| << | Contents | >> |
Spirit-Led Identity Change
The previous chapter described the human heart as a battlefield, and I wrote that I had lost ground in my battle. In this chapter I will tell how I retook the ground.
I remember one set of events in particular that stands out as an example. It occurred while I was in college in the late 1970s. As the “cloud of demons” pressed me with accusations, more and more unresolved guilt piled up over time. I was faced with a decision: What should I do with all of the past circumstances in which I still felt compelled to publicly confess small potential sins? Should I try to relieve my guilt by going back and confessing them all? Or should I continue to consider the guilt to be a lie and resist it?
As I considered this, I realized I was confused about how I should handle my conscience. Here is a quote from the second volume of Watchman Nee’s The Spiritual Man that shows both the sort of teaching that confused me and why I am not fond of the first and second volumes:
…A believer should not walk according to reason nor do whatever is reasonable; rather, he should do the will of God as revealed in the intuition. Whenever the believer rebels against the moving of the intuition, the conscience will speak out to condemn. Although explanations by way of reason may satisfy the mind, they are not sufficient to satisfy the conscience. Once the conscience has condemned a certain matter, it will never accept any reasoning or stop condemning until the matter is removed. …[2]
Statements like the above left me susceptible to the condemning voices pressing in on me. Those voices were all about telling me I couldn’t trust my reason. They claimed that they were the Holy Spirit speaking through my conscience, enlightened by “the will of God as revealed in the intuition”. They said that they wouldn’t leave because “once the conscience has condemned a certain matter, it will never accept any reasoning or stop condemning until the matter is removed”.
It wasn’t until I studied theology and philosophy many years later that I was able to come up with a workable theory about why I found Watchman Nee’s statements so confusing. I suspect he was using the word ‘reason’ according to a definition he was raised with. I am not sure exactly what that definition was, but borrowing an example from my own childhood, he might have been using a definition based on a philosophy like pragmatism. According to pragmatism, to be reasonable is to be practical.
For example, consider how pragmatism would play out during times of persecution and martyrdom (which Watchman Nee faced). A reasonable person (according to pragmatism) would take care of their basic need for safety and choose to disobey God rather than stand firm in the face of violence. That would be the practical (or reasonable) choice.
According to Jesus, however, to follow this definition of “being reasonable” would be wrong (Matthew 5:10-12). We should instead choose to endure persecution for His sake.
My confusion came from the fact that I didn’t use a definition of the word ‘reason’ based on pragmatism or a similar philosophy. I defined it to be the ability to use logic to come to a conclusion. Most importantly, I considered myself reasonable when I applied the words of the Bible to my life. I reasoned, “If God is real, the only good choice is to obey Him no matter how impractical that might seem.”
When I plugged my definition of reason into Watchman Nee’s statement that I should not use reason to contradict my conscience, his words seemed to say that it was dangerous to use my mind and will to apply the truths of the Bible. Instead, I needed some sort of “spiritual experience” in my intuition to raise me above mere logic.
Going back to the example of persecution, it wasn’t enough to obey Jesus in the face of pain and death simply because the Bible told me to. That could be my mind and will plotting out a path based on my natural ability to read and make decisions. I needed God to show up in some way that made my decision more than a simple choice of faith based on His word.
This conclusion put me in an odd position where it felt unspiritual to follow spiritual principles. My obedience had to be more prophetic than that. (When I use the term ‘prophetic’ in this book, I am speaking about times when we sense the Holy Spirit is speaking directly to our hearts. He gives us a message that we conclude did not come from our own thinking.[3])
Unfortunately, a dependance on prophetic experiences left me unable to act without them, and the resulting passivity opened the door for counterfeits. These counterfeits compelled me to act in ways that my mind considered useless and fanatical. Yet it felt unspiritual to use my mind to resist them, so I became paralyzed by indecision – waiting for God to hit me with His Spirit in some way that would pretty much make the decision for me.
I eventually realized that God wasn’t going to touch me in this way, and I gradually gained the courage to use my mind to apply what the Bible taught about my conscience. I stood on the fact that it did not describe my conscience as a totally accurate source of truth. Instead, it said that my conscience would approve or condemn my behavior based on what I thought I knew.
If my knowledge was right, my conscience would be also; if my knowledge was wrong, my conscience would follow suit. Seeing this slowly birthed in me the confidence I needed to stand up to “the voices.”
Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.
However, there is not in everyone that knowledge; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.
In this scripture, we see that if we truly understand the truth about food offered to an idol, we know that there is nothing wrong with eating it, and our conscience will not condemn us. There is only one God, the Father, so an idol is just a statue, and there is no sin in eating food killed before a statue. On the other hand, if we believe that an idol is really a god, we see the food as a part of the worship of that god. In that case, to eat would be to participate in idolatry, and our conscience would condemn us.
What stood out to me about this scripture was that my conscience was not an infallible judge. It was only a help to remind me of whether I was acting in a way that was consistent with my beliefs. I concluded that my conscience was not a prophetic reflection of the will of God. It could be totally convinced it was right and still be wrong.
The guilt I had experienced was tied to my confusion over how I should discern truth. Because I was looking for the Holy Spirit to give me an obviously prophetic experience to show me what to believe, when that experience didn’t show up, my conscience had been left in limbo. I couldn’t apply principles to my life and make solid decisions that would stand against “the voices.” I didn’t feel I had enough input to build a case against their accusations, so my emotions remained vulnerable to their attacks.
Based on this insight, I decided I needed to actively guide my conscience with good knowledge. I needed to spell out what my convictions were based on solid evidence. So I sat down and looked at each circumstance about which I felt guilty, and I honestly decided based on principles of truth whether I should confess to other people or not.
Then if I choose to confess, I refused to second guess that decision, and if I choose not to confess, I did the same. I was open to new knowledge that might change my mind, but I would resist changing my mind simply because some message from the spiritual world told me I needed to.
As I stood my ground in this way, the demons gradually retreated.
I was doing the opposite of what my naïve reading of Watchman Nee’s words told me. Rather than submitting reason to my conscience, I was using reason to guide my conscience (not reason based in an ungodly philosophy, of course, but reason defined to be the ability to logically apply truth).
Doing so often felt like a “natural” approach. There wasn’t a great sense of power behind it, so I didn’t feel like I was being transformed by the Holy Spirit. Yet this was because I didn’t know what it meant to be transformed by Him. I expected it to feel like a great time of worship. When it instead felt like an effort, I had to press on in faith that He was working in spite of what I felt.
What evidence did I have that the Holy Spirit was working? The evidence was that the demons gradually fled. They don’t do that without the Spirit’s work.
…Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? …But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.
The whole trial gave me a key piece of how God was going to transform my identity: I was going to learn to be led by the Holy Spirit in ways that were different than I expected. For example, as I obeyed what I read in the Bible, I had to trust that He was moving whether I felt some grand spiritual experience or not. Then when my choices led to growing obedience, I would consider this to be evidence that the He was the one accomplishing the work.
Only He could raise me above the sinfulness of my flesh (Romans 8:2-8, 12-14). In addition, since my natural mind could not understand the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14), if I gained understanding, it was a sign that He was the one that was giving it to me (2 Timothy 2:7). He was equipping me for every good work through the words of the Bible:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
As Watchman Nee taught in the third volume of The Spiritual Man, I was learning to actively use my mind and will as I served God. I still benefited from more obviously prophetic experiences, but I didn’t passively rely on them to drive me forward. Instead, I took it by faith that Jesus was manifesting Himself to me in His time and way as I did my part to learn and keep His commandments.
If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth…. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.
(John 14:15-17, 21)
Search Comments
This page has been visited 0004 times.
| << | Contents | >> |
10 per page