anguish – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

Ruth Haley Barton, author and consultant who specializes in bringing clarity to otherwise murky waters for individuals and ministry teams alike, offers this,

“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, you’re longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation then you have experience so far, is the truest thing about you.”*

Isn’t it interesting how quickly we can point to features about ourselves and mistakenly assume they are the things that most accurately define who we are?

Ruth continues,

“You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife mother or father somehow defines you. But in reality it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. . . From this place we cry out to God for deeper union with him and with others.”

The Apostle Paul, who penned a large portion of the New Testament, voiced his own longings, even after long years had piled up in his companioning journey with Christ.

“For my determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly. . .”**

His words were not an expression of mediocrity. We may wish to pause a moment, draw in a slow breath, and re-read them.

This single-focused messenger (Paul) surely yearned that the same kind of longing he knew might characterize every Christ-follower getting introduced to the way of the Master,

“My little children. . . I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!***

Such pulsing cries breaking from the heart of those early messengers (and the many who followed after), call the believing world to run after the resurrected Lord. Marking those who do as a people given over to desire.

This gives me pause. Some of my desires can use some realigning. Others, if I am honest, likely call for drastic action. Some may well need killing. Getting soon replaced with desires that are worthy of the name.

The prophet’s words broke over him like a great wave deluging a child at play on a calm beach – sudden and unforeseen. Overwhelming. One moment all is serene. . . all is chaos the next.

Tears surfaced from a bottled place deep within Leonard, like a long-capped reservoir straining for release. The emotion driving the tears was anguish – an all-encompassing sorrow like he had never known. Soul anguish.

The fourteen words he just read had wrecked him. The first line looped repeatedly in his mind.

“The heart is deceitful above all things” The statement – bold as it came – stripped him entirely. Between sobs he wondered, How could the mere reading of words impact me so? The puzzlement came jumbled, not tidily delivered – more a crying than a question. He felt the worst kind of pain, the pain of detecting his own dreadfulness, the deception of his own heart. Shame.

Leonard realized that for too long he had been self-deceived. He took in the remaining words. . .

“. . and desperately wicked: who can know it?” The anguish remained, coming even stronger now and in waves.

“Deceitful and wicked.” His sense of guilt brought him to the floor. Sobbing, he lay face down, prostrate. A crushing sense of unworthiness drove him further. Moving the throw rug aside he stretched himself directly to the floor. The next day came and went. When not at work or trying to sleep nights he lay at his place on the floor. He knew his misery had a name. Sin.

Years later he recounted the scene in his memoir Impossibilities Become Challenges.

“I saw myself as I had never seen myself before. Lost, undone, wicked. .It seemed as if my very clothes smelt of the awfulness of sin.” In his drive to critically dismantle the book, the book was dismantling him. In a single verse the Bible exposed him, shining its light on his own pride.

Entering his third day of misery, Leonard thought to exit his room, find a place in the back yard and go prostrate there on the bare earth. It was then something happened.

“Something arrested and stilled my mind.”

Leonard found himself looking at a cross. “It possibly was a vision”.

Affixed to the cross by sharp iron nails was a heavily bleeding man.

“I seemed to understand this blood was for my sins.” He knew the man to be Jesus. “He was saying to me, ‘I died in this way for you. I shed my blood for your sins. Just accept my work of redemption.’”

Tag: anguish

Pulsing Cries

A Stilled Mind