Lack of spiritual power, my fault, the church's fault both

My posts on this blog seem to be about levels of spiritual growth I feel I can never attain, or the fact that the churches don't teach us anything about such experiences. I could say a great deal more about both of these preoccupations and now that I've identifed them maybe that's what I will be doing in a more focused way.

There must be churches somewhere who do this teaching. It's in books after all.

Right now I'm reading back and forth in some books about prayer I've had for years, books I've read and partly read, and started to read and put down, books that have generally left me feeling I can never do that, but as usual hoping the Lord will find some way to use them to inspire me. For years I've read about prayer warriors who are able to pray for hours on end, who have very specific experiences they describe of feeling called to pray about a certain concern on a moment's notice, even sometimes something they know nothing about, and praying until they have the experience of knowing that God has answered the prayer, and finding out some time later that at that very time the concern was dealt with by God. They talk about "praying through" a concern, they talk about "wrestling" in prayer, or "battling."

These are people who take their cue from God. And that's how it should be. We are supposed to pray HIS will, not our will, be done. How many do this and where are they and why isn't this taught in the churches?

There's another question related to this that frequently comes up, that is: How can I know what God's will is? I have to say I'm thoroughly disappointed in the usual answers we get.

The question is really, How do I learn to HEAR FROM God about His will in the specifics of situations I encounter in my own life and the world around me?.

The question is not How can I learn to obey what scripture reveals of God's general will, His commandments, and so on. It may well be that the question is often asked prematurely, before God's general will has become our guide, but that is not what is said.

Sometimes you get the answer that if we stay in God's word He will communicate with us there. And He does, and often His communications are quite specific to situations. BUT this is still not addressing the question as it is meant, concerning our direct communications with God. He is the vine, we are the branches, that implies something pretty direct.

Most of the answers one gets from today's pulpit imply that there is no such thing as hearing from God so specifically and personally.

Why do we have the Holy Spirit then? Just sort of to be there in the background, believed in but never experienced, never to be an active part of our lives in any way we can be conscious of, just there to ensure our salvation and keep us persevering despite our lack of awareness of His presence?

No.

SO much more I want to say about this, SO tired. Back later.

Some problems with Puritan John Owen's "Spiritual-Mindedness"

This is to be a half-baked post I must admit -- at least the first part of it is. It's about an impression I've been having that I haven't studied out enough to understand well so I have to give my impression provisionally. But it is a strong impression.

When I read John Owen or some of the other Puritans, Jonathan Edwards too at times, although I'm impressed with their thoroughness and sincerity and their personal experience of what they are writing about as well, I nevertheless sometimes end up feeling so hopelessly unsavable in the light of their writings I nearly lose heart. I've had this experience many times over the years, to the extent of believing I'm not saved and trying to learn how to get saved if I'm not. I'm still vulnerable to this doubt despite the fact that I have many reasons to be sure I am saved. If I am not saved all I can do is hope that the Lord will come in revival and save me. There are always some in any revival who have been Christians all or most of their lives who discover in revival that they have never been saved and get saved then.

If I AM saved, as I most likely am, then these doubts are being laid on me from an external source, and there does seem to be plenty of it in the Puritan writers. You could think from reading Owen (say, his Spiritual-Mindedness) that if you ever act from the flesh, from pride or selfish motives, that is proof that you are not spiritually-minded and therefore unregenerate / unsaved. Sometimes the effect of reading him or similar writings is so dispiriting I get into such a gloomy state of anxiety I'm useless for some time.

This last time I put it down and went back to the "higher life" people. They seem to more clearly recognize that Christians continue to struggle with the flesh, and in fact much of their writing aims to teach how to put oneself under the ministry of the Holy Spirit to experience conviction and victory over the flesh and sins.

It was a joy and a relief to me after reading some in Owen to read in one of the hymns by the "mystic" Gerhard Tersteegen these lines:

Tell me, O God! If aught there be
Of self, that wills not Thy control;
Reveal whate'er impurity
May still be lurking in my soul!
To reach Thy rest and share Thy throne,
Mine eye must look to Thee alone.

O Love, Thy sovereign aid impart,
To save me from low-thoughted care;
Chase this self-will from all my heart,
From all its hidden mazes there;
Make me Thy duteous child, that I
Ceaseless may, 'Abba Father' cry.

Even someone who had spent most of his life in seclusion in the presence of God knows he still has unmortified self-will in his deceitful heart.

When you DO put yourself under the watchful eye of the Lord, it's amazing how many little sins He points out, some things you were vaguely aware of, some you had no clue about, and when He points them out it's remarkable that you actually do have the power to put them out of your life, if not always for love of Him certainly for righteous fear of Him, for fear of the pain of conscience. THAT is more spiritual-mindedness than some standard that eliminates all sinful and fleshly life in the soul as qualification for being saved.

We're rotten to the core, after all, by nature. How on earth can we become as perfectly spiritually-minded as Owen seems to require of us?

In a way I know I'm being unfair to him. I did read ahead some (I'd already read this book -- pencil markings attest to that although I hardly remember it), and find him dealing with the fact of continuing sin in the believer. Nevertheless, somehow he manages to give the impression earlier on that sin -- real sin -- only pertains to the unregenerate. I'm going to have to read this book again more thoroughly someday and see if my impression remains.

BUT OWEN TRULY DOES MISS WHAT SPIRITUALITY IS REALLY ALL ABOUT:
I did note some comments he made in the early part of the book that strike me as quite odd. The scripture where Jesus says those who believe on Him will become sources of living water, which is taken by the "higher life" people as promise of Holy Spirit power for witness and work, rightly it seems to me, is described by Owen (pp 11-12) as a fountain "bubbling up for our spiritual refreshment," the source of the spiritual thoughts he is discussing.

But Jesus isn't just promising us something for our refreshment and spiritual thoughts, Jesus is promising LIFE through the Spirit flowing from the inner being of believers outward to the dead world -- something that is demonstrable in those who have a great measure of that power -- not mere spiritual refreshment of the individual. Jesus is saying all life, all true conversion, all spiritual reality, comes from the Spirit Himself, and the Spirit is given by Jesus to flow from the innermost parts of believers. "The flesh profits nothing," Life comes only through the Spirit. The flesh is dead and can only propagate death, but the Spirit is life everlasting. Really the whole mission of the Christian life. Not just refreshing spiritual thoughts.

That's a problem with Owen. I believe he and the Puritans did have the Holy Spirit and wrote a great deal of important truth but I believe they miss the boat on some of the most important issues, THE most important issue in fact in this case.

He continues to show this spiritual obtuseness -- that is what it is -- when he says a few pages later (p.17) that "spiritual gifts are nothing more than a spiritual use of natural faculties." Anyone who has learned to sense the Spirit within even once in a while should know how wrong this is, but even the description of the spiritual gifts in the Bible should make it plain this is no matter of natural faculties at all. He has reduced the word "spiritual" to a carnal principle. The gift of tongues was certainly straight from the Spirit, no natural faculty could produce a foreign tongue in a person unfamiliar with it. The gift of healing certainly comes from the Spirit, no human faculty, and there's also a gift of miracles -- what human faculty could be made to produce a miracle? The gift of prophecy likewise comes straight from God, God's own speaking within the human spirit. To reduce it to mere learned exegesis of the Bible as some do is, again, to reduce the spiritual to the carnal. The Puritans do tend to be heavy on the intellectual side of things.

Likewise he reduces the concept of being "filled with the Spirit" to a MIND FILLED with spiritual thoughts under the influence of the Spirit." (p. 35) No, no, no, no, no. The Spirit is a living reality with Whom we CAN be truly filled -- He regenerates the human spirit and fills it, not the MIND but the spirit -- a reservoir of spiritual power that MAY then inform and transform the mind and emotions and all the rest but often doesn't as fully as should be the case because Christians are so badly taught about these things. The presence of the Spirit is something you can EXPERIENCE too, something decidedly separate from the mind and the soul in general. He is a spiritual power within born-again believers that is the bearer of LIFE, no mere propagator of "spiritual thoughts."

This is what the "higher life" people know that many of the other branches of the Church for the most part don't know -- Puritan, Reformed, Fundamentalist, and many others -- and this is a tragedy for the Church as the Holy Spirit is the WHOLE POINT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

Revisiting the Higher Life writers

In my time off the internet because of computer problems (I'm writing on a borrowed computer and have to limit my time) I've been rereading some of the "higher life" books this blog is mostly about. It's an effort to revive myself spiritually and I'm very happy for the lack of internet distractions.

Reading these wonderful books brings a sad reminder of the low state of spiritual life in myself and in the church at large. Andrew Murray laments it in his day, Samuel Chadwick in his, Watchman Nee in his own indirect way as he carefully delineates the character of the spiritual life, which is enough to make it clear how few really live that life. And it's no better and most likely much worse in our time. It inspires me to pray for all the churches, as we all should be doing, as well as for revival from my own miserable condition.

I remember hearing a couple of fairly well known Reformed radio personalities saying how wrong all this higher life stuff is. There are many versions of this complaint but I'm remembering particularly their saying how in their younger days they'd "tried" to surrender absolutely to God and couldn't do it -- an allusion to Murray's classic book, Absolute Surrender. They'd concluded from their own failure that such all-out surrender is impossible and went over to the Reformed camp in reaction, where apparently holiness is something a Christian just sort of naturally and slowly acquires over a lifetime. No matter that Murray himself testifies that it is indeed possible and in fact a necessity, and reports that others have too, along with all the others who write in this same vein. But the Reformed branch seems to have entrenched itself behind a doctrine of its impossibility and therefore its non-necessity. The fundamentalist churches also seem to lack an appreciation for such writings but I don't know their reasoning on the subject. So great segments of the Church cut themselves off from the life of God that is so sorely needed.

I left the charismatic movement because there was just too much carnality masquerading as spirituality -- and very likely even the working of evil spirits at times -- and too little concern for spiritual discernment of the source of the phenomena they experienced, and went over to a Reformed church that had recently appeared in town because the preaching was systematic and Biblical and included exhortations to holiness that I also found disregarded in the charismatic environment. But every branch of the Church has its strengths and weaknesses. The charismatic churches are also the only place I ever experienced genuine spiritual life -- genuine spiritual fellowship I should say -- despite all the questionable and outright counterfeit spirituality; and the solid doctrine of the Reformed churches which is so comforting after the confusions of the charismatics also comes at the expense of spiritual life as it tends to dominate the whole life of the church. The charismatics err in the direction of experiential chaos to the point of irresponsibility, but the Reformed are truly in danger of snuffing out the Spirit altogether. The complaint of the charismatics that doctrine is not the essence or center of Christian life has validity, but so does the complaint of the Reformed in response that there is no true spirituality without true doctrine.

However, NONE of the denominations of the Church has anything to boast of at the moment as there hasn't been a genuine revival anywhere that I know of in a long long time so spiritually dead are they all. But revivals have occurred in all the denominations at one time or another, and "higher life" teachers have come out of all of them at one time or another. It always takes someone seeing the desperate lack of spiritual life and putting himself/herself out, you could even say actually taking himself to the altar, to the cross, to die for the church -- that's really what it takes -- and then God comes down. Someone who counts the cost and puts self on the altar to pray for God's intervention in the Church with lengthy wrestling prayer for all its members -- better all the elders of a church, as happened in the revival on the Isle of Lewis, or prayer meetings that attract people from all denominations that happened in New York more than a century ago and brought a huge revival. But it hasn't happened that I know of in quite a while -- anywhere in the West at least despite the fact that it's sorely needed. The revival in Saskatchewan in the 70s that Bill McLeod prayed for so avidly is possibly the last.

Reading in the Higher Life library one enounters over and over, as I say at the start of this post, laments about the condition of the churches. It comes from all denominations. I just happened to read this one by G D Watson in his book White Robes about the dismal condition of the Methodists in his time (the early 20th century):

When a church loses heart holiness, it must try ritualism, or machinery, or lyceums, or concerts, or festivals, or 'sacred dramas,' or oyster suppers, or something as a miserable substitute for primitive power. It has ever been that when the visible Church does not raise healthy children for God, she raises lap-dogs for the devil... Hundreds of Churches of Methodism have not enough holiness to produce revivals and clear, happy conversions; and as a substitute for revival and the Holy Ghost, they feel compelled to go at something. They must raise dainty pets, and spend all their strength on a trained choir or nursing a dainty manuscript minister, or working up little giggling, dissipating Church socials, or little Sunday school dramas, or a soul-starving literary lyceum, or a star lecturing course, or an old folk's concert, or some wax doll arrangement to atone for the Church's lack of purity and power.

God will never accept these little Church poodles as substitutes for holiness and Heaven-born children. The little petty idols being stuck up in some Protestant churches are just as abominable to God as the big idols stuck up in Romanism. [pp 85-6]

I've been in churches where there is a lot of this sort of thing, maybe even beautifully done classical Christian music as a performance, but it's still just a performance and the Church itself has no spiritual life. Converts are more like inductees to a social club than born again believers.

But a church doesn't have to go all out in that direction to show its lack of spiritual power. Any dependence on human means is a clue already, drumming up human sympathy for needed financial support being a very common one, instead of relying on God for the support. Is the project even one which He approves? Have they taken the time to find out? If it is, shouldn't He be expected to provide for it? I'm guilty as an individual of this same sort of spiritual failing, not trusting God for provision, not submitting all needs to Him, bowing to His will over my own. I wish I weren't. I know it's a symptom of spiritual weakness and I am making an effort now to overcome -- a big effort. But I do recognize the same symptom everywhere in Christendom, and pray more and more that the Lord will break us all and come down, convict us of our deadness first of all, revive us, empower us, inspire us and lead us. Watson goes on:

You can hear from Methodist pulpits many an innuendo against the old-time sobbing and crying at a mourner's bench, many an apology for modern Church vices, many a cold fling at entire sanctification, yet these men are devoted to the mere Church system, and that passes as a substitute for their personal holiness.

Sad. Whatever one thinks of Methodist theology it has to be recognized that there was a time when that denomination was spiritually alive and it's sad to read Watson's description of what it had become in his day, many of them even embarrassed about their previous spiritual vitality. Today it's even worse than that.