Apprentice 2 Jesus

Having spent the past few months buried in the lives of the desert fathers, I get my radar up when I read other articles on the desert fathers. Of course, then I get jealous because THEY wrote the article (and got paid) and I didn’t! God, save me from my jealousy!

An excerpt from an article concerning the lessons of the desert fathers and mothers:

If these desert dwellers were alive today, I believe they would tell us that our gospel is too small because our wills are too big. The core battleground, they argued, is the human heart. They would counsel us to declare war on the inner adversaries that hide secretly in our hearts, and to be watchful of their stealth attacks. We’re wisest, they taught, when we concentrate our energies on the source of all our problems, the inner person—its selfish orientation, dark impulses, sexual preoccupations, greed, lust, anger, unforgiveness, hatred, and other “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19–21). Every believer still has a powerful attraction to sin. So the monks took decisive action in their reliance on God, engaging in the hard work of holiness, something they called ascesis, or spiritual training. Some monks were such great trainers, they acquired the name “athletes of God” or “soldiers of Christ.”

This was written by Bradley Nassif in Christianity Today.

The full article is here.

We need spiritual training in our day. Our lives are consumed upon ourselves and we fall prey all the time to “boredom” and other spiritual sins. In our ADD and ADHD world, we need the Spirit of God to slow us down. We need the disciplines to slow us down and force us into position to once again hear the voice of God.

These desert fathers and mothers went to the desert precisely to seek the face of God. And in that deliberate pursuit of God they met their fiercest battles. The toughest spiritual warfare is not to tear down the stronghold of a city. It is to tear down the strongholds in our own lives. We do not face our toughest demons in others. We face the toughest demons within ourselves. It is no wonder we drown ourselves in noise and distractions. We fear that battle.

Lord, give us courage to face the battle. We need to win the war in our lives. Overcome, Holy Spirit. Give us victory.