Spiritual Learnings

I’m thinking about a lot of really big issues or thoughts on the Christian life. Occasionally in my life I experience these moments either through prayer, a conversation, a Scripture, or just a daily moment in life where it’s like God truly steps down and reveals something directly to me. It can be something I have heard hundreds of times before, but somehow hearing it again in just the right way causes me to think deeply about it and to understand what God is teaching me at that moment. This is actually God’s Spirit at work which I will discuss later.

1) Hard not Heavy

Jesus says, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt. 11:30). Christ’s burden that He carries is easy and light meaning He has plenty of strength to help us and carry our burdens in our place. When the Christian life becomes heavy – stressful, anxious, worried, controlling, burdensome – this is due to your own control and your lack of surrender unto Christ who will carry your burdens for you. We like to hold on to the reigns of our lives (even though we all know the final result of doing so ends in disaster) and control our lives making “bootstrap” accomplishments that we can pat ourselves on the back with and say to ourselves, “Well done good and faithful Ben. You had a problem and you took care of it yourself without even having to ask God for any help at all!” This is what the world praises right? Self-sufficiency. Individual accomplishments. Awards. Cinderella sports teams. Hear me now my family in Christ! If the entire weight of the world lay on your shoulders, it would not begin to describe the burden that is upon you without Christ! Jesus Christ is stronger than you are and He calls all people to lay down this burden that you cannot even stand under and give it to Him so He may free you from this stress, this anxiety, these desires. Jesus frees people from their own contradictory and self-destructive selves. If only I could just submit to God and let go of my control over my life, things would be so much simpler. Letting go is the hardest aspect of the Christian life.
So it is meant to be hard? Yes, the Christian life is meant to be hard, but it is not meant to be heavy. Does that make sense? Heaviness is you carrying an impossible burden on your shoulders. Hard is dying to yourself and letting go of your control over life trusting in God’s sovereign and loving nature to lead you through. Heavy is the pressure that is placed upon yourself to do and not just be.

2) The Spirit and the spiritual: the only way to learn, the only way to change

The Holy Spirit’s movement is the only way I can ever understand anything; it is the only way I can ever change or learn anything about God or about myself. Without it I stay the same man year after year, I read the same scriptures over and over having no ears to hear the words and no eyes to see the truth that lies within it. I said above that what needs to happen in the Christian life is a dying to yourself, a release of control. How can I give up control of myself, how can I die to myself?? The first lesson is recognizing that you don’t know how to do it nor do you have the ability to do it. I’ve been praying for God’s Spirit to work in me because without it, without Christ the vine, I can do nothing (John 15). Abiding in Christ simply means to remain as you are – don’t break yourself off from the tree. It is only by the Spirit that I can learn these truths. It is only by the Spirit that it becomes spiritual knowledge and not just information stored in my brain. It is only by the Spirit that these truths will actually stay with me long enough to have any effecting change. It is only by the Spirit that truth finds its way to action in my life. Yes I want to be more than do, but as you are being, doing will occur naturally and led by the Spirit of God rather than by your determination, drive, discipline, or boldness to change yourself (James 1).

It is good to feel God’s Spirit working in my life after a month of distance and distraction.