August 25 / January 29
Dear Gary,
Laubach has truly bypassed me. By my calculations he has been working on this “experiment” for about two weeks compared to one for me. (or as I read his letters, he's been at it for over a year.) That’s probably the reason for my lack of success. He has finally arrived at this stage:
“I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in little things is what so astonishes me, for I never have felt it this way before. I need something, and turn round to find it waiting for me. I must work, to be sure, but there is God working along with me. … I seem to have to make sure of only one thing now, and every other thing “takes care of itself,” or I prefer to say what is more true, God takes care of all the rest. My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to his will. To make this hour gloriously rich. This seems to be all I need think about.”
I confess my inability to keep up with him. I can maintain a continuous inner conversation for about ten minutes, then I get distracted. in that short time I often have a sense of God’s will, but I am certainly not perfectly responsive to it. I can get so far as asking for guidance in a certain matter. I even get an answer. But it always seems to be the answer I don’t want to hear. I try to talk God into suggesting something else and that’s when my companionable dialogue comes to a halt.
Jonathan Edwards would not, I think, be my first choice for a spiritual advisor. He seems a bit too willing to decide whether others are displaying Christian lives - and can expect eternal results because of their behavior. My thinking is that Edwards is frustrated by the fact that so many people have religious truth presented to them and show no change in their lives. His explanation, I think, is that those individuals have not been “affected” by God, and he names the affections that reside in persons who are truly religious. Those people are the chosen recipients of God's grace and salvation.
He lists several affections: fear (of God), hope, love, hatred (of sin), desire, joy, sorrow, gratitude, compassion, and zeal. One of these stood out for me because our pastor’s message today focused on it. Edwards says, “Religious sorrow, mourning, and brokenness of heart are also frequently spoken of as a great part of true religion, a distinguishing quality of the saints. ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ said Jesus, ‘for they shall be comforted.’ It is also a pleasant and acceptable sacrifice to God: ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’”
The pastor presented the same “affection,” but in different terms. We are broken-hearted about the evil in the world because God’s heart is broken. It is the broken-heartedness we share with God that motivates us to not be idle in the face of sin, but to engage it, to confess our own contributions to it, to abandon cynicism and to adopt the new heart of life and engagement God offers us. We accept not for Edward’s emphasis, that we allow the affections to move us so that God won’t despise us. The pastor’s approach built on our desire to become more Christlike, which means being centered in sorrow for evil and sin.
- Pastor Mike
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