Week 2 Throwback: Under Serious Love Attack

The chapters from this week really resonated with me because the issue faced by the churches in Ephesus and Smyrna brought to mind something a couple of things I've been reading/hearing about: the first is 'The Dark Night of the Soul', a term penned by a guy by the name of St. John of the Cross (though the book I read is written by a guy putting it in modern terms). TDNOTS is, at the root "an ongoing transition from compulsively trying to control one's life toward a trusting freedom and openness to God and the real situation of life". It's about how God will bring us times in our lives where our old habits, ideals, or even our very sense of who God is are made dead to us and stripped away, leaving an empty space within us to be filled. We get a feeling of emptiness, a lack of energy for the old ways of living, where we feel like all we're doing is regressing and stagnating, the absence of consolation leaving our hearts wondering and desperate---even our prayer feels dry and impotent.

What's awesome about TDNOTS, John of the Cross says, is that 1) Behind all this, God is obscurely and secretly using this spiritual trial to wipe out everything that is not of him, liberating us from attachments, and 2) there is one sign that comes at the end of the time of obscurity and wandering---the dawn of a simple desire to love God, to give all the empty space we have in ourselves to him, so that in his filling of us, we may remember how our souls are already in union with him through Christ. Once we realize this, affection and intimacy can only follow again. How can one not be excited about a relationship of this nature?---one where no matter what we think, things are never as they seem---Jesus is coming AND is already here working, in each and every heart. Me, you, that skeptical AGASA member sitting a few feet away, that co-worker who looks at what you do dumbfounded. God's united with our souls--- we must realize the basic intimacy that already exists and pursue it madly in love!

TDNOTS is God calling us back to our first love. John of the Cross and Darrell would agree that we get caught up in the ritual, the intellectual side, the spectacle, the simple spirit of the fight, or our own personal ideas of who God is can throw us off big time from what our relationship with God should be. I'm sure as heck that perhaps God had the church of Ephesus go through a TDNOTS to help them realize what it was that they had forgotten---and would probably continue to do so again and again. That's the awesome thing God does with TDNOTS---it is not a single event but a process that'll go on our entire lives, continually pulling us to pursue him. He keeps on saying "Ben---you've been hanging around with everyone but me. I love and miss you. Let's hang together again." The tough, but good shepherd and groom, our Lord is!


This last week, our good friend Zach did a sermon on II Corinthians 12. His sermon put focus on the thorns that are put in our sides during our lives---the external struggles that we have no fault in bringing about. "God takes struggles and makes them valuable and beneficial to ourselves and others". His two man points were that a thorn is good is because 1) it humbles us, keeps us from becoming arrogant and trying to fight solo, and compels us to draw together in community and be a united body of God against the troubles of this world, AND 2) unleashes the divine power of grace. God's grace shines and overpowers, outlasts all, and at its peak in your struggles. "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." (II Cor 12:9). The thlipsis faced by the church of Smyrna, as noted in the book, was outlasted, as the city still stands today. But it was not the city that outlasted it---it was God's grace, forever renewable, that did. So keep the thorns coming! I may learn a thing or two from it, sure---but nah, that's a mere afterthought to the fact that it is his presence that is causing the evil forces to frantically sting and crush me. Where that happens (everywhere, every time), God shines brighter and brighter!

I know I've said nothing new here---but the thought of the thorn made understanding what this chapter had to say so much better. Thanks God, for speaking through your servant Zach.

The things I want to simply say is that even when we forget our first love, when we become the neglectful and adulterous lover, God never will stop wooing us, and will use all he's got to bring us back to him. And that whatever thorns and thlipsis that come our way, God is using them to protect the beautiful rose---the kingdom of God, and those who desire to dwell with him in it. And I find that beautifully awesome. It's been a while since I've been moved to tears by anything I've read----God, you are good.