God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Spiritual Depression and Spiritual Separation Anxiety

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here.

To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Spiritual Depression and Spiritual Separation Anxiety.

Satan’s Scheme in Our Suffering

How does Satan want to trap, trick, and trip us up when suffering enters our world? Here’s his persistent ploy. “Life is bad. God must be bad, too.”

Here’s another way to put it. The theological reality of suffering teaches that our world is fallen and it often falls on us. The personal reality of suffering tutors us in the truth that our world is a mess and it messes with our minds. Suffering is not only what happens to us, it is also, and more importantly, what happens in us.

All suffering and mourning amount to a sense of death, divorce, aloneness, and forsakenness. The doubts that we endure while in the casket of suffering lead to a potential hemorrhage in our relationship to God so that we end up feeling spiritual abandonment.

Spiritual Abandonment: “I Feel Forsaken”

In spiritual abandonment, Satan tempts me to see God as my enemy (Job 3:1-26; 6:4; 10:1-3; Psalm 13; 88; Jeremiah 20:7-18; Lamentations 3:1-20; 5:20). Luther called this spiritual depression. It’s the trial of faith produced when I reflect on and interpret my suffering with reason unaided by faith.

It results in a terrified conscience in which I perceive that God is against me, and in the sense of ultimate terror that God may have forsaken me. The presence of suffering can result in the absence of faith.

I call it “spiritual separation anxiety”—the terror of a felt sense of abandonment. Satan incites this terror when he whispers, “Life is bad. God controls life. God must be bad, too. How can you trust His heart? He has left you all alone. Again.”

Spiritual depression and spiritual separation anxiety are the results of our internal interpretations of external events. They are satanic temptations to doubt God, spiritual terrors, restlessness, despair, pangs, panic, desolation, and desperation. The absence of faith in God in the presence of external suffering leads to a terrified conscience which perceives God to be angry and evil instead of loving and good.

Jeremiah felt and expressed such condemnation and rejection. “Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?” (Lamentations 5:20). In Jeremiah 20:7, his language is even stronger, making us squeamish. “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.”

Heman, considered one of the wisest believers ever (1 Kings 4:31; 1 Chronicles 2:6), pens the “Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul” (Psalm 88) in which his concluding line summarizes his spiritual struggle. “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18).

If you’re honest; if I’m honest, we admit that we’ve felt what Heman felt. We’ve thought what Jeremiah thought.

The Rest of the Story

You say, “Bob, you can’t stop here!”

Interestingly, Psalm 88 does. It stops with verse 18 that I quoted above. Life is not a situation comedy where everything is wrapped up in twenty-two minutes. It’s messy.

However…you’re right. We can’t stop with Satan’s scheme. We have a choice when faced with Satan’s temptation to doubt God. In fact…we have two choices. Tomorrow’s post outlines our options when suffering enters and Satan enters with it…

Join the Conversation

When life is bad, how do you defeat Satan’s temptation to believe that God is bad, too?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Healing, Spiritual Depression, Suffering

The Story

At RPM Ministries our story is all about changing lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

We’re always asking people, “Want to change lives?”

But, what if your life is unchanged? What then? How do you participate in life’s greatest adventure of empowering others to live a changed life if you remain powerless to change?

Then our question for you is entirely different. The new question, really the first question, is “Want a changed life?”

How do people change? Why do people need to change? Change to what?

The story that answers those questions is the story God is telling in the Bible. His story is summarized below. To read about it in narrative form, click below on the image of The Story.

When you’re done, tell us what you think. Ask us any questions that you have. Contact us at rpm.ministries@gmail.com

Tags: Christ, Christianity, Gospel, Salvation, The Story

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

The Lesson Plan of Suffering

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: The Lesson Plan of Suffering.

Opening Our Hands to God

The Apostle Paul teaches us suffering’s lesson plan. Suffering and death are meant to teach us our need again.

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).

In suffering, God is not getting back at you; He is getting you back to Himself. The actual experience of dying persuades the little god that he is finite after all. When Paul felt the sentence of death, he understood that his only hope was the dead-raising God.

Suffering opens our hands to God. It was Augustine who declared, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there is nowhere for Him to put it.”

Delicious Despair

Moses taught the same truth in the passage Jesus quoted during His temptation. Why does God allow us to endure desert wanderings? According to Deuteronomy 8 and Matthew 4, it is to humble us, teaching us how desperately needy we are.

God loves us too much to allow us to forget our neediness. God makes therapeutic use of our suffering. Luther taught that suffering creates in the child of God a delicious despair. Suffering is God’s putrid tasting medicine of choice resulting in delicious healing.

Healing medicine for what? For our ultimate sickness—the arrogance that we do not need God. Suffering causes us to groan for home and to live in hope. The author of Hebrews, surveying the landscape of Old Testament journeys, shows us the way home.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

God refuses to allow us to get too comfy here. Instead, He allows suffering—daily casket processionals—to blacken our sun so we cry out to His Son. Suffering reminds us that we’re not home yet.

At least, that’s God’s intent. Satan plots an altogether different strategy. We learn about his scheme in our next post.

Join the Conversation

What lessons are you learning from suffering?

Tags: Augustine, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving, Healing, Luther, Suffering, Sufferology

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures.

A Personal Journey with a Personal God

Moving through hurt to hope is a journey—a personal journey. Finding God’s healing for life’s losses is a trek—a messy trail with far more detours than we would ever wish.

That’s why I’m not promising you eight easy steps. However, as we journey together, I will offer you eight biblical markers on your personal healing journey. As you begin exploring these trail markers for life’s trials, you’ll experience the ups and the downs, the hills and the valleys, the zigs and the zags.

View these markers as your personal suffering GPS: God’s Positioning Scripture derived from God’s Word. Nothing ever written can compare with the honesty and reality of the Word of God. It is totally sufficient to light our path. It is utterly profound in its capacity to resonate with our experiences.

The various “stages” we’ll explore in the grief journey provide compass points in God’s process for hurting and hoping. They empower us not to evade suffering, but to face suffering face-to-face with God.

A Crisis of Faith

When tragedy occurs, we enter a crisis of faith. We either move toward God or away from God. We’ll probe how to move in the direction of finding God in the midst of our suffering.

The end in sight is not quick answers through easy steps. Our goal is deep healing through a personal journey . . . with God, in Christ. He never lets you walk alone.

Our Journey Together

Through God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I invite you to walk with God and God’s people. At the end of chapters two through nine, you’ll find a built-in “Grief and Growth Workbook.” You’ll be able to trace your journey and you’ll be able to journal about your healing process.

While you can read and apply God’s Healing for Life’s Losses alone, I’ve also designed it for group use. Consider gathering with some other spiritual friends to share your progress along your journey. At the very least, invite one other friend in Christ to be “Jesus with skin on” for you.

Grief tends to tempt us to walk alone. Fight against that temptation. Walk with God and His people as you journey on the healing path.

Join the Conversation

How has God’s Word been a GPS for you in your suffering?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, GPS, Grief, Healing, Scripture, Suffering

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Creative Suffering

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting please click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, please visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Creative Suffering.

Take Heart

We need to be able to deal with life’s losses in the context of God’s healing. Jesus did.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Peace. With one word Jesus quiets the quest of our soul. We thirst for peace—shalom, wholeness, stillness, rest, healing.

Take heart. Hope. Come alive again.

That’s what you long for. I know it is, because it’s what I want.

The Anvil of God

We live in a fallen world and it often falls on us. When it does, when the weight of the world crushes us, squeezes the life out of us, we need hope. New life. A resuscitated heart. A resurrected life.

Brilliantly the Apostle Paul deals simultaneously with grieving and hoping. Do not “grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Paul, who offers people the Scriptures and his own soul (1 Thessalonians 2:8), skillfully ministers to sufferers.

To blend losses and healing, grieving and hoping, requires creative suffering. Frank Lake powerfully depicts the process.

“There is no human experience which cannot be put on the anvil of a lively relationship with God and man, and battered into a meaningful shape.”

Notice what the anvil is—a lively relationship with God and God’s people. Notice the process—battering. Notice the result—meaning, purpose. What cannot be removed, God makes creatively bearable.

Converting Suffering

Another individual, this one intimately acquainted with grief, also pictures creative suffering. British hostage, Terry Waite, spent 1,460 days in solitary confinement in his prison cell in Beirut. Reflecting on his savage mistreatment and his constant struggle to maintain his faith, he reveals:

“I have been determined in captivity, and still am determined, to convert this experience into something that will be useful and good for other people. I think that’s the way to approach suffering. It seems to me that Christianity doesn’t in any way lessen suffering. What it does is enable you to take it, to face it, to work through it and eventually convert it.”

Creative suffering doesn’t simply accept suffering, through the Cross it creatively converts it. In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, our passion is to learn together how to grieve but not as those who have no hope.

Join the Conversation

What do you think about Terry Waite’s perspective? Christianity doesn’t lesson suffering, but enables you to face it, work through it, and convert it.

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving, Healing, Suffering

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Black History Month: Day of Reflection

Note: Welcome to the final day of The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’ve learned life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. I’ve based our series on material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

My Reflections: A Gift To and a Gift From

As I promised at the outset, on our 41st day, we pause to reflect. We pause to celebrate the legacy of African American Christianity and to celebrate the heroes and heroines of Black Church history.

In the introduction to Beyond the Suffering, we noted that Black Church history is a gift to African Americans and a gift from African Americans.

As a gift to, it honors the tremendous contributions made by African American believers—contributions frequently neglected by most historians.

As a gift from, it equips and empowers all people of all races as we learn life lessons from female and male heroes of Black Church history.

It is my prayer that the past forty days have served a similar purpose: that my longest-ever blog series has been a gift to and a gift from African Americans.

It never ceases to amaze me that so few people are aware of these amazing Christians and their remarkable life stories. I hope their treasure will now remain unburied.

Biblical Reflections: From the Past Into the Future

We complete our journey with two biblical reflections.

*Reflection # 1: Hebrews 11:1-12:3

The great past cloud of witnesses, though dead, their lives yet speak. I’m thankful that our legacy outlives us.

I’m thankful for the African American legacy. Their legacy encourages and empowers us to live beyond the suffering and to leave a loving legacy for future generations.

*Reflection # 2: Revelation 7:9

When the Apostle John peers into the future, he does not see a homogenized eternity. Instead, he sees a multi-cultural future throng gathered together for ever and ever in joint worship of the King of Kings.

I’m thankful that diversity will outlive the old heaven and the old earth. I’m thankful that in the new heaven and the new earth our differences will be celebrated. I want to live today in light of that future intercultural day.

Your Reflections: Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

*Reflecting on everything you’ve read during these forty days of Black History Month, what topics and themes stand out to you? Why? What will you do with these concepts?

*How can we keep the gift going and growing?

*How can we expand intercultural ministry and multicultural relationships?

Tags: African American Christianity, Beyond the Suffering, Black Church History, Black History Month, The Journey

The Heart of Addiction: A Biblical Perspective

Book Details

• Author: Mark E. Shaw

• Publisher: Focus Publishing (2008)

• Category: Biblical Counseling, Ministry, Church

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, and free resources at www.rpmministries.org.

Recommended: The Heart of Addiction is an increasingly rare book—one that addresses a specific life issue in a biblical, deep, practical, wise way. Mark Shaw combines the sufficiency of Scripture (theology for life) with the relevancy of Scripture (principles of progressive sanctification) in a way that offers hope and help to those experiencing habitual sin problems.

Review: God’s Way to Victory Over Habitual Sin

Dr. Mark Shaw brings an impressive résumé uniquely suited for a biblical approach to addictions. He holds biblical counseling certification with the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC), is a certified Master’s Level Addiction Professional (MLAP), as well as being a Sr. Pastor.

A Theology of Habitual Sin

Shaw eschews the terminology of “addiction” and seeks to get at the “heart of addiction” by conceptualizing it as a “life-dominating and life-devastating sin problem.” He sees “addiction” ultimately as a “worship disorder.” Further, Shaw takes issue with the common medical model approach that links “addictions” to the “disease model.”

That being said, Shaw is not simplistic in his approach. He recognizes that the body can respond to a sin problem so that over time actions associated with addiction become habitual and extremely difficult to overcome. This is a very useful “balance” missed by some.

In fact, he’s more than balanced. Shaw is comprehensive. He acknowledges that even after people have initially overcome the physical portion of addiction:

• Physically, they may still experience real cravings.

• Mentally, they may always battle to take their thoughts captive to Christ.

• Emotionally, they may struggle with feelings that will tempt them to want to return to the addiction for an escape.

• Spiritually, they may experience days when they wonder if God has forgotten them.

Rejecting the world’s definitions of addiction, Shaw then develops a concise biblical description. “Physical addiction occurs when you repeatedly satisfy a natural appetite and desire with a temporary pleasure until you become the servant of the temporary object of pleasure rather than its master” (p. 27). Addictions are not “compulsions” for Shaw, but rather “persistent habitual choices.”

Shaw wisely addresses habitual sin from the threefold biblical plotline of Creation, Fall, Redemption. Thus he embeds his theology of habitual sin in the context of God’s original design for the soul, sin’s depravity, and Christ’s final solution for and victory over all sin—including “addictive sins.”

Perhaps the most insightful and needful chapter is where Shaw addresses the physical components of addiction (Chapter 9). Unfortunately, many biblical counselors seem to skip or minimize this important area. Shaw not only tackles it, he nails it. He carefully traces what I might call a “theology of desire” (he calls it a theology of appetite). He assists readers to see the purpose for God-given desires, appetites, and affections, while also mapping where they can go sinfully wrong and how they can become habitually sinful.

There is much to appreciate in Shaw’s theological development. There were two areas, though, where Shaw could have engaged the theological issues a bit deeper. First, Shaw assumes that the “old nature” or “old man” still resides in the believer, which is a common enough belief. However, it would have been good in a book of this depth to address or acknowledge, at least briefly, the competing view. Namely, while the believer is not perfect this side of heaven, and while the believer does battle the world, the flesh, and the devil, the old nature or old man has truly been crucified with Christ. There are implicational differences that derive out of these two theological positions.

Second, while Shaw does develop a nuanced perspective on addiction, it might have been helpful for him to grapple with concepts such as “enslavement” and “mastery” (2 Peter 2:19). And the powerful imagery where Peter speaks of one who knows the Lord as Savior (2 Peter 2:20) as “a dog returns to its vomit” (2 Peter 2:22). Peter (and at times Paul) seems to use terms like these to indicate a depth of entanglement of sin akin to, but different from, “addiction.” I expected to read Shaw engaging passages like these, but did not. To his credit, he did address other complex issues such as lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and a seared conscience.

A Methodology of Victory Over Habitual Sin

Of course, great theology is truly great because it leads to relevant principles and practices for spiritual growth. Shaw so seamlessly blends “theology” and “methodology” that you can’t find where one ends and the other begins (which is very good). For instance, in Chapter 10, he discusses idolatry using the practical and pictorial imagery of the “go button” and the “stop button.” “Go button pushers” excessively satisfy their natural appetites, so they must guard their hearts when doing anything pleasurable. This is not radical abstention, but wise moderation always with the ultimate goal of glorifying God rather than loving pleasure.

A large part of Shaw’s “methodology” rightly focuses on renewed thinking leading to renewed emotions. Fortunately, in his skillful hands this is not some Christianized version of rational-emotive therapy. Rather, Shaw focuses his readers on renewing their thinking in the context of biblical reality as portrayed in Scripture.

He makes this very practical by addressing the common “motivating factor” for many addictive behaviors: escaping emotional pain. We don’t deny our emotional pain. Rather, for Shaw we take that emotional pain to Christ and to His Word. We find joy even when we can’t find relief.

This become even more practical in Chapter 12 where Shaw dissects specific emotions and prescribes biblical principles for addressing them in spiritually healthy ways. He describes how we can respond to bitterness, guilt, discontentment, loneliness, depression, and despair in ways that lead us toward God rather than toward god-substitutes.

The actual “methodology” portion of the book begins with Chapter 13 (but obviously starts sooner in Shaw’s skillful application of theology). Shaw uses the biblical motif of put off and put on. With some writers, this becomes rather “behavioralistic.” Not with Shaw. He talks about putting off the depths of sin, including sin’s denial and self-deception.

He then talks about putting on, again in a heart-centric way. Here (Chapter 17) Shaw again highlights renewing the mind. He avoids generic language, instead focusing on idiosyncratic renewal, the battle for the mind, how to fight cravings, and how to resist the devil’s temptation. He then moves toward putting on right actions—based upon renewed beliefs.

Thus Shaw includes specific chapters on putting off and putting on beliefs, actions, and emotions. He writes specifically about putting off sinful idols of the heart. However, this excellent work could have benefitted from specific sections about putting on a renewed, grace-oriented, love relationship with God in Christ. It certainly was implied. And it certainly is contained in the various “heart prayers” at the end of each chapter. However, specific chapters on returning to God “the Spring of Living Water” would seem central in a book on putting off sinful addictions and putting on ongoing spiritual affections. Since addiction is a “worship disorder,” I would have liked to have seen more on moving from the idolatry of addiction to the worship of God through putting on renewed relational/spiritual affections, passions, and desires. It’s there…it just could have been highlighted more.

Shaw concludes with Appendixes A to K which each provide very practical tools. Taken together, these seventeen chapters and eleven appendixes provide a wealth of authoritative, relevant wisdom. The Heart of Addiction: A Biblical Perspective will prove extremely helpful for pastors, counselors, and spiritual friends, and for the individual seeking ongoing victory over habituated sin.

Tags: Addiction, Biblical Counseling, Book Review, Books, Mark Shaw

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Forty: Lift Every Voice

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Two Visions of America

How we view America depends upon our experience in America. In American history, there has been a great “tournament of narratives”: two competing visions of the American narrative. In our 40th post in our 40-Day Journey of Promise, we compare and contrast the typical European vision and experience of American with the typical African vision and experience of America.

Understanding these drastically different perspectives can be of great assistance toward understanding one another–toward unity in diversity.  

The Promised Land

When European Christians immigrated to America, they chose a dominant biblical lens through which to view themselves corporately. They were, according to Puritan John Winthrop, “a city upon a hill.” As God’s new chosen people fleeing the religious tyranny of Europe, if they obeyed God they would “find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies.”

From the earliest period of their migration to the New World, European colonists spoke of their journey as the New Exodus of a New Israel from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land of milk and honey. For these early European Americans, America already was the Promised Land. White Europeans left Europe in an exodus due to persecution, finding religious and political freedom and likening it to the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea.

For their ancestors, the message rings true to this day—they are God’s chosen people and America is an especially God-blessed land. In fact, many would be shocked to realize that anyone has ever seen it any differently.

Bound for the Promised Land

Whereas Europeans freely sailed to the “land of the free,” Africans were stolen away from their free lands, stowed in the hideous holds of the slave ships, and brought to the “land of bondage.” For Europeans the Exodus already occurred, for Africans it was yet future. Europeans lived in the Promised Land. Africans were bound for the Promised Land.

“For African-Americans the journey was reversed: whites might claim that America was a new Israel, but blacks knew that it was Egypt, since they, like the children of Israel of old, still toiled in bondage. Unless America freed God’s African children, this nation would suffer the plagues that had afflicted Egypt.”

Could two biblically-based visions of one nation be any more different? Both shared a common stock of biblical metaphors: Egypt, Exodus, the Promised Land. However, each saw the vision through different lenses.

The African American National Anthem

James Weldon Johnson summarizes the African American national narrative brilliantly. Lift Every Voice has been called “The African American National Anthem.”

James Weldon Johnson

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

We’ve Come This Far by Faith

We’ve come this far by faith. The journey has been dark, but it’s taught us great faith lessons leading us toward the light.

God calls us on our voyage to live an emancipated spiritual life. Through Christ’s power at work within us, we can stand, as one, true to God and true to our native land.

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Concerning the “Tournament of Narratives,” how surprised are you that there have been such diametrically opposed views of the American experience?

2. How can your understanding of these different viewpoints equip you to minister more effectively cross-culturally?

Tags: African American National Anthem, Bound for the Promised Land, Lift Every Voice, Promised Land, Tournament of Narratives

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Father to the Fatherless

We follow the North Star guidance of African American sisters of the Spirit by encouraging spiritual sisters with the good news that the Spirit intimately indwells them. Jarena Lee reminds us of this truth because she experienced it.

Jarena Lee

In the course of six years, five of her family members died, including her husband. In response, she wrote:

“I was now left alone in the world, with two infant children, one of the age of about two years, the other six months, with no other dependence than the promise of Him who hath said—I will be the widow’s God, and a father to the fatherless.”

Turning to Our Brothers and Sisters

Along with Lee, we need to help our spiritual friends to see the two primary ways that the indwelling Spirit ministers. First, he uses his other children. Lee recounts:

“Accordingly, he raised me up friends, whose liberality comforted and solaced me in my state of widowhood and sorrows. I could sing with the greatest propriety the words of the poet, ‘He helps the stranger in distress, the widow and the fatherless, and grants the prisoner sweet release.”

Such awareness is vital. The temptation when we are hurt by people is to turn only to God. This pseudo-spirituality is not the way of the Spirit. African American female exemplars like Lee demonstrate that the Spirit uses brothers and sisters of the Spirit to sustain, heal, reconcile, and guide us.

Turning to Our Heavenly Father

Second, the Spirit does indeed work directly in and on our hurting hearts. Lee understood this truth, also.

“I can say even now, with the Psalmist, ‘Once I was young, but now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ I have ever been fed by his bounty, clothed in his mercy, comforted and healed when sick, succored when tempted, and every where upheld by his hand.”

This “balancing” awareness is also crucial. The temptation when we are helped by people is to keep turning only to people. These sisters of the Spirit led people to the Spirit for His sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. Our source of spiritual care is not either/or. It is both/and.

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. How can our churches become places where we turn to one another as brothers and sisters and to God as Father for sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding?

2. What do these inspiring messages from sisters of the Spirit inspire you to do?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black History Month, Jarena Lee, North Star, The Journey

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Eight: Who Are You in Christ?

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Calling Out a People

In September 1832, in Boston, Massachusetts, Maria Stewart did something that no American-born woman of any race before her undertook. “She mounted a lecture platform and raised a political argument before a ‘promiscuous’ audience, that is, one composed of both men and women.”

Maria Stewart

According to her personal testimony, she was a woman of profound Christian faith, moved by the Spirit to “willingly sacrifice my life for the cause of God and my brethren.” In the climate of that day, she did indeed take her life in her hands. In her characteristic fiery style, familiar to readers of her articles in The Liberator, she argued against the colonization movement to ship African Americans to West Africa. Using biblical imagery she challenged her racially mixed audience asking, “Why sit ye here and die?”

She called blacks and whites to action, in particular urging black Americans to demand their God-given rights. “Her message was unsparing and controversial, intended as a goad to her people to organize against the tyranny of slavery in the South and to resist and defy the restrictions of bigotry in the North.”

Arousing to Exertion

To fully comprehend Stewart’s staggering accomplishments, we have to backtrack to her less than advantageous upbringing.

“I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803; was left an orphan at five years of age; was bound out in a clergyman’s family; had the seeds of piety and virtue early sown in my mind, but was deprived of the advantages of education, though my soul thirsted for knowledge. Left them at fifteen years of age; attended Sabbath schools until I was twenty; in 1826 was married to James W. Stewart; was left a widow in 1829; was, as I humbly hope and trust, brought to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus, in 1830; in 1831 I made a public profession of my faith in Christ.”

Married at 23, widowed at 26, converted at 27; she challenged a nation at 28. In the fall of 1831, she entered the offices of William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the newly established abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Stewart handed Garrison the manuscript of her challenge to African Americans to sue for their rights. Relegated to the paper’s “Ladies Department,” both ladies and gentlemen received her confrontation.

Stewart entitled her work Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build. She told her readers that she:

“Presented them before you in order to arouse you to exertion, and to enforce upon your minds the great necessity of turning your attention to knowledge and improvement.”

Here we have a young, female, African American widow writing in a white male abolitionist tabloid as a spiritual director to motivate her people to learning and action.

But God!

Stewart adeptly used a bevy of spiritual direction skills to inspire her audience. For example, she avails herself of the guiding competency of scriptural exploration.

“Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea (Genesis 1:26). He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little lower than the angels (Psalms 8:5) . . .”

Using the biblical truth of the imago Dei (image of God), she guides her readers toward the counter-cultural but scriptural truth that, “It is not the color of the skin that makes the man, but it is the principles formed within the soul.”

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Maria Stewart focused upon who we are in Christ and the imago Dei. What did she stir up in your heart when you read her words of challenge?

2. Who are you in Christ?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black History Month, Identity in Christ, Maria Stewart, Sisters of the Spirit, The Journey