Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

How Circling Prayer can Convert a Vicious Circle to a Virtuous Circle

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Have you ever experienced a vicious circle?

You know: Feel sad. Eat chocolate or sugary treats. Feel hyper or aggressive. It wears off. Feel sad. And grumpy and defeated about the weight gain. Eat chocolate to help you feel better. And then…

Or: Get stressed and tired. Let things lie where they fall. House gets messy. You get too stressed and low-spirited to pick it up. Things get lost and replaced. You feel bad about the mess and the waste of money, and that it would take too much energy to invite your friends over. Tidying would barely make a dent in the mess, so you don’t, and mess grows. And …

Or: Wake late, keep looking at the time. The day is slipping away without much getting done, feel depressed and defeated. Drink coffee, get a second wind, stay up late, aimlessly surfing Facebook, blogs, twitter, newspapers. So can’t wake early the next day. And so…sense defeat through the day.

Very, very sadly, I have slipped into each of these circles for years, even decades of my life!! I do confess it. Thankfully, though, I am not in any of these vicious circles at the moment!

Drawing Prayer Circles: Ways to change a vicious circle to a virtuous one

 I am reading Mark Batterson’s The Circle-Maker. Mark talks about drawing figurative circles around your Jericho, the one dream you have longed for all your life, the dream your life has always tended towards, and pray bold, fervent, consistent prayers over it. Powerful prayers need to be specific, he says, just as powerful writing does.

I recently read a fascinating book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg which mentions keystone habits, which set up a cascade of positive changes in one’s life. One of these is exercise, which is scientifically proven to make you feel better through the release of endorphins, so that you sleep better, work better, feel happier, and have better relationships. Other keystone habits, unsurprisingly, are waking early, and domestic order.

* * *

So one way to change a vicious circle to a virtuous one is to circle it in prayer–pray circles around it. The habit you want to change will be uppermost in your mind, and grace will be given you to make the tiny necessary changes, which will start a virtuous circle in place of the vicious one.

I have started circling many areas of my life in prayer— my husband, children, memoir, blog, writing plans, weight, home, garden, career, finances, love of travel etc.

And in each of these I am praying for a virtuous circle—where each action creates momentum and leverage, making the next virtuous action easier.

My Personal Jericho

Can you put a due date on the walls of Jericho crumbling? In Joshua 6, it was on the seventh day.

I’ve set a date for my Jericho to collapse—September 29th, 2016. It would be the day I first arrived in England, full of dreams and hopes and ambition, which have not been fulfilled, but life is long, and sometimes, God prioritises changes in you before he lets your dreams come true.

So these are the walls of Jericho which I would like to collapse by September 29th, 2016.

1)   I would like to finish my memoir, which is now in a polished second draft (while not neglecting my blog).

2)    I would like to get healthy. I am currently 84 pounds overweight, and I would like to get to a healthy weight

3)   I would like to get the house decluttered, with everything in its place, and everything not beautiful or useful donated or chucked. (We’ve been tidying and decluttering weekly since summer 2008, so have made huge progress on this).

4)   I would like to wake at 5 a.m.

Am I biting off more than I can chew? Who knows, but with God’s help, I believe the walls of this Jericho will crumble.

* * *

Synergy

And I hope these goals are synergistic, and will set up a virtuous circle in my life

1 Exercise will help me sleep better, be clear-headed for writing, and feel happy. It will, also, God willing, build up muscles which will boost my metabolism.

I am planning to continue losing weight through Dr. Furhman’s Eat to Live diet as a template (with some deviations), and have already lost 18 pounds on it. It is a nutritarian diet, so, God willing, I will continue to rarely be ill, and to have high levels of energy.

2) Waking early will give me more time to exercise, to tidy the house, and to write, and will give me an increased sense of well-being and shalom.

3) Keeping the house orderly and tidy will increase my shalom and mental wealth. And increase focus for writing.

4) Writing–well that’s in a category in itself! The way it could help my other goals would be through the happiness it gives me. Though Julia Cameron suggests that writing down your words daily helps you lose weight.

So that’s it. That’s the Jericho I am praying around. If you think of me, pray for me, please?

Five years have past! When a retrospective glance consoles

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Tintern Abbey

                                                                                 Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters!

Wordsworth writes, as he revisits Tintern Abbey, and muses how he has matured over the last five years.

For nature then

To me was all in all.

But now, he sees something else in it. Dare he say it—God?

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man….

                                                                                                     * * *

Five years have passed. Looking back, if we are Christians, should bring comfort. We should have grown, matured and deepened over the last five years of walking with Jesus because of the working of his mercy and grace on our souls.

About 12 years ago, I was telling my mentor, Lolly Dunlap, that I was frustrated about my marriage which was mediocre then, rather than excellent (and oh, how I hate mediocrity!!) and my temper, which I then hadn’t learnt to control. (But now I have, I am glad to report!!) And my mothering was distracted, and my housekeeping haphazard, and as for exercise…

“Think about 5 years ago,” she said. “Have you improved in any way over the last 5 years?”

I thought. I brightened. I began to tell her how amazing I was in 2001, compared to what I had been in 1996. I was actually showing off about the progress over which I had been so despondent a few minutes earlier.

So if you’ve been a Christian 5 years, think back to what you were and thank God for how far you’ve come under his loving eyes, with the action of his grace in your soul.

 

I am not what I ought to be.

I am not what I wish to be.

I am not even what I hope to be.

But by the cross of Christ,

I am not what I was.

~John Newton

* * *

 So, Christian, compared to April 2008, how is it with your soul today? Does the answer console you? 

The Light and Easy Way of Sanctification or Transformation

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I strayed onto an acquaintance’s blog, and started feeling tired.

Oh, it was all so bossy, so prescriptive. 10 ways to be a better wife; 10 ways to be a better mum; 10 ways to lose weight in a Biblical way; 10 ways to read more spiritual books.

It made me feel so tired. I scrolled through the blogs she had  blogrolled, even more prescriptive and bossy, and began to feel even more tired.

* * *

18 years ago, when I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, I had taken a theological course called Sonship developed by the brilliant Westminister Seminary Professor and founder of World Harvest Mission Jack Miller. It was the most heavily theological material I had encountered to date, and gave me a taste for theology!

At the outset, Miller reports someone raving about Richard Foster’s“The Celebration of Discipline.”

And Miller, a big, hearty, larger-than-life man, laughs a big booming laugh and says, “I am too big a sinner to be fooled by the Celebration of Discipline.”

* * *

Huh? I did not understand what he meant then, but understand it perfectly now. Discipline cannot save us. 10 ways to study scripture, fast, give, serve are not going to change our selfish, self-seeking, ambitious, twisty old hearts. If anything they might just make us more self-righteous. For our hearts to change, we need a heart transplant. We need God to pour his Holy Spirit into us and give us a new heart (Ez 36:26).

* * *

We do need strategies—for ensuring we pray every day, spent time soaking in Scripture everyday, and for our own particular battles: eating healthily is one of mine.

But strategies cannot save us. For me at least, lists of food rules, or domesticity rules or spiritual rules or time-management rules get a bit boring and feel like too much of a strait-jacket and I soon drop them. They are the law, a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? Acts 15:10.

What helps me, and fills my days with sweetness is going through my day with Jesus, sharing the easy yoke.

* * *

I do have food rules, as for much of my adult life, I have medicated boredom, low spirits, stress, anxiety, and even happiness with food. So my two rules are: Limit eating what is not a blessing to your body (sugar, white carbs, chocolate). Do not eat when you are not hungry.

I was energized when I first formulated them, but now, especially that I am walking 6 km. a day, I sometimes buy chocolate or pizza or Indian takeaway after a long walk. The law, my strategies, weren’t strong enough to save me. On the other hand, slowing down, and asking Jesus for help and grace and the filling of his spirit does help me to resist things which are a curse to my body.

Slowing down. I wondering if that is a major secret of the spiritual life.

It’s the same with exercise. I know I will be stronger if I do it. I know I will be happier if I break up my writing with housework breaks (pomodoros) but this is very hard for me, for really, I like to work till done—and if what I am working on takes 3 to 4 hours it is quite painful almost for me to leave it and switch gear. So I need Jesus’s help to get up and get moving more than rules.

* * *

Hudson Taylor after continued spiritual failure, and self-excoriation stumbled upon the secret of abiding, which is known as Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. He writes:

“Not a striving to have faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need.”

Here, I feel, is the secret : not asking how I am to get sap out of the vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine-the root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed. Aye, and far  more too! He is the soil and sunshine, air and rain-more than we can  ask, think, or desire. Let us not then want to get anything out of Him, but rejoice in being ourselves in Him-one with Him, and, consequently, with all His fulness. 

” I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him, and have just to believe it and act upon it. If I go to the bank in Shanghai, having an account, and ask for fifty dollars, the clerk cannot refuse it to my outstretched hand and say that it belongs to Mr. Taylor. What belongs to Mr. Taylor my hand may take. It is a member of my body. And I am a member of Christ, and may take all I need of His fulness.”

Perhaps this is the easy way of sanctification—to see yourself as a branch in the vine of Jesus, and pray,  relying and drawing on the wells of his strength and sweet life when tempted to indulge your temper, your gluttony, your laziness, or any of the deadly seven temptations.