What is Spiritual Direction in the 21st Century? Part 1

While the question sounds simple, there are many possible answers. For a Christian, all forms of spiritual direction have developed out of the day-in, day-out, relationship that Jesus shared with His twelve disciples.

With nothing more than three years of constant exposure to His life, works, and words, the twelve (actually just eleven) soon became known as those who turned the then-known world upside-down.

Today, spiritual direction can happen via iPhone, text chat, email, mp3, video or audio, ebooks, web sites, books on paper, magazine articles, lectures or sermons, seminars and conferences, retreats and many other ways too numerous to list. But while we can take advantage of technological breakthroughs and online tools for virtually instant communication, there is still no substitute for the life-on-life, face-to-face, heart-to-heart in-person conversations first modeled by Jesus.

Christ’s followers in the 21st century, meeting over coffee, breakfast or lunch, sharing a park bench, or taking a walk or a cross-country trip together, can still plant seeds that will have world-changing results.

These men and women share a common purpose (promoting spiritual growth that encourages the formation of Christ in us—the lifelong goal of becoming more like Him in all of our attitudes, words, relationships, works and actions).

We will pray together and for one another. We will read, study, reflect and share the results of what we learn through our personal discoveries in and by our personal applications of the Word of God. We will encourage one another. We will learn together and grow together. We will do this person-to-person. We will give and receive spiritual direction as peers, mentors, disciplemakers, pastors, teachers, trainers and friends in Christ.

We will often do this one-on-one (men discipling men; women discipling women), sometimes three individuals will meet together in this way, and a small group of 5 to 7 can also provide the accountability and discipline and growth towards a more Christ-centered common life that our world needs to see practiced by Christ’s followers.

If you give direction, encouragement, or counsel, to brothers or sisters in Christ, be sure to do it in reliance upon the Spirit of Christ in you:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

“The Counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 14:26).

What is Spiritual Direction in the 21st Century? Part 2

According to Evelyn Underhill “It is the guidance of one soul by and through another soul. It is the individual and intensive side of pastoral work. God comes to and affects individuals very largely through other individuals . . . Direction work can, of course, be done only and all the time in absolute interior dependence on God; and all the most valuable part of it will be done silently, by the influence of your prayer on the souls that you are called upon to guide.”

Underhill reminds her readers that each person’s spiritual personality is unique: “the spiritual personality you are helping to form is probably quite different from your own; and perhaps even different from your own secret ideal for it . . . It needs a great deal of self-abandonment to do all this with simplicity—it means learning from those who come to you as well as trying to teach—and that is the purifying part of personal religious work.

“Moreover those who do this work are commonly themselves growing and changing; they have not arrived, but are traveling and exploring as they go. It is generally a case of one more or less dusty pilgrim helping another . . .

“This is where a strict personal training in mental prayer and spiritual reading abundantly justifies itself. You may not yourself be called to the mountains; but you will be more able to advise and understand prospective mountaineers if you have at least put on heavy boots and tried a little hill-climbing, than if you have merely spent all your time on the level growing nice little patches of devotional mustard and cress.

“It is imperative that those called to guide the souls of others, should themselves be humble pupils in the school of interior prayer.”

(Quotations from Concerning The Inner Life, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 1999, pages 84-85, 90-92)

Remembering Gutenberg's Artistry

Last month we journeyed to Southern California to attend the 41^st version of the California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Los Angeles over the weekend of February 15—17^th.

Nearly 200 dealers from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Argentina, and Australia display samples of every kind of book imaginable. “Overwhelming” best describes the impact of spending a few hours wandering and browsing among these treasures. The next day we added an impromptu visit to the nearby Huntington Library.

This unique Library displays one of 12 copies of the 42-line Gutenberg Bible (regarded as the first book printed with moveable type by Johann Gutenberg around 1452 to 1455).

Truly amazing to see a book made over 500 years ago. Here’s a kind of contemporary tribute to Gutenberg’s pioneering accomplishments from some 20^th Century artisans:

Reading Our Family History

As our friend Evelyn Underhill writes, “the proper feeding of our own devotional life must . . . include the rightful use of spiritual reading.

“Spiritual reading is, or at least it can be, second only to prayer as a developer and support of the inner life . . . It should not be confined to Scripture, but should also include at least the lives and writings of the canonized and uncanonized saints.

“If we do it properly, such reading is a truly social act. It gives us not only information, but communion . . . with the great souls of the past, who are the pride and glory of the Christian family. Studying their lives and work slowly and with sympathy, reading the family history, the family letters; trying to grasp the family point of view, we gradually discover these people to be in origin though not in achievement very much like ourselves.

“They are people who are devoted to the same service, handicapped often by the very same difficulties; and yet whose victories and insights humble and convict us . . . The Confessions of St. Augustine, the Life of St Teresa, the little book of Brother Lawrence, the Journals of Fox, Woolman and Wesley—the meditative, gentle, receptive reading of this sort of literature immensely enlarges our social and spiritual environment.

“It is one of the ways in which the communion of saints can be most directly felt by us.

“In the saints we always have the bracing society of keen Christians . . . Their personal influence radiates, centuries after they have left the earth, reminding us of the infinite variety of ways in which the Spirit of God acts on people through people . . .

“The saints are the great experimental Christians, who, because of their unreserved self-dedication, have made the great discoveries about God, and, as we read their lives and works, they will impart to us just so much of these discoveries as we are able to bear. Indeed, as we grow more and more, the saints tell us more and more: disclosing at each fresh reading secrets that we did not suspect.

“Their books are the work of specialists, from whom we can humbly learn more of God and of our own souls” (Concerning The Inner Life, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 1999, page 54-56).

Breathe Out.

After breathing in it’s natural to breathe out. For those who pray, short “arrow prayers” are often the equivalent of exhaling. In Pray How to Be Effective in Prayer by Warren and Ruth Myers (NavPress, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1983, pages 111-115), the Myers note that “Short, concise payers offered anytime, anywhere are both scriptural and immensely useful.”

“We have had similar experiences with prayers which, like arrows quickly shot from a bow toward a target, are shot toward heaven for immediate help, guidance, or protection, or in response to special prompting.”

“We can use arrow prayers to intercede for others, even strangers,” writes Warren Myers. “Many times when I pass a person on the street or see someone on a bus, the Lord prompts me to pray that the person might come to know Him or have a special need met. Though we seldom learn of specific answers to such prayers, God hears them.”

“Nehemiah was a master of such prayers. While he was serving as cupbearer for Artaxerxes, ruler of the Persian Empire, he received the distressing news that the wall of Jerusalem had been broken down and the gates had been burned. Later, when King Artaxerxes unexpectedly asked Nehemiah to state his request regarding Jerusalem, he quickly ‘prayed to the God of heaven,” then answered the King. Later in Jerusalem, when enemies tried to frighten Nehemiah and his men to prevent them from rebuilding the city wall, his emergency prayer was, ‘But now, O God, strengthen my hands.’ Nehemiah concluded his book with a brief cry to God that he often used, with variations: ‘Remember me, O my God for good.’”

The so-called “prayer of aspirations” is the technical term used by old school writers like Evelyn Underhill to describe arrow prayers more formally “The frequent and attentive use of little phrases of love and worship . . . keep our minds pointing the right way, and never lose their power of forming and maintaining in us an adoring temper of soul . . . They stretch and re-stretch our spiritual muscles; and, even in the stuffiest surroundings can make us take deep breaths of mountain air. The habit of aspiration is difficult to form, but once acquired exerts a growing influence over the soul’s life” (Concerning the Inner Life, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 1999, pages 52-53).

In other words: practice, practice, practice. Pray. Breathe Out.

Breathe In.

Writing on “The Goals of Inner Life” Evelyn Underhill asserts that “adoration, and not intercession or petition must be the very heart of the life of prayer.” Although we often use the acronym ACTS—Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication—as a prescription for personal prayer, we seldom gain a clear understanding of what adoration really means.

Underhill expands our understanding when she writes movingly that prayer “must begin, end, and be enclosed in the atmosphere of adoration; aiming at God for and in Himself. Our ultimate effect as transmitters of the supernal light and love directly depends on this adoring attentiveness. In such a prayer of adoring attentiveness, we open our doors wide to receive His ever-present Spirit . . .” We seldom practice this kind of adoration when we pray. But our need to learn how to pray prayers of adoration is as necessary to maintaining a healthy spiritual life as breathing in is essential to our physical life.

“Only when our souls are filled to the brim can we presume to offer spiritual gifts to other people. The remedy for that sense of impotence, that desperate spiritual exhaustion which religious workers too often know, is, I am sure, an inner life governed not by petition but by adoring prayer. When we find that the demands made upon us are seriously threatening our inward poise, when we feel symptoms of starvation and stress, we can be quite sure that it is time to call a halt . . . ‘Our hearts shall have no rest save in Thee.’ It is only when our hearts are thus actually at rest in God, in peaceful and self-oblivious adoration, that we can hope to show His attractiveness to other people.

“Thus it is surely of the first importance for those who are called to exacting lives of service, to determine that nothing shall interfere with the development and steady daily practice of loving and adoring prayer, a prayer full of intimacy and awe. It alone maintains the soul’s energy and peace, and checks the temptation to leave God for His service. I think that if you have only as little as half an hour to give each morning to your private prayer, it is not too much to make up your minds to spend half that time in such adoration.

“For it is the central service asked by God of human souls and its neglect is responsible for much lack of spiritual depth and power” (Concerning The Inner Life, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 1999, pages 47-50).

O come let us adore Him. Pray. Breathe In.

Personal Spiritual Fitness

How’s your progress with your New Year resolutions? Did you make any?

The gyms are full of newcomers this month, and we have to wait longer than usual for an open treadmill or elliptical trainer. Most people set goals for physical fitness, but what about your personal spiritual fitness? Are you in training? Have you set any goals to maintain or improve your personal spiritual fitness?

The first priority for a minister, writes Evelyn Underhill, is that “his own inner life should be maintained in a healthy state; his own contact with God be steady and true”

It isn’t just the career minister who needs a strong inner life. Paul encouraged every Christian to grow in faith: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:16-17). You may be the only “minister” or “religious worker” that your neighbors, friends, or colleagues ever know. As Evelyn Underhill wrote, you are one of the “assistant shepherds.”

So if you are a layman or woman who does the work of ministry—counseling, encouraging, teaching, or discipling others—you must become spiritually fit.

“The soul of a priest—in fact, the soul of every religious worker—stands in a special relation towards God and other souls . . . He is one of the assistant shepherds, not one of the sheep. He has got to stick it out in all weathers; to be always ready, always serving, always eager to feed and save. An unremitting, patient, fostering care, the willing endurance of exhaustion, hardship, and risk: all these things may be asked of him. He is constantly called upon to give out spiritual energy and sympathy. And he has got to maintain his own supplies, his own religious health and suppleness, in a manner adequate to that demand; so to deepen his own life, that he is capable of deepening the lives of others. In the striking phrase of St. Bernard, if he is adequately to fulfill all his obligations, he must be a reservoir and not a canal” (Concerning The Inner Life, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 1999, pages 13-14).