Two Sides of Bipartisan Forgiveness

What about when it’s us

Who are hurting so bad?

Resentment, it climbs

It continues to make us sad.

This is where our trust in God

Helps as we routinely rely,

Being honest with God,

Is power nobody who’s tried it can deny.

When resentment mounts it’s time to enter the prayer closest: to confess the resentment and allow God to deal with our own hearts in order to heal us. Such prayer, however, needs to be done with regular routine. It won’t happen overnight, but healing will eventually happen.

Additional to prayer is the counsel of a close friend – one who may be relied upon to give us the truth in love, and who possesses the scruples of God.

If we are to take our hurts beyond resentment and into the lands of forgiveness for healing we will surrender our possession of will before God. Resentment is no good action and dealing with those climbing itches of relational rebellion is a courageous and blessed work.

***

All we can do

Is to do our part,

Then trust God

To deal with their heart.

Relational forgiveness is always a two-way street. That’s why it can be frustrating and hurtful. It’s a great blessing, therefore, when we accept what we cannot change, and we trust God to work in their heart in our Lord’s time, and in his way. And if they are not to change we are still hopeful we can accept they will never change. Accepting the things we cannot change is the greatest agent for peace.

We might forgive them, but that is no guarantee of their forgiving of us. This is a sad reality, but it proves all the more that we have no control over others besides our gentle influence, our prayers, and the Spirit’s conviction.

All we can do is do our part, and do it well. As we model a redemptive philosophy for living we invite the other to reciprocate, but are invitations are just that – an invitation. The privilege of invitation is that it may be refused or rejected at no risk to the party doing the refusing or rejecting.

***

Bipartisan forgiveness is the equal transaction for grace and mercy given by and enjoyed by both. All we can do is do our part, leaving them to consider their part. Acceptance is the masterstroke of maturity. All we can do is attend to our mounting resentments.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The ‘Form Slump’, ‘If’ and Spiritual Dryness

EVER noticed this phenomenon of life, that incidentally is reflective also of the faith journey post-salvation? There is an initial period in any endeavour where all goes swimmingly – everything we touch is golden and blessed.

Then, in the second season, there is a period of testing. In sporting terms it is the form slump. In faith terms it’s a period of spiritual dryness. In sporting terms it’s the flailing technical issues – we cannot score or perform anything how we’d like or we are consistently beaten, despite our best efforts. In faith terms, God isn’t anywhere close (or so it seems), or there is a period where we feel excluded, undervalued or unappreciated.

Second seasons, a term we may use for those confounding periods of frustration, are paradoxically the seasons of vast and unparalleled growth – though we are loath to see it. Times of inextricable inner torment, even as we put on the ‘brave face’, take us into a kind of despair that is palpable for growth – if we will go to God with it, be honest, and seek to join the journey with his purposes.

If.

‘If’ Is a Big Word with Grand Stature for Growth

Notwithstanding how you may feel about this theory of growth, it is what it is, and there is nothing you and anyone may do about it.

Growth occurs in the seedbed of trial.

Yet evidence of growth is usually only detectable after we have germinated and blossomed much later on in the piece.

But there is a second, critical element in the growth journey – and it has an inherent ‘if’ nested within it.

During second seasons of trial, where the simple things are seemingly unachievable, and relationships are trending south despite our efforts of grace, we can only grow if we are prepared to submit these things to God, to own our despair, and to surrender our darkness before his Throne to partake in the healing of his grace.

Second seasons for growth are ‘if’ seasons. Suffering is only the first half of the equation. The second half is the ‘if’ half. Can we be humbled in our humiliation? Can we surrender when every sinew in us wants to scream for justice because of pride? Will we allow God to be Sovereign (he is and always will be, so why do we rail against that which we cannot hope to change?).

***

Growth occurs in the seedbed of trial.

If we are prepared to accept that God’s greatest work in us is when we are under a tremendous burden of trial, this horrible hour will be our Magnum Opus – to the Lord’s unparalleled Glory.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Joy for All You Give, God

LORD,
What You have given,

Is enough for me,

For what You give,

Is good in sight,

Plain enough to see!

Help me be grateful,

For Your plan and my task,

Help me be diligent,

Regarding everything You ask.

AMEN.

Mark this: as I woke up one recent morning, having dressed, I was putting on my shoes, and as I looked around the lounge room I saw symbols of all things God has given me: not just the furniture, but as I looked around to the right, through the bedroom door, was my wife asleep peacefully attending to her dreams. Next to her, on her bedside table, was the monitor: our son sleeping peacefully, even though, on this night, he had kept us both awake for most the night. Still, strangely enough, having my bearings, I was thankful for the alertness I had. In the back room slept my daughter. The previous night my wife had given her a hair treatment. I sat back at that time, whilst my year-old son played peacefully on the floor, knowing God’s peace.

When all is quiet, and we are somewhat surplus to requirements, and allowed to peacefully take in the inner world of our relationships in the context of our thoughts and feelings, God blesses us with a peace that transcends our understanding. We see that coveting things is no longer relevant to the life God gives. For what we think the world gives pales into insignificance in comparison with what God gives.

These are the times when I am most thankful for all things that God has given – the ‘bad’ things as well as the good – because the Lord is able to show me very intentionally exactly who is in control and the intention of those plans.

God’s plans are to bless us in our obedience, and even beyond obedience God gives to us things we perhaps don’t deserve.

Why is it that at the end of our lives we think of the things that are important?

Why do we not instead think of these things now? It’s because we are busy and we are not attentive to the important things, because the more urgent things block our view.

***

Why is it that at the end of our lives we think of the things that are important? We miss out on the joy we could have for the thoughts of thankfulness we could have now.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

What’s Healthy About Resentment? Plenty!

FRUSTRATION mounts over an insignificant issue, but this insignificant issue is predictive of a deeper problem – one that won’t go away. That just makes the frustration all the more pensive, and, we really have to know, what is nested in the frustration is resentment. Helplessness propagates the resistance of resentment. If all we can do for ourselves is resist by resentment we will choose such a thing, even if it’s buried deep in our unconscious thinking processes.

So, what’s healthy about resentment?

This idea, the title of this article, could easily be framed as a trick question – and I would suggest it is. Resentment may we be used as God’s goading that would propel us beyond hurt into a suitable resolution. And, if we agree that the frustration as it stands cannot be easily resolved, we need to allow God’s Spirit to do a work in us.

This is where the works of our imaginations come right to the fore.

The Works of the Imagination

Resentment is always inherently about a narrow, even fixated, focus.

Suddenly, we are dogged by an undercurrent of thoughts – that surround the items of our frustration – and we truly begin to unconsciously itemize them. Our imaginations are negatively set, because our imaginations are merely following the lead of a master whose name is Resentment. And Resentment is a horrible master.

The way we seize control is to take the imagination into submission, pointing it in the direction of what can be done, how the situation might be accepted, and to help us see the bigger picture more readily and convincingly.

When we consider how the imagination may be utilized by either party – Resentment or Forgiveness – then we are empowered mindfully to employ it for forgiveness and, therefore, healing.

There is a great deal of advantage in harnessing the imagination. God has given us a big, big world with which to get lost in our imaginations – there are so many ways we can divert the thinking into areas of growth, expansion, and blessing. Can you begin to see how the imagination can facilitate a blossoming out of the current frustrated and resentment-bound situations?

The power in resentment is this: it forces us to search for a better way.

***

Resentment is the unhealthy activator for change, if we will seek for something better for ourselves. In such ways, resentment can be considered God’s invitation into healing – a better state of mind and heart. See how resentment can be used by God? When we are sick and tired we desire change and we are motivated to change. The imagination is key...

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Embracing Your Child Within You

“A grownup is a child with layers on.”

— Woody Harrelson

What is it about me,

That makes me so mild?

What is it about me,

That has lost that inner child?

This is something for,

Every adult to know,

We cannot lose our inner child,

And ever hope to grow.

Times when I’ve lost connection with my inner child – the boy who grew to be the man I am today – are the times I’ve become mild; out of touch with my heart, my passion, my personhood. We need to be in touch with these if we are to grow. And the way to be in touch with these states of being is through being as intimately connected with our inner child as we can be – reconciled, in fact.

What kind of kid were you?

In other words, what kind of kid are you?

I was always the type of kid who had to work hard to be popular; I would need to be the class clown in school to attract attention. I was never the popular kid without lots of effort or lots of fortune. But popular kids may wonder why they are. Sometimes popular kids are only popular because they are bullies. And sometimes popular kids are just plain nice and because they don’t need others’ approval, they enjoy just being themselves.

We see so many features of schoolyard play in the adult world today. There are the politics, the competing with one another (whether it’s overt or covert), and the gossiping against one another. There is the passive aggressiveness of people pretending to be nice, but who are secretly cavorting with plans to undermine.

In the rough and tumble of the world we need to ensure we nurture a gentleness within; a gentleness that respects the vulnerable child within each of us; it’s a gentleness that allows that child – the child we know best – the space and freedom in a safe world, i.e. within the adult we have become.

It is a great opportunity in the process of healing: to embrace the child within.

As we do this very thing, by coming to an acceptance of our flaws and failures, and reconcile our hurts and hang-ups through the same acceptance, we become more at peace with ourselves and joy may effuse more readily from within us.

***

It is a great opportunity in the process of healing: to embrace the child within. To make a safe home for the wounded child in us, is both a great responsibility and great privilege. God has empowered us to be gentle with ourselves.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

That Long Road From Grief to Growth

“There is no growth without change,

There is no change without loss,

There is no loss without pain,

And there is no pain without grief.”

— Rick Warren

I was going to title this article, From Grief to Growth, but that just sounds too glib to me, because there is a long road to be sojourned from grief to growth. And in many ways the distance from ‘A’ to ‘B’ is not as tangible, for when is ‘A’ finished and when does ‘B’ commence? When is grief concluded? When does growth begin? The truth may be that some grief never finishes; certainly the memory of the loss, though the pain may be healed almost entirely. And it is the truth that growth commences well before we even notice its work in us. But whatever occurs it does appear to us that it is a long road from grief to growth.

It is a long road. There were so many times in my one experience through significant grief, over ten years ago now, where I thought to myself, “When will this end? Haven’t I grieved enough already? When will I be back to normal?”

The truth is there will be no return to that normal – but there will be an awakening to a new normal. The nature of life is that it changes, and when grief is approached the right way that change becomes growth. I like to think that growth is God’s compensation for the losses we have endured. It is something I have experienced personally, and it’s a truth that continues to catapult me in growth. Once loss is recovered from – as much as it can be – the growth aspects can then become a way in which we go about life. Our identities become reformed around loving God’s transformative growth in and through us.

***

It’s a long road from grief to growth,

At least that is the way it seems,

But growth is implicit through it all,

Despite the content of our dreams.

It’s a long road from grief to growth,

But growth is our very goal,

Growth is compensation for the pain,

So in grief growth is our role.

We cannot recover unless we grow. So good is God that he isn’t restoring us to that which we were; he desires to take our hand through grief in order to bless us by growing us.

***

There is grief in pain, pain in loss, and loss in change; but change brings growth. Growth is good.

Growth is the compensation we receive from God for having recovered from our losses. It is a long road. But we will definitely get there if we keep travelling. And to keep travelling we must. Is there any better option? Recovery is the outcome we seek, and assurance of that recovery is growth.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Enjoying a Sad, Mad, Bad Day

“See yourself as you really are.

Accept the good and the bad.

Only then can you truly share yourself with another.”

— Velyn Cooper

OXYMORONS can be fun and they can be tormenting, it depends on many things. Enjoying a sad day, a mad day, or a bad day may seem a ridiculous notion, but at least there is an openness of mind – and even a skerrick of humour – about it.

But conversion is what we are after. We want God to transform our day, our afternoon, our evening, and if not those, our next day. We want to rise above the clouds of the abyss or nemesis. It’s only right. It’s only justified that we would want something of the light to break into the foreseeable darkness.

If we could foresee that possibility, that out of brokenness a lighter place of soul might temporarily be enjoyed, then suddenly we commence a thought process open to that possibility. Sometimes it’s way too much, but at other times being able to encapsulate such a thought is the mastery of God over our attitudes, and even our circumstances.

Yes, it is too much of a pipedream to think that every sad, mad, or bad experience is redeemable – that we can accept. But some of these times might be made better, and how will we know unless and until we try.

Normally we will scoff at the whole concept of ‘enjoying’ something as foreign and life-giving as converting something good out of bad, structure out of that which is mad, or happiness out of what is sad.

But if we can hold our minds open and if we can risk our hearts – to feel into the possibilities – we come to be surrendered to what God may show us, because it is the will of the Lord to redeem and restore us.

***

God is able to make something bad better. He can make something sad meaningful. God’s business is to bring order out of the madness. God can do all these things and more. When we imagine the power in the grace of God, we see his capacity to turn many things around. God can restore anything he chooses – yes, even the dispositions of our laments, our anger, and the evils against us.

God is a miracle worker and we only need to see his power once to believe it. All the more glory goes to God when he turns us around.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Blessed Baptism in Holy Anguish

It was a warm day in my cold worn-out flat,

I had become sick and tired of living all this loss!

What was I where I was, and what was I becoming?

Worse was the pain never far away and the weakness.

Add to this the numbing sense that took over,

Because I could not contemplate or stomach,

That I’d lost everything; everything that mattered.

As I shed my tears in anguish,

Praying as hard as I could,

Knowing God presently,

Yet still immersed in so much pain!

That’s when God did it,

He baptised me in my anguish again.

As I fell into something of a spiritual state,

Realising I was out of body or something,

There and then God spoke to me,

“Son, you’ve just got to obey!”

I miss that time, even though it was a hell I’d not wish on an enemy.

I miss the tears and the heartfelt prayer and the fasting and the long tasks of walking at night. I miss those things that were utterly other the old me; suddenly, having been baptised in my anguish, having been in the state of agony for months, suddenly I was in a place that was both scary and empowering at the same time. It was new – scarily new – but God was there, through my prayer, through my fasting, through my tears and exhaustion, and through those long night walks.

Anguish was the key to everything. It was the springboard that lurched me powerfully into belief, into action, into service, into growth, and finally, into ministry. But unless we keep our anguish kindled we are seduced by a diluted gospel and we begin to miss God.

This is why anguish is good. It is painful but its purposes in us are for good.

***

The secret to being catapulted out of spiritual slumber – a Christian busyness or apathy – into being set alight for God is anguish. Until we are rent of heart and in deep pain we will never know God, nor his purposes for us in his Kingdom.

If we want true joy and real spiritual power we will engage with God by engaging with our anguish. Our anguish is pivotal to a real experience of God, but we rail against pain and suffering. But the key to being connected with God most intimately is the very thing we hate. Embrace anguish. Cry. Pray. Fast. Be leveled. Be flattened by God. In these times God does not disappoint.

If you are in anguish God has a message for you: “Give your anguish to me, and pray out your agony, and cry your tears over my shoulder, and express all your emotions to me. Then I will be making you new!”

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Forgiveness – One True Relational Freedom

Until we ‘get’ forgiveness, we will not truly get life.

For, when we get forgiveness — when we understand how and why we do it, by God’s grace — God puts life in proper perspective. Nothing is important enough to be resentful for — not in truth; not with the backdrop of eternity in mind.

There may not be a more important message for us regarding the relational life.

None of us can escape this life, where we must interact with others and risk being hurt, as well as being the source of hurt. If we would escape, living as hermits, we would hardly be living life, and we may find ourselves disposed to other problems because of our isolation. We were made to connect with people.

Contentment within life, so far as relationships are concerned, is not only achievable, but it’s what we need to strive for — as we surrender to God our allegiances to resentment. And we all experience that climbing strain of the angry, though fearful, emotion.

Entering Relational Freedom

As soon as we understand that fear within relationships is incompatible with relational goals we can begin to believe that all our relationships can exist without such fear. Even for those people who may torment us there is the possibility of forgiveness, such that we might experience relational freedom; to not be bound in fear.

Entering relational freedom is really entering a place devoid of fear.

There is one thing we must do to enter this place. We must surrender our resentment; our ‘control’ over the situation (because we have little control anyway); and our desire for recognition, respect, or reward. The moment we can give these things up in order to advance the relationship in any way is the moment we can experience grace enough to forgive.

Entering relational freedom is the life God has always sought to give us, freely.

This life, the abundant life, is about living in harmony with all people, recognising that each person has their restraints of personality to deal with; each person struggles as we do, albeit in different ways.

More important than our individual and collective struggles, however, is the common need. We all need to be loved and accepted. To be hated and rejected is fuel for resentment. It never does us any good; or the other person.

But as we rise up above this fear-enshrouded resentment, we earn ourselves a reprieve from resentment, and forgiveness is augmented. We understand that we win when everybody else wins; and that’s our objective. The true life is lived by that objective. Then we know a reality where fear melts away, because it’s unimportant. Then we know true blessing.

***

There is no sense to life without forgiveness. To forgive is to love with sacrificial abandon. When we act with the authentic intent of love, the keys to forgiveness are ours.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

God’s Ministry, My Integrity, Others’ Dignity

“This is not your ministry,”

The Lord whispered into me,

“What I ask of you, however,

Is just help others to be free.”

EVEN though we call it ‘our ministry’ or ‘my ministry’ or ‘your ministry’ it isn’t quite correct. It is God’s ministry that he does in others; we are just simply blessed to be sought to do that work that brings people in connection with the living God of their creation.

As a means to that end, we exist as vessels through which God pours his Spirit generously into. It is amazing that we are funnels through which this work of God occurs. We get to observe him, and to marvel, as his work takes place and continues in and through the life of another person, family, or group.

It is God’s ministry that we are involved in, through our integrity, by protecting their dignity. This is the prerequisite of the work. If we cannot protect their dignity and provide our integrity then we are not doing God’s work.

Dignity, for them, in our presence, as a ‘minister’, is all they may have. They present as vulnerable, by the very nature of their coming to us. They would not be seeking God’s ministry to themselves through us if they weren’t vulnerable. We, too, are vulnerable, but with this mask of ‘the minister’ over ourselves we can so easily become deluded – and, thereby, dangerous. We must care for our souls by taking up the cudgels of God’s ministry through our own devotional life – a thing we are doubly responsible for. For their dignity is our integrity, and by our integrity is created their dignity – all for the glory and Presence of God’s ministry in and through them.

***

Do you ever feel undignified before your minister? If you do, is it founded in pride against the work God wishes to do in you, through the minister? These are complex issues, but if a minister cannot dignify you and you feel there is a lack of care taken in his or her integrity, you might choose to go elsewhere. As a minister I must constantly ask, “Am I dignifying this person?” and “Is my integrity sound?” I am responsible to God to answer both these questions in fear and trembling as I work out my salvation.

It is God’s ministry that we are involved in, through our integrity, by protecting their dignity. That is how we love: through integrity in protecting others’ dignity.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Rallying As the Darkness Descends

There’s a darkness descending,

As I wake,

This feeling is horrible,

So hard to shake,

I lay there seeking solace,

And anything will do,

Sharps rips of dread,

That’s my reality, true!

What’s to become of me,

I shudder to think,

My thinking right there,

Is beginning to stink.

“You must do something,”

Says a wise voice within,

“Don’t just lay there,

Get up, lift your chin.”

Some days it works,

Some days it’s not so,

Just keep praying and connecting,

A day at a time, let life flow.

***

DARKNESS descending is the reality of the expunging of light from life. Once was the person who lay there, inspired to get up out of bed to get on with the day ahead. Grief will dash all that. From a slumber of sorts we awake, and it’s not a pleasant experience. Suddenly we are living a thousand deaths every second, or so it seems, if we can allow a little hyperbole.

Little grace is afforded such a coarse season of trials and snares. Whatever knowledge of God we have – so far as his imitable Presence is concerned – is vanquished into that ether of darkness that has lowered itself over us. Yes, in our faith, we appear rather foolish to ourselves – this is the very exemplification of faith; just to stand, sit, or wallow in this.

“There has to be a way out of this. There must be a way.” These are the things we say to ourselves as we search for the answer out of the abyss.

And the search defines us.

The search takes us into frustration and fatigue, that’s for certain, but the search, also, takes us into fellowship with those who will support and love us. We are compelled by our connections to read our Bibles, to pray, to grow, to be led and mentored.

The search is what details our hope, for whoever searches diligently is most likely to find the things they need to survive, initially, then to thrive on our way out.

The search defines us as resilient. The search in the depths as the darkness descends may tire us, but at least we know we are destined to make our way out.

When the darkness has descended, and we have little fire of hope left, flush the furnace of the soul with the bellows of the clean air of faith.

As darkness descends we can either rise up like the phoenix did from the ashes or we can capitulate, it’s up to us. Sometimes rising up is about playing safe and sometimes it’s about taking a calculated risk. The opportunity is to rally against the forces of darkness by going with the power of light!

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.