Guest Blog: Mark Kelly on Soul Physicians, Part 3

Soul Physicians: God’s Passionate Romance Novel (pt.3)

Note: This is a guest blog by Pastor Mark Kelly who is working his way through Soul Physicians section by section and blogging along the journey. Thanks Pastor Mark! Visit Mark’s excellent, informative blog at: http://gracedependent.com/

Posted on August 25, 2009 by gracedependent

This is part three of an ongoing reading / studying of Dr. Robert Kellemen’s counseling resource: Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction

I’ve heard it stated this way before and was interested to see what Dr. Kellemen’s take on it would be: “God’s Word…is His love letter to you.” It is in Scripture that we find, not only that we are part of a Heroic Grand Adventure but, we are smack in the middle of a passionate romance novel. God is love – we know that; but how does that impact me on the morning that I get a pink slip at work, the doctor reveals that the dark spot on the lung indeed is cancerous, or I find myself choosing again to sin in a destructive manner? What are the things that pull at my mind and heart during these times? How can I make sense of it all? Does Scripture speak to any of that…and is God really loving if He allows all this?

Dr. K makes an incredible statement in this chapter: “For the Bible to make a difference in our lives, we need to understand the difference the Bible intends to make. The Bible is God’s love letter designed to melt our adulterous hearts.” When we truly live a life that is impacted by God’s love, we live dying to self and living for God and others. (All part of those “love” commandments that Jesus referred to). And the only way we can do that is through the grace found in Jesus Christ. We constantly make choices of “lovers” in our life: will I love Christ or will I be seduced by Satan?

As we journey through struggles and sins, Satan bombards us with fallacies, such as: “Doubt God/Trust Yourself” which leads to “Doubt God/Hate Yourself” and finally “Doubt God/Beautify Yourself”. These are expounded in this chapter – a must read.

Christ battles these fallacies and provides the ultimate “antidote” to these wrong ways of thinking through faith and hope. Faith destroys mistrust and Hope vanquishes condemnation.

It is through the pages of Scripture that we see the hope for ourselves and others as we “…understand that justification is [our] current standing before the Father, that sanctification is [our] ongoing promise by the Spirit, and that glorification is [our] future guarantee in Christ.

In the upcoming chapters (4-7) we’ll see how Dr. K describes “Knowing the Creator of the Soul: The Great Physician – the Trinity”. If you have not yet picked up a copy of Soul Physicians, please visit RPM Ministries today.

Preview here: http://bit.ly/7vaE

How's Your Spiritual Love Life? Part Four: Designed for Relationship

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?
Part Four: Designed for Relationship[i]

Why do we do what we do? What motivates us? Why do we love God or fail to love God? The biblical answers to these questions might surprise you. Join us on a journey of spiritual discovery in our new blog series on How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

Designed for Relationships

Because God is relational, all reality is relational. God, therefore, designed us for relationship. Henri Nouwen, though separating our relationality from our rationality more than I would, illustrates our core nature.

Somehow during the centuries we have come to believe that what makes us human is our mind. Many people seem to know the definition of a human being as a reasoning animal. But what makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love. It is our heart that is made in the image and likeness of God (Robert Durback, Seed of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, p. 197).

Henry Scougal and John Piper more accurately, I think, dissect relational reality. “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love” (Scougal, The Life of God, p. 62).

How else do we assess the beauty of an invisible heart than by what it loves? Someone might suggest, “By what it thinks.” But clear and accurate thought is beautiful only in the service of right affections. The devil himself is quite an able intellect. But he loves all the wrong things. Therefore his thinking serves evil and his soul is squalid. Or perhaps someone would suggest that we can assess the beauty of a soul by what it wills. Yes, but there is half-hearted willing and whole-hearted willing. You don’t judge the glory of a soul by what it wills to do with lukewarm interest, or with mere teeth-gritting determination. To know a soul’s proportions you need to know its passions. The true dimensions of a soul are seen in its delights. Not what we dutifully will but what we passionately want reveals our excellence or evil (Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 18, emphasis added).

Face-to-Face, Faith Beings: We Are Worshipping Beings

Designed by God, we are face-to-face beings. In relationship to God, we are faith beings. Faith is the core of the original human personality. That core involves entrusting ourselves to Someone who transcends us, yet draws near to us. In the innermost chamber of our soul resides a worshipping being; the ability to worship from the heart is what makes us human.

By these descriptions, there are no atheists. Everyone must put their trust in Someone or Something. Even Madelyn Murray O’Hair. Consider these excerpts from her diary, found by the IRS in 1999.

A 1959 entry reveals an almost pathetic despair: “The whole idiotic hopelessness of human relations descends upon me. Tonight I cried and cried, but even then, feeling nothing.”

1973 New Year’s Wish List: A mink coat, Cadillac, cook, housekeeper. “In 1974 I will run for the governor of Texas, and in 1976, the president of the United States.” Ironic that in 1976 we elected one of the most committed Christians ever to be president.

In 1977 she wrote: “I have failed in marriage, motherhood, and as a politician.”

One poignant phrase appears again and again. In half a dozen places, O’Hair writes, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.”

Reflecting on her words, Chuck Colson writes:

How telling that this hostile and abrasive person, who harbored nothing but hatred for God and his people, who believed human beings were merely the product of a cosmic accident, would nevertheless cry out to the great void for someone just to love her. What a powerful example of the fundamental truth that we are made for a relationship of love with our Creator, and that we can never fully escape from our true identity and purpose. No matter how much we may deny it intellectually, our nature still cries out for the love we were made to share. To paraphrase the famous words of St. Augustine, even the most bitter atheist is restless until she finds her rest in God (Colson, Prison Fellowship Ministry, 1999).

God is our primal relationship, whether we face it or not, whether we like Him or not. We always live oriented toward God—either with our faces or our backs oriented to Him.

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

So, how’s your spiritual love life? Prayerfully ponder:

*If our ability to love is what makes us human, then how human am I? How loving am I?

*If the worth of the soul is measured by the object of its love, then of how much worth is my soul? Who or what is the object of my love?

*If we can assess the beauty of our heart by what we love, then how beautiful is my heart? Who or what do I love?

*Am I loving all the right things or all the wrong things?

*Who or what does my soul delight in? Who or what is my soul passionate about?

*Who or what do I entrust my soul to?

*We are made for a love relationship with our Creator. Is my face turned toward Him or is my back turned toward Him?

[i]Developed from materials originally published in: Kellemen, Bob. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007

The Backside of God

The “Backside” of God (Exodus 33:18-34:9)

In Exodus 33:18-34:9, God shows Moses His “backside.” While people often debate the meaning of this, the text makes it clear. “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”

The back side of God is His goodness.

Biblical theologian Bob Deffinbaugh notes that: “Here, the emphasis of ‘goodness’ falls not on the things which God gives, but on the goodness and generosity of God as the giver of good things.”

His interpretation is reminiscent of Hebrews 11:6 where we are told that when we come to God we must believe that He is, and that He is a generous Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Here’s my questions for us. It would be interesting, informative, and encouraging to share responses with one another.

1. When have you seen the backside of God?

2. On this Thanksgiving weekend, do we have spiritual eyes to detect the backside of God—His goodness?

3. Do we have faith eyes to see the generous, gracious goodness of God?

4. How is God showing you His goodness these days?

5. What signs of God’s goodness is He sending into your life?

6. Are we seeking only the good gifts from God, or are we seeking to know the good God?

7. How is God making you aware of how good He is?

The Bitter Waters and the God of All Comfort

The Bitter Waters and the God of All Comfort

AP science writer, Randolph E. Schmid reported on November 25, 2008, that Marine archaeologists had found the remains of a slave ship wrecked off the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1841, an accident that set free the ancestors of many current residents of those islands. Some 192 Africans survived the sinking of the Spanish ship Trouvadore off the British-ruled islands, where the slave trade was banned.

This report reminds us that millions of free Africans experienced the horrible progression from freedom, to capture, to baracoon, to inhumane inspection, and then to the holds of the slave ships. Historians have variously labeled their months-long crossing of the Atlantic as “the trans-Atlantic passage,” “the Middle Passage,” “the slave holds,” “the bitter waters,” and “rupture.”[1]

Barbara Holmes, in Joy Unspeakable, explains the terminology while introducing the tragedy. “Although the event is often referred to as the Middle Passage, this label fails to depict the stark realities of a slave ship. Captured Africans were spooned together lying on their sides in ships that pitched with every wave. Together they wept and moaned in a forced community that cut across tribal and cultural lines.”[2]

Creative Communal Expression of the Inexpressible: The Moan

The air was thick with stench and panic as ships like the Trouvadore departed the Slave Coast laden with their human cargo. The gruesomeness of their voyage of terror was akin to something out of a horror movie.

But how could they articulate such suffocating physical suffering and psychological agony? And if articulated, would they be understood since the slavers pitilessly ignored all tribal associations? Groans that could not be uttered and words that could not be communicated became the primal sustaining language of known as the moan.[3]

As the ships lurched back and forth with each wave, each soul rocked and swayed with despondency. Out of their despair “the moan became the first vocalization of a new spiritual vocabulary—terrible and wonderful, it was a cry, a critique, a prayer, a hymn, a sermon, all at once”[4]

As such, it was desperately defiant. Seemingly destitute of all power, the sufferers grasped hold of the universe, wordlessly shouting, “This is not the way it was meant to be!” The pain of enslavement dared them to succumb—to give up hope by losing their voice. In the moan, they reclaimed their voice, their inner personhood, their God-given right to express themselves.

Following the North Star: Portals of Hope

We follow the North Star guidance of the enslaved Africans’ responses to capture and rupture by reminding ourselves and our spiritual friends that we are never alone. Most of us would consider ourselves condemned prisoners in solitary confinement if we were stowed in the suffocating hold of a slave ship with little air, no portals, and no access to the outside world. Our African forebears teach us that there are always three open portals providing a way of internal release from captivity.

Portal one is God—the God of all portals, the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our tribulations. Kidnapped from their homes and hijacked across the world, enslaved Africans encountered a wilderness experience that raised ultimate questions and brought them to a breaking point. On the brink between sanity and insanity, many encountered God—their good God who hears, sees, and cares. Theirs was a dual journey—away from their human home to their heavenly Home. As they journeyed, the chains still clanked, yet their hearts still hummed, or at least moaned.

Portal two is people—when the God of all comfort comforts us, he does so in order that we can comfort one another with the comfort that we receive from him. Individually and corporately they tapped into the Holy Spirit at every turn. In bound community, they shared with one another the Spirit of God within them, their hope of glory. The collective gathering of the power of his presence in their inner being provided life-sustaining strength in the midst of death-bidding despair. The all-surpassing power of God (2 Corinthians 4:7-9) shared among these captured souls transformed them into “Jesus with skin on.”

Portal three is self—not the self of self-sufficiency, but the self created in the image of God and infused with the Spirit of God. Ramming into the breakers of life, these enslaved men and women could break or conclude that there is no need to break. At their breaking point, those slaves who entrusted themselves to God discovered a bottomless resourcefulness that enabled them to transform physical bondage into spiritual freedom.[5] Through God, they absorbed the ache of life without abandoning the ship of hope. Even while stowed like animals below deck, they saw the shining North Star of God with upturned eyes of faith looking out spiritual portals.



[1]Excerpted from, Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering, Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, Baker, 2007.
[2]Holmes, Joy Unspeakable, pp. 69-70.
[3]Holmes, pp. 72-74.
[4]Noel, “Call and Response,” p. 72.
[5]Thurman, Deep River, p. 39.

Meet Logan, The Sky Angel Cowboy

Friends,

Meet Logan, the sky angel cowboy. He tells us about God's love for His Son and God's love for us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0r_FbARIn8&NR=1

Bob