I trust you have had a good week of experiencing the grace of God in Jesus!
We've just finished chapter three of Life Together, which is about "the day alone." Bonhoeffer discusses in this chapter some spiritual disciplines for our personal journey with God, and as in all the other chapters, there's way too much in it to touch on everything. So I'll comment on just a little of this chapter.
In my walk with God, He has discovered to me that there's a great difference between living and moving in Him and living and moving in my own natural life. I am more of a private person by nature, but the Lord has taught me that this doesn't mean that I'm naturally good at practicing Christian solitude. The Christian discipline of solitude is purposeful, intended to be time with God alone, not simply being alone.
And I love Bonhoeffer's teaching that we can't be alone healthily if we don't know how to be in fellowship with other believers. He adds that we don't do fellowship healthily if we don't know how to be alone with God: "Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship."
Along these lines, he goes on to address the need to practice silence..."this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness prevails. Real silence, real stillness, really holding one's tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness."
In my personal experience the discipline of silence has been powerful to teach me when and how to speak. I have become more sensitive to the nudges of the Holy Spirit when I'm talking too much or when I should be talking rather than be silent.
Although I did an extreme version of silence and solitude this past January in which I literally separated myself from people and everyday stimuli for a month, you don't have to practice this discipline in such a way. A couple of ways that we can do this in the normal course of life are the following:
- Take a few minutes out of the day to be silent before the Lord and His Word.
- Take a day (or weekend) off and get away to a retreat center or just away from your normal setting to a quiet spot, and there commune with the Lord.
- Andrew Murray suggests setting apart a month in which you don't talk - by this he means that you govern your mouth to only speak what you must in order to live your day; inother words, keeping alert to not speak carelessly every little thing that comes to your mind to say.
Many years ago I took up this suggestion of Andrew Murray's and was very surprised at what I discovered about myself. Whereas I had thought I wasn't strongly opinionated about things (because I didn't talk outwardly about them), I discovered that this discipline brought to light how much inner talking I did and how opinionated I was! The Lord was there to help me then to begin to listen more to Him and align my inner heart with His truth and passions.
Bonhoeffer goes on to talk about how meditation on the Scriptures naturally leads to prayer, and how true this is!
Intercession for others flows naturally out of meditation on the Word and personal prayer. The author says something that's so true about Christian fellowship: "A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me." I wonder if there would be less backbiting and criticism of our brothers and sisters with whom we live and work if we took more time to pray together and to pray for one another...
Finally, Bonhoeffer concludes the chapter with a wonderful and terrifying truth that I am convinced of myself: "The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it. Every act of self-control of the Christian (when alone) is also a service to the fellowship. On the other hand, there is no sin in thought, word, or deed, no matter how personal or secret, that does not inflict injury upon the whole fellowship."
John Donne wrote: "No man is an island..." Your daily obedience strengthens me as does my obedience strengthen you, and the negative side to that is true as well. This isn't meant for condemnation but bears out once again how impossible Christianity is without Jesus living His life in and through me, and so we keep reaching for Him and clinging to Him continually.
May the enabling grace of the Lord Jesus rest on you this week. Lord, thank You that it is You in us who is our hope of becoming like you - increase in us by Your Spirit this week, in Jesus' name.
Next week we'll cover chapter four in which the author speaks of various types of ministry that go on in the Body of Christ. Remember that in two weeks we will be starting the new book, Living in the Freedom of the Spirit by Tom Marshall.
I've been playing catch up with the readings and read chapters 3 and 4 the last couple days. There's so much good stuff that I'm reading and questions I have, too, like what does it really mean to bear one another's burdens? I don't fully understand it (p. 100 - 103). Maybe I just need to read that portion again, but if someone can explain it or give an example, that would probably help me.
ReplyDeleteSince no one has commented on Susan's question, I'd like to because this issue of "forbearance" is near and dear to me...
ReplyDeleteI love it that Susan commented about the ministry of "bearing" because this is a Christian virtue that tends to get overlooked in our more scientific approach to everything, including Christianity. What I mean by this is that because we have grown in our knowledge of the makeup of humans (physical, psychological, etc.), we may tend as a Western Church to want to "fix" one another all the time. I'm a strong believer in emotional healing and the desperate need there is in the Body of Christ for this; but having said that, I also value so much this virtue of being able to receive those around me as they are, speaking into their lives when the Spirit nudges me to do that, but also having the grace to allow them to have weaknesses and just simple human annoying things about them. After all, I have irritating things about me that others bear with.
In reading this portion of Bonhoeffer's book, I'm struck once again with the wisdom he had to recognize realities within the Body of Christ and the overarching need for us to exercise the patience of Jesus in loving one another. That patience takes the form of allowing a person freedom to be themselves while being involved in their life, and it definitely involves daily forgiving of those around us, even when they aren't conscious that they need forgiving. I sometimes thank the Lord for the patient and forgiving people around me who put up with my idiosyncracies and irritating parts of my personality.
I like that he recognizes that there are "strong" and "weak" within the Christian community, and the tendency of the "weak" is to criticize the "strong" while the "strong" too easily despise the "weak" and want to put them down. Both need patience and the grace of God operating in and through them.
The end of this section gives a summary statement that I believe is the best place to start (and continue) in practicing the "ministry of bearing":
"The service of forgiveness is rendered by one to the others daily. It occurs, without words, in the intercession for one another." We'll never fully know the power there is in praying for one another...
This may be more than you bargained for, Susan, and it may not answer you as specifically as you'd like - if anyone else wants to contribute from another angle, please do! Blessings...
What you said is really good, Nita. I think I understand better now. Your comments reminded me of how we can either be critical of another or ask God to give us His heart toward the person. If our posture is to want God's best for them and if we realize how much God loves them, it's more difficult to be critical and think less of them. AND when we recognize our own sins and shortcomings and idiosyncrecies, we're even less likely to criticize. If we really want to have God's Kingdom come on earth, we must be prayerful for others and bear with them in their shortcomings.
ReplyDeleteI am glad when people forebear with me...I often mean well, but mess up sometimes. It's hard when someone gets mad at me and I'm trying my best. It's so much more motivating when someone is understanding and encouraging. I usually don't need my shortcomings pointed out...they're pretty obvious to me. And there's nothing worse than knowing someone is glaring at me, ready to pounce on something I did wrong. God is so faithful to point things out to me. But...I also appreciate when someone, in humbleness and in the fear of the Lord, approaches me with an exhortation - someone I know, love, and trust - who only wants my best. Nita did that for me once. It was a good thing.
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