#3- (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by P. Scazzero): Too 'busy'? Is it a sign you need an Anchor?

My Spurgeon devotional this morning included this :
"...Come, my heart, be thou no more sick and sorry; Jesus bids thee be strong and walk with God in holy contemplation. Obey His word of love."
This reinforces His call to me for holy contemplation as I go through this book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. Much of the 'wordage' here are Scazzero's own words, not mine. I'm writing them down to reinforce the ideas in my own heart.

Ch.3: The Radical Antidote: Emotional Health and Contemplative Spirituality
This chapter is long and there is much to ponder.

Scazzero refers to the book of Revelation and its message that "believers must resist and overcome the beast expressed through the culture of their generation." He quotes Os Guiness: "due to the combination of capitalism, technology, and modern communications, the most powerful civilization ever-- a global culture--has been formed." Scazzero says that this is the beast that threatens our generation today. Its core values include:
-happiness is found in having things.
-you should get all you can for yourself, as quickly as you can.
-security is found in money, power, status, and good health.
-above all, you should seek all the pleasure, convenience, and comfort you can
-God is irrelevant to everyday life.
-Christianity is just one of many alternative spiritualities.
-there are no moral absolutes; whatever is true for you is what is true.
-you're not responsible for anyone but yourself.
-this life on earth is all there is.
Our fears, mistrust, fierce self-will, stubbornness and rebellion in our very depths feed the fire of the beast within us.

Our primary question has become, "What can Jesus do for me?"
Scazzero says that "many of us act as if God works for us, functioning as our personal assistant when we need Him. We, in effect, use God, squeezing Him  into our image of what He should be like. When He allows suffering in our lives, we get mad at Him and pout. How dare He?"
Few people are experiencing the deep ongoing transformation into Christ that includes an emotionally healthy spirituality. Scazzero goes on to define some terms.

What is "Emotional Health" (EH) concerned with?

• naming, recognizing, and managing our own feelings.
• identifying with and having active compassion for others.
• initiating and maintaining close and meaningful relationships.
• breaking free from self-destructive patterns.
• being aware of how our past impacts our present.
• developing the capacity to express our thoughts and feelings clearly, both verbally and nonverbally.
• respecting and loving others without having to change them.
• asking for what we need, want, or prefer clearly, directly, and respectfully.
• accurately self-assessing our strengths, limits, and weaknesses and freely sharing them with others.
• learning the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the perspectives of others.
• distinguishing and appropriately expressing our sexuality and sensuality.
• grieving well.

"Contemplative Spirituality" (CS) focuses on concerns such as:

• awakening and surrendering to God's love in any and every situation.
• positioning ourselves to hear God and remember His Presence in all we do.
• communing with God, allowing Him to fully indwell the depth of our being.
• practicing silence, solitude, and a life of unceasing prayer.
• resting attentively in the Presence of God.
• understanding our earthly life as journey of transformation toward ever-increasing union with God.
• finding the true essence of who we are in God.
• loving others out of a life of love for God.
• developing a balanced, harmonious rhythm of life that enables us to be aware of the sacred in all of life.
• adapting historic practices of spirituality that are applicable today.
• allowing our Christian lives to be shaped by the rhythms of the Christian calendar rather than the culture.
• living in committed community that passionately loves Jesus above all else.

Scazzero reiterates that Christians need an integration of both emotional health and contemplative spirituality to love God, ourselves, and others well.
Together they offer 3 primary gifts:

• the gift of slowing down.

-CS: our lives are marked by 'busyness'. We have become too active for the kind of reflection needed to sustain a life of love with God and others.
In the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42, we see Martha busy, her inner person is touchy, irritable, and anxious. Mary, however is enjoying being with Jesus, listening to Him, attentive and quiet. Her life has one center of gravity--Jesus. Martha's life is fragmented, pressured and filled with distractions.
Like Martha, most of us need to slow down to pay attention. Our goal is to love God with our whole being, to be consistently conscious of God through our daily life.
We will know we have found our 'balance' when "we are so deeply rooted in God that our activity is marked by the peaceful, joyful, rich quality of our contemplation".
God speaks to each of us every day in different ways--through Scripture, creation, drama, songs, dreams, silence, boring work or school days, interruptions, job losses, conflicts, betrayals--in fact all the stuff of life. Scazzero terms this "the sowing of seeds" that are snatched away immediately due to external pressures or our absorption with other concerns.

-EH: It takes time to feel, grieve, reflect, be mindful of what is transpiring around us, to love well. You need to carve out this time. Rather than keeping busy to avoid my inner pain and disappointments, give yourself space to explore your feelings and wrestle with anger, shame, bitterness, grief, jealousy, fear, or depression. Try journalling. You will soon be cognizant of your limits related to your personality, temperament, gift mix, and physical, emotional, and spiritual capacity.

• the gift of anchoring in God's love.

-Christianity is not about our disciplined pursuit of God, but about God's relentless pursuit of us...the inexhaustible God loves us so intensely that every time we turn to Him after wandering from His love for us, all heaven breaks out in a thunderous celebration. (Luke 15:7)

-EH: some deeply held negative beliefs we have learned include:
     -I am a mistake.
     -I am a burden.
     -I am stupid.
     -I am worthless.
     -I am not allowed to make mistakes.
     -I must be approved by certain people to feel okay.
     -I don't have the right to assert myself and say what I think and feel.
     -I don't have a right to feel.
     -I am valued based on my intelligence, wealth, and what I do, not for who I am.
However when we are emotionally healthy and have grasped "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge", then:
     -I hold myself in high regard despite my imperfections and limits.
     -I am worthy to assert my God-given power in the world.
     -I am entitled to exist.
     -It is good that I exist.
     -I have my own identity from God that is distinct and unique.
     -I am worthy of being valued and paid attention to.
     -I am entitled to joy and pleasure.
     -I am entitled to make mistakes and not be perfect.

-CS: Contemplative disciplines help us progress from the "give me, give me, give me" attitude of a small child to a more mature way of relating where we delight in being with God as our "Abba Father"
Progression is as follows:
     -Talking at God - parroting learned prayers.
     -Talking to God - our own words, "give me more, O God."
     -Listening to God - having a 2-way relationship and starting to listen to God.
     -Being with God - simply enjoying His Presence.
The practice of disciplines including silence, solitude, the Daily Office, meditation on Scripture, prayer, Sabbath enable us to tune into the awareness of His love for us. In doing so, God heals our image of Who He is. Brendan Manning summarizes the result of regularly anchoring in the love of God:
"It is always true to some extent that we make our images of God. It is even truer that our image of God makes us. Eventually we become like the God we image. One of the most beautiful fruits of knowing the God of Jesus is a compassionate attitude towards ourselves....This is why Scripture attaches so much importance to knowing God. Healing our image of God heals our image of ourselves."

• the gift of breaking free from illusions.

Our worlds are filled with the illusions: we feel we cannot live without certain earthly pleasures, accomplishments or relationships. At the end of the 3C in the deserts of Egypt, an extraordinary phenomenon occurred when Christians began to seek God in the desert. They saw their world:
"as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life....These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster...They knew they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them."

-EH: In emotional health:
     -I break free to live in the truth. I stop pretending to myself, to others, and to God about what is truly taking place inside me.
     -I break free by choosing to live the unique life God has given me. I no longer live the lie of someone else's life or journey.
     -I break free by acknowledging my brokenness and vulnerabilities rather than trying to cover them over. I rediscover God's mercy and grace.
     -I break free from the need to attach myself to accomplishments, things, or people's approval to feel okay about myself. I experience the gift of being Abba's child.
     -I break free from the generational patterns of my family and culture that negatively shape how I relate and live today.
     -I break free from the illusion that there is something richer, more beautiful, than the gift of loving and being loved.

-CS: Adds a few more truths:
     -I break free, on a new level, from layers of my "false self" that I am shedding so that my authentic self in Christ might emerge.
     -I break free by realizing things are not as they appear to be. The idols in my life are smashed as the illusion of what they promise is exposed. I get perspective on my life in Christ over and against success as defined by the world.
     -I break free from the illusion that I will live forever. Contemplative spirituality keeps the shortness of my earthly life as well as the reality of eternity before me each day.
     -I break free from selfish desires that consistently move me away from God to do my own will, not His.

Scazzero says that he slowly learnt during his time of solitude that the 'god' he was serving reflected his earthly parents more than the God of Scripture, a 'god' that kept saying "It is never enough, Pete". However, God's love burns away the false and sets us free to live in the truth of Jesus.

Prayer:
"Lord, slow me down that I might pay attention to You through this day, that I might meet You even as I read these pages. It is safe to walk with You whether or not I feel like it today. You are a secure place. Anchor me to You today, O Lord, amidst the storms and trials going on around me now. Break me free from all thoughts and ideas about You that are not true. Unleash a spiritual revolution in my interior, Lord Jesus. Set me truly free, O Lord, that I may be a gift to those around me. In Jesus' Name, Amen."