Hi Saints
This is from Fenelon "The Seeking Heart" the chapter "Temper Your Standards".
No book or prayers will help you die to yourself as much as facing the humiliation of your daily failures. Of course you must retire inwardly and be faithful to bring yourself before God. I also warn you to not let your business distract you from your spiritual life. If you allow yourself to be constantly distracted your heart will grow hard. Retire to pray when you can and live the rest of your day in love.
A side question: What is your definition of failure and sucess? What do you think is God our Father definition of failure and sucess?
Love
Don
Here is my answer, for today's entry:
Hello all,
First, a word about "the humiliation of our daily failures". I have seen in my own life that indeed it is the case that facing my failures is a vehicle that God uses to cause me to decrease and Him to increase. But it must, repeat, must be emphasized that WE CANNOT REMAIN IN THAT PLACE. Far too many believers remain in that place of shame and humiliation, of crucifixion of the self, and NEVER EMERGE INTO HIS LOVE AND GRACE. If we are living our lives concentrating on our failures rather than His love for us, then we are like the church in Galatia who abandoned the Grace of God to go back to the Law. True faith and true humility come when we not only acknowledge our failures, but acknowledge that WE ARE DEAD ALREADY to ourselves and ALIVE IN HIM. Again, God may have to subject us to humiliation to bring us to that place, but God's ultimate purpose in revealing this is not to leave us there dangling, like Jesus crucified but never resurrected, but to LIBERATE US FROM BONDAGE TO SELF LIFE AND SELF EFFORT. Staying focused on my daily failures has only ever brought me death; focusing on Christ in me has always brought me back to His Life, without fail.
OK, now to the definition of failure and success. My natural definition is that of most people I suppose; making enough money to support myself without depending on anyone else; becoming good at my job, perhaps well enough to advance in it and make more money; having a family that is stable and children that grow up successful themselves, being, for the most part, free from want.There is nothing inherently evil or ungodly in any of these desires. But in themselves, by themselves, isolated from God's love and God's sovereignty, they have absolutely no ability to give me true happiness and satisfaction such as my soul and spirit TRULY long for. So often, it is the need for the affirmation and approval of others, even loved ones, EVEN OUR CHRISTIAN LEADERS, that forms in us these earthly ideals of success and failure. And, it is when we use our own self-effort to achieve these or any other desires that we depart from the path of Christ and swerve onto the path of Adam. These desires then become gods and idols themselves, and the achieving of them becomes an obsessive bondage that drives us to insanity and to truly evil deeds to achieve them. And the failure part comes when we do not live up to either our own or others' expectations of us, therefore descending into a cesspool of self-loathing and self-condemnation, which is ironically the LAST place we ever intended to be in God, but exactly where Satan wants us. It is then that we just shut down and stop trying; why try any more when it is never good enough, when success always evades us? We must be destined to fail.
All right then, now on to success in God's eyes. It must be said first of all that success in His eyes is most times, not always but most times, DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED to our own ideas about it. Let me put it in terms that a child could understand; to God, success is LOVE. It is not money and power and friends and family and possessions; it is LOVE. And it is love precisely because HE IS LOVE (see 1 John Chapter 1). The more we love, the more successful we are in God's economy. And the love I mean is not the hippy-dippy sensual love or the conditional love the world is used to. It is the love known in the ancient Greek as agape, the selfless love that regards others above ourselves THAT ONLY COMES FROM GOD. We in ourselves are bankrupt of this love; it was forever lost to our humanity in the Fall. But because our old self nature, that false self under Satan's rule, was crucified with Christ, and we arose as new creations in Christ, it is restored to us, praise God. BUT IT IS NOT RESTORED TO OUR OLD NATURE, ONLY OUR NEW NATURE. And when we become aware of His Love in us, and it bleeds over into our lives, THEN we can love as He has loved us; BUT IT STARTS WITH HIM, AND ENDS WITH HIM. The Greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is to love the Lord God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and then your neighbor as yourself. It comes pretty much in this order, though it revolves back and forth a lot: God loves us, we love God, we love ourselves (because he Loves us), and we love others. Why did I put loving ourselves before loving others? BECAUSE IF WE DO NOT LOVE OURSELVES AND SEE OURSELVES AS GOD SEES US, WE CANNOT HAVE ANY AUTHENTIC LOVE FOR OTHERS. We can show others phony, guilt-driven love, but those people, if they are perceptive, can see that it isn't real and it does nothing for them, not like it is intended by God to.So this is success. The more we love, the more it is returned to us, and the more we can additionally give, and the healthier and happier we are physically, mentally, and spiritually. Ironic, isn't it? The more we acknowledge that we are dead, the more alive than ever we become, IN CHRIST. Our true success in the Heavenly Economy is not measured in how much wealth, knowledge and even spiritual experience we gain and hoard for ourselves, but in how much we lavishly pour out on our brothers, sisters and neighbors. It is not to say that it is evil to own things or have one's own experiences, but if we never allow God to pour out our very essence onto our fellow humans, we live in true poverty and true failure. May it never be.
Peace,
Tom Sebring
Here is my answer, for today's entry:
Hello all,
First, a word about "the humiliation of our daily failures". I have seen in my own life that indeed it is the case that facing my failures is a vehicle that God uses to cause me to decrease and Him to increase. But it must, repeat, must be emphasized that WE CANNOT REMAIN IN THAT PLACE. Far too many believers remain in that place of shame and humiliation, of crucifixion of the self, and NEVER EMERGE INTO HIS LOVE AND GRACE. If we are living our lives concentrating on our failures rather than His love for us, then we are like the church in Galatia who abandoned the Grace of God to go back to the Law. True faith and true humility come when we not only acknowledge our failures, but acknowledge that WE ARE DEAD ALREADY to ourselves and ALIVE IN HIM. Again, God may have to subject us to humiliation to bring us to that place, but God's ultimate purpose in revealing this is not to leave us there dangling, like Jesus crucified but never resurrected, but to LIBERATE US FROM BONDAGE TO SELF LIFE AND SELF EFFORT. Staying focused on my daily failures has only ever brought me death; focusing on Christ in me has always brought me back to His Life, without fail.
OK, now to the definition of failure and success. My natural definition is that of most people I suppose; making enough money to support myself without depending on anyone else; becoming good at my job, perhaps well enough to advance in it and make more money; having a family that is stable and children that grow up successful themselves, being, for the most part, free from want.There is nothing inherently evil or ungodly in any of these desires. But in themselves, by themselves, isolated from God's love and God's sovereignty, they have absolutely no ability to give me true happiness and satisfaction such as my soul and spirit TRULY long for. So often, it is the need for the affirmation and approval of others, even loved ones, EVEN OUR CHRISTIAN LEADERS, that forms in us these earthly ideals of success and failure. And, it is when we use our own self-effort to achieve these or any other desires that we depart from the path of Christ and swerve onto the path of Adam. These desires then become gods and idols themselves, and the achieving of them becomes an obsessive bondage that drives us to insanity and to truly evil deeds to achieve them. And the failure part comes when we do not live up to either our own or others' expectations of us, therefore descending into a cesspool of self-loathing and self-condemnation, which is ironically the LAST place we ever intended to be in God, but exactly where Satan wants us. It is then that we just shut down and stop trying; why try any more when it is never good enough, when success always evades us? We must be destined to fail.
All right then, now on to success in God's eyes. It must be said first of all that success in His eyes is most times, not always but most times, DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED to our own ideas about it. Let me put it in terms that a child could understand; to God, success is LOVE. It is not money and power and friends and family and possessions; it is LOVE. And it is love precisely because HE IS LOVE (see 1 John Chapter 1). The more we love, the more successful we are in God's economy. And the love I mean is not the hippy-dippy sensual love or the conditional love the world is used to. It is the love known in the ancient Greek as agape, the selfless love that regards others above ourselves THAT ONLY COMES FROM GOD. We in ourselves are bankrupt of this love; it was forever lost to our humanity in the Fall. But because our old self nature, that false self under Satan's rule, was crucified with Christ, and we arose as new creations in Christ, it is restored to us, praise God. BUT IT IS NOT RESTORED TO OUR OLD NATURE, ONLY OUR NEW NATURE. And when we become aware of His Love in us, and it bleeds over into our lives, THEN we can love as He has loved us; BUT IT STARTS WITH HIM, AND ENDS WITH HIM. The Greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is to love the Lord God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and then your neighbor as yourself. It comes pretty much in this order, though it revolves back and forth a lot: God loves us, we love God, we love ourselves (because he Loves us), and we love others. Why did I put loving ourselves before loving others? BECAUSE IF WE DO NOT LOVE OURSELVES AND SEE OURSELVES AS GOD SEES US, WE CANNOT HAVE ANY AUTHENTIC LOVE FOR OTHERS. We can show others phony, guilt-driven love, but those people, if they are perceptive, can see that it isn't real and it does nothing for them, not like it is intended by God to.So this is success. The more we love, the more it is returned to us, and the more we can additionally give, and the healthier and happier we are physically, mentally, and spiritually. Ironic, isn't it? The more we acknowledge that we are dead, the more alive than ever we become, IN CHRIST. Our true success in the Heavenly Economy is not measured in how much wealth, knowledge and even spiritual experience we gain and hoard for ourselves, but in how much we lavishly pour out on our brothers, sisters and neighbors. It is not to say that it is evil to own things or have one's own experiences, but if we never allow God to pour out our very essence onto our fellow humans, we live in true poverty and true failure. May it never be.
Peace,
Tom Sebring
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