The Toil of Mental Effort

Several years ago a pastor friend of mine made the comment, “I would sooner shovel concrete for ten hours than write a sermon.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t like preparing sermons – he did, and he was widely regarded as one of the premier preachers in the USA in his day. No, it wasn’t dislike of the task that led him to make the comment, but the intense toil it involved. The mental and spiritual demands of sermon preparation, he reckoned, far outweighed the effort involved in wielding a shovel all day.

Recently I came across a statement of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper that addresses this issue. Kuyper, a man of immense mental energy and activity, argued that the work of thinking and writing is not less demanding than that of physical activity but more so. He writes,

“Compare the student, the scholar, the inventor thinking out his new invention, the architect forming his plans, the general studying his opportunities, the sailor nimbly climbing the mast of his ship, or yonder blacksmith raising the sledge to strike a glowing iron upon the anvil with concentrated muscular force. Judging superficially, one would say that the blacksmith and sailor work, but the men of learning are idle. Yet he that looks beneath the surface knows better than this. For if those men perform no apparent manual labour, they work with brain, nerve, and blood; yet since those organs are more delicate than hand or foot, their invisible, indwelling work is much more exhausting. With all their labour the blacksmith and sailor are pictures of health, while the men of mental force, apparently idle among their folios, are pale from exhaustion, the vitality being almost consumed by their intense application.” The Work of the Holy Spirit, p. 13

Anyone who has devoted themselves to hours studying the book or writing a serious paper will know exactly what he means.

More Than Just Feelings

One of the objections I commonly encounter when talking about experiential Christianity is that it is “all about feelings.” People equate experienced interaction with God with feelings of joy and peace, inner promptings, words of knowledge etc. But this is a serious misunderstanding.

I mentioned in the last posting that experiential Christianity is really about “walking with God.” It differs from theoretical Christianity, or historical Christianity, which is essentially just a thing of the mind. Experiential Christianity is about living with God – interacting with him as we see the characters of the Bible doing so, especially the writers of the Psalms in the Old Testament. Their God was real, personally present, and able to be approached. They experienced God in their lives in response to their prayers. He was “a very present help” to them in their troubles (Ps. 46:1 A.V.).

That kind of spirituality can’t be dismissed as purely emotional or subjective. True, the emotions of people are deeply involved in their daily experiences of life with God. They cry to him in distresses that are real – situations that have rubbed their emotions raw – and their responses to God’s grace and mercy involve profound feelings of joy and gratitude. It would be totally wrong to suggest that living with God is “unemotional.” We were created emotional beings, and our emotions are perfected as we walk with Christ and become more like him.

But it is another thing altogether to suppose that our relationship with God is based on emotion – that is, upon feelings, promptings, and urges that we experience within ourselves. That’s dangerous territory – the realm of mysticism. True, there is a subjective element of the Spirit’s influence in our minds and hearts that registers in us as deeply felt awareness and impression, and we will explore this some other time. But that reality doesn’t mean that our lives are based on our feelings, or our inner impulses.

True experiential spirituality is based on what God reveals of himself in the Bible. It’s an intimate, interpersonal fellowship with him. We relate to him as he has made himself known and in the ways that he has made known. The fact that in the course of that we experience deep feelings (see Psalm 84 for example, and passages such as 1 Thessalonians 1:6 and Romans 14:17), doesn’t mean that experienced spirituality is in itself only a matter of feelings.

Experiential Spirituality

The kind of “living in Christ” patterned by Jesus in his relationship with his Father belongs to the experiential side of Christian spirituality. That is to say, it belongs to the practical, living-out-in-life side of our relationship with God.

Author and theologian J.I. Packer has commented that evangelicals today are “less sure-footed” in this dimension of Christian living than were their forebears. Evangelical Christians have focused on knowledge and doctrine and the Bible, resulting in a strong cognitive or intellectual dimension to their faith. For many, the Christian life is largely a matter of knowing the Bible and applying it to daily life.

That’s all very well and good. But one aspect of the “truth” that evangelicals warmly embrace is the fact that God is a personal being who desires our love, worship and fellowship. The goal of theology is really to know God in this kind of way. To put it another way, the ultimate aim of informed evangelicals is to “walk with God”. And that inevitably brings us into the realm of experiential Christianity – the experience of knowing God in the practicalities of everyday life.

One reason why many are hesitant in this area is the fact that experienced relationship with God brings us into the realm of interaction with him. We call upon God, and he hears us and draws near to us. He is a dynamic and living reality in daily life. That necessarily supposes that he will guide us and comfort us – and yes, even “speak to us.” And it is that in particular that makes many evangelical Christians wary. Such “experiences” of God at work in our lives appear to threaten the sufficiency of Scripture. As evangelicals we firmly believe that the written Scriptures are complete and totally sufficient for every aspect of life and godliness. That to our mind, rules out any possibility of more direct, personal communications between God and us on a daily basis.

I wholeheartedly concur that the Scriptures are complete and sufficient. But in what sense is that true? We confess that they are a complete record of all that God wants to tell us about himself and his redemptive work in Christ. They take us from the beginning of the works of God in creation to their consummation in the new heaven and earth. There is nothing more we need to know about what God has done, is doing, and will do in his redemptive work in Christ. And all we need to know to live in covenant with God as his redeemed people is made plain in the writings of the law, the prophets, the gospels and the epistles. In that sense the Scriptures are finished and totally sufficient. We need nothing else.

But if the Scriptures reveal anything, they reveal that the true and living God is personal and relates to those who are in covenant fellowship with him. The spirituality of the Bible is not an impersonal spirituality of living by doctrines and rules contained in a book. Abraham and David, John and Paul lived in intimate personal fellowship with God. God’s self-disclosure, be it through theophany, vision, dream, prophecy or through the incarnation of his Son, was always to the end that we might know him and respond to him. He has even come to live within us through the Spirit in this new covenant age. By means of his word, the Spirit draws us into and sustains us in living fellowship with the Father and his Son.

That necessarily means that true Christianity is ultimately experiential in character – it involves experienced relationship with God.

Living in Christ in Action

The past few days I've been caught up in effects of the violent storms that have been rocking the south-eastern part of Southland. Farmers in our district have been particularly hard hit with lamb and ewe losses - the lambs from exposure and the ewes from milk fever. Everyone has suffered major losses. 

Pastorally, its been like trying to deal with grief on a large scale. The farmers and their families have been grieving over what has been happening. It's not that they treat their animals as though they were human; they just care for them, and hate to see them suffering and dying.

Venturing out into that world of anguish has been a challenge. The last thing I've wanted to do is to intrude, or to offer trite-sounding (howbeit, biblical) comfort. Frankly its the kind of situation that an introvert like me shrinks from. Nevertheless, it is a moment of great need, and of great opportunity.

Faced with this, I have found myself clinging to Christ with every fibre in my being. How deeply I have depended on him for the right words in a telephone call, the right tone and attitude in a visit. Sure, I've been conscious of my need to act; but I've been even more aware that I need the life of Christ in me and working through me to be able to act in the right way. It's been a very practical test case for the reality and dynamics of living in Christ. And he has proved faithful.

One very specific way I've been conscious of the Lord at work in me relates to gifts of  scorched, chocolate coated almonds! As I prayed for farmers and prepared to visit them, the thought of taking a small gift has come to mind. Usually that's the sort of thing my wife would think of, not me. But, in Nola's absence (she is caring for her aging and ailing mother), the Spirit of the Lord within me has drawn my mind to this way of expressing love and care. At least, that's how I interpret the very distinct impressing of this idea upon my mind. Given that, it's not surprising that in almost every case people have said to me, "Wonderful - they are my favourites!"

That, to me anyway, is what living in Christ is about.

Nothing Apart From Him

The flip side of the Father living and working in Jesus was Jesus' total dependence upon his Father.

We see this in Jesus' response to the Jews after healing the invalid by the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15). When charged with blaspheming because he called God his "own Father", Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does... By myself I can do nothing..." (vv. 19, 30).

This is an emphatic and clear declaration. Jesus didn't go around simply relying on his Father to help him out as he implemented his own plans. No! He didn't do anything apart from his Father. His life was that of a faithful Son doing the things his Father was doing.

I often liken this to my own experience as a boy growing up on the farm. During school holidays my brothers and I invariably worked with our father. As we did so, we never entertained for a moment the thought of making our own plans as to what we would do: we either saw what our father was doing and joined him, or carried out his expressed wishes. There was no "going solo", doing what we thought best in the way that we thought best. As sons, we did what our father wanted in the way he wanted it done.

That seems to be what Jesus was saying. His life on earth was totally given up to doing his Father's will. And as he surrendered himself to that, the Father worked in and through him. In that way the kingdom or rule of God was actually present in Jesus. Through him, God was at work to bring about his rule in the earth.

Jesus here sets before us the pattern God intended for human existence. When God made us like himself, he meant that we should live our lives totally dependent upon him and dedicated to him. And as we lived in such a way, he would come and live in us and work through us. 

 

“The Father Living in Me”

Perhaps the clearest reference Jesus made to his life "in the Father" occurred in the Upper Room as he was preparing his disciples for his departure.

At that point his followers were still befuddled by his reference to leaving them, and asked him to show them the Father to whom he was going (John 14:8). In reply Jesus said that to have seen him was to have seen the Father (14:8). "Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?" he asked. "The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, who is living in me, who is doing his work."

What a striking statement. "It is the Father, who is living in me..." Jesus understood his Father not simply to be present with him, but living in him. That is to say, his Father was a dynamic, active personal presence within him – within his mind and heart and will. The Father was in him working, influencing, directing and empowering. And as a result, Jesus could say that the Father was actually "doing his work." Jesus, of course, was active. But it was nevertheless the Father living in him who was behind his actions. And the works he (Jesus) did, and the words he spoke, were not his own, but the Father's. That's why he could say that to have seen him was to have seen the Father. The Father was so much at work in Jesus that all he did was really a revelation of the Father working in him.

This is exactly what Paul meant when he wrote about Christ "living in him" (Galatians 2:20). And it is what the Westminster Confession refers to when it speaks of the Christians' good works in this way: "Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will, and to do, of his good pleasure..." (WCF XVI:3)

The Christian life is an empowered life; a life that manifests the indwelling of God within us.

Never Alone

Following on from what I wrote last time, one little expression of Jesus in John's Gospel has come to mean much to me. It's the comment he made to his disciples in John 16:32 about never being alone.

Jesus was about to be betrayed and crucified. His followers had expressed new-found understanding of  his knowledge of all things and with that had come a deepened conviction that he had "come from God." What they said amounted to a fresh declaration of their loyalty to him.

Yet, knowing them as he did, Jesus replied, "You believe at last!... But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me alone. Yet, I am not alone, for my Father is with me" (John 6:31-32).

"Not alone... for my Father is with me." What precious words these are. Not only was Jesus aware of the personal presence of his Father with him; he was always aware of it. The only time when that may not have been true was during those dark hours of his dereliction on the cross. His cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) points to a time when the immediate sense of his Father's presence deserted him. Apart from that, however, he seems always to have known the real, intimate companionship of the Father.

Jesus had indicated that earlier in his ministry as well. Once, when condemning the Pharisees for judging by human standards, he declared, "I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me" (John 8:16). Then later in the same chapter we read, "The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him" (8:29).

I find these words incredibly comforting. More than that, I find them inspiring. How wonderful to know that we can experience the same personal presence of Jesus with us as he knew with his Father. For surely, when he promised his disciples that he would be with them to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20) he was referring to precisely the same thing - his personal presence as a constant companion at hand to help in every circumstance of life, especially those relating to his ongoing mission in the world.

Like him we can say, "I am not alone." We need to train ourselves to remember that moment by moment.