Charis

My favorite part of Cooke’s The Secret of a Powerful Inner Life comes early on, as he discusses life in the Spirit and Paul’s declaration that there is no condemnation for those in Christ. Most Christians know this, but my own experience and observation suggest that many Christians don’t really believe it; they have head knowledge—a fact and a memorized verse—but they don’t have the reality of it—belief—in their hearts. Cooke personalizes this vital truth, making it clear and believable:

God does not beat us up over missing it one day. In fact, His love bubbles over for us: “I know the struggle you’re having, but it’s a good fight. I promise, it’s a good fight you can win. Just stop condemning yourself for it. If we don’t win today, we’ll win tomorrow. Every day is a new day, by My mercy.”

The next morning we wake up, and God says, “Okay, it’s a new day. I’ve gotten rid of yesterday; let’s not carry anything forward into today. Let’s have a fresh crack at it, together. I refuse to allow you to beat yourself up over what happened yesterday.”

Meditate on this for a while: can you hear your God and Father saying this to you?

I got up this morning ready to write more about Graham Cooke only to discover that my laptop wouldn’t boot. You likely know what that meant: a day spent reinstalling software, trying to figure out what I hadn’t backed up and therefore lost, getting everything back in order. I’m still not there yet, but I’m close. At any rate, in the midst of all this turmoil, this passage from Cooke seems appropriate:

When the soul comes under the rule of the spirit, life and peace are the result. Suddenly, we do not have to know everything—we just become wise about where to stand at any given moment. We do not know how everything will pan out, but we learn to be happy with the process of getting there. We become fixated on holding God’s hand and do not worry about the trouble around us.

While I can’t say I had this attitude all day, I had it at least part of the time. I didn’t get in a tizzy this morning because I knew God would work it out, and at 6 (I had been up for an hour and half at at point trying to solve the problem), the Spirit prompted me to drive to campus to get my Mac mini and bring it home. I figured I would use it to work if I had to take my laptop in for repairs. As it turned out, having the mini was a huge blessing but not as I expected: I was able to copy all my applications and other files over, saving me from a very frustrating hunt for installation CDs, serial numbers, and so forth. When I realize that I could connect my laptop to the mini and copy, I was excited: not only because it was a great solution, but more importantly, because I realized that the Holy Spirit was looking out for me even before I knew I needed the help. Or, to put it another way, He’s got my back. When you see God at work in unexpected ways, you can’t help but be filled with love and gratitude.

I’m reading Graham Cooke’s The Secret of a Powerful Inner Life—less than 60 pages, but slow going because there’s so much to think about. Here’s what caught my attention this morning:

How much of our “spirituality” is threatened by opposition? Do we feel the urge to control or dominate in human confrontations? How much of our peace is destroyed by conflict? How easily upset are we? How long does it take us to regain normal, good humor? How vulnerable are we to anger, resentment, and bitterness? How long do we hold a grudge? How quick are we to forgive? How willing are we to be restored?

If the answer to any of those questions is, in any way, negative, we are more likely living in our souls than in our spirits.

Ouch!

Lest this leave you feeling overwhelmed with your failures, Cooke offers hope in the next paragraph:

God is breaking our controlling selves by enabling us to submit to the spiritual fruit of self-control. Our dominatnig, manipulative selves must become humble and submissive to Christ. We must learn to reassert our wills as the vehicle of the spirit over our emotions and thought lives.

How do you describe yourself? When you introduce yourself, what sort of things do you say? I might say, “I’m Dan; I’m a blogger and I teach English at UAB.” or “I’m Dan, the husband of Teddie and the father of three children.”

Note that our introductions are typically what we do or who we are related to—not qualities. I don’t say, “I’m Dan, generally nice but also easily irritated.” Look how God identifies Himself to Moses:

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with Moses and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

This description, “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love,” is repeated throughout the Old Testament…

There’s a reason we don’t want to recognize our woundedness and sin and inconsistency. It hurts. It points a finger. It reminds me that I’m less than perfect. It makes me—oh, horror!—feel bad about myself. And as a culture, we don’t like to feel bad about ourselves.

Undoubtedly some will disagree, but I think feeling bad about yourself is a prerequisite for true repentance. Only after I was confronted with my incredible sinfulness and my utter inability to make lasting change did I come to a full appreciation of God’s love, mercy, and grace. I was caught in an addictive cycle of sin that I couldn’t stop, no matter how much I wanted to. I was miserable, and I realized that I was not nearly so wonderful as I had always thought. At the moment I knew God loved me in the midst of my mess, I fully experienced His grace for the first time. To use Card’s words, I recognized my woundedness…

After I wrote yesterday’s post, I remembered that Peter and John distinguished themselves as “ordinary men who had had no special training” in Acts 3 and 4. In chapter 3, the man who had been crippled for 40 years is healed, and Peter preaches to the amazed crowds; because of this, he and John spend the night in jail. Chapter 4 tells of their encounter with the Sanhedrin and notes the response of the councilmen: “The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men who had had no special training. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.”…

Yesterday, feeling a little flat, I thought I’d find inspiration in a name of Jesus. I have a “Names of Jesus” poster hanging in my office on campus, and occasionally I’ll take one of the names, look at the scripture reference, get the context, and mull it over. I’ve worked my way through about a third, so the next in the list was “Carpenter.”

My first thought was: who put that on the list? Why is carpenter there with Morning Star, Bread of Life, and King of kings? But I looked at the reference anyway…

Poetry is challenging for the majority of my students, both because of unfamiliarity and because of poor teaching in the past. Most of my students have apprehensions and misconceptions about poetry, and so I will often introduce it by writing on the board “When I think of poetry…” and asking them to complete the statement by writing for a few minutes. When students read their responses, I hear things like “it’s hard to understand” and “it doesn’t make sense.” There is the student who loves poetry and has been looking forward to discussing it all semester, but there’s generally only one in a class of thirty-five.

I suspect that if I ask my students to complete the statement “When I think of God…” I would get pretty similar responses. Ditto, my neighbors and coworkers and even fellow Christians. There are a lot of apprehensions and misconceptions about God…

My parents were in town this week on their way to and from seeing their new great-grandsons, the twins. Thursday night, we were talking about my mother’s parents, and particularly her father, Leo B. Switzer. I loved Grandpa Switzer—he was the quintessential grandfather: kind, funny, affectionate. I remember sitting on his lap; he would squeeze my leg just behind the knee to make me laugh. I also remember how he smelled, though for the life of me I can’t find words to describe it. I don’t think it was cologne or aftershave, and it wasn’t unpleasant; it was just Grandpa. I always remember him smiling….