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.

Experiencing Grace Within Grief

“Trouble and anguish have come upon me,

but your commandments [Lord] are my delight.”

— Psalm 119:143 (NRSV)

Spiritual confusion overwhelms us within our emotions many times in this life; we become perplexed by overload or relational conflict or we are frustrated when our goals are thwarted. We may enter dry times where our experience of God runs thin to unfulfilling. There are many causes of desperation and we all know those places; some more than the many.

But the Christian is invited—by the Word of God—to hold in tension two very different realities. It is possible to have trouble and anguish, whilst pushing ever more ardently onward in our relationship with God. And what occurs is wondrous.

When we honour our grief in such ways as to carry it to the truth—to reside there for a while; not shirking the deal—we enter a process of healing. It doesn’t occur overnight, of course. Indeed, the notion of being healed is still some distance off.

We venture by truth and we call it faith.

Experiencing Saving Grace Whilst Hurting

When life is messy and its chaotic nature has had us frequently giving up, and where we feel we have failed more times than is any more relevant, we get to a place where quality of life doesn’t mean much any more. There are so many things that have gone wrong we cannot any longer see the things that do provide hope.

Going to God in the most extreme bouts of exasperating despair reconciles to us this saving grace that anyone can know; to experience a moment’s healing, perhaps the day after. Mixed with this going-to-God process has to be our best attempts to please God by simple biblical obedience.

This is not a works theology. It’s about taking responsibility for the things we can control. We work with God this way, the best we can; we are never expected to be perfect. God sees our intent, however faltering it is, and he blesses it.

That’s why we know it’s not a works theology; it’s all about intent. We honour God because we love God. It’s as simple as that. And it is possible to honour God by our intent even in the darkest hours.

***

God’s power can break through the toughest of times and speak into our anguish. Due our surrender at times when we are overwhelmed, we are given a miraculous power that allows us to hold on when we feel like giving up.

Grace is both peace and power. And we need both when the pit of lament has suckled us to itself. This power in grace manifests itself in peace. Suddenly we have acceptance and some relief from the pain. God has transformed it.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Searching Out the Healer Within

“We are living in days where our wounds have become all too visible.”

— Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)

The danger in life stated above is a perennial danger; it has existed since the dawn of time. We would prefer to run our own game and avoid our healing.

It’s such a damning contrast to the original plan God set out for us. We do need God to continually remind us of the importance of Christian living, especially when we are so apt to become betrayers of God. We have become our own worst enemies when we take every route to healing but the one that works.

The only route to healing that works is truth: TRUTH.

What I determine the above quote to mean is this: in this age, where sinfulness reigns (oh but for a little time—with heaven on the horizon) our very wounds ingratiate and embarrass us by many forms of outward action: gossip, slander, anger, anxiousness, etc. These wounds are of emotional origin and they were instilled in us by many degrees of violating disorder (abuse and neglect), whether our loved ones knew it at the time or not.

The Opportunity of a Lifetime

But we have an opportunity in this age where self-control over emotional expression has such frustrating limits.

The opportunity we all have is to ambush the source of our wounds and reclaim the visibility of them. This we do by so respecting and adoring the truth that we commit ourselves to it with such regular ardency that we ensure it becomes best friend.

Truth is the objective and the focus of our process. The outcome then tends to be—by the factor of the amount of truth applied to our lives—that we are more comfortable within ourselves.

The source of truth within—all truth’s revelation—is the Holy Spirit. We have to search out the Healer within. And we do so by abiding in and with the truth.

This opportunity of a lifetime is to be healed by God’s Spirit, but that can’t occur unless we genuinely trust God. Many people call God their Saviour, but they do not go on into the fullness of their salvation. Let’s not ever make that mistake.

***

God desires that we all be healed, and we all need it. We enlist the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us by abiding to all our truths—particularly the uncomfortable ones, the shameful ones, and the fearful ones. Healing makes all these more palatable and manageable. Only God’s Spirit can heal us.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

In the World But Not of the World

The Christian straddles the balance beam of life. They are required to discern the favour of God from within the evil empires and principalities with which they live—and then execute God’s transient will. This is the exercise of moral discernment to a level hardly known, unless through teaching they are blessed or through experience they have learned the hard way.

Not including the influence of spiritual attack, learning, openness and humility are keys to divining this Spiritual web of intrigue.

People may run to the Lord Jesus Christ in a bout of traumatic uncertainty as to their very existence, but they soon learn that being a Christian—whilst it is the most blessed reality possible in this life, and for the hope in it beyond this life—it’s a hard life, at least initially, and also in enduring pressing seasons that intervene within our lives at many points unknown.

How are we to live this life when we are trapped between the splendiferous realities of eternity? We think there is heaven on earth—in certain respects—but then there is heaven! Go figure. Then we experience the hellishness of this life and we forget altogether the vast expanses of bliss saved just for us that are now only just out of reach.

How are we to go about our daily business—our going out and coming home and all the things between—when we are to satisfy the Audience of One whilst simultaneously getting on with many problematic relationships and tormenting schedules amongst the frenetic fears and anxieties that find themselves clung to us?

To be in the world but not of the world is the call of Christ on our lives.

This call of Christ in our lives is probably the most central call given, but we cannot also help but to live in the world. God mandates that we live! Life and breath we have for this reason.

We will be tempted by so many things, and so many things will entrap us. Then the devil will condemn us and we will allow it to occur, until we realise that God is no stickler; the one and only true Deity, full of grace.

Being in the world but not of the world helps us to honour God, but we need great discernment and then courage to allow and then facilitate the passage of God’s will as we execute it in our daily lives.

***

Living in the world but not being of the world is a Christian’s key purpose. It requires skilled discernment of awareness and the courage to commit and recommit to the Lord’s way. It is our daily challenge; our daily walk.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

God, Make Me a Man

“God, make me a man with thick skin and a soft heart. Make me a man who is tough and tender. Make me tough so I can handle life. Make me tender so I can love people. God, make me a man.”

— Darrin Patrick, Church Planter (2010)

On the day of my induction to pastoral ministry at Lakeside Baptist Church in Perth, Western Australia, the very day I write this in fact, I was given this quote, above, that rings with the drone of ancient truth through the Spirit in me. It was given to me by a younger man, a high-performance athlete, a man after the heart of God in being a real man; a man I have the utmost respect for because of the ardency through which he adheres to the truth in his life. So, when he gave me a special hand-written note—with the quote inscribed within it—it was the most treasured object and interaction I took from the day.

The note was both an encouragement and a challenge.

I could not help exploring this wisdom from God through his faithful servant. The note was signed off, “Much love & HAZAK.” An encouragement and challenge.

Be Strong (Hebrew: Hazak)

The core of the message, the precious ore that is reclaimed in the words, presented as a stockpile of manly beauty, is to be strong. But to be strong is to be shrewd around what it really means.

To have thick skin and a soft heart is no easy task; perhaps there is nothing harder. But this is the inevitable task for the man of God—the man resonating Christ from within and permeating outwards.

The prayer I was given reflects the prayer I’m sure God wants all of us men to pray. Being that it’s a prayer from the Spirit of God, himself, to me, through this faithful brother in Christ, it shall be my prayer now, too.

To be strong is not much to do with physical strength, though at the same time it is everything about the application of courage that underpins physical strength in the heat of battle. It seems to me that the strength we apply in a physical battle is that selfsame strength we apply in a spiritual battle. It comes from within; from the Holy Spirit within, bound upon our obedience to the Spirit.

Such strength to “be strong” is manifest in the perfect balance of having thick skin yet a soft heart; a thing I will now ever strive for. Thick skin is for the challenges and pressures of life—some of which are relational. A soft heart is all relational; the ability to allow others their success even if at a personal cost.

***

God, make me a man; honest with myself, honest with others as much as you will allow, and above all honest with you. My honesty will join your blessing to make me thick-skinned yet soft-hearted. Then I will be a man. AMEN.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Dedicated to Ben Beran.

3 Keys to Kindness

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”

— George Sand[1]

We can well imagine for all the life in us how we are to live the most prosperous of lives. Most of us think that. Most of us want that; the access to and the ability to enjoy abundance. How do we gain such a life? What investment is required?

If we accept we live in an upside-down world where those who take are taken from and where those who give receive even more, we are well placed to receive this truth.

Kindness is at the heart of blessing; that sort of other-centredness that has us rejecting the overtures of the flesh, yet clamouring with any minds for how we might serve another.

Kindness is at the heart of blessing.

It bears repeating and that’s why I have repeated it. Kindness is at the heart of blessing.

There are at least three tangible ways we express kindness:

1.      Giving without hesitation: holding things lightly is a great blessing in itself. It proves we are directed by the Holy Spirit so far as our decisiveness is concerned. Because we cannot take to heaven any material thing, besides perhaps our character of soul, we should be motivated to give without hesitation. When we give without hesitation others receive what we give with more genuine appreciation.

2.      Losing without regret: when things disappear from our grasp we have a choice how we receive those losses. We are not blown by many winds if we have removed the sails of our greed. Nothing that disappears is entirely regrettable, but we must think past grappling for the thing that has gone.

3.      Acquiring without meanness: because we can take things in this life, as they lay there physically within our grasp, we may often forget the morality of acquiring. Things should only be acquired at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons. In acquiring there is never any good in leaving a sour taste in someone else’s mouth.

***

Kindness is at the heart of blessing. It’s the consummate manifestation of love. When we give without hesitation, lose without regret, and acquire without meanness we come close to this thing called kindness. There is no better legacy than kindness.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

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[1] a.k.a., Baroness Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin (1804–1876)

The Only Right Way To Give Up

 

Giving up can sometimes be the easiest thing we could do and sometimes it’s the hardest. Depending on what it is we are considering giving up, and whether we even seem to have a choice or not, makes a big difference. Giving up smoking is a completely different matter than giving up a health and fitness program because it seems too hard at the time.

So, what is the right way to give up when giving up is either a very good thing or an extremely bad thing, depending on circumstance?

Perhaps we need to boil it down and reduce it to the only way we should give up: to give over our will to God. This is the only right way to give up: to give in to the Spirit of God as we discern it in truth.

When we have given up our will to God, ever prepared to implement what we discern, we have both the information and power to give up what is good to give up and to sustain what we shouldn’t give up.

This way of giving up—of giving our will to God, to be massaged, moulded and formed by his Spirit—is the only way we begin with a basis that honours the truth in wisdom. Such an honouring of truth will be blessed and not cursed, for we have entrusted ourselves to God who knows and provides every good way.

God alone holds our present and future in the palm of his hand, and by our decisions we are made.

Whenever we find ourselves surrendering to God, alone, we find ourselves at peace; we experience this serene sense for joy; our eyes are opened to love—to see what we should see; and we detect other Fruit of the Spirit permeating within and from without us.

This sort of giving up—of giving up our will to God, alone—is the only blessed sort of giving up there is. All other forms of giving up should commence from this one. And if one form of giving up doesn’t rest in the will of God, it isn’t for us to take any further; we should dismiss it.

***

We’re all tempted to give up and there are some things, no matter how hard we try, that we don’t seem to be able to give up. Giving up is not the point. The point is giving up our will to know and do the will of God. Giving up should have every basis (or it has no basis) from the datum mark of God. God gives us power to give up the bad and to sustain the good, but we must do his will.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.