C I R C L E O F H O P E

In the previous lesson, we looked at the “feeling good” stronghold in general and at how God may move in on that stronghold in order to free us from it. In this lesson, we look at the spiritual practice of the stronghold and how God may react to that.

Many of us judge the quality of our experience of God by how good we feel afterward. Were we lost in worship, did the pastor’s sermon really touch us, did we learn something significant in our Bible reading, did we really feel on fire in our prayer time, was our meditation relatively untroubled by stray thoughts? We believe we were very close to God in those times. However, if worship was mechanical, the pastor’s sermon was dry as dust, our Bible reading was boring, our prayers never got above the ceiling, and our minds were wild with thoughts during meditation, we assume that God was far, far away. But is that a correct assumption?

The Christian contemplatives would say “absolutely and emphatically not”! They talk about dark nights of the soul where God, while not withdrawing His actual presence from His children because He has promised never to do that (Hebrews 13:5b),[1] withdraws the sense of His presence from them. Now, why would God do that? John of the Cross has written perhaps one of the best known discussions on the dark night. Here is a summary of what he has to say (you will detect his Catholic background in the wording he uses, but what he says is applicable across denominations):

Out of love for us, God works in the dark night to help us grow and be freed from our imperfections. In the dark night, God removes all pleasure from our devotional life. The purpose of this is so that the soul will not misuse its spiritual consolations and turn them into opportunities for sin. Specifically, the soul will be delivered from the seven capital sins.

You are satisfied with your spiritual achievement and condescending of others who are not as good as you are. You like to teach but don't want to be taught. You begin to do spiritual exercises in order to be seen to be spiritual. You refuse to be transparently honest for fear of ruining your "image". You seek God's deliverance from your imperfections only to feel good about yourself and not out of any concern for God.

In the dark night, pride is replaced with humility, the attitude of thinking little of yourself and your religious works and focusing on how great and deserving God is.

You are discontented with what God gives you, thinking that you deserve more in the way of spiritual consolation. You practise spiritual disciplines in order to get good feelings, a rush, a special touch from God. You focus on the feelings you get out of your disciplines rather than on God and what matters to Him.

In the dark night, God offers no pleasurable sense of His presence and of His work in your life, and greed gives way to simplicity.

In moments of deep prayer or worship, you experience profound temptations arising from the flesh or the devil. You avoid devotions in order to avoid the battle with temptation.

In the dark night, God takes away all sensory pleasure, and spiritual luxury is replaced with peace. The flesh is quieted, Satan is silenced, and fear of temptation subsides.

You are addicted to the benefits of the spiritual life and will not allow them to be removed without experiencing anxiety and frustration, which can lead to anger and/or bitterness. You respond by attempting to do things in order to become more spiritual and recapture the blessings.

In the dark night, you learn contentment, the ability to wait for whatever God wants to give and His timing in giving it.

You want more and more in the way of spiritual experiences rather than being content with what God chooses to give. You kill yourself with spiritual exercises, trying to subdue your own flesh. You confuse pleasure in devotions with accomplishing things of significance for the Kingdom, and you do not see that much can be accomplished in the spiritual realm without any kind of pleasurable feeling.

You are not pleased with the spiritual growth of others. You prefer to be thought of as the most spiritual person in the room. You resent those who appear to be more gifted.

When your spiritual exercises do not yield the anticipated consolation, you abandon them. You get angry over God calling on you to do what does not suit your need. You begin to lose interest in God because He does not measure up to your expectations. You are too weak to bear the crosses that would cause you to grow.

Dr. Larry Crabb sums up these kinds of experiences as God seeking to overcome in our hearts a single stronghold - the feeling good stronghold. If we stay caught in that stronghold, God will eventually attempt to dismantle it. His primary method for doing this is to do nothing while we suffer. We will discuss this more fully in the next lesson.

Do the 20-minute breathing meditation. In the last 10 minutes, do a special prayer of examen. Ask yourself and the Lord: Do I fall into any of the seven kinds of errors that John of the Cross talks about? If you do, ask God what needs to be done. Also, from here on, note when that same kind of thinking tries to intrude on your times of meditation/contemplation and let those thoughts go so they can’t take hold again.

Do the 20-minute breathing meditation. At the same or another time in the day, do a 10 to 15-minute prayer of examen.

[1] Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."