Beautiful front teeth

The Accuser always enjoys taking our doubts and needling us with them over and over. On pp. 150-151 of "The Sacred Romance," John Eldredge shares the story of his friend Mary, who felt very self-conscious about losing her front teeth during an accident in early adolescence.

Years later, she struggled to finally resolve the issue with dental caps. What should have been a simple procedure took weeks, then months. Appointment after appointment, the caps were either the wrong color, the wrong shape, or the wrong size. When she finally did get a pair that she could live with, the glue didn't hold. Where was the Sacred Romance in such a mundane and yet withering struggle? Why didn't God ride in as hero and provide a beautiful set of caps? Wouldn't that have been the loving thing to do? As the ordeal continued, a major issue of her heart surfaced. Mary's teeth had long been for her a symbol of her struggle with the question of her inner beauty. Her teeth were a source of shameful arrows lodged deep. A seemingly irrelevant nit that God refused to take away became an opportunity to face a fundamental question the heart of every woman asks: Am I lovely? Without the nit, the deeper issue of her heart would never have come up. Once it did, the real battle began.

The Accuser stepped in with a subtle, deadly stream of thoughts: 'Look, just settle for the wrong caps and get on with your life. Your desire for beauty is nothing more than vanity. Things will never change. God doesn't care for your heart or he would have taken care of your teeth.' And finally, 'This is who you really are: unlovely and unlovable.'

Each time Mary looked in the mirror, these sentences urged her to lose heart. Some days, the crisis felt as if it would crush her spirit; on other days, she just felt dumb. Meanwhile, Mary's false lovers took their cue and began offering to help her deal with the pain. Food promised to take away her heartache; busyness lured her to bury it beneath a deluge of Christian service. Even the faith practiced by the charismatic church she attends offered to lift her beyond the struggle if she would only focus on the Lord and worship more frequently.

Thankfully, her True Love was persistent in his pursuit of her heart, refusing to let her take the easy way out. The question of her inner beauty broke to the surface one day, and, fortunately, a friend with eyes for the Romance was there to help her see what was at stake. Once Mary finally turned and faced the core issue, God was able to speak words of loving reassurance: 'You are lovely, Mary, and I want you to offer your inner beauty, your womanly heart to the world.'

Mary's situation was another instance of God using our friends to connect with us.

Climbing Mount Everest

In John Eldredge's books, he often talks about climbing adventures. On pp. 216-217 of "Wild at Heart," Eldredge shares how God related climbing to the adventures in life:

In the past year or so I've made a number of decisions that make no sense unless there is a God and I am his friend. I left my corporate job and struck out on my own, following a dream I've long feared. I've picked up the shattered pieces of a vision I lost when my best friend and partner Brent was killed in a climbing accident. What feels most crazy of all, I've opened my self to friendship again and a new partner, and we're heading out where Brent and I left off. The battle has been intense; a steep ascent that's taking everything I've got. The stakes I'm playing at now are immense -- financially, sure, but more so spiritually, relationally. It's requiring a concentration of body, soul, and spirit I've never before endured.

What is perhaps the hardest part is the misunderstanding I live with from others on a daily basis. Sometimes the winds howl around me; other times I fear I'll fall. The other day I was feeling way out on the end of my rope, cutting a path across a sheer face of risk. Out of my heart rose a question. What are we doing, God?

We're climbing Everest.

Life indeed can be challenging, but we are bolstered when God is with us.

Finding God in the mountains

At one point in his life, author John Eldredge was trying to choose between going to graduate school

and accepting a high-paying job in Washington, D.C. On p. 202 of his book "Wild at Heart," Eldredge shares how God helped him to sort things out during a visit to the mountains:

Life makes more sense standing alone by a lake at high elevation with a fly rod in hand. The tentacles of the world and my false self seemed to give way as I climbed up into the Holy Cross Wilderness. On the second day God began to speak. John, you can take that job if you want to. It's not a sin. But it'll kill you and you know it. He was right; it has False Self written all over it. If you want to follow Me, he continued, I'm heading that way. I knew exactly what he meant -- 'that way' headed into wilderness, frontier. The following week three phone calls came in amazing succession. The first was from the Washington firm; I told them I was not their man, to call somebody else. As I hung up the phone my false self was screaming what are you doing?! The next day the phone rang again; it was my wife, telling me that the university had called wanting to know where my first tuition installment was. On the third day a call came from a longtime friend who had been praying for me and my decision. 'We think you ought to go to school,' he said. 'And we want to pay your way.'

Getting away from the busyness of life really can help us to slow down and contemplate decisions. I find the shores of Lake Superior particularly peaceful.

Becoming myself

God accepts us. He loves us. In the words of Stasi Eldredge, he "embraces us." By that, she means trusting God and "embracing the goodness of God's creative work in us."

Elredge recently shared in a letter from Ransomed Heart a touching experience with God:

About twenty years ago, I was at church and in a very low place. I felt hideously ugly. I was telling myself that I looked like Jabba the Hutt. (Not very nice words to say to oneself.) Kneeling in prayer, I asked God, 'How do you see me?' In my sanctified imagination, I immediately 'saw' a woman kneeling. The sun was filtering through the window and streaming a golden beam of light on her head. She was wearing a lovely fitted white satin dress. Her hair was softly yet ornately done up with seed pearls in it. She was beautiful, clearly held in the gaze of her God, and a Bride.

God saw Stasi as beautiful. And He sees all of us as beautiful. Read more of Stasi's work in her new book, "Becoming Myself: Embracing God's Dream of You."

Spiritual warfare and deeper communication with God

Sometimes I wonder what things in my life are spiritual warfare and what are not. On pp. 119-120 of "The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God," Brent Curtis writes how spiritual warfare brought deeper communication between him and God.

On the other hand, once we begin thinking of all the deceptions the enemy is about with regard to our lives, we have a tendency to become obsessed with him, fearful of what he is going to do next. Once we take him seriously, he switches from his tactic of 'I'm not here' to one of having us worry about him day and night, which is almost a form of worship. God graciously showed me this several years ago while I was in the midst of an intense, three-year spiritual battle on behalf of a client who had spent years in the control of a satanic cult.

One night, David (not his real name) called me on the phone at three in the morning, in the midst of painful spiritual torment. We talked and prayed and I began to read from the Psalms. Finally, I could hear by his deep breathing that he had fallen asleep. As I lay on my dining room floor, pondering whether to leave the phone off the hook and build up a huge phone bill or hang up and risk having the beeping of the phone-off-the-hook signal wake David, something wonderful and strange took place.

In my heart, I heard a voice say, 'Brent, forget about the battle. You're here with me now. Rest.' I looked up, actually expecting to see God in some way, or perhaps an angel. What I did see was the light in the room change. I find myself wanting to say it grew more distinct, almost more personal. I only know I discovered that my hand was raised in the air in worship. I didn't decide to raise it. I am not, by any means, an expressive person in the charismatic sense of the word. It was simply as if there was no other appropriate response and my hand acted accordingly. For several minutes I basked in what I can only describe now as God's warmth and love toward me. The epiphany ended with me reading the Twenty-third Psalm and others it seemed the Lord had chosen to assure me that I was not alone in the battle.

Through spiritual warfare, Satan tries to separate us from God. God, on the other hand, wants to draw us closer.

Psychology and religion

By having empathy for people, we can gain insight into how to pray for them. Take, for example, Gordon Dalbey's story from his book "No Small Snakes: A Journey Into Spiritual Warfare" (pp. 193-194):

I had tickets to hear a speaker on the subject of psychology and religion. During the break time, I happened to wander outside. Off to one side, I was surprised to spot the speaker leaning up against a wall, cigarette in hand, shaking noticeably. Instinctively, my heart went out to him, but I found myself too intimidated by such a personality to approach him.

Quickly I prayed for guidance, and an unexpected picture came to mind: a young boy with wings, flying upward, then plunging to the ground. I asked the Lord for understanding and at once remembered the Greek myth of Icarus, the boy whose father fashioned wax wings for him with which to reach the heavens; as he approached the sun, however, his wings melted, and he plummeted to his death. Icarus could be seen as a pagan example of the prototype Adam, who aspired to be like God and fell into sin -- and therefore death -- by eating the forbidden fruit.

I decided to bind a spirit of pride over the speaker, then pray for humility within and protection without. A few years later, I read a newspaper interview in which that speaker discussed circumstances under which it might be 'helpful' for a therapist to have sex with a client.

Today, I would be more likely to continue praying for him, and if that same word of danger through pride persisted, I would make an effort to contact him, simply to pass on the warning as I had received it, allowing him to draw his own conclusions. That night, however, I was aware only of a special alertness in my spirit and a sense of power as I prayed for the speaker.

After I had finished praying for the anxious speaker, I felt as if I had done such as a good job that I wanted to celebrate and even reward myself. The others with me at the event were going for pizza afterward, and I prayed, 'What about it, Lord?' The only sense I received was, 'Good job, My son! Enjoy!' And so I did, having several slices.

Dalbey provides an excellent example of someone in tune with the Lord.

Finding purpose in life

For many people, finding your purpose in life is challenging. John Eldredge, on pp. 200-201 of his book "Wild at Heart," shares a story about how God communicated to him related to his life's purpose:

Several years ago I was thumbing through the introduction of a book when I ran across a sentence that changed my life. God is intimately personal with us and he speaks in ways that are peculiar to our own quirky hearts -- not just through the Bible, but through the whole of creation. To Stasi he speaks through movies. To Craig he speaks through rock and roll (he called me the other day after listening to 'Running Through the Jungle' to say he was fired up to go study the Bible). God's word to me comes in many ways -- through sunsets and friends and films and music and wilderness and books. But he's got an especially humorous thing going with me and books. I'll be browsing through a secondhand book shop when out of a thousand volumes one will say, 'Pick me up' -- just like Augustine in his 'Confessions.' Tolle legge -- take up and read. Like a master fly fisherman God cast his fly to this cruising trout. In the introduction to the book that I rose to this day, the author (Gil Bailie) shares a piece of advice given to him some years back by a spiritual mentor:

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs in people who have come alive.

I was struck dumb. It could have been Balaam's donkey, for all I was concerned. Suddenly my life up till that point made sense in a sickening sort of way; I realized I was living a script written for me by someone else. All my life I had been asking the world to tell me what to do with myself. This is different from seeking counsel or advice; what I wanted was freedom from responsibility and especially freedom from risk.

We cannot rely on others to tell us who we should be. We need to rely on God and his plans for us.