Be Still My Soul

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 41: Be Still My Soul

What about you? We’ve explored how we can journey with others helping them to worship God in the midst of suffering. But what about you?

Whether you are reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions. I’ve designed them to help you to move from cistern digging to worshipping God your Spring of Living Water.

Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Worship Journey

You have two choices in suffering: digging broken cisterns that hold no water, or drinking from God your Spring of Living Water (Jeremiah 2:13). How can you drink from God?

In your suffering, what does it look like for you to admit your insufficiency and cling to God?

What do you do with the ache in your soul caused by your suffering, grieving, and loss?

What false lovers of the soul and sinful idols of the heart are you tempted to wed yourself to when you try to face suffering without facing God?

Are you crying out to God? Longing for God? Straining to glimpse the face of God?

What do you want more, God or relief?

How are you finding God even when you don’t find answers?

How are you walking with God in the dark and finding Him to be the light of your soul?

How are you using your suffering as an opportunity to know God better?

How are your problems influencing your relationship to God?

Problems can either shove us far from God or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him. Which direction do you seem headed?

What would it look like for you to say with the hymn writer, “Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side; Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain”?

What would it look like for you to say with the hymn writer, “Leave to thy God to order and provide; In every change He faithful will remain”?

What would it look like for you to say with the hymn writer, “Be still, my soul: the best thy heavenly Friend, Thro’ thorny ways leads to a joyful end”?

Like Asaph, how could you reflect on your grief and conclude, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you (Psalm 73:25)?

Like David, how can your grief create God-thirst? “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).

How is your grief opening your hands to God?

Suffering’s ultimate goal is worship. Suffering’s ultimate goal is knowing and worshipping God as our Spring of Living Water—our only satisfaction and our greatest joy. How are you doing as you journey toward the goal?

What's Next?

We’ve come near the end of our journey. But your journey of grieving and growing will continue. In our final posts, we’ll reflect back and ponder how our journey thus far can impact your continued walk with God.

Clinging to Christ

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 40: Clinging to Christ

How do you help others to worship God in the midst of suffering? There are many effective ways to journey with people toward wanting God more than wanting relief. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Worship Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to find God even when they don’t find answers. Let’s explore some biblical trialogues that lead to worship in the midst of suffering—to suffering face-to-face with God.

“Satan wants to use suffering to cause us to doubt God and turn to false idols of the heart. In what ways have you faced such temptation? How are you overcoming them?”

“As difficult as your suffering is, what lessons are you learning about your desire for God?”

“Facing his suffering, Asaph said, ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you’ (Psalm 73:25). In what ways are you responding to suffering like Asaph?”

“Paul’s suffering drove him to want to know Christ. What is your suffering driving you to want?”

“How have you been able to worship God in the middle of this?”

“What would it be like to worship God as you go through this?”

“In what ways is God drawing you nearer to Himself through your suffering?”

“What would it be like for you to turn to Christ in the middle of this?”

“How is all of this helping you to cling to Christ, to depend on Him, to thirst for Him?”

“Who do you suppose is watching you and wondering, ‘How’s she/he doing this? Why does she/he still cling to Christ?’ What would you tell them?”

What About You?

Join the journey against next time as we apply worship to your life.

Problems Are Opportunities

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 38: Problem Are Opportunities

“Worship;” it’s such a common word. But what is worship really. Specifically, in the midst of grief, what does worship look like?

Subtle Contrasts

Let’s start with some subtle contrasts.

In cry, you cry out for God’s help; in worship, you cry out for God.

In comfort, you receive God’s strength; in worship, you experience God.

In wailing, you long for heaven because you’re tired of earth; in worship, you long for God because you miss Him.

In weaving, you glimpse God’s perspective; in worship, you glimpse the face of God.

Worship While Grieving

So what is worship in the context of suffering?

Worship is wanting God more than wanting relief.

Worship is finding God even if we don’t find answers.

Worship is walking with God in the dark and having Him as the light of our soul.

Terri’s Story: "Not Everything's Perfect!"

A while back I received an email from Terri (see previous posts in this series). She began with words I’m sure she typed with a smile.

“Guess what? Not everything’s perfect at our new church.”

I smiled knowingly as I read her first line.

She continued, “But God is. God is perfectly beautiful. Perfectly holy. Perfectly in control. Perfectly good.” Terri is glimpsing the face of God. She’s worshipping.

Every problem is an opportunity to know God better and our primary battle is to know God well. Thus in suffering leading to worship, we ask a core soul care question, “How are these problems influencing your relationship to God?”

Problems can either shove us far from Him or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him.

Worship and the Word

Join the journey again tomorrow as we explore worship from God’s Word.

Loving God or Pursuing False Lovers?

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 37: Worshipping—Loving God or Pursuing False Lovers of the Soul

As we progress through the stages of healing, we are transformed from regrouping to waiting, from deadening to wailing, from despair to weaving, and from digging cisterns to worshipping.

Digging Cisterns Described

God describes digging cisterns in Jeremiah 2:13.

“My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

In the ANE, you had two choices for life-giving water. You could settle near a clear, pure, bubbling spring of fresh underground water, or you could dig a cistern which captured run-off water and held it in a stagnant well that often cracked leaking in more filth and leaking out water.

Spiritual cistern digging involves rejecting God as our Spring of Living Water because we see Him as unsatisfying, unholy, and unloving. Once we reject the only Being in the universe who could ever satisfy the last aching abyss of our souls, we choose to turn to substitutes—worthless, putrid substitutes—cisterns.

Back in the Casket

Put yourself back in that casket. You’ve tried to claw your way out through immediate gratification. Your bowl of soup may be power, prestige, pleasure, pleasing people, or any multitude of pathways of relating. Since soup never satisfies the soul, only the stomach, you still ache. What to do with your ache?

Well, if you face it, then you have to admit your insufficiency. That simply will not do. So you deaden it. You block out and suppress the reality of your hungry heart. Keep busy. Fantasize. Climb the corporate ladder. These tricks of the godless trade work no better than immediate gratification. Somewhere, deep down inside, despair brews. “Is this all there is?”

Now what? If you follow the beaten path, then despair guides you to false lovers. Idols of the heart. Digging cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Something or someone who will rescue you from agony’s clutches—or so you imagine.

Is That All There Is?

Now what? Our choice is clear. Tomorrow we entice with the clear choice—worshipping God in the midst of life’s losses.

How's Your Spiritual Love Life? Part Six: Desiring God

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?
Part Six: Desiring God[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?

Yesterday we explored our longing to enjoy our heavenly Father. Today we explore several additional biblical portraits of our longing for our Father who art in heaven.

Longing to Entrust Ourselves to Our Father

When we say that we long for Father, we mean that we long to enjoy him and also that we long to entrust ourselves to him (Psalm 40:11; Psalm 62:11-12; Isaiah 6:1-3; Psalm 63:1-8). Entrust implies that we rely upon and place our confidence in Father’s faithful strength to keep us safe and secure. The cry, “Abba, Father,” represents our most basic relationship with God—a relationship of intimate trust. For believers, this means that every second that we trust God, we are fulfilling our purpose. Every time we cling to God, we glorify him while achieving our destiny.

Longing to Engage in Our Father’s Good Purposes

We revel in Father when we enjoy him, we take refuge in Father when we entrust ourselves to him, and we respect him when we engage in our Father’s good purposes. We long for the applause of heaven.

The Apostle Paul, awaiting his martyrdom, reminds his protégé, Timothy, that he has engaged in God’s purposes, and now longs for God’s high-five.

You take over. I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, he’s an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for his coming (Eugene Peterson, The Message, p. 2172, 2 Timothy 4:6-8).

Father fashioned our souls to long for His “Well done thou good and faithful servant!” His pleasure with us is our pleasure (Luke 3:22; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17).

Longing to Emulate and Reflect Our Father

We long to enjoy Father, entrust ourselves to Him, engage in His purposes, and we long to emulate or reflect Him. We want to hear God say, “That’s my boy! That’s my girl!” We want people to say of us, “Like Father, like son and daughter.” Our souls experience shalom when we fulfill our destiny of mirroring Father (Romans 8:28-29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 5:1-2).

Longing to Exalt Our Father

Some may be ready to mount a protest. “What about exalting God? Doesn’t the Westminster Confession of Faith teach that our chief duty is to glorify God and love Him forever? You’ve got the love Him part, what about the glorify Him part?”

Totally true. We long to exalt Father. However, how do children exalt and honor parents? Is it not by enjoying parents, trusting parents, engaging in parents’ purposes, and emulating or imitating parents? When we enjoy, entrust, engage, and emulate, then we exalt our Father. We glorify God by loving Him forever.

If people notice that my son wants to be with me, smiles as we talk, enjoys my presence, then they think, “Must be a pretty cool dad.” As Piper reminds us, “Never forget that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him” (Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 14).

If people observe my daughter trusting me, depending upon me, believing in me, then they say, “Great father.” If people see that my children join me in my values, living for Christ like I try to, then they comment, “Wow! Some parent.” If people find my children following my lifestyle examples, reflecting something good in me, then they respond, “He must be quite a man.”

People will honor our Father when we enjoy Him, entrust ourselves to Him, engage in His good purposes, and emulate His character. God will be honored and we will be at peace. Our longings satisfied. Our thirsts quenched.

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

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

*Who do I trust in to keep me safe and secure?

*Who do I cry to and cling to?

*In what ways do I long for the applause of heaven?

*What will it mean to me to hear God’s “Well done!” and to receive God’s high five?

*When people look at me, do they say, “Life Heavenly Father, like son or daughter”?

*How well am I exalting God by enjoying, entrusting, engaging in His purposes and emulating Him?

*How well am I glorifying God by loving Him forever?

[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.

How's Your Spiritual Love Life? Part Five: Longing for Father

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?
Part Five: Longing for Father[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?

We Are Worshipping Beings Who Long

As worshipping beings we long for Father. We are faith-in-Father-beings. Our souls are a magnet polarized toward FATHER, longing for peace with our Father of holy love. The essence of our humanity centers on our loving trust in God the Father. This is the fundamental unifying factor in the human personality.

We are truly human only in fellowship with our Creator. Communion with God is precisely the natural state of true humanity. Man is truly man only when he participates in divine life and realizes in himself the image and likeness of God, and this participation in no way diminishes his authentically human existence, human energy and will (Maximos the Confessor, quoted in Neil Anderson, The Common Made Holy, p. 52).

The deepest longing in the human soul is to be in relationship with Someone who absolutely delights in us (“This is my beloved . . .”) and who fundamentally values us (“. . . in whom I am well pleased”). God created our souls with an ardent desire, a yearning, an appetite for relating. Our prevailing and prominent desire is for a relationship with our Father who art in heaven.

Longing to Enjoy Our Father

So when we say that we long for our Father, what do we mean? What do we long for when we long for our heavenly Father? First, we long to enjoy our Father. Enjoying God is foreign to us today, yet it is a continual biblical theme, it was common to our parents in the faith, and it is our holy calling and happy privilege.

The Psalmists sing, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you” (Psalm 63:3). “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25). “I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land” (Psalm 143:6). Our Father’s unfailing love is the umbilical cord of our life (Psalm 107:9; Psalm 136:1-26; Proverbs 19:22). Speaking of God’s husband-wife relationship to His people, Walther Eichrodt writes:

In choosing her to be his wife, he is not amusing himself, but fully committing himself to put his love into effect by founding a community, within which it is his will to enter into an intimate relationship with his people, and through them with all humanity. When he disciplines, it is not a light-hearted disregard for his unheard-of graciousness, nor a chilly withdrawal, nor yet a penalty enforcing the letter of the law. But a solemn act of calling to account, carried out in a fit of blazing indignation, to bring about a realization of what a grave thing it is to put his holy will to shame, and at the same time to show how seriously he takes his human partner (­Eichrodt, Ezekiel: A Commentary, p. 209).

Enjoying God is biblical and it is historical. Aelred, summed God and our relationship to Him when he wrote, “God is friendship.” Satisfying friendship, at that. “The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied” (Edwards, “The Christian Pilgrim,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, p. 2).

Enjoying God is biblical, historical, and wonderful. “The pleasure God has in his Son will become my pleasure, and I will not be consumed, but enthralled forever” (Piper, The Pleasures of God, p 28). He quenches our thirst and captivates our souls.

The suffering church militant of this present evil age is to cultivate one great impulse throbbing in her soul, viz. an aching longing for the Bridegroom to come to her, to take her in his arms, with nothing within herself to wrest her away, and to be held there for ever. Until such time as he is pleased to come, she is to center her life around the love of Jesus Christ, the King, Bridegroom and Husband of his church, to her his Queen, Bride, and Spouse, and of hers to him (Ray Ortlund, Whoredom, pp. 168-169).

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

In tomorrow’s blog, Lord willing, we will explore four more aspects of our longing for God our Father. Until then, let’s examine our spiritual love life. Prayerfully ponder:

*In what ways is my life evidencing that my soul is a magnet polarized toward my heavenly Father?

*In what ways is my life evidencing loving trust in God the Father?

*In what ways is my life evidencing the deepest longing of the human soul to be in relationship with God the Father who absolutely delights in me and who deeply values me?

*In what ways is my life evidencing the longing to enjoy my heavenly Father?

*In what ways is my life evidencing that my heavenly Father’s unfailing love is the umbilical cord of my life?

*In what ways is my life evidencing the truth that the enjoyment of God is the only happiness that satisfies my soul?

[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.

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

How's Your Spiritual Love Life? Part Two: The Holy of Holies of the Soul

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?[i]
Part Two: The Holy of Holies of the Soul

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?

Hunger Was God’s Idea

Hunger was God’s idea. He created us with a soul that thirsts for what only relationships can quench. The Hebrew word for soul comes from a word that means “throat”—the organ through which we take in nourishment, fill our hunger, and quench our thirst. The Hebrews used physical body parts to represent immaterial aspects of our personality. Proverbs 25:25 is one example: “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.”

As the throat craves physical satisfaction, so the soul craves personal, relational satisfaction. We long for and are motivated by a thirst for intimate involvement and union. These longings for relationship are part of our essential being as created in God’s image.

Love is to the soul what breathing is to the lungs and food is to the stomach. Without connection, we shrivel; we starve to death. With mutual, risky, giving, grace relationships we thrive. The exact center of our being is our capacity to give and receive in relationships.

What motivates us to do what we do? What impels us? In training counselors, I like to tell them, “Go where the action is.” The action is relational because we are relationally motivated. We pursue what we perceive to be pleasing.

“We have an immense void inside that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves. Yearning and longing and desire are the very stuff of our nature” (John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 48).

As the Puritan writer, Henry Scougal, reminded us, “the soul of man has in it a raging and inextinguishable thirst” (Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, p. 108). We’re motivated to quench our relational thirsts.

Worship: The Holy of Holies of the Soul

We were born desiring worship. In our original design, God implanted in us a fundamental nature that must worship.

When I began working toward my doctorate at Kent State University, I decided to develop relationships as a precursor to sharing my faith. Or so I thought. Two weeks into my initial semester, our professor assigned a paper on humanistic psychology. As the class discussed our viewpoints, our professor encouraged me to share my position. “Bob, you wrote an interesting paper contrasting humanistic psychology with Christian thinking.” So much for my “go slow” approach. During the ensuing discussion, one student was particularly vocal against my views.

About a month later, in a course on counseling the culturally different, a Native American presented the guest lecture. Toward the end of her talk, she invited us to stand to worship the spirit of the four winds. Two students remained seated—myself and the woman who had vocally opposed my views in the other class. As soon as class ended, she marched up to me to thank me for not standing. “You gave me the courage of my convictions. But to be honest, I’m not sure what I believe in. You seem so strong and sincere in your faith. Could we talk about your relationship to God?”

This young woman exposed her fundamental spiritual nature. I could have said of her what Paul said of the people of Athens, “I see that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22).

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

*What quenches my thirst?

*What satisfies my soul?

*What fills my hunger?

*What do I crave?

*Can I say with the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth I desire nothing besides you”?


[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.

All the Colors of the Rainbow

All the Colors of the Rainbow

Why do we find multi-cultural worship so difficult. Here we are in the first decade of the 21st century, and yet Sunday mornings are still the most segregated hours in America! What a shame. What a sin. What are we going to do about it?

1. Be Proactive: Connect personally with someone of a different ethnic background.

2. Be Intentional: Influence your church leadership and members to purposefully build cross-cultural bridges.

3. Be Educated: Read excellent works on multicultural churches like those of David Anderson.

4. Be Brave: Don't expect everyone to support you. Do expect some to subvert you.

5. Be Thrilled: Nothing thrills the soul more than worship of every tribe, nation, and tongue. Just ask God in Revelation 5!