Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

“Who Am I?” a poem by Bonhoeffer; Spurgeon on how to lead a Bible Study, and other fascinating links

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1  Who am I ? by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!

Written March 4th, 1946.


Let us, dear brethren, try to get saturated with the gospel. I always find that I can preach best when I can manage to lie a-soak in my text.
I like to get a text, and find out its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down in it, and let it soak into me.
It softens me, or hardens me, or does whatever it ought to do to me, and then I can talk about it.
You need not be very particular about the words and phrases if the spirit of the text has filled you; thoughts will leap out, and find raiment for themselves.
Become saturated with spices, and you will smell of them; a sweet perfume will distill from you, and spread itself in every direction; — we call it unction.
Do you not love to listen to a brother who abides in fellowship with the Lord Jesus? Even a few minutes with such a man is refreshing, for, like his Master, his paths drop fatness. Dwell in the truth, and let the truth dwell in you. Be baptized into its spirit and influence, that you may impart thereof to others.
If you do not believe the gospel, do not preach it, for you lack an essential qualification; but even if you do believe it, do not preach it until you have taken it up into yourself as the wick takes up the oil. So only can you be a burning and a shining light.

3 A Christian Voice for Barack Obama from The Huffington Post.




Encounters with the Angel of Writing

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I heard a really amazing talk last month on writing at—get this!!– a large Charismatic Conference, RiverCamp. The speaker Mark Stibbe talked about the angel of writing, and prayed for an anointing to write for us.

I asked for it; I received it.

I have always felt guilty and conflicted about my writing, since I got married in 1989: wasn’t there some laundry or housework to do?  Should I be encountering God in a laundry basket as a male spiritual adviser suggested?

Now I saw it as a calling, a spiritual gifting. An anointing!! I have, on a daily basis, written more words than ever since then. When I am stuck, I visualize myself as standing in the waterfall of God’s power and anointing, and ask to be refilled with the spirit.

* * *

Another thing Mark Stibbe said that interested me was that “Seeing” was a spiritual gift. If you have a gift for leading Bible studies, he said, you “see” things in the text which most people do not. I have long had the experience of seeing riches in a Biblical text which I thought were totally obvious to any reader, but which, apparently, were not. But I had never thought of this as a spiritual gift.

Stibbe talked about the gift of “seeing” as you write. And the manuscript which I had been stymied over for 15 years began to shape and coalesce in my mind as he spoke, and over the next couple of days.

That evening, a sweet Elim Pentecostal minister, Trevor Baker, in his sixties or older, spoke about how he had been stymied with his first book manuscript—his autobiography—for decades; how Mark Stibbe prayed for him; how the block dissolved; how he finished the manuscript in six months. He asked us to buy the published book!!

Stibbe himself spoke about how he received an anointing to write when John Wimber prayed for him.

(I am reading a book called The Anointing by R. T. Kendall, unusual, brilliant. It says God’s gifts and call are irrevocable. It examines how one might be able to transfer an anointing to write, let’s say, or be able to preach brilliantly, or heal, while no longer in a fresh, close relationship with God.)

I was delighted when Mark Stibbe prayed that we receive the anointing to write. Over the next few days, I saw the shape my book should take. I saw the painfully long chapters—between 12 and 20+ pages dissolve and reshape themselves into short 2-3 page 1000 word chapters. In the other words, the length of the blog-posts I’ve been writing for the last 29 months—the sound-bites in which I’ve been instinctively thinking. I was filled with a longing to write it, and it has been flowing freely and joyfully since then.

 

In which Angels Sing, and Diamonds Materialize: A Report from the Revival Alliance Charismatic Conference in Birmingham

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“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Alice in Wonderland.

The Revival Alliance Conference I attended had a special “impartation” meeting in Birmingham on Saturday for those aged 15-30 to receive an “impartation” (with laying on of hands) from the world’s leading charismatic leaders.

There was Randy Clark, whose preaching birthed the Toronto Revival.  John Arnott, the pastor who shepherded the Toronto Revival to a movement which has gone on for 18 years, and is still going strong. The amazing Heidi and  Rolland Baker. Bill Johnson, “the thinking man’s charismatic,” as steeped in the Bible, as in a magical, miraculous world much like the Bible’s. Che Ahn. Georgian Bainov.

So both our daughters go to this meeting, and come back bubbling and bouncing with excitement.  Those watching outside caught some of it on TV screens. As Rolland Baker placed his hands in blessings on the young people’s palms, diamonds appeared. The floor was covered with these diamonds, which rained down from heaven. The more aggressive crawled on hands and knees picking them up. My children got 3 between them, while others got several. The Kingdom sometimes goes to the aggressive. In fact, when the adults returned, there were some of these in the loos, and parking lots.

HERE are eye-witness accounts from the Revival Alliance’s Facebook page. (Screen shots, so a little fuzzy)

 

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Our friend, James, an Oxford educated physicist, was particularly fascinated. He picked up two, and compared them with Zoe’s. His had a gold backing!!

Apparently, according to Bill Johnson, this not a rare manifestion. Gold-dust, diamonds, a glory cloud and angelic feathers appear all the time in his church, Bethel in California, and even in houses, restaurants and airplanes where those like Bill who particularly experience “the presence” travel.

Irene, my 13 year old says, “Wow, Mum if Rolland can make diamonds appear, maybe it’s all true.” Oh, I am so old.  My reaction. “Cool.” Did I believe it? Yeah, sure. Why not?

I have heard Heidi Baker tell this story of miraculous multiplication in person, which she also shared with the CBN’s 700 Club.

“It was a 110-degree Christmas Day. There were hundreds of children that were awaiting a Christmas party at their center. These children included girls who had sold their bodies, bandits, rascals, and children from the village. All had all been invited. The challenge was that there were so many children, but only a limited amount of toy bags available. So, Heidi began to give the presents out first to those children who had never received a present before. Finally, it came down to the older girls, but all that was left were bags with stuffed animals in them.

Heidi asked the girls, “What would you like, sweetheart?”

And the girl replied, “Beads.” 

Heidi’s friend and co-worker, a psychiatrist, said “There is nothing in the bags but old stuffed dogs.”

Heidi asked her friend to check the bags again. When the lady reached her hand into the bag of stuffed animals she started screaming, “Beads! There are beads in the bag!”

All of the girls got beautiful, bright beads for Christmas.

“God really is God, and He is much better than Santa Claus,” says Heidi.

In the same interview, she tells this story, “After the government evicted the Bakers from the orphanage, “a friend from the American Embassy came with chili and rice for the Bakers and their 2 children. They prayed over the pots of food and told the 80+ children to sit down.  Everyone ate and was full!”

Do I believe these stories? Do I believe that Jesus changed water into wine, and fed 5000 from 5 loaves? Do I believe that He said that those who believe in him will do greater things than these? Yes, yes, and yes!

* * *

In the evening, there was an impartation for everyone, and as Arnott etc went around and laid their hands on people and prayed, most of the thousands in Bingley Hall fell backwards instantly, “slain in the Spirit.”  Amazingly, my husband buckled as he was prayed for, as did Zoe and Irene. Moi—no! Too self-conscious, too scared of falling backwards, too scared of losing control, too analytical, too much of a blogger observing the proceedings. And perhaps that was what God intended. When I blog, I feel his pleasure.

It was a rather fascinating sight though, to see Arnott and Rolland Baker and Bill Johnson go through the rows, say a brief pray for people, who then fell backwards as if poleaxed.

And there was the sweetest, most angelic singing rising.

I heard it myself, high sweet singing, though the worship band said there were no instruments, and no one was singing.

Here are some accounts from the Revival Alliance 2012 Facebook:

Revival Alliance 2012
Martin Smith leading all the saints joining in one song! Who else heard #angels singing during worship at venue 1??? #revival2012
Photo: Martin Smith leading all the saints joining in one song! Who else heard #angels singing during worship at venue 1??? #revival2012
12538Like ·  · Share

Thomas Kinkade, A Beauty which Never Was on Land or Sea

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 The hilarious, ironic, and spot-on website Stuff White People Like mentions a sure way to convince your white friends that you are totally unsophisticated
“If you wish to ensure that white people will never speak to you about art again, there is an easy escape. Simply mention your favorite artist is Thomas Kinkade and that you are in negotiations to purchase an original from the store in the mall. This will effectively end any friendship you have with a white person.”I realized that when I bought not one, but two Thomas Kinkade repros from a mall, and showed them, happily to a white Christian artist friend. Who was horrified.

You know I really, really do have good taste in art. Promise. And loathe kitsch.

But Thomas Kinkade appeals to something in me. I love his paradisial landscapes. I love the way the seasons are all jumbled together. How trees and flowers from every continent appear. That’s what heaven will be like, I think.

There is this sense of the jumbling of the “natural order,” deranging of nature in Scripture, when it talks of God’s blessing. Aaron’s staff, a sign of God’s power, had buds, blossoms and fruit all together. It’s been a symbol of me of the possibility of the sudden flowering of creativity, a sudden burst of inspiration.

In another of my favourite passages, Ezekiel 47, we are told that the trees on the banks of the river which flows from the sanctuary bear fruit every month because the water from the sanctuary flows to them.

That’s what’s Kinkade’s landscapes remind me off, the beauty of all the seasons together; spring, summer, autumn, winter; and trees and flowers from every continent, blooming in an immense and joyful profusion–together.

The Hills are Alive with Angels in Chariots of Fire, and Christ Walks on the Thames

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 Billy Bragg sings Jerusalem at Greenbelt 2011
 And did those feet in ancient time.

Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green and pleasant Land

William Blake
Blake refers to the pleasing. apocryphal tradition that the young Christ visited Glastonbury with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. 
And though the answer to all Blake’s questions is No–it is thrilling: the notion that those feet, in ancient time, walked upon England’s mountains green, that the Holy Lamb of God was upon England’s pleasant pastures seen, and the Countenance Divine shone forth among our clouded hills.
What is no less thrilling but actually true is those feet still walk upon England’s mountains green, that the Holy Lamb of God is among England’s pleasant pastures seen, and that the Countenance Divine shines forth among our clouded hills.
We just do not slow down enough to see or recognize him walking beside us.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Visionaries and prophets on the other hand can always see the one walking beside. Always another walking beside us. Can see the hills around us ringed with angels in chariots and fire. Can see Jacob’s ladder between heaven and Charing Cross, as Francis Thompson saw it, or between Heaven and Oxford. Can see Christ walking on the water, not of Gennesaret but Thames, or the Isis and Cherwell.
Here’s one of my favourite poems by a Christian mystic, Francis Thompson.
The Kingdom of God
1
“IN NO STRANGE LAND”
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
5 Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
10 And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
15 ’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangéd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
20 Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
2
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!
Oh, may I always see Him walking beside me.

Sometimes God is most merciful when we are least deserving!!

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The Pure, Unmerited Goodness and Mercy of God. Isn’t He? by John Wimber




Here’s a wonderful story from Carol Wimber’s book, The Way it Was.

“Right away the Jesus Songs started coming, like a stream of sweet water. I call them airport songs because God gave them to John on his way to or from the airport. “Isn’t He?” (which keeps food on my table from the royalties) was another song written on the way to the airport on a scrap of paper.

It came the same way, all at once, words and music, but it came in a flood of gratitude for the goodness and mercy of Jesus.

John was on his way to pick up an uninvited visitor who had called the house and informed our son, Tim, that he was waiting for John to pick him up. Well, poor Tim! John was a “kill the messenger” guy. He jumped all over Tim. “Why didn’t you tell him I didn’t know he was coming?” “Because I didn’t know that, Dad,” answered a bewildered Tim. “But I’m tired, and I just got home, and it’s raining. I don’t want to go out again, Tim. Why didn’t you explain it to him?” “Dad, I just answered the phone, and said Hello. The man said you were supposed to be there to pick him up, and I said, “Oh,” and the man asked me to tell you when you came home. I said I would.”

John left for the hour and a half drive to the airport, and he felt miserable. Not about having to go out when he was tired, but because of the way he had treated Tim. He wept over it, and told Jesus how wrong, and how sorry he was, and was just planning how he would apologize to Tim, when the car was flooded with the love of God. Overwhelmed with God’s mercy, his head and heart filled with the words and music:

Isn’t he beautiful? Beautiful, isn’t he?
Prince of Peace, Son of God, isn’t he?
Isn’t he wonderful? Wonderful, isn’t he?
Counselor, Almighty God, isn’t he? Isn’t he? Isn’t he?
He taught us that sweet Jesus song the next Sunday. It is amazing how fast the Holy Spirit-given songs go around the world. They fly on the wings of the wind.”

I love this story. I love the way God sometimes responds to me with poetry and insight and blogposts when I have blown it, am feeling crushed and overwhelmed with shame. That’s when he reveals himself and his love most clearly, and blesses me with new insight.
Gerard Manley Hopkins describes this
“Father and Fondler of heart thou hast wrung,
Hast thy dark descending, and most art merciful then.”
Or as Francis Thompson puts it,
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry–and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

When Great Poets Encounter the Angel of Writing

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I love “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe. It has a mysterious perfection: the rhythm, the evocative words, the allusions, the beautiful language create a loveliness  greater than the sum of its parts.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

 

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

(Chorus)

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on.”

(Chorus)

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

 In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

On the night of November 18, 1861, Julia Ward Howe awoke with the words of the song in her mind and in near darkness wrote the verses to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembers, “I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’ So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”

                                                      * * * 

Wow! To whom are these mysterious gifts of creativity handed out?

Generally to those who have long trained themselves waiting for the angel. “If the angel comes, it will be because you have wooed him by your grim resolve to be always a beginner,” Rainer Maria Rilke muses. Rilke suffered for most of his life from torturing writers’ block. Beauty, images, art, ideas, poetry filled his mind; he was, however, unable to express them in poetry.

Rilke said that as he was walking, depressed, by the cliffs near Duino Castle, he heard a voice call out to him, “Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?” which became his famous Duino Elegy,

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?

And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.

His writers’ block was broken, and The Duino Elegies flowed forth in a torrent.

* * *

Milton claimed that he was visited nightly by an angel or muse who dictated cantos of Paradise Lost to him. In the morning, his daughters found the blind poet, already up, neatly dressed, and waiting to be “milked” of his verses, which he dictated to them.

Milton however, at the age of 14, had decided to become one of the great poets in English. His goal: “To write something which the world would not willingly let die.” He spent his youth in arduous preparation, so much so that by the time he began writing Paradise Lost at the age of 50, he was blind (the result of the years from his early teens spent reading late into the night by candlelight); had an brain incomparably stocked with poetry and learning, but had written nothing substantial.

But the angel came, and he did indeed write something that the world would not willingly let die.

My father had memorized the opening of Paradise Lost, and I remember the opening sentence with a thrill of pleasure. It’s so beautiful, so majestic, that reading it now, after some years, I almost cry with pleasure,

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

    Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

    Brought death into the world and all our woe,

    With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

    Restore us and regain the blissful seat,

    Sing, Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top

    Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

    That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed

    In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth

    Rose out of Chaos; or if Sion hill

   Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d

   Fast by the oracle of God, I thence

   Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,

   That with no middle flight intends to soar

   Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues

   Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

   And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

    Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,

  Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first

  Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,

   Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss

   And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark

   Illumine, what is low raise and support,

    That to the highth of this great argument

   I may assert Eternal Providence

    And justify the ways of God to men.

Wow! What a long amazing sentence!

Paradise Lost comes, it comes as if dictated by an angel, but it comes to the blind poet who had spent his life preparing to write it. The Duino  Elegies were “overheard” by the poet who also spent a life of sacrifice in preparation.

Poetic inspiration comes suddenly, as if the unconsciously suddenly ripens, to those who had laboured long  and hard, for much of their lives to receive it.

* * *

In contrast is William Blake, an untaught visionary poet who was more in touch with Heaven than with our world.  At the age of four, the young artist “saw God” when God “put his head to the window.”

At the age of eight or ten in Peckham, Blake claimed to have seen “a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.”

Do I believe him?  Actually, yes!

“I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I

lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the region of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even now write from his dictate,” Blake wrote.

Blake continues, “Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it

is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides

her golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours;

voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, &  their forms more distinctly seen.”

It was while he lived in Felpham, Sussex, that Blake wrote
the perfect Jerusalem.

 

In which God forgives us, we forgive ourselves, and we are freed from paralysis

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jesus paralytic 150x150 Jesus Heals Paralytic Man | Mark 2:1 12

 I am re-reading Mark. John’s my favourite gospel guy, followed by Luke, but the immediacy of Mark, our immediate immersion in a fast-moving scenario of accelerating success grabs me every time.
Jesus issues his great call to repent and believe the good news.
He heals most everyone, dramatically, and so “news about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.” He became the Obama or Daniel Radcliffe of his day, “As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. Still, people came to him from everywhere.”
                                                      * * *
And then in Mark 2 1-12, so many gather to hear him preach the word that there was no room left, not even outside the door.
(I have just been to hear some amazing speakers and miracles workers, and I can testify there is the same spiritual hunger and over-crowding today.)
And though it seems unfair, the pushy, the hungry, the desperate are often rewarded. That’s one of Jesus’s puzzling sayings, “The Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” Matt 11:12.
So instead of being polite, waiting their turn, which surely seems to be the right thing to do, his friends cheekily dig though the roof, and lower him in.
And, remarkably, and encouragingly for all those who pray for their families, or do prayer ministry, Jesus heals him because of the faith of his friends.
And—whoa!!—what interesting words of healing
“Son, your sins are forgiven.”
And those words, the forgiveness of sins, heals the man’s paralysis.
                                                   * * *
A river is a consistent Biblical metaphor for God—leaping, rushing, dancing, forceful, iridescent, full of energy.
Never stagnant. Never “paralysed.”
Mental and emotional paralysis, or paralysis in any area of one’s life, does not comes from God, in my opinion. The first chapters of Genesis give us an insight into God’s nature—imaginative, fun, creative, thinking, making, shaping, active—then punctuating six days of activity with a day of complete rest, when “he rested from all this making.”
No paralysis there!!
                                                    * * *
When my daughter Zoe was born, I often wheeled her around in her stroller to put her to sleep. (We never let our children cry themselves to sleep—I considered that unthinkable—which, of course, meant hours of walking or driving or holding them to sleep, or sleeping with them. Or vice-versa. Very undisciplined.)
I had four major areas of need or “paralysis” which I used to ask for God’s help with as I pushed Zoe in her pram.
1)   My writing, in which I was paralysed and perfectionistic, and worked with much painful second-guessing and perfectionism, and without significant output.
2)   Housekeeping. My house was messy, and disorganized, and this upset me.
3)   I was a night owl, and so woke late, and this is not the most efficient thing.
4)   I was overweight.
                                                                                                                                       * * *
Over the last 18 years of following Christ with wobbles and falls backwards, I am glad to report that my writing is flowing freely. The house is no longer embarrassing. It’s not immaculate, but not messy either. We tidy every room at least once a week (well, Roy does.)
I don’t wake early, but not ridiculously late either.
But weight! Alas, I am at my heaviest ever. I am failing.
And I don’t believe God intends this paralysis or failure.
                                                * * *
And Jesus, mysteriously, heals the man’s physical paralysis, by forgiving his sin, and he walks.
Is this a key?  Repentance and receiving forgiveness to break paralysis in any area of our lives. Paralysis like Paul describes in Romans 7 when one knows and loves and desires what is good, but does not have the power to pursue it.
                                                 * * *
Obviously, being overweight is not a sin, any more than being paralysed is.
But, in my case, sin has led to it.
1) Using food as an all-purpose anaesthetic, when sad, angry, stressed, depressed, low-energy, listless, bored, or fed-up.
2) Eating because I enjoyed the taste of good food, even when not hungry.  Eating foods not good for my body.
3) Putting off exercise because reading and writing were more interesting.
And, so I spent some time today repenting of these weaknesses, and asking for the blood of Christ to wash these sins away, and to filled again with the spirit of Jesus, so that I remember to turn to him instead of chocolate when sad, stressed, angry, bored etc.
That I remember to respect my body and not give it excessive yummy stuff that is not good for it.
And the empowering of the spirit that I will make myself exercise even when the laptop and books are more tempting.
Jesus, heal this paralysis.
                                                      * * *
I am reading The Anointing by R.T. Kendall. The Anointing (among other things) is a divine enablement which makes the difficult easy. Kendall stresses the need of getting a fresh anointing every day, so that we do not continue using powerful spiritual gifts (preaching, let’s say, or writing) in our own strength.
I think it’s the same when breaking free from an area of paralysis in one’s life. You repent; God forgives you; gives you his Holy Spirit on request, (Luke 11:13). But you are not yet home free. You need to continue asking for fresh grace, fresh strength and enablement.
I have read testimonies of alcoholics and drug addicts or heavy smokers who have been instantaneously healed from their addiction. I myself have experienced a grace-enabled kicking of a coffee addiction.
Perhaps healing from something which has put tentacles into the very way you function, such as emotional eating or using food as an all-purpose anaesthetic can come all at once.
Or perhaps, step by step as the powerful waterfall of the Holy Spirit and God’s grace breaks down the last filaments of bad habits. Perhaps, it’s a daily process—just as acquiring knowledge or physical fitness or a godly character is a long process. You sometimes tire, sometimes rest, but you keep rowing.
But slow, or fast, Lord, heal me. Let there be no little strongholds or holdouts to your full reign in me, body, mind, soul and spirit!