Extracts from the writings of William Gurnall -- PRIDE AND WORLDLINESS

"A man's pride shall bring him low." Proverbs 29:23.

RELIGIOUS Pride. Some are blind as Laodicea, and know it not (Rev. 3:17). As ignorance blinds the mind, so pride is a blind before their ignorance, that they know it not. These have such a high opinion of themselves that they take it ill that any should suspect them as such; these of all men are most out of the way to knowledge; they are too good to learn of man, as they think, and too bad to be taught of God. The gate into Christ's school is low, and these cannot stoop: the Master Himself is so humble and lowly that He will not teach a proud scholar.

Ah, poor creatures, what a sad change have they made, to leave the word, which can no more deceive them than God Himself to trust the guidance of themselves to themselves. "He that is his own teacher," says Bernard, "is sure to have a fool for a master."

Never art thou less holy than when puffed up with the conceit of it. "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright" (Hab. 2:4). See an ecce, like a sign, is set up at the proud man's door, that all passengers may know that a wicked man dwells there.

When men stand high their heads do not grow dizzy till they look down; when men look down upon those that are worse than themselves, or less holy than themselves, then their heads turn round; looking up would cure this disease. The most holy men, when once they have fixed their eyes awhile upon God's holiness, and then looked upon themselves, have been quite out of love with themselves. After the vision the prophet had of God sitting upon the throne, and the seraphim about Him, covering their faces, and crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts," how was this gracious man smitten with the sense of his own vileness! they did no more cry up God as holy than he did cry out upon himself as unclean (Isa. 6:5). So Job, "Now mine eye sees Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself" (Job 42:5, 6).

Compare not thyself with those that have less than thyself, but look on those that have far exceeded thee: to look on our inferiors occasions pride. "I am not as this publican," says the Pharisee; but looking on others more eminent than ourselves will both preserve humility, and be a spur to diligence.

A man may be very zealous in prayer and painstaking in preaching, and all the while pride is the master whom he serves, though in God's livery. It is hard starving this sin; there is nothing almost but it can live on; nothing so base that a proud heart will not be lifted up with, and nothing so sacred but it will profane. . . . So far as pride prevails the man prays and preaches rather to be thought good by others, rather to enthrone himself than Christ, in the opinion and hearts of his hearers.

Remember, Christian, when thou hast thy best suit on, who made it, who paid for it: thy grace, thy comfort, is neither the work of thy own hands, nor the price of thy own desert; be not for shame proud of another's cost.

Pride of gifts. If once (like Hezekiah) we call in spectators to see our treasure and applaud us for our gifts and comfort, then it is high time for God to send some messengers to carry these away from us, which carry our hearts from Him. . . . Pride of gifts hinders the receiving of good from others. Pride fills the soul, and a full soul will take nothing from God, much less from man.

Joseph's coat made him finer than his brethren, but caused all his trouble; thus great gifts lift a saint up a little higher in the eyes of men, but it occasions many temptations which thou meetest not with that are kept low; what with envy from their brethren, malice from Satan, and pride in their own hearts, I dare say none find so hard a work to bear up against those waves and winds.

While thou art priding in thy gifts, thou art dwindling and withering in thy grace. Such are like corn that runs up much into straw, whose ear commonly is light and thin. Grace is too much neglected where gifts are too highly prized; we are commanded to be clothed with humility. . . . Pride kills the spirit of praise: when thou should bless God, thou art applauding thyself. It destroys Christian love, and stabs our fellowship with the saints to the heart: a proud man has not room enough to walk in company, because the gifts of others he thinks stand in his way. Pride so distempers the palate that it can relish nothing that is drawn from another's vessel. . . . Pride loves to climb up, not as Zaccheus, to see Christ, but to be seen himself.

"God resisteth the proud" (James 4:6). The humble man may have Satan at his right hand to oppose him; but be sure the proud man shall find God Himself there to resist him. We must either lay self aside or God will lay us aside. . . . A proud scholar and a humble master will never agree: Christ is humble and lowly, and so resists the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.

Love of the world. Tell some of adding faith to faith, one degree of grace to another, and you shall find they have more mind to join house to house, and lay field to field; their souls are athirst, but not for Christ or heaven: it is earth, earth, they never think they have enough of, till death comes and stops their mouth with a shovelful digged out of their own grave!

The canker and rust of our gold and silver, which is got with harder labour than is required here, will rise up in judgment against many, and say, "You could drudge and trudge for us that are now turned to rust and dust, but could walk over the field of the word, where an incorruptible treasure lay, and would lose it rather than your sloth!"

Thy time is short and thy way long. Is it wisdom to lay out so much on thy tenement which thou art leaving, and forget what thou must carry with thee? Before the fruit of these be ripe which thou art now planting, thyself may be rotting in the grave: "Time is short," says the apostle (1 Cor. 7:29).

Men are very kind to themselves: first they wish it may be long before death comes; and then because they would have it so, they are bold to promise themselves it shall be so. Who makes the lease? the tenant or the landlord? . . . Thou art young, thou canst not therefore say, thou shalt not die as yet: alas! measure the coffins in the churchyard, and thou wilt find some of thy length: young and old are within the reach of death's scythe; old men, indeed, go to death, their age calls for it; but young men cannot hinder death's coming to them.

It is an ill time to caulk the ship when at sea, tumbling up and down in a storm: this should have been looked to when on her seat in the harbour. And as bad it is to begin to trim a soul for heaven, when tossing on a sick-bed. Things that are done in a hurry are seldom done well. These poor creatures, I am afraid, go in an ill dress to another world who begin to provide for it when on a dying bed. . . . There is but one heaven: miss that, and where can you take up your lodging but in hell? One Christ that can lead you thither: reject Him, "and there remains no more sacrifice for sin."

O, how many part with Christ at the crossway! like Orpah, that go a furlong or two with Christ, until He goes to take them off from their worldly hopes, and bids them prepare for hardship, and then they fairly kiss and leave Him; loath indeed to lose heaven, but more loath to buy it at such a rate.

Of all men out of hell, none more to be pitied than he that hangs over the mouth of it, and yet is fearless of his danger.

It requires courage to despise the shame which the Christian must expect to meet for his singularity, to avoid which many durst not confess Christ openly (John 7:13). Many lose heaven because they are ashamed to go in a fool's coat thither. When the Christian must turn or burn, leave praying or become a prey, how many self-preserving distinctions would a cowardly heart invent? The Christian that has so great opposition had need to be well locked into the saddle of his profession, or he will soon be dismounted.

Extracts from the writings of William Gurnall -- PROFESSION AND HYPOCRISY

"The hypocrite's hope shall perish." — Job 8:13.

SUCH a generation there ever was and shall be, that mingle themselves with the saints of God; who pretend heaven, with heavenly speeches, while their hearts are lined with hypocrisy, whereby they deceive others, and most of all themselves; such may be the world's saints, but devil's in Christ's account. "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" And truly, of all devils, none so bad as the professing devil, the preaching, praying devil.

Satan can live very peaceably, as a quiet neighbour, by the door of such as will content themselves with an empty name of profession; this alters not his property. Judas's profession, he knew, did not put him a step out of his way to hell; the devil can show a man a way to damnation through duties and ordinances of God's worship. That covetous, traitorous heart which Judas carried with him to hear Christ's sermon, and preach his own, held him fast enough to the devil; and therefore he gives him line enough, liberty enough to keep his credit a while with his fellow apostles; he cares not though others think him a disciple of Christ, so he knows him to be his own slave.

The hypocrite at first blush may be taken for a saint, by such as see only his outside, as he passeth by in his holiday dress, and therefore is fitly by one called the stranger's saint, but a devil to those who know him better.

The hypocrite can show a clear tongue, and yet have a foul heart; he that made that proverb, Loquere ut te videam, "Speak that I may see you," did not think of the hypocrite, who will speak that you shall not see him.

He that has a false end in his profession will soon come to the end of his profession, when he is pinched on that toe where his corn is; I mean, called to deny that his naughty heart aimed at.

Many there are that have nothing to prove themselves Christians but a naked profession, of whom we may say as they do of the cinnamon tree, that the bark is more worth than all they have besides.

Many take up their saintship upon trust, and trade in religion with the credit they have gained from others' opinion of them. They believe themselves to be Christians, because others hope them to be such; and so their great business is, by a zeal in those exercises of religion that lie outermost, to keep up the credit they have abroad, but do not look to get a stock of solid grace within; and this proves their undoing at last. They say trees shoot as much in the root underground as in the branches above, and so doth true grace. Remember what was the perishing of the seed in stony ground! it lacked root; and why so but because it was stony? Be willing the plough should go deep enough to humble thee for sin, and rend thy heart from sin.

A hypocrite never got pardon in the disguise of a saint. He will call thee by thy own name, though thou comest to Him in the semblance of a penitent: "Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam," said the prophet. Hypocrisy is too thin a veil to blind the eyes of the Almighty. Thou mayest put thy own eyes out, so as not to see Him, but thou canst never blind His eyes so that He should not see thee.

Speak, O ye hypocrites! can you show one tear that ever you shed in earnest for a wrong done to God? It is a good gloss Augustine has upon Esau's tears (Heb. 12): "He wept that he lost the blessing, not that he sold it."

Time-serving. The hypocrite sets his watch, not by the sun, the Word I mean, but by the town clock; what most do, that he will do; vox populi is his vox Dei.

Self-righteousness. Take heed uprightness proves not a snare to thee. The young man in the gospel might have been better, had he not been so good. His honesty and moral uprightness was his undoing, or rather his conceit of them. Better he had been a publican, driven to Christ in the sense of his sin, than a Pharisee, kept from Him with an opinion of his integrity. May be thou art honest and upright in thy course. Bless God for it, but take heed of blessing thyself in it: there is the danger; this is one way of being "righteous over much." There is undoing in this over-doing, as well as in any under-doing.

What men do by themselves, they do for themselves; they devour the praise of what they do. The Christian only that doth all by Christ, doth all for Christ. Many souls do not only perish, praying, repenting, and believing after a sort, but they perish by their praying and repenting, while they carnally trust in these.

Few so bad indeed but seem to like religion in the notion; but living and walking holiness bites; the pharisees can lavish out their money on the prophets' tombs; but Christ is scorned and hated. What is the mystery of this? The reason was, these prophets are off the stage and Christ is on.

False zeal. Zeal without uprightness is of no service, nay, no one will go to hell with more shame than the false-hearted zealot, who mounts up towards heaven in his fiery chariot. Be not loth to be searched; there will need then no further search to prove thee unsound; if God's officers be denied entrance, all is not right within. If thy heart is sincere, it will delight in privacy. A false heart calls others to witness his zeal for God. It is the trick of the hypocrite to strain himself to the utmost in duty, when he has spectators, and to be careless alone.

A false heart may seem very hot in praying against one sin, but can skip over another; a hypocrite will be favourable to one lust, and violent against another; whereas a sincere Christian abhors all sin: "Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me" (Ps. 119:133).

The hypocrite seems hot in prayer, but you will find him cold enough at work; he prays very fiercely against his sins, as if he desired them to be all slain upon the place; but doth he set himself upon the work of mortification? Doth he withdraw the fuel that feeds them?

Hypocrisy in religion springs from the bitter fruit of some carnal affection unmortified. So long as thy prey lie below, thy eye will be on the earth, when thou seemest, like an eagle, to mount in thy prayers to heaven. God is in the hypocrite's mouth, but the world is in his heart, which he expects to gain through his good reputation. . . . No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 12:3). A man may say the words, without any special work of the Spirit, and so may a parrot: but to say Christ is Lord believingly, with thoughts and affections comporting with the greatness and sweetness thereof, requires the Spirit of God to be in his heart.

Knowledge without grace. An orthodox judgment with an unholy heart and ungodly life is as uncomely as a man's head would be on a beast's shoulders. That man has little cause to boast that what he holds is truth, if what he doth be wicked.

Knowledge may make thee a scholar, but not a saint; orthodox, but not gracious. He that increaseth in knowledge, and doth not get grace with his knowledge, increaseth sorrow to himself, yea, eternal sorrow. It would be an ease to gospel sinners in hell, if they could erase the remembrance of the gospel out of their memories.

He that can venture on the appearance of evil under pretence of liberty, may, for ought I know, commit that which is more grossly evil, under some appearance of good; it is not hard, if a man will be at the cost, to put a good colour on rotten stuff and practice also. . . . It is possible a man may have a rotten body under a gaudy suit; and under fine language, a poor ragged conscience. Who had not rather be sincere with mean gifts, than rotten-hearted with great parts?

Hypocrisy exposed. The Christian, like a star in the heavens, wades through the cloud, that for a time hides his comfort; but the hypocrite, like a meteor in the air, blazeth a little, and then drops into some ditch or other, where it is quenched. "The light of the righteous rejoiceth: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out" (Prov. 13:9.).

Sincerity enables the Christian to do two things in affliction which the hypocrite cannot — to speak good of God, and to expect good from God.

"Will he always call upon God?" (Job 27:10). The hypocrite is often exposed here. An unsound heart will be meddling with prayer now and then, but grows weary of the work at last, especially if he be made to wait long for an answer. Saul prays to God, and because he hears not from Him, goes at last to seek the devil.

One spot occasions the whole garment to be washed. David overcome with one sin, renews his repentance for all (Ps. 51). A good husband, when he sees it raining at one place, sends for the workmen to look over all the house. This indeed, differenceth a sincere heart from an hypocrite, whose repentance is partial, soft in one plot and hard in another. Judas cries out of his treason, but not a word of his thievery and hypocrisy. The hole was no wider in his conscience than where the bullet went in; whereas true sorrow for one, breaks the heart into shivers for others also.

If profession would serve the turn, and flocking after sermons with some seeming joy at the word were enough to save, heaven would soon be full: but as you love your souls, do not try yourselves by this coarse sieve; that is, seek by an easy profession, and cheap religion, such as is hearing the word, performance of duties and the like; of this kind there are many that will come and walk about heaven's door, willing enough to enter, if they may do it without ruffling their pride in a crowd, or hazarding their present carnal interest by any contest and scuffle. Take Christians under the notion of "seekers," and, by Christ's own words, there are many; but consider them under the notion of "strivers," such as stand ready shod with a holy resolution, to strive even to blood, if such trials meet them in the way to heaven, rather than not enter, and then the number of Christian soldiers will shrink, like Gideon's goodly host, to a little troop.

In this old age of England's withered profession, how great a rarity is a sincere convert! When we see a tree that used to stand thick with fruit, now bring forth but little, maybe an apple on this bough, and another on that, we look upon it as a dying tree. Those golden days of the gospel are over, when converts came flying as a cloud, as the doves to the window in flocks. Now gospel news grows stale, few are taken with it. Our old store of saints, the treasure of their times, wears away apace; what will become of us, if no new ones come in their room? Alas! when our burials are more than our births, we must needs be on the losing hand. There is a sad list of holy names taken away from us; but where are they which are born to God? If the good go, and those which are left continue bad, yea, become worse and worse, we have reason to fear that God is clearing the ground, and making way for a judgment.

None sink so far into hell as those that come nearest heaven, because they fall from the greatest height. None will have such a sad parting from Christ as those who went half way with Him, and then left Him.

Extracts from the writings of William Gurnall -- SIN AND GUILT

"The way of transgressors is hard." Proverbs 13:15.

THE terror of sin. A soul in a state of sin may possess much, but enjoys nothing. One thought of its state of enmity to God, would drop bitterness into every cup; all he has smells of hell-fire; and a man at a rich feast would enjoy it but little if he smelt fire, ready to burn his house and himself.

The love of sin. Sin is as truly the offspring of the soul, as children are of our bodies, and it finds as much favour in our eyes, yea, more; for the sinner can slay a son to save a sin alive (Micah 6:7).

The pleasures of sin. The pleasures of sin must needs be short, because life cannot be long, and they both end together. Indeed, many times the pleasure of sin dies before the man dies: sinners live to bury their joy in this world. The worm breeds in their conscience before it breeds in their flesh by death. But be sure the pleasure of sin never survives this world. The word is gone out of God's mouth, every sinner "shall lie down in sorrow" and wake in sorrow. . . . The carnal heart is all for the present; his snout is in the trough, and while his draught lasts, he thinks it will never end. Who would envy the condemned man his feast which he has in his way to the gallows?

Where guilt is contracted in the getting of an enjoyment, there can be little sweetness tasted when it comes to be used. There is a great difference between the joy of the husbandman, at the getting in of his corn at the harvest, and the thief's joy, who has stolen some sheaves out of another's field, and is making merry with his booty.

No sin goes single. It is impossible to embrace or allow one sin, and be free of others. Allow one sin, and God will give you over to others. When Judas began to play the thief, I question whether he meant to turn traitor; no, his treason was a punishment for his thievery.

Secret sins. God is privy to thy most secret sin, "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance" (Ps. 90:8). As He sees when thou shuttest thy closet to pray, and will reward thy sincerity: so when thou dost it to sin in secret, He will reward thy hypocrisy. The word tells thee of an informer which thou hast in thy own bosom, — conscience, which goes along with thee, and is witness to all thy fine-laid plots, and what it sees it writes down, for it is a court of record. Thou canst not sin so fast but it can write after thee; and the pen with which conscience writes down our sins has a sharp point, it cuts deep into the very heart and soul of the sinner.... Consult the word, and thou wilt find that God usually has put them to shame in this world, who have promised themselves most secrecy in their sinning. So Gehazi played his part cunningly enough, which made him so bold to come before his master, and impudently lie to his head, not dreaming the least that he was aware of his sin; yet this man is found out, and for the garments he got of Naaman by a lie, he had another given of the Lord, which he was to wear as a livery for his sin, for he was clothed with a leprosy: a garment more lasting than the two changes of suits he had from the Syrian; for this lasted him all his life; neither was it then worn out, but to be put on by his children after him (2 Kings 5:27). Yea, be he a saint, yet if he goes about to save himself from the shame of a sin, by any secret plot of wickedness, he takes the direct way to bring that upon him which he contrives to keep off. Uriah's blood was shed only as a sinful expedient to save David's credit. Ah, poor man! all comes out to his greater shame. David shall know that God will be as tender of His own honour, as he is of his credit; "For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun" (2 Sam. 12:12).

Bosom sins. Satan labours to provoke the Christian to heart sins, to stir up and foment these inward motions of sins in the Christian's bosom; he knows his credit now is not so great with the soul as when it was his slave; he must not think to command another's servant as his own; no, all he can do, is to watch the fittest season, when the Christian least suspects, and then to present some sinful motion handsomely dressed up to the eye of the soul, that the Christian may, before he is aware, take this brat up, and handle it in his thoughts, till at last he makes it his own by embracing it; and may be, this boy, sent in at the window, may open the door to let in a greater thief.

There may be more wickedness in a sin of the heart than of the hand. The more of the heart and spirit is let out, the more malignity is let in to any sinful act. To backslide in heart, is more than to backslide; it is the comfort of a poor soul when tempted and troubled for his relapses, that though his foot slides back, yet his heart turns not back, but faceth heaven and Christ at the same time; so to err in the heart, is worse than to have an error in the head; therefore God aggravates Israel's sin with this, "They do always err in their heart" (Heb. 3:10). Their hearts run them upon the error; they liked idolatry, and so were soon made to believe what pleased them best. Peter lays the accent of Magus's sin on the wicked thought, which his words betrayed to be in his heart: "Pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven" (Acts 8:22).

Say not thou lovest Christ, so long as thou canst lay those sins in thy bosom, which plucked His heart out of His bosom. It were strange if a child should keep, and delight to use, no other knife but that wherewith his father was stabbed.

Deliberate sins. Take heed of deliberate sin; like a stone thrown into a clear stream, it will so disturb thy soul, and muddy it, that thou, who even now could see thy interest in Christ, wilt now be at a loss, and know not what to think of thyself. Like a fire on the top of the house, it will be no easy matter to quench it. If thou hast been so unhappy as to fall into such a slough, take heed of lying in it by impenitence: the sheep may fall into a ditch, but it is the swine that wallows in it.

Presumptuous sins. Presumptuous sins are the thieves that break through and steal the saint's comfort away. When the Christian comes to look into his soul after such a bold act, and thinks to entertain himself, as formerly, with the comforts of his pardoned state, interest in Christ, and hopes of heaven through Him, alas! he finds a sad change; no promise that will give out its consolations to him. The cellar door is locked, Christ withdrawn, and the keys carried away with Him. Hast thou fallen into the hands of any such presumptuous sins; that have stolen thy peace from thee? Send speedily thy hue and cry after them. I mean, make thy sad moan to God, renew thy repentance out of hand, and raise heaven upon them by a spirit of prayer. This is no time to delay; the further thou lettest these sins go without repentance, the harder thou wilt find it to recover thy lost peace and joy out of their hands.

As presumptuous sins are the thieves, that with a high hand rob the Christian of his comfort; so sloth and negligence are as the rust, that in time will fret into his comfort, and eat out the heart and strength of it.

A thorn in the foot will make any way uneasy to the traveller, and guilt in the conscience any condition uncomfortable to the Christian, but most of all a suffering one. Oh it is sad, to go with sore and smarting consciences into a suffering condition.

Forsaking sin. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon" (Isa. 55:7). Some men's sins forsake them; "the unclean spirit goes out," and is not driven out; occasions to sin cease, or bodily ability to execute the commands of sin is wanting. To forsake sin, is to leave it without any thought reserved of returning to it again. It were strange to find a drunkard so constant in the exercise of that sin but some time you may find him sober; and yet a drunkard he is, as well as if he was then drunk. Every one has not forsaken his trade, that we see now and then in their holiday suit; then the man forsakes his sin, when he throws it from him, and bolts the door upon it, with a purpose never to open more to it: "Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?" (Hosea 14:8). . . . Forsake all or none; save one lust, and you lose your soul. What wilt thou get, poor sinner, if thou goest to hell, though thou goest thither by thy ignorance, unbelief, or spiritual pride, yet escape the plague of open profaneness? This is as ridiculous as it was with him, who being to be hanged, desired that he might by no means go through such a street to the gallows, for fear of the plague that was there.

Soul, take thy lust, thy only lust, which is the child of thy dearest love, thy Isaac, the sin which has caused most joy and laughter, from which thou hast promised thyself the greatest return of pleasure or profit, and offer it up; run the sacrificing knife of mortification into the very heart of it, and all this now, before thou hast one embrace more from it.

THE SACRED ROMANCE (Drawing Closer to the Heart of God) Brent Curtis & John Eldredge

Remembering Toward Heaven

The road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it been.

Now far ahead the road has gone,

And must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way.

J.R. R. Tolkien

The sacred Romance calls to us every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We’ ve heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the simmer of a sunset on the ocean.  It is even present in times of great personal suffering---illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend.  Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure. This longing is the most powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for wholeness, for a sense of being truly alive.  However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God.

We set out to discover if there is in the wide world out there a reality that corresponds to the world within our heart. Hopefully, we have helped you see in new ways that Chesterton was right: Romance is the deepest thing in life; it is deeper even than reality. Our heart is made for a great drama, because it is a reflection of the author of that story, the grant Heart behind all things. We’ve seen how we lose heart when we lose the eternal Romance, which reminds us that God sought to bring us into his sacred circle from all eternity, and that despite our rejection of him, he pursues us still.  The Arrows and the Haunting both find their place in Act III of that drama, in which we now live. But, this act is drawing to a close. Our lover has come to rescue us in the person of Jesus; he has set our heart free to follow him up and into the celebration that begins the adventures of Act IV.

Where do we go from here? “This life,” wrote Jonathan Edwards, “ought to be spent by us only as a journey towards heaven.” That’s the only story worth living in now. The road goes out before us and our destination awaits.  In the imagery of Hebrews, a race is set before us and we must run for all we’re worth. Our prayers will have been answered if we’ve helped to lift some of the deadweight so that your heart may rise to the call, hear it more clearly, respond with “eager feet.” Our final thoughts echo the advice found in Hebrews 12:2-3:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

This marvelous passage is familiar to many of us, so lets we should become dull to its power due to its familiarity, consider Eugene Peterson’s translation from the message:

Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed---that exhilarating finish in and with God---he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

Jesus remembered where he was headed, and he wanted to get there with all his heart.  These two themes, memory and desire, will make all the difference in our journey ahead. Without them, we will not run well, if we run at all. We have tried to do honor to the riches of memory and desire in the preceding chapters of this book. Let me (John) explore them more deeply now, as a man goes through his essential belongings one last time before setting out on a long and dangerous quest.

                                       Living from Desire

Jesus ran because he wanted to, not simply because he had to or because the Father told him to. He ran “for the joy set before him”.  To use the familiar phrase, his heart was fully in it.

THE SACRED ROMANCE (Drawing Closer to the Heart of God) Brent Curtis & John Eldredge

GOD THE AGELESS ROMANCER

So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about---He is looking for us.           Simon Tugwell

In my sophomore years in high school I (John) fell in love with a beautiful junior named Joy. Our first dates were romantic, exciting, and full of adventure. I gave her my heart. One day several months into the relationship, I was trying in vain to thumb a ride home when I saw her car approaching. My heart leaped with anticipation, but Joy whizzed past in her convertible with another guy at the wheel. Adding insult to injury, she waved gaily as they rushed by. I felt the fool, which is what we often do when we feel betrayed. And I never gave her my heart again.

Everyone has been betrayed by someone, some more profoundly than others. Betrayal is a violation that strikes at the core of our being; to make ourselves vulnerable and entrust our well-being to another, only to be harmed by those on whom our hopes were set, is among the worst pain of human experience.

Sometimes the way God treats us feels like betrayal. We find ourselves in a dangerous world, unable to arrange for the water our thirsty souls so desperately need. Our rope won’t take the bucket to the bottom of the well. We know God has the ability to draw water for us, but oftentimes he won’t.  We feel wronged After all, doesn’t Scriptures say that if we have the power to do someone good, we should do it.  (Prov. 3:27)? So, why doesn’t’ God?

As I spoke with a friend about her painful life, how reckless and unpredictable God seems, she turned and with pleading eyes asked the question we are all asking somewhere deep within: “How can I trust a lover who is so wild?” Indeed, how do we not only trust him, but love him in return? There is only one possible answer: You could love him if you knew his heart was good…………

Does God have a good heart? In the last chapter Brent spoke of God as the Author of the story, which is how most people see him if they see him at all. And, as Hamlet said, there’s the rub.  When we think of God as Author, the Grand Chess Player, the Mind Behind It All, we doubt his heart. As Melville said. “The reason the mass of men fears God and at bottom dislike him is because they rather distrust his heart and fancy him all brain, like a watch.” Do you relate to the author when reading a novel or watching a film? Caught up in the action, do you even think about the author? We identify with the characters in the story precisely because they are in the story. They face life as we do, on the ground, and their struggles win our sympathy because they are our struggles also. We love the hero because he is one of us, and yet somehow rises above the fray to be better and wiser and more loving as we hope one day we might prove to be…………..

In the story that is the Sacred Romance begins not with God alone, the Author at his desk, but God in relationship, intimacy beyond our wildest imagination, heroic intimacy. The Trinity is at the center of the universe; perfect relationship is the heart of all reality. Think of your best moments of love or friendship or creative partnership, the best times, with family or friends around the dinner table, your richest conversations, the acts of simple kindness that sometimes seem like the only things that make life worth living. Like the shimmer of sunlight in a lake, these are reflections of the love that flow among the Trinity.  We long for intimacy because we are made in the image of perfect intimacy. Still, what we don’t have and may never have known is often a more powerful reminder of what ought to be.

“God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love because within himself love happens.”

THE SACRED ROMANCE (Drawing Closer to the Heart of God) Brent Curtis & John Eldredge

THE MESSAGE OF THE ARROWS

I cried when I was born and every day shows why

George Hebert

There are only two things that pierce the human heart, wrote Simone Weil. One is beauty. The other is affliction. And while we wish there were only beauty in the world, each of us has known enough pain to raise serious doubts about the universe we live in. Form very early in life we know another message, warning us that the Romance has an enemy.

The psalmist speaks of this enemy and tells us wee need not fear it:

He [God] will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers,

And under his wings you will find refuge;

His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night,

Nor the arrow that flies by day. (Ps. 91:3-5)

Yet we cannot deny that the Arrows have struck us all, sometimes arriving in a hail of projectiles that blocked out the sun, and other times descending in more subtle flight that only let us know we were wounded years later, when the wound festered and broke.

One of the first Arrows I (Brent) remember came on a fall morning when the green choruses of summer were no longer there to comfort me.  I happened upon my mother standing by the stove one morning before school began, stirring oatmeal. She had been crying and the tears shed in anger or even pain due to a momentary spat with my father. They were not due to some recently delivered message about illness or death in the family.

They were the tears of a frightened girl in her mid-twenties who could fin no meeting place between the life she found herself living as wife and mother and the needs of her own wounded heart that never felt the connection with mother and father so necessary to living with courage and hope. I couldn’t have put that into words back then, but I felt the fear as a palpable enemy that needed to be quickly defeated. If there was an adversary of the heart that even adults did not know how to handle, my world was much less safe than I had thought. I moved quickly to help my mother vanquish this foe in the bst way I know how………………………………….

I remember feeling a sharp pain in my chest that I silenced with cold anger. I thought what a fool I had been all these years to believe in the summer message of this place. Laid out before me in the light of day was obviously the reality that had always been there. It was time I stopped believing a lie. The mysterious Love and Lover that had come to me in my childhood were frauds.

I know now I placed that last Arrow in my heart that day and shoved it cleanly through. I did it to kill the tears of mourning inside that would have insisted that there was something I had lost. Yet the Haunting was still there that day on the bridge. I only understood years later that it was I myself who killed it or tried to. If I had allowed the loss I felt to flow in the waters of my own tears, the haunting call of that long-ago summer would have remained. It was in placing a dam of hardness over the ache I felt inside that I refused to acknowledge the Haunting and even misinterpreted the message of autumn: Something Lost and Again Coming.

At some point we all face the same decision-what will we do with the Arrows we’ve known? Maybe a better way to say it is, what have they tempted us to do?..................................... The result is an approach to life that we often call our personality. If you’ll listen carefully to your life, you may begin to see how it has been shaped by the unique Arrows you’ve been known and the particular convictions you’ve embraced as a result. The arrows also taint and partially direct even our spiritual life.

My own spiritual journey with Christ “began” (I’ve since come to know the beginning was long before I was born) when my first prayer to God since I was a boy escaped from my heart one morning at work………… One morning almost without my bidding, my heart cried out from its own depths, “God, help me, because I am lost”.  And God answered with lavish faithfulness in those “first love” years. I began reading the Bible and it came alive in my hands and heart. A friend I knew from high school came by and told me he had ‘become a Christian.’ He invited me to attend classes with him at Philadelphia College of the Bible, where I drank in everything I was taught with hungry joy and anticipation. At night, Ralph and I would go listen to a speaker, or simply out at a diner talking about God, life, girls, and the abundant living we were sure was ahead. That fall, I went to a retreat in the mountains of Pennsylvania and met a longhaired girl whose heart God had recently courted and won. We sat for hours, talking about our personal longings and fears. We even prayed out loud together, a totally new concept to me.

Becoming a Christian, however, does not necessarily solve the dilemma of the arrows, as I was soon to realize. Mine were still lodged deep and refused to allow some angry wound inside to heal.

I chose those words from this chapter of the book for two reasons: 

1)      As Brent had his first encounter with Our Lord and Saviour which caused him to become TRULY a BORN AGAIN Christian, my heart skipped a beat and all I could say “this is the God that I know and the God who taught me why the church is filled with believers who are not born again because they believe in their beliefs. They became Christians, through leaders and evangelists selling a watered-down gospel. They are the perfect pictures of Matthew 23:15 and Matthew 15:13-14. I am not criticizing or judging rather, I am stating a fact that any Christian living a spiritual life, any Christian walking in spirit, and any Christian who is abiding can see it clearly through the eyes of the spirit of God. It is painful to know what I know, yet being so powerless to make a dent in this mess out there. I found comfort in knowing that even Christ could not and would not do anything about it. Just like He let the rich man go without forcing him or tried to manipulate the situation. Just like the Pharisees, were lost, only very few got to become Christians after Christ ascension to heaven.

The spiritual side of Ephesians 4:15 is about loving enough to tell the truth of God like it is in order to provoke a reaction from those who are not growing and walking with Him. Believe it or not, it is not easy, and it is a lonely path. Not too many out there say yes to God when we are called for this kind of ministry.

2)     Brent said: “Becoming a Christian, however, does not necessarily solve the dilemma of the arrows” That is so true, because receiving salvation in our heart and soul is just the beginning. But, only those who are His, will be able to go forward “INWARDLY” to be transformed by the word of God. You do not go forward because you are better than someone else, you can do it because of God’s promise in Philippians 2:13. You can do it, because you have been TRULY SEALED WITH THE SPIRIT OF GOD as a deposit for what is to come.

 WHAT IS TO COME THEN? Well, even our transformation where heaven comes down into our heart as we abide in Him and drink of the water that gives life. Our transformation as we are no longer compartmentalized, we are healed, made whole and freed from the bondage of our past that shaped us.

THE TRUE GOSPEL IS SO POWERFUL, SO BEAUTIFUL, SO PAINFUL AND SO TASTEFUL AT THE SAME TIME. We don’t have to wait to reach heaven to know the riches of this life God has in store for us.

ARE YOU ABLE TO GO FORWARD INWARDLY? That is your proof and mine that we don’t have a defective salvation. That’s our proof that we belong to Him and we are His heirs.  Anything else is an illusion, man-made salvation, good behavior, wishful thinking and the power of our emotions, of a life lived in the flesh.

Anyway…. I have to force myself to stop here.

BIBLE VERSES QUOTED

Matthew 23:15 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.”

“Matthew 15:13-14 He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

 

Ephesians 4:15 “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

Philippians 2:13 “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”