The Danger Within

Even as a child I wanted to hear God’s voice. I was promised in Sunday school that He was individually interested and that He spoke to each one of us through His Word. Looking to test this, I would pull my Children’s Explorer’s Bible off the bookshelf lined with my grizzled collection of My Little Ponies, and flop down on my bed; open the book at random, and drop my finger somewhere on the exposed pages to see what God had to say to me. I didn’t really think it worked like that—the spiritual equivalent of spinning the globe with your eyes closed to find out where you should live—but I thought it was worth a try. If memory serves, God didn’t have any specific messages for me.

These days I find myself doing slightly more sophisticated versions of the same foolish thing because I still want to hear God’s voice speak directly to me. I want Him to talk to me about the things that are close to my heart and the things that are close to His. Sometimes I think I’m listening to the Holy Spirit, but I hear my own heart instead. It is so easy to err when God starts to sound a little bit too much like me.

Few of the deceptions that we face in life are as unvarnished as an email from an obscure Nigerian prince with an inheritance to bestow upon those who speedily reply with their banking details. Even the slickest of con men seeking to swindle the unsuspecting out of their money are only mere entry-level deceivers. True deception—the kind you really need to be on guard against—has a far subtler hand. It oozes in through the cracks in the brickwork of your life; it pushes open the unlatched gate; entering through the broken places you just haven’t gotten around to mending yet. And it isn’t after your money, but rather your soul.

“The heart is deceitful above all things. 

And desperately wicked; 

Who can know it?” 

(Jeremiah 17:9)

Culturally, the heart—the seat of our emotions— is lauded as the most trustworthy organ of decision. Following one’s heart is the irrefutable defence; the final say on a matter; the trump card that has no equal. The heart is the means by which the unbelieving world chooses its way. Absent the Holy Spirit, the World must feel its way forward, rather than discern what the Spirit of Wisdom is speaking.

The scriptural warning against the heart is not an embargo against emotion. Human beings are made in the image of God and our emotional capacity finds its original template in the Most High. But real deception invites your emotions to dance. It offers you its hand through offence, jealousy, fear, anger, lust, despair, or pride;— until it whirls you about in a flurry of feeling and confusion; never tiring in order that the room never stops spinning. Emotions are a powerful counterfeit for truth because they feel so true—and we feel powerful when we feel so much. Wisdom, however, promises no such affectation. 

Discernment is the spiritual means of perception, and it is a function of the Holy Spirit. It is the ability to differentiate the whole truth from the half-truths—the genuine from the counterfeit—amid the cacophony of emotional noise. It is the only remedy against deception; the still small voice that reveals what is true as opposed to that which only feels true. It’s worth contemplating then, that the Holy Spirit came to rest upon Jesus as a dove;—a sensitive creature apt to take off at the slightest surprise. No dove ever came to rest upon someone in the middle of a temper tantrum. Likewise, the Spirit of Discernment, cannot be heard when an emotional reaction has been given free rein to guide. The voice of wisdom is heard by the quieted soul in a posture of humility who is longing to hear. It’s not complicated, but it is hard.

(A version of this article was published in the July/August edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)

Faith Pursuing Real

I write stories for a living. I invent people and stick them in impossible scenarios to see how they manage. Usually, when I start writing I have some idea where I want these characters to end up; whether they will behave nobly or ignobly, —usually a mixture of both—as they confront the obstacles I throw in their path. The trouble is, characters—like the Velveteen Rabbit who was loved by his boy—eventually become real. Real to me at least, and then I can’t do a thing with them. I write scenes and put words in their mouths and they stubbornly disagree and refuse to say them with any kind of conviction. The action of the story stalls. The other characters look at the floor, awkwardly pretending not to notice my embarrassing faux pas, and the writing comes to a dead end until I delete all the way back to authenticity. Characters who have revealed who they are can’t be manipulated into being someone they aren’t.

God also has a stubborn way of being real and not taking my stage direction. More often than not, He doesn’t say the thing I want Him to say, and the stuff He does say;—well, let’s just say that God isn’t particularly concerned about human opinions. He is who He is.  

I can always tell when I’ve tried to put words in His mouth or force His hand when the conversation goes dead and I find I’ve painted myself into an uncomfortable spiritual corner with no where to go. Once again I realize that I’ve tried to call the shots and write both sides of the conversation. It’s embarrassing but I don’t think it’s just me. It’s a bad habit that plagues us all. Humanity doesn’t want a God with His own opinions. We want a god whose rules enable us to live as we please; who we can pick up with our hands; and see our own reflection in the gold-plated surface and set aside again whenever convenience suits.

But God is real and the faith that He gives us to pursue Him is far more unwieldy than a set of religious dictates. Faith is vision and the drive to pursue the God who is the destination of life’s arduous climb. Sometimes the path of faith is steep and harrowing. Sometimes we pause out of breath with every exhausted muscle screaming for reprieve, and doubt whether we have another step in us. But the view is from the height is something else.

After their victorious exodus from Egypt, the Children of Israel elected to stay at the foot of the mountain. The God who had rescued them through wonders and signs was too frightening to meet face to face.  

“You talk to Him,” they implored Moses, “and we’ll do whatever you say.”

Moses’s faith drew him up the mountain because he alone longed for God’s presence. The people, however, stayed far below, content to cater to their fears and appetites. What each of them saw of God depended on where they stood. Moses climbed the mountain and entered the glory cloud of God’s presence where the Almighty spoke to him; revealing His thoughts and plans as one might share with a friend. But to those who wanted nothing to do with God Himself,  “To the Israelites at the foot of the mountain, the glory of the LORD appeared at the summit as a consuming fire.”  (Exodus 24:17)

At a distance, God will always be frightening to us—no matter how many oceans He’s parted, or how many desperate prayers He has answered. When we stand far off and resist the beckoning of faith, He is terror and destruction to our eyes. Yet when we dare to approach Him, He envelopes us in His glory cloud and unclasps His heart. The destination of faith is God alone. It is to be taken into His presence; to experience the revelation of who He is. God will always resist our habitual attempts to fashion Him into our image. After all, He’s real and He is who He is.

(A version of this article was published in the May/June edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com).