By Terry Walters
Now the question is ~ how can our spiritual
and emotional tanks can be filled and how they can be drained ?
FILLING OUR
TANKS
Our tanks are filled by God and People when we are affirmed and
encouraged and strengthened by them.
Encouragement.
The following scriptures show us that God, The Father, Jesus, The
Son, Holy Spirit and the Scriptures themselves encourage us.
In 2 Thess2:16 and 17 Paul prays, "May our Lord Jesus Christ
himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us
eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and
strengthen you in every good deed and word."
Then in Acts 9:31 we are told that "…the church
throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace.
It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew
in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord."
And the Scriptures encourage us as well. Romans 15:4 "For
everything that was written in the past was written to teach us,
so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures we
might have hope."
Romans 12:8 says that encouragement is spiritual gift. It
is so important to encourage others. Paul sent Tychicus to
encourage the Ephesians and the Colossians (Eph 6:22, Col4:8) and
Timothy to the Thessalonians (1Thess.3:3) Paul spoke many words
of encouragement (Acts 20:2)
Preachers are to encourage. In 2 Tim 4:2 we read "Preach
the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct,
rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful
instruction."
I suspect that many of us would find it very easy to be critical
and without much patience or careful instruction.
Elders are to encourage. Titus 1:9 "He must hold
firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that
he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who
oppose it."
The writer in Hebrews tells us that we should all encourage one
another. "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is
called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's
deceitfulness." (Heb 3:13)
So none of us is excluded from this ministry. You can see that
encouragement builds hope and should keep us from having hard
hearts. The purpose of the gifts is to build up God's
people and strengthen them. It can, and should be, very
positive.
Strengthened
We all need to be strengthened and Paul prays that the Father
strengthens us. Eph 3:16 "I pray that out of his
glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his
Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith."
With Christ dwelling in you then your spiritual tank should be OK.
Paul also prays that God may "strengthen your hearts so that
you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and
Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones."
And Paul has no doubt that "The Lord is faithful and will
strengthen you and protect you from the evil one". (2Thess 3:3)
Protection
Proverbs 2:8 tells us that God "guards the course of
the just and protects the way of his faithful ones."
All these will help to fill up your emotional and spiritual tank,
and following the example of God and Jesus and Holy Spirit it is
our function to help others keep their tanks full.
DRAINING OUR TANKS
But what drains the tank? The opposite of encouraging and
strengthen and protecting is
Discouragement
Discouragement is probably the most effective tool of the enemy.
It has been used by him since the time of the Creation. In
Genesis 3 we first see the effect of discouragement upon Adam and
Eve. It was a simple statement denying what God had said.
But it was most effective.
Perhaps one of the most well known examples of discouragement in
the Bible can be found in the story of the rebuilding of the
walls of Jerusalem when the exiles were allowed to return.
The discouragement is described in Ezra 4. In verse 4 it
says "Then the people around them set out to discourage the
people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building."
Discouragement can take many forms and many guises, but every one
of them is from the enemy, who does not want you to succeed in
doing what God has given you to do. Discouragement comes
from the pit.
God and Jesus told their people on many occasions not to be
discouraged, and not to be afraid. That is because God
knows that discouragement is so easy to place into someone's mind.
It can even be done with a positive statement used in the wrong
way, and can come from your closest brother or sister, often
without them realising it. There is nothing worse to drain
your emotional and spiritual tank than discouragement. So
if we find it easy to discourage then let's make an effort to
stop and be encouraging so that we may be.
What else drains ?
Spiritual Problems
I read a book a little while ago by Gordon MacDonald. The
book is entitled Restoring Your Spiritual Passion. In it
MacDonald lists four spirits that will drain your spiritual tank.
1. The
Competitive Spirit
"God calls us to work together. When we get absorbed
by a sense of competition, we are in danger. Our passion
subsides as we spend more and more time jealously looking
sideways at the roads others are taking rather than looking ahead
at the path God has paved for us."
At page 98. MacDonald quotes Oscar Wilde.
Said Wilde: "The devil was once crossing the Libyan desert,
and he came upon a spot where a number of small fiends were
tormanting a holy hermit. The sainted man easily shook off their
evil suggestions. The devil watched their failure, and then
he stepped forward to give them a lesson. 'What you do is
too crude', he said. 'Permit me for one moment.' With that
he whispered to the holy man, 'Your brother has just been made
Bishop of Alexandria.' A scowl of malignant jealousy at
once clouded the serene face of the hermit. 'That,' said the
devil to his imps,'is the sort of thing which I should recommend'."
2. The Critical
Spirit
MacDonald found in himself "A critical spirit that often
squelches spiritual passion…. It was there, in abundance,
and while I despised it in others, I was embarrassed to discover
it was also ready and waiting in me. When tired or unguarded, I
found it easy to find a flaw in every person in my world. I
found something to carp about in the reading of every magazine or
in the watching of or listening to a Christian presentation on
television or radio.
The tendancy to emphasise the negative in every situation, to
find the ideological or doctrinal difference, to see the
character fault, to major in locating the weakness of the program
prevented me from generating the positive energy I needed to get
on with my part of the work to which I'd been called."
3. The
Vain Spirit
"This is an insatiable need to impress people in order to
have them prefer or like us. It usually arises from private
insecurities.
It emerges in many ways e.g. by the way we insist that proper
credit be given to our accomplishments, by the attention we pay
to titles and privileges, and by the amount of attention we draw
to ourselves in conversations.
The more we seek to impress others about ourselves, the more
security we will develop built around human adulation. And
the less God will feel obligated to provide us with His gift of
security. The more we strive to live off the applause of
others, the less we will hunger for the passion that causes us to
seek the approval of the heavenly Father.
The great theologian James Denny once wrote, "No man can
bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No
man can give the impression that he is clever and that Christ is
mighty to save."
3. The
Adversarial Spirit
This relates to our critics, those who have opposed us or failed
us and towards whom we feel vengeful. This creates an energy that
will destroy every ounce of spiritual passion we have.
Spiritual passion cannot co-exist with resentments. The
unforgiving spirit is no home to the energy that causes Christian
growth and development.
Learning to accept criticism from those who may or may not like
us is a heavy discipline. MacDonald was taught by a mentor
that there is a kernel of truth in every critique. Look for
it and you'll be a better person."
It is a great learning process to look for the kernel of truth
and out of that process comes growth, effectiveness and spiritual
passion. I won't say too much about the other three headings of
Emotional problems, Physical Problems and Concerns about Self but
they are very real areas of attack for people in Chrsitian work.
But it is worth pointing out that all those people who have the
potential for filling up your emotional or spiritual tank also
have the capacity to drain it. Again I will refer to MacDonald.
He identifies five types of people, three who fill and two
who drain.
The Fillers
1. The Very Resourceful People. Those who ignite our passion for faith and Christ-like performance.
2. The Very Important People. Those who share our passion and are prepared to become fellow-workers.
3. The Very trainable People. Those who catch our passion. We ignite and they catch the passion.
The Drainers
1. The Very Nice People. Those who enjoy our passion and are prepared to be very kind and good to be around, but who will not catch the passion and so they end up absorbing all our energy without any result.
2. The Very Draining People. Those who sap our passion, and not even particularly good to be around.
Now I don't want to sound too critical in
what I am saying, nor do I intend to be condemnatory in any sense.
But what I am saying is that in every person there is likely to
be something of all of those traits. And in every group of
people there are various types with various needs. We need
to be very careful not to be involved disproportionately with
those who are prepared to drain us. That's not to say we
should not help them. We should and must, but be careful
that your spiritual and emotional tank is not drained to such an
extent that you have no energy left for what God has called you
to do. Anything which prevents this can be a deceit from
the enemy.
Incidentally all that I have said here relating to individuals
also applies to a fellowship corporately. A fellowship's
spiritual and emotional tank can be drained in exactly the same
ways as an individual.
So at the beginning of 1999
let me ask you, "What sort of a year was it? Have you become
stronger, closer to God, more enthusiastic? Or are you like
so many of us struggling sometimes with you Christian walk?
If you are then may I encourage you today to think about this
teaching and ask yourself why.
If anything I have said has touched you, and it has certainly
touched me, then I suggest that we ask God to work in our lives.
Resolve to be a filler not a drainer. Resolve to do
everything that enables you to be a filler. God will work
with you and through you if you let Him.
In many professional circles at the present time there is a
concept being used to make the practitioner better at the job.
The concept is that of the reflective practitioner. It is
intended to encourage the practitioner to learn from experience
by reflecting on that experience, explaining what has been
learned, and then trying to develop the experience further.
So it becomes a cycle.
I think this concept is one that could be
very instructional for Christians. How many of us truly
reflect upon our experiences and learn from them so that we can
then improve what we are and do? I suspect very few of us.
If we do then it is likely that we will begin to get stronger and
stronger in our Christian lives as we reflect and learn and
reflect and learn. The helix will be on the upward trend,
not the downward trend.
There is one big difference between the Christian and the
practitioner, of course, and it is that the Christian has Holy
Spirit to help fill their Spiritual Tank. So keep your
tanks full. That way you can function in your relationships.
Don't let them be drained for any reason.
Terry Walters is a Profesor of Law and a regular speaker at both his local church and in other fellowships.
You can contact Terry at terrycwalters@lineone.net