Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

• Matthew 16:25

But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

• Matthew 7:14

Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

• 2 Timothy 2:22

“ ‘Regarding spiritual sloth, these beginners [on the spiritual way] usually become weary in the more spiritual exercises and flee from them, since these exercises are contrary to sensory satisfaction. Since they are so used to finding delight in spiritual practices, they become bored when they do not find it if they do not receive in prayer the satisfaction they crave … they do not want to return to it or at times they either give up prayer or go to it begrudgingly. Because of their sloth, they subordinate the way of perfection (which requires the denial of one’s will and satisfaction for God’s sake) to the pleasure and delight of their own will. As a result they strive to satisfy their own will rather than God’s.
“Many of these beginners want God to desire what they want, and become sad if they have to desire God’s will. They feel an aversion toward adapting their will to God’s. Hence they frequently believe that what is not their will, or that which brings them no satisfaction. is not God’s will, and, on the other hand, that if they are satisfied. God is too. They measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, which is in opposition to his teaching in the Gospel: that he who loses his life for his sake will gain it. and he who desires to gain it will lose it [Matthew 16.25].
“Beginners also become bored when told to do something unpleasant. Because they look for spiritual gratifications and delights, they are extremely lax in the fortitude and labour perfection demands. Like those who are reared in luxury, they run sadly from everything rough, and they are scandalized by the cross, in which spiritual delights are found. And in the more spiritual exercises their boredom is greater. Since they expect to go about in spiritual matters according to the whims and satisfactions of their own will, to enter by the narrow way of life, about which Christ speaks [Matthew 7.14], is saddening and repugnant to them.’ (The Dark Night of the Soul 1.7.2-4).”

• Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought

John of the Cross or Juan de Yepes y Alvarez (1542-1591) was a Carmelite friar.  He, like St. Teresa of Avila, used mysticism to get closer to God.  As a result, he was a prolific writer.

In this rather lengthy quote, he talks about the spiritual sloth, but he is really talking about the person who does not seek God’s Will.  In fact, the sloth thinks their own ideas are so wonderful that God will quickly get on the bandwagon and adopt the sloth’s ideas as being God’s Will.  Thus, why ever would the sloth need to seek God’s Will?

This is a slothful practice because it takes Bible Study and a lot of prayer to determine God’s Will.  It takes prayer where we pray beyond our own thoughts and desires and continue to be in a prayerful frame of mind to hear God’s side of the issue at hand.

We do not need mysticism as much as we need a full surrender and the willingness to stay in our prayer closet until God has communicated with us.  But if we are not rooted in a foundation of Bible knowledge, the voice we hear could be an evil interloper or our own voice, taking the slothful shortcut.

Thus, what others might call arrogance, since the sloth thinks their idea is so good, God will adopt it…  This is a soft way of saying the sloth’s idea is better than God’s idea in the sloth’s mind.  This starts off on dangerous ground and it gets worse.  With arrogance and considering your idea better than God’s idea, you have a sinful foundation.  How could you ever think this would work?

We are setting our expectations on top of a sinful foundation.  So, when the idea flops, we turn from God?  We might blame God, in our arrogant fashion, but the fault is our own.  Yet, for a beginner who is a spiritual sloth, it is easier to give up, blaming God.  This is not a case of falling from Grace.  They only went through the motions of accepting Grace to impress God with how great they were.

Note how many of God’s servants had excuses why they were not qualified to be in that position, like Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

I must start out on my knees and humbly seek God’s will.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.