Wholeness Ministries
www.wholeness.org
www.wholeness.org
The Value of Nuturing the Soul Part 1
Do you really want to live your life-every moment of your life-in His presence? Do you long for Him, thirst for Him? Do you hunger to be in his presence? Thomas Kelly asks,"Do you want to live in such an amazing divine Presence that life is transformed and transfigured and transmuted into peace and power and glory and miracle?"
If you do, then you can. But most of us may believe we do not have the time to submit to the silence and solitude that is re-creative. Life is too busy with spouse, kids, job, school, friends or fun. Most likely, you are not ready to go that deep yet. You do not at this point love God above all else in the world. You do not yet love Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. But Scripture tells us that this is what His heart longs of us.
Isn't it true that whenever we really want to do something we find time to do it? It is not so much that we lack the time, but the discipline. And we lack the joy of knowing the inexpressible delight of being with the Father God because we so seldom go there for any length of time. When we read, "My soul pants for Thee" (Psalm 42:1), we may realize that we do pant, but not for God. Instead, in our feverish scrambling, we long and pant after other things. We run after security, success, the latest fad, a new way to pray, a new way to spend a minute with God.
A.W. Tozer wrote:
"In my creature impatience I am often caused to wish that there were some way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual life painlessly by short easy lessons; but such wishes are vain. No shortcut exists. God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: the man who would know God must spend time with Him. He must count no time wasted that is spent in the cultivation of His acquaintance. He must give himself to meditation and prayer, hours on end."
But in addition to a lack of discipline and lack of knowing the joy of being with the Father, what many of us lack is a nurturing relationship with God. Nurturing allows us to speak and act from strength rather than from fear or insecurity. It helps us to begin to understand our true value and worth, to get in touch with our "belovedness." Knowing our value and worth frees us from dependence on other people. It allows us to experience the profound, daily joy of just being alive. We do not have to justify ourselves or apologize for being alive. We can enjoy simply being.
Most importantly, a nurturing relationship with the Father allows us to hear this message: It is okay to do nothing but sit quietly in His presence. God still loves you! You do not have to always do something for Him.
What We See in the Mirror
When you look at yourself, what do you see? Do you like what you see? At some point you might have said things about yourself like, "I hate myself!" "I do not like my nose, legs, etc." "I am not wanted." "I am so clumsy I cannot do anything right." "I am not good enough to be accepted and forgiven by God." "I wish I were a boy/girl." Such statements are typical of those who have little self-esteem, whose self-image is deeply wounded, who feel like a flawed clay pot rather than a treasure.
Many of us have an intense dislike of ourselves and project onto Jesus our own feelings about ourselves. We decide that if we cannot accept what we perceive as flaws, than neither can Jesus. Though we cannot blame Satan for our weaknesses and failures, we must recognize that he lurks in the background, ready and waiting to take advantage of whatever is there, to harass and, if possible, destroy us.
David Seamands wrote:
"They find themselves defeated by the most psychological weapon that Satan uses against Christians. This weapon has the effectiveness of a deadly missile. Its name? Low self-esteem. Satan's greatest psychological weapon is a gut-level feeling of inferiority, inadequacy and low self-worth. This feeling shackles many Christians, in spite of wonderful spiritual experiences, in spite of faith and knowledge of God's Word. Although they understand their position as sons and daughters of God, they are tied up in knots, bound by a terrible feeling of inferiority, and chained to a deep sense of worthlessness."
In my youth, I continually heard sermons emphasing hell. They pretty well convinced me that all those things I wanted to do were sinful, and that even thinking about such things meant I was bad. They drummed into me that God was going to get me if I did anything wrong. Instead of seeing myself as a person of value to God, I thought God was incessantly watching and waiting to catch me doing something wrong. No wonder I grew up thinking God was there to spoil my fun. With such a church background combined with what was happening in my life as I entered adolescence, my self-image was shaky.
During my junior high and high school days my family was not only deeply involved in church activities where I heard all this hellfire and brimstone preaching, but my hormones were kicking in, making me an adolescent mess. Physically, I was a small, uncoordinated guy. I remember standing in line during physical education class waiting to be chosen for a team. When it came time to be chosen for a team, I was the one left over. The team captains would argue over who would have to have me on their team. All this reinforced this short, skinny, uncoordinated kid's sense of inadequacy. I wanted to play sports, but I was too short for basketball, too little for football and too uncoordinated for baseball. I overcame this lack of athletic prowess by joining the high school choir. But, of course, since our school was ruled by jocks this really did not help much in pursuing a status as a big man on campus.
I also grew up in a family of hunters and, though I did not particularly like hunting, it was the manly thing to do. All the men in my family hunted. In order to participate in male bonding, I had to hunt. I will never forget my first hunting experience. We were out on the opening day of dove season. I had a shotgun, which weighed about as much as I did, and a bird was unlucky enough to fly over my head. I shot and hit the bird, and we all ran over to where it lay. Unfortunately, I had merely wounded it, and the bird was lying there on the ground bleeding, flapping its wings looking up at me with these pleading eyes. I looked down at this bird and felt horrible. But, of course, all my relatives were congratulating me on what a great hunter I was going to be. On the outside I appeared quite manly and proud of myself, but I was crying on the inside and thinking there must be something wrong with me. Why did I not feel good about myself when my dad was obviously proud of me?
Not until the latter part of my college years did I discover some sports I could do well. Skiing and sailing were two of these. I became an avid snow skier. What that did for my self-image is beyond words. It was also during these latter years of college that I began to learn I was of value to God. I began to understand that I was of great worth and significance. I actually began to receive positive input from people and started feeling that I might be okay.
Next issue we will learn how to see ourselves as treasures in jars of clay.
Wholeness ministries offers a weekly School of Healing Prayer, individual prayer by appointment, numerous resources on both audio and videotape as well as our book "Learning To do What Jesus Did."
For more information please contact:
Rev. Mike Evans
4301 Stine Rd. Suite H
Bakersfield CA
USA 93313
661-833-2920
Fax 661-833-2934
mevans@wholeness.org
www.wholeness.org
