Back to School
Blessed Be the Walls
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
November 8, 2009
This week we are going to address a critical time in our journey of becoming emotionally and spiritually healthy. This is when the competencies are proven to be integrated into our lives or not. It has been called the walking through the desert place. Jesus was tempted in the desert. Israel wandered the desert for 40 years. It is also know biblically as the wilderness. This is where Isaiah tells us that God meets us.
One saint called it the dark night of the soul. It can be extremely painful. It can be traumatic. Psalms 23 calls it walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Peter Scazzero likens it to hitting a wall and the only real way is to go through the wall.
Abraham waited at the wall for 25 years for Isaac to be born. Nehemiah hit a wall in building a wall. Moses, Jeremiah, Elijah, and Paul all went through some major obstacles in their journey with God. The only real way is to go through the wall. You can’t go around walls, over these walls, or even under them. You can only go through them.
If we are going to confront our imperfections, we must allow God to clear away the roots from the garden of our souls. It is during these dark and desolate times that we fall back onto those familiar ways of behaving and relating—those bad habits that sustained us for so long. We hit the wall and the only way is to have God take us through the valley and through the wall.
Without understanding these dark nights, followers of Christ stagnate and no longer move forward. Sometimes we hide behind our faith to flee the pain rather than trust God to transform us through it. While scripture verses can be helpful and can be anchors, too often we “fake it until we make it” by uttering platitudes “God uses all things for good” or “God only gives what we can bear.” Scriptural truths, yes, but they sometimes help us stay in denial of the depths of emotions and struggles. We pretend like we are not angry with God. We keep it together under the guise of demonstrating to the weaker members of the body and the watching world that our faith is solid and strong.
But emotionally healthy faith admits that sometimes we are bewildered. We admit that we don’t know what the heck God is doing right now. We can say that we are hurting right now and even angry. We don’t have to have all the answers accepting that this is all a mystery. We can’t even own our sadness and cry out to God, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Our feelings of God’s presence seem to evaporate. Heaven’s door has been shut. Sometimes seeming as if it was slammed shut. Darkness, helplessness, weariness, sense of failure, sense of defeat, emptiness, and dryness descend on us. Those disciplines that we have used for so long are empty. They don’t seem to work. We can’t seem to see God working and certainly don’t seem to see any visible fruit in our lives.
I do I dare say that sometimes congregations experience it corporately as well. And we will do just about anything to fix it as quickly as possible. Anything except what is truly necessary, which is to wade into the darkness and pain in order to go through the wall.
God so longs to free us from unhealthy attachments and idolatries of the world and of ourselves. He deeply desires an intimate, passionate love relationship with us. He aches for us to know His true peace and rest. These dark nights of the soul are exactly what God prepares for us so that we might purge our affections to enlarge our capacity to experience at the grandest level His amazing love. Yet, it is only by going through these walls that this will occur. Nothing else prepares for this richer, fuller communion with Him except to go through the wall.
Paul wrote about this concept in 2 Corinthians:
7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Important Concepts
• Everyone encounters walls
This is part of the experience of God. One author described God during these times as a Cloud of Unknowing. He said at first it seems in your meditations that you enter a darkness—a dark cloud. It is where God seems to be unknown. Eventually with persistence, God reveals himself in a powerful, new way as you go through the cloud into His wonderful presence.
Everyone will encounter a wall, usually several in his or her lifetimes. However, not everyone journeys through the wall. Judas hit a wall but didn’t come through it. Peter hit a wall when he denied Jesus and almost didn’t come through it. But he finally trusted Jesus to bring him through it and back into grace. These times are like the refining fire that burn away the impurities. It is God’s way of rewiring our taste buds for better and healthier ways of functioning as we shed our dysfunction. And we all have dysfunctional issues to deal with. But the greatest dysfunction of all is the denial of dysfunction.
There is something incredibly healing and freeing to not only be able to admit our flaws but in community with others who admit their imperfections.
• Our resignation is needed
By resignation I have meaning to be resigned to allow God work in us for His purposes. It is not giving up. It is “Letting Go and Letting God.” Cliché, yes. But it is also very helpful and full of truth. Whether or not we actually journey through the wall depends on whether or not we are resigned to follow God through the valley of the shadow of death.
• It can seem like an eternity
It seems like forever when we are going through it. It seems like it will never end. Often it seems like it cannot get any worse, yet it does.
But how long will it last, you may ask. That’s your cue… “How long will it last?” Do you really want to know? No, you don’t really want to hear this but it may go on for several months. But probably, it may last a year or two… or more. Abraham waited 25 years for God to show up. Israel wandered the desert for 40 years. Israel was in slavery in Egypt for generations. (Now that isn’t good.) For generations, people wondered when the Messiah would come. When Jesus finally came, it was such a huge wall that many couldn’t or wouldn’t go through it. Paul spent several years after his conversion growing before he left to be the disciple to the Gentiles.
Even though these really, really tough walls can last a long, long time. Please know this that this is absolutely the easiest and softest way. If you are facing one right now, hold onto the promise that God wants what is the absolute best for you. He has immeasurable riches in store for those who persevere. He has them for you.
What can we expect?
• Lower expectations
• Greater sense of brokenness
• Increased capacity to give grace & mercy
• Patience
• Less attachment things not of God
• More appreciation for mystery (Holy Unknowing)
These are just a few of the results of going through the wall. The greatest of course is a greater emotionally healthy spirituality. The competencies that we learn suddenly take on a whole new meaning.
My first major wall that I went through came when I got sober. But along the way, I ran into walls that now I know were just small ones. One of these had to do with my expectations of those that supposedly loved.
Though the years of drinking and using, I had developed some very unhealthy expectations for relationships. Actually, I really never developed healthy ones to replace the childish notions. Literally my notions of love were based on the unfulfilled needs of a child that suffered from a rejection of his mother. To be blunt, I was extremely needy. And no one really wants to have an intimate relationship with someone that is extremely needy unless that person is also extremely needy, which is a recipe for disaster.
In recovery, I had to confront my unrealistic expectations and replace those with the concept of unconditional love, which is what characterizes God’s love in Christ. At one point several months into sobriety, I became increasingly frustrated with God’s apparent lack of leading me into a committed relationship with a young woman. In short, I wanted a girlfriend but God didn’t seem to be providing any reasonable possibilities.
Finally, I stood before the wall and resigned to God. “God, I am going to trust that your way is best. Even if you desire me to live the rest of my life unmarried and celibate, then I will accept that. Your will be done not mine.”
I was completely resigned to God and accepted that perhaps this was not God’s plan. As a result, I stopped trying so hard to help God. I let go and let God handle the details. I accepted that God’s way was best. I focused on simply learning how to love others unconditionally. No expectations of possible dates or a possible future.
Remarkably, God in a few months did steer my path and the path of beautiful young woman together. We met, eventually started dating, fell in love, and married. Together we have also faced several walls but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I think that we are a congregation are facing a wall. I believe that we seeking to allow God move us through it. It is a wall that we have been starring at for a long, long time. The wall has been growing higher for years and years. I believe that if we are willing to face our own personal issues together and are willing to follow God wherever God wants us to go, we will be blessed. We will encounter grace in a fresh way. We will allow God to bring us through to the unimaginable riches on the other side.
Whatever wall you may be facing or will face, I assure you with every part of my being that God will bring you through (even us through) if you are willing to trust God’s way as best. Go through the wall, the darkness, the pain and you will find freedom, healing, and wholeness. This I believe with every cell in my being. This is the truth and promise of the gospel of God’s Kingdom in Christ.
