"Only in Christ, only as filled with the Holy Spirit and in
completest surrender to Him, do men and women really find themselves, and
express themselves with the truest freedom and most complete power.”
-Roland Allen
Observe the Fight Between Your Body and Your Mind:
There are several life lessons that can be learned from running. If you
don’t believe me, get up right now and go for a 3 mile run and tell me about
your experience afterwards. Rigorous exercise, like running, seems to
bring out something that is deep within us to the surface. There is a
tremendous amount that I learned about human nature as a cross country runner
in High School. You learn real fast what it means to be divided within
yourself, as your mind tells you to go a little bit faster and a little bit
longer while your body is screaming at you to “Stop, lay down, and rest!”
Oftentimes, if we are truly observant we will find that there are several
occasions throughout the course of daily life where the mind and the body seem to
be at odds with one another, even to the point of battling one another.
Rigorous exercise seems to be one of those things that brings this underlying
battle to the surface more rapidly than most other activities in our daily
experience….most, not all. More on that in a minute.
Do you not find this to be the case with you? How many times have
you set your mind to do something but your body/desires have led you somewhere
else…or, worse yet, nowhere at all? This sort of thing can be a daily
experience for us in a variety of ways throughout the course of our
lives. Actually, it can be a source of great frustration and even
depression for many of us because we can come to feel as though we cannot
control who we are and what we are doing. We can begin to feel enslaved
by the things we do which we don’t want to do. We all have experienced
what the apostle Paul said about his former way of life in his letter to the
Romans:
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do
not do, but what I hate I do.”
-Romans 7:15
Brother Donkey:
I am reminded of something that St. Francis of Assissi once taught. He
called his body “Brother Donkey” because, even though his mind seemed to be
steering him in the right direction, his body was as stubborn as a donkey and
would not follow his mind in route. It was always doing things that he
didn’t want it to do.
Christians With No Answers:
Although this is a battle that seems to constantly ensue in all of us (we all
have our donkeys) I have found that throughout my 11 years as a Christian, the
Church has had a very limited amount to say in this area. Call it
whatever you want, it seems to me as though the Church has been quite negligent
on its teachings about: the heart vs. the head, the mind vs. the desires,
reason vs. passion, head vs. donkey…etc. Now, I don’t want to come across
as a dualist because I am not one. We should do what we can to steer
clear of viewing human nature in deeply fragmented ways. However, we
should not fear addressing the divisions that various stirrings of the desires
and of the mind cause within us.
In my experience Christians tend to side with one of two views whenever it
comes to this inner struggle. Either you attempt to get rid of “passion” all
together and live a desire-less life, because desire and passion lead you down
the wrong road and muddle your thinking...or you admit to yourself that these
things are natural to our humanity and, therefore, there is nothing that we can
do about it anyway…so, live it up. You can be as rational and as
clear-headed as you want to be, but you will always succumb to your “natural” desires
in the end within this line of thinking.
So, either Jesus will love you even though you’ve transformed yourself into a
soul-less, passionless automaton or He will love you regardless of how many
“oops-es” you allow yourself to have and justify yourself in having.
I may be poking fun here more than I should, but both views seem to miss the
point so drastically. I mean, are my only two options as a Christian man
in this world in attempting to make sense of the struggle that apparently
occurs between my brain and my body to either: rid myself of anything and
everything that evokes emotion from me, or to simply say “everything is
permissible,” even though I know such thinking will make a slave of me.
Is there not a better way of looking at things? A way in which
acknowledges the fact that letting my desires run wherever they may is not the
best thing for me but a way that doesn’t want to make me less of a human being
in the process? I am reminded here of something that N.T. Wright has
written in his book, “Following Jesus”:
“The human emotions, especially those of falling in love, are so wonderfully
important that an entire book of the Bible is devoted to exploring and
celebrating them. It would be bizarre if following the Jesus who made more
wine for a wedding meant automatically renouncing alcohol and sex.”
Sexual Urges: Where the Mind and the Body Most Frequently Combat
One Another:
The Christian notion of sexuality is where we are going to turn to next.
The problem is that, for most of us, this is where the mind vs. body battle
continuously and forcefully rages on within us. This is most likely
where the “brother donkey” within us is most stubborn of all. Here, many
of us stand with our donkey but with no clue as to how to “tame” it. Perhaps
many Christians in this day and age feel as though they are fumbling on this
issue of what to do because the Church has had the tendency to either demonize
all aspects of sexuality or, the opposite, fully condone all aspects of sexuality.
Many people find themselves straddling two worldviews at the same time while
hoping that whenever the divide widens too much, they will fall somewhere in between, upon a happy medium avoiding both extremes. As a result,
many people have a foggy sense of what they are against (sexually)…but many are
without a clue of what they are “for.” Furthermore, the Church is very
frequently guilty of teaching people more about what to stand against as
opposed to what we, as the Church and human beings, should be standing
for.
What We Should Be “For”:
While many in the Church today are preoccupied with telling the donkey, “don’t
do this…and don’t do that,” my mind is more preoccupied with what we are train
our donkey to do, as opposed to not to do.
The book of Jude is a very interesting read if you have never read it.
What I really like about Jude is that he does not beat around the bush.
He starts his letter off by admitting to his readers that, although he wanted
to write a lot about the salvation in which they share, he felt compelled to
address another issue: sexual immorality in the church and in the culture.
While he says a lot of things about those who are practicing the sexual
immorality that he is talking about (he is very adamant about what he, and the
church, should be against), he elaborates in a very powerfully driven point
what Christians should be “for.”
“But you, beloved, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith by
praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the
mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”
Even though I use the TNIV translation most of the time, I modified this
version a bit (modified words in bold). I wasn’t quite happy with the
wording and felt as though this is more accurate to the Greek New
Testament.
What does this have to do with sex and lust? Well, read the passage (or
the whole letter) before this passage and you will see that Jude is contrasting
the actions of those who are not only immoral, but adamant in their sexual
immorality. “These people do this and live this way…you are to do this
and live this way,” is what he is aiming at here.
The Goal:
The goal which Jude tells these people, and us, to shoot for is to keep
ourselves in God’s love. He is not simply saying, “believe in God’s
love,” but is telling them that God’s love is something that they should be
already experiencing in a very real way throughout the course of their daily
lives and that His love is something that they should make a conscious effort
to remain “in.” That, if they are not careful, they will do things that
would remove themselves from His love.
The Means:
How are we, then, to keep ourselves in God’s love? Jude tells us to build
ourselves up in our most holy faith.
The Means For The Means:
How, then, are we to build ourselves up in our most holy faith in order to keep
ourselves in the love of God? Jude gives us the most important answer of
all here: “by praying in the Holy Spirit.”
Now, I am…and I am not one of those guys that believes that prayer is the
answer to everything. While I truly believe that prayer is the most
important thing that anybody can do, I have to agree with E.M. Bounds on this
one that: “Not all praying is prayer.” In other words, there is a manner
in which we can pray in which we negate actual prayer, itself.
Furthermore, there is a tremendous distinction between presenting your “to do”
list before God and actually “praying in the Spirit.” The two are not
automatically synonymous by any stretch of the imagination. Prayer that
just involves you talking (whether out loud or in your mind; prayer that does
not involve you proactively seeking God’s face with the entirety of your being,
is not true prayer.
Prayer that just casually lists off things that the person desires God to do
for them is not prayer by the very definition of what the word “prayer” means.
People who diminish prayer down to a few recited lines or a casual offering of
various numerous words should not be surprised in the least by the fact that
their prayers go unattended to and that they remain in constant enslavement to
their lusts and sinful desires…for they have not truly prayed. If they
have not truly prayed, what makes them think that God will truly listen?
The word for prayer that is most common in the New Testament is
“proseuche.” It is a word that is composed of two words, “pros” and
“euche.” “Pros” is a word that denotes intimacy and adoration.
“Pros” means being towards and immediately before something or someone.
In nearly all places in the New Testament whenever the word “pros” is used, it
denotes a closeness, and intimacy.
The second word, “euche,” is a word that denotes the idea of “sacrificing
something of value in order to gain a favorable answer from God.”
Traditionally, the person would make a vow, sacrificing something in hopes that
God would hear their cry and grant their request. Even though we can dive
further into this word, I think enough has been said at this point to move
forward.
Whenever you put “pros” and “euche” together, there are two important features
that show up in their composition of “proseuche.” First, that prayer is
about intimacy and closeness with God. It in not just words mumbled to a
far off deity but it is the true understanding that God is with us throughout
our daily lives and in our daily affairs, and that we should seek union with
Him…we should seek Him, Himself. Second, prayer is about sacrifice.
It means sacrificing the self in order to gain Him. It means sacrificing,
not just something, but everything to gain Him. The very act of praying is
in fact a hardship we must endure to gain union with God. It, whenever
practiced rightly, is a form of sacrifice as it cuts into our time, our energy,
and most often cuts against the grain of our “natural” desires.
Prayer is about sacrificially and fervently seeking God. Without
this aspect, again, it is not true prayer. Now you see why not all
praying is true prayer.
Back to Jude:
How do we withstand sexual temptation and keep ourselves in the love of
God? By praying. Really praying. By “praying in the Spirit,”
as he has worded it. Jude understands very well that whenever Jesus told
His disciples that the “Holy Spirit would come on them with power,” He wasn’t
playing around. There is a real power in being united to God through the
presence of the Holy Spirit, understanding that the Holy Spirit can do nothing
but empower. We are to pray so that we can keep ourselves in the Spirit
so that He can build up faith in us so that He can keep us in the love of
God.
Suffice it to say, those who are habitually engaged in sexual sin are those who
are not truly praying in the Spirit and have not been for quite some
time. This is the main issue at hand. This is another case where
you cannot serve two masters. In this case the sexual-habitual sin,
itself, reveals who the true lord of those engaged in it really is.
The apostle Paul spells out something rather important in this light for us in
Romans 1:
“22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look
like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to sexual
impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They
exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created
things rather than the Creator.”
It is important that we note this. Moral perversion (i.e. sexual
immorality) is the result of God’s wrath, not the reason for it. Listen
to what Richard Hays has to say on the matter:
“Paul is not warning his readers that they will incur the wrath of God if they
do the things that he lists here; rather, speaking in Israel’s prophetic
tradition, he is presenting an empirical survey of rampant human lawlessness as
evidence that God’s wrath and judgment are already at work in the world.”
-The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pg 385
Prolonged sexual immorality is a symptom, not the disease itself. Many
people look eagerly for some sort of method by which they can attempt to
overcome the enslavement of their lusts…and most will find it somewhat trivial
for someone to say that there is no true method, but that only prayer is the
answer. Where methods only to treat the symptoms will fail to cure the
disease, we look to find the cure for the disease itself. Jude tells that
praying, proseuche, is what builds up our immunity to the disease because it
keeps us in God’s love.
If someone feels enslaved by their sexual lust, they need to understand first
and foremost that the lust itself is a symptom of God’s wrath…or, to put it
another way, God’s absence.
Whenever Paul says in Romans 1:24 that God “gave them over” to their lusts it
means that God gave them over to another lordship. They wanted nothing to
do with Him, so he let go of them, literally. That, once they were under
His love, headship and lordship…now they have both desired and fallen to the
lordship of their own futile sinful passions and lusts. The most literal
translation of “gave them over” is “to give into the hands of another, to
deliver up one to custody.” Whenever Jude tells his readers to keep
themselves in God’s love, he doesn’t want what Paul is talking about in Romans
1:24 to happen to them. He wants them to remain under God’s love and
care, not the cruel tyranny and custody of their own lusts.
Here, again, we see that the solution and the problem is prayer. Jude tells us
to find true passion, true love and wholeness by finding and/or remaining in
the love of God by seeking Him wholeheartedly through prayer. For Jude,
God’s love is the real thing…the thing that will truly satisfy us, while the
lusts of our own hearts are just cheap imitations.
Proseuche: Desires Transformed by the Renewing of the
Mind:
So, what do we do about that pesky head vs. heart, mind vs. body issue?
Here, I want to draw out one final verse before we close up; Romans 12:1-2
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s
mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to
God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern
of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
To me, this is what happens whenever proseuche takes root. Allow me to
elaborate: I am an avid believer of what happens in prayer spills out into
daily life. If we distance ourselves from God by not remaining in prayer,
we should not be surprised if we feel as though our spiritual lives are
incredibly weak. However, if we learn how to pray regularly and daily,
seeking His face and sacrificing our own time just to be with Him, we will find
ourselves fervently seeking Him and sacrificing ourselves for Him in all
situations…for the Holy Spirit has trained us to do so during our times of
prayer and adoration.
To me, Romans 12:1-2 is what bleeds out of a person who has learned to pray in
a proseuche sort of way; in the true way of prayer. They will offer their
bodies to God in order to please Him. Through prayer, and by the grace of
God, their bodies and lusts are something they have gained control over…they
offer it up because they are capable of doing so. Catch the Biblical
imagery here…even though God had once given them over to their own bodily
lusts, they have now learned to control those lusts and offer there bodies...in
fact give...their bodies back to God. The Holy Spirit has freed them to do
so in and through prayer. In fact the Greek word here for “offer” even
denotes a sense of intimacy, a sense of placing oneself before another, just as
the word “pros” does in proseuche. Again, what happens in prayer will
bleed out into all aspects of life.
By setting their minds to pray, regardless of what their bodily desires
suggest, they have learned to be transformed by the renewing of their minds…for
their bodily desires have now become subservient to a mind fixated on
prayer. I hesitated saying all of these things this way out of a fear of coming across
overly dualistic, but I think you catch my drift.
The next article that I write will be something along the lines of how to pray
in holistic ways, so that the mind and body, the entire self, is engaged in the
act of worship. Furthermore, I will talk about how to guard the prayerful
mind against temptation. As always, though, I wanted to make sure that
the necessary first step in overcoming temptation and sexual lusts is truly
addressed, which is why I have labored on about prayer in the manner that I
did. Why? Because, no one should forget Jesus’ own words:
“Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
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