Pride and Despair...

"Pride usurps God. Pride inverts the universe's deepest truth:
that we need and serve God. Pride gets this exactly backward. Pride is the delusion that God, if He  exists, is awfully lucky  I've shown up and should mind His p's and q's lest I change my mind.

The twin of pride is despair. It is to collapse into a sense that not even God is good enough or big enough or smart enough to sort out the mess I've made or stumbled upon. In despair, we are consumed by the lie that God, if He exists, is too inept or distracted or apathetic to even notice us, let alone come to our aid."

-Mark Buchanan's The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

Comments

[Chris]

Oh, I thought this book was fabulous. Anyone looking to begin observing Sabbath or study or whatever, should start with Buchanan's book. I read this alongside Rabbi Heschel's seminal work, The Sabbath (an equally amazing and transcendant read). Good stuff. I taught a class from both sources and the response was just fantastic!

[jane]

Pretty ironic that you would post on despair this AM (or is it?). Just a few thoughts:

This post opened my eyes to that fact that I must not be too prideful because, in what I thought was despair, I always turn to God and feel He is the only one that will lift me up. I guess then, it is not really despair but, maybe, only sadness. Whatever its title, I always turn to HIM.

Now, heres my question: At times, I feel quilty about turning to Him with so many requests. Should I always depend on the Lord to elevate my mood or do I need to take some responsibility for this myself? I ask this but, in the same breath, not sure how that would work out for me. I have spent so many years, most of my life, turning to Him for everything. I ask myself "does He ever get tired of it?" I find myself apologizing in prayer for asking for his constant attention and, at this point in my life, can't imagine it any other way. Guess I have very little pride when it comes to asking for help from the Lord and, when you get right down to it, not sure I want to do it any other way. I could have NEVER lived through some of the rougher years of my life without keeping the Lord close and feeling his arms wrapped around me. I still feel that way but I don't ever feel as though I give back enough. But, he continues to love me anyway. Amazing!

Can one be too needy in the eyes of the Lord?

[Bob]

Ironic? I'm not sure why...

I think "Despair" is different than the general angst I tend to feel- though one can definitely lead to the other... and part of why I posted this was because it spoke to ME...

In any case- "Can one be too needy in the eyes of the Lord?"

Let me give a qualified "yes"... and refer back to the evergreen discussion from two sundays ago...
here

"Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,
like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.
Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me."
"When he talks about “ a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk” what do you think he’s getting at? What’s the metaphor trying to describe?
The opposite of the proud, self-promoting, self-centeredly ambitious person is this: calmly and quietly dependent on God. Happy just to be in His presence. Even a weaned child depends on her mother. She just depends on mother differently- it looks and feels very different…
On the other side of arrogant ambition and infantile dependency is this…
VS 3
In the same way a child slowly learns to see Momma as something more than a means of satisfying its own desires and begins to love her more and more for her own sake, the goal for the one moving towards maturity in relationship with God is to stop seeing God as a means toward satisfying our own desires and ambitions and to begin to love Him for Himself. To see being in His presence and worshiping Him not as a means, but as an end.
Now, my hope is found NOT in having all my wishes and desires met by God, but my hope is found in God Himself- in His presence, in relationship with Him. I rest and quiet myself not through getting all I want but simply by resting In God Himself. I like the way Dan Stults put it on the forum this week: “We learn to depend on Him to provide for our needs without us needing to freak out about whether or not they will be provided for.” And we learn that not everything we think we need really qualifies as a need.
Let me quote Spurgeon on this one (an Evergreen first!):
“ …to the weaned child his mother is his comfort though she has denied him his comfort. It is a blessed mark of growth out of spiritual infancy when we can forgo the joys which once appeared to be essential, and can find our solace in Him who denies them to us”
But when a child is denied something, even for it’s own good, initially- that’s hard. There’s a lot of crying. But soon- the child learns that Mom still loves him, even if she won’t give him what he most desperately wants…
How many of you have had this experience?
When you first come to God, He is SO present. Whenever you cry out, whenever you call to Him you FEEL His presence. Your prayers get answered, your needs get met, God shows up.
But over time, something seems to change a bit…
You don’t feel like you did when things first started out.
You cry out and God is not as quick to show.
Many of your prayers seem to hang there, unanswered and seemingly unheard.
And so you start to wonder- has God abandoned me? Did I do something wrong?
No- If you are feeling that way, God is most likely not punishing you- no more than the mother who denies her child her breast, even knowing that at that moment, the child wants nothing else. God has not abandoned you. No more than the mother who lays in bed listening to her child cry but knows that if she picks up the child every time the child cries, that child will never grow up, it will never learn to calm and quiet itself… It will be stuck.
God has not abandoned you. But it is possible He’s weaning you. "

[jane]

I only said ironic because of my e-mail to you last evening. Sorry.

Yup, I was there for the "big breast in the sky" sermon. A long time ago I learned the Lord is not at my beck and call to grant whatever I ask for. You should know that better then anyone. I think what I was trying to say more then anything was I am not sure what I would do if I did not have my faith, if I did not feel that I could share everything with the Lord, not have that closeness. Do I ask for strength? Oh, yeah! Do I ask for courage? Without a doubt! But, I ask Him to show me the way and, if that means I need to be weened, I am not sure that will ever happen.

Too needy would be constantly asking for things we weren't willing to work for, to try to do on our own. Guess I answered my own question, didn't I?