Common Soul

I once read in K.P. Yohannan’s book “Revolution in World Missions” about his confusion over why young indigenous ministers who experienced great power, miracles, signs and wonders in their outreach, upon attending Bible College or obtaining some theological training, found that the power would disappear.   Equipped with more knowledge of scripture and theology, they would no longer experience signs, wonders, healings, demons being cast out or other such phenomena.  I echo his natural resounding question of “Why?”  

I similarly remember the early days after I began to cling to Christ for my very life.  Amazing supernatural things would happen.  And I could sense the leading of the spirit as if a breeze was blowing through an open window, and I would just “know” and obey.   It was a precious time.   My theology was not all worked out.  I often admitted that I did not have it all figured out.  Somehow just knowing that I was in the hands of the One that did know it all, gave me peace and assurance to go on.  Faith was alive and the impact of the reality of a living God could be felt everywhere I looked and in almost everything I did.  But it was a scary time too.  It is all too easy to romanticize things in retrospect.   It was romantic in many ways to find Someone so great, to be know him and be known by him.   

But the scary part was partially because that is what faith felt like sometimes and partially because I could feel my own weakness so clearly at times.   We live our whole lives since childhood learning how to protect ourselves and have control over our own lives and destiny.  With Jesus you have to unlearn that.  You have to accept all the implications of being vulnerable in the most intimate and tender parts of your soul: the parts that hunger for love and thirst for acceptance and are desperate to be valued by others.  When we are very young we want someone that we can trust and we want to be trusted back.  It’s a deep human need.  But most people become so let down or injured by their own family, friends or confidants that they give up on the trust search.   They decide they can’t find someone they can trust, then they must find something they can rely on.  It can be anything that feels more solid than the relationships they’ve seen crumble.  It could be achievements, it could be physical attractiveness or sexuality, or money, or some talent or aspect of themselves that can be socially desirable and useful to cultivate some semblance of value.  So it becomes this system that they trust, but not people.  Friends and family become necessary utility and perhaps enjoyable accessories.  They might be enjoyable and even stress-relieving.  But trusted?  It’s easier to “love” than to trust.  And I remember the little baby steps of unlearning the patterns that I had so daily gripped to and developed as scary.  I was learning to do what I had been taught and even shown you cannot do: trust.     

But even though I was experiencing this great inward healing, and learning what it meant to love and to trust and to experience joy, patience, kindness and hope…   even though this was occurring, I still felt the need to scratch the itch of having more control.  More specifically, I mean the kind of control that is an extension of mistrust.  This particular temptation lures the person who has embarked on the open sea of faith and is still learning how to work his rigging and harness the wind to find a comfortable sandbar on which to lodge.   It’s a natural temptation to slow down and spend some time in port, getting better prepared for the sea.   It’s not altogether a bad thing to do.   The problem is, the port is a haven for wanna-be seamen who talk the talk and appear to have their lives centered around life at sea.  But the problem is that they don’t actually leave port very much and are caught up with the posturing of the sailing life with others and find it all too easy to be affirmed there among friends than face the lonely sea where uncertain winds blow.   But the primary the reason they don’t often venture too far beyond the harbor is because they have ceased to be drawn by the voice beyond the waves.   They remember it well, are haunted by it, and can recall it to others well enough.  They love to surround themselves with stories about it and be friends with those who heed the call to voyage.  But the voice is drowned out and lost among the cacophony of stories, information, cargo trades and merchant deals that hum around the port and its vessels.   They are busy getting better equipped, building more capable ships, and increasing in stature among the young sailor hopefuls and even teaching courses on marine warfare, stellar navigation and oceanic survival skills but rarely ever taking anything but short cruises, where they return to port again after a day at sea, posturing like seasoned mariners.  They sometimes get frustrated with it all and think about moving inland.  But occasionally on a quiet morning at the beach when the sea is calm and the port is asleep… they hear it!   The voice beyond the waves whispers its delicate unfolding mystery and they renew their activity at port, preparing, assessing, training…  drowning out the voice again with activity. 

It’s not that the power leaves the young missionary who formerly experienced power in his ministry and now finds that it has somehow evaporated in his new theologically trained life.  It’s just that when he found a good port with good provisions, a good network of camaraderie and lots of things he can do to prepare himself…  he can get encumbered with the trappings of staying near port within himself and cannot bear to venture too far because there is always a little more that can be done to prepare.  There is always someone with a better developed answer to certain questions that might arise and always a little more understanding that can be had from others about survival at sea, and always some better equipment, ropes, sails, and provisions…   and soon we can’t seem to find our way out of the habit of consumption.  We become the consumer, when the whole time we are supposed to be the ones being consumed by the One who draws us far across the sea with him… to have our being filled with that wonderful voice and be spent upon the waves of agony, joy, peace and power that cannot be experienced in its fullness while settled comfortably numb in the teeming marketplace of port. 

I’ve neglected this blog for a few months because I’ve been focusing on helping shut down the company I work for, while simultaneously trying to find a job while also getting our house ready to sell.  We have no idea where we are going or where I job might come from.  Needless to explain, my energies spirit-wise have been focused on soul survival and I’ve not had much additional cream to scoop off the top and keytap on to this space.   But I’m still here.   I have, however, been blogging on a different theme HERE.   I’m going to keep this CommonSoul site up since it has a much larger undercurrent of vision for it than is immediately apparent.  So I’m not done!  Not by a long shot.

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”

~Leo Tolstoy

I believe there is a profound value in erecting inward monuments to God through “secret” self denial.  There are things that come natural to humans who breathe the air of a society that encourages us to indulge and live for ourselves. There are personal little indulgent habits, perhaps benign addictions, that we enjoy regularly or out of a sense of routine.  There is nothing inherently wrong with these things.  But when sobriety of soul is necessary, and it is indeed necessary, these things can get in the way.  They contribute to a fog.  A soul couched in fleshy habits finds repentance a disquieting road.  It’s too easy to buck against the Lover of our souls that would lead us away from the poison of a life lived unto itself.  

I have felt the drawing of the Spirit woo my attention to a few of these little cherished habits.   When He casts his gaze on them, I wince a little and my mind immediately begins rationalizing about why they are ok.  But He hovers there.  He’s speaking and waiting to see if I will speak back.  Not with the language of English, but with the love language of ‘foolish’ unexplainable acts that are too tender to be framed by the harsh word “obedience.”  It’s a sublime communication.  A truly great poet would never ask for a monument to be erected in his memory.  But a people who loved him would express their love by doing it anyway.  This is a hidden one, away from the eyes of the world, and set up in the cherished green hills of the heart.

There is a language we are learning as neophyte agents of the Kingdom.  It’s not English or Aramaic or Portuguese.  It’s a language of life being lived.  And with this language we can frame an honorary monument that stands on the hill of our life for our Lover to see, that says, I’m doing this because I want to be continually reminded of what You did for me and the life You’ve given.   Lest I forget, I will abstain.  My spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak.  I’ll take this cherished little habit that I’ve made a shrine out of in my life, and lay it down.  Let my hunger for it be a reminder, my prayer, the inward monument that You are my satisfaction.  You are my fix.  My lover and my passion.  Let nothing even permissibly self-serving dull my awareness of you.   

Do not despise the little things.  The voice of God is found in them.  

When you commit yourself to following the Intercessor, its really important to count the cost.  Jumping on the bandwagon of a blessings-oriented “discipleship” may sound nice, but there is another reality that transcends it and reveals it for the tunnel-vision it is.  

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” 
-Paul in Antioch (Acts 14:22)

Jesus promised us trouble in this world, but great blessing for those who endured to the end.   The end of what?  

There is a price to pay.  Its a laying down of your reputation, your credibility, and the habit of always spinning the truth in a way that makes you most acceptable to the person you are talking to.  You’ve got to die to that part of you that wants to fit in and be accepted or understood.  To walk the way of the cross is to embark on a path where you will be mostly misunderstood, considered naive or misinformed, or even despised and wrongfully accused.  It’s called a narrow path for a reason.  If you don’t feel the cost, you are probably hiding the Light,

As you embark down that path, the powers of hell will, at times, be arrayed against you.  And they will express themselves through false accusation against you, and worm their way into the emotions of hurt people who single you out for attack.  And a synergy of forces of the world, spiritual darkness and your own flesh will be orchestrated to strain and sift the seed of faith out of you.

I know the above is true.  I’ve lived a good portion of it out.  But God is faithful.  The promises remain for those who endure down the path of becoming one with our constantly interceding God.

How utterly vital that we remain sober and keep our minds and souls from being stained by the indulgent noise of the trespassed world’s media and entertainments.  But abstinence from these doesn’t put you on the path.  Being on the path creates a distaste for the things of this world, for they stifle and muffle the still tender Voice that is no option when souls being interceded for are hanging in the balance.

Has your distaste for the world waned?  Or is there a slight longing for Egypt?

I repented this week of “permissibles” that had been numbing me, causing my soul to sleep at my post.  Some people dear to me got ambushed and I was ineffective to help when I should have been strong in the spirit.   It’s time to purge the temple of idols.   Spirit, help us.

Am I alone, or will someone join me?

I had once been taught through assumption that people who are not Christians have no moral compass and cannot hear the voice of Christ until they receive into themselves a divine impartation of something that then makes them alive.   “Before you were dead in your sins, and now you are alive in Christ.”   The Bible seems pretty clear on that, I guess.

John 1:4-9 states that Jesus was the light to “every man’ who comes into the world.   This seems open to some interpretation.  What “every man?”   Even people born in an place and time where the name and concept of Jesus was never known?  Was he the Light to them?  

The early Quakers spoke of the voice of Christ being heard in and as the conscience of man.  George Fox when visiting the early American colonies got into a debate with a minister about this subject.  The minister argued that the Native American “savages” were totally depraved and without any light within them provide guidance Godward and that it must be administered from without until faith appears.  This is basically the posture I’ve seen among the ‘righteous’ toward “the lost.”   George Fox asserted, quoting verses from John above, that all people born into this world are given the Light that is and leads to Christ and ultimately to own that Light for themselves.  He called one of the ‘unchristianized savages’ to them and inquired through an interpreter if there was anything inside him that told him if something was right or wrong.  The native man affirmed that there certainly was something in himself that was doing this.   The minister was silenced and corrected in his belief about “the lost.”

There has been debate for generations about “prevenient grace”, notably between Calvinists and Armenians who have their own variations of this idea.  A.W. Tozer eloquently wrote about a grace that opens and enables the heart to choose to believe.  So even the most sublime favor in a person’s mind toward Christ is a gift from God.   All belief in God is a gift from God.

This brings great comfort to me when facing this ripe mission field in the local grind.   I’m not squinting through the neurosis of black-and-white contrasts of lost-or-found as I meander along, smugly assessing half-baked spirituality or grimacing inwardly at gesticulations of the profane.  Rather, I take Jesus interaction with Pilate as a high-mark example that I believe typified his method, if I dare attribute any method to the man most yielded to the wafts and gales of the spirit.  He always had his eyes open.  Whether feasting with friends or standing beaten and bloodied, Jesus was the unwavering Rock of ages who kept his eye on the radar to see if there might be one more precious blip of faith in the souls around him, whether they were rabbis, fishermen or politicians.  Like a blackened miner toiling deep in the earth, his eye was always scanning the mud and walls and kept sharpened to see one more glint or shimmer of something precious in the slurry. 

Pilate:  “Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus:  “Did someone tell you that? Or are you saying that of your own accord?”

Can you see the significance of that response?   This is a spiritual flashback to the interaction with Peter when Jesus told him that he was blessed because “flesh and blood did not reveal this to you [that he was the Christ]” but that it was spoken to him by the spirit in the inner chambers of the heart.

It was an important question for Pilate.  Perhaps the Light was shining in his conscience as it did the crucified thief hanging next to Jesus when he rebuked the other criminal. 

And its the same glimmer of hope we are to be attentive to as it appears in the lives of those around us.  This Light is Christ and it is Christ we serve.  When we find it, we encourage it, serve it in others, give kindling to the spark and watch the flame grow.  And as it grows, Christ lives bigger in another soul and brings more Jesus to us all.

Sometimes the Light appears in someone as a bruised and battered thing, perhaps as an outcast in the soul or imprisoned or crucified as the inequities of the selfish life persecute Christ within as the unwelcome guest of conscience.  We are to live our examples as those who have turned to that Light, embraced Jesus “the Light that shines to everyman who has come into the world” and exalt him in the inner chambers, cherished and prized, not as a common dumb light of conscience we are free to abuse, but as the Pearl of Great Price that is costly to own, requiring a sentence of death to all those things within that would persecute God-given Conscience under the power of the Holy Spirit.  Salvation comes in measures as a person turns to that Jesus-resonant principle within themselves and owns it finally at whatever the cost.

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.” –Kahlil Gibran

“If the spiritual life be healthy, under the full power of the Holy Spirit, praying without ceasing will be natural.”  - Andrew Murray

The only life worth living is the life that is prayer: intercessory prayer.  This is the life of Christ at work within.  All other things that we may attempt to draw upon to give a sense of inward nourishment; entertainment, activity, recreation, work…  all these things run dry and leave a toxic residue and a deeper thirst.   Only Christ’s life as it continues to be poured out through us for others can be that everlasting spring.  It is possible to “pray without ceasing” just as it is possible for one’s life to be a living prayer.  These are one in the same.  And they require the fuel of self sacrifice to keep burning.

I’m pushing into this today, hacking back the distractions like one would use a machete in the jungle, trying to clear the way for clarity of heart in beholding what forgiveness needs to be solicited for whom and what gap might be narrowed between the masses of wandering souls and the One who loves them.   Light my way, God.  I am so weak.  But you are strong.

I’ve been fighting through a haze.  An uncertainty of my job situation and wrestling with ideas of what could be next seems to have caused an increase in chest pain these last few days.  I haven’t felt right on a number of levels, but I think I am in generally decent health.  But I am going to see a doctor tomorrow.

Do you ever get a frustrated feeling when reading other people’s blogs that show people doing what you have dreamed that you could be doing?   I know that is terrible.  A classic “grass is greener on the other side” kind of thing.  The worst for me are the expat and missionary blogs.  My wife and I have a deep longing to get out there away from the consumerist commerce bubble of life in the US and get challenged to our core, dig hard into languages and culture and end up growing.  We’ve talked about it for 9 years.  I’ve just been praying that God lead us in this and that my life will be clean and that we can be obedient in the little things here so we can be prepared for what’s to come.  But I don’t think you can ever be totally prepared.  I need to rest and trust and maybe this pinch in my chest will go away.   If it is right, then God will open the door and intersect us with the right opportunities.  We are not associated with any missions agency or sending organization.  I have a strong personal conviction against “raising support” which could be a whole other blog entry.  But for now it should suffice to say that we need to work where we go. I have no idea what, when or how.  I’m just staring into the dark with a strong belief and a smoldering desire that has been seeping out from it for years now.  I soon must come to terms with it.

My 7-year-old son has been surprisingly outspoken about being vegetarian and stays very passionate about not eating animals.  Even though we took that step as a family some time ago, he has been the one to get additionally passionate about it, along with his aggressive concern for the environment and natural habitats.  He’ll argue with me when he thinks I am not doing something that is in the best interest of the planet, etc.  And he totally ‘gets it’ that meat-eating is failure of stewardship in many areas.  What amazes me is that we have done almost nothing to indoctrinate or pursuade except answering his questions as honestly and factually as we could.  Something in him, this passion, just runs with it.  All his friends and acquaintences know him as the naturalist.  Of all the Cub Scouts at the pond, he’ll be the one with his pants rolled up standing in the water catching crawdads while the other boys and myself look in amazement. 

Yesterday I was feeding him breakfast…  and he was sitting there very contemplative as he frequently is in the mornings.   Then he tells me “You know, Papa, when you think about nature, it’s just not fair.”  

“What isn’t fair?…  What do you mean?”

“We think we are allowed to eat animals, but then we think it is not ok for them to eat us. It’s not fair.”

(pause)
“Wow.  Good point, buddy.  I hadn’t thought of that.”