Six Paths to An Outcome

CHANGE affects us all in different ways, but just the same, we respond to change in much the same way.  But our responses are not set for life.  Our responses to life’s difficulties and disappointments are our responsibility to control.  We have the ability to respond well.

When something happens to us, we’re in the place of having a choice what our response will be.

Here are six possible outcomes of response:

1.     Something bad happens and we use the issue to rail hard against life for plunging us into an abyss.  The trouble isn’t responding like this, but landing in this outcome that anchors us in bitterness.  The outcome is to become stuck in the seething rage of resentment manifest in passive aggressiveness.

2.     When something bad happens we decide the pain of responding to the issue is too great a cost.  How will we know if faith will serve us well, i.e. is it worth it?  We deny the reality and therefore decide not to adapt to the learning and fail to grow.  The outcome is to become stuck in a comfortable place of spiritual sameness, in boredom and of being boring.

3.     Something horrendous takes place and nothing happens.  No response is made.  It’s as if nothing bad happened at all.  Total denial.  Until you’re reminded of the outcome when you don’t expect it and then you turn panicked or run in the moment to cynicism.  Disparaging the situation or outcome won’t help, however.  Running won’t, either.  In response to future upsets, the cynic behaves like a child.  The one given to panic learns to inwardly fear the unknowable future.

4.     Change pierces the comfortable divide in our lives and it levels us, and the trauma becomes something we must overcome.  Indeed, it’s trauma.  We bear the marks of post-traumatic stress.  But we refuse to stay there, committing what’s within us to the journey to coping.  And, over the following years and decades, coping becomes our response.  God proves faithful.

5.     As change moves us into a new and challenging season we commit prematurely to a stoic response, without truly processing the costs of change, and feeling the losses for what they are.  The outcome is initially a good one, but it’s fraught with danger.  When the test comes, we fracture under pressure.  But cracking under pressure is not the end of the story; God gives us the ability to learn as part of the following sixth response.

6.     Changes rocks us, and for a time we’re backwashed into an emotional stupor, but in time we recover, and despite the ups and downs of recovery, we learn to reflect, buckle in humility, and ultimately we learn.  God speaks.  We listen.  God advises us to lean in and endure the besmirching reality.  The outcome is we move through the groaning passage of loss and our grief, and, through openness to learning, we acquire new resilience, wisdom and understanding.

***

Some things in life,

Do surely condemn,

Things bringing strife,

When we need a friend.

God is one,

Who when we’d ensconce,

Helps ensure what’s done,

Is our best response.

The harder we meet change, the more likely it is that we’ll feel its full force and adapt best.

Our responses to life’s difficulties and disappointments are our responsibility.  Taking responsibility is empowering, just as refusing to take responsibility is a bondage.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Take Heart When Life Goes Against You

Bear with me in reading the following long quote:

“In the walk of faith there is a sound that is impossible for us to get used to; it often comes abruptly, and it always happens surprisingly.  It’s inaudible, but it is powerful.  And most of us can name specific places and times in our lives when we heard that sound.  And I’m referring to the sound that occurs when God closes a door.  The thing that makes it most difficult is that we usually misinterpret that sound.  It often comes on the heels of a strong commitment to obedience, being filled with the Spirit, going through a season of prayer, often over weeks of time, followed by hard work, diligent effort, the counsel of others… and then SLAM, that door shuts.  And to make it even more difficult, following the closing of the door, there’s silence, deafening silence… God’s silence.”

— Charles R. Swindoll, When God Closes a Door

You are not in control of your life, no matter how much you insist you are.  Yes, this particularly applies to those who hate God.  God proves that He controls everything.  And that doesn’t make anyone happy, including Christians.  But it’s a fact.  Christians and non-Christians need to get used to it.

Nobody likes it.  The non-Christian says, “Yes, there you go, a ‘loving’ God would not let good people suffer!”  The Christian says, “But, I’ve been living a good and godly life; and now this!”  For the Christian, lament is permissible.  But lament is worse than a waste of time for the non-Christian, because they complain to others and end up with a bad name.  The Christian rails against God, to God, and finds that God allows such railing — in fact, He designed it.  It’s an important kind of prayer.  But that, in itself, doesn’t seem to help much in the midst of anguish… only later is it seen to have helped.

There are times in our lives when, for no apparent reason, a door slams closed.  At such times life’s so unfair.  Our misfortune runs counter to what we expect.  And then, silence?  From God?  We wonder what that’s about.  We imagine some of our Atheist friends having a chuckle; not that we’re suffering, but that God is somehow proven (in their eyes at least) to be impotent.  But what they don’t count on is our faith — that backs a faithful God.  Such a faith proves that God does in fact exist, just as such a faith inspires an acceptance for something nobody can change — life, in the ultimate sense, is beyond anyone’s control.

So if we would pursue a real faith we must know that such a faith can only be procured in the testing.  When life goes against us.  Otherwise faith is window dressing.

Take heart when life goes against you.  God is for you, necessarily in His silence, in fortifying your faith.

He chose us.  We must choose Him.  When He’s silent.  And if at the first sign of vacuous darkness we depart, we choose comfort from a liar, because there’s no comfort in darkness without faith in the Lord.

The ultimate expression of faith is choosing to be still before God when He’s silent.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

The Gambler’s Psychology for Life, Happiness, Success

You never count your money
when you’re sittin’ at the table,
there’ll be time enough for countin’
when the dealin’s done.

— Kenny Rogers, The Gambler (written by Don Schlitz)

Life offers up plenty of surprises, and the conversation that occurs between a gambler and a fellow traveller highlights the wisdom of an old-timer who learned the wisdom of life, supposedly, from his poker games.

The gambler picks that the traveller is down on his luck.  They travel aboard a train bound for nowhere, which is often the train on which gamblers end up.  The gambler’s there perchance.  His conversation with the traveller is his legacy, for a nip of whisky, a cigarette and a light.  The deal done, things get quiet, and the mood changes from frivolity to frankness.

The gambler knows what he knows about people who gamble by simply looking at their eyes.  Studies of body language make it possible to predict with some accuracy where others are at.  Body language, expression, and gestures are cues.  If we’re sufficiently interested in other people, motivated by actual love for them, God can give us the ability to see them.

As for the chorus of the song, here is what I believe the gambler is saying to us:

Know when to hold ‘em: retaining what we should keep, no matter the temptation to sell.  This is especially true about the spiritual things we’re to retain.  This is a spiritual matter.  Spiritual acquisitions of God are precious and priceless.

Know when to fold ‘em: giving away that which we should not keep.  Parts of our characters we need to let go of.  The rough edges God, by cruel experience, is burnishing off us.

Know when to walk away: when we’re behind before we get too far behind.  It takes a mature person to quit ventures trending to nowhere before things get dramatically worse.

Know when to run: when we’re ahead, we run, before we get behind.  Not being greedy, we get to run from that which could be a sweet temptation to stay when we shouldn’t.

When to Count Our Winnings

Only in clear sight of transition is it the right time to review what happened; what we walked away with.  We don’t count our chickens before they’ve hatched, because some might just be unfertilised eggs, suitable only for eating.  We don’t count our winnings at the table, because they’re not ours yet.  Only when we’ve run can we do such a thing.  This applies to all performance.  Do the performance mindfully, and when the performance is over, then conduct the review.

***

The secret to survival is knowing what to chase from what to leave alone.  Sometimes we’re winners, and sometimes we’re losers.  Nobody holds the aces on victory, just as nobody owns defeat.

It’s true that the gambler says, “the best thing you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”  To not have to experience death consciously is about the best way to do death, given that we all must experience such a morbid end.  And when the gambler, he rolled over, ready for that sleep, the song tells us he “broke even,” which is a gambler’s way of understanding he died.  In death we break even, for all we gained and lost in life is then put in a box.

Our circumstances in life are the cards we’re dealt; the way we play our hand speaks about our choices.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Postscript: whilst I deplore gambling for its addictive qualities that produce no end of personal and social problems, I couldn’t get past the incredible wisdom in this song, as a metaphor for applying wisdom to life.  Learn the wisdom, but please don’t gamble!

Feeling All Your Emotion, Thinking With All Your Mind

“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that we cannot bear the pain.  But we have already borne the pain.  What we have not done is feel all we are beyond that pain.”

— Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931)

Often we think much of capping our feelings in order to control them, and certainly a lot of the time we need to.  Sometimes our feelings swarm and threaten to overwhelm us.  But what if they did?  We might suffer another panic attack.  Yet in controlled circumstances we might be able to venture safely into the fear of such an event in order to let God heal us of our fear.  I don’t suggest you do this anytime soon without having consulted people trained and competent in such expertise.  The point is we fear our emotions to such an extent we’re likely to avoid them, and in the process avoid the healing we could experience for simply enduring the emotion by engaging in the fullness of the feeling.

It’s the same with our thinking.  We’ve got everyday opportunities, each moment of every day, where we can engage the senses and become intentionally mindful.

We may think too much, but that isn’t the type of mindfulness that leads to the power of being present.  That type of analytical thought usually bogs us down in dread.  Being mindful is the practice of conforming the mind to God-willed and God-glorifying thought — a type of obedience; the practice of prayer, as much as anything is, provided we’re praising or thanking God in our thoughts.

Feeling With All Our Emotions

One way to harness all our fear is to intrepidly venture into the fullness of our feelings.  Again, we design a safe place and way of doing it, with safe people around to catch us if we might fall.

One thing that goes with courage, in venturing into the fullness of our feelings, is its polar opposite: vulnerability.  We never think that courage and vulnerability are anything close, until we realise that to stand in the presence of one’s horror, we’re both courageous and vulnerable.  No self-protection was afforded to us, and to feel the weight of our emotions is an empowering permission we can give to ourselves.

Thinking With All Our Minds

This practice doesn’t seem quite as risky as feeling with all our emotions.  But it’s just as scary, as we give God permission to reveal whatever He will during our deliberations.

Thinking with all our minds can produce through us some crazy, inane, and even some insane thoughts.  We have to trust them all in the Presence of God within us.

Thinking with such intention is the removal of all distractions, even a meditative state of mind.

***

We can be more if only we can endure more of what we actually feel and think.  There is nothing to be fearful of, and, when we commit to feeling the fullness of our emotion, we empower our mind to think with might.  Facing what we actually feel and think is a boon for a self that normally kowtows to society’s norms, where it’s easier to deny.

When we permit ourselves to feel the weight of our emotions, we permit God to heal us, for the more honestly we feel, the better we think, the stronger we grow in bearing our weakness, the greater we enjoy life.

We’ve already sustained ourselves in the rawness of the experience of our pain.  Now is the opportunity to feel it for what it was.  Now is the time to thank God for the fortitude He gave us to hold up under such trauma.  Face it and heal.  Do so with your spiritual director.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Who’s to Judge the Length of a Person’s Grief?

Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness.  It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love.  The only cure for grief is to grieve.

— Earl A. Grollman

At a time when we’ve recently ‘celebrated’ two years since a significant grief started, I’ve often wondered how others honestly perceived me and us in this social media age.  I’m an avid blogger, as you the reader will know.  I’ve written about two-hundred articles on our personal journey since July 1, 2014.  Overall, I’ve written nearly six-hundred on grief and loss.  I’m acutely aware that writing so much is ingratiating for some.  I feel called to write on whatever God places on my heart, but the social media age can bring with such expression the idea of ‘enough already’ in those who receive my posts.  I do understand that that can lead to negative perceptions, which is a cost of expression.

Recently I heard about a woman who had been abused by a Facebook friend for apparently posting too much about her loss.  A lady I’m acquainted with posted a photograph of the text message, worried that someone might do the same to her.  She and her partner had lost their baby at 59-days-old.  Shattered by her loss, her grief found safe harbour within a special group to which I belong — because of our loss.  Only six months have passed.  The baby she had long prayed for, the baby that was hers, hers to enjoy, had Pallister-Killian Syndrome (PKS) — the syndrome our deceased son had.  Nobody can comprehend the journey she’s been on, least of all herself or her partner and their family.  Nobody.

To read words like those in the picture above is infuriating in one sense, and bewildering in another.  Infuriating because nobody gets to say those words to someone bereaved.  Bewildering because there are many out there who think people just need to harden up a little — and nothing anyone says will convince them otherwise.

The point I want to make is this: who can legitimately judge the length, or the expression, of a person’s grief?  And how unfair is it, that, given our grief must be expressed, that the only cure for grief is to grieve, people find they cannot bear those who grieve during this time; that they might find those who grieve ingratiating.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past thirteen years of experiencing a series of losses, it’s that grief lasts longer than we would ever like or anticipate.  And the irony is, the person grieving has had enough of the grief long before anyone on the periphery would complain of them being ingratiating.

Love is measured in how well we bear the burden of others.  It is better than somebody else experiences loss, and that we have the privilege of support, than such loss strikes us.

If someone has experienced loss, let us love them by giving them plenty of space to express how they feel, with no limit of time.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

The Hardest Thing to Learn About Brokenness

“There was a time in my life when I would fight and work hard at vindicating myself, [but] through a process of years and the dregs of painful experiences, I have learned that I’m unqualified to do that, furthermore I do not learn when I’m busy about defending myself.  It also distracts me from my calling, which is all part of the enemy’s plan.  It’s easy to forget all that when there are spears coming your way.”

— Charles R. Swindoll, The School of Brokenness

The purpose of life is not learned at the pinnacle, more so at the precipice.  The purpose of life is learned in the abyss; in clawing our way out through a hope that vanished long ago, that is clung to anyway.  The purpose of life becomes apparent when an old life is discontinued for a new one that hasn’t arrived yet.  Yes, in the now-but-not-yet reality, in the land-between-land.

The purpose of life can actually become apparent in crucible of criticism.  If we stay the moment in faith.

When we face the crucible of criticism, and for a time spiral into the abyss, what have we with which to respond?

Nothing.  It’s not our turn to react to the spears that whistle into our orbit in alignment with the Doppler effect.  We let them whistle past us; through us if necessary.  We have no purpose fighting.  The purpose of life is not learned through fighting back; it’s hidden through taking vengeance.  The purpose of life is learned through a humble reliance on God to vindicate our cause (Psalm 37:5-6) in His time and in His way.  Even if that means death in the meantime.  And rarely does it ever mean death, but it frequently means death to the self.

To react out of the indignation of pride, we should soon learn, is to wreak a disaster of repute we can all do without.  All of us do things wrong.  We will get it wrong from time to time.  There will be regrettable embarrassments.  But we’re right when we don’t fight back, and only wrong when we do.  We best respond as if it didn’t happen, but without missing the lesson.  Rather that than offer up a list of excuses.

One of the hardest examples of brokenness is criticism.  Yet the best of brokenness is being broken to the point of learning acceptance.

***

Welcome the state of brokenness, for it holds open the purpose of life.  Brokenness is the calling of the truly spiritual person.  It makes us pliable to learn, to grow, to develop, to mature.

Only out of adversity, in due humility, do we turn inward the pain of reprisal, and cause that pain to be useful for a worthy response.

Stride into your calling.  Stride in with your eyes wide open.  Make testing an expectation of your daily reality.  Everything is a test.  Stop fighting.  Accept brokenness.

Being acceptably broken is about accepting we cannot fix broken situations.  We can only accept what we shouldn’t attempt to change.

The hardest thing to learn about brokenness is acceptance — to accept being broken.  Take heart, however, for the rest of life is easy.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

When You’ve No Idea What’s About to Hit You

10PM in the evening, and I sidle up to my pretty wife and say, “Guess what anniversary we’ve got coming up…?” [blank look from her] “July 1st?”  “Oh yeah,” she said.  That day will ever be etched in our hearts; those minutes of late morning, and the seconds that ticked with temerity onward.

Days before that now surreal day in 2014 we had no idea what forecast was coming.  On that July 1st we received our forecast — a storm coming with 100 percent likelihood for devastation to our regions.  We had no idea when it would hit, and that storm brewed for four full months of days — 122 of them.

Days before we received news that our foetus was on a collision course with death we had no idea how life for us would change.  And life did not revert back to what it was.  It changed and it remained changed.  It still is changed.

That’s our truth.  It’s all our truth.  None of us can readily prepare for news like we received that July 1st.  We never know how inextricably vulnerable we are in life until life gives us a situation that turns our lives upside down.

Should we live in constant fear of that shocking moment when a new normal is foisted upon us?  No, never.  But neither should we enjoy a listless life thinking all things will remain the same.  Change is coming.  And it breaks sometimes in a drizzle after a long period of sunshine, or as a confusing fog, or as a ferocious storm.  Equally, a storm may clear and the best of change makes its way into our lives; as quickly as that storm came, may come hope.

When we’ve no idea what’s about to hit us we’re forgiven for being naïve.  It’s okay.  We couldn’t have been expected to know beforehand.  And we can only wrestle with a new reality as it in fact comes.

Facts are realities ever real, sometimes too real, and yet God is good, in trusting us to learn of our capacity to bear what inevitably breaks us time and again.  Somehow it’s in being broken time and again that God wrings growth and change, as miracles, through us.  And, as such, faith is reckoned and made real.

We learn so much about the fateful reality of life when we’re blindsided, and though it’s cruel, it still has God’s purpose; an incredibly meaningful purpose if we’ll only endure.

None of us know when or if our lives will change, but we can know for certain that there will be change.  Be ready, not taking the present for granted.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

God of Hope, for Hope, Through Hope, Believing On Hope

God allows life’s disappointments so we learn His hope that transcends them all, to overcome despondency, to live solely at His direction.

God allows life’s disappointments… they’re a fundamental sign that God is sovereignly in control, yet, of a broken world, that He allowed everything, at our will, to come to be that way; but that He has the final teleological (purposeful) say.  That God allows us to do as we choose, and doesn’t intervene, is proof He’s sovereignly in control; He won’t be coerced by anyone or anything.  He cares how we feel, of course, and He has the fullest faith in each of us that we can respond in a godly way — to learn and grow in humility, onward toward maturity.

… so we can learn His hope.  This is the purpose of life’s disappointments.  When we accept we cannot beat our hardships away, we learn to tolerate the nature of reality: life is hard.  Most of us only finally grow when life makes us give up on ourselves to such an extent we reach out to God, finally, in all sincerity, broken, but about to be restored.

God’s hope transcends all of life’s disappointments, but not straight away.  We learn nothing if our struggles are whisked away as with a magic wand.  Learning is part of God’s telos.  His purpose is that we develop.  Not simply until we stop growing physically, but through the entire lifespan, our characters becoming as beacons for and of Jesus.

… to overcome despondency.  Despondency is something we all get to try on.  It’s a drape we put over ourselves, to wear when the devil’s convinced us that life isn’t worth it, when it’s too hard.  Only the true Spirit of God can help us overcome despondency even in the face of it.  It’s easy enough to deny how we feel, but that doesn’t help us, and getting angry doesn’t help either; it hinders, even destroys.  Relying on God is the only way to stare at the face of a horrid truth and overcome it through accepting it.

… to live solely at His direction.  This is the final telos.  God’s final purpose.  To get us onto His agenda to live accepting His agenda, to live for His agenda.  Think about it.  Life’s hard, right.  Yet life is often harder than it needs to be.  Living solely at His direction allows God to steer our ship, to give up our despair for His patient hope, to endure the screeching moment.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

A Paradox of Cruelty and Compassion

Mary Queen of Scots (1542 – 1587), having been born to the throne, was favoured through her childhood development, yet her contemporary, Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), was horribly treated, due to religious and political adversities, through her formative years.  Mary made a terrible, entitled queen who was thrown off the throne by her own people.  Elizabeth was a special queen who loved her people so much, her faithfulness to them suggested they were an extension of her own family.

The narrative of these two monarch’s lives is a litany of paradox.  One had life easier and had the capacity to be cruel, whilst the other had an arduous early life and became better for it.  This phenomenon isn’t depicted in every life situation, for many people who’ve had charmed lives are charming people, and many people who’ve been kicked around by the school of hard knocks are cynical.

Here’s the typical thing.  We ignore the hurts of others, most especially so when our own needs are taken care of.  But when we’ve suffered some horrible injustices we can develop an enhanced empathic capacity; the blessing outbound of brokenness, if we can transcend the temptation to bitterness that leads to cynicism.  Especially if there is some source of love we can draw hope from.

Then there is a truth that floors us suddenly: when we have all of life together — or we think we do — we’re only a moment from setting ourselves above the next person.  The moment we do that in our minds, even before we speak, we begin to think of those people as ‘those people’:

“We are ‘those people.’ The truth is… we are the others.  Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health diagnosis, one serious illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people” — the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our children play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.”

— Brené Brown

Sometimes when life is cruel God is amplifying our capacity for compassion.  We learn that we’re only one moment of life’s cruelness away from being humbled for God’s purposes.  Sometimes having life easy isn’t the best way to live.  We miss out on being exposed to the elements of reality.  We miss out on the fullness of life, which is sometimes indwelt with hardship and pain.

It’s an oft cruel life, but when life is cruel God helps by proving within us resilience.

Resilience and compassion.  Two budding hopes to push on through for when life is tough.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Time to Let Go

Time to let go of all worldly restraints,

Of wishes and dreams and all that taints,

Of fantasies and visions of what could be,

Time to let go of all I ‘must’ see.

Time to let go where bad intent blinds,

Where my sin and flesh weakness viscerally hides,

Where I look without when I ought more to look within,

Time to let go of this covetous sin.

Time to let go of all that this world holds,

Of ambition and status; to break those moulds,

Of hiding behind grandeur, the stuff of a dreamy con,

Time to let go of what I’d love to don.

Time to let go of things making no sense,

Of analysing thoughts of any pathetic defence,

Of making something ‘worthy’ of my cognitive function,

Time to let go of everything that looks like an injunction.

Time to let go where God’s not honoured,

Where fearful things are erroneously pondered,

Where there’s staring into space at the hopelessness of life,

Time to let go of all those situations of strife.

Time to let go, for once and for all,

Of circumstances that’ll make me most certainly fall,

Of situations where God won’t get to do as He wills,

Time to let go of everything that mortally chills.

***

Sometimes, many times in life, all the time, it’s time to let go.

Holding what we hold lightly; that’s the juice of life, for we hold on too tightly to the things we value, and we say, “I cannot live without you.”  But the truth is, we can.

When we hold all of what we’d call our own — ready to let go —
we’re ready to hold that which can never truly be ours.

Have the courage to let go,

In faith, one day at a time,

When each day is its own climb,

God’s peace you’ll know.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Overcoming the Moment Where Fear Overwhelms

C.S. Lewis once said that he was astounded how close grief was to the feeling of fear.

There are many things that implicate us in fear.  Certainly the grief of uncertainty, where the floor has fallen out of the security we had in life.  When life is irreparably changed.  There are situations we find implicitly fearful, where vulnerability takes the place of safety.  And then there’s our own minds, which cause us to fear things known and unknown, real and unreal.

Recently I had a moment, like so many other moments.

One moment where doubt shredded the present, and suddenly I felt boundless in the worst of ways.  Mentally, I considered giving up, right there, right then.  I was saying in my mind, “What’s the use?”  It was one of those instants where I would rather have not been alive.  My mind was amess with negativity; just in that moment.  Up until that moment, I’d been positive regarding the predicament I found myself in.  Yet all it took was a few seconds of spiritual attack, and I was again at the mercy of Satan — a place where there is no mercy.

Fortunately, the next moment God’s Presence reminded me to just become mindful — to stop focusing on the negativity, and to just become present and mindful again.

I found that simply concentrating on the task at hand, being present in doing that well, made me able to overcome the moment where fear threatened to overwhelm me.  And ten minutes later I was ever thankful for God’s Presence in that moment.

Being mindful helps us nullify negative thoughts, which makes us feel better and less fearful.

Engaging in mindfulness as prayer aligns our minds to the truths in God’s Word, to repel spiritual attack.

Iterations of fear are not entirely removed from our lives so we might learn to come back, again and again, to God through mindfulness as prayer.  It’s how we develop resilience.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Our Brokenness and Trust, God’s Sovereignty and Compassion

We all presumably know that a disciple’s life is one of submission and obedience; a trust of God, no matter what.  That’s faith in a nutshell.  To have faith we must trust, yet trust makes no sense if we don’t believe in God’s Sovereignty.  Why would we trust God if we didn’t believe He had total control?

God’s sovereignty is a latent factor, and so ought to be our trust.  But we usually don’t learn to trust in God’s sovereignty until we find we have to.  When life blows our house of cards down, we quickly realise how vulnerable we really are.  We begin to realise trust in God, however nebulous it seems, is truly the only viable and worthy trust.

I thank God for the experience of brokenness, for without that perishing feeling I have no need of God, but when I’m needy in His Presence, then I no longer perish because of His compassion.  And even as I perish in this daily life, I perish with the comfort of His Presence, which is nothing I can attain otherwise.

Perishing therefore is a prerequisite to experiencing the compassion of His Presence.

Experiences of momentary brokenness, where we have nothing left to hold from God, where our lives are held open in perfect submission, draw the experience of compassion only possible in the heart of God’s Presence.

I’ve previously written that, as soon as we’re able to trust God’s sovereignty, we’re a testimony of restoration.  See how God’s sovereignty takes us from brokenness to restoration in a moment?

When we trust God, because we believe in His sovereignty, we trust our brokenness to Him, and we experience God’s compassion.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Embracing The End to Come to a New Beginning

The purpose of the prayer of petition is not that God would hear our cries and answer our prayers immediately in the affirmative.  Rather, our prayers of petition ought to be for a hope to meet the demands of, and maybe transcend, the current tumultuous hour.

When we realise that requiring our prayers answered is actually a bargaining of God, which doesn’t work, we refuse to do go there, and instead prefer to meekly come to the end of ourselves so we can enter a realer, truth-honouring beginning — a truer hope.

Our plights, whatever they are, are what they are.

God won’t manoeuvre our lives to accede to our wish to be more comfortable.  It’s just not how God works.  Anyone who has lived a life of faith for even a short time should know that.  This is not pessimistic, just realistic, putting a cap on optimism.

It doesn’t stop us from wishing our dreams would come true.  We cannot stop hoping our dreams would come true.  We ought to accept this.  God knows our heart’s desires.  And we can trust God to advance us toward realising our dreams.  But we cannot go ahead of God, not if we want to stay sane.

Yet we inevitably do still get frustrated and even exasperated.  And with frustration and exasperation there is a purpose — God’s purpose.  He graciously allows us to make the choice when we’ve had enough of frustration and exasperation, to submit to His will.

When we come to the end of ourselves, we’re ready to come back to the beginning of life — God.  Accept life as it is, happily, this moment, and we live a Kingdom reality.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

The Point of Hardship Is What It Points To

God uses challenges and hardships for our refining,
But we must first look for the dark cloud’s silver lining.

There is always something to see in the dilemma at hand, if only we’re curious enough to seek God for the knowledge of it.  The trouble is we often respond very emotionally when we’re blindsided by situations and thoughts we didn’t anticipate.  We panic.  But, if we hold that moment, asking God to show us something new, He will.

Yes, He will.

The point of hardship is the learning within the situation itself, not the pain, though the pain will drive us to learn.

The time in the hardship that’s hardest is the in-between wrestling-with-conscious-pain time.  Most of us experience this sort of hardship weekly or at least monthly, and yet there are entire seasons where we wear hardship as a kind of parasite; the hourly task.

If we’re open to the fact, by faith, that God uses challenges and hardships for our refining, we complete the transaction, by becoming aware of this fact’s power, by simply looking for silver lining in this particular loathsome cloud.  It’s there alright!

God will always show us something new if we’re curious enough.  And that new thing will make the hardship tolerable, and in that we’re refined, and taught how to live as a disciple of Christ who can willingly bear and carry their cross.  And, be aware, the new thing of God is not something we could learn anywhere else, and don’t expect others to understand.  It’s between us and God.

***

The point of hardship is discovery; to learn how a setback can be turned into a comeback.

What about pain?  The point of pain is never the pain itself, but what the pain causes us to do.  Pain causes us to look deeper, to canvass wider, and to search longer, so our perspective becomes broader.

The point of hardship is it forces us to become curious, if we’re courageous enough to be open.  We only get curious if we don’t otherwise become cynical or compromise to cowardice.

With curiosity we’re able to see more readily the blessings right before our eyes.

Ultimately hardship points us to God, for the point of God, in pain, is He enters our hardship by the intimacy of example.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.

Emotion and Authenticity

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.”

— Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

I met with a guy once who felt men could never learn about their emotions from women.  I immediately thought that was crazy.  It’s mainly because emotions have nothing to do with gender.  Emotions are all about authenticity.  Wherever we can trust ourselves to a situation we can be emotionally present and demonstrate emotional intelligence.

In recovering from the breakdown of my first marriage, I used to think I was getting in touch with my feminine side.  It wasn’t that at all.  I was simply broken sufficiently enough that my defences were down to the point where authenticity was all I had left.

And thankfully that sense for authenticity stuck.

When you’re broken, day after day, month after month, when you’ve no longer got a defence, but you have a faith, and with that some sense for hope, even if it’s scant, you get used to being real.  Being inauthentic is no longer attractive.  Being emotionally false gains you nothing.  You wear your emotions externally.  Courage becomes you.  You’re not afraid of tear stains down your cheeks.  You’re not put off by a quivering chin and tear-glazed eyes.  Appearing ‘weak’ is not a deterrent.  And you begin to see the concepts referred to in the Bible as they come alive in you.  Then you realise this is how Jesus heals us.

***

Emotion and authenticity are inseparable.  If we’re authentic we’re at peace with our emotions, and no longer in fear of them to suppress them, which can only cause harm.

Being authentic is the journey through which we’re to gain emotional mastery.  Just because we have command over our emotions doesn’t mean we need to be ‘emotional’.

***

To be true, to be real, to be authentic, is to allow the safe expression of our emotion.

Trust our emotions and we trust God to heal us from the inside out.

And yet, we must understand trust is an ongoing journey.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.