Six Books for the Journey – Course 4 week 4

DEVOTIONAL CLASSICS – Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith – Hodder and Stoughton  published 1993

 

 

CS Lewis  1900-1963  “Mere Christianity”

 

“The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as the starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else – call it “morality” or “decent behaviour” or “the good of society” – has claims on this self: claims which interefere with its own desires. What we mean by “being good” is giving in to those claims. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call “wrong”: well we must give them up. Other things turn out “wrong”; well, we must give them up. Other things turn out to be what we call “right”; well, we shall have to do them.

But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right but he does hope that there will been left over for him to live on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point.

As long as we are thinking that way, one or the other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. For make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier.

In the end you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, “live for others” but always in a discontented, grumbling way – always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. And you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself; my own will shall become yours.”

Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do. You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross” – in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”. He means both. And one can just see why both are true.” P 5

Jesus “never talked vague idealistic gas. When He said, “Be perfect”, He meant it, He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad!” p 7

 

 

Dallas Willard (1935-2013)

 

“The word “disciple” occurs 269 times in the New Testament. “Christian” is found only three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to the disciples…The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ.” P 13

“The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian – especially padded, textured, streamlined and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.” P 13

 

“In place of Christ’s plan, historical drift has substituted “Make converts (to a particular faith and practice) and baptize them into church membership.” This causes two great omissions from the Great Commission to stand out. Most important, we start by omitting the making of disciples or enrolling people as Christ’s students, when we should let all else wait for that. We also omit the step of taking our converts through training that will bring them ever increasingly to do what Jesus directed”. P 14

 

The cost of non discipleship

“In 1937 Dietrich Bonhoeffergave the world his book The Cost of Discipleship. It was a masterful attack on “easy Christianity” or “cheap grace” but it did not set aside – perhaps it even enforced – the view of discipleship as a costly spiritual excess, and only for those especially driven or called to it. It was right to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God. But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10.10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul…The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfilment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane.” P 17

 

 

Jonathan Edwards (1703- 1758)

 

Religious Affections

“The nature of human beings is to be inactive unless influenced by some affection: love or hatred, desire, hope, fear etc. These affections are the “spring of action”, the things that set us moving in our lives, that move us to engage in activities. When we look at the world, we see that people are exceedingly busy. It is their affections that keep them busy.

If we were to take away their affections, the world would be motionless and dead; there would be no such thing as activity. It is the affection we call covetousness that moves a person to seek worldly profits; it is the affection we call ambition that moves a person a person to purse worldly glory; it is the affection we call lust that moves a person to pursue sensual delights. Just as worldly affections are the spring of worldly actions, so the religious affections are the spring of religious actions.

A person who has a knowledge of doctrine and theology only – without religious affection – has never engaged in true religion. Nothing is more apparent than this – our religion takes root within us only as deep as our affections attract it. There are thousands who hear the Word of God, who hear great and exceedingly important truths about themselves and their lives, and yet all they hear has no effect upon them, makes no change in the way they live.

The reason is this; they are not affected with what they hear. There are many who hear about the power, the holiness and the wisdom of God; about Christ and the great things that he has done for them and his gracious invitation to them; and yet remain exactly as they are in life and in practice.

I am bold in saying this, but I believe that no one is ever changed, either by doctrine, by hearing the Word, or by the preaching or teaching of another, unless the affections are moved by these things. No one ever seeks salvation, no one ever cries for wisdom, no one ever wrestles with God, no one ever kneels in prayer or flees from sin, with a heart that remains unaffected. In a word, there is never any great achievement by the things of religion without a heart deeply affected by those things.” P 24

 

Edwards concentrates on these feelings – hope, love, holy desire, religious sorrow, zeal etc.

Francis De Sales (1567-1622)

 

On the sweetness that comes through repentance and purgation

“The world sees devout people as they pray, fast, endure injuries, take care of the sick, give alms to the poor, keep vigils, restrain anger, control their passions, give up sensual pleasures, and perform other actions that are rigorous by themselves and by their very nature.

But the world does not see the heartfelt inward devotion that renders all such actions pleasant, sweet and easy. Look at the bees amid the banks of thyme. They find there a very bitter juice, but when they suck it out they change it into honey because they have the ability to do so.

O worldly people! It is true that devout souls encounter great bitterness in their works of mortification, but by performing them they change them into something more sweet and delicious. Because the martyrs were devout men and women, fire, flame, wheel and sword seemed to be flowers and perfume to them. If devotion can sweeten the most cruel torments and even death itself, what must it do for virtuous actions?

Sugar sweetens green fruit and in ripe fruit corrects whatever is crude and unwholesome. Now devotion is true spiritual sugar for it removes bitterness from discipline and anything harmful from our consolations. From the poor it takes away discontent, care from the rich, grief from the oppressed, pride from the exalted, melancholy from the solitary, and facturedness from those who live in society. It serves with equal benefit as fire in winter and dew in summer. It knows how to use prosperity and how to endure want. It makes both honour and contempt useful to us. It accepts pleasure and pain with a heart that is nearly always the same, and it fills us with a marvellous sweetness.”

 

On devout persons

“I ask you to regard attentively those who are on this ladder. They are either people with angelic hearts or angels in human bodies. They are not young although they seem to be so because they are so full of vigour and spiritual agility. They have wings to soar aloft in holy prayer and they also have feet to walk among people in a holy and loving way of life. Their faces are beautiful and joyour because they accept all things meekly and mildly. Their legs, arms and heads are uncovered because in their thoughts, affections and deed they have no purpose or motive but that of pleasing God. The rest of their body is clothed but only by a decent light robe because they use the world and worldly things but do so in a most pure and proper way, taking of them only what is necessary for their condition. Such are devout persons.” P 36

 

 

 

 John of the Cross  (1542- 1591)

“At a certain point in the spiritual journey God will draw a person from the beginning stage to a more advanced stage. At this stage the person will begin to engage in spiritual exercises and grow deeper in the spiritual life.

Such souls will  likely experience what is called “the dark night of the soul”. The “dark night” is when those persons lose all the pleasure they once experienced in their devotional life.  This happens because God wants to purify them and move them on to greater heights.

After a soul has been converted by God, that soul is nurtured and caressed by the Spirit. Like a loving mother, God cares for and comforts the infant soul by feeding it spiritual milk. Such souls will find great delight in this stage. They will begin praying with great urgency and perseverance; they will engage in all kinds of religious activities because of the joy they experience in them. But there will come a time when God will bed them to grow deeper. He will remove the previous consolations from the soul in order to teach it virtue and prevent it from developing vice.”

Some magnificent observations follow leading to

 

“The problem is this: when they have received no pleasure for their devotions, they think they have not accomplished anything. This is a grave error, and it judges God unfairly. For the truth is that the feelings we receive from our devotional life are the least of its benefits. The visible and unfelt grace of God is much greater, and is beyond our comprehension.  It may be said that through their efforts to obtain consolation such souls actually lose their spirituality. For true spirituality consists in perseverance, patience, and humility. The sin of spiritual gluttony will prompt them to read more books and say more prayers, but God, in his wisdom, will deny them any consolation because he knows that to feed this desire will create an inordinate appetite and breed innumerable evils.  The Lord heals such souls through the aridity of the dark night.” P.46

 

“Let it suffice to say, then, that God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of his love for us, urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness.

In doing so he is able to take away all these vices and creates virtues within us. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No soul will ever grow deep in the spirit life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night.” P 47

 

 

 

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

 

“God is entitled to our love. Why? Because he gave himself for us despite the fact that we are so undeserving. What better could he have given? If we ask why God is entitled to our love  we should answer, “Because he first loved us”. God is clearly deserving of our love especially if we consider who he is that loves us, who we are that he loves us, and how much that he loves us.

And who is God? Is he not the one to whom every spirit bears witness: “Thou art my God.”  God has no need of our worldly possessions. True love is this; that it does not seek its own interests. And how much does he love us? He so loved the world that he gave his only Son; he laid down his life for us” p 52

 

Different degrees of love

1)        Love of self for self’s sake

2)        Love of God for self’s sake

3)        Love of God for God’s sake

4)        Love of self for God’s sake

1 and 2 are easy to explain

3 is as follows

 

“In the first degree of love we love ourselves for our own sake. In the second degree of love we love God for our own sake, chiefly because he has provided for us and rescued us. But if trials and tribulations continue to come upon us, every time God brings us through, even if our hearts were made of stone, we will begin to be softened because of the grace of the Rescuer. Thus we begin to love God not merely for our own sakes but for himself.

In order to arrive at this we must continually go to God with our needs and pray. In those prayers the grace of God is tasted, and by frequent tasting it is proved to us how sweet the Lord is. Thus it happens that once God’s sweetness has been tasted, it draws us to the pure love of God more than our needs compel us to love him. Thus we begin to say, “We now love God, not for our necessity, for we ourselves tasted and know how sweet the Lord is.

When we begin to feel this, it will not be hard to fulfil the second commandment : to love our neighbour. For those who truly love God in this way also love the things of God. Also, it becomes easier to become obedient to all the commands of God. We begin to love God’s commands and embrace them. We have obtained this degree when we can say “Give praise to the Lord for he is good, not because he is good to me, but because he is good.” Thus we truly love God for God’s sake and not our own. The third degree of love is the love by which God is now loved for his very self.” P.54

Fourth Degree of Love

“Blessed are we who experience the fourth degree of love wherein we love ourselves for God’s sake. Such experiences are rare and come only for a moment. In a manner of speaking we lose ourselves as though we did not exist, utterly unconscious of ourselves and emptied of ourselves. If for even a moment we experience this kind of love, we will then know the pain of having to return to this world and its obligations as we are recalled from the state of contemplation. In turning back to ourselves we will feel as if we are suffering as we return into the mortal state in which we are called to live.” P 54

 

To conclude

“What are the four degrees of love? First we love ourselves for our own sake; since we are unspiritual and of the flesh we cannot have an interest in anything that does not relate to ourselves. When we begin to see that we cannot subsist by ourselves, we begin to seek God for our own sakes. This is the second degree of love; we love God but only for our own interests. But if we begin to worship,and come to God again and again by meditating, by reading, by prayer, and by obedience, little by little God becomes known to us through experience. We enter into a sweet familiarity with God, and by tasting how sweet the Lord is we pass into the third degree of love so that now we love God, not for our own sake, but for himself. It should be noted that in this third degree we will stand still for a very long time.” P. 55

 

Finally – “Can we attain the Fourth degree of Love”

“I am not certain that the fourth degree of love in which we love ourselves only for the sake of God may be perfectly attained in this life. But, when it does happen, we will experience the joy of the Lord and be forgetful of ourselves in a wonderful way. We are, for those moments, one mind and one spirit with God. I am on the opinion that this is what the prophet meant when he said “I will enter into the power of the Lord: O Lord, I will be mindful of thy justice alone”. He felt, certainly, that when he entered into the spiritual powers of the Lord he would have laid aside self and his whole being would, in the spirit, be mindful of the justice of the Lord alone.” P.56

 

 

Francois Fenelon (1651-1715)

“How happy are those who give themselves to God! They are delivered from their passions, from the judgements of others, from their malice, from the tyranny of their sayings, from their cold and wretched mocking, from the misfortunes which the world distributes to wealth,  from the unfaithfulness and inconstancy of friends, from the wiles and snares of the enemy, from our own weakness, from the misery and brevity of life, from the horrors of a profane death, from the cruel, remorse attachment to wicked pleasures,  and in the end from the eternal condemnation of God.

We are delivered from this countless mass of evils, because placing our wills entirely in the hands of God, we want only what God wants, and thus we find consolation in faith, and consequently hope in the midst of all our sufferings.  What weakness it would be then to fear to give ourselves to God and to undertake too soon so desirable a state!” p. 64

“What folly to fear to be too entirely God’s!  It is to fear to be too happy. It is to fear to love God’s will in all things. It is to fear to have too much courage in the crosses which are inevitable, too much comfort in God’s love, and too much detachment from the passions which make us miserable.

So let us scorn earthly things, to be wholly God’s. I am not saying that we should leave them absolutely, because when we are already living an honest and regulated life, we only need to change our heart’s depth in loving, and we shall do nearly the same things which we were doing. For God does not reverse the conditions of his people, nor the responsibilities which he himself has given them, but we, to serve God, do what we were doing to serve and pleased the world and to satisfy ourselves.

There would be only this difference, that instead of being devoured by our pride, by our overbearing passions, and by the malicious criticism of the world, we shall act instead with liberty, courage and hope in God. Confidence will animate us. The expectation of the eternal good things which are drawing near, while those here below are escaping us, will support us in the midst of our suffering. The love of God, which will make us conscious of God’s love for us, will give us wings to fly on his way and to raise us above all our troubles. If we have a hard time believing this, experience will convince us. “Come, see and taste”, said David, “how sweet is the Lord”.

Jesus Christ said to all Christians without exception, “Let him who would be my disciple carry his cross, and follow me.” The broad way leads to perdition. We must follow the narrow way which few enter. We must be born again, renounce ourselves, hate ourselves, become a child, be poor in spirit, weep to be comforted, and not be of the world which is cursed because of its scandals.

Those who are wholly God’s are always happy.  They know by experience that the yoke of the Lord is “easy and light”, that we find “rest in our souls” and that he comforts those who are weary and overburdened, as he himself has said”

“But woe unto those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and the world!  They want and they do not want. They are torn by passion and remorse at the same time. They fear the judgements of God and those of others. They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting its sweet consolations. O how wretched they are! Ah, if they had a little courage to despite the empty talk, the cold mockings, and the rash criticism of others, what peace they would have in the bosom of God!

How dangerous it is for our salvation, how unworthy of God and ourselves, how pernicious even for the peace of our hearts, to want always to stay where we are! Our whole life was only given us to advance us by great strides towards our heavenly country. The world escapes like a delusive shadow. Eternity already advances to receive us. Why do we delay to advance while the light of the Father of mercies shines for us? Let us hasten to reach the kingdom of God.” P 66

 

ST AUGUSTINE (354-430) 

CONFESSIONS

 

Talks about the stern experience of his conversion

“And you, O Lord, never ceased to watch over my secret heart. In your stern mercy you lashed me with the twin scourge of fear and shame in case I should give way once more and the worn and slender chain should not be broken but gain new strength and bind me all the faster.

In my heart I kept saying, “Let it be now, let it be now!” and merely by saying this I was on the point of making the resolution. I was on the point of making it, but I did not succeed. Yet I did not fall back into the old state. I stood on the brink of the resolution, waiting to take fresh breath. I tried again and came a little nearer to my goal, and then a little nearer still, so that I could almost reach out and grasp it.

But I did not reach it. I could not reach out to grasp it, because I held back from the step by which I should die to death and become alive to life. My lower instincts, which had taken hold of me, were stronger than the higher, which were untried. And the closer I came to the moment which was to mark the great change in me, the ore I shrunk from it in horror. But it did not drive me back or turn me from my purpose: it merely left me hanging in suspense.” P 75

 

“I probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it, and when I mustered them all before the eyes of my heart, a great storm broke within me. Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes. For I felt that I was still the captive of my sins and in misery I kept crying, “How long shall I go on saying, “Tomorrow, tomorrow”? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?”

I was asking myself these questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow in my heart, when all at once I heard the singing of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain, “Take it and read, take it and read.” At this I looked up thinking hard whether there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these, but I could not remember ever hearing them before.

I stemmed  my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. So I hurried back to the place where I had put down the book containing Paul’s epistles. I seized it and opened it and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites.” (Romans 13.13,14)

I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. I marked the place with my finger and closed the book. You converted me to yourself, so that I no longer placed any hope in this world but stood firmly upon the rule of faith.” P 78