Life, even as a Christian, is a journey. Ahead of us as travelers are pathways, both health and infirmity, difficulties and dangers, highs and lows, joys and sorrows, pain and privilege, success and failure, wealth and poverty. At the root of every human hope is the quest for the good life, living large. The Greek word, zoe, means life at its best. It is actualizing sheer joy, that intangible commodity that overrides the temporary condition of life and transcending it with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The up side of each of these adverbs is of no problem to us; it is living with the downside that is difficult. At the moment of challenge and difficulty, we need answers, rapidly to address the failure. To fail is not the same as being a failure, for one will experience many failings in life but still be far from totally washed out. To fail is not the disgrace everyone has portrayed it to be. For to err is to do nothing more than be human. Failure is only a temporary setback, establishing a tremendous set-up for a comeback! Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without running the risk of failure or difficulty. Developing ones spirit is the empowering perspective of human life and the Holy Spirit. God’s presence is power to brought to bear in the world.
A translation of the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek work pneuma is “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit” depending upon the context. Both the Hebrew-based and the Greek-based texts (both Testaments) deploy the spirit of both God and of human beings. In His conversation Nicodemus sought[i] Jesus said that the Spirit is like the wind in that one cannot see it but one can see its effects. This is true of both the Spirit of God and the spirit of a human being. Christ like or to “put on Christ”[ii] is Christians like everything else need to make a fresh start, refresh, renew, revival, reshaping. We look at our bodies and believe we need to trim weight, hair, or ____. Review relationships and decide upon updating old valued friendships that were long forgotten, trading them for damaging friendships. , Losing, casting away, and saying “no” to someone with whom we believe we are in love is akin to the woeful experience of the “dark night of the soul” in spiritual mysticism. The dark night of the soul in spiritual mysticism is John of the Cross’ thesis of that stage in which the spiritual person suffers great trials, by reason not so much of the aridness that they suffer, as the fear they have of being lost on the road. Dark nights are times in which we do not feel the presence and the goodness of God. This feeling of lostness tricks the mind into believing that all happiness, good fortune, and blessings are gone for them because there is no more pleasure in the remaining pleasures of life as God gives. With the dark night of the soul one experiences an inability to even pray as normally or to pray at all. Separation from that which is damaging provides time to heal and to rebound.
This spirituality is grounded in personal prayer. Personal prayer, not just when things are not going our way, but when they are going our way, has to be a lifestyle if we ever hope to find out the purpose and the meaning of our lives in relationship to God. Without personal prayer, you cannot be an integrated Christian and without personal prayer, you cannot have an integrated family.
What these pilgrims go there for is to ask God, through their prayers, to help them change their attitude about the problems they have. They ask God to give them acceptance of the problem; they ask God to help better their personal situations and their family situations at home.
We, as Christians, have grown up hearing the expression more things are brought about through prayer than this world dreams of. That is true. St. Paul constantly reminded us, as did Christ, the value of praying constantly so that we would receive the insights, through
For the person who forces themselves from a damaging relationship full of futile illicit sex, they feel that there is no good substitute for the mate that they have lost, yet, that very mate was brutal, damaging, exploitative, abusive, and obsessive. Losing you’re a cherished possession upon which you depend can be your dark night of the soul. Even when that possession is money, power, sex, an unhealthy relationship or even a good relationship, when the dependency upon it is ethically unbalanced, The dry spells without this abusive person is good for you, but you still want it, because it is better than the barrenness of loneliness and isolation. You know that you are better without a mate who is damaging to the soul and spirit, but you talk yourself into believing that the injury you experience is not as unpleasant as the terror you fear.
One great approach to abandonment that is helpful is the twelve-step-like approach. The Twelve Step program[[1]] has developed into a method, if followed, of teaching people how to become fully human. The steps are very spiritual. Each step must be followed. The first step is the toughest of any. You can not move forward without accepting and doing step number one.
- Admit to being powerless over the addiction to the bad relationship, and that your life has become unmanageable;
- Come to a belief in a power, God, greater than yourself to restore you to sanity;
- Make a decision to turn your will and way of life to God;
- Search yourself and fearlessly take a moral inventory of yourself and your life as it is today;
- Admit to God and yourself those wrongs;
- Become at a state of readiness to ask and depend upon God to remove the shortcomings of your life;
- Now ask God to remove the shortcomings of your life;
- Make a list of all persons that you have harmed, and make reparations to those persons;
- Make direct amends to the people who you have hurt and injured;
- Continue to take a personal inventory and repair the wrongs, promptly;
- Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with God, and pray for God’s will in your life—not your own will;
- Have a spiritual awakening!
When we are preoccupied with God, darkness becomes light and bitterness sweet. Your faith in God can show you the beauty of life away from even the most bittersweet, gruesome experience. Your faith in God will be your comfort and rescue from that abandonment you experience when you cut your losses. Don’t throw away a good investment to redeem a bad investment. You can only lose more by plunging deeper into the wasteland of the seemingly intoxicating pleasures of an addictive, hot, illicit sexual relationship that is outside of the promised gift of God. This is not in concert with God’s will for your life. It is faith that will lead us out of darkness into the marvelous light with great rewards.
Galatians 5:16 Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.
Galatians 5:22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.
1[i]
[ii][ii] 1 Corinthians , New Living Translation (NLT)
[[iii]]The twelve-step program was first published in 1939 by psychologists, Dr. William James, Dr. Carl Yung, and religious leaders, Dr. Frank Buchman and Samuel Shoemaker. The twelve-step program was first used by Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and many others.
