God will withhold no blessing from the honest person

I have seen them come and I have seen them go, and those that come and stay a while and honestly confess their faults, I have seen, God withholds no blessing.

There is something of a freedom in honesty that so many people never take a chance on.  Oftentimes, it’s when we hit rock bottom that we finally realise that God is saying to us, “Be honest.”

Until we’re honest we sometimes don’t comprehend how many things we’ve let slide.  But when we enter a program that demands rigorous honesty, it is both brutal and beautiful — brutal in the way it crushes our sinful pride; beautiful in the way God fashions a masterpiece from the ruins.

If only we can be honest, all things will be given unto us, for this is what putting the Kingdom and God’s righteousness is all about (Matthew 6:33).

But we need to be more than honest to prosper.  We also need to be wise about when and how to deploy our honesty, for we cannot hurt others with our honesty.  We need to learn to speak and do the truth in love.

Honesty is the cornerstone of Christ’s work in us, even as Jesus is the cornerstone through which our lives are to be built.

Honesty demands humility, it’s the basis of integrity, and it’s enabled by the fear of the Lord.  There’s no higher ground than honest ground.  Honesty is true worship.

God has purposed for the honest person their stake in life, and their life flourishes for their steadfast commitment to God.

And should a person be honest about things they ought not have done — though there are always consequences to live out — the best is yet to come for a person making good of their opportunity to set the record straight.  Honesty for such a person is faith.

God will withhold no blessing from the honest person.

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Joy doesn’t get any simpler than a life of making amends

I honestly lament that I am not the man I was 15 or 16 or 17 years ago.  That man was a far better version of the man I am now, but alas the passage of the years, and the weight of knowledge have jaded me and worn me down — but I’ll never forget the vision of that man who lived better with nothing much at all.

Not that I am a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. Most people who know me know I am flawed, but they also see Christ’s work in me.  But there is something missing; I’m a professional Christian these days who can guide someone through healing because of what I experienced years ago.

But I far prefer the image of the younger man for the joy that was in him, simply content to live a life of making amends.  I was climbing the heights of spiritual recovery, pushing the envelope to wherever my joy would take me.  Joy, hope and peace were the currencies of the day.  The more I served for absolutely nothing at all, no reward, the more God did an inside job in me.

It is so sad that for the majority of the time I don’t live that life nowadays.  I am just being honest.  Perhaps it is the cost of ministry over the years, as the heart cools and the mind obliges.  We give up our zealotry for a comfier Christianity — it’s sadly the way of world in the church.

AA is still by far and away the best denomination, and yet it’s not even got Christ at its head!  Just like white culture could learn a lot from indigenous culture, our modern church could learn so much from the humble AA form of unified fellowship committed to service purely for love — no strings attached.

Making amends through a life of service to every single human being that we encounter; that is really what the Christian life is all about.  But we settle for a brand of Christianity that accommodates idols and so many of them — we worship our favourite Christian stars, our ‘special’ churches, our programs, our achievements, our power, what ‘we have done for God.’

But true Christian joy is driven hard away from us when we replace God with these pathetic and putrid idols.  The only way God draws close is through the contrition of a broken heart determined to do all it can bless others.  It’s really all that counts.

I write this as much to myself as anyone else.  We must put away our power, our prestige, our knowledge, and every single thing that sets us apart from God; we should desperately cling to everything that sets us apart to God.

Living a life of making amends means we are no longer interested in the petty complaints that any of us can become bogged down in.  Imagine finding out this lesson when your back is pressed up hard against the wall, and you have no other way but to believe God for a redemption that seems so ridiculously impossible (to all bar God!).

Think about it for a moment.  Imagine being so committed to blessing and serving others that all there is as a product is joy.  This is done very simply by the orientation of our hearts toward making amends, whether we need to make amends or not, because a heart that is committed to blessing others, seeking no reward for it, is a heart beyond hurt; the eyes of such a heart are fixed on one thing and one thing alone: the Lord Jesus—the author and perfecter of the faith we claim to be real.

And this faith is only real by the testimony of those who testify to that faith.  If we believe we have the power to bless anyone and everyone who will receive the blessing, God will see to it that we’ll succeed.

We do not look for kudos or favours in return when we set out to make amends, so you can see why it works.  True service is done in a making amends kind of way.  We bless people because we can.  We do it because we owe everyone love when God loved every one of us enough to make us right with God.

I have thought long enough; I want to go back to being a man like that.

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How do I recover from the abuse done to me?

A Christian men’s forum provided this question that I was asked to provide a view on.  I love the opportunities to wrestle with questions such as these, because I find it much easier to think and pray and write than give a ‘great’ answer on the spot (i.e., I need God’s help).  This is obviously a general and considered response, hopefully written to men and women.

Let’s consider that any broad question like this requires a holistic — all of person — kind of answer to even go close to potentially satisfying the person asking the question.

First of all, I want to say two things from the outset: 1) we must believe that we can recover with God’s help, and that 2) healing is a practice.  It’s something that we commit to doing and then do; as a discipline.

Not only will the practice of healing disciplines help us one day at a time in our recovery, we also trust our recovery one day at a time to our Lord.  Spiritual practices, therefore, are a work of trusting God. They follow the replacement principle that the apostle Paul outlined in Philippians 4:8-9.

Now, I need to say this:

You are believed;
it happened, it was horrible, and it is horrendous.
But you can also be more than
what you have experienced.
It is part of who you are.  It happened.
But you don’t need to be forever defined by it.

Let’s turn to the holistic areas of focus in our search for effective recovery methods:

Physical

Sleep, diet and exercise.  I could probably leave it at that.  Many things that happen in our bodies as a result of trauma are effects of the deeper psychological fissures that have been grooved into our psyches.

We must trust God that in honouring our bodies to the extent of catering for the basics of sleep, diet and exercise, we will do all we can for God to renew our physical being.

Get sleep right (as much as it’s possible; some have sleep disorders) and we take out a large proportion of the direct causation of mental health maladies.

Get our diet right and we add years and sometimes a decade or more to our lives, and we stave off chronic disease to a large extent.

Exercise gives us the wellbeing of endorphin release.  There is nothing quite like a good exercise regime.

All this is about getting the basics right as much as we can; it’s the practice of disciplines.

Psychological

Cognitive function can be aided by many things, but what I want to focus most on are the two aspects of thinking around betrayal and self-forgiveness.

I counsel people not to judge their thinking.  Using what I learned from Richard Rohr on dualistic and nondual thinking, we hold open space not to judge our thinking — there’s absolutely no benefit to us or anyone else in it.  Psalm 37:8 indicates this thinking causes only harm.  If there’s something we need to correct, we correct it without judging it.

Nondual thinking, again, is a discipline.

As an example, it took me about two years to master taking myself into a trance for middle-of-the-day napping through an eyelid relaxation technique that God gave me to master.  Now it’s second nature.

It takes time to establish these disciplines, and there is no time like the present to commence such a thing.  Essentially, through the process of contemplation — a conscious contact with ourselves and God in our thinking — we trap right/wrong, good/bad, judgmental thoughts and repent of them.

This is not a repentance that has anything to do with feeling guilty or ashamed.  We just simply turn and go back to our appreciative thinking processes.

Emotional

I want to raise here that none of our emotions are to be judged, because they can better be cherished.  We feel how we feel.  Rather than say, “naughty boy (or girl),” we’d be better to observe the feeling — sorrow, fear, worry, etc — and sit in those moments and find a way to thank God for divine presence in the midst of them.  This is what is termed divine lament or the practice of spiritual lament.  It’s an honouring of the truth.

We don’t need to run from it through denial.  Neither do we need to berate ourselves or attack others in our anger, for much sorrow and fear protrudes as anger and as I said it only leads to heartache (Psalm 37:8 above).

Healing is the quest to acknowledge all emotion as beautiful, God-given and God-ordained.  Our emotional truth is where God is.  In our lament we will find God, and most assuredly we will know God more through an intransigent love that we cannot comprehend.

In Christian circles, and particularly for pastors and elders, there has been too much quashing of the emotions — our faith has become too cerebral.  We are entire beings capable of experiences we cannot even unpack, such is the global mystery in and about us.  See how fearfully and wonderfully made we are?

Spiritual

The spiritual dimensions in recovery can never be underestimated.  We’re spiritual beings living in a spiritual world where there are many spiritual forces at play.

Spiritual warfare is real and we quickly realise when we’re under spiritual attack that we’re not dealing with flesh and blood but of evil schemes of powers and principalities in the demonic realm.  Sound a bit kooky?  To some it does, I know.  But it’s real.

We do well to imagine narcissists don’t care because they know no other way, and they’re being used as instruments of wickedness and evil even though they too are made in the image of God.  We must remember this.

The role of wise intercessors is important from the spiritual dimension.  That people pray when and as they feel led.  The best intercessors also have much gifting in wisdom and discernment — a compassionate spirit — and they’re committed to doing no harm.

Relational

The relational dimensions of healing are crucial.  The empathy of those who believe our story overall, but who don’t take sides, because they know that that is not only pointless, but that it’s both inappropriate and incongruent with the goal to heal.

What is wrong will not be made more right by more words, but in support we can still listen and affirm so the pus from the wounds may seep free.

There is much healing in safe expression; in listening and empathising.  We focus on the feelings without constantly pathologizing the situation that led to the trauma, but some allowance for this needs to be made, particularly early on.  Sometimes it will feel like Groundhog Day, as the trauma spills forth again and again.  There must be space, patience and grace for it.  It can co-exist with a forward-looking narrative.  Processes that allow for the forwards-backwards-forwards flow of a recovery journey are important.

There is also healing in having an accountability partner who can gently guide a redemptive repentance when trauma bleeds into impacting others.  All situations are redeemable provided we’re humble enough to own our contribution to conflict.  There is no punishment in repentance, only freedom.

We need those who can hold us in our pain, withhold judgment, and who urge us on toward hope for a purpose beyond the pain — how God will use it for divine glory, like in the theology of 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, when Paul talks about how we pass onto others the comfort we receive from God through others.  This is usually what makes ministers out of us.

This is the redemptive purpose in suffering and it always offers hope if we can just ward against the folly of getting stuck down the salty marshes of resentment and bitterness of Ezekiel 47:11 and move on downstream to Ezekiel 47:12 where good fruit blossoms from within the healed heart and becomes apparent in the fruit of the Spirit.

Those who sit shivah with us in our traumatic grief are paraclete friends, indeed with wisdom that rubs off in tangible healing.

~

Recovery from abuse is a complex and necessarily slow process.  Safe harbour is needed.  A place where grace and the fruit of the Spirit abides.  There is only growth when there is safety.

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Awareness and Action In Spiritual Attack

The enemy of God, like talons into flesh,
Is desperate to cause hateful ructions,
His desire is to enmesh,
Where spiritual friends are stretched,
And then become foes,
We all need to know,
His desire is to increase all our woes.
But when we see, what they are, the devil’s cheap designs,
We call him to account,
Along the Saviour’s saving lines.

***

Never underestimate the devil’s snarky designs woven into the lattice of spiritual warfare. Awareness is the key. As soon as we become aware of the attack, we call him on it; not in anger, but in the Power of the Holy Spirit; in calmness, that God’s will always prevails, knowing that God is on our side!

***

Ah, to recognise the wiles of Satan!

The moment of recognition, the apparition of awareness, even in that moment, to swing back to the Lord and allow God the opportunity to crush the hateful, cheap design; this is one of the most powerful blessings of God in redeeming the moment as God’s and God’s alone.

Spiritual people must know the presence of evil as it is personified through the spirit of the Accuser as he slinks back and forth, conniving as a Jezebel to cause trouble.

The more benefit we may be to the Kingdom of God the more we may realise just how annoyed the enemy of God is.

When we comprehend even a snippet of the truth regarding the heavenly realm here on earth, even in this present moment as we read, we begin to understand the contest for our spirits. The devil has this conquest with God—a forlorn conquest that was defeated 2,000 years ago—but he would rather fool us in our lack of awareness.

We see not the attack in many conflicts we are required to negotiate. Love is the way.

We see not the attack in many derisions of spiritual disharmony. Stillness is the way.

We see not the attack when we doubt God. Faith is the way.

We see not the attack when we are despairing. Hope is the way.

When we see the attack in these situations and more, and we turn, repenting in the moment, we can say, “I see what this is about, Lord. Thank you for helping me. I am yours and you are mine. Protect me at the hand of the evil one, by making me to refocus on you, on calmness, on hope amidst the torment, and peace to transcend it. I invoke the Risen Power of the Lord Jesus Christ over this, through the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

***

We receive great power when we call upon the Holy Spirit in the midst of spiritual attack. This is our act of obedience by repentance in simply turning back to God by our awareness.

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The courage of, “I can’t deal with these emotions, BUT I will”

I just love the courage of people who go into counselling rooms and bear their heart and soul in the faith that they can grow.  Inevitably, those who find the courage to open up do in fact grow.  God is indeed faithful.

But of course, this can be one of the hardest things to do; to take that first step, to open up, to trust, and to let the words teem out of the mouth.  It’s the overcoming of many fears:

§     “What if I communicate something wrong?” 

§     “What if nothing comes out?” 

§     “What if what I say is rejected; then what?”

§     Etc.

This is something that was vocalised to me recently.  “I can’t deal with these emotions, BUT I will.”  Said through tears of brokenness, this utterance epitomised the state of the person who will most definitely grow.  From a place of nothingness comes the trust to gallantly enter the unknown.

What this is saying is, “BECAUSE these emotions floor me, I MUST do something about them.”  The very thing that disables us is a thing that we must strive to overcome.  It may take a while.  It may even take a miracle.  But faith is the antecedent of miracles!

If a person presses in upon the trigger point, within the safety of a therapeutic relationship, where everything about the relationship is upside — in that there is only gentle encouragement and unconditional acceptance of limits, where the client is in complete control — there WILL be a breakthrough.  There will be breakTHROUGHS.  Plural.  However small the breakthroughs might seem to some, they’re always significant and life-changing for those who have them.

Whenever any of us are honest we identify that we all have a trigger point or three that can manipulate our emotions in a nanosecond.  This is nothing new and it certainly isn’t anything to be fearful of or to be avoided.

But inevitably we do avoid this territory.  We characteristically want the easier way, and this causes us to make a decision for a short-term comfort rather than our long-term benefit.

I often say that the best decisions are hard to make in the short-term, but they inevitably are a blessing in the longer term.  Our worst decisions, on the other hand, are based in wanting the easy way, which inevitably becomes the hard way.

Whenever we cannot deal with our emotions, it’s the best invitation of all to explore it.

This is always best done with another person, because there’s power in finding words for what we often feel are inexpressible things.  Another human being, especially a pastorally gifted person, will not only listen, but they’ll ask poignant questions to unlock what is needed to be known, and they’ll also listen for what’s not being said.  A gifted pastor or counsellor will journey into the unknown with their person being helped, and when both trust the Holy Spirit, miracles of understanding, perception, realisation, revelation and confidence can occur.

If only more people would say, “I can’t deal with these emotions, and because that’s the case, now I WILL.”

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“The best way out is always through.” —Robert Frost

“If you’re going through hell, keep going” is a quote attributed to Winston Churchill, and it is so true to life.  And when we combine these two quotes together, the Frost quote with the Churchill quote, we get a salient process for resilience.

The Frost quote highlights that the shortest journey is a straight line between origin and destination; if a grief journey started where it did, and it ends sometime in a notional new normal, the shortest distance between those two points is the distance of daily honesty as we process our loss, with honesty being the crucial mediator of that direct path course.

Some days we will be ahead and some days we will be behind.

Overall, as we traverse the journey by patience, denying very little or none of it, we ultimately reach that point where life begins again in the shortest duration possible — which is usually way longer that we were initially prepared for.

The only best way through is directly through the middle.

The Churchill quote is somewhat different.  It highlights the fact that we will often feel like giving up or going the easier route.  But we must keep going if we are to avoid staying in the tormenting barrenness of hell, and it can be hellish to continue to tug at the edges of grief without tussling with its core.

But there are also days when all we can do is tug at the edges.  Days that undo our resolve, that plunge us further into the grief and despair.  Days and seasons like this we need our support, our rest, our gentleness, and not our judgement or anyone else’s for that matter.

The long drawn out affair of recovering from loss is only negotiated via the direct path when we have a vision of faith that will call us all the way through.

Such a faith is a promise held on the heart, not so much a bargaining chip, as a shimmering reminder of the firm hope we hold to.  Such a faith as already reached the other side.  Faith such as this calls us from the other side to come toward it.  Faith as this comes from the heart and cannot be denied.

The difference between whether we make it through grief or not, is usually faith.  We must always hold to a purpose beyond the present hardship.  Something must call us to it.  Or, perhaps the best is, someONE would call us to him, because of the situation: Jesus.

One of the best things we can do when our life has been ripped apart by grief is submit to multiple safe supports: 

§     doctors for a mental health care plan,

§     including a plan for improving sleep, diet and exercise,

§     a church or small group for fellowship, 

§     mentors who will listen and encourage, 

§     friends who will be present.

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