to jam our days with a long list of frenetic activity.  We hear, echoing in our ears, the adage ‘idle hands are the devil’s playthings.’  Thus, we do all that we can to avoid such idleness turning our day 'off' into a day of busyness.
Yet in this where is the rest?  Where is the sense of peace?  Where is the sense of being ‘off’ from the frantic running around that is part of the normal routine of life.  What is more, where is the sense of re-creation essential to not only our physical lives, but our spiritual lives as well?  It is like when people express the need for a vacation in order to recoup from their time on vacation.  Clearly the point of time off was missed.

This type of frenetic running around on our time off is not only exhausting, but it drives us to the place of distraction.  We are never able to keep our mind or heart in a focused state because we are too busy looking continually to the next activity.  Again, this is not only physically taxing, but it is spiritually draining as well.  How can there be any peace and rest in the presence of God if we are filled with other things?  In this place of constant movement,  bringing with it ever shifting attentions, how can we ever quiet ourselves enough to delight in the presence and love of God?  Instead, we are left like Jacob who cries ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, but I was not aware of it’ or like Martha for whom it is said is distracted by many things.

There is a deep spiritual problem at hand when endless line of distractions that jam up so much of the work week filters into our days of leisure as well.  The problem isn’t necessarily in what we are doing, as if to say we should not watch movies or drink coffee on our day’s off.   Nor is this simply a lining the day with prayer, bible reading, and other spiritual activities; we would be doing the same thing, yet this time adding on the sense of guilt over not being able to keep focused in prayer or bible reading for the pre-determined length of time.  How can there be any communion with God in this?

The problem lies in the fact that like our regular work week, we define our down-times by what we choose to ‘do.'  Instead of seeing our time off as a time spent with God, in re-creation and and spiritual nourishment, we see it as a time to catch up on our 'to do lists'.

In order to enter into the place of rest and re-creation, we must uncover the glory found in the three letter word ‘off.’  It is here where we release ourselves the perennial pressure to perform or accomplish.  We put down the demands that we sometimes place on ourselves, and are thus able to enter into the day in complete anticipation of God’s presence and activity.  In his book “Streams of Living Water”, Richard Foster uses the phrase 'Waste time for God.'

What would happen if we ripped up those day off to-do lists, and decided to simply waste our time with The Lord.  Is this not what Jesus meant when he said 'Come away with me to a quiet place and get some rest'?  What if we decided to wake up to a day of no demands, no tasks, and no pre-conceived notions of what needs to be ‘done.’  What if the activities of the day were not defined by what we wanted to accomplish, but what the Spirit prompts us to in the moment?  It may just be that it is as we actively turn things off, put things down, and stop our frenetic activities that we find ourselves catching a deeper deep vision of God's kingdom and finding ourselves re-created in his image and likeness.

Week #16: Observe a ast

Surrendering ourselves to Jesus becomes little more than a thought exercise unless we see practical avenues in our lives in which we are given the opportunity to live it out.  The discipline of fasting is one such powerful tool in this regard.  Fasting is the act of abstaining from elements pertaining to our appetite in order to further give ourselves to prayer and communion with God.  It should be noted that 'appetite' does not simply refer to the grumbles of the stomach, but refer to the wants and whims of our human nature.  Fasting addresses those appetites, pertaining to life in the flesh, which only serve to move us away from spirit-filled living and imprison us in a life of self-satisfying cravings.   Through the act of self-limiting, we turn ourselves away from these hindrances in order to more faithfully and intentionally rest in the presence of God.  The physical act of going without that which we crave becomes an echo of the willful and spiritual laying down of ourselves before God.  We ignore the claims of self, with its juvenile cries for attention, in order to more deeply immerse ourselves in the presence of the Spirit.

While we can fast from anything, electronics, media, sex, we most often think of fasting as it relates to our physical appetite for food.  Fasting from food can be a powerful exercise, precisely because much our interaction with food is solely pleasure-based.  That is to say that rather than food being a source of sustenance and nutrition, it is often that which serves to 'make us feel good.' We run to food when upset; we pacify our frustrations with alcoholic beverages, eating has even become a past-time all in itself.   Based solely upon the ever-expanding waistbands of the average North American, it is abundantly clear that we have an unhealthy association with food.

Yet our unhealthy association with food goes far beyond our associations what and how much we choose to eat.  A culture that can turn dieting into a competition clearly illustrates a lack of control over appetites.  Clearly we have lost the basic understanding that food is a gift from God to be cherished and not squandered.

Fasting breaks us out of our self-destructive habits. It shocks the system out of that which in which it has grown comfortable, and in doing so places us profoundly before the spirit of God in uncluttered sacrifice. It is only when we refrain from the gluttonous associations surrounding food that we fully hear Christ's words that "Man does not live by bread alone.' (Matthew 4:4)   By stripping away the amount of time we spend in shopping, ordering, preparing, and consuming food, we open ourselves to receive the better, and more satisfying bread from heaven.

It is important to remember that the purpose of fasting is not simply to go without food for a certain period of time.  The time spent in usual association with food, not freed through the discipline of fasting, is therefore redirected to prayer and worship.  In the Institutes of Christian Religion, John Calvin reminds us that the purpose of fasting is to free ourselves to become 'more eager and unencumbered for prayer.'

 Through the practice of Fasting we are able to address anything that gets in the way of our spiritual progress toward Christlikeness.  By going without our 'appetite' we become confronted with how much of a hold such things have on our lives.    We realize, for example, just how often we check our social media status, how much time we spend on our cell phones, the quickness for which we turn on the television, or how our bodies physically react to the ceasing of constant sugar or caffeine related stimulants. Undoubtedly this can be an uncomfortable process.

There are many different types of food-related fasts that you can do.  If you have never engaged in a fast before, I would recommend a 24 hour-2 meal fast.  Simply stop eating after dinner time on one day, and do not eat until dinner time the next.  A 2 meal fast isn't that hard on your body, you will feel the effects of hunger, which becomes a reminder for you to seek first God's kingdom.  Beyond this, you can try a 24 hour-3 meal fast; for a 36 hour fast.  Remember to drink lots of liquid (water or fruit juice) and consult your doctor if you fear any medical-related complications or concerns.

Much more could be said about the topic of Fasting, particularly regarding the many practical considerations pertaining to how we go about entering a fast.  There is neither time nor space to speak about such matters here.  I recommend Richard Foster’s chapter on Fasting in ‘Celebration of Discipline’ for any who wish to know more.   I end this section with words from Andrew Murray:

Fasting helps express, deepen, and confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the Kingdom of God, and Jesus, who himself fasted and sacrificed, knows to value, accept, and reward with spiritual power the soul that is thus ready to give up everything for him and his kingdom. (From With Christ in the School of Prayer)

Week #15: Ask for Help.

My father tells a story of the time when my family did not have much money to speak of. It was unknown from where our next meal was to come from.  Unbeknownst to us children, hampers of groceries were frequently left on our doorstep by anonymous donors.  On one such occasion, my father met one of these donors, a kind old gentleman from our church.  Coming fact of face, not with the groceries but his own uncomfortableness with needing help, my father instantly began to refuse the gift.  They would be fine, he objected, no gifts were necessary.   The gentleman simply smiled and said 'Without one to receive, one is not able to give."

We like to believe that we can do things alone, that we don't need any assistance.  It almost seems as if this is the default position of modern life.  After all, many idealize such mythical notions as 'the self-made man.'  We chase what is popularly called 'The American Dream', but we know that it is really nothing more than the lie of the garden -  You shall be like God, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:4-5)  How can we be like god in our own day and need the assistance of another?

Because of this we often associate the receiving of help with inability or weakness.  We easily succumb to the lie that tells us that needing help highlights a deep lack and/or negligence in our lives.  It is embarrassing - an embarrassment we desperately try to void.  Receiving help, worse yet asking for it, means we are trapped in that which we cannot do.  It strips away our self-focused confidence and our egotistical pride.

Of course, offering help is another thing altogether.  We laud and esteem the qualities of service and helpfulness!  There is no problem with extending a helping hand to another.  Helping others is even encouraged, for in this we are able to remain stalwart in our sense of competence.  It means that we are powerful, we are able, we are steadfastly in control.

We would like to think that this dynamic doesn't occur in the church, but it does.  The community of faith is naturally a place where people are willing to lend help at a moments notice.  I have seen it many times.  People give sacrificially toward a cause, a fund, or a family in need.  It happens time and time again - the call goes out and the response is overwhelming.   People dig deeply into their pockets of resources and give sacrificially.  Yet  so often these same people, so very willing to lend a hand to those less fortunate, will not allow others to help them.  They refuse offers and reject invitations.  They do not open up about their needs, or their hurts.  To ask for help is just too uncomfortable.

Asking for help can be hard, because it displaces that throne of pride that so many of us carry deep within.  There is a certain amount of humility that is needed in asking for help.  We must be open and honest, not just about our abilities, but also our inabilities. In asking for help we are called to recognize the gifts of God, flowing through the talents and expertise of other people.   It forces us beyond reliance on ourselves or our own competencies, and asks us to see our lives lived within the context of the community.

Asking for help moves us away from the rampant 'Me-and-Jesus' type of individualized spirituality that so often dominates our religious landscape.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul lists a variety of spiritual gifts.  "And God has appointed in the church fist apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues."  The King James Version used the term 'helps' in reference to the spiritual gift of assistance.  Receiving help, then, allowed another person to exercise their spiritual gift, a gift exercised to the glory of God and the livelihood of the faithful communion.

What if we chose to understand the receiving of help in this manner?  What if asking for, or receiving help spoke, not to our weakness or inability, but to our love for the community of faith - a love that causes us to lay down our need to pridefully assert our own independence and allow others to express the grace and love of God to us?

We all need help.  Sometimes this is because we cannot do something, or do not know something, and we need to reach out to one who has the resources or knowledge to aid.  Sometimes receiving help is more about allowing a brother or sister in faith to minister to us in the love of God.  So when you uncover a need in your life - a need that you quickly attempt to swallow under your own competence, perhaps choose a different route.  Take a deep breath, ask for help, or accept help when it is offered.  Don't make it complicated, and attach no provision onto it.  Allow no bargaining to take place.  Just receive.  Be forthright about your need and make the decision to see the help given as God's response of provision and love for you.   Allow that help to lead you into a deeper dynamic of God's kingdom, a kingdom  which is not yours alone but is experienced fully through the community of faith.