Month: March 2017

Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Books, Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing, Prayer, The ChurchLeave a comment

“The greatest problems of our time are not technological, for these we handle fairly well. They are not even political or economic, because the difficulties in these areas, glaring as they may be, are largely derivative. The greatest problems are moral and spiritual, and unless we can make some progress in these realms, we may not even survive.”

So writes D. Elton Trueblood in his foreword to Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. This blessed book, written by Richard J. Foster, has been used since its initial printing in 1978, to deepen the interior lives of countless individuals, nurturing them toward more abundant living.

“Superficiality is the curse of our age,” Foster asserts. “The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is…for deep people.”

The classic Disciplines, or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith allow us to place ourselves before God so that He can transform us. Dividing the Disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contributes to a balanced spiritual life. The inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance and celebration bring us nearer to one another and to God.

Foster asks us to “picture a long, narrow ridge with a sheer drop-off on either side. The chasm to the right is the way of moral bankruptcy through human strivings for righteousness. Historically this has been called the heresy of moralism. The chasm to the left is moral bankruptcy through the absence of human strivings. This has been called the heresy of antinomianism. On the ridge there is a path, the Disciplines of the spiritual life…[T]he path does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur. This is the path of disciplined grace…[and] our world is hungry for genuinely changed people. Leo Tolstoy observes, ‘Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.’ Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort.”

If you are feeling spiritually dry, if you have tired of superficiality, if you are hungering for a more abundant life, I recommend you carve out some time to spend with Celebration of Discipline. I have used this book in many classes on spiritual growth and have seen astonishing transformations in those who have devoted themselves to the principles set forth within.

Taking the Initiative Against Despair

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian FaithLeave a comment

“Rise, let us be going” (Matthew 26:46).

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, “Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore.” If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, “Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing—they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.” If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.

From My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (1874-1917).

Accompanying image: The Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, with the Basilica of the Agony in the background, 1898.

The Fire of Love

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual WellbeingLeave a comment

Luke 11:33-36

Richard Rolle (1290-1349) writes, in his The Fire of Love, about the spiritual flame that feeds the soul: “I cannot tell you how surprised I was the first time I felt my heart begin to warm. It was real warmth, too, not imaginary, and it felt as if it were actually on fire. I was astonished at the way the heat surged up and how this new sensation brought great and unexpected comfort. I had to keep feeling my breast to make sure there was no physical reason for it.

“But once I realized that it came entirely from within, that this fire of love had no cause, material or sinful, but was the gift of my Maker, I was absolutely delighted, and wanted my love to be even greater. And this longing was all the more urgent because of the delightful effect and the interior sweetness which this spiritual flame fed into my soul. Before the infusion of this comfort, I had never thought that we exiles could possibly have known such warmth, so sweet was the devotion it kindled. It set my soul aglow.”

When I came to faith in Christ at a Billy Graham Crusade in Boston, Massachusetts, I felt this flame within me. It was as though I was on fire and all the spiritual detritus within me had been burned away. I felt the embers flash into flame again, when on a Cursillo weekend, I sensed a call to the ministry. This time the fire was accompanied by light that seemed to surround me and encompass me. I entered seminary, and in my first preaching class, my professor, Gwyn Walters, told me he could feel the fire within me when it came through, as a “fire in my belly,” as I expounded on the Word of God.

Like Rolle, I have also moved through times when I felt “spiritually frozen…missing what I had become accustomed to…[feeling] myself barren.” Disappointments and overturnings in my life obtruded into my soul warmth, disturbing and quenching the flame. I was comforted then by Rolle’s assertion, that the flame, once kindled, is “irremovable” because it has taken hold of the heart.

Rolle notes us that no mortal could survive the heat at its peak if it persisted. “We must inevitably wilt before the vastness and sweetness of love so intense and heat so indescribable.” Yet at the same time, we long for more of this “honeyed flame;” we long to be “held in thrall with those who sing their Maker’s praise.”

The soul warmth within me continues to bring comfort and enlightenment and an overpowering sense of the presence and love of the living God. The fire still burns steadily and, often, fans into flame.

Have you experienced the “fire of love” as described in this post? Would you be willing to share your experience with me? I am working on a chapter about soul warmth and spiritual fire and would appreciate your input. Please respond in the comments below or email me at therockery.hailson@gmail.com. Thank you, in advance, for any assistance you are able and willing to provide.

Christ is Building His Kingdom with Earth’s Broken Things

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual WellbeingLeave a comment
Christ is building His kingdom with earth’s broken things. Human beings want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. Heaven is filling with earth’s broken lives, and there is no bruised reed that Christ cannot take and restore to glorious blessedness and beauty. He can take the life crushed by pain or sorrow and make it into a harp whose music shall be all praise. He can lift earth’s saddest failure up to heaven’s glory.
–J. R. Miller
 
Adapted from today’s Streams in the Desert

Hold Us Up Against Our Sins

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing, PrayerLeave a comment

Father in Heaven! Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins so that the thought of You when it wakens in our soul, and each time it wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what You did forgive, not of how we went astray but of how You did save us.—Søren Kierkegaard

Excerpt from The Prayers of Kierkegaard.

Sketch of Søren Kierkegaard. Based on a sketch by Niels Christian Kierkegaard (1806-1882), in the public domain.

 

Holding Up the Life of Another Before God

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing, PrayerLeave a comment

From Douglas Steere’s book, Prayer and Worship, comes this excerpt on intercessory prayer:

When we hold up the life of another before God, when we expose it to God’s love, when we pray for its release from drowsiness, for the quickening of its inner health, for the power to throw off a destructive habit, for the restoration of its free and vital relationship with its fellows, for its strength to resist temptation, for its courage to continue against sharp opposition—only then do we sense what it means to share in God’s work, in his concern; only then do the walls that separate us from others come down…”Prayer is incipient action,” and these clues are the lines along which the molten freedom of the person in prayer is to be cast. “Mind the Light,” reads an inscription on a sundial. Come under holy obedience.

Here is the unformed side of life’s relationships—the letters to be written, the friends to be visited, the journey to be undertaken, the suffering to be met by food, or nursing care, or fellowship. Here is the social wrong to be resisted, the piece of interpretive work to be undertaken, the command to “rebuild my churches,” the article to be written, the wrong to be forgiven, the grudge to be dropped, the relationship to be set right, the willingness to serve God in the interior court by clear honest thinking, and the refusal to turn out shoddy work.

Yet we need more than the intimations. We need spiritual staying power to carry them out…Holy obedience to the insights, to the concerns that come, that persist, and that are in accord with God’s way of love is not only the active side of prayer, but is the only adequate preparation for future prayer.

Lancelot Andrewes: Prayers that Lift the Mind Up to God

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, PrayerLeave a comment

Launcelot Andrews (1555-1626)Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) is cherished for his prayers that have been preserved for us from his own private devotions. Here is a selection that we might use this week as a call from our own hearts.

I believe in you, O God, Father, Word, Spirit—one God. I believe that by your Fatherly love all things were created; that by your goodness and love all things have been gathered into one in your Word, who for us and for our salvation became flesh, was conceived, born, suffered, was crucified and was buried, descended, rose again, ascended, sat down, and will return and judge…I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins in this world, and the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting in the world to come. I believe this most holy faith, once delivered to the saints. O Lord, help me in my unbelief.

Help me to receive faith from his miraculous conception, humility from his lowly birth, patience from his suffering, power to crucify the sin in my life from his Cross, burial of all my evil thoughts in good works from his burial. Grant that I might be able to meditate on hell from his descent, to find newness of life in his resurrection, to set my mind on things above from his ascension, to judge myself in preparation of his returning judgment.

Accompanying image: Lancelot Andrewes, English School, circa 1660, in the public domain.

Ben Carson, the Media, and Word Pretzeling

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Some media outlets and some of my friends on Facebook have been in an uproar over comments made by Ben Carson at a Monday meeting with Housing and Urban Development employees. They have expressed outrage over Dr. Carson’s use of the word “immigrant” to refer to slaves brought, in cargo holds, to the United States.

“There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,” Carson, the new HUD Secretary, said. “But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

The dictionary defines “immigrant” as “a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.” No choice is indicated in this definition. According to Henry Louis Gates, in his 2009 book, In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, Carson has at least one ancestor who was abducted from Africa. Carson certainly understands the difference between an “involuntary immigrant” and a “voluntary immigrant.” He was not suggesting that slaves came to this country of their own free will. I read his comments before HUD in this way: once here, those who came to this country not by choice, as well as those who came to this country of their own volition, all hoped and prayed for better lives for their progeny.

In fact, Monday night, Carson expounded on his remarks saying, “You can be an involuntary immigrant. Slaves didn’t just give up and die, our ancestors made something of themselves.”

It should be clear to anyone, who cares to look, that the majority membership of the media in the United States didn’t actually report on the HUD meeting. Instead, like heat-seeking missiles, they went in search of a word or a phrase that could be twisted into something vile, something damaging. Sad to say, this intentional mangling has come to characterize much of what the industry is putting forth as journalism. It’s all a matter of capturing readers. And, sad to say, much of the American populace has been eating up these manufactured pretzels without taking a moment to question what they’re ingesting. They do so at their peril.

Accompanying image taken from “Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829” by Robert Walsh, published 1830, in public domain

Sunday’s Palms Are Wednesday’s Ashes

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing, The ChurchLeave a comment

Sunday’s palms are Wednesday’s ashes as another Lent begins;
Thus we kneel before the Maker in contrition for our sins.
We have marred baptismal pledges, in rebellion gone astray;
Now returning, seek forgiveness; grant us pardon, God, this day!

We have failed to love our neighbors, their offenses to forgive,
Have not listened to their troubles, nor have cared just how they live.
We are jealous, proud, impatient, loving over-much our things;
May the yielding of our failings be our Lenten offerings.

We are hasty to judge others, blind to proof of human need;
And our lack of understanding demonstrates our inner greed;
We have wasted earth’s resources; want and suffering we’ve ignored;
Come and cleanse us, then restore us; make new hearts within us Lord.

-Rae B. Whitney (1991)

I had intended to post this on Ash Wednesday, but just located the lyrics today. Though a tad late, the words remain good ones for reflection, prayer and action during this period of Lent and beyond.

subpage--ash-wednesday-

 

Converts to Christ Who Are Not Disciples of Christ

On By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Christian Faith, Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing, The ChurchLeave a comment
Richard Foster writes: “Perhaps the greatest malady in the Church today is converts to Christ who are not disciples of Christ–a clear contradiction in terms. This malady affects everything in church life and in large measure accounts for the low level of spiritual nutrients in our local congregations. To counter this sad state of affairs, we must determine that, regardless of what others do, our intention is to come under the tutelage of Jesus Christ, our ever-living Savior, Teacher, Lord, and Friend.”
Dallas Willard reminds us that: “Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated through by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus same He came to bring (John 10:10).”
In Devotional Classics, in which both of these quotes are found, it is noted that Jesus instructed His followers to obey everything that He had commanded (Matt. 28:16-20). A good exercise, in this period of Lent, would be to go through the gospel of Matthew to list all the things Jesus commanded us to do. The results would make up a mosaic of what the basic Christian life should look like according to Jesus.