Being Encouraged by Our Discouragement

Being Encouraged by Our Discouragement

by | Jan 21, 2018 | Encouragement, Positive Living

Picture

Ironic as it might seem, the further we progress along the Way to which we are called as Christians, the more it seems we see the failings and errors  of our own nature.   That can be discouraging at times, but when it happens we need to remember something. 

The Bible gives us two stories that speak to this situation, though we might not realize it unless we give the matter some thought. The first story, in the Old Testament, relates to a vision of the prophet Isaiah:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple… “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:1, 5).

Isaiah’s very clear reaction on seeing God in this vision was one of understanding his own spiritual inadequacy and “uncleanness.”   Now compare this story with another in the New Testament  – how Jesus revealed his divine power to Peter and the men fishing with him:

“One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret … he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”….   When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break …. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”  (Luke 5:1-8).

Although these two stories may seem very different on the surface, Peter’s reaction to seeing even a small glimpse of Jesus’ divinity was not unlike the effect of the vision of Isaiah – it was a realization of his own unworthiness and sinful nature.   Admittedly, these events occurred at the beginning of the careers of the two servants of God, but the principle remains the same – the more we come to understand of God, the more we are conscious of our own failings. 

It was many years after the conversion of the apostle Paul that he wrote: “What a wretched man I am!” (Romans 7:24), and “… I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle…” (1 Corinthians 15:9). Yet Paul continued this same thought to the Corinthian Christians: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect” (vs. 10).  Despite his painful awareness of his own failings – after many years  of God working with him – Paul could still say near the end of his life: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).  Both statements were true! Just like the rest of us, Paul doubtless realized his own spiritual failings all the more as the years progressed, yet he knew that God was changing him and completing a purpose in his life.  

To use a simple analogy, before conversion we live in spiritual darkness – like living in a dark room – and cannot see any of the “stains” and “black marks” of sin that cover us.  As we are converted and move  toward the “light” (remember, God is spiritual light), the more we begin to see those black marks on ourselves – and the brighter the light becomes, the more we see even the smallest stains.

It is a  simple truth of the Christian life that the more we grow and come to see God, the less we like what we see of ourselves. Yet this can be encouraging – looked at the other way around, the less we like what we see of ourselves the more we are probably seeing of God and moving closer to him! 

This is not the same as living our lives in a despondent spiritual attitude that focuses on how unworthy we are.  It is just an honest realization of our own spiritual inadequacy and a heightened awareness of ways in which we do fail – sometimes in small things that we would never have noticed earlier in our Christian lives. 
 
Perhaps we can say that our occasional discouragement with our own failings can be turned around.  The more we see the failings of our own nature, the more we can be encouraged that we are doubtless moving closer to God who is enabling us to see those things.  We can rejoice that just as we see ourselves more clearly as we move closer to God, he can continue the process of helping us to see him and making us more like him. ​

Get More Out of Your Bible Study … Try a New Translation

Get More Out of Your Bible Study … Try a New Translation

by | Jan 18, 2018 | Bible Study, Tactical Notes

An irony of faithful regular Bible study is that the more you read it, the more familiar the Bible becomes – and sometimes we may feel we are just not seeing as much as we did when we first, excitedly, came to the word of God.   Now clearly, our major responsibility in this is faithful prayer along with the study – prayer to see and understand more each time we continue our journey in the book. We also need to study with a purpose – not just to be reminded of things we know, or to see something new, but to  learn more of the mind of God, and to learn how we might take on that mind in the small things of which everyday  life is composed.

But there is something else we can do to keep our interest level high and to be rewarded with new understanding.  Get a new translation.  Many of us stay with the same old translation simply because we like to stay with the same physical Bible.  It’s “the Bible” to us, it’s comfortable and may have  our markings and notes built up through years of reading.  But we don’t have to end our relationship with that Bible in order to try a new translation.

I have my own favorite translation and it is the one to which I most frequently turn, but when I feel that I am not seeing anything beyond what I saw the last time I read a biblical book or pondered a single chapter or verse, I turn to another translation.  It’s not that my regular version is not accurate enough, but that I want to hear the words with different stresses, from a different perspective as it were.  Just recently I did this with the Book of Job.  Rereading Job in a different translation opened up dozens of new insights for me.  The words themselves were not necessarily so different from the translation I usually use, but time and again seeing the same verses from a different perspective helped me to see things I had read over earlier.

But I’m not talking about comparing lines or verses in different translations.  That is fine for detailed study of exactly which words are “best” in translating a given verse.  I’m talking about just taking a different version and immersing yourself in it – getting used to its speech patterns and style in the same way you would if you were listening to a new friend speak. 

The great thing is just how simple it is to try another translation. If you like reading on a screen, many Bible versions are available online on various Bible websites (see our article “Five Bible Study Sites Compared”) and many Bible versions can now be obtained free for reading on the Kindle or with the Kindle for PC application or other e-reader.  So, if you sometimes feel that Bible study is not as exciting for you as it was, or if you would just like to maximize what you see in a given study session,  give yourself a lift – try a new translation.

(if you need help selecting a new translation, see the article “Choosing a Bible Translation” on this site.)

Burning Coals

Burning Coals

by | Jan 14, 2018 | Difficult Scriptures

Picture


​
Scripture in Focus:

“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you” (Proverbs 25:21-22).


From a Christian perspective, the proverb’s admonition that we give food and water to our enemies so that “burning coals” will be heaped upon them may seem strange indeed.  Helping someone just to bring punishment on the person seems contradictory to most biblical teachings, yet this exact Old Testament proverb is also cited in the New Testament –  by the apostle Paul:

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head” (Romans 12:18-20).

But we do not need to understand this proverb literally in order to understand its message. If we look at it in its original setting in the Book of Proverbs, we find that it occurs in a group of sayings that all use physical imagery to describe emotional conditions.  Proverbs 25:20 – the proverb directly before the one we are looking at – tells us, for example: “ Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.”  Proverbs 25:23 –  the saying directly after the one we want to understand –  likewise tells us: “Like a north wind that brings unexpected rain is a sly tongue — which provokes a horrified look.”  All of these proverbs are not to be understood literally, rather they are meant to supply a graphic image of what a given feeling is like.

In Proverbs 25:22 we are given an analogy showing what the emotional feeling will often be like for someone who is treated kindly despite their own behavior toward the person showing the kindness.  In a great many cases that feeling will be one of emotional discomfort – the flush of acute embarrassment –  that might well be symbolized by having “burning coals” tipped upon the person’s head.  There are other examples of the metaphorical use of “burning coals” in the Scriptures, as in 2 Samuel 14:7 which uses the image of a “burning coal” to  represent a person’s heir, but the meaning of the expression in Proverbs 25 is clearly that of a feeling of  emotional embarrassment and perhaps guilt. 

There is a wonderful example of this principle and its effect in the Book of 2 Kings (6:8-23) which tells the story of how the Prophet Elisha asked God to strike an Aramean army that was invading Israel with blindness.  When the enemy soldiers did become blind, rather than having them killed as many expected, Elisha led them to Israel’s capital city Samaria where he instructed the king of Israel to “Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink and then go back to their master” (2 Kings 6:22). This is the exact application of the principle of giving food and drink to one’s enemies, in this case to those who had sought to harm the people of Israel.
 
Not surprisingly, when the sight of the enemy warriors was restored and they had been fed “a great feast” by those they originally intended to harm, we read that: “after they had finished eating and drinking, he sent them away, and they returned to their master. So the bands from Aram stopped raiding Israel’s territory” (2 Kings 6:23). The Aramean warriors who had been treated in this way felt great embarrassment at the kindness of those they had considered enemies and that feeling doubtless was responsible for their cessation of hostilities.

That is why the apostle Paul could cite Proverbs 25:21-22 as a practical example of not being overcome by evil, but overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21).  The principle of embarrassment also underlies Paul’s words to the Thessalonian church:  “Take special note of anyone who does not obey our instruction in this letter. Do not associate with them, in order that they may feel ashamed” (2 Thessalonians 3:14).   Paul knew that it is better, where possible, to embarrass others with right behavior than to ignore or reciprocate their wrongdoing.  “Heaping burning coals” in the context that Paul uses the expression clearly means to cause temporary emotional discomfort that may lead to good.

The Ups and Downs of Life

The Ups and Downs of Life

by | Jan 7, 2018 | Positive Living

Picture


 
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven …” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

Unless you live on a balmy tropical island where the temperatures stay fairly constant and there are few indications of seasonal change, your life is full of rhythms that you don’t think about much, but which are always there.  Day and night, hot and cold, spring and fall, summer and winter, daily high temperatures and daily lows. We take such rhythms for granted and don’t particularly stress if we find ourselves in a period of darkness, cold, or whatever – we know that the warmth or the light will return in time.

Although we may understand and live with this aspect of physical life, as Christians we don’t always apply that understanding spiritually – although it is equally true of our spiritual lives. In his classic work The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis noted that there are times when God seems particularly close to us and our spiritual lives seem to go easily: our faith seems strong, we want to do what is right – and temptations to do otherwise are relatively easy to overcome.  Yet there are other times when God may appear to be more distant, our faith seems less secure, and overcoming temptation is somehow harder.

Our spiritual lives, just like our physical lives, are a series of ups and downs, of “highs” and “lows” as well. But that is not the bad news we often presume it to be. In writing about this fluctuation in our spiritual experience, Lewis stated:  “Now it may surprise you to learn that [God] … relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.” Although Lewis used the terms “peaks” and “troughs” and we may perhaps say “highs” and “lows,” his point is clear –  and is one that is worth thinking about.

Lewis effectively argued that it is during our “troughs” or low periods, much more than during our “peaks” or high periods, that we are growing into the sort of creatures God wants us to be: “He wants [us] to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with [our] stumbles.” This is an important understanding of our spiritual lows –  that during those times our efforts may be especially appreciated by God. So Lewis also writes, “… the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.”  When we demonstrate that we want to continue to walk with God even when we do not feel inspired or particularly blessed or helped, we also demonstrate the reality of our faith and commitment. 

That is a truly encouraging perspective if we can grasp it and make it ours. Although the spiritual aspect of our lives has its ups and downs and times of drought as well as times of abundance, God can and does use our spiritual low periods to increase our personal growth and service, if we let him.  In fact, some of the greatest advances in Christian missionary and aid work have occurred at extreme low points in the lives of those who have been instrumental in bringing them about. Sometimes we are just more receptive to the needs of others and to possibilities to serve that we do not tend to see when we are cheerful and buoyed up in good times.

Just like the daily or seasonal weather cycles with their “high” and “low” temperatures, we will always experience highs and lows in our spiritual lives.  But realizing that lows do not last forever and that while we are in them they may provide opportunities to grow that spiritual highs do not give us can make a big difference in how we live and what we accomplish.  Looked at this way, we can strive to persevere through problems and discouragements not only in order to survive and to make it to the end of the road to which we are called, but also to grow and to accomplish more than we could perhaps otherwise have done. 

*All C.S. Lewis quotes in this article are taken from chapter 8 of The Screwtape Letters, originally published in London during 1941 and 1942.