Humility: Jesus' Disciples - New Heart Needed

Create in me a pure heart, O God,   

  and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 

Do not cast me from your presence    

  or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation    

  and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.  (Psalm 51:10-12)

Apart from me, you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

How impotent all external teaching and all personal effort is, to conquer pride or give the meek and lowly heart - for three years the disciples had been in the training school of Jesus. . . .  And yet all had availed but little. At the Holy Supper there was still the contention as to who should be greatest.

To teach them and us the much needed lesson, that no outward instruction, not even of Christ Himself; no argument however convincing; no sense of the beauty of humility, however deep; no personal resolve or effort, however sincere and earnest, can cast out the devil of pride.

It is only by the indwelling of Christ in His divine humility that we become truly humble.  (Andrew Murray, Humility, Chapter 5)

A little while ago I tried to revive a laptop computer from the dead.  I did a couple of fairly small repairs on it and it seemed to do well for a little bit, but then it would crash and burn again.  I try to use things until they are no longer usable.  In this case, I had gone a little beyond the expiration date of this computer.  It had given several years of good service, but needed more than I could give to it.  We discovered that we needed a new computer instead of fixing the old one.

The human heart was not made to be disposable like that computer.  The human heart will last into eternity.  It will either be thrown on the trash-heap of its own pride or placed in the setting of God's grace to shine with him eternally.  The fix for the human heart is not a "tuck here and there," but a complete overhaul.  I do not need my heart to be tweaked, I need a new heart altogether.

I need a heart that bleeds to be in God's presence and beats along with his.  I need a heart that is willing rather than willful.  I need a heart that seeks one thing in purity.  I need a heart that lives in the joy of being delivered.  I need a heart sustained by God.

Since my need is for a new heart, I cannot fix myself.  If my problems were small and relatively easy to fix, then I might be able to get somewhere.  (I think this is one reason I tend to be blind to my own sins: I want to believe I can fix myself.)  No, I find instead that my spirit is not repairable, but completely unusable in seeking and staying with God and navigating life in general.  I find neither the strength nor interest to remain with Christ long.  Without Christ, I am helpless and hopeless.

Seeking humility brings me to this point quickly.  How true that I can study, seek, and try to beat myself into submission, only to find that pride has been at my side instead of God.  I want God to help me, but find that he won't.  Instead he wants to inhabit my life.

It's sort of like asking a therapist to help you with a problem and having the therapist say he has to move in with you.  Or maybe, it is like spending two weeks in a hospital hoping to get better, only to find you'll have to stay there indefinitely to continue living at all.  This is what my "old heart" tells me.  It tells me, "If you let him have too much, he'll take it all, and you'll be miserable."

This much is true.  Jesus wants it all.  He asks to move in permanently.  He asks me to move away with him.  However, the "being miserable" part has to do with that "old heart" and how it works.  It lives on getting what it wants.  If that "old heart/spirit/will/self" doesn't get what it wants, it dies.  The only solution to my problem is to put it to death through suffocation.  I do not let it get what it wants.

If I do not have a new heart, then my old heart has to come up for breath every once in a while.  I live with "managing" my sin, "coping" with my problems, "compromising" with God.  In the end, I am frustrated with God because he won't cooperate.  I end up thinking he demands too much and gives too little.  This is because I am operating out of that old heart that pridefully wants its own way.

The new heart does not live in me apart from God living with me.  The new heart dies when it is not doing what God wants.  It lives to see him, walk with him, work with him, play with him.  The new heart actively puts the old one to death by depriving it of its own way and seeking God's ways.  The new heart has desires just like the old one does, but they originate and end with God instead of the self.

Humility is the beating of that new heart.  Pride is the beating of the old one.  Every life-giving pulse from the new heart feeds the body, mind, soul, and relationships with God's love, joy, and peace.  Every pulse from the old heart brings further death and ruin to the soul, body, mind, and relationships, striving to make them serve my own desires rather than God.

While lessons might inspire me to seek a new heart, they will never give one.  While the testimony of other people might show me how much I long for a new heart, they will never give me one.  Jesus is plain about what the operation requires.  "Come with me, stay with me, make your home in me.  Let my words be your words.  Let my life be your life."  His teaching is more than teaching.  His example is more than example.  He lives.  I must let him live with me and through me.  He will be closer than even my family if I will let him.  He will give me the whole treatment - a new heart - and I will find everlasting, fulfilling life with him and in him.

Lord, I want a little humility, but not too much, so I end up with none.  I want to live my way and your way and hope it will all work out, but it never does.  Let me come to you and leave everything behind.  Let me move in with you and out of this old life I am trying to make work.  Make humility the blood that flows in my veins even as my heart beats for you.  Amen.


Do you fear giving God "too much?"  What do you fear he would do to you?  Could it be that your pride is afraid to die?  Can you really live compromising with God?

Virtue and Temptation Again

Devotional Classics, Teresa of Avila, Excerpts from Interior Castle

It is at this stage that the devils will attack the soul with the earthly pleasures of this world, like snakes who bite with deadly poison.  They trick the soul into thinking that such pleasures will last an eternity; they remind the soul of the high esteem in which it is held in the world; they place before it the many friends and relatives who will disagree with the manner of life you have now begun. . . .

 When you feel the beginnings of temptation, do not fight back with strenuous efforts, but rather, gently begin a time of prayer and recollection.  At first it will be difficult, but after a while you will be able to do ti easily, and for long periods of time.

Do not think that you must stop doing your work in order to pray.  The Lord will turn all of our work time into profit as long as we continue in a spirit of prayer.  There is no remedy for the temptations that we face except to start at the beginning, and the beginning is prayer.  The only way to lose is to turn back. (pp.197, 199)

Looking at this picture of Teresa of Avila, I am reminded of her monastic life.  She was a nun from age 19.  I have had mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, the life in a convent was so unlike my own, and so unlike that of Jesus and his disciples.  Most people have jobs and work and raise families.  On the other hand, the dedication and concentration that she and others like her devoted to prayer makes me admire her, as I would a scientist doing research for a cure to a dreaded disease.  In the end both have made my life seem mundane and distant from the one she talks about because of its distance from monastic life and because of my lack of concentration on the matters that Teresa dedicated her life to.

If I seek to remove some of the "monkish wrappings" from her words and thoughts, I find that she is not speaking about the life of a recluse or hermit in particular, but about life in general.  The monastic influence places some barriers in front of my understanding and appreciating what she has to say, but I also believe that my own lack of desire to seek God with all that I am plays no small part in my hesitation to accept her words and learn from them.  This is the nature of "early stages" of prayer, as she puts it.  The lack of desire to leave temptation ans sin behind has kept me from seeking God numerous times.

This is not something that I became aware of until I saw it in hindsight.  When I was in the middle of these temptations, I did not recognize many of them to be temptations at all, but just "how I am."  Because I didn't recognize temptation, I did not recognize how much I was sinning against God and other people.  I was in a place where I prayed, though, asking for forgiveness for the sins that caught my attention because I was caught  doing them, or because my life was suffering so obviously from them.  Mostly, I was aware of my sin through the eyes of other people who reacted to the sins or the results of those sins.

The beginning of dealing with temptation was in confession.  Looking back and regretting my actions was where I started much of my prayer life.  It wasn't that I was never thankful or did not give honor to God, but my love and appreciation were never very deep in my life as long as I was dealing with temptation on the tail end, after I had sinned.

I write about this as past, not because I do not ever deal with temptation this way any more, but because I have found other ways of dealing with temptation through prayer other than confessing and repenting of sins I commit.  It began with the great desire to be free from certain sins and the temptations that precede them.  Confessing becomes tiring and insincere when I do not long to be free from such sins in my life.  Instead of giving up and calling my sins inevitable, I began to seek for other ways out of this stage of prayer and my life with God.

Teresa is right about the devil resisting this move.  Certainly my own flesh - my natural abilities - were so used to giving in that temptation seemed insurmountable.  One of the works of the devil that Jesus came to destroy (1 John 3:8)  was flesh, that is, reliance on my own natural abilities apart from God.  Satan tempts me to work on my own, either rationalizing my sins or fighting against them with all my might.  Either way I fail, because I feed the flesh and desire rather than strengthening my resolve to wait on God and humbly do as he says.

This is why Teresa's advice about gentle prayer rings so true for me.  She uses another word as well: "recollection."  This is recalling the thoughts and feelings of God at the time of temptation.  It can be memorized scripture, familiar hymns, the cross, the feeling of God's presence, or just getting back to work.  Such "recollection" mixed with asking God for help provide another way out of temptation rather than confession.  So when temptation comes as a thought and an inclination to sin, I can redirect my mind toward God through recollection and asking for his help.  This made me aware of how temptation precedes sins in my life and needs to be monitored closely.  "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation." (Matthew 26:41)

I found quickly that "parroting" a prayer or Bible verse does not amount to recollection or prayer.  Such things cannot be used like magic to adjust the faults I am particularly ashamed of.  They are part of a larger life that goes on when I am not being tempted.  If my mind is filled with thoughts and feelings that quickly lead to temptation and sin, then a little song or Bible verse or even prayer will not change my direction easily or consistently.  I found that I needed thoughts and feelings about God that were at least as compelling and powerful as the other thoughts and feelings I was having.  Guilt was not enough.  It often worked against me.  Instead I needed joy and peace in God himself.


What I found was that prayer and recollection involve many aspects of my life.  I cannot get fixed without being changed.  This is why in order to leave behind the "earlier stages" of prayer and life with God, I needed to become aware of my temptations and sins enough to realize that they are not momentary lapses, but indicative of how my life is lived, of what inhabits my thoughts and feelings, of what my body is prepared to do without thinking, and of how distracted and confused are the depths of my being.  I pulled on the string of my momentary lapses and found a spider web of connections throughout my whole life.

Now I am learning about another way to fight temptation and grow in my life with God.  I have not left confession or recollection and prayer behind, but have found that they lay the foundation for something else.  This is doing all things in a "spirit of prayer."

I had thought I could jump to this after reading some about it and skip or do without confession, recollection, and prayer, but have found instead that these actions point to something all-pervasive and all-encompassing that I need in my life.  Teresa is right in saying that I have to start at the beginning.  It is starting with prayer and continuing on with it.  Confession begins this journey.  Recollection and petition sustain it.  The goal of it is "abiding" with God, as John puts it (John 15), or having the "spirit of prayer," according to Teresa.

I am writing mostly about what I have heard and read and not so much experienced here.  In the realm of temptation, this kind of prayer brings a person to a place where it does not evil does not even occur to them.  As Dallas Willard puts it, "A person is only as good as what doesn't enter their minds."  (paraphrase)  Obviously, this is not to be free from temptation, since Jesus himself was not free from it.  Rather it is to have it be far less frequent because of what the mind is occupied with.  Satan can intrude with thoughts of temptation, but often these would be discarded as uninteresting or ludicrous.

I know there are some temptations that have always seemed that way to me.  For myself, getting drunk has never been a temptation for me.  Although the thought was there, there was hardly any inclination.  It never really "made sense" to me.  I have seen some things for which I have a strong inclination begin to fade because of what I am interested in, dedicated to, and hoping for in my life.

Occasionally, the thoughts and actions that help me resist may be very mundane things, but mostly, they have had to be charged with love in order to stand up to temptation.  What I mean is that temptation is fixed on my own desire apart from the good of God and everyone else.  When love begins to take root, I choose God and his goodness more than what I want and so the inclination of temptation decreases.  Only love is strong enough to thwart my desires, which are strengthened by my flesh, teased by the devil, and imposed by the peer pressure of this world.  Love must be separated from desire and be understood as "willing what is good."  Such love is what I really need and truly desire more than merely getting what I want.

I see that how I have worked with temptation indicates where I am in my walk with God.  If the main place I deal with temptation is through confession, then I am just starting.  Moving forward from this place begins with the desire to overcome temptation.  This is brought about by God's grace.  He makes me aware of my need.

The next "stage" is one where I respond to temptation before I sin through direct means.  I recollect and pray in the face of temptation.  This is a huge step and is accompanied by a lot of resistance.  For this reason, it is easy to give up and go back to just confessing.  This is the only way to fail.  By moving forward, I believe I am guaranteed victory, since God wants me to draw near to him and be free from sin.  Giving up indicates what I think about God.

Finally, recollection and prayer start to become ingrained as habits and desires, so that there is much less room for temptation in the mind and much less inclination for temptation in the body.  Instead of being the central focus, whether as an object of desire or an object of guilt and hatred, temptation becomes less interesting and "slips the mind" due to the fascination and delight in God and his work.

Lord, I write and write, but I feel that I can never quite explain what it is to be near you and say, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God; how vast the sum of them!"  I enjoy the research that people like Teresa have performed and recorded in what it is to walk with you.  May I learn and grow as they did.  Amen.


I meant to be more short and sweet with this, but I ended up outlining my life and struggle with temptation.  As usual, I am short on concrete examples, so I end up swimming in abstractions.  However, this was very important as I realize more of what temptation is and how I can deal with it so that God might be who I want to be with as well as who I want to be like.