Narrow Gates and Dark Sluggish Nights | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

I have not been particularly happy, spiritually, for the last couple of weeks, and I am not sure why.

I suppose as with weight gain (which, yay, I am tackling, having lost 6.5 pounds) or depression, there are a complex of reasons.

I blew it with a sweet lady who was working with us, and wrote a hurtful email. I took long to repent because I honestly could not see how else I could have reacted. And then I did see. I could have reacted in humility, and not in pride. Explain how things were making me feel rather than going on the attack.

Ah, not repenting. The heart becomes a stone. I remember a mentor saying that she got fed up of apologizing to her husband, and decided to stop apologising. And her heart become hard and cold.

And then, I am trying deferring–“submit to one another out of reverence to Christ,”–in a church relationship, which is new and unaccustomed behaviour for me. I guess I will just have to pray my way through this.

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Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. Matthew 7:13

What are these narrow gates into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God?

Perhaps we each have our own. Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts says her way of entering in was always giving thanks. Hmm. I have occasionally thanked God, while swimming, for everything lovely in the universe that I could think of, and got myself into an ecstatic state. But thanksgiving hasn’t been my gate, though I need to practise entering his gates with thanksgiving in my heart, entering his courts with praise.

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My gates are murder. And they usually work.

One is absolute surrender, the title of Andrew Murray’s brilliant book. Oh gosh, just the phrase makes me squirm, I am so far from it.

But God is merciful, and a master builder. A builder works methodically, beginning with firm foundations, and basement, working upwards, ending with the fancy, finishing touches. One thing at a time, and the most important first, generally: digging deep, laying firm foundations.

So fortunately, when I say, “My life is yours, have your own way,” it’s just a single thing which goes. He reminds me to spend more time with the children. Or reminds me that my blog is his; that my fitness efforts are his; that the group I am leading is his. That my writing is his. That I should give in on some petty issue on which Roy and I are waging war. Stop stressing, stop worrying, hand it over. Let him work.

Repentance is another narrow gate we have to wriggle and squirm through to enter into life. Again, one of God’s outstanding traits is his mercy. We don’t need to go through our lives with a lice comb to find what to repent of. We generally know. It could well be our area of current unease. For me, alas, it’s often a species of idolatry, getting over-obsessive about writing, or blogging or success or money, about other Gods before him.

Sometimes, the spiritual unease is simple estrangement. I haven’t read Scripture long or deeply for a while. I haven’t been immersed in those eternal salty seas. No wonder then, I gasp and pant like a beached whale longing for her native element.

Or I am running, in the way Jonah ingenuously says, “I am running away from the Lord.” No spectacular sin, really, just idolatry. Auto-pilot: wake up, read, blog, exercise, garden, hang out with family. Avoid getting face to face with Jesus, looking into the blazing eyes of him who dwells in the bush which blazes and is not consumed; avoid stepping onto his holy ground, for then I will have to bend, and remove my sandals, and who knows what He might say. The longer I drift pleasantly at sea, far away from him, the harder it is going to be to hear him send me off to Nineveh.

Yes, these are my narrow gates for entering the Holy of Holies: repentance, surrender, read scripture, hang out with God. Stop running.

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Are there short-cuts into the presence of God?

For me, listening to worship music of surrender and devotion awakens my sluggish, bored, grumbly, snarky heart and ushers me into holier realms. Matt Redman, Misty Edwards, Michael Card, Rich Mullins, Ernesto Rivera are some of my favourites. Or anything Celtic! Yeah, such joy in the spiritual life, I realize. Such joy! And I am missing it!

You know when you just simply get bored in your spiritual life. The monastics called it accidie. Spiritual sloth or sluggishness. Torpor. Though at a pinch, you can still talk the talk, while your heart says, “Shut up. Fraud.”

It scares me when that happens. I remember reading The Gospel of John around 2003-2004 and it was electrifying. I felt Jesus walked into my bedroom, early each morning, in his majesty and radiance. He spoke to me though that Gospel. Oh how alive it was!

But I am reading it now, and the words which were like an electric shock then, leading me into worship, are not quite as alive. My mind decodes and translates the words. Jesus says “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life,” and instead of worshipping, my mind says, “Okay, so I need not struggle about the balance of writing books and blogging. Or how to lose weight. Jesus is the light. And he will not let me walk in darkness. I will ask him what to do.” Nothing wrong with that, but it sure doesn’t beat worship.

So then, what are we going to do with this Anita, and her cold, dry, dull distracted heart?

I know what I am going to do. And it is, like almost all my spiritual solutions, a monastic solution. Benedict thought of it first.

Lectio Divina. Spiritual Reading. I read books written by men and women who have dwelt far more deeply in the holy places of the Most High.

George Mueller. Hudson Taylor. Bill Johnson. John Piper. Frederick Buechner. John Eldredge. Simon Ponsonby’s “More”. “Joy Unspeakable,” by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Dallas Willard. Richard Forster. Brother Lawrence. John Arnott. Oh, anything good about experiencing the Holy Spirit.

Ah! See what I was missing. See the joy I was missing. My heart starts beating faster. Excitement floods me again.

I read how Frank Laubach lived in the presence of Jesus though his Game with Minutes. Goodness, so living in the presence of God is that simple? All we have to do is train ourselves to pray through the day. I re-read the lovely books of my friend Paul Miller, Love Walked Among Us and A Praying Life, and my heart beats faster. I want to pray like that!

I browse through my spiritual bookshelves. The Filling of the Holy Spirit. Miracles. Grace, Forgiveness. Prophetic words for the ordinary woman—“all flesh.” Guidance in one’s work or writing. Discerning the will of God. Spiritual treasures: Rubies, diamonds, emeralds of joy and excitement. And here I am drearily reading Proverbs and Leviticus and they are not speaking to me.

I place my dry, distracted heart in the fire of these writers, and it is strangely warmed.

You have made my heart come alive again, dear spiritual writers, friends, forerunners on the Way. And for that, I thank you.

Yeah, indeed this is the way to live. As a child of the Father, hand in hand with Jesus, overflowing with the Holy Spirit, feasting on the bread of life. Allowing ancient vintners, the Trinity and other lovers of God to pour the bubbling wine of joy into my heart.

And I am made new again!