Going to the God of All Comfort

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.”

— 2 CORINTHIANS 1:3-4 (NRSV)

How do we unpack this package of consolation in the matter of affliction?

We go to God. But then there are those of us who have no idea on how to go to God, but then there is a second element we need to consider; a second element that helps with the first element:

As we help those with the help we have received from God, God helps us all the more.

The second element—that of helping—augments the first element. It gives the first element traction.

It is a simple matter to go to the God of all comfort; we go when we are weary, when we are estranged to hope, and when matters of life are beyond us. As we draw comfort from God, God shows us how to comfort others in their distress.

But first we must learn to go to God; it starts from us. This is the practice of repentance; this is about going to the spiritual location of Faith Central.

Pulling into Faith Central

As if steaming into a station, a locomotive with a consist of wagons, a rake of railcars carrying the burdens of life, we pull into Faith Central, and we slow down... and stop. We have made it to the station. We are home. We have made it back into the heart of God. And God will meet our needs there like absolutely no other.

The moment we are stopped all passengers disembark, alighting for their individual journeys; these passengers are our burdens. We are in the practice of seeking consolation for our afflictions and we do it best in silent contemplation.

Having pulled into Faith Central, having stopped and allowed the burdens of life to disembark, whilst praying diligently, in moaning and tears as and if necessary, we draw close to the comfort of God—to the God of all comfort.

Having pulled into Faith Central we have practiced the ancient art of repentance.

Those who routinely repent know precisely how to encourage others to repent without mandating it. They encourage others to pull into Faith Central, where the God of all comfort will comfort their friend, by the comfort they themselves have received.

***

Once we have drawn comfort from God in our affliction we seriously want that comfort to abide in others. The God of all comfort will console us in all our affliction as we draw close. He is drawing us into Faith Central—a train station of spiritual locale where we can stop, contemplate, and receive the comfort we need. It is Safe Sanctuary. Go into the Heart of God.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

On Becoming and Being Genuine

“When we are genuine, people meet us in a human way and get a glimpse of our personal life of faith.”

— RICHARD M. GULA

There is a gift we can give another person; every other person!

This gift is a gift to ourselves as much of the other person, but the other person benefits in ways that are quite rare. They get a real person. And when we are genuine, we also gain by being that real person.

We shouldn’t assume that being a real person is an easy thing. Most people have to spend years of their lives undoing the vast tapestry of falsity they have learned serves them well in a world valuing duplicity, partiality, and quirkiness and the like. Most people have learned to wear their masks, and they choose a different mask according to the situation. At the end of the day most people have learned to be anything but genuine.

I want to devote the rest of the article to how we become and be more genuine.

Becoming and Being Very Real Despite the Costs

There is certainly a cost of becoming and being real. It has to become the most important thing otherwise we don’t stand a chance.

First of all, we must get to a position where we like ourselves; where we accept who we are and what we have become and what has made us who we are. Again, we may think this is easy. In reality it will take years, but because most of us have years to invest we would be mad not to invest.

Secondly, it helps if we identify the costs and agree beforehand we are willing to pay. Whenever we think of costs we always underestimate the level of sacrifice required, whilst we overestimate the value of the realised goal. But if we have agreed beforehand we will remain committed and we may succeed.

Thirdly, we must appreciate the value of being genuine, to the point that sometimes being genuine means we shouldn’t defend ourselves, even if to save ourselves from embarrassment. Being genuine means being seen as weak as well as strong, and as wrong as well as right. We shouldn’t manipulate situations to make ourselves look better than our acknowledged or the collectively accepted reality.

Fourthly, nothing helps us more than to appreciate the benefit, personally and interpersonally, of being real; where others can rely on us as safe people, whilst we can rely on ourselves to be that safe person.

Fifthly and finally, when we get past our fear for being vulnerable, when we feel safe enough to risk, we know we can trust everyone with ‘who’ we actually are. Guards are dropped in the knowledge that there is no better strength to show than the strength in humble authenticity. Fearful people—people who may be typically untrustworthy regarding our vulnerabilities—tend more to shy away from direct conflict with people who are bold enough to be real.

***

Becoming and being a genuine person is the greatest gift we can give another person, whilst it is also the greatest gift we can give to ourselves. Being real has as its process the honouring of truth at all times. Being real is also the best way to honour God.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Continuing On In the Godly Way

Challenges to our time, resources, progress and sanity come and go through our days. Some days are especially marred. Other days we efficiently get on with our God-willed work and there is nothing but strength. The other days are forgettable, lamentable, and despicable—or, at best, plain boring.

Yet God encourages us eternally with this battle charge:

“Stay with ME, and I will provide grace for your journey, peace for your presence, my Presence for your hope, and faith enough to secede the doubting.”

This is what I imagine God saying, urging us on, strengthening us by his Almighty voice that pervades all creation in the deafening sounds of silence.

***

Continuing on in the godly way is a noble task, yet many things of the world will interrupt such work at the very whiff of a divine undertaking. Tall poppies are slayed because they stand out. Yet we stand out in very ordinary and limited ways if God’s will is known. We would have nothing of the glory if we were to see the glory manifest in God.

Still, we must note, we are positioned and placed as comparative tall poppies—threats for many who are ruled by fear, whether within the church sheepfold or not.

Let us not be afraid, or even the slightest bit distracted, by the noises of the vocal minority as they intend to knock us sufficiently off course as to limit our effectiveness because of their reigning fear.

We are to continue on: humbly, patiently, quietly, gently, compassionately... unswervingly... as a friend to all, higher than ourselves.

***

Let’s consider ourselves slaves to God, servants of the Saviour who won us all at Calvary. When one is bought for a priceless sum, to be set free, eternally, then that one is won to such a freedom as to give their lives away so they might gain their very selves.

The more we give ourselves away, the more we reconcile the wondrous essence that abides within; the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

***

There are many and several discouragements every day; distractions intended to sway us from the good way. God’s will is met with all kinds of ungodly resistance. Ours is to see it; to acknowledge what must be done from what needn’t be done. Ours is to continue on the godly way, despite every raucous voice and inflated image to the contrary.

God says, “Stay with ME.”

It’s the Divine code and the very purpose of our existence.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Enjoying the Solidity of Focused Direction

“A life lived in the light of God’s love and surrendered to him in faithful service is pretty hard to knock off course.”

— Monica O’Neil

When I first read this quote I was struck by the stability and strength in its truth. Wow, God really has given us the key to life. The solidity of focused direction is grounded in such simple wisdom...

But of course this truth will be tested. Or, better put, we will be tested by the very way we apply this material that provides such solidity for focused direction. We will be found wanting by the manner of our being. We will be challenged to grow through vulnerable standpoints of weakness and to steel, otherwise, those parts of us that only show up as flimsy in the milieu of the present challenge in its vagaries of surprise.

There are many twists in the average day.

Yet again, we face this truth: living in the light of God’s love, surrendered to him alone in faithful service, totally committed to those ends, we have the key to life. If nothing else is as important as that mission we will have the solidity of focused direction; a spiritual rigidity that is malleable enough to remain on course.

Let us dig deeper into the simplicity of this wisdom:

The author of the quote impels us to know what really matters to us: best if it is Jesus Christ.

Life is queer that it requires us to live many boring and busy days, yet we are swept uncontrollably down a torrent on the odd day when we least expect it. At 4 PM on an idle Tuesday we are numbed by news so starkly apparent we are backwashed and busted. There are so many experiences of life that find us wanting; so many times when we are pushed off bearing.

Now these times are all tests of our character, and the depth of our character is known by the responses we have during such times. But character is not a fixed entity; we shift with the shape of our spiritual tide. Inwardly towards the shore to nestle for a time with God or outwardly into the seas that rough us up and may even spit us out.

We are known by what defines us. By what is observable in the poignant time; that is how we are made, both by the material of our making and by the making upon another person’s mind of whom we are.

***

There is simplicity and strength in the solidity of focused direction. To be centralised upon Christ is to be grounded upon a firm foundation that is not easily shook. We are both what we are and what we do and what we do informs who we are. If the best thing we do is surrender to God, then the best and worst of a topsy-turvy life is enjoyed for what it is, nothing more and nothing less, but in the unfazed knowledge that God is good all the time.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Brokenness and the Blessings of Realism and Joy

“We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That’s what connects us—that we’re broken, all beautifully imperfect.”

— EMILIO ESTEVEZ

There is the wonder-filled presence of majesty in the fact of our brokenness. The more we magnify the grace that holds us up, eyes raised to the sky in awe, the more we know it’s okay to be the way we are.

We are mistaken, fearful, foolish, frustrated, fatigued, ignorant and arrogant people—and many more. We are more the same than we are different.

And besides all this God loves us.

Think about that for a moment: God loves us. The verb in that sentence, “loves,” commands our attention. One single word tells us graphically and never more understatedly what God does and what God has done, from eternity to eternity; eternally.

God loves us. Despite our junk, all the vain propriety we bring to life, and the hurts we either deny or make much of, God loves us.

God may not want us wallowing in our brokenness, but we do ourselves a service when we regularly reach into such a fact of being, because it highlights just how magnificent God’s grace is that he loves us.

We are, again, most similar—by the facts of our commonalities of failing.

But that isn’t the best news, not by far!

Freedom from a Thing that Promised Bondage

We could be really forgiven for thinking that sowing into our brokenness would depress us and take us into a netherland far from home.

But precisely the reverse occurs. The more we establish space for ourselves in being acceptably broken, the more we realise how wonderful it is when we achieve something. We start from a low base and are easily satisfied. Our expectations are right-sized. We thank God more willingly for the simple things.

These ideas of life are the marrying of realism with joy: realism because we are suddenly not afraid of the truth—indeed, we are glorying in it—and joy because we faint with glee at just how good God is that he, an utterly holy God, loves us.

Realism and joy. Does life get any better? And it comes from a truth that sinks so many; the source of our despair. It’s a great thing that we’re so fallible.

***

Only God could use our brokenness and turn it into the blessings of realism and joy. God loves us—unconditionally. Accepting our brokenness welcomes this truth without fear: realism. Our joy abounds that nothing we can do would make God love us any less.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Patience for the Process of Healing

There comes a time when the pain is gone,

But it’s just as true that truth you bear,

What was that’s now lost can make us strong,

By the softening of our hearts to simply care.

***

Although anger is a most necessary part of grief—a principal component toward true healing—it may be an antecedent or precursor to a better thing: patience.

Healing from grief may be defined as that state where we know the fullness of truth about what has occurred, but we feel little or none of the pain anymore.

Such a thing is not a denial of the truth. We honour the truth. We honour who we were. We honour the past and those people or situations now gone or transformed. And we may occasionally lament life because it involves loss; this is merely a wrestling with the truth.

Patience is what this journey is all about.

God will teach us how to be gentler with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our recovery. But we must learn, first of all, to give ourselves over Jehovah Rapha—God our Healer (Exodus 15:26).

Such a place of having been healed—which is a landmark of healing in no ultimate sense—because there may still be tinges of pain occasionally—mandates we hold two tensions simultaneously: we are open to our pain as we are open to the truth, and our pain dissipates because that truth we have we are not afraid of anymore.

That truth has helped to define us. That truth has been central to the forging of our new identity. We honour that truth, tough as it is. Courage has become us.

Meeting Pain in Truth and in Gentleness

It would be no good to meet the pain in our grief without gentleness. Both are needed: to approach the truth, yet in gentleness. This is where others play a role; caring others.

We need space to repeat ourselves. We need a compassionate space. We need a space where there is space to simply ‘be’ without judgment—heaven knows we will be judging ourselves enough as it is.

There is only beauty in truth and power for healing when we are gentle, being patient enough to care for ourselves and to allow others to care for us. When we come about grief like this we can find someone who will care, despite how lonely we may be feeling.

***

There is only beauty in pain when we have hope for healing. We need to be patient and continue to wrangle with our truth, knowing that patience is helped by gentleness. Anger is understandable, but patience is by far better. Foster gentleness.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

How Do I Number My Days?

Moses prayed to God:

“So teach us to count our days

that we may gain a wise heart.”

— Psalm 90:12 (NRSV)

In the rat race that is life in this modern-day world, we find ourselves possibly wondering “How does eternity get a look in with all the worry and fuss going on in me and in everyone else?”

Well, eternity is eternity and it has everything waiting on ‘it’ not the other way around. We would be fools not to acknowledge this truth. Life is a bequest of God and we don’t get one single breath that is not willed by the Lord and bequeathed directly to us.

And still, we waste our time on things of no importance when the things of eternity stand there shouting, “Be of me!” We are forgiven this folly. God knows how broken of sense we are. We are bound to get many details of our lives absolutely wrong.

But overall we can go easier on ourselves by simply noting that numbering our days gives us some sense of perspective.

We cannot achieve what we want to achieve in the day and we push too hard, but we tend not to see how very much can be accomplished over the longer frame of time. But we can be like ants; purposefully believing in and doing a huge legacy of work. And we can imagine ants not being bothered about the day-to-day things that don’t go right—theirs is a longer goal.

Why Settle for Less Than Wisdom?

Wisdom—without sounding narcissistic—should be our very objective, goal and prize. What better theme of our lives is there than wisdom to get the days of our lives right in the general sense.

This is to acknowledge, beforehand, many days will be wasted; many days we’ll feel we’re heading backwards.

It’s also about acknowledging that some days—and some entire seasons of bliss—we will think we’ve got it ‘all together’ before our pride is crushed and we’re brought back to earth. Most days, however, will be replete with the ordinary—we may doubt our very affect in this life. We endure much disillusionment.

Numbering our days is getting their apportionment in perspective.

It’s dropping all sense of ambition, to simply know that the next breath could be the last one, whilst also—at the same time—understanding that our lives (and the effect of our lives) will probably extend far longer than we currently anticipate.

***

There is a great need these days of life perspective. When we contrast life and our lives with eternity we stand awestruck at what we commonly and mistakenly prioritise. Coming back to the things of God helps us to number our days—in order that we don’t miss the truth that God impels us to know. Numbering our days is the grasp of perspective we all need to live life well.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Feelings, Truth, and the Abundant Life

Whilst to feel is to enjoy the best of life, it means also, paradoxically, that we suffer more acutely the pain. Alternatively, the thesis not to feel, to defend and deny, is a choice the majority make because feeling involves far too much risk; there’s safety in guarding against pain (guilt, shame, embarrassment, exposure, grief, loss etc).

To feel or not to feel—there’s a choice. Yet many find themselves predisposed to one or the other.

During spare moments, where there’s time to reflect, an awareness of feelings gathers about... to feel or not to feel—that’s our predicament:

***

Spare moments, indeed, out in the sun,

Forever, if ever, we know we can run,

Spare moments may bring an anxious awareness,

The knowledge, just now, of life’s unfairness.

Interceding in the space, captured anew,

The defence so typical, arriving as due,

Coming into being, enters our ‘mate’,

Quelling our feelings as if right on fate.

Choice becomes known, right about now,

To allow such defence or continue to plough,

Awareness, it comes, an overused word,

If we let it, it’ll make us free as a bird.

With courage we tackle this newfound fact,

Quickly along with it, the commitment to act,

At once we see what we may be becoming,

Indwells us because we like an image so stunning.

***

Spare moments are good in that they offer us space for thought, but this thought might occasionally degenerate into anxiety or despair, purely because an absence of things to do or think about means the mind is unoccupied—hence, the reflective imagination can take the reins.

So in this moment we may be feeling. If and when our feeling becomes too much it provokes a defence—we then have a choice; do we side with the defence entering denial or to refocus on something else, or do we ‘continue to plough’ boldly into these feelings.

Continuing To Plough – Entering Upon Further Enquiry

At times it takes a great deal of courage to progress a painful feeling, dredging deeper below into the source of the lament. As we rough up for seeding the earth within the soul, causing angst we rarely feel, we can expect to become undone emotionally. We’re unravelling ourselves in order to, at some point, reconstruct a better, more ‘stunning’ us.

This is the purpose of feeling. It’s getting to know, and developing, ourselves. Both are discreet, yet magnificent, tasks and outcomes. Whom, and how many, actually delve into themselves to such an extent—voluntarily? Only the emotionally mature, or those on that path.

To feel is freedom, despite the pain at times. To feel is to be human. To feel is to be every bit alive. To feel as we’re supposed to feel, and to be free for feeling, is to know the experience of salvation—the Presence of God. That’s because to feel is to attend to the truth.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

On Being a ‘Safe’ Person

There’s hardly a kinder gift we can be to another person than be a safe person; with them and for them. Where we can neither hurt each other nor be hurt by one another.

The counsellor is quintessentially a safe person. They provide an inviting and open space—implicit with safety—for the client to partake in their therapy of healing. It’s the client’s process the counsellor works with, not the other way around.

Not many of us are professional counsellors, but God calls us all to care for people in such ways as to develop and deploy some of the counsellor’s skill set.

We call this love.

Trusting and Enjoying the Safe Person

We all need safe people in our lives; people who we can trust, who will listen to us, and who will give us good advice when we either seek it or need it.

We all know that feeling when somebody gives us advice and we haven’t asked for it. It feels like an intrusion and we think we are suffering pride; no, perhaps it’s a matter that our personal dominion is compromised—we don’t feel safe; we don’t feel relaxed; we are defensive and we don’t want to be.

Trusting and enjoying the safe person is about finding such a person. Then it is about simply relaxing with them, and being ourselves. It is God’s will that we are able to be ourselves, without pretence, masks or walls. We can only really be ourselves around safe people, unless we are the safe person—in which case we can be ourselves anywhere.

The Greatest Gift of God to Ourselves

Could it just be that just is willing us to become safe people—to be with, to enjoy the journey of life around? Could it be that this ‘calling’ to be a safe person might be the greatest of God’s gifts to us—a gift directly sponsored of the Holy Spirit? I tend to think so. In fact, I know so.

It’s the greatest gift to ourselves because of the tangibility of the relationship scenario.

God reinforces the idea of love, helping us to love and be loved, in the context of our relationships. We need to experience love in relationships in order to enjoy the confidence of living the full, abundant life.

When we venture on a journey to becoming a safe person—by embracing our own healing—which is tackling and accepting our own truths (yes, the sordid ones)—our experience of love abounds. Love is the greatest gift and becoming a safe person is the way to enjoy the presence of such a gift.

***

The safe person is one we trust and enjoy and can be ourselves around. We can share with them and they listen and their advice feels safe and wise. But we too can be safe people; indeed, it may be God’s greatest gift that we would nurture within ourselves the notion of becoming or being a safe person to be around.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

From Pity to Great Power (Again)

God’s Power comes when mine comes to an end,

So, there’s no need at all for the ‘me’ to contend,

Trust is ever simple—just surrender, it’s true,

It’s the only way ever that God’s Power will renew.

***

There is the regular reminder for all of us, I’m sure—a reminder that occurred for me recently when I insisted upon the use of my own pathetic strength—which is true pitiful and proud weakness—that great power vanishes when it’s no longer required.

God’s Spirit leaves the state and the country so far as we’re personally concerned.

Of course, God’s Spirit never leaves from anywhere. It’s always here. But as we quench the Living Spirit in us, that selfsame Spirit, the Person of the Living God in us, turns his face. God cannot abide with us as we venture hand-in-hand with the sin of pride; that we might forge our own self-willed way.

The magnificent heights of my pride were found in the breath of another’s prayer for me; that I would do things no longer in my own strength, but in God’s strength alone. Whoa, that was too much. Those sorts of things are always too much for our pride that regales upon the backlash that it’s not the ‘king of the moment’.

Pride always compels us to be kings and queens of the moment.

Unchecked pride soon designs and constructs the sort of searing anger that we don’t know where it came from. The enemy of God loves to confuse us. Dazed in an emotional lapse of quite monumental proportions, I leapt out of where I was quietly ‘controlling’ myself. Yep, pride.

***

The greatness of God in all this is he soon brightens the soul with an opportunity at perspective. It’s a glimmer and a glance—that’s all—a little foretaste—to see if we’ll come around.

The goodness of God is his grace in this situation. Who would be so routinely betrayed, yet forgive so gracefully? Only the Living Lord our God.

In the perspective of his greatness and goodness the Lord reminds us of how to access his joy, his peace, and to bear the fruit of repentance.

It is at the end of our strength—when we finally give our game away—that we gain insight for the repealing power in grace; we discern what now appears so simple, but for the very life of us seemed to confound us in that irredeemable anger of ours.

***

Strength and power are as obvious as they are simple—once we find them. Modes of surrender, humility and repentance redeem this power for us, which helps us in our weakness. Such ‘weak’ people that rely on their Lord as fully as they can have more power than the powerful pretend to have.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Forgiveness for Those Who Feel Unforgiven

Forgiveness—the actual felt experience—can seem so far off. It’s not like God is withholding something that he made freely available nearly 2,000 years ago. We can begin to feel it’s personal—“There’s got to be something wrong with me!” may be the tormented sentiment.

What do we do with a reality that seems so different to what others experience?

Feeling envious about the joy and peace others are experiencing certainly won’t help, but it is understandable. We may experience resentment and anger for what we feel we cannot control. The truth is, however, none of us can control something that is what – it – is—God’s grace gift-wrapped and presented as forgiveness—done once for all time.

Who would want to control of it?

We would only wish to partake of it.

Firstly, the problem for the many that haven’t experienced forgiveness is self-condemnation—whether conscious or unconscious—has been a key barrier.

Secondly, and critically, we must know the great hope that consists in the fact: forgiveness experienced once is forgiveness accepted forever. Once we ‘get it’ we get it for the rest of our natural lives. This second fact provides the summum bonum of hope.

Breaking the ‘Habit’ of Self-Condemnation

All our lives are a requiem for messages of condemnation in failure. The world hates failure and we have learned very well from the fearful ones who’ve influenced us that we get accepted when we succeed, yet we’re rejected when we fail. Failure in many ways is an irredeemable reality from this viewpoint. Life shifts sideways in turmoil and recovery isn’t possible, hence the denial we must respond with in order to simply survive.

Self-condemnation creates a situation where we live apart from ourselves psychologically and spiritually.

When we don’t like ourselves deep down we cannot receive God’s forgiveness, purely because we cannot conjure thought of anyone loving us complete with our failure and brokenness.

Self-condemnation is a habit, hard-wired into the brain by the ways we instinctively think. The good news is this habit can be completely restructured and debunked.

Once the Heart ‘Gets’ Grace We’re Transformed for Good

This simple fact is a delight to everyone who lives it.

This is hope for everyone who needs their portion of grace from God.

Central to this transformation is our healing. With abounding healing, upon the journey to leave no stone unturned, comes a heart prepared to receive its portion of forgiveness. At the centre point of our healing is truth—to accept the truth that we’re loved by God no matter what we do.

***

The experience of God’s forgiveness can seem a mystery, but it is available to all. First we must deal with the habits of guilt and shame, or self-condemnation. Second we must know that once we ‘get it’ the experience of God’s grace remains as a once-for-all-time reality to enjoy and explore.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.