The Way of Self-Examination (cont'd)by Bishop W. Reynold Storr October 20, 2004
Hyperactivity Jesus has provided spiritual rest for us now in this time: (Heb.4:9) “There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God”. That rest is ours as long as we abide in faith and obedience: “For we who have believed do enter into rest…” (4:3). Really, Jesus is our rest. In Him, we rest; apart from Him, we cannot rest.
When we disobey the Lord, therefore, our spirits are troubled. And no matter how we try, we are unable to rest. This spiritual restlessness shows itself in physical restlessness. We become impulsive, hopping from one new project to another while our earlier works remain unfinished. Waiting, or inactivity of any kind, torments us. Driven to perpetual motion, we feel we must fill every moment with activity. Even our leisure time provides no rest; insomnia fills our nights with tossings and disturbing dreams. (See Isaiah 50:11.) These sorrows of hyperactivity betray our troubled hearts.
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These signs of spiritual darkness are corrective messages from Love. They are the gentle-but-firm voice of the Bridegroom telling His wayward bride that she has turned aside and wooing her to return to Him: “Come unto me…and I will give you rest [spiritual restoration]” (Matt.11:28). They are a personal “word of knowledge” (1Cor.12:8), the Spirit’s supernatural revelation of our true state. Whenever they arise, we should immediately examine our relationship to God. Somewhere our connection to the Vine is severed. Somewhere we are not walking in the Spirit. Somewhere we have entered the dangerous realm of spiritual darkness, and we are walking in the way of Achan.
When Achan sinned and did not repent, immediately God gave a sign: At Ai, Israel could not stand before her enemies and thirty-six of her soldiers fell slain (Josh.7). If Achan had voluntarily confessed to Joshua, he may have received mercy; because he didn’t, he was judged. We must learn from Achan’s folly. Whenever the signs of spiritual darkness appear in our lives, we have an accursed thing—a wrong thought, motive, emotion, word or act—buried in our hearts. With the Spirit’s help, a few moments of quiet, truthful digging before God will unearth our wedge of gold or Babylonish garment. We should then come to the light and make confession to our Joshua, Jesus: “I have sinned against the Lord…I saw…I coveted…and [I] took them…” (Josh.7:20-21). He will always show us the path to full spiritual recovery. God’s purpose in ordering self-examination is for correction, not penalty.
He seeks not to punish but to purge us, that we may remain in living touch with Him at all times. But for this to occur we must be correctable; that is, willing to see where we are wrong and eager to do whatever God requires to make it right. Whether we confess sin, quench wrong thoughts, plant new thoughts, put off wrong attitudes, put on the mind of Christ, ask forgiveness, give forgiveness, make restitution, we must do it quickly.
When the signs of spiritual darkness tell us, “Thou art the man…,” we must not resist confession, as King Saul. When Samuel confronted Saul about his failure to kill all the Amalekites, Saul denied his true spiritual condition, insisting, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord…”(1Sam.15:13, &20). Instead, let us walk in the way of David. When Nathan confronted him with his errors, David quickly yielded and confessed his sins: …” (2Sam.12:13). “I have sinned against the Lord.
A quick, humble confession of sin always brings us an immediate return to favor, fellowship and fruitfulness in God. For He promises, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1John 1:9). It will also spare us chastisement, because if we won’t judge ourselves, God will.
The failure to walk in the way of self-examination inevitably brings
us into the way of divine correction.
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