A Coming Together

Introduction

Last week my brain had a coming together. I was finally able to see the truth and co-applicability of three things that over the past year had struck me as odd yet potent. I will share these below.

Lust Inflicts Injury That Needs Healing

Last year I started seeing a Christian counselor. He prescribed for me a weekly checklist of disciplines that I was to observe. This was a negotiated checklist: if I felt that his suggestion was beyond my then-current level of healing, I could reject it. One thing that he suggested was this: if I lusted, I should send him an email reporting this so that he can pray for the healing of the self-injury that occurred. At the time I considered this to be a very odd discipline for two reasons:

1. It presupposed that lust was discrete. In other words, it presupposed that there was a definitive boundary between sexual temptation and lust, such that I could in fact know whether I crossed it. At the time, all the motions in my soul seemed like the unbroken flow of a river with no recognizable national boundary, so I resisted this discipline. In the end after he quantified lust, I accepted the discipline: if I looked at someone with sexual desire or sexually fantasized about someone in excess of three seconds, that counted as lust.
2. It suggested that there was something beyond forgiveness that I needed after lusting, namely, healing of an objective, specific wound. This struck me as very odd--especially since it was he who would pray for the healing of that wound. I mean, if I can pray for my own forgiveness, I certainly can pray for my own healing. In retrospect, his request was quite wise. Since I did not yet believe that each incidence of lust discretely and objectively wounds my soul, I hardly could pray with faith for the healing of this wound. But he wanted to make sure that it got healed regardless of the state of my faith, so he took it on himself to pray for it.

I do not actually recall our discussing this mysterious wound, but the question certainly stuck in my mind, and I have continued ruminating on it for months after ceasing to see that counselor. Last week, I finally grasped the concept. It is implied by 1 Peter 2:11: Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. A passion (lust) of the flesh wages war against my soul; thus, if I permit one, it will inflict an injury on my soul. 1 Corinthians 7:9 and Romans 1:27 both metaphorically compare passion to fire, so a burn would be an apt description of this wound. This realization also helped to firm up the notion of lust's discreteness. If lust causes a burn and I have a lust burn, this implies that I in fact lusted.

Lust Surrenders Ground to Satan That Needs to Be Retaken

Last month I met with a different counselor for two sessions. He led me in prayer concerning a number of experiences in my life. For each experience, one of the things that he asked me to pray was I ask you, Lord Jesus, to take back ground given to the enemy through X and I yield that ground to Your control. When he led me in the prayers, I followed along, but I made a mental that I needed to meditate on this expression later. It struck me as quite analogous to the wounding mentioned above and again implied that there was something beyond forgiveness that I needed.

Last week I finally grasped the concept. Ephesians 4:26-27 says: Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. This word translated opportunity means place, any portion or space marked off, as it were from surrounding space. In other words, through sin we give ground to the devil. And if we merely ask God for forgiveness, it is possible that we will merely be forgiven and not recover the lost ground. I don't pretend to know what it actually means that the devil possesses ground in my soul, but I hypothesize that it at least entails this: Our conscience is desensitized a degree and thus repeating the sin that caused the ground-loss will be one degree easier.

Strategic Prayer

A while back Amy gave a teaching on being strategic in spiritual warfare. The gist was as follows: The powers of darkness know my weaknesses, have devised a personalized strategy to destroy me, and are actively trying to implement that strategy. Thus, it should not come as a surprise to me that the temptations I experience seem fine-tuned to trip me up with high degree of effectiveness. Furthermore, since their goal is not just my one-time failure but my destruction, it is wise to intentionally prepare a counter-strategy. When I heard her, I was reminded of 2 Corinthians 2:10-11, Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. Unfortunately, I just could not envision what such a counter-strategy might look like.

Well, last month when I met with the second counselor, he proposed a pattern for combating lies that I believe. The strategy was very good, but I will just focus on the last step here: For each lie X that I am strategizing to overcome, I select a specific prayer target (PT), i.e., a specific person or group for whom to pray. Then when I am being tempted to believe lie X, I pray the following for the associated PT: I pray that you use PT to bring great destruction to Satan's kingdom. He explained that if I do this consistently, the Evil One will notice that every time he tempts me to believe lie X, his kingdom experiences great destruction at the hands of PT. As a result, he will back off tempting me to believe lie X. This struck me as a very valuable tool.

The Application

As I was driving in the car last week, all three of these came into my mind, and I envisioned a new better-rounded weapon for battling lust. This is the program:

1. Heal existing wounds and take back already lost ground. I listed every person for whom I had lusted at some time in the past. The I confessed the sin, asked God to heal me of the injury, asked God to take back the ground that I had lost, and then asked God to use that person to bring great destruction to Satan's kingdom. This took a significant block of time. When I could not think of any more people, I asked the Holy Spirit to bring more people to mind, which He did. This was important because I want to have a truly clean start.
2. Having taken care of the past, now use the concept in the present. When I am tempted to lust for X, I out loud ask God to use X to bring great destruction to Satan's kingdom. I keep praying along these lines until the temptation recedes.
3. If I fail again and lust in the future, I repeat step one for that person.

I feel much more hopeful than I have a in a long while because I feel empowered now to do battle. I would be interested to know if this post was useful to anyone else.

Fruits of the May 2009 Retreat

On May 1 - 3, 2009, I attended the semi-annual Red Tag retreat. One of the themes was God's four omni's: omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnibeneficence. Below I will try to share some insights with which I came away.

I basically have a mental block on the fourth omni (omnibeneficence) that has become the cords that bind me, and they were relentlessly tight all day Friday night through Saturday afternoon. During the free time Saturday afternoon, my friend Doreen proactively sought me out for some reconciliation issues. Then she began to run into the same mental block in me that made it impossible for me either to receive God's love or accept myself. She was inspired to ask some questions. Then when I could not answer a question, she instructed me to ask God right then and there and then waited until I heard an answer. I saw three pictures over the course of that meeting, and then another one Sunday afternoon. I will describe them below:

1. She asked me what God felt when the sperm penetrated the egg that would develop into me. The only thing I could think was that He was disappointed that a different sperm had not penetrated and created a different person. So she told me to ask Him, which I trepidly did. I saw a picture of a large deer with a huge rack of antlers rapidly jumping to the top of a mountain (Songs 2:8-9). When he reached it, he lifted his head and wave his antlers wildly. I instinctively knew that he was excited and proud because his fawn had just been born, and I felt the excitement and pride of God for me.
2. Then I shared the reason I was so afraid of being alone. God is omnipresent, but I feel that He does not like me. The result is a God who is rather peeved that He cannot help being in the same space as me. This has made it very hard to be alone because I cannot get the picture out of my mind of His disgust at being trapped with me. Doreen told me to ask God what He felt next time I was alone with him. I told her that that was not reasonable since my anxiety level at that point is already so high that I most likely would not be able to hear. So she told me to ask him right there what He felt when I was alone with Him. I saw a picture of a boy and his dad together going through a maze made out of tall stacks of hay. I instinctively knew that the father already knew the path to the end, so his purpose was not to find the exit but rather to enjoy the time together with his son. I saw the little boy run ahead several times, get lost, and then run back to his dad to ask which way to go. His dad would always answer, "Let's try this way." I felt God's pleasure at being alone with me.
   
3. I shared with Doreen that I long have had a picture in my mind of my sister getting injured as a child and running to my dad for comfort. He backed away from her as from one with leprosy and then called to my mom, "Janet, your daughter needs you." This picture symbolized what God felt toward me--disgust at my weakness and brokenness. As I prayed, I saw a wolf spider, carrying its children on its back (it looked like this) I instinctively knew that the spider enjoyed the closeness and physical contact with its children and was draw to them because of their weakness and inability to care for themself.
4. Something with which I have long struggled is God's seeming general unavailability when I seek him. While the red tags were sharing their testimonies on Sunday afternoon, I spontaneously saw a fourth picture. It was of a stalagmite and its accompanying stalactite. I remembered that they there were formed by water dripping down from the ceiling, first leaving a calcium deposit on top and then on the bottom. I instinctively knew the interpretation: 1) Even my capacity to reach up to God (the upward-reaching stalagmite) has its source first in grace coming down to me (the water dropping from the ceiling) and 2) At the same time that I am reaching out to God (stalagmite), God is simultaneously reaching out to me (stalactite), and in fact, he reaches out first (the drop leaves calcium on the top first and then the bottom).