Wanna be a Spiritual Leader… or rather not?

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being born again, church, dark night of the soul, experience, Jesus Christ, leadership, spiritual power, T.A. Sparks, the dark night of the spirit, the new self, the old self, true faith

Picture credits https://greglee.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/spiritual-leadership.jpg

It was certainly not my plan to write about spiritual leadership, but somehow I came across this topic on the internet and here you are. Having read some deliberations from T.A. Sparks on how God, not man (!), makes spiritual leaders, I thought I could arbitrarily excerpt some characteristics from his article and share them with you. Since God’s way is not man’s way, a spiritual leader is not necessarily a theologian who graduated from college and has been pastoring a church for many years. Most probably, you won’t find God’s man or woman tarrying with a crowd of clerics, all of them decorated with titles and honors. No, the man of God is not a prince in shining armor, just as his Lord Jesus Christ in His time on earth did not push himself to the fore. Quite the contrary. It was always the people that so often pressed around Him because they would be drawn by the Holy Spirit in Him. Let’s hear now what Sparks had to say as to what a spiritual leader who was called by God needs to go through and how he eventually sees God, himself, and his work for God.

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God’s Love vs. human love

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being born again, Bernard of Clairvaux, dark night of the soul, darkness, ecstasy, experience, eyes of the heart, following Jesus, God's love, heart, intimacy, Janet Ruffing, Jesus Christ, joy, Karl Rahner, mysticism, pain, sanctification, Sebastian Moore, spiritual power, the dark night of the spirit, the new self, the old self

His Love is Stronger than Death…
(Picture taken from http://guardthedoor.com/day-8-love-is-not-jealous/)

Am I able to love like God loves? No, never, and that won’t ever change. But I do know as soon as my old self has been completely died, I can.
How is that possible? The only hindrance to let God’s love fully flow through us and from us to others is the old Adam, the one who has not yet given up on trying to do God’s work, the one who has not yet stricken his colors and given into that painful process of dying to self whatever the cost. I do admit that cutting heart pains day and night are not fun, really. 😦 Yet Jesus didn’t promise us that circumcision of the heart by pruning our old and worthless branches would be all joy and pleasure. Instead, He called sanctification “the narrow way to life” which only a few were able to find during their lifetime. Our goal should be the one the apostle Paul by grace had already achieved as he described here,

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2:20 ESV)

The Dawning of the New Creation…

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being born again, dark night of the soul, darkness, eyes of the heart, God's love, joy, new creation, pain, the new self, the old self, the promised land, true faith

The Dawning of Wisdom
(Source http://www.theosophytrust.org)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor 5:17 ESV)

Have you ever realized that the new creation we are to be can only be found IN Him? I read that passage and others which speak about being IN Him over and over, but I felt there was still something missing regarding my interpretation of these Scriptures so that I could write about it more clearly. Although I have been feeling Christ IN me since 2008 without interruption – and sometimes before too – those periods of having been IN Him were always transient in nature. However, I hoped and believed that one day my life would be changed into a “24/7 experience” of being IN Him as well. Or in other words, what I am speaking of here is entering into His rest, entering the promised land, that means, being able to see the kingdom of God everywhere, having our spiritual senses that belong to our new heart completely opened. Being IN Christ is a condition where our perception of God and the world is completely changed. We perceive everything around us in a new light that can be both seen inside of us and outside of us in every created thing. To put it briefly, we are enabled to see God wherever we might be and whatever we might look at.

Suffering Stamps Out the Superficial Self

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being born again, dark night of the soul, experience, eyes of the heart, following Jesus, pain, the old self

The Suffering of Job
(Source http://www.identityfulfilled.com/the-suffering-of-job/

I want to begin this article with a quote from a brother who commented on my blog last year in December. Reading his words back then for the very first time, they really hit me and I felt they had come directly from God. Meanwhile I even saw that his whole comment has been a prophetic message for me. Here’s Dan Dailey’s comment.

Making Sense of Suffering

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being born again, dark night of the soul, darkness, Donald W. Ekstrand, experience, faith, following Jesus, God's love, pain

Hope in the Darkness
(Photo Credits http://abstract.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/562557/)

Since our all-knowing and sovereign God decided to usher me into deep darkness which is accompanied by much pain and suffering, I thought it would be a good idea to provide an excerpt from Dr. Donald W. Ekstrand that deals with the Hows and Whys of dark times in our lives.

God never lets us suffer because He likes to do that. However, in His great love He alone sees what kind of circumstances, afflictions or trials will be helpful for us to finally give up on ourselves and to only trust in Him. Despite serious pains in my heart and soul for some time now, I sense that a new form of faith which is no longer grounded on something that I could find in myself – since there is nothing that could ever make me jump for joy again – has begun to come to light right out of the darkness. I do not understand how it works, yet I have realized that faith, indeed, exclusively comes from God. We could never achieve true faith on our own.