He has not forsaken us

One of the deepest emotional pains that one can feel, I believe, is the fear or belief that God is not love, or that one is not loved by God, or that God's grace is not sufficient to cover one's sins, or that God is distant and displeased (they are all permutations of the same feeling, I think). When one has known and seen God, and experienced His love and mercy, He becomes the deepest desire of one's heart; He overwhelms us with the torrents of His love, and we respond with adoration. So at any point after that, if we begin to fear that we have lost that love through some sin we have committed or righteousness we have left undone, the pain of that fear will penetrate to the depths of our heart like a dagger that stabs and a club that crushes.

Unfortunately, the emotional nature of this fear makes it incredibly difficult to counter! Reminding ourselves of the truth of God's love, going back to the cross and remembering the pain He suffered on our behalf, and repeating the assurances of His grace to ourselves time and again are all good things to do, and they can help restore a soul to joy and confidence in Christ - but I think it is also good to cry to God in the midst of our fear, as the author of Psalm 6 does. For an emotional pain there must be an emotion outlet and an emotional healing.

"O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord - how long?
Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake!
For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?" - Psalm 6:1-5

The truth that he knows - God's mercy and deliverance of His people, His righteousness and healing power - is interspersed with what he feels and fears - that God is angry with him, and has forsaken him, and is abandoning him to death; the desperate plea of v3 captures it perfectly: "But You, O Lord - how long?" In his head, he knows that in God is deliverance and salvation; he knows that God will rescue him and not abandon him. But in his heart, he feels that God has already forsaken him - that the pain and the trials have continued longer than he can bear already, and that God is not with him in them. It's a place we've all been in, I think, particularly if a specific trial or struggle (read: external problem or internal sin issue) has lingered with us for any length of time. You said You would sanctify me, Lord! Why do I still struggle and fail so much with this one temptation? And You said You would be with me always and work all things for good, Lord! Why is my life such a wreck of circumstances, then? Why do my endeavors wither and die instead of prospering when I'm trying to follow You?

But there is beauty even in that emotional plea, twisted as it is by the lies the world has spun about the impermanence of love and the impossibility of grace, because he is trying desperately to feel and believe the truth that he knows - and because, at the end, there is hope. Our cries to God do not have to be perfect or sinless for Him to hear us; He hears our weeping and our supplication, no matter how weak and frail and faithless we are, and He will receive our prayers. He has not forsaken us, and He never will; His love has not failed us and His grace will endure through all eternity.

The Pursuit of Happiness

God wants us to be happy. As the psalmist says,

"in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

And again,

"be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!" 

 He provides for us here on earth:

"You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing."

And He has given us incredible spiritual blessings - His grace, His love, forgiveness of sins, knowledge of Himself, the promise of glory, and so on:

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

But the happiness He has intended for us, and which He desires and delights to give us, is not the same happiness that we want for ourselves or that our culture values - the hedonistic self-centered happiness of pursuing and obtaining one's own wishes in this world, or the proud self-righteous happiness of succeeding or making a difference in this life by one's own merit. To paraphrase Lewis (since I don't have the book at hand, nor would I be able to find the passage quickly if I did), God has intended us for infinite and eternal happiness, centered in Himself - the strong and beautiful spring of all true happiness and joy - and if we so desire we can begin to prepare ourselves for that happiness right now, by learning to trust and know God more. If we have to sacrifice some of our more readily obtained and plainly visible happinesses along the way, if we must suffer and be miserable for times in this life, I believe it is worth it, if those sacrifices and sufferings are God's tools for making us into being capable of truly knowing Him and delighting in the great happinesses and indescribable pleasures He has treasured up for us in Him.

The precarious heady happiness of temporality

There are so many wonderful things in this life, to enjoy and to delight in! Yesterday afternoon I was able to go to a bridal shower for a friend from college, to spend time celebrating her and rejoicing in the beautiful relationship God is building in the lives of her and her husband-to-be; in the evening, I was able to visit friends who have just had their third son, and got to spend time enjoying their company, catching up with them, and even holding their not-quite-two-week-old son. Driving home from their house, I was practically overflowing with happiness, from all the love which I had witnessed and been able to be a part of all throughout the day. These relationships that God gives us, in which we can be loved and learn to love others, which force us to take our minds off of ourselves and think about, care for, and value the people around us, are such an incredible blessing, and it is right and good to be happy because of them!

But as I was driving home, I realized that this happiness isn't a stable, steadfast, lasting thing. It is an emotion, and it can come or leave at the drop of a hat, and as quickly as a butterfly takes wing. And because it takes you soaring so high, the fall can take your breath away when it comes. At least, that how it works for me; I do know quite a few people whose emotions seem to never fly so high or fall so low, so they never have to deal with the crazy contrast, with the unstoppable fear-inducing plummet when the peak of happiness is surmounted and passed. But for those of us whose emotions swing through the wide range of human feeling more easily and often, that happiness - even though it comes from good and wonderful things - can be dangerous, like walking on a tightrope. Though intoxicating, it is hazardous: the precarious heady happiness of temporality.

When happiness comes from Christ, as a result of being in Him and resting in the knowledge that all things are through Him and for Him, it can endure through the fickle whims of human emotion. The joys of fellowship and community can then deepen that happiness in the moment, without exciting the fear of instantly falling into a pit without so much as a warning sign, because the happiness we have in Christ can create a stable, solid ground to walk on, a place of emotional security in which to operate. Being in Him will not deaden or dampen our emotions, but it should give them a foundation to rest upon, and truth to inform them, so that we can use them - just as we use our minds and our bodies - for His glory.

My soul longs for You like a thirsty land

I am a person of many moods. A compliment, a glimpse of light on falling water, a butterfly, a feeling of God's goodness or nearness, or a fascinating idea, can send me soaring crazily high into happiness. On the other hand, a small troubling thought, a worry about something almost insignificant, a failure to accomplish everything on my to-do list, or a feeling that someone (especially God!) may not be pleased with me, can send me spiraling downward in seconds. In the same day I can be almost overwhelmed with joy, praising God and rejoicing in the blessings He has given me, and then be burdened with the feelings of guilt and unworthiness to the point where it is difficult for me to do anything at all.

Because of this tendency of mine to ride an emotional roller coaster, I have found it extremely important to keep my mind meditating on the truth of God's word. If His promises aren't there in my heart, then I have no guard against those things that would weary my soul and empty my heart of hope. So I read Scripture, and I memorize verses (Psalms are especially encouraging), and I delight in the Lord who loves me, and His word encourages me. But in the darkest times - when the light of joy seems to have set like the sun beyond the horizon, and the night stretches out around me, starless and moonless and void - in those times, my only recourse is to cry out to my God, and cling to Him desperately, my Rock and my Deliverer.

And I found today that the great pray-er of prayers, whose very cries to God were inspired by God, has been in that place, and lifted up his voice to God with words that I can also speak when my own words fail to come from the heavy ache inside me (forgive me for quoting so much of this psalm here; it is just so meaningful to me).

"Hear my prayer, O Lord,
Give ear to my supplications!
In Your faithfulness answer me,
And in Your righteousness.
Do not enter into judgment with Your servant,
For in Your sight no one living is righteous.

For the enemy has persecuted my soul;
He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me dwell in darkness,
Like those who have long been dead.
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me;
My heart within me is distressed. 

I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all Your works;
I muse on the work of Your hands.
I spread out my hands to You;
My soul longs for You like a thirsty land. 

Answer me speedily, O Lord;
My spirit fails!
Do not hide Your face from me,
Lest I be like those who go down into the pit.
Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning,
For in You do I trust;
Cause me to know the way in which I should walk,
For I lift up my soul to You." - Psalm 143:1-8

 He will hear our prayers. He will send light into our darkness. He will not condemn us for our sins, for He has forgiven us in Christ. He will satisfy our longing souls "as with marrow and fatness!" For "His compassions fail not. They are new every morning!" And when my spirit is overwhelmed within me, I can cry out to Him and He will not despise me for my weakness or grow impatient with my stumbles and hesitations, because He loves me. He loves me unfailingly and unconditionally! That is a truth to hold close to my ever-changing heart! In the fiercest of storms, in the darkest of nights, in the depths of self-condemnation, this I know, and this I can hold fast to: that my God has called me His beloved, and He will never cause His love for me to lessen or to cease.

Leaving the weekend behind

A brief update on my weekend: I tried to make granola bars for Paul, so he'd have a portable, filling, healthy snack; I failed rather miserably (although the granola that resulted isn't that bad, I guess). I intended to clean our apartment and straighten things up; I managed to vacuum the kitchen (which needed it most desperately) but that was about it. I wanted to make a patchwork valance for our kitchen window; I started, but probably won't finish until next weekend at the very earliest, so now I have all the random pieces of fabric sitting around making the place look even messier than it otherwise would (see previous point!) I planned to do my Bible study in preparation for our meeting Tuesday night, but forgot until 8:30 last night (and I didn't get very far because it's pretty intense). I hoped to make delicious meals for Paul to come home to after drill on Saturday and Sunday, but I really didn't do any cooking at all the whole weekend. I thought I had figured out how to run a Java applet for my homework assignment, but then found out that I got an awful grade because the grader couldn't get my applet to load. I desired to make our apartment a place of rest, peace, and beauty, but I felt so exhausted and discouraged that I wasn't even able to keep myself consistently happy and cheerful, and struggled to be loving and joyful. In addition, God convicted me about a few areas where I was putting Him into the limits of my understanding, and rejecting or ignoring things I didn't understand or didn't like, and while that is definitely a good thing in the long run, it isn't necessarily pleasant at the time, and it contributed to my feeling of discouragement even though I knew intellectually that God still loved me and wasn't angry with me (side thought - I am sometimes absolutely terrified that God is angry with me, so scared that I am afraid to even open up my Bible for fear of what I might read. I don't think this attitude really reflects the reality of who God is and what His relationship with me is now that I've been adopted into His family! But I still struggle with it.) Basically, in all the little and not-so-little tasks I set for myself, I fell short (in some cases, very far short) of the goal. Whether I was trying to cook or sew or pray or have a joyful heart, I just couldn't do it. So lucky me, I got to start the week feeling like a miserable, worthless failure. But as I was writing this post, not entirely intending to post it because it was devolving into a list of complaints, God reminded me of a very encouraging verse: "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:13-14 The challenge in those verses is rather obvious. The encouragement, at least to this rather negatively-inclined individual, is not quite so obvious! But it is this: that we are not bound forever to the failures and sins and mistakes of our past - that we can forget them and move on from them, that we can be free from that over-hanging burden of guilt and fear of condemnation, because God has already forgiven them and wants us to keep moving forward. Even when it is a sin that we are leaving behind, rather than just a failure to meet a human expectation, once we have repented, we don't need to linger in the guilt and the shame any longer. We are free to move forward, to keep pressing toward God, to continue seeking His face and striving to trust and obey Him by grace through faith. That freedom, that lifting of the burden of the past, is one of the most encouraging things ever! So weekend, I am leaving you behind, and choosing today to reach forward and press toward my goal of knowing and following Jesus Christ.

The progress of temptation

"For first cometh to the mind the simple suggest, then the strong imagination, afterwards pleasure, evil affection, assent. And so little by little the enemy entereth in altogether, because he was not resisted at the beginning." - Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ.

At the root of a lot (if not all) of my emotional struggles is pride and a love of self. I don't want to fail, I want people to admire and respect me, and I want to receive praise and approval. I want to be perfect before men and God so that I don't have to worry about losing their love or esteem. So when I make a mistake at work, or say something out of turn, or unintentionally offend someone, it is a really big deal to me - not because it isn't glorifying to God, but because it reflects badly on me. The focus is all on myself. Because of this, I become angry, frustrated, sad, discouraged, and even despairing far too easily. Those emotions aren't necessarily sinful in and of themselves, but they are in this context the sinful fruit of pride and self-love and the choice to believe in a lie rather than in God's revealed truth.

So often, when I feel those emotions beginning to stir within me, I give in to them. I'm simultaneously terrified and intrigued by the depths of darkness to which they can take me, and so the sin doesn't long remain a simple suggestion - it almost immediately becomes a strong imagination, difficult to cast out of my mind, and in a perverse way I even find myself taking pleasure in the darkness. It becomes familiar and comfortable, even as it is hateful to me, and the simple knowledge of how different life would be without that darkness makes me nervous about trying to entirely leave it behind me (it's like the attachment of the ghost in C.S. Lewis's Great Divorce to the lizard on his shoulder that makes him miserable - even as he wants to be free, he can hardly stand to make the choice to irrevocably lose the odious creature). I like knowing I can retreat there, to my refuge of pain and pride, when I need to. But God is a far better refuge, and the joy He offers is far greater and richer.

The lies that creep in unawares

Lately I've been thinking about how what I take in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually affects what I believe, how I think, and how I act. It makes sense when compared to my physical state of being - if I eat too much meat or fat, my stomach feels sick; if I eat fruits and vegetables and beans, I feel healthy all around; if I eat too much sugar, my blood sugar spikes and crashes; if I don't eat enough, I get tired and shaky; and so on. What I put into my body affects how my body feels and how well it works, so it is logical that what I put into my mind and heart affects how they feel and how well they operate. I just never really thought about it that much.

But if I listen to songs like "I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel, it makes me more emotionally closed off than I already am, and it makes me want to be independent and self-sufficient in a negative relationship-less sort of way, while if I listen to songs like "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns, I gain confidence and faith in God and have more joy and optimism to face the life before me.

This is why I think a lot of the books I read in the formative years of junior high were so unhealthy for me. These books were rightfully classics, in many cases, but they were bad food for my mind at that point in its development, like alcohol would be for a child. But I didn't know that then. So in the years when I was starting to figure out what the world was like, and wonder what the purpose of life was, and discover who I was and what I wanted for my future, I was reading books about the futility of life - books that portrayed pleasure as the only good and showed the emptiness of seeking and obtaining it, books that showed life as a prison of despair that killed any hope or dream or love that dared to be born at all. And all that I took in went into my mind and my heart and filled it with half-truths and lies that unnoticeably became part of the way I viewed the world.

God, please let me fill my heart and my mind with your truth and love and hope so that all these falsehoods that I have believed - both the ones whose source I can identify and the ones that snuck in from some unknown place - can be washed out of me, so that I can build my life on the things that are real, the things that matter, the things that have eternal significance in Your kingdom. Thank You for giving me eyes to see so that I can start meditating on the things that are good and true and lovely and pure and be vigilant against the deceits and snares of this world.

My answers... or thoughts... or preliminary half-thoughts...

So if you remember, in my last post I posed some questions and promised that I'd give my answers tonight. Well, now it is tonight, so here they are, such as they are :P

I definitely agree with the first paragraph I quoted earlier. I have seen in my own life the suffocating effects of trying to dominate every area of my life with pure reason - it doesn't work, and it leaves me feeling like a failure because I am unable to completely get rid of the emotions I don't approve of. So it is interesting to me to think that maybe these emotions (even the ones I can't stand!) have a God-given purpose and I should learn to use them, together with reason, in my life. I can see how feeling things fully and honestly can bring more richness to my life - the richness and wild beauty of passion to complement the structure and order that reason provide.

My problem is finding out how to balance the two practically. Either I'm trying to live without emotion, just by reason (which leaves me feeling depressed because I fail), or my emotions burst out of control and reason seems to completely abandon me (which ends up hurting the people around me without resolving anything). I prefer the first option to the second personally, but it isn't great either, and it turns out that it can hurt other people too because they feel shut out of my life. So I've been endeavoring to obtain more of a balance in this area.

One idea that has been really helpful with striving for balance is that of emotion serving as a sort of guidepost to my heart and beliefs. That way, I can use reason to figure out where my emotions are coming from and what they are trying to tell me, and based off of that joint conclusion I can decide how to move on from there. For example, when I wake up tired and can't seem to get going in the morning (say I'm half an hour behind my ideal schedule), I can get extremely angry or sad. Like, calling myself mean names, slamming things around, hopelessly crying kind of things. It's a bit excessive.

But instead of calling myself a failure for feeling this way and trying to ignore all that emotion and stuff it back in, I could try to figure out why this little situation is causing me to respond in such an extreme way. What is the root cause of my anger and sadness? What false belief have I built into my heart that is making my emotions be so out of whack? In this case, it's the belief that I have to be perfect to be loved and that self-discipline is the key to that perfection. So when I mess up in some little area of self-discipline - like getting up on time even after a bad night - I take it really hard because it says to me, "you don't have self-discipline at all, and you're not perfect, and so no one is going to love you." Instead of trying to get rid of the emotion, then, which is merely the symptom, I need to get rid of the false and hurtful belief that lies at its root.

I'm just starting to try to think this way, but I believe it could be quite helpful :) What do you all think?

Emotional and rational beings

"...neither emotion nor reason is supposed to be king. People do not work that way. God did not create a higher us and a lower us, a ruler and a subject. He just created us. Reason and emotion are so totally intertwined and interdependent that anyone who tries to separate them will end up with spiritual dwarfism, never attaining true maturity or emotional fullness.

"God made us emotional and rational beings. The two go hand in hand. They support, define, and clarify each other. Emotion and reason together are what make us complete and make our lives full...

"...Getting out of the box means living with emotion and reason working together, instead of having them jockey for top position. This balanced approach is the harder road. It requires that we never ignore what we are feeling - or what we are thinking. We have to search ourselves and the Bible to make each decision in our lives." - Matthew Elliott, Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart

What do you think about this? Should emotion and reason be used together, or is one more important than the other? If you agree that they're equally important, how does it change things to think of yourself as emotional and rational instead of just one or the other? Where do you struggle with balance, and what do you think balance looks like? I'll post my answers later tonight, but you should leave some of your own in the meantime :)

Rich, emotional, genuine passion: the unconditional love of God

What exactly is unconditional love?

Unconditional love is love that keeps on loving someone even if they hurt them, reject them, disappoint them, anger them, or even betray them. It is love that loves someone even when that person doesn't seem to deserve that love at all, or be worthy of it in any way. Rob Bell once said, "Agape [God's love] doesn't need a reason." (I read this quoted in Feel by Matthew Elliott, whose book inspired this post, so I don't know the original source.)

Does that mean that unconditional love has no regard for who the beloved is as an individual? If I love you no matter what, does that mean that your personality and actions and character mean nothing to me? More importantly, if God loves us unconditionally, does that mean He loves us as general amorphous beings, not finding anything special or delightful in the individual aspects of our personality, character, body, emotions, mind, or so on? If God loves me without any reason at all, then I am totally and utterly worthless in reality and in His eyes, and His love would seem to be more of a duty - or a way to make Himself look good - than a genuine, heartfelt, sincere love. And if that were true (which I do not believe), life would be so incredibly empty. Can you imagine living your whole life for God and never once receiving sincere love from Him? Never once experiencing His delight in you as His beloved child?

And yet that is the logical conclusion of thinking that God's love does not respond to or delight in anything in us. Have you ever thought about how He created you wonderfully, taking the time to form you before you were born, making you specifically as an individual in precisely the way that pleased Him? Have you ever read Ephesians 1 and wondered at how often God's pleasure is referenced? He redeemed us because He loved us with a love that delights in us and longs to find even more pleasure in us as we learn to walk with Him in righteousness and returning love. He compares His relationship with us, His Church, to that of a husband and wife, and He gives us the Song of Solomon to show us what that kind of love ought to look like. This is passionate love, delighting in the beloved, treasuring every aspect of her even as she feels unworthy to be so valued and cherished.

That is the love with which God loves us. He made us, and even though we are tainted with sin, He loves us each individually for the specific qualities that define who we are - that He gave to us. To put it very simply, VeggieTales had it right when they said "God made you special, and He loves you very much." All the worth we have, all the reasons God has for loving us, are things He gave to us in the first place, but they are still a part of who we are as unique beings. I mean, He created us, after all! But He loves each and every one of us as He created us, regardless (and here is where the unconditional part begins to come in) of how we have squandered or despised or destroyed the person He made us to be. Yes, He loves everyone - but He loves each of us as an individual because of all the things that make us the individual that we are.

He delights in you, you know. All the little things about who you are - the way you laugh when you see a baby smile, maybe, or your desire to protect the people you care about, or your joy in nature - bring Him pleasure, and He loves you because of them. He created you with those things according to His purpose, for His joy. You are His great treasure, for whom He died and with whom He desires to spend all eternity! And no matter how far you fall, or how many mistakes you make, or how long you rebel, or how hard you have to struggle, He will never stop loving you.

Wait, it's ok to feel?

Have you ever thought that emotion was sinful, or at least an irrelevant distraction from the important and significant things in life like love and faith and truth? I've always tried not to feel intense emotion about things, or at least to hide it if I couldn't help feeling it, because it always seems to get me in trouble! I've hurt so many people, including myself, with the anger that I feel; I've lost time and energy and been oblivious to the needs and joys of those I love because of the sorrow I feel; and I've alienated people and received their disapproval by expressing the crazy happiness and love I feel. It seems like I get a lot more approval from other people if I don't express or feel emotions, especially strong emotions. But then what do I do when I feel them? I can't be the only one who feels things so strongly that I sometimes think I might burst if I don't express it!

Most of the time, I show a little bit of my emotion and hide all the rest inside until a time when I'm alone or with people I'm more comfortable with, like my husband, and then let it all out. This is fun when it's a "positive" emotion like happiness or love, but can be really hurtful when it's a "negative" emotion like anger or sadness. I've lashed out at the people close to me undeservedly so many times in life, because I needed an outlet for the anger that I'd originally repressed. Is there a better way to deal with it than this? Stuffing it all in a bottle can't be the best solution when the bottle eventually explodes onto the people that I care most about in life, I think.

So it is with wonder, joy, and a bit of apprehension that I've been reading Matthew Elliott's book Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart. The title itself frightens me a little! It's like I believe that if I allow myself to honestly feel emotion it will inevitably lead to disaster, pain, and embarrassment. But is that belief really true, or just something I've been conditioned to think over the years? Elliott argues that God is both rational and emotional, and having been created in His image we are also both rational and emotional. One does not rule the other - they have to learn to work in tandem - and both have to be grounded in truth. They can both be used by God and they can both be co-opted by sin. Too often as Christians, he says, we teach and act as if calm dispassion and pure emotionless rationality are ideal, ignoring all the emotion that fills the Bible and is used even to describe the actions and characteristics of God. Instead of learning to repress and control our emotions, he suggests that we learn to understand and use our emotions in the way God intended. Even negative emotions can be thought of as counselors or friends that help us see problems in our beliefs, values, and patterns of thinking.

To me, this is a really new way of thinking. It kind of scares me to think of experiencing the power of emotion without the buffer of control. But at the same time it is so freeing. Can you imagine going through life without having to continually stifle that huge part of who you are, and instead get to use that part of you to grow spiritually and glorify God? I would love that so very much.