10 Mini Philosophies for Transcendent Life

JOINING the community of faith involves a plethora of opportunities to learn and grow. Growth is our engagement in the good things of life by God’s grace. Here are ten easy-to-remember ideas for growth, which breed hope, peace, and joy:

1.     Try your Best – one constant thread that links the most successful athletes, artists, and business people is they never give up. They simply refuse to believe anything that speaks against their vision — that vision that God perhaps gave them. This is our opportunity; to believe what we heard long ago… to chase that dream. But at the very least we need to bounce back when we’re beset by setbacks.

2.    Be a Good Guest – many times in life we’re in others’ territory and we must be respectful, sincere guests, full of integrity. Being a good guest means we’re content allowing others to make a home in us even as we’re away from home. It’s about being someone who’s safe to be around even when we might feel vulnerable ourselves. It’s something worthy to aspire to.

3.    Make Room for Appropriate Jest – seriousness is a necessary element of success, but so is the appropriate use of serendipity; humour is a relief valve. But our humour must be respectful, and it needs to be appropriate for the situation. Humour helps us make light of the darkness. It helps us not sweat the small stuff so much. But we must counterbalance it with truth so we don’t use humour to deny the real issues in our lives.

4.    Don’t Forget to Invest – we must sow into life if we’re to reap significance so far as our legacy is concerned. Investing is about actually stepping into the arena of life; actually taking the risks we need to in making things happen. It’s about sowing into relationships and giving more than what would be safe to give.

5.    Build a Good Nest – wisdom dictates that we nurture ourselves, our families, and those ones God places in our orbit. Building a good nest is about being a home to people, and making a home where people can safely come. And be who they are. Be themselves. Home is as much a place of heart as it’s anything. Building a good nest is nurture, discernment, and wisdom. It’s believing in the value of place.

6.    Don’t Be a Pest – nobody likes arrogance, petulant ignorance, nastiness, or wilful indifference. We serve life well when we serve those in our midst well. There’s no need to be a pest.

7.    Make Life Your Quest – only you can define what God gives you as the answer to the meaning of life. But making life your quest will ensure you don’t settle for a lesser life than you deserve, and that God deserves; that he can achieve through you.

8.    Don’t Forget to Rest – drive, passion, and enthusiasm are crucial to success, but the bane of success is burnout. Rest is whatever we find rejuvenating, revitalising, and recovering.

9.    Stand the Test – life is one long series of tests, and mostly of our moral and physical integrity, our resilience, and tenacity. Standing the test is not about not failing, for we’ll all stumble. But the important thing is not to fall, which would be to leave failures unreconciled. To leave things unreconciled that could be improved is unforgivable because it means we don’t care. It bides in us well when we reconcile everything that can be reconciled.

10.  Explore the West – be prepared to travel. Make the most of opportunities. If we live in the west, yet we travel further west, we’ll find ourselves ultimately in the east.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

That Terrible Day When the Grieving Starts

ARRIVING home from work one innocent enough Monday afternoon, I was coming down with a mild flu. I’d already received sobering news; I had missed out on a promotion from a State manager to a National manager. I was about to receive shattering news at a whole different level. It was September 22, 2003.

It was about 8pm when, with kids all tucked into bed, my then-wife walked through the door and said, “We need to talk.” The rest is history. She told me how she was feeling. We argued. I begged. The marriage was over in a few minutes (though I couldn’t quite let go so easily). She’d been grieving in her own silent and unconscious way for months. My grief was seconds old. I drove around our city aimlessly, sobbing tears, my heart gripped like a vise in a flood of panic. How could a marriage that was never supposed to end be in such disarray? How could all I’d worked for go up in smoke with no sign of the fire brigade in sight? How would I be able to live without my precious wife and children?

That terrible day when the grieving starts is such an unforgettable day, as are the following days. I was rocked by so much change over a few hours period.

***

The day does come when we realise there’s so much more suffering in the world than we can comprehend.

Such a day commends us to pain on a whole different level to that of all prior experience. Suddenly, in a moment steeped in the tradition of horror, we come face-to-face with a reality we cannot live through — it seems that way. Life comes to be so tenuous that we despair of breath, and we wish we were dead!

The darkest of days is tiresome enough without other significant challenges — all of which, together, overwhelm and frustrate and polarise and confound. In the darkest horror of war we don’t get to see what happens to our loved ones. Yet, this grief is different. Our loved ones are pawns by their daily vocation. They try so hard, but not everyone will rise to the occasion of grief and begin the actual tremendously tumultuous journey toward a reconciliation they had all these years assumed would never happen.

Both parties enter the fray with eyes only for the loss. It’s not going to be easy nor will it be enjoyable to watch and play. When the grieving starts life stops; life seems foreign for a little while, which seems like an eternity.

2015 Steve Wickham.

Why Feeling Vulnerable, When You Are, Is Normal

“I just don’t want to feel this way,” is a common sentiment I get when seeing people as a counsellor. People never like being vulnerable. But feeling vulnerable when you’re vulnerable is normal. It’s normal to have bouts of vulnerability.

Feeling vulnerable is normal when vulnerability is felt as a result of normal life.

People often feel polarised in their vulnerability: “I shouldn’t be feeling this… I’m Christian, and I should be stronger than this… my identity’s in Christ; what’s this weakness saying about my identity?”

Weakness actually says a lot about our identity in Christ, but where we come unstuck is when we don’t lean on God.

Life is such an important influence on how we feel. If we place due importance on certain things, those things will certainly press us into a corner. We will be quickly overwhelmed.

One of the saddest realities in life is we judge ourselves and others too quickly for looking weak in a trial.

What is as it is cannot be dumbed down as something it isn’t. Reality bites from time to time, and if we don’t take our realities seriously we may miss the significance of our lives.

Feeling vulnerable is normal when realities make us vulnerable.

One of God’s objectives in allowing us to feel vulnerable is he wants us to make the choice to rely on his strength to get through. He knows we can. But we can’t get through the way he wants us to get through by relying on our own pitiful strength.

Feeling vulnerable is normal when life pushes us to edge and occasionally over it.

If we expect that we’ll always maintain our composure we may find that pride has taken over. What we find motivates us more than truth is fear of exposure and embarrassment.

True love finds itself home in truthful vulnerability — nothing to show off; nothing to hide.

When we view life as a learning ground, and we accept that vulnerability will catch us off-guard from time to time, we see the new weakness as a learning opportunity. Instead of feeling fearful we can feel hopeful. Instead of judging ourselves as weak we can be gentle with ourselves. Heaven knows we need it.

There’s no shame in feeling vulnerable because there’s no shame in being vulnerable.

When life becomes a struggle we should expect that we’ll struggle.

Feeling vulnerable is normal when it’s expected that it’s normal to be vulnerable.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

A New Thinking For Your Struggles With Porn

ELICIT images are not currently a problem for me, and for most of my life that’s been the case, but there was a time — over a decade ago now — when I was living like an unbeliever — when I used ‘soft’ porn. People magazine styled porn. Of course, I’m not proud of the fact, but I’m also not ashamed of it, either. God has shown me his incredible loving, forgiving grace so I can be honest about it. I recognise, however, how much a habitual hold such images could have if I even went there again, once! Abstinence is the only sensible strategy when it comes to stopping porn.

I must contend, though, my thought life has not been as pure. I have to admit I’m a normal carnal man and that I notice there are attractive women everywhere. God shows me on a daily basis, in my awareness, the effect of my unflagging flesh desire. I’m very fortunate that I’m head-over-heels in love with my wife, but that, alone, is no protection from going into the arena of fantasising over other women. Oh my unrelenting desire, and where it would take me, if not for God and my desire to live for him, alone!

I have had to learn to embrace a New Thinking in order to negate the images my eyes see, which my fleshly desires want to engage with. Not only are these other women my mothers, sisters, and daughters, they’re made in the image of God, they’re God’s possessions, if not another man’s, and they’re innocent of my potential mental transgressions with them. My inappropriate attractions must be stopped at their source or I’m ruined.

Abstinence is the only sensible strategy when it comes to stopping porn.

Step Into a New Thinking

God’s invitation is to explore the problem from its very source. Instead of being fascinated by the shape of a woman’s breasts, buttocks or body, we ought to take those reflections of her shape to God. This New Thinking is part confession, part reflection, and part edification — as we journey with God through the acknowledgement of our sin.

I’ve found that when I become aware of my thinking to the point that it’s sin, acknowledging that it’s inappropriate, I then have the choice: what to do with it? Being honest before the Throne of Grace, I take that wicked thought and find God will hold court with me. If I were to leave the sin as it is, even glory in it, God’s Spirit, I’m sure, would quickly depart. But in our willingness to be honest, God, sitting atop his Throne of Grace, will enable us to unpack our thoughts. And I find this works well when he helps us process the thoughts through a New Thinking: mechanically.

I might ask, “What’s this fascination with a person’s shape, the sound of their voice, or the features of their face?”

Enquiring into the mechanics of attraction does a few positive things. Firstly, it’s an acknowledgement of the truth; I’ve fallen into an inappropriate, sinful pattern of behavioural thinking. Secondly, it’s a worthy and warranted distraction. Thirdly, it allows the Holy Spirit to shed important light onto not only the circumstances the attraction occurred, but also what it is we’re actually attracted to, which is an empowering we need in order to be more aware, and appropriately safeguarded, for next time.

The distraction element is not only worthy and warranted, with communion with God, it takes us into a state of being where perspective elucidates our thinking beyond matters merely of the flesh. God makes our attractions to porn be inferior, as they are, when we bring him into the picture. When we see nature as it is, for instance, a plethora of natural phenomena in myriad manifestation, we’re quickly admonished by the sheer weight of truth before our eyes. God’s glory is self-evident when we see beyond the tunnel vision of pathetic carnal fantasy. When I considered the shadow of a bird atop a shade sail, for example, I saw something new, and I was fascinated beyond the fascination of ogling a person.

So, a New Thinking helps because God is brought into relationship with our struggle. We don’t hide from God what only he can help with.

Honesty on approach to God ensures God approaches us with grace. But to lie to God is to depart; God’s felt Presence departing from us.

If our aim is the target of grace, the bullseye is hit when we bring our sin to God.

An archer never intends to miss. Likewise, our target is hit in being honest with God.

God’s powerful grace is ours to overcome when sin’s power is exposed before grace.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

Life Before Loss and Grief and Life Afterwards

As I consider what life was like before my first bout of loss and grief I have no doubt I struggled for good reason. Life before loss and grief was a prideful existence, full of wanton opportunism, and a lack of true care for others, including myself. Don’t get me wrong; I wanted to care. But I had no clue what real love was.

Before I suffered loss and grief (prior to 2003) I didn’t know how to love enduringly and patiently. My love was a more selfish, self-motivated love. After I suffered I found the motive to love was the meaning of life.

Suffering proved the growing ground in my case, and I know that’s a fact both biblically, and in others’ lives also. Three palpable evidences of how the suffering in loss and grief makes life afterwards a more prosperous experience than the more comfortable state it was before.

Three proofs prove that suffering makes life better, afterwards — after recovery from loss. Having suffered, yet having not succumbed to the hopelessness of it, we came to acknowledge that suffering showed us a better way to life.

Suffering opened our eyes us to the vast sufferings everywhere. Suddenly our senses were assaulted with a truth God sees all the time; the world is littered in suffering. Having had our eyes opened, then the eyes of our heart were opened. And the key to it all was that suffering came into our lives like a flash flood. It vanquished all thought of escape. We were captivated in a tomb of inconsolable torment so that we would be compelled to reach out for God.

What seems absurd to us when we’re stuck in a worldly schema is absolutely true. Being forced into suffering through loss and grief is destined to make us better, if we believe that grief can be learned from.

***

Life before loss and grief was less of a life. Life afterward is the abundant life.

God shows us meaning in our suffering when he releases us to the abundant life because of the humility we’ve learned in it.

In the meantime we must ply our faith during the worst days to simply bear up patiently under the pain.

Faith is indispensible in situations of suffering, because it acts as if there’s perspective at a time when there’s no perspective at all.

Faith makes it possible to suffer greatly in the hope of deliverance. And having recovered, faith ushers in virtue as compensation for what was suffered.

Suffering forces us to grow in compassion and kindness and grace. See, there is purpose in suffering.

© 2015 S. J. Wickham.

A Question of Commitment to the Conquest for Character

OBSERVATIONS of life, made from crucial vantage points of assessment, reflecting over what has been and what is done, we come, afresh, to decision time.

As any game or event is — a plethoric series of potentially significant moments — which we only note as significant as we look back — our lives are chockfull of such moments. And the game isn’t over!

The game of life is about the character to avert pride in victory and remain stoic in defeat. And life is a game, if we can imagine how important such events are to us mere mortals. We place so much stock in the winning of competitions, whether it be sport, politics, current affairs, even wars. Yet we miss what’s blatantly in front of us — but for a little reflection: life is the most serious, most truth-filled game of all.

Life!

What proves my point better than death? We are all dying, and will one day pass into the realm of God. What will be important then?

All of life is a conquest for one thing or another: comfort, here, or character.

Comfort and character are about choices and consequences. We, by our choices, choose our own consequences.

Life will take us on a passage of moments — much like a game — and it will put us in situations where we have choices. Choices force decisions. To be indecisive is the worst: the critic is the one who remains so indecisive they opt to criticise others rather than step into the arena themselves — and make something of a contest of their game.

It’s too easy to have an opinion; will our opinion drive us into a position of doing something? That’s the challenge.

Life’s about deciding the question of commitment to the conquest for character.

We’re all committed to something; the worst of us is committed to everything in such a way we’re committed to nothing: classic behavioural indecision.

If we can strip away all the little distractions of life that matter so little, we can commit to the only thing that matters much: character.

Character is formed in us when we make tough choices that subtract our comfort.

Character is added to us as a joy when comfort is willingly subtracted.

The more we resist comfort for comfort sakes — comfort therapy — the more we can take hold of which is our holy destination in Christ.

Sure, there are times when we do genuinely need comfort; times when our cravings are holy and appropriate; times when we crave God’s comfort. A comfort only his Holy Spirit can provide. Yet, it’s a classic irony that God-comfort is actually the fast track to character growth. It’s the only viable comfort; the only comfort that works.

But every sensual and worldly comfort takes us away from character formation and maturation.

The truth is there are many moments in our lives when we face the same question:

“Will I make a fresh commitment to the conquest for character?”

Your answer?

It only matters to you and God — and, of course, to everyone your life impacts.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

Nurturing the Vision of What Not Yet Is

IT OCCURRED as I took a glance at myself in the mirror of a window I was walking by — “I’m not there yet,” was my instant observation of perception. I’d lost 10kg but I still had at least 10kg to go. But then something triggered in my mind: I’ve been nurturing a vision of a skinnier me and, even though I’m not there yet, my practices are supporting that vision of what not yet is.

We’re certainly heading to where we’re going; there’s no doubt of it. The future is coming and the future is real. What future we unload upon ourselves is the present we live with intention in. All of life is intention.

Nothing of life is without intention. We each are propelled forward on a trajectory of our own choosing, by those attitudes we select and those behaviours we choose.

And it’s with intention that we either choose a vision for personal greatness — an anointing God has given us to live into — or a vision that someone else would have us live; a vision with no specialness about it at all. It’s our choice!

Nurturing the vision we have of ourselves of what not yet is; it’s a faith journey with nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Most of all that could be gained is the untold mercies we derive from what we couldn’t see in the vision that God provided. As visions come to pass in our lives, God always surprises us with a new thing we hadn’t reckoned upon.

Nurturing the vision of what not yet is is the way to experience a foretaste of what is beckoned into existence.

Prayerfully we communicate our deepest wishes to God and God returns these wishes to us in our subconscious.

We furnish these wishes with the resources that come from what our lives can draw on. We encompass the vision by seeing how it can become interwoven into the fabric of our narrative.

We work these wishes into the nucleus of our being. And a vision is formed. And the gladness of hope expands our perspective and our horizons flourish.

Daring to dream in the colours of boldness, captivating a vision, bringing the dream to a vision’s reality, we see the hope that such a dream can attain.

We are here, anyway. We might as well put our time and efforts to good use. Dream up a vision of God’s will in life and set about achieving it.

Believe in the dream God’s given you. Nurture that vision of what not yet is.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

One Ancient Secret to Life Balance Made for Today

“GOOD time management remembers the Sabbath principle. One day a week we must delight in being unnecessary.”

— Dr. Brian Harris

SHAMANS of ancient Mexico believed that a warrior had the motive and ability to protect their accessibility — that concealing their presence was a vital skill of a man (or woman) who could command life. Certainly the Bible calls us, from ancient times, to this ability in the obedient person to remove themselves from life for a period of necessary rest: Sabbath — a one-in-seven rhythm.

Yet it is hard to ‘do’ an actual shalom because we have come to delight too much in being necessary. We may not even want to be superfluous. And that’s because our identities are stuck in a place of externality when our real need is an internality of Jesus.

I talk with a friend in ministry regularly and we regularly talk about prayer. We pray together, we pray for each other, and we pray when we’re led. His prayer life is an inspiration to me. He gets up early most mornings and devotes a few hours to his quiet time with the Lord. My quiet time is centred on the thoughts God reveals to me as I write them down. But the centrality of my friend’s prayer life is simply getting away from distractions and being in himself with God.

God is using my friend’s application of prayer and quiet time to show me a new thing: stillness of soul is critical if we’re to become what God destines us to become in Christ.

Stillness of Soul

How still can we be? How still of ourselves are we able to be?

Sabbath is an ancient principle. As ancient as it gets. And so long as time has been we have had access to this secret from God: stillness of soul is found through a safe sense of self. But a safe sense of self is found only in Jesus, because deeper down, where we hurt in guilt and shame, Jesus helps us know that he is what we can never be. He is. What we can never be. We hunger to be perfect. But we can never be. But, in him, we are his perfection. The Father sees us in his perfection.

When we finally understand and accept this truth, and better is it done to meditate silently over it, we’re given access to an understanding of ourselves that reconciles us to ourselves. We no longer need to be perfect. We’re happily broken. We might laugh at the fact. Then, we have stillness of soul. We no longer need to be everything to everyone. We happily be nothing to nobody. We are no longer driven to pillar and post. And from there we’re freshly infused of God and enthused for life.

Stillness of soul is the pleasant locale of self that enjoys being him or herself. This is nothing of an ego locale. It’s a pleasant sense of being where nothing of the forces without have much impact on the forces within.

A person who is easily able to be unnecessary in a busily vexatious world will find peace in being necessary solely to God, for quiet times, within themselves.

A person finding busyness truly unnecessary finds what is truly necessary in life.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.