Feeling Good On the Inside

Faith speaks a language all its own.

It converts the will of the flesh to buckle into alignment with the will of the Spirit to secede from brokenness. Faith is the vehicle for overcoming.

Faith also provides the means for feeling good on the inside. But it’s the wisdom of prudence that motivates a person to decide for it. The following three visceral targets are in sight:

1. Peace of Mind

Oh the price for peace between the ears! No more lying awake at night for thoughts whirring through the chastened mind. No more dwelling on matters we can’t affect, or procrastinating over issues we can affect.

Peace of mind is a search. It’s achieved in different ways for different people. But general advice still applies.

Perhaps it’s a matter more of intentional focus, self discipline and the paradoxical ability to relax. Practical things assist. Not taking too much on. Agreeing to not stress or fret about tomorrow, but planning the best we can anyway; then leaving it at that.

For regretful or hurt pasts, we do all we can to deal with them in courage and truth, accepting that God’s grace is sufficient in all these situations. God’s with us and for us.

2. Calmness of Heart

If the mind is the vestibule for thinking, the heart is the portent for feeling.

How do we calm our feelings when most of them occur involuntarily? The answer is we can influence our feelings by the way we think. Even better if we’ve achieved peace of mind!

Even though the mind can bring order to the heart, it’s the heart that underpins our attitudes to everything. There’s good reason to do whatever we can to establish and maintain calmness of heart.

Whatever we do in this area, and abiding to the truth as it’s personally discerned is a big part of it, will be blessed as an investment for the rest of life. From the heart, “flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23b NRSV).

3. Safety of Stomach

Most Westerners take for granted the very basic blessedness in having a full stomach. Our temptation is to overeat, or fill up on the wrong foods. Some of these make us feel sickly inside, whilst others do little for our energy and overall wellbeing.

Safety of stomach is a thing eluding most of us. We tend to put up with bloating and other temporary, but chronic, conditions. We practice the same dietary sins day-in-day-out, interspersed by fleeting ‘diets’ of discipline. Some of these ‘diets’ are over the top.

Feeling good on the inside, for me personally, is about eating three moderate sized meals a day and two pieces of fruit, to be had at snack time. The odd piece of birthday cake is then affordable.

Most of us don’t connect spirituality with our stomachs. But there is a connection.

Ordering Life by Its Consequences

Wisdom must be about planning life around consequences.

If we want to feel well on the inside we’ll be motivated to act in ways that achieves peace of mind, calmness of heart and safety of stomach.

The consequences have it. Life is very predictable regarding these innermost things. If we think, feel and eat well we’ll enjoy preferable consequences.

To have the very best of life we should want to feel good on the inside.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Creating Space for Balance

Our life purpose is to attain and maintain balance – do this and we enhance satisfaction. But, we won’t know what this individualised balance means until afterwards. Creating space for balance is the key driver for our lives.

This is not about a selfish sense of satisfaction. It may involve personal blessing but most times personal blessing is received through the interpersonal impartation of blessing to others, i.e. through the giving of ourselves.

Addressing the Mystery – Balance and Eternity

Life, eternity and balance are examples of mystery. We know we’ll never know. As much as eternity is set inside our hearts — ours to grapple with per the subject of death and life thereafter — balance is accorded easily as much interest.

Balance is to this life as eternity is to death.

Both are mysteries we can but attempt to understand. And even if we’re destined never to understand we’ll perhaps still be seeking to know why. It’s strange, and indeed fascinating, that we can’t help but claw at the non-definable things in life, desperate as we are to get below the hard veneer.

Without making light of this eternal gap there are some things we can do to improve our situations so far as balance is concerned, but that’ll necessarily involve some tough decisions.

Extracting Space

Balance is a thing of mathematics. So much input dictates so much output.

The problem comes when we compress like a gas more activity than our minds and schedules can readily handle. If only time for us was more like water — incompressible. And indeed it is! It’s us that somehow want to defy this ‘freak’ of physical nature. We proudly call it ‘multitasking’.

Even though we’re confined to linear space (a.k.a. time), and this at times seems rudely cruel to us when we could do with more, we can be thankful that apart from some flexibility this is a matter of dealing with quite simple logic.

Perhaps the only way many of us will achieve better balance is to create the space for it, and we just as easily extract some of the wasted space in our lives as in the principle of a vacuum. We create void spaces, not for time-empty ventures, but for good activities to meet our wholeness needs.

Wholeness Needs

This life is not just about us and our needs and wants. Most of us understand and actively accept this.

Where we struggle in fitting our lives out in balanced ways is against the datum of eternity. Without an accurate and awed sense of eternity throbbing away within our minds and hearts we’ll most likely miss the point of life and, hence, fill our lives — at least in part — with silly and pointless activities in that context of eternity.

Our wholeness needs are central to those all around us. We were created to be whole and to live whole lives wherever that is possible for us. Balance is the shortest way of getting us there.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Blessed Are the Curious; They Shall Reap Knowledge

“We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilisation depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.”

~George F. Will.

Shallowness is the bane of our age. Actually it goes further than that. Shallowness is a very human trait where ignorance is rife and curiosity’s lost for laziness.

Curiosity or Assumption?

Too easily it seems our natures collude over assumption; we think we know more than we do. The sad thing about that reality is once we begin to hold that view our eyes become blinkered and our ears close over.

The curious, however, have the habit of sifting through the data — all the inputs of life, true and false and all between — and they simply sort the wheat from the chaff, re-organising it according to its worth. There is no prejudice to this. Fact wins and falsity loses. No correspondence is entered into. There’s a constant forward-moving energy force behind it.

Two Blessed Traits – Faithfulness and Understanding

The people who go genuinely far in this life seem to have two traits. They are both faithful and trustworthy and they scour the world for knowledge; good knowledge that’s etched in truth. This produces understanding and that leads to the authenticity and cogency of wisdom.

People with these traits are good friends to have. Look for the person who can be trusted and who values good knowledge. A better, more faithful friend — who will edify us — we will not find.

Framed like a beatitude, the person focused to these ends has the eternal favour of God in tow. They remain interested in what they can affect and on the information that matters.

Blessed, indeed, these will be!

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Master New Media.

God’s Plan and the True, Beautiful, Original YOU

“... for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

~2 Timothy 1:7 (NRSV).

Ever noticed how glibly silent the world reacts when we give it a cheaper version of our true selves? That is, we think by giving them what we think they want that they’ll be satisfied; no, God wants us, by evidence of their fickleness, to be our original unique selves first and foremost.

We can perhaps imagine that the Apostle Paul is exhorting Timothy to this: “Just be yourself, Timothy; your normal, more courageous, God-indwelt, self.”

Without Thought of Self-Protection

As conscious, thinking, feeling human beings we naturally have the propensity of giving way to those things that keep us safe. Sometimes this instinct, however, goes beyond the useful. The opportunity is to burst past this self-imposed limit of the protected human psyche — the flesh-felt and flesh-inspired unrealised potential, avoidance of embarrassment and shame.

Conversely, when we act without thought of cowardly self-protection — which is the secondary, self-protected thought — we become our original selves again that very instant.

This is not allowing time for timidity to beat us into a hasty retreat when we know the action we should take or the words we could say.

This is no excuse to say just the first thing that pops into our minds — without screening it in wisdom. It’s merely ensuring we don’t buckle from the self-discerned will of God.

There are No ‘Copies’ in the Kingdom of God

God doesn’t create copies. We know by the originality of our DNA that we’re all distinctive individuals, made perfectly in the image of God.

We are all dyed-in-the-wool originals of the Lord Almighty. As we’re bodily original, so we’re mindfully original. No one thinks exactly like we, individually, do. Match this power-for-thought with biblical truth and we’re quickly approaching our potential.

When we agree to live this way, taking our courage, not buckling in cowardice, we become purveyors of God’s delight and we’re blessed by fashion of the Spirit’s inspiration.

In Timothy’s context, he’s reminded of the power resplendent in simplicity; in the purity of love; in the magnification of truth; by the harmony of light; in straightforwardness of bearing — to continue on the straight road of life.

When self-consciousness gives way to the pure flow of our true selves, others reap the benefit, and God is blessed because we’ve simply obeyed the Holy Spirit’s leading to be ourselves.

This may seem hard; it is never easier, however, with courage.

This is having the faith to trust what the Holy Spirit is saying; to abide to the truth withheld in the each situation; to actually do what we’re being asked — within ourselves — to do.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Majoring on Bliss

Peace and bliss; are they rendered the same? They certainly come from the same class at the School of Choice Living. Bliss is more positive, but peace — founded out of a wistfully resilient joy — is safety in any situation. Both are superb condiments for life.

These two play dynamic roles generating an alluring thing:

Majoring on bliss is a choice made to think a certain enjoyable way. Then all it requires is the skills of focus and self-discipline.

A Salient Illustration

Bicycling to and from work has been a pastime of mine for years, yet it’s something I don’t so much enjoy as see the benefit in efficiency of finding opportunity to exercise for health that doesn’t cost me inordinate time. Although it’s physical work involving pain, I’ve often decided to enjoy these rides... before, during and after.

Particularly those things we don’t enjoy we can major on bliss.

In this situation, it’s done beforehand by recognising the value of exercise. It’s conducted during the activity by flushing the mind with bliss-filled thoughts, whilst keeping a tidy bearing on the hazards about (cars, trucks etc). By the time the showers are reached the endorphins create their own bliss — home is intrinsic joy.

Mind Control

It will go against the grain for some, but the steady fact is we can control what we think. Bliss can be achieved just as easy as banality.

Controlling what we think is an adult concept; the mature mind is able to fix on a thought and continue to come back to it when the focus is lost. This principle of grown thought is made possible with effort on virtue.

Mind control is one remitting factor in the blessedness of the virtuous life.

Two Forms of Bliss

Bliss is active via focus on thoughts creating a heady joy as well as passive by way of the deep peace felt when the mind is at ease.

Majoring on bliss is about starting our way there and then simply allowing the mind continuity to exist — flowing in and out of bliss and peace — in our thinking.

Using the bike riding example previously, majoring on bliss is simply part active focus on deliberate blissful thinking and part passive allowance for the dreamy peace to have its way between thoughts. Less physical pain is felt as a result, and this pain is rendered meaningless as the mind anesthetises the mind.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Keeping a Better Secret

“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

~Colossian 3:2-3 (NRSV).

Addictions involve secrets.

Before we get stuck on discussion about dependence versus addiction, and whether we might be confusing dependence for addiction, let’s first be sure we have a problem.

If the mind is involved in weakness, and is tormented by same, we may need little more convincing.

Resolve is what we need. First we need to make a decision about this wielding nemesis and second to commit to a path toward the better life.

Better Secrets By Far

This better life we’re after involves keeping secrets too.

But these secrets are highly empowering and not destructive like the secrets we’ve been used to keeping; those apportioned to maintain — at secrecy — the captive lifestyle of dependence and addiction.

These ‘better secrets’ are hidden with Christ in God; they are indebted to sacrifice — the right sacrifice for the right reason.

Hiddenness with Christ in God

To be hidden with Christ in God is to ‘get’ the perspective of life beyond death; that is, to understand that fleeting thrills involve the hook of captivation — the selling of one’s divine soul to Satan, who’s ever undermining us. Further than understanding, it’s also amending this hook of captivation; due a better secret.

Being hidden with Christ in God is a fervent desperation to ever return to God, safe and only ever home in the generous arms of the Almighty.

This is a heart worthy of repentance.

For without God in this way, the human vessel lies exposed, bare for the ravens to pick at. Hiddenness within God is a sacrosanct journey set on continual quietness of soul — an intrinsic running from the worldly and flesh desire as much as it can.

It’s given over to God and so glad in that state, that humanity and things of this world are patently blank by comparison. It’s this basis of life that’s lost faith in the ‘light’ of acquisition, and corresponding captivity. God is now the only ‘acquisition’ we’re taken by.

God, after all, is the giver of all good gifts (James 1:17); everything good we have is from the Lord.

Turning the Destructive Negative into a Joyous Positive

From one secret to another we go. It sounds simple because it is simple.

The more we’re interested in the things of God, the less we’ll be caught up in the nasty secrets of life; those confounding our wills and exposing us to shame.

The secret life of us — to be hidden with Christ in God — is a power so powerful that those still estranged to God will find it unfathomable in its simplicity, as they discover it.

Let’s keep this secret simple. There are things now that are between us and God, though we’re free to share with those trusted wise ones; we do so as the Holy Spirit leads us.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Looking Unto Jesus.net.

FEAR–LESS, Yes!

“Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still’.”

~Exodus 14:13-14 (NRSV).

One recent day was a horror at wakening. Not that this particular day was anything to be too concerned about — I’d just assessed my ability with people this day as less than average. My stocks of confidence were lower than usual.

Do you know those days when you’re just super-aware of the lack and not aware enough of the most wonderful potential that lies within?

Hemmed-In – No Doubt

When the Israelites were hemmed in prior to the crossing of the Red Sea anyone could understand their desperate plight. Sure, the Lord had done many miraculous things in that day, but as for us, fear tended to blind them to these as they encapsulated the terror, caressing it with their sight — a mighty sea and an angry foe, and them between.

We too are often hemmed-in, and frequently without cause will come an army against us, bearing us up against the seas of our billowing doubt.

Two Responses to Fear

We all experience fear, and the paradox is we cannot be truly courageous without fear. Fear is a necessary activating component for us to do anything truly heroic. We cannot express true faith without a semblance of fear.

So, when we acquiesce to the fear and go into our self-pitiable or frozen states, we defuse the opportunity at conquering the fear with the virtue of a holy and all-powerful God behind us. We disarm the wrong thing.

Instead we should be disarming the fear itself. And this is done in at least one of two ways.

First, we can approach the problem or issue in a fearless sort of way: denying the fear, but truthfully so. There are truly many fears we have that are ridiculous in the face of reason. The more we come about this rational sense of logical reason, then, the more we’ll retrain our minds to think differently and better. Our goal should be to quickly recognise these unreasonable fears and quash them with immediate effect.

Second, we can approach it in a manner that just fears it less, acknowledging that what we’re fearing is appropriate to fear; we just must conform the fear so it’s manifested healthily. We’re open and honest about it. This of itself is courage.

Being fearless or just fearing less. God is with us in these pursuits. It’s God’s will that we’re not disabled or impaired by fear.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

God's Speed in All You Do

“But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.”

~2 Thessalonians 3:3 (NRSV).

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we’re all living in a rather fractured age. All the more do we need God to preclude our entry into evil, for none of us is beyond it.

The Apostle Paul, writing in this section of his letter to the Thessalonians, was perhaps feeling constrained for them. Indeed, he implores them to remain faithful to the Lord... to keep doing what they’ve been doing (verse 4).

It’s no different for us.

God is still there and the Spirit goads us to remain on the stiff path chosen for us.

It’s God’s speed we pray for in all we do. We keep going. Despite the problems, the impossibilities, the reasons to quit, we go on past them — unless to do these things would definitely not be God’s will. We trust the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in continuing to do good.

So often the calls to quit, or not keep punching through, are the messages of Satan, tricking us beyond truth. God is closer than we realise. If we draw near to God in this trial, he will draw near to us (James 4:8) and provide the shelter we need from the enemy.

And we will make it through, for God is faithful (1 Thessalonians 5:24).

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Having Eyes to See and Ears to Hear

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

~Marcel Proust.

There’s possibly no worse a blight-filled plight for any human being than being closed minded and stony hearted because the eyes and ears have long since closed over, or were never allowed to open in the first place.

But this truth occasions itself to all of us, especially even those of us who pride ourselves on having our eyes and ears continually open to whatever ‘God might be saying’. There’s a certain spiritualised pride involved in having open eyes and ears — if that’s taken beyond the sublime.

Humility is Balance

The best eyes and ears to possess are those that are renewed, certainly from experience, but that are also open to the things never before experienced; those even right around the corner or in front of us.

Life should not be able to readily surprise us in fear to the point that our faith is being overhauled or demolished — unless it’s destined that we grow from it, which is often the case as seen from retrospect. Indeed, the construct of our faith — based solidly on established truth and grace — should not only withstand the new knowledge but be able to house it and grow from it.

The greatest of faiths, then, tend to be obedient to God’s call for the humility of balance to be the overlaying screed governing the experience and expression of faith — grounded always sufficiently enough that truth is able to be prized above all else.

Truth seen and heard — otherwise, assimilated — is what personalises faith as being appropriately humble, and resilient, to the core.

Blessed are the Open-Hearted, for They Will Have Eyes and Ears Open to God

Below the outer reaches of sight and sound is the heart beneath it all. This is both our emotional nerve centre and the basis of an inordinate amount of decisions — or judgments — we make.

We cannot be truly open-eyed or open-eared without being open-hearted. It’s the heart that motions to the mind to open up or close down in the matter of our experience.

The heart, then, is the life-source, for out of it comes the surges or goings of life (Proverbs 4:23).

The Open-Hearted Have the Fuller Realm of Joy in Discovery

The faintly or reticent ‘open’ heart betrays the joy of discovery every time. Put oppositely, those free of heart to explore without the slightest encumbrance will enjoy the real thrill of discovery. This is fantastically available almost every moment.

We cannot rob God in this way. God’s always having the last say. There’s no blessing of joy where the heart is incongruent or ambivalent.

God blesses the pure motives of the person seeking to grow in sincerity of heart. This, however, can only be done without the remotest selfish thought. In this exercise we’re God’s property entirely... to the extent of the childlike faith.

Open heart? ... It really is up to us to make our move with God bringing nothing of ourselves to heaven’s table.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Listening for The Voice of Light

Those spiritual voices heard in stereo can be actively deceiving. Discerning the right channel from the wrong one can be arduous. So, what are some indicators we’re hearing from God and not the enemy?

1. Whilst the thing we hear mightn’t exist for us in peace, it will bring us peace as we obey. At times the voice of light brings us to points of repentance. The enemy tends to work the other way around — promises instant peace and all we get is torment.

2. The message is for others’ good. We cannot be hearing from the voice of light if it’s telling us to do anything that would bring another person (or people) harm. God never works that way in the civil realm. It’s the voice of darkness that’s justifying our sin.

3. It reveals opportunities at slow and ongoing growth. It’s only the enemy who’s interested in sending us on a get-rich-quick scheme or an opportunity-too-good-to-refuse. Whatever we’re good at God’s got a lifetime plan for. There are no instant miracles of spiritual achievement of the worldly standard; only the day by day process of serving the Lord and attaining gradual improvement. Miracles do occur, but these are brought about, in retrospect, entirely by God; they’re not in the slightest bit human-engineered, apart from humble obedience.

4. Findings and attributions of personal fairness. Self-condemnation and self-adulation are the keen extremes of the enemy who’s set upon taking us on a spiritual roller coaster with damaging emotional results. The voice of light is intent on honing us into the truth about ourselves — which is neither too harsh nor too admirable. It’s the fair honest truth.

Actively listening for the voice of light, and screening out the dark bells as they occasionally ring; these are the spiritual tasks of discernment. Both require skill, discipline and humility. It’s about knowing what to pay attention to and what to find immediately rejectable.

It’s hoped that we can attune our spiritual sense so much that we hear God in stereo, complete with surround sound.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Living What Makes Us Come Alive

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

~Howard Thurman.

Perhaps the biggest reason for our dilapidated sense of wellbeing in life is we’ve bought into a lie.

We see all this need about us, and if not that, it’s the opportunities — to make money, create a reputation for ourselves, or forge a lifestyle — and we just sense the innate want to respond, often without challenging — really challenging — what it is we are here for.

Buying into a lie will not ever satisfy.

Breaking Open the Lie

Other people’s dreams will never be our dreams.

If we’ve achieved exceedingly well and even if we haven’t but we’ve tried, but we’re still not happy, there’s a reason. This reason is central to the purposes of the heart that still haven’t been found yet.

Blessed is the person who with honesty interrogates their lie and pushes on beyond it to their personally-held truth.

The world can give us nothing. Only from what God’s placed deep within our hearts can we get what is purposed for us; this is a life that we’ll live and die for.

Faith to Find

Sometimes we think we’ll get to a veritable no-mans-land even if we find our purpose. Perhaps the world won’t need what we’re purposed to give — that’s the doubt. The thing is the world always needs what we’re purposed to give, because the world needs people who are genuinely alive and who’ve become inherently honest about their place in life.

Having the faith to find our purpose is also very much about knowing we’re next to nothing as persons until we’ve actually found our purpose and then start living it. Our purposes can be as bright or as humble as we like — they don’t have to be about changing the entire world.

This sense of reason, notwithstanding our lack of overall wellbeing otherwise, should fuel our faith to find those things that will make us come alive.

It’s a Biblical Imperative

This is very much the gospel message — to put to death the ever-encroaching extrinsic life that is not truly us and to be ‘re-born’ to the intrinsic life that suddenly fits.

All we’ve done is become a vision that God’s always had for us.

This is the way that sees Jesus actually enter into us via the Holy Spirit, so we have been enlightened. The tragedy is sometimes, or perhaps many times, people do not recognise God in the transaction to transformation. God’s the one to be thanked.

Obviously, then, there are elements of the gospel message of salvation missing or lost in this, and anyway we’re digressing...

The imperative is to go beyond what life so far has dished us up.

In this we go on beyond that outer reality to the cherished inner reality that is real for us, however quirky that might be for the world. And then we have reason that convicts us to ‘do’ life with the welling energy never before known to us.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Five Visions for Life

The form of life we scream out for is the simple life that can be appreciated and enjoyed. We know when we haven’t got it. We clamour for it. We’re angered because we don’t have it.

Is it any more complicated than to:

Find peace. Establish joy. Nurture love. Be yourself. Enjoy God.

Find Peace

This is a different process and destination for each of us. Finding peace happens to be a very personal thing. Yet, it’s within the grasp of all people. It’s as much about knowing ourselves and how to get there than anything.

As a vision for life is there anything more important than finding our peace? From all this other things good come. Once we’ve found it then it’s our job to maintain it.

Establish Joy

How do we have hope if joy is not first established? Indeed, these two commute in tandem.

To establish joy is something we actively do. This is to agree with God that we’re blessed beyond our comprehension. Even the most basic life is blessed with life past imagination.

Nurture Love

Life is, of a sense, all about relationships. Even though the laws of life require us to love in order to succeed, we want to love, because we want to be loved. We know we must propagate what we wish to receive.

Nurturing love is fundamentally about giving; a life that gives itself away is a happy life indeed, because it has no burden for itself, only for others. It’s about knowing who to love and focus on, and how.

Be Yourself

Being ourselves is not really what we think it is. It’s not doing what we selfishly want.

Instead, we must be under no illusions as to who we actually are. This is about self-knowledge and, at root, honesty. Would we allow a false agent to represent us? So why do we lie to ourselves and follow others’ dreams? — either what others have in mind for us, or what we desire to replicate from others’ success.

Knowing ourselves, then, is not as simple as it seems. Sometimes we must go to our depths to be forced to face up to who we are. Of course, those people who think they know, but may be deluded, might scoff at these suggestions.

Knowing ourselves is acceptance of who we are; the ability, also, to enjoy God.

Enjoy God

This has to be a most straightforward role; to truly enjoy God is to have the whole of life in perspective. It’s understanding that God is relational being; one with a strong desire to be our friend, but no ordinarily friend, rather an entirely faithful friend.

To enjoy God is to seek the best out of all have our relationships — with God our friend, with others, and most importantly with ourselves.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.