The Light in the Woods

#26 – THE LIGHT IN THE WOODS – SEPTEMBER 2007

© Aubri Dennison 2007

9/7/07 Insights from Prayer               What an odd God, this God of Jihad. Maybe our culture has drifted into self-centeredness and prurient interests, but we have at least a majority of goodness. In the Bible God directed His chosen people in battle – as long as they worshiped Him they won. Are we worshiping our fortune and fame more than our God, and are we destined to collapse because of it? But then, which God is the real God – the loving, forgiving God of Christians or the hate-filled, murderous God of Jihad? I hope God helps us survive to win this battle, and I hope God helps us get the saved culture back to the way it was when it was pleasing to Him. I hope all cultures return to pleasing Him. I hope this is the purpose of our current conflict, for if it is, it’s all worth it.

9/7/07 Insights from Study            In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us to pray in secret so our devotion doesn’t become a public showing. And yet I sense a lot of converts have been made when they’ve watched good Christians at work. Of course, each of us knows if our devotions are humble or prideful, but what about the non-believers who watch us? How do we strike a balance between humility in our practices and using these practices to get the word out? If I saw a group of happy people who gather at a local eatery for dinner and discussion of the sermon of the service from which they’ve just come, I might pick up on their enthusiasm and wish it for myself. They may even pray together after they sit down, and I doubt if casual onlookers would feel they were doing it for show, as long as their joy in being what they are eventually showed the most. It’s this joy that would impress me – for sure, I came into my embrace of my spirituality from watching the joy of Christians. I thought I was a good Christian, but I was searching for more although I didn’t know it then. Now I know better than to seek God just for what He can do for me, but at the start, I needed the “grabber” of joy and contentment that true spirituality seems to bring about.

9/9/07 Inspirations           Patience is the outward sign that we are willing to let God work through us in His own way and in His own time. Patience is us not needing to take control; allowing God, who has everything at His disposal, to accept our free-will and use it for our betterment and the benefit of others. If pride makes us uncomfortable with this, we can give up our pride or let it keep on causing us misery. What we can’t do is make human pride something it’s not – a desirable virtue, as so many secularists try to do. For to take pride as an achievement is to forget that the grace to accomplish what we have accomplished does not come from us but from God. How much more human it is to deny God than to accept His dominion; to celebrate our wisdom than to recognize it as a gift. And how much more human it is to take charge and forge ahead, when the sensible and victorious thing to do is let things pan out the way God wants them to. I’m in a situation now that I’m thinking I should handle according to my human sense of justice, when all the while something is holding me back from doing that. God has a use for this state of affairs, and a better plan than mine as to how to use it, as He uses everything for our good. If I feel I must “do” something about the situation, praying for the patience to not interfere with God is a good place to start.

9/9/07 Reflections                English usage is an odd undertaking, where arguing with something and arguing against something are the same thing. Yet, you can agree with something but you could never agree against it.

9/12/07 Reflections                It’s during those dry times, when I feel as far from God as those are who have never known Him, that I am finally and lovingly brought to this realization: I would not have this dry time, this inability to bring out any love of God whatsoever or to detect any of God’s love for me, if I wasn’t experiencing God in the first place. How can I mope around about not experiencing God when it’s this very state that reminds me that I have been experiencing God? Let me rejoice no matter how lame I feel at the present, because my need now shows me how my need before has been met. I don’t have to doubt what I found when I’m able to miss it so much when it’s hiding. The greatest affirmation that God has truly been reaching out to me personally comes when He draws away in order to teach me how it feels to not have this union. Before, I felt His love but had no particular feeling for Him – I had no dryness, but I had no spiritual joy either. Now we do have this blessed communion together, and I’m reminded of this everytime I feel it slipping into the background of my life. Dryness tells me three things — there really is a God, He really does want a relationship with me, and He has given me the grace of such a union. A little dryness and melancholy longing is a small price to pay for the hope of goodness and joy now and forever.

9/13/07 Insights from Study            The more you study the Bible the more you realize the vast amount of wisdom in it. When I got married my gift to us as a couple was a Bible, because this was a new family and should have a family Bible. But how did I use it through the years? I would open it randomly when I had a problem, in the sure hope that God would answer, through his words, a person so devout they were reading a Bible. Or else I would go to the concordance to find a word that pertained to my question and see if any of the verses listed there would fit. What I didn’t do was try to get anyone else in my family to read the Bible. I now regret my surface Christianity and I regret not having encouraged my children to develop their spirituality. We were not a Christian family even though we did have a family Bible. We were a good family, but not a Christian one. Later on, when the kids were grown and gone, things changed. I really read the Bible, over and over actually. I didn’t read the Bible so that God would reveal Himself to me – God revealed Himself to me and in doing so inspired me to read the Bible. I read it the first time as an historical documentary – immersing myself in the rich story and the golden cast of characters. I read it the second time in deep-study along with a full commentary and a New Testament course on the life and words of Jesus – analyzing each incident and exclamation for how it illustrated God and His relationship with man. I read it the third time in a contemporary language version – clearing up some verses and expressions that had given me trouble and putting new light on many concepts. Now as I read I see the Bible as seeds for meditation and contemplation, and every page seems to have a new surprise. As I read, the Holy Spirit looks over my shoulder, encouraging, enlightening, gifting me with knowledge and insight. This is the Bible as it ought to be read. I needed the other kinds of reading, but now the Bible is a true tool for my spiritual advancement; one I wouldn’t have come to without divine help. I feel so extremely blessed to have had that help, and I’m called to be an inspiration to others. Not to read the Bible — there are many others who do a better job at that than I could ever do – but to ask God for His inspiration and, with humility and love, recognize God’s answer and use it to expand their spirituality in whatever path God chooses for them.

9/17/07 Inspirations            Lord, remind me to remember what I had. Provide me with the foresight to be grateful for what I have while I still have it. Guide me into imagining what life would be like without your gifts, so I’m inclined to do everything I can to keep them. Show me how to pray to You in thanks and appreciation. Widen my power to enjoy the present so I have no regrets when I experience the loss that’s bound to happen. And lead me on gently to what You have prepared for me in Your kingdom of Heaven.

9/18/07 Insights from Study             Some mystics downplay the usefulness of study because we can only study the things of the world, and the world should be eliminated from a mystic’s concern. To me it’s not only unrealistic to avoid every aspect of life on Earth, but also, God has provided enough good in life to shine through, and the more we study from those who recognized and used this goodness, the more we ourselves can recognize and use it.

9/23/07 Reflections             I became associated with the Church of Living Water in response to my calling to minister by means of educating people about their own relationship with God. I wanted to learn how to evangelize from the best evangelists. Since then it seems like every other day there has been an unbidden reference to “living water” springing up in my life. So I think this is the right course for me even though fundamentalism seems to get us in trouble sometimes. I give out all the right answers while knowing that were I doing the teaching I would do things differently. In a way I feel dishonest, but if I’m dishonest it’s because no deviation from the strict program is allowed and I have to live with that if I want to accomplish what I know I must accomplish. I use it as a learning experience – if something is that hard to swallow maybe I should be extra vigilant to reflect on why it feels wrong. Let the fundamentalism be what it is; when it sounds wrong in my heart I am able to notice it in a special way – the noticing itself is proof that the Holy Spirit works one-on-one in our hearts to teach us, and proof that things can go awry when interpreting Scripture. I see that because this school takes the Bible literally, they would not charter my ministry because I’m female. I’m not offended, because I know God, who in His wisdom created me female, has chartered this ministry for me; has indeed assigned it to me when I prayed my acceptance of whatever He willed for me. Being chartered by God, I’m not in fear of what a fundamentalist thinks of me any more than Jesus was when He had to dance around the scribes and Pharisees. Because of Christ’s example, I am, in fact, honored to be rejected by mere men.

9/29/07 Reflections                 The time I spend deeply immersed in pain, trials, and suffering is never time wasted, for all bad is the means to a good end. When I’m broken is when I appreciate God’s help the most purely. And when I’m fixed and look back at the bad times, I see instead of regret a gratefulness for having been divinely held up and pulled through that I would never have experienced if I had not had the problem. Sometimes devout people will intentionally bring suffering upon themselves in order to show their love to God, but to me this isn’t the same on many levels. For one thing, it’s merely self-serving because God already knows how much you love Him. Secondly, there’s nothing you can do for God since He is your sole enabler – even the grace to accept His salvation, which is the choice God wants for you to make, is a gift from the Creator. Third, could anything we do come close to being as good as what God does? Fourth, our stable of self-imposed trials is a pitiful inventory compared to the wise and infinitely varied means available to God. And then there is the basic, wrong-minded futility of taking on suffering for our sins when that’s already been done perfectly by Christ so that we wouldn’t have to strive for the impossible. So I wouldn’t welcome suffering so much as I would accept it as the will of God and enjoy the process of purification.