Do not Counsel The Spirit

Recently, I start to use Marva J. Dawn’s (唐慕華)《展翅困乏中─31天以賽亞書四十章默想之路》[To Walk and Not Faint: A Month of Meditations on Isaiah 40] to do my daily devotion. There are 31 days of devotion. Each devotion is based on one verse in Isaiah 40. In the beginning of the year, I used it for a while and stopped at Day 10. I pick it up again because I remember I did get refreshed by using it for devotion. A lot of time I just read the Scriptures for devotion. Sometimes, I rely on a supply of devotional materials prepared by good writers.

“Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel?” (40:13, ESV)

In the Old Testament, the Spirit is always tied into the power of God, especially his creative power. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2, ESV). Water symbolizes evil power in Hebrew culture. This verse gives a graphic imagery of a cosmic war between God and the evil force. In the midst of cosmic chaos, God’s Spirit fought against the power of disorder and turned it into orderliness. The Spirit of God hovering over the water is like an eagle “hovering over the nest of its young, protecting and preparing their nest” (cf. Deut. 32:11).[1] In the power of the Spirit, God placed all things according to their kinds: from disorder to order.

Who am I to “advise” (NLT) the Holy Spirit? How many times I tell Him what to do instead of waiting for His guidance. How many times I tend to correct and direct Him the way I want to go instead of quietly discerning His will through Scripture and His Body. Who knows enough to advise Him? What knows God’s will better than the Spirit? Paul says, “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:10-11, ESV). God’s ways and thoughts are higher than my ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9). Only the Spirit of God can comprehend the depths of God. We who believe in Jesus Christ—His death, resurrection, and return—are “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1:13, ESV).

The result of this is through Jesus’ intercession: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, and even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (Jn. 14:16-17, ESV).

We know the One who searches the depths of God.

[1] See John Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expository Bible Commentary. Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), p. 25.

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Daily Inclination

“Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!” (Ps. 119:36, ESV)

By nature, our hearts are inclined away from his laws and decrees. The sinful effects of the original sin are stamped within us. “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:19a, ESV). The doctrine of the original sin still affects us. We always fall for what we want to do and fail to do what we ought to do. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19, ESV). To reflect on the dilemma between “want to” and “ought to”, John Piper notes, “The biblical doctrine of original sin boils down to this (to borrow from St. Augustine): We are free to do what we like, but we are not free to like what we ought to like.”[1]

The psalmist prays for the inclination of his heart towards God’s laws, statutes, and decrees, for they mirror the face of God. Whenever the heart of the psalmist is inclined to God’s laws, the face of God is drawn near.

Each day we ought to pray for our inclination so that we can think and do what we ought to. Our inclination towards Scripture ought to be our starting point in daily worship.

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[1] John Piper, Taste and See: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2005), p. 42.

Return and Rest

“Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (Ps. 116:7, ESV).

The psalmist exhorted himself to return. Returning is a recurrent theme in the Psalms. It’s a holy yearning to get back to the center of life. Getting lost in one’s life is a recurrent reality. It’s necessary to know that we are lost and realize that we need to get back. The psalmist spoke to himself, saying “Return, O my soul, to you rest.” Resting is the means to the end. The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel says, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15a, ESV). We don’t get saved in resting, quietness, and trust. We encounter the peace of God and enter into the presence of God through resting, quietness, and trust: the means to the end. It requires obedience and wisdom to get back to the means because not everyone sees the need to get back to the means. God says, “But you were unwilling” (Isa. 30:15b, ESV).

The reason to get back to the means is in the second half of the verse: “for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.” For is the ground for the psalmist’s returning. He has tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord throughout his life. Such goodness is bountiful. There is no lacking in His holy goodness towards us. Each morning, each day, each night, when we learn to get back to the means of returning, quietness, and trust, we are silently declaring His bounteousness in life. When we are able to declare His bounteousness in action quietly and silently, we start to return and enter into rest in and through which we begin to understand and view our life (daily) concerns differently.

Buy the Truth

“My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will be glad. My inmost being will exult when your lips speak what is right. Let your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off” (Prov. 23:15-18, ESV).

A teacher who is like a father speaks to his student as a son with these affectionate counsels. The quality of the heart of the son affects the joy of the father in his heart. When the son is able to articulate what is right and act upon it in life, his inmost being of the father is filled with joy. Such an interconnection is more than a mentoring relationship. It’s a father-son relationship in which their hearts are joined.

What is right and wrong is not defined by our own moral standards. It does not come from our own religiosity either. It comes from the fear of the Lord through which we know who the boss is in life: God is the Creator, Sustainer, Provider, and Redeemer. He is the source of hope. He is the reason for us to press on with faith. God who is love is the reason for us to learn to love the unlovable.

Prov. 23:23 says, “Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding” (ESV). Godly thinking and upright living don’t come to us spontaneously. It requires some sort of efforts to attain it. No pain; no gain. They are precious, and they are not easy to get. Once we get it, we don’t give them up for the lesser goods. Rather, we keep them even though we need to give up the lesser goods. In the parables, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:44-46, ESV). Once we find what is invaluable, we sell the lesser goods to get it, not vice versa.

The Intimate Stranger

Psalm 77:5-6—“I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, ‘Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart.’ Then my spirit made a diligent search:”

Either in national tragedy or personal disaster, the psalmist pondered what was going on and meditated contemplatively. It was at night. He couldn’t sleep. This Psalm paints a picture of solitude and silence. In the midst of it, we see the struggle of the psalmist. He struggled with God—“In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord…my soul refuses to be comforted” (77:1-2). He also struggled with the inner person—“Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search” (77:6b).

Lauren F. Winner, assistant professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School, wrote a book review on Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr (Jossey-Bass, 2011) in Christian Century (Vol. 128, No. 17, August 23, 2011).

An excerpt:

Rohr’s framework leans heavily on Carl Jung. The spiritual life has two stages. In the first half of life, you are devoted to establishing yourself; you focus on making a career and on finding friends and a partner; you are crafting your identity. Spiritually, people in the first half of life are often drawn to order, to religious routine. We are developing habits and letting ourselves be shaped by the norms and practices of our family and community.

Then—a crisis. “Some kind of falling,” Rohr says, is necessary for continued spiritual development. “Normally a job, fortune, or reputation has to be lost,” writes Rohr, “a death has to be suffered, a house has to be flooded, or a disease has to be endured.” The crisis can be devastating. The crisis undoes you. The flood doesn’t just flood your house—it washes out your spiritual life. What you thought you knew about living the spiritual life no longer suffices for the life you are living.

Rohr does not offer a syrupy evasion of this crisis. But he does underline two crucial points. First, God has not abandoned you, even if you are sure that God has…Second, “We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.” That may be cold comfort during the crisis—when your house has flooded, who wants to think about spiritual growth? But later you will notice. You will wonder how you possibly could have come to where you are without that flood.

As Rohr notes, it is written into the very life of Christ, how descended to the dead before he could be resurrected and ascent into heaven. The falling will happen—there is no way to avoid it. But the growth, the second half of life, doesn’t necessarily happen. You can stay stuck if you wish. You can refuse the second half.

If you welcome the second half of life, this is what you will find: you learn to hear “a deeper voice of God” than you heard before. “It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of ‘common sense,’ of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self.” You can hear this voice in the second half of life precisely because of all the work you did in the first half; your very self is now a container strong enough to hold the call of the intimate stranger.” (p. 39)

In the second of life, the psalmist learned to hear “the call of the intimate stranger” at night.

Be Courageous

Henri Nouwen wrote:

"'Have courage,' we often say to one another. Courage is a spiritual virtue. The word courage comes from the Latin word cor, which means 'heart.' A courageous act is an act coming from the heart. A courageous word is a word arising from the heart. The heart, however, is not just the place our emotions are located. The heart is the center of our being, the center of all thoughts, feelings, passions, and decisions."

"A courageous life, therefore, is a life lived from the center. It is a deeply rooted life, the opposite of a superficial life. 'Have courage' therefore means 'Let your center speak.'" [Bread for the Journey (HarperOne, 1997), June 26.]

Be Still

A moment ago, I read today's devotion in Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings (Zondervan, 1997). It is a timely message for me.

An excerpt is as follows:

"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'" (Isaiah 30:21)

When you have doubts or are facing difficulties, when others suggest courses of action that are conflicting, when action dictates one approach but faith another, we should be still. We should quiet each intruding person, calm ourselves in the sacred stillness of God's presence, study His Word for guidance, and with true devotion focus our attention on Him...Soon He will reveal by His secret counsel a distinct and unmistakable sense of His direction.

It is unwise for a new believer to depend on this approach alone. He should wait for circumstances to also confirm what God is revealing. Yet Christians who have had many experiences in their walk with Him know the great value of secret fellowship with the Lord as a means of discerning His will.

Are you uncertain about what direction you should go? Take your question to God and receive guidance from either the light of His smile or the cloud of His refusal. You must get alone with Him, where the lights and the darkness of this world cannot interfere and where the opinions of others cannot reach you. You must also have the courage to wait in silent expectation, even when everyone around you is insisting on an immediate decision or action. If you will do these things, the will of God will become clear to you. And you will have a deeper concept of who He is, having more insight into His nature and His heart of love. All this will be your unsurpassed gift. It will be a heavenly experience, a precious eternal privilege, and the rich reward for the long hours of waiting. (pp. 240-241)