Month: October 2017

Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

In my 27 years as a believer, I have found that how I am feeling before I open the Bible can profoundly affect how I perceive what I am studying at that moment. This is particularly true if I am in the midst of some circumstantial struggle that has contributed to a pre-existing sense of anxiety or depression. In this case, the seemingly harsher verses of Scripture seem to jump off the page and embed themselves in my disquieted mind and heart. These verses all seem meant for me, and only me. At the same time, the words I read about God’s love, mercy and grace seem meant for someone else. It is as if the sterner language is boldfaced and the softer words are grayed-out in comparison.

Sometimes (though not as much as I would like) the opposite happens. When I’m in a positive place emotionally and I sit down to do my devotions I can, at least to some extent, apply all the warm and reassuring verses to my life. I have a sense that I’m easily accepting these encouraging words into my, now, peaceful mind and heart.

Of course, whether I am in a bad place or a good one, the words of the Bible have not changed. What has changed is my emotional state which can pose a considerable challenge to my ability to interpret the Word of God. The primary danger is that I will decide who God is to me based on my feelings, bad or good, rather than on the objective truth of God’s nature as revealed in Scripture.

We fallen human beings are notoriously ineffective in discerning Truth (the capital “T” being key). We see this in the moral confusion and self-destructive tendencies of so many people on our planet today; being Christians does not exempt us from these things. We also can, like a faulty radar system, fail to transmit reality accurately and end up going off the moral “deep-end” to the detriment of our own souls. The best defense against this is in having consistent knowledge that, to paraphrase Martin Luther, God is good and He is good to us [italics mine]. One of the principal ways we get such knowledge is through encountering the character of God in His book, the Bible.

The problem is that we cannot accurately discern the truth of God’s character if we always allow our pre-existing emotional state to dictate how we understand Him. In this circumstance we can err on the side of God being all about justice or, otherwise, being all about love. In either case we are allowing our feelings at that moment to create a “God” who does not exist. The true nature of our Lord is not found in the extremes that arise when we let a random verse, tainted by an out of context interpretation influenced by our emotions, determine who we think He is.

So what’s the solution to this problem? To be honest, I haven’t yet fully found one. Letting my mood determine my understanding of Scripture remains an issue for me. I will say, though, that recognizing and acknowledging that this dynamic exists helps me to work on finding a solution for it. We cannot fix a problem we don’t realize we have.

Maybe writing this essay is a part of my finding an answer to this problem. And, perhaps, if you are like-minded, reading this essay might be a part of you doing the same.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

When we feel badly “burnt-out” in doing the hard work of loving others we often think of only two solutions. One is to pull-back from the objects of our love to seek an extended period of rest and the other is to “re-double our efforts” and try to continue being there for them despite feeling like we have nothing more to give.

There is, however, a third option.

When deeply fatigued we can consciously choose to begin seeking to go farther into God, to find the strength we need in our weakness in the infinite yet accessible depths of His love. Instead of pulling back or bearing down we can choose to dig deep.

It is easy to forget that as Christians we have access to unlimited resources. The God to which we have given our lives to is not finite. This may seem to some like the most basic spiritual common sense, but it is one thing to affirm the omnipotence and infinitude of God in our heads and another to believe it in our hearts. We live in a world of scarcity. All resources seem limited and, in the natural sense, this is indeed the case. All material things on earth truly are in limited supply and this perception is so pervasive in human life that it becomes easy to forget that scarcity in the natural realm does not extend into the realm of the supernatural. There is no shortage of resources in God’s economy and there never will be. If our spiritual “tanks” are empty He is always able to fill them again to the brim and, beyond that, to make them overflow onto others.

The Scriptures tell us to “seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added onto you.” Included in what can be added on to us is the love we need to reach out to those the Lord has given us for the purpose of blessing. We may indeed be burnt-out, we may indeed need to rest and even limit our participation in the lives of certain people for a short season. But that time of rest is perhaps best used to turn our hearts, minds, souls and spirits towards our Lord in a way we have not done before.

Very few seasoned Christians would disagree that they have more to give the people in their lives after they have spent a sustained period of time seeking seriously after God. Whether the seeking takes the form of extended periods of prayer, meditation, worship or Bible study the fruit of drawing near to God in new and deeper ways is new strength to sincerely love and serve others.

Of course some will argue that the demands of modern life make it very difficult to find the time necessary to draw near to God in this way. There is some truth to this complaint, especially for those trying to balance the seemingly endless demands of work and family life, but here the old cliché about “being too busy not to pray” is an apt one. If God cannot be given priority in our lives in the sense of giving him the first fruits of our time then something beyond “burn-out” is at stake here. Coming under the Lordship of Christ and progressing in sanctification is in no way optional for an authentic believer. In the long run we will see our lives fall apart spiritually if we do not find the desire to seek God before all other persons and things.

One heartening truth that needs to be stated is that it is the love and grace of God which not only motivates our decision to go deeper spiritually, but also opens the practical doors to do so. He can and will show us how to find the time to seek the deep resources within Him that He longs to share with us. Once our will is set the doors will be opened, for all who earnestly desire more of God will find more of God.

In the end we who dare to plumb the depths of divine love will find renewal in every sense, for our own sakes, for the sake of others and, ultimately, for the glorification of our Lord.

Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Sometimes “the World, the Flesh, and the Devil” are not trying to get us to do something obviously and openly wrong. Instead they are more quietly tempting us to try to work our way to Heaven in a way that apes the true holiness of life that comes only through the progressive application of God’s transforming grace.

Legalistic and self-centered attempts to earn favor with God, whether conscious or unconscious, are nothing new in the history of Christianity. Despite our Lord’s severe warnings to the Pharisees about thinking their external works would make them acceptable to His Father we still have plenty of modern day Pharisees in the Church and, if we are honest, we often also are aware of at least traces of that error made manifest in ourselves.

Why are these tendencies towards “work-righteousness” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) so difficult to eradicate within our hearts? There is more than one answer to this question and I will not presume to address them all here. Instead I would like to shine a light on one reason why we continue to mistake false holiness with the actual article.

A primary reason is found in the subtlety of the forces mentioned earlier. The “World” constantly tells us that we cannot get something for nothing. We are led to believe that we have to work for anything and everything we want to possess, even love itself. The “Flesh”, meanwhile, appeals to our internal sense of pride, the idea that we really can attain to whatever we want based on our own completely intrinsic merits. Then there is the Enemy of our souls, the “Devil”, an active and actual being who embodies evil in its “purest” form. He does his best to deceive us into thinking that both what we learn from the World and what we learn from the Flesh is the truth.

All three of these influences also encourage us to commit those obvious and open sins this piece began by mentioning but such transgressions, because they are obvious and open, are much easier for us to identify, and from which repent. It is not so easy to identify the spiritual pride lurking within us and encouraged from outside ourselves. It’s that pride which ultimately motivates our inauthentic efforts to be “good”, to grow in the appearance of true holiness. In fact there is perhaps no other threat to our spiritual life both as profound in its negative effects and as elusive in its identification as prideful effort masquerading as God’s sanctifying work in us.

This begs the question of how to recognize and turn from trying to work our way to Heaven. Blessedly, there are several ways to tackle this problem. Probably the most effective approach is to ask God, by His Spirit, to both show us when and where we are practicing works-righteousness and then to direct us away from our own efforts and into surrender to His grace. We can also pray for protection against the effectiveness of those three influences: the World, Flesh, and the Devil. Another resource is our brothers and sisters in the Faith, who can pray towards that end for us. Finally some fellow Christians even have the gift of identifying legalistic effort in others. Often pastors and Christian counselors are particularly discerning in this area.

The problem might be a difficult one to both know and resolve but, as with all the things which threaten our progress in being conformed to the image of Christ, God Himself gives us strength even in our weakness to overcome. In fact it is in recognizing our weakness and accepting it that His grace can be brought to bear on this challenge to an authentically Christian life.