Stage 4 The Inward Journey
|
Stage Four The Inward Journey We have been working our way through this thing called The Journey of Faith. Each week I am giving a brief overview of the six stages on the journey as put forward in the book, The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith, by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich. My purpose, for those in our church community, is that each person has a basic understanding of the journey. I realise that over a period of seven or eight weeks some people will miss a meeting or two. By repeating the overview each week, it is my hope that people will understand the basic idea of the journey and their place in it. Overview These stages build upon one another. So, stage one is the starting place; then stage two, and so on. They are also somewhat fuzzy in that we can be in more than one stage at a time, and we can move back and forth between the stages. Understanding these stages is important so that we can understand where we ourselves are situated, but also so that we can have a better understanding of each other. Let’s do a quick overview of the stages. · Stage One: The Recognition of God. Stage one is where we become aware, in a real way, of the existence of God and we begin the journey of faith. The overwhelming sense in stage one is awe. We are in awe of the greatness of God as seen in creation, and we are in awe of the love of God as seen in the cross. · Stage Two: Learning & Belonging. Stage two is a time for forming who we, and what we believe, in the context of those who teach and disciple us. · Stage Three: Productive & Serving. Here we learn that God has equipped us with certain abilities and gifts, and we want to contribute to the group by using those gifts. The emphasis is serving and being productive for God. Most people stop at stage three. It is comfortable. We feel productive and we are getting positive reinforcement from those around us. · Stage Four: The Inward Journey. Stage four is almost always preceded by some kind of crisis. We are full of questions and not many answers. We question who we are and why we do what we do. We question what we have been taught about God. It is an intensely lonely and painful stage but one which is shared by quite a number of biblical heroes. · The Wall. Towards the end of Stage four is the Wall. The Wall is where our will meets God’s will face to face. We face God. We also face our own ugliness and all of the ways in which we have asserted our own egos, while still claiming to follow God. · Stage Five: The Outward Journey. Having been through the Wall, we have seen ourselves at our worst and have accepted and received God’s unconditional love. We are aware of our faults, but we are more aware of God’s grace. We have a looser grip on ourselves and a greater desire to love and accept others in the way God has loved and accepted us. · Stage Six: The Life of Love. This can only be described as total Christlikeness. It is a life of complete humility, obedience and service.
Now, let’s look Stage 4 of the spiritual journey. The first three stages of the spiritual journey are all feel-good stages. They can have a negative element about them if we get stuck there, but for the most part they are feel good stages. · In stage 1, we meet God. We start to understand something of God’s reality, presence, power and grace. · In stage 2, we explore and learn in the context of belonging. We gain understanding, and this brings a sense of certainty and stability. · In stage 3, we learn that we have a place to fill, and when we start using our spiritual gifts and abilities, we can feel good that we are making a positive contribution to the church and to others. Stage 4 changes all that for the simple reason that it doesn’t really have any feel-good elements to it. In fact, stage 4 doesn’t feel like a part of the journey at all. Stage 4 is where everything gained in the previous stages feels like it’s falling apart. That’s why it’s almost always a crisis of some kind that drags us kicking and screaming into this most unwanted stage of the journey. Let me share some quotes from The Critical Journey about stage 4… For the first time our faith does not seem to work. We feel remote, immobilised, unsuccessful, hurt, ashamed or reprehensible. Neither our faith nor God provides what we need to soothe us, heal us, answer our prayers, fulfil our wishes, change our circumstances, or solve our problems. Our formula of faith, whatever that may have been, does not work any more, or so it appears. We are stumped, hurting, angry, betrayed, abandoned, unheard or unloved. Many simply want to give up. Their life of faith may even seem to have been a fraud at worst, a mirage at best… Gnawing questions become more and more unmanageable, questions about what we believe and have believed and about how we live and why we do and do not do certain things. We are no longer able to ignore or repress them. The Critical Journey. pages 94-95 There are a number of biblical examples of godly people who have had a stage four experience. David must have been through stage 4, probably on a number of occasions. All you have to do is read through the Psalms. Many of them are filled with rejoicing and praise, but there are other psalms which reflect periods of introspection, questioning and doubt. Have compassion on me, Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. I am sick at heart. How long, O Lord, until you restore me? Psalm 6:2-3. NLT O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? Psalm 13:1-2. NLT Maybe the best example of this is the prophet Elijah. This great prophet had a powerful ministry. He saw one miracle after another, the pinnacle being his contest with 450 prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel. Two altars were built with the agreement that the god who answered with fire for the altar was the real God. The prophets of Baal went first and had no success. Then Elijah decided to up the ante. He had the altar and the wood on the altar soaked with water. God backed his man and responded with fire. That angered the queen of the day, a nasty woman named Jezebel, who basically put out a contract on the prophet’s head. Elijah had been fearless and powerful for three years. Then one woman threatened his life, and Elijah fell to pieces. Let’s read what happened. It gives a good picture of the Stage 4 experience. Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died." Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, "Get up and eat!" He looked around and there beside his head was some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again. Then the angel of the Lord came again and touched him and said, "Get up and eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you." So he got up and ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God. There he came to a cave, where he spent the night. But the Lord said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah replied, "I have zealously served the Lord God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too." "Go out and stand before me on the mountain," the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And a voice said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He replied again, "I have zealously served the Lord God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too." 1 Kings 19:3-14. NLT God then gave Elijah an assignment. Almost as an aside comment at the end of the narrative, God also informs Elijah that he’s not really alone, that there are 7000, by God’s count, who had remained faithful and not bowed down to Baal. This story gives us some insight into the conditions which led to Elijah getting into his condition. · He was physically and emotionally exhausted. The fact that he slept for a long time (the angel woke him up twice) shows that he must have been worn out. How many know that even when you’re doing good and godly stuff you can find yourself exhausted. · He felt let down and unsupported. By Elijah’s count, he was the only one left who had not bowed to Baal. The fact that God knew of 7000 didn’t matter. For whatever reason Elijah didn’t see it. He felt all alone and isolated. · He was under attack, both physically and spiritually. The Bible does not say that Jezebel’s threat was anything more than a physical threat, but there is also recognition of a demonic spirit associated with her, a spirit which seeks to control those who do the work of God, and if she can’t control she will seek to destroy. 2 Kings 9:22 tells us that Jezebel was into witchcraft. · God had not responded as expected. Elijah was used to seeing God respond with great power. This time, however, there at least does not appear to be the same kind of response. Although he doesn’t exactly say it, it seems that Elijah is disappointed that God has not intervened the way he thinks God should. He appears disappointed with God. One of the things Stage 4 does is expose our selfishness as well as our wrong thinking about life and about God. Stage 4 starts with a crisis which exposes wrong thinking. Something terrible happens and God does not respond the way we think God should. Life, instead of being full of certainty, begins instead to have a lot of questions – questions which may not have any answers. My own experience into Stage 4 came through a series of things. · The deaths of my mother and my father-in-law (about 8 months apart) highlighted the shortness of life and the desire to do something with life that really matters. · Then series of events then happened which left me feeling very much disrespected and unappreciated. I won’t go in to those events today, but the feeling that accompanied them was strong. · Then came a major anniversary and with it all the midlife questions about whether or not what I am doing is really having any major significance. It was kind of like Elijah, thinking that all he had done had not really amounted to anything. Stage 4 comes on you like that. · The things you were once really sure of are no longer quite so certain. · The things that once were high priorities suddenly don’t mean so much. · Your idea of who God is and how God operates come into question. · Like Elijah’s experience, you feel very much alone and isolated. At the end of Stage 4 is The Wall. The Wall is where our will comes face to face with God’s will. The Wall exposes our ugly side. · Self will · Ambition · Self protection · Unhealed hurts · Wrong thinking We will look more at the Wall next week, so I won’t say much more here.
What can we do, while in Stage 4 but before we come through the Wall? · Don’t be in a hurry. Our human nature wants to put an end to pain as quickly as possible. In Stage 4, God may be bringing us face to face with things that need to be changed in our lives. It may be that our understanding of God needs changing. Or it may be that there are some areas of self will that need dismantling. Either way, looking for immediate relief from the pain may prompt us to go back to Stage 3 without dealing with the real issues. That would be like taking a Panadol for the pain when what is really needed is to have a tumor removed. God is not in a hurry. It is better to deal with the issues of Stage 4 instead of just seeking relief. · Let God out of the box. Often in Stage 4 we will find that God is different from what we once thought. o If you believed in a harsh and judgmental God, you might find He has a lot more grace than you realised. o If your God was impatient, you might discover that He is more patient. o If your image of God was angry, you might find more love. o If your God fixes everything, you might discover a God who walks with you through the pain but doesn’t fix every problem. Our image of God can be based on a number of things that are not very biblical. They are more a product of our culture, our upbringing and the ways in which we have been taught. Letting God out of that box allows Him to reveal Himself to us in ways we might never have imagined. · Avoid looking for someone to blame. When things go bad, our natural tendency is to find someone to blame for our situation. We blame others… We blame the devil… We blame God… Because the Wall involves subordinating our will to God’s will, we have to first come face to face with how often we get it wrong, how often we misunderstand, how often we struggle for control instead of surrendering… The first step in that direction is simply stop blaming. The next step is closely related…. · Look for direction instead of answers We want answers. We want to know why things happen or why God allows them to happen. We want to know what to do to get out of the mess we’re in. We want to know how long we will have to endure. At Stage 4 we learn that many (maybe most) of our questions will never be answered. Job was full of questions during his ordeal, and not one of his questions received an answer. We have to learn to be okay with not getting the answers we want. Instead, we start looking for a direction. We ask, “Which direction should I go?” We look for the direction of Stage 5 without even knowing for certain where we are going or what it will look like. Wanting answers is wanting to understand how we got to where we are. Wanting direction is seeking where to go from here. · Don’t give up This stage of the journey is the one which seems to have the most casualties. Because it is so painful, we tend to either revert back to the other stages and pretend that the nagging questions are not there, or we take the route of Elijah and give up altogether. One of the reasons that The Critical Journey has been so helpful to me is that it gives light at the end of the tunnel. It tells me that Stage 4 is not the end. It is simply a necessary part of the journey. If you know there is something on the other side of the wall, it gives you the motivation to push through.
In closing, watch and listen to this song by the group 33 Miles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qXdrzRdo20 |
|
