Planting for Prayer: Teresa's Second Mansion

Entering into the practice of prayer quickly brings me face to face with sin in my life.  Ignoring sin inevitably leaves my prayer life disabled and dark.  My understanding of God will be confused  at best because of the shroud that covers my mind.   "Although the Sun Himself, Who has given it all its splendour and beauty, is still there in the centre of the soul, it is as if He were not there for any participation which the soul has in Him, though it is as capable of enjoying Him as is the crystal of reflecting the sun."  (Teresa of Avila, St.; Peers, E. Allison (2010-10-07). Interior Castle (Kindle Locations 441-443). Wilder Publications. Kindle Edition.)  Denial of sin is one of the great diseases of the soul.  It is cured through a living knowledge of what we are, who we are, and what we fight.

ingodsimage.com

People are beautiful and well-built.  "In speaking of the soul we must always think of it as spacious, ample and lofty; and this can be done without the least exaggeration, for the soul's capacity is much greater than we can realize, and this Sun, Which is in the palace, reaches every part of it." We are built as a home for God.   The beauty and usefulness of each person as a dwelling for God cannot be overemphasized.  People are like trees planted by water.  We draw our life from outside of ourselves.  We are not self-sufficient.  We are made to work in cooperation with God.  As we move into prayer, we need to be drawing from God and his grace, a "spring of life. . . .  On the other hand, through its own fault, leaves this spring and becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil-smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth."  Because of this condition, people need pity.  God gives us pity.  Without pity, we cannot find grace.  Without God's grace, we cannot find prayer.  We are well-made.  We draw our life from outside ourselves.  We need pity to grow.  This is what we are.

Self-knowledge governed by God grows into humility.  We can never have enough humility.  We always need to return to the work of humility, taming the desires of the body, the desires for recognition, and pride in what I do.  We can only be lifted to the heights of prayer from the stable foundation of humility.  We must not take this task on ourselves.   "Although. . . it is through the abundant mercy of God that the soul studies to know itself, yet one can have too much of a good thing, as the saying goes, and believe me, we shall reach much greater heights of virtue by thinking upon the virtue of God than if we stay in our own little plot of ground and tie ourselves down to it completely."  Self-knowledge can only be found in knowing God.  Each person will only find who they are through humility.  We must return to the work of humility frequently.  The best place to find humility is in knowing God more and more.

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Pride blinds us to what and who are are.  Pride causes us to think that we are the center of the universe.  We are god.  We forget Who dwells in us, where we draw our life from, and our need for pity.  "What a state the poor rooms of [this soul] are in! How distracted are the senses which inhabit them! And the faculties, which are their governors and butlers and stewards -- how blind they are and how ill-controlled! And yet, after all, what kind of fruit can one expect to be borne by a tree rooted in the devil?"  Pride makes us into mere consumers needing to be entertained.

This seems to me to be the condition of a soul which, though not in a bad state, is so completely absorbed in things of the world and so deeply immersed, as I have said, in possessions or honours or business, that, although as a matter of fact it would like to gaze at the castle and enjoy its beauty, it is prevented from doing so, and seems quite unable to free itself from all these impediments.

 Finally, in our blindness, our love for God and other people grows cold.  We do not see our true neediness.  We do not see how knowing God will help us understand ourselves.  Pride is what we fight.

The beginning work of prayer lies in understanding how wonderful we are and yet how each person needs pity to grow.  Such understanding draws us into humility before God, the only place where we can truly know who God is and who we are.  Humility arms us against pride which destroys our life and soul through isolation from God and other people and blind self-destruction.  Praying to God begins this work and continues far beyond it.  Lord, open our eyes to you so that we might open our lives to you and dig deeply into conversation with you and real love for you.  Amen.

Humility and Faith: Faith Requires Humility

In an address I lately heard, the speaker said that the blessings of the higher Christian life were often like the objects exposed in a shop window - one could see them clearly and yet could not reach them. If told to stretch out his hand and take, a man would answer, "I cannot; there is a thick pane of plate-glass between me and them."  And even so Christians may see clearly the blessed promises of perfect peace and rest, of overflowing love and joy, of abiding communion and fruitfulness, and yet feel that there was something between hindering the true possession.  And what might that be?  Nothing but pride.  (Murray, Andrew (2011-03-03). Humility, Chapter 9: Humility and Faith, (Kindle Locations 567-571). Niche Edition. Kindle Edition.)

INVISIBLE PRIDE

Pride often remain invisible, a strange sickness in which blindness to one's own condition is a symptom.  Reading the Bible, God's promises are great, but often ignored or diminished because we get used to seeing them on the other side of the glass of pride.

The invisible barrier of pride comes out in various phrases.  "I can't do that!  I can't live without that!  Why would I want to give that up?"  Our wills are enslaved to our immediate desires and passions.  Pride says, "I won't do what I can't do on my own otherwise my desires might go unsatisfied."

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The cost is high.  As long as we walk by sight and not by faith, the glass of pride remains keeping us from the "blessed promises of perfect peace and rest, or overflowing love and joy, of abiding communion and fruitfulness."  In short, the things of the kingdom of God.  "Even the most secret breathing of pride, in self-seeking, self-will, self-confidence, or self-exaltation, is just the strengthening of that self which cannot enter the kingdom or possess the things of the kingdom, because it refuses to allow God to be what He is and must be there - All in All."  (ibid, Kindle Locations 580-582)

When we begin to walk by faith and not by sight, we find that "humility is simply the disposition which prepares the soul for living on trust. . . .  Faith is the organ or sense for the perception and apprehension of the heavenly world and its blessings.  Faith seeks the glory that comes from God, that only comes where God is All. . . .  Pride renders faith impossible."  (ibid, Kindle Locations 583-584)  As Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."  (Matthew 18:3-4, ESV)

SALVATION THROUGH HUMILITY

Recently my pride hid from my eyes as self-loathing.  The anger of pride was directed inward.  I could not even ask for help.  I felt there was no place for me and no hope for me.  I believe some of it is seasonal, but there was something more intense and desperate as I struggled through my days.  I did not see it as pride.  Actually, I probably thought it was humility of sorts.

But in this self-loathing was also a complete lack of faith.  I had no trust in God, in what he made me, how he has walked with me, nor in where he might take me.  I was stubbornly determined to take my own path, even if it was self-destructive.  I can see how pride brings self-destruction.  It may be through despair or anger or lust, but the refusal to give in to God is the same.

I needed salvation, deliverance in an active sense.  Such salvation requires humility and faith.  "Salvation comes through a cross and a crucified Christ. Salvation is the fellowship with the crucified Christ in the Spirit of His cross. Salvation is union with and delight in, salvation is participation in, the humility of Jesus."  (ibid, Kindle Locations 585-586)  When God showed me that my struggle was with pride, not with any real deficiency, I was able to give in and call for help.

God's help almost always involves the grace of other people.  Instead of driving them off, I began seeking them out.  Instead of hiding myself and worrying about my peculiarities, I began to exercise them as gifts and talents.  Pride renders faith impossible partly (maybe mostly) because it renders relationships impossible.  Pride ends in collapse of the self and the ruin of the soul.  Humility welcomes relationships and seeks them out.  It opens the self to God in an attitude of worship and self-sacrifice, which rebuilds and fortifies the soul.

Lord, may my life be open before you as a living sacrifice.  May the glass of pride be shattered by the truth of my humble position, my humble needs, and my humble offerings to you.  May my humility not remain a mere abstraction, but show up in all my relationships as I lay my life down before you.  Amen.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;    my eyes are not raised too high;I do not occupy myself with things    too great and too marvelous for me.But I have calmed and quieted my soul,    like a weaned child with its mother;    like a weaned child is my soul within me.O Israel, hope in the Lord    from this time forth and forevermore.  (Psalm 131, ESV)

The Word Comes to an Honest Heart

Devotional Classics, Watchman Nee,  Excerpts from What Shall This Man Do?

God has made, from His side, a threefold provision for every person in that person’s hour of crisis: Firstly, Jesus has come as the Friend of sinners; secondly, it is He personally (and no intermediary) whom we are called to meet; and thirdly, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh, to bring to pass in us the initial work of conviction of sin, repentance, and faith, and, of course, all that follows. . . .  We are not required – in the first place – to believe, or to repent, or to be conscious of sin, or even to know that Christ died.  We are required only to approach the Lord with an honest heart.

In the Gospels the Lord Jesus is presented as the Friend of sinners, for historically He was found, first of all, moving among the people as their Friend before He became their Savior.

I met a student who said it was too early for him to come to the Lord. . . .  He said to me, “The thief on the cross was saved, but he had his fling, and it was high time that he repented.  But I – I am young.”

“Well what do you want to do?” I asked him. 

He replied, “I want to wait another forty years and have a good time, and then I will repent.” 

So I said, “Let us pray.”

“Oh, I can’t pray,” he answered.

“Yes, you can,” I said.  “You can tell the Lord all you have told me.  He is the Friend of unrepentant sinners like you.”

“Oh, I can’t say that to Him.”

“Why not?  Whatever is in your heart, you tell it to Him.  He will help you.”  Finally he prayed, and told the Lord that he did not want to repent and be saved, but that he knew he needed a Savior; and he just cried to Him for help.  The Lord worked repentance in him and he got up a saved man.

What is salvation?  Many think that to be saved we must first believe that the Lord Jesus died for us, but it is a strange fact that nowhere in the New Testament does it say precisely that.  We are told to believe in Jesus, or to believe on Him; not to believe that He died for us.  “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” were Paul’s words.

The first condition of salvation is not knowledge, but meeting Christ.

For what is it to be reckoned righteous?  It is to touch God.  That is why our first object must be to lead people to meet Him.

[Salvation] is, as we have seen, a question of meeting God – of people coming into first-hand contact with Christ the Savior.  So what, you ask me, is the minimum requirement in a person to make that contact possible?  The basic condition of a sinner’s salvation is not belief or repentance, but just honesty of heart towards God.  God requires nothing of us except that we come in that attitude.

At first, Watchman Nee’s statement about coming to God without repentance or belief seems wrong.  How else could someone come?  Jesus himself said, “Repent!”  Paul speaks of faith as the sole avenue for righteousness from God.  Yet he says we need only meet God with an honest heart.

When I read this, I found that Nee had hit on something I learned a while ago, but easily forget.  (Funny how that works. . . .)  I cannot find God without this “honest heart.”  Repentance cannot be a precursor to coming to God because by their very nature, sinners are unrepentant.  Repentance follows conversion.

Similarly if belief is understanding some things about God, a person who does not know God will know very little about him.  This kind of understanding follows coming to God.  Belief as trust is the same.  I cannot trust God before I come to know him.  Somehow, I must touch him, experience him.

My certainty about this only increases as I grow closer to God.  The thing that takes me into the road of religious pride and away from God the quickest is trying to change (repent) or believe (understand or trust) without touching God.  The whole thing becomes powered by my will and guided by my pride.

One of the most tempting ways (maybe the most tempting) of dealing with sins and shortcomings in my life is to bring pride in to beat them into submission.  “You’re better than that!”  “At least I’m not as bad as. . . .”  “I may do this, but at least I don’t do that.”  All these statements and many more of them  come to my mind when I try to resist my faults and sins with pride.  I may see improvement with certain sins, but I exchange them for something far more deadly.

I think this “honest heart” is one way of describing humility.  In the story above, the young student practiced humility through confession.  Confession is not so much admitting I am wrong as being honest before God about where I am at.  Confession is not so much “I’m sorry” as “I’m here.”  Meeting Jesus keeps me from the source of pride: hiding from God.  Hiding means I am trying to take care of it on my own rather than bring it to Jesus for help.

Nee’s three provisions are absolutely necessary to make this kind of “honest heart” effective.  Jesus is my Friend before I repent.  He is on my side.  He wants to be around me and will be, even if I have ambivalent feelings.  Jesus is merciful and forgiving.

Next, this meeting with Jesus is all that is necessary.  He alone stands before me when I am alone in grief or sin or pain.  He alone stands with me when I face what I fear, whether God or people.  He alone is my mediator, not his death or his teaching or his resurrection.  These come with him, but they are not mediators; only Jesus is.  I go to him with an honest heart, not to his teachings or his promises or his achievements.  Jesus himself answers my needs and cries.  He alone is the mediator.

Finally, I meet Jesus through his Spirit.  His Spirit overshadows me and all people, awaiting my cries to him.  He is as close as the cries from my heart.  His presence and power are available immediately when I seek him out apart from my repentance or my belief.  I access Jesus by my heart crying out to him, not my efforts to please him or know him.  This is grace: Jesus’s immediate presence to each person.

Jesus’s grace takes the honest heart and fills it with repentance and belief.  All that matters is how my heart turns to Christ in each moment, whether crisis or peace.  He is my Friend, faithful at all times even when I am not.

Lord, recently I have once again turned to you.  I have seen how pride grows easily in my heart.  I begin to hide.  I grow cold.  I forget your presence beside me.  I try to conjure repentance and create belief.  For you, I let it go today.  They are not worth anything.  I need you and you alone, Jesus, this day and every day.  Let me eyes be on you as I open myself completely before you.  Then I will turn.  Then I will trust.  Amen.

Confession is powerful tool to beat on pride.  Pride thrives in darkness and hiding.  Confession brings light and community.  Pride competes.  Confession brings the knowledge that everything is loss compared to knowing Jesus, my Friend, my Mediator, my Help.

Compassion and Living in Grace

Devotional Classics, John Wesley, Excerpts from Christian Perfection

The first advice I would give to those who have been saved from sin by grace is to watch and pray continually against pride.  For it is pride not only to ascribe what we have to ourselves, but also to think we have what we do not have.

One way to [be clothed with humility] is to own any fault we have.  If you have at any time thought, spoken, or acted wrong, do not refrain from acknowledging it.  Never dream that this will hurt the cause of God - in fact, it will further it.

Also, beware of the daughter of pride: enthusiasm.  By enthusiasm I mean the tendency to hastily ascribe everything to God, supposing dreams and voices and visions to be special revelations that God has given to you. . . .  You are in danger of enthusiasm every time you depart even a little from the Scriptures. . . .  One general inlet to enthusiasm is expecting the end without the means: expecting knowledge, for instance, without searching the Scriptures and consulting other people of God, or expecting spiritual strength without constant prayer and steady watchfulness, or expecting God to bless you without hearing the word of God at every opportunity.

When we take a fresh teaching from the Scriptures to heart, we must not conclude that it is a "new" gift.  We have all of these things when we are justified; all that remains is that we experience them in higher degrees.

Settle in your heart that from this moment on you will aim at nothing more than that love described in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians.  You can go no higher than this.

Be slow to speak.  It is said, "In a multitude of words sin abounds."  Try not to talk too much, or for a long time.  Not many people can converse profitably beyond an hour's time.

Let the language of your heart sing out with regard to pleasure or pain, riches or poverty, honor or dishonor, "All's alike to me, so I in my Lord may live or die!"

Do not despise or run down any preacher.  Do not exalt anyone above the rest lest you hurt both him and the cause of God.

Do not give even a single thought of separating from your brethren, whether their opinions agree with yours or not.  Just because someone does not agree with everything you say does not mean they are sinning.  Nor is this or that opinion essential to the work of God.  Be patient with those who disagree with you. (pp. 258-261)

Love is patient; love is kind.  (1 Corinthians 13:4)

 Religious pride is perhaps the worst.  Doing seemingly "good" things with a continual eye toward oneself and other people's reactions quickly destroys whatever good may come from the action.  Even worse, it drives people away from the cause or the God that you claim to serve.  As with the Jews Paul had to deal with: "The name of God is being blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."  (Romans 2:24)

Because of the stench of such pride, I have found it tempting to join the many who have ejected all religiosity from their lives.  I have sought to follow God in a purely "spiritual" manner, which seems to include no "religion."  Of course, no such "purity" exists.  Since I am embodied, I need to serve God through this body as well as in a social context.  I cannot somehow shake them off except by some sort of denial.  If I reject one form of religion, I will quickly put on another, even if its of my own making.

Even worse, I have thought that the answer to religious pride was to "not worry" too much about my sins.  Somehow in my fear of being prideful, I thought that "not worrying" about certain sins might keep me humble.  I think the reasoning would go something like this:  Jesus came to die for my sins so that I wouldn't have to try to deal with them, since I can't.  Trying to overcome sin in my life is to deny that Jesus' death is sufficient to cover my sins.  Since, of course, we cannot just let sin spin out of control, there are limits to what is allowed and what is not if I say I'm "trying my best."  This leads to all sorts of hypocrisy and confusion.

The best understanding of sin is that it comes from pride.  Sin does not lead to humility, but to arrogance and self-centeredness.  Fundamentally, the best way to fight sin, then, is through humility.  Wesley's suggestions are focused on religious pride and the humility that will defeat it.  Pride of any sort cannot be fought head-on, which is why Wesley's suggestions are not ones in which I learn to despise myself (also a form of pride because of its self-centeredness) so much as see myself correctly.  Pride inflates my view of myself until I am my own god or at least all I am paying attention to.  Humility deflates my self-importance until I can serve the true God.

The response to pride is not "I'm just a miserable sinner!", but "I am a recovering sinner living daily by God's grace" and "God has plans for me into eternity."  Pride leads to sin.  Humility leads to God.  Humility is developed through submitting to what comes my way as God's plan for my salvation, knowing that he is sufficient to deliver and comfort me in pain, and happy and rejoicing with what goes well.  Humility is the practice of living by grace and in the Spirit rather than by "making it work" and relying on my status and abilities apart for God (the flesh).

Compassion as a sub-category of religion suffers from the same difficulties.  Pride makes compassion a stench through pretended self-righteousness, run-away enthusiasm, departing from the Scriptures, and a sense that philanthropy excuses me from the love of those near to me.  The only way to avoid such degradation is through the humility of living in God's grace.  I mean learning how to rely on God's grace and the power of his Spirit more than on my own abilities and talents.  Only then can the "widow's mite" become far more worthy and powerful than the seemingly large sums that others put in for their own glory.

Lord, I am moved to open my arms to your grace.  Your forgiveness extends far out beyond relieving my guilt.  Your forgiveness is a wave that carries me into righteousness and obedience.  Such grace is what I need to put my pride to death.  I want to do so by learning to rely on you showing up in my many times of need.  Teach me the expectation of your grace and grow my distrust of pride.  Let this lesson deepen my love for you and for others in my life.  Amen.


I think I see a a new way of practicing my "religion."  These things are meant to teach me patience and eager expectation of God's grace.  I can see why I need not "try so hard" at them, but let them assist me through trials.

The Virtue of Humility

Devotional Classics, Benedict of Nursia, Excerpts from The Rule

"Friends, the Holy Scriptures cry out to us saying, 'Everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.' Therefore, they show us that every exaltation of ourselves is a kind of pride." (p.178)

Benedict's twelve steps of humility cover both the negative and the positive aspects of humility. The negative is putting to death self-exaltation and the positive, a right attitude toward God and oneself.

For all his severity, Benedict begins with the positive aspects: reverence for God, doing God's will, submission to others, enduring affliction, confession, and contentment. Some of these certainly push against my desire to exalt myself because they place me under God and other people, but the focus seems to be on recovering and enjoying my relationships with God and other people. I have found much freedom in submission and confession. Although the way can be difficult, the results bring joy and peace.

The negative aspects are harder to deal with: self-reproach, obeying the common rule, silence, seriousness, simple speech, and humility in appearance. Because of the great abuses of some of these, both in my personal life and historically, some of these steps are hard to use for me. For me, self-reproach and seriousness tend to move me toward self-obsession, which is far from God or humility. However, properly understood each of these can really aid humility by limiting self-exaltation. Silence and simple speech can be quite powerful in limiting self-exaltation.

Benedict locates humility and pride on opposite ends of the spectrum. Where pride is almost the ultimate vice, humility is a very important virtue. Jesus says it is required for entry into the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3). Efforts toward humility, then are important both in their positive outcome - entry into the kingdom - and their negative outcome - overcoming pride. An interesting point is that pride can only be overcome with humility. Perhaps another way of understanding it is that pride is the absence of humility.

For some reason, it is more natural to think of humility as the absence of pride. Most likely, this comes from a typical cultural bias that sees virtue as merely the absence of vice, peace is no war, love is no hate, etc. However, as C.S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive. . . . The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not of primarily securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if abstinence and not happiness was the important point.

And so humility tends to carry the idea of low self-esteem, self-hatred, and spinelessness. A lack of pride does not humility make.

Perhaps Benedict starts with the positive aspect of humility first because of this tendency. Just as love is not merely going without good things for ourselves, but more creating good in and for others, humility is not so much about cutting ourselves down as it is bringing others up. "Do everything without selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." (Philippians 2:3-4) Humility is the freedom to let others (including God himself) succeed and to enjoy their progress and achievement with a lack of concern for myself. I guess more simply, it is letting God exalt me.

Following such practices as doing God's will, contentment, or confession will bring quick inner objections. So to practice these without inner turmoil and pain, Benedict suggests the negative disciplines to remove the heartache of pride. Humility pushes pride out of my heart and the pushing hurts. So pride must be deflated and destroyed. Self-exaltation inflames pride. Obeying rules, silence, seriousness, and simple speech encourage humility and limit self-exaltation, the primary food of pride.

Lord, what a wonderful promise you've given! You want to exalt me. You want to exalt everyone. You want to share your glory with each of us. I do not believe it most of the time and do not leave room for your pleasure. Help to let my defenses down through training in what I say and do so that I might receive your exaltation: being lowly like Jesus. Amen.

How timely! I have an opportunity to seek humility through enduring affliction and silence in dealing with a person who has not been kind to me. No doubt I will find ways in which I have not been kind to him as well. Funny how these things come up as I write this blog. It certainly brings a sense of realism to the rather "heady" discussion. Mostly, I find that God guides me each day so that these virtues do not remain dead in a book, but can come alive in practice. Perhaps I will find a way to confess to this person and grow out of my fears.