In this talk, given at the 1988 Singles Conference, Paul DeCelles quoted the Spirit and Purpose: “We oppose in earnest the activities of Satan . . . ,” He then taught how to do that, how to understand the different movements in the soul (consolations and desolations), their purpose and how to leverage them to live for God’s glory.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
MAN’S VOICE: This talk was given at the 1988 People of Praise Singles Conference held in August of 1988 in Washington, D.C. This tape is copyrighted by the People of Praise, and may not be duplicated without prior permission.
[Tape begins after Paul has already begun speaking.]
PAUL: . . . The Spirit and Purpose, in the third paragraph, we read that
Because we love our Lord in return (for the way he has loved us), we labor for the renewal of the church and for the conversion to Christ of all those who do not yet know him. And we strive. . . .
What we’re doing here is, we’re laying out a lot of the mission that the Lord has given us over the years through various prophecies. One was that
We (should) labor for the renewal of the church and for the conversion to Christ of all those who do not yet know him. We strive to lead all people into the fullness of the baptism in the Spirit and into the exercise of the charismatic gifts allotted by the Holy Spirit.
Now we could have said a lot of other things in this area, in this section, that we didn’t say, things that occur to you: “Well, we could do this. Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do that?” The reason that we put in this is that we felt like the Lord had called us in—to be a People of Praise for this purpose: “To lead all people—to strive to lead all people into the fullness of the baptism in the Spirit, and into the exercise of the charismatic gifts.”
Then the next thing that we deal with–these are major issues that we feel the community was called into existence by God for. The third one we list here is,
We oppose, in earnest, the activities of Satan, who is the enemy of God and of mankind. And we especially oppose his continuing efforts to keep Christians divided from one another.
So today we want to talk about some of the ways in which we want to oppose, in earnest, the activity of Satan. Today we want to dwell a little bit on the question of how to tell, what is the work of Satan? And what is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Both Satan and the Holy Spirit are spirits. And they work, actually, using pretty much the same kinds of things to reach us, which is very important to realize. The Lord has told us that the—Satan comes disguised as an angel of light. That is to say, he is an angel: he’s spiritual; he’s brilliant. He was the head, he was the chief cherub, before he was thrown out of heaven when he tried to lead the rebellion against God. He was—in fact, he was so important in rebellion that God had to create hell to receive him; he had to find a place for Satan. And that hell is described vividly in the New Testament.
And so, here we are, confronted with someone who really knows the way angels work. He is an angel, and he is a big top one. And he’s very much against the work of God. He hates God. And he hates the work of God. In particular, he hates us! And in fact, one of the reasons some of the ancient Fathers used to give in some of the writings, was—one of the reasons why Satan hates God so much is because he understood that the Word of God was going to become flesh. And the idea . . . that human beings like us would be able to have the Holy Spirit and—the Spirit of God, and be called sons of the Father, and therefore actually be exalted above the angels, who were so wonderful, so brilliant, and so perfect in every way; that we would—people like us would—be promoted above him. . . . you can see that envy was at work. He despised God for that.
That’s an interesting sidelight there. One of—St. Basil the Great, who was one of the wonderful founders of—you could say theologians or theoreticians, or whatever you wanted to—of the eastern Monasticism, wrote that the main, the most important problem that you run into in building community life is . . . guess what? Envy. And so, again, Satan, I think, started his existence and interference in our lives by envying the place that God had set aside for us.
Okay. Let me talk now about some things that I’m not going to talk about. I want to make some distinctions so that you won’t be totally disappointed when the talk is over, because I haven’t talked about them. (At least, if you’re disappointed, I’ll say to you, “Well, I told you I wasn’t going to talk about ’em.”) [Crowd laughs.] But, I want to distinguish discernment, which is the main subject of my talk (and then after the talk, there’ll be some time for some discussion, I hope)—I want to distinguish discernment from, for example, prudence. Some of the questions that come up in connection with discernment of spirits are actually questions that have to do with, How can you make a right judgment? What’s the right way to choose the right thing?
So, let me just describe to you that there is an area of prudence, and that’s different from dealing with evil spirits, which—and discernment of spirits has to do with that latter. So, first, a word about prudence. In Kerry’s [Koller] talk, he spent quite a bit of time showing us that it was part of God’s plan in creating us; he made us a certain way. And so, we have a certain reason for existence. He made us for a certain purpose. We are created for a certain end in store for us.
Now, as a person looks at one’s end—“Why are you doing what you’re doing? What is this all about? Why am I here? What should I be aiming at? Where should I put my energies, etc.? What is this? What am I striving for?” . . . When you ask questions like that, you actually are trying to find out what it is that is most characteristically human about you. In fact, it is the thing which— one of the ways in which you can distinguish a human being from all other animals and plants, anything organic. That is to say, human beings are capable of perceiving what the purpose of things is, and therefore, they’re able to aim at that. They can construct their life and freedom to move to certain ends. So—animals can’t do that. They live by instinct only. But human beings are able to understand what this is all about. And they can direct themselves in the direction of achieving the purpose for which we were created.
Now, prudence has to do with choosing the best means to attain the end that you should be attaining. So, in the—ancient philosophy, they used to talk—which is where we got a lot of these ideas about nature and the end of our life, and so on. They were raised up, of course, by Christ, by revelation, into a fullness. But we need to understand what these ideas mean, that we were created for a certain purpose. And that purpose, we know, is to live for the praise of God’s glory, and thereby save our souls. And we should build the kingdom of God, bringing as many people with us to salvation. So that’s what we’re made for.
But when you look at things—and this is what the ancients used to say—if you could see what the end is that you’re trying to achieve, you automatically see all the things between where you are and the end itself. So, it’s something like, say, you want to get to the end of these stairs at the top of the door up there; well, in order for me to see the door, in fact, I see all the points in between. So, as soon as I see the end clearly, I also, in fact, see what I have to do to get there. I see the way. It’s contained, almost, in the act of seeing the end itself.
But there are a lot of ways for me to get up to that door. I can go up this aisle. I can climb—I mean, I could really make life hard on myself. I could step from Bob’s lap, I mean, he’d break my leg! It’d be all kinds of trouble, but I could get up there the hard way, or I can get up there the easy way. In fact, maybe I’d try some ways, and I wouldn’t make it at all.
So, the question is, what’s the best way for me to get to the end? That’s what prudence has to do with. It’s a special virtue which we should cultivate in ourselves. Understand ends, what you’re trying to achieve; see the variety of options you have for getting to the end; and then also choose, deliberately, what is the best, most effective way to attain the end that you’re trying to reach. In this case, the end is life everlasting, at the heavenly banquet with our Lord.
So, I’m not going to talk about prudence, which has to do with choosing the best means to attain the end. I’m also not going to talk about wisdom, and a lot of other things that are extremely important. In fact, I’m not even going to talk about half of what discernment has to do with. But let me talk—let me explain that. There are two kinds of gifts of discernment of spirits. They really function very much along the same spiritual track, but they are distinguished from each other by one being so much more excellent than the first way.
Some people God gives a great, overwhelming gift of discernment of spirits. It’s like they can sniff out evil spirits as though they were perfume or some terrible fragrance. And in fact, if—somebody like the Curé of Ars, for example, St. John Vianney, had a wonderful gift of discernment of spirits. Somebody could go into his confessional, and as soon as he walked in, John Vianney knew what was on this man’s soul. And he could spot immediately what was going on with the person without the person having even said anything yet. So, it’s just a remarkable gift from God. I’m not going to talk about that.
There is another discernment of spirits, which is ordinary equipment for the saints. And that’s what I want to talk about. There is a gift of discernment of spirits, which is not nearly as dramatic and effective as the one that John Vianney had, for example; but it’s one that we have, and that we need to cultivate. And it is plenty sufficient to get us through all the difficulties we can encounter as we strive to reach our end. It’s a way . . . well, let me describe what I mean—define what I mean by discernment, then. It’s understanding, to some extent, the different movements produced in the soul, for the purpose of recognizing those that are good, in order to let them in, and to recognize those that are evil, in order to reject them.
So, what I mean by discernment is: having that ability to understand, to some extent, the different movements produced in the soul. Now, obviously, there are a lot of terms here I haven’t defined very well. What do I mean by “movements”? Well, the things that stir in your soul; anything that you perceive as a change of status of your soul, is something I mean by a movement. For example, “once I was like this, and now I’m like this. And in between, I remember that this kind ofthi- —I just felt this kind of thing going on in my soul. I felt a transition taking place.”
There are all kinds of degrees of events surrounding this transition. Sometimes, there are dramatic occurrences, and we can see—we just—we feel this tremendous movement of our soul. Sometimes there are very gentle movements of the soul. It’s more like a blade of grass bending over under the influence of a gentle breeze. But you can see, “You know what? There’s a little change in my spirit here.” So, that kind of movement in your soul or in your spirit—I want to use them pretty much interchangeably—is something which is produced, and it’s going to be produced either by God, or by evil spirits. And it’s having the ability to distinguish between them in order to recognize those movements which are good—we see them happening so that we can embrace them and say, “Yes, I want that. I’ll go with that. I agree with that. I’ll commit myself to that, surrender myself to that, and move forward with it.” Or, “That’s not right. I mean, it looks right. It’s certainly spiritual, but it just does—it isn’t right. That’s not coming from God. It’s coming from an evil spirit.”
So, I want to talk today about some ways in which you can tell one movement from another. They may, in fact, as I said before, be the same kind of movement. For example, somebody might be moved to an extraordinary degree by God in their souls—they’re moved to give half their money away. And it might be exactly right. If it’s from God, it’s exactly right. That’s what they ought to do.
On the other hand, somebody else in different circumstances, a different time, a different person, or even maybe the same person under different circumstances, may experience the same kind of movement tending to “I want to give half my money away,” when in fact, if he did that, it would be altogether against God’s plan. God wants him to have that money so that he can use it for the building of the kingdom of God in a special way, and he does not want it to be given to the poor in this instance. In fact, that kind of sentiment, which looks so good, actually can come from Satan!
Now, gosh, this is beginning to be very complicated. You mean that you can’t tell just by looking at something and saying, “Well, this is a good effect; therefore, I should do it. Isn’t that sufficient reason for me to do it?” And the answer is, no. The question is, where did it come from? Where did that notion come from? Is that from the Lord? Or is it from Satan? And that’s–I want to give you some clues—although there’s no way to go through all this; there’s no cookbook that I can give you that is going to be perfect. I can just open some ideas to you that will enable you to begin to work more effectively with this, distinguishing the movements from God and the movements from evil spirits.
One time, in the very beginning of the charismatic renewal, there was a man who got baptized in the Spirit—at our house, I believe. He had left his wife back in Colorado, and he had arrived in South Bend, searching for a job. And he was tremendously moved by the baptism in the Spirit. And shortly thereafter, he started walking around—he was a Catholic, and he was wearing a rosary very ostensibly [sic; “obviously”?]] around his neck. And sometimes, you’d see him standing around on street corners, waiting to decide by the power of the Spirit, whether he should cross the street, or turn right or left. And so, this went on for some time. And we thought, “My, this man is really—he’s been deeply moved by God!”
And then we found out that, in fact, he had been parking his children that he had brought with him with some saint, a wonderful woman who had been coming to the prayer meetings also, who was taking care of his kids while he was out standing on the street corners, wondering whether or not to cross ’em. In fact, instead of taking care of his responsibilities, he was out having these “mystical experiences,” quote/unquote, in fact, very much to the detriment of his family. Finally, he left the children, he left—he abandoned his wife, did all sorts of things, all this in the name of the Lord. Well, it was actually not too much longer after that, that—I know that he really did come just up a—bankrupt in the whole matter of spirituality. But there was no dealing with him. He had no way—no sense for how to distinguish what was a spiritual movement from God, and what was a spiritual movement from an evil spirit.
So, this is very difficult material in some respects. Not that it’s so difficult, in fact, to understand, because we do deal with it all the time. What makes it difficult is that it comes at us in so many different directions. And it’s just not so easy to understand how to piece it all together. It’s a little bit like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, which all of you, I’m sure, have tried at some time or other. My wife is wonderful at jigsaw puzzles. I’m pretty good at the boundary. If you give me a straight edge, I can usually find the edges, okay? But most of the rest of it looks like blue sky to me, just completely one color. And I spent all my time trying to find out—I look for big noses or thin jaws, or something like that. And it just gets hopeless.
It’s hopeless at first. But as you begin to put the pieces together, things get to be—in fact, they begin to fall into a pattern. In fact, I’m actually positively brilliant with the last twenty pieces! [Crowd laughs.] I even hide one out, usually, at the beginning, so that I get to put the last one in [laughter]. And then I can say, “See, I solved the puzzle.” [Crowd laughs.]
Well, that’s what we need to do here. We need to be patient. You have to learn these things because—as spiritual people. These things are only known by spiritual people. They’re only revealed to spiritual men and women. And there’s a lot to learn. And you learn by experience, by trying to put things together, trying to understand them. And as you do, things do begin to get a little easier.
Actually, there’s one story which is—really surprised me when I read it the first time. I think I have it straight. I read it a long time ago. And I may have—I may be misremembering part of it. But one of the really wonderful people who has best understood the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of Satan in the—in this whole area of discernment is Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatius had already experienced a tremendous conversion and had, for many years, been practicing heroically a virtuous life.
One day when he was praying, he had an image of a snake that came to him with emerald-like eyes. And the snake would just sort of stand in front of him while he was praying, and it filled him with a certain kind of joy. And then the snake would leave, not having communicated to him anything in particular. And he would—after a while, he would not feel very good about it. But while the snake was there, he felt, in fact, some kind of consolation, which I’ll describe a little bit more later. He had that experience for fourteen years before he could make up his mind exactly what was going on.
Now, that’s remarkable! I mean, I would have thought, “Well, a snake’s a snake. I mean, everybody knows you should get rid of them!” [Paul chuckles.] It’s probably just because of my native dislike of snakes. But, actually, you know, in Scripture, the serpent is used as a sign of Christ occasionally, too. So, I mean, it wasn’t—it isn’t so cut and dried. Ignatius was not a fool, at all. And he was experiencing some spiritual consolation when this appeared to him. But after this long period of discernment, he concluded that because of the state that he was left in all the time when the apparition disappeared from him, because of the turmoil that he experienced in his soul and his lack of peace, that in fact, that was not from God; it was a distraction. And so he commanded it to go away, and it never came back.
So, even those who are extremely gifted and understand how these things work very well sometimes take a long time to come to decisions about ’em. So, I’m not trying to give you an easy, 1-2-3–step sort of cookbook, by which you can say, “Well, this is from God, and this is not. And I’m going to make these decisions just so simply. And I’m going to cast this out, and I’m going to accept this,” and so on. It’s not going to work that way. But I do hope to give you something of a sense for the struggle and the way Satan and evil spirits work in your lives.
So, let me begin. First of all, Satan works, and Holy–and the good spirits work, in different ways, depending on what kind of people they’re dealing with. For example, if they’re dealing with somebody who is regularly committing grievous sin, who is a very immoral—grossly immoral person, for example, Satan acts this way: he will fill their imaginations with all kinds of sensual delights and gratifications. He will cater to their baser vices. He’ll cater—he’ll try to make their life more pleasurable through gluttony, through eating fine foods, through drinking too much, or drinking fine wines too often/too much, etc. Or he’ll tempt ’em through other kinds of, say, sexual sins, other kinds of immorality. He will approach a grossly immoral person through these baser sensual delights.
So, he will make things like that very gratifying. People will spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re gonna eat for lunch, for instance. I mean, some people in this category, when—they start planning their adulterous affairs, you know, what they’re going to do, say, several months from now, and they start thinking about that and deliberating on it and how they’re going to go on this ship, etc., etc. They have all kinds of imaginations, and that’s the work of Satan.
The Holy Spirit does just the reverse with those very same people. He makes use of the light of reason, rousing the sting of conscience in them, filling them with remorse. So, Satan tries to overcome them with pleasure, and the Holy Spirit gives them a certain prick in their conscience. They begin to feel like “Things are not right. I really regret having done that.” You could say the Holy Spirit is making them feel bad, and the evil spirit is making them feel good.
Now, for those who are striving for perfection—people like us, say, who have for some time been trying to live a good life in Christ, who have rejected gross sin, and who have succeeded for some period of time now in living a righteous life—how does the Holy Spirit work with them? And how does the evil spirit work with them? Well, for people like you, especially, the evil spirit will harass you with anxieties. He will hit you as though you had whips—he had a whip in his hand, lacerating you with sadness—that is to say, lashes of sadness. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel just very depressed, very sad. Before your head clears and you can get your conscience—you know, your reason, working right, your first experience may very well be one of tremendous anxiety.
You’ve been living a good life. You say, “Gee, I’ve been living a good life. Why don’t I just feel great and full of joy?” Well, the evil spirit will work in such a way as to bring on such anxiety. When you have been living a good life and you’re experiencing anxieties of this sort, which raise obstacles that are backed by false reasoning, that disturb your soul, that keep you and your soul from making advances, then you can be sure that that, in fact, is the work of the evil spirit.
It’s interesting, because—notice, for the grossly sinning person, he might describe himself as experiencing some anxieties as pangs of conscience. He’s disturbed in his soul. He’s feeling unrest. He’s unhappy. And that would be the work of the Holy Spirit in his life. But for those who have been living a good life for a long time, have not been sinning grossly, you can be sure that the same thing—in fact, the grass is bending in the same direction. Okay? But in fact, in your instance, that’s not a question of your sinning; it’s a question of the evil spirit insinuating himself into your life, to keep you from advancing.
On the other hand, for you, primarily, the Holy Spirit, and all the good spirits, give courage and strength and consolations. They give tears, inspiration. And you experience peace. In fact, they tend to remove all obstacles, so that the soul goes forward in doing good.
Let me say just a word about tears for a minute. Tears are—in the beginning of the charismatic renewal, we used to experience quite often a gift of tears: people who would be experiencing—directing their energy at the things of the Lord; just thinking about something good, they would begin to cry. Like, the death of a holy man just caused them to cry. Not because of sorrow, but because somehow, this consideration of godly things is so profoundly moving, that our nature is to just weep in the presence of it.
That kind of thing happens often to people. And when you feel moved by something good, directed to the praise of God’s glory, when you feel moved by that to tears, that could be the Holy Spirit moving in your life, and you ought not shut it off, but gain strength from it. I know of one holy man who had such a strong gift of tears, that there was some concern that he might go blind, that he cried so long, so often. I’m dead earnest. He was just—every time he thought of the Lord, he would just tear up, and he would just really weep.
Also, of course, a person may be weeping because of just how good God is, that God should love them so much. It just tends to do that to our hearts. That we should be regarded by God at all is such a remarkable thing. And it’s our nature to just want to weep. On the other hand, sometimes good people will think about their terrible sins, all the things that they have done in the past that have so offended God, and they just weep for that. Just thinking how awful they have been to the Lord and to their brothers and sisters whom they’ve offended with their sins. So, there are a lot of reasons why you may have a gift of tears.
The work of the Holy Spirit, and all of his agents, then, has this effect of removing obstacles, so that you will go on with more encouragement, more zeal, to accomplish all the things that God wants done in the world.
A lot of people, since we got here, have told us how many troubles they’ve encountered as they tried to come here. In fact, I know of a smashed finger, for example. I know of visa troubles, as people were trying to come into the country in order to be here. It was—the visa thing is a particularly interesting one. Notice that what they needed to do was to be ready to go to the airport. The plane hadn’t left without ’em yet. They didn’t have a visa and they couldn’t get on without a visa, but [sic; “and”?] they might have been tempted to just say, “Well, I don’t have a visa. I’m not going to go on. I’m not going to get on a plane. I just—I might as well forget it. There’s no sense in going to the airport”—right?
And that would be a mistake. When you walk by faith, you keep going to the end! That is, not having the visa early was an obstacle—but it was an obstacle which the Lord removed, at the last minute. People got the visa. If they, in fact, had not put themselves in position to get on the plane with the visa, they wouldn’t have been here. So, they perceived that in fact, they were just being confronted with an obstacle that was not from God. And they just kept leaning in the right direction. And by the grace of God, they’re here.
Earlier today, I was talking with a man who said that he had suffered a terrible disaster in his family. He’d lost a couple of very dear cousins in an awful airplane crash, who died. And just about—a couple of months ago, as he was making plans to come here, he suddenly got overwhelmed with fear of flying. And he started having nightmares. All kinds of troubles came up. And that was two months in advance, as he was planning to come here. Now, that’s the kind of obstacle that the enemy can put in your way. He overcame the obstacle. He simply did it by guts, by courage. He got on the plane. He was terrified. He had not been sleeping well, [it] was interfering with his work. But he got through that. He did what he was supposed to do. And he got here. And I think he has been blessed by being—I know he’s been blessed by being here. And I think that there’s a real good chance that that whole work of the enemy has been taken off his back.
So, these things happen. Car accidents, all kinds of episodes that have come up that many of you—I think most of us here can recount something that has happened that has interfered with our being here, or would have. But the Lord says to us, on the contrary, “It’s going to be okay. Go ahead. Make your plans.” We heard in prophecy, “This is an important time for you. It’s an important time for the whole community. Don’t miss it. Go on. It’s going to be great,” you know. And so, he urges us forward.
Now, let me say a couple of words about the distinctions between consolation and desolation, because I’ll be using these a little bit later in the talk. By consolation, what I mean is an interior movement that is aroused in the soul which causes the soul to sense that it is inflamed; it’s just burning with zeal and love of God, its Creator, and Jesus, our Lord. So, it’s an int- —a consolation is this movement of the souls, an interior movement. And it’s created in the soul. And the effect of it on the person is that they just feel madly in love with God, on fire with God, with love of God, and our Lord.
Or it could be this: one sheds tears, as I described before, that move one more to the love of God. All the kinds of things that I talked about before that have to do with directing us immediately to the praise and service of God. So, those tears can be a consolation. And I really recommend that people pay more attention to that.
And the third one I mention is every increase of faith, hope, or love; every increase of joy that invites or attracts you to what is heavenly, or to anything that has to do with the salvation of your soul—anything like that, any increase of faith, hope, charity, or joy that is aimed–and you know that its effect is that it’s moving you more in line with God’s plan for your life, more in line with accomplishing God’s purposes in the world, more in love of God. Anything of that sort, you can be sure that that’s a consolation. That’s what I’m calling a consolation.
On the other hand, let me give you three types of desolation. First one is—will take care of all of them, actually–but it’s basically: a desolation is the exact opposite of a consolation. Second one is, there’s—you feel a darkness of soul; or you feel a turmoil in your spirit; or you feel an inclination to something that is really gross, base, low in life, something really earthly; or you feel a restlessness that comes from many disturbances, and many temptations, that, in fact, have the effect of decreasing your faith, your hope, your love, and your joy. That—those things are desolations.
Okay, the third type I’ll mention is, you find your soul slothful. You procrastinate about everything. You really don’t want to start this project because you know that it’s gonna take a great deal of energy, and you just don’t want to pay the price to see this through to the end. You won’t even begin to start it because you know that it’s going to be too much trouble, and you just don’t want to do it. And besides that, you’re sick and tired of all these good things, these so-called good things of God. You begin to despise God. So, that’s all slothfulness, various forms of it.
Or your soul may experience being lukewarm. All of a sudden, you’ve lost your zeal. You’ve lost the anointing. You’ve backslidden. You’re sad, and you feel separated from your Creator. So, those are several types of desolation. When you experience those things, what you’re going through is a desolation.
Now, it’s really important to understand this notion of consolation and desolation, because it is an understanding by which you can leverage yourself spiritually tremendously. Let me explain how it works. Basically, your life has a bunch of consolations up, and desolations, where you hit the pit. So, you go up and you go down, up and down. It seems like you’re always going. . . . Sometimes the frequency of the cycle will be one day. One day, I’m up, and the next day, I’m at the bottom. I mean, I am really dark, my soul is full of turmoil. It may be a week in between, or maybe a little longer, six weeks. But I’m not talkin’ months. I’m not talkin’ years. That would be a different kind of problem. That’s not a consolation and desolation. That’s a psychological type of problem. The sort of thing I’m dealing—or it could be an obsession, also dealing with—another way the enemy works in our life. But what I’m talking about here is—consolation and desolations are things that happen rather quickly in your life.
Now, in fact, our lives, then, look like we’re on the end of a yo-yo sometimes. We’re going up and down, up and down. And our souls, we’re experiencing going—all these ups and downs. And you wonder sometimes, “Am I making any progress?” Well, I don’t know if you are. It depends. But what usually happens for righteous people who are—and in fact, if you stay faithful to the Lord, I guarantee it, is that while you’re going through these oscillations, your life, the trajectory as a whole, is going up! It’s like—these oscillations start down here, and they keep oscillating, but they build up! And you wind up still having good days and bad days, so to speak. But in fact, you’re really living a very righteous life, and you’re very pleasing to God, and you’re accomplishing a great deal for the salvation of others’ souls, and your own.
Now, the point is that when you’re in a desolation, the temptation is to give in—is to, in fact, accept these obstacles that Satan puts in your life. So, here you are making progress up like this with all these oscillations on it, right? And you’re in a pit of a desolation, and the temptation is to just junk the whole thing and go “pyoom” [Paul makes a sound like a small explosion], and let your curve drop off the map, see, all the way down. But you don’t have to do that. What you can do is you can kind of catch the slope of this curve, see, as you go into a consolation, and throw yourself forward. At a time of consolation, you can achieve more for the Lord. So, with consolation, you can make great progress. With desolation, you have to avoid disaster. Okay?
So, understanding that gives us a certain kind of leverage. It’s important to understand how the spiritual life works like that, so that in fact, you can make more progress. A lot of people, in fact, if you watch them, seem to be basically in the same place all the time! They just—some days they’re up, some days they’re down, but they really aren’t making any progress. They just get going—you know, they just stay on the same track. They don’t take advantage of the benefit, of the joy, the increase of faith, hope, and charity, that they have at a time of consolation, to make some steps that will move them forward in Christ. If they don’t do that, they’ll just sit there bouncing up and down, until finally they slip off altogether.
Okay, now, let me say: when you are experiencing times of desolation, I have some general rules for you. Do not, at such a time, make any change in your way of life. Isn’t that remarkable? Rather, remain firm and constant in the commitment which got you to the day—to that very day, and guided you to this point. The kinds of commitments that you made before the desolation came on. Remain in the decision that you had made that got you—that you made, rather, at a time of previous consolation. And don’t throw it aside, don’t set it aside on the shelf. Don’t sort of “jettison” that. Do not make a change in a time of consolation [sic: Paul means to say desolation here], but remain firm and constant.Â
Secondly, you should, at a time of desolation, intensify all your energy and activity against the desolation itself by praying more, not less; by meditating on the word of God more, not less; by studying Scripture more, not less; and by examining your conscience more, not less. So, don’t slacken up. In fact, move forward with it. Come against it. God allows the enemy to try us, as he did, for example—as we see in the book of Job, how Satan arrived with all the other people in a heavenly court, and he’s—and he was bragging that he had been to and fro, all over the face of the earth, just searching out for people like us, some people that he could harass. And the Lord said, “Yeah, but have you seen my servant Job? There’s a man.” And Satan says, “Yeah, well, you just protected him. You haven’t given me a chance at him.” So, the Lord gives him a chance, and tests Job. He allows Satan to attack Job.Â
There’s a big confusion about the fight that we’re talking about here: the fight between God and Satan and where we fit into all this. There’s a tendency for people to think—really, very falsely; it’s an ancient heresy—that there are these two godlike creatures; there’s—I mean, two godlike things, one being God and the other being Satan, and that this big battle is somehow still up in the air! There is—there was a battle, but I think from the point of view of God, it must not have been a very big one, when he put Lucifer down. I mean, Lucifer is his creature! Lucifer has—I mean, would not exist if God just decided not to think about him anymore! So, there’s no contest between God and Satan. Satan can’t hold a candle to God! But he is a very, very intelligent, superior being, brilliant, full of malice, and he hates us. Hates us as much as he hates God, I think. He hates us because he hates God.
God uses him as though he were a mad dog on a leash. Sometimes he will come up to you and he’ll say—he’ll let the dog come near you. And you feel like the dog might attack you. And it scares you a bit. It moves you on. And it tests you. But the dog is on a leash. There’s no way Satan can cause you to sin. Satan, in fact, is the weakest creature in the whole universe. Because you can defeat him by simply saying no! Isn’t that amazing? You just say, “No, I won’t do that,” and he’s whipped. So, Satan is fearsome—I’ll describe him a little bit more in this direction later. But don’t get the idea that Satan somehow is gonna overcome you. He won’t overcome you unless you give in and sin.
So God, rather, allows this enemy to try us, but he never abandons us. We lack fervor, we lack all kinds of joy in the Lord, at this particular instance, say—instant. But even at that moment when we feel so low, God’s grace is always there, and sufficiency for us. No matter how low or deep the desolation may go, God is always giving us sufficient grace for us to make the right decisions and move closer to him. So, however deep we may get into this desolation, we still are, by God’s grace, able to make the right choice.
Okay. In times of desolation, we must persevere in patience. Love itself is patient, we read in 1 Corinthians 13. It’s kind. But love is patient, and we need to persevere in patient love. So, remember: when you’re feeling attacked, as I’ve described and as I’ve described desolation, you should remember that consolation is just around the corner. Consolation is coming soon. It will return.
There are a lot of reasons for being—experiencing desolation. One of them is that we have been lukewarm, ourselves. We’ve let ourselves grow tepid. We’ve become slothful or negligent in our duties toward God. It’s our own fault, in this instance, that consolation has left us. It’s our fault. That’s one reason for desolation. Another reason is that God wishes to try us. He wants to see what we’re made of. What—will we love him more and make a bigger sacrifice for him?
Another reason is that God wishes to show us that great devotion, zeal, intense love, tears, and any other consolation we have—all these things are a gift from God. And he wants us to realize that. After we’ve had them for a while, you know, we feel that they just belong to us by right! We say, “Hey, I’m feeling really good in the Lord, you know. Like, I deserve it; I’m a really good guy.” That’s not true. We don’t deserve these good things that we experienced in the Lord. And when the Lord takes them away from us, we still make the right—we still have grace to make the right choices, but in fact, we won’t feel very good about it. And when we experience that, we run into a period of time where we have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Lord.
Let me read you something from the Imitation of Christ, which is a book that was written in about the 14th century by Thomas à Kempis, or somebody in that school. “Jesus”—this is on—his chapter on the fewness of those who love the cross of Jesus . . .
Jesus today has many who love His heavenly kingdom, but few who carry His cross. Many who yearn for comfort, few who long for distress. Plenty of people he finds to share his banquet, few to share his fast. Everyone desires to take part in his rejoicing, but few are willing to suffer anything for his sake. There are many that follow Jesus as far as the breaking of bread, few as far as drinking the cup of suffering. Many that revere his miracles, few that follow him in the indignity of his cross. Many that love Jesus, as long as nothing runs counter to them. Many that praise and bless him, as long as they receive from him some comfort. But should Jesus hide from them and leave them for a while, they fall to complaining or become deeply depressed.
That’s a description of us with regard to desolations. God allows that to happen to us sometimes so that, in fact, we can see that he is the origin of all good things.
Recently, we had occasion to witness a marvelous consolation in a time of terrible tragedy of a very dear friend and distant relative of ours now. About two weeks ago, the—our daughter’s father-in-law dropped dead. He was about 52, something like that. And it was completely unexpected. This was Jim Loughran. In fact, he died of asthma, an asthma attack—which is, I understand, not so uncommon after all; I was talking to one of the doctors here. He had been unable to sleep well for several nights. And he was keeping his wife, who also has been ill a bit, from—keeping her from sleeping properly. And so he asked her to go sleep in another room, so that she, at least, would get some rest.
So, she went down, that night, to bed. And as she was going to bed, she just turned to the Lord, and her heart was overflowing with love of Jim. And she thanked him—God—for “what a wonderful man Jim is, what a holy man, what a good man, what a good husband, what a good father. . . . ” And she went on and on in this litany of good things about Jim, and how much like St. Joseph he was, which is their—it was their patron saint. In fact, they had, I think, six children, and they’ve named all of them Joseph. They either had—they all had middle names of Joseph, or the girls took Joseph as their confirmation name. Because—they had met, in fact, on the feast of St. Joseph. So, she said how much like St. Joseph Jim was.
And she was praying and feeling very good. And all of a sudden, this chalice appeared in front of her. And she looked at it and she heard the Lord say, “Will you drink of the chalice I’m offering you?” And she said, “Well, Lord, I mean, do you want me to?” And he said, “Yes.” So, she drained the cup. She drank everything from it. And she felt fine, and she went to sleep perfectly peaceful. And four hours later, she woke up to her husband, who was dead. So, the Lord had prepared her with a special consolation there, to make it possible for her to see—to get her through the time of this tremendous deprivation of this good man, her husband.
In fact, she’s able to look at this whole thing as a moment of great strength. She sees the pain as something the Lord somehow, in some mysterious way, is using. It was part of God’s plan for her, and he had prepared her for this. There were—I don’t know, it seemed like a thousand people or so at the wake and funeral. And people were just sobbing, so brokenhearted, because it was so sudden, they hadn’t had time to adjust to it. And they would come up to—everyone would come up to Ann crying, and after they had embraced her, they would walk away smiling, because she had such joy and strength, knowing that Jesus had really taken Jim to himself. So, that’s a consolation that the Lord had given her that prepared her to overcome this terrible obstacle which was coming upon her.
Okay, now let me say a few more things of a general character. When you enjoy consolation, figure out how you will manage in the time of the next desolation. Because it will come. But in view of what you are getting out of this particular consolation, what can you put in place in the wall, so to speak, of your fortress, that will make it possible for you to come through the next desolation, just breezing through it? Now, that’s an ex- —the example of that “spiritual leverage” I was talking about, see? Make plans at the time of consolation for how you’re going to handle desolation. And that will leverage you up, keep stepping you up, as you move through your life in Christ.
The next item is, you need to understand that the enemy is a weakling. He, in particular, acts like a weakling before a show of strength. On the other hand, he acts like a tyrant or a bully if he gets his way. He’s a terrible boss, a terrible bully. If, in fact, the person gives in to him. So, if a person shows determination and fearlessness in a quarrel with a coward, a coward loses his courage, and he turns and runs away. “Back off!” you say to some coward in a tight situation, and he will: he’ll cave in, and he’ll turn.
But if a person, on the other hand, loses courage, and begins himself to flee, then all the anger and the vindictiveness and the rage just surge up in a huge force, and it seems like they’re boundless. If one begins to be afraid and lose courage in the middle of temptation, no wild animal on earth can be more fierce than the enemy of our human nature. So, the way—this is difficult stuff! When you act like a coward in the face of Satan’s temptations, he will really be enraged; he’ll come on, so wild against you. But in fact, if you stand up with courage and energy, and tell him to go to hell, you resist his temptation, you won’t have anything to do with it, and then don’t even think about it anymore: then, in fact, he walks away like a whipped dog.
Satan comes on as a—with deception. He’s a liar. He’s a little bit like a person—like this situation. Suppose that a woman is home alone, her husband’s gone off to work, it’s 10 o’clock in the morning, and she gets a phone call from, let’s say, George, who is a friend of Alan, her husband, and her. And they’re having this little conversation, and all sudden, she wonders, “What’s going on here? Why is George calling me when he must know that Alan’s gone to work? What’s the story here?” So—she doesn’t hang up or anything; she just has this pleasant conversation of shooting the—whatever, you know—chewing the fat, or whatever you say. And then finally, he says, “Well, I’ve got to go.”
And the next day, he calls back again about the same time. And this time, he says—he makes some kind of a lewd allusion, perhaps to something he saw on TV that she—he thought she might have watched, something just a little bit off-color. And she feels a little embarrassed, you know, like, “This doesn’t seem quite right.” But she doesn’t hang up on him. She talks a little bit more, a little bit more. Well, he’s got a hook on her, because he’s got something “on” her. He’s told her something she shouldn’t have listened to, and she stayed with it, and now he’s got something like—almost like extortion, going; he can blackmail her. So, he calls back the next day and begins to talk about his plans for how they should have an affair.
But on the other hand, imagine the following. Suppose the man calls up the first day, and—let’s say her name is Alice. Alice talks to Alan and says, “Hey, Alan, funniest thing happened today: you’d just hardly gone to work, you know, and I got this call from George, and he just talked and talked and talked. What do you suppose George was calling me for?” So, the next day, George calls again. Alice says, “Hey, yeah, I was just talking to Alan, and Alan wanted to know what the heck you were calling me for?” You suppose he’d ever call back again? [Laughter.]
There’s tremendous strength in sharing with a person who’s pastorally responsible for you, the temptations you’re receiving from the enemy. If you do it eagerly and openly, you can—you, in fact, in—by that very act will frustrate Satan. He will know immediately that you are not in fact defenseless, that you’re not alone, and that he’s going to have to also contend with your head. He’s got to put up with a lot of spiritual force now: not only yours, but also somebody else’s. After all, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there is Christ” [Matthew 18:20]. And he knows that he’s dealing immediately with the body of Christ.
So, the moral of that whole story is: be open with your head about the temptations you experience—earlier, rather than later. The enemy goes around investigating us in order to attack us at our weakest point. He examines our fortress, just like Nehemiah examined the walls of Jerusalem to see where the enemy could breach the wall. Satan goes like that, like it’s said in the book of Job, “to and fro across the face of the earth,” looking to see where are the weak spots. And that’s where he attacks you.
So, you need to know where are your weak spots, and start strengthening those spots, by the grace of God. Pray that the Lord will fill those spots with firm mortar. Make good decisions to cover yourself. If you experience certain kinds of sexual temptation—for example, on a certain bus, because every day you happen to get on the same bus with somebody who, in fact, you know is trying to, in some way or other, insinuate himself or herself into your life in an improper way, then—you know that you’re having temptation here, then make some provision for that. Bring a different kind of book. Bring a Christian book. [Laughter.] Talk to them about Christ.
For those, then, who are progressing—well, let’s see. If I keep talking, we won’t have any time for discussion of some of the points that you want to—I know, to talk about, with regard to things like making states of life decisions, and so on. There are some suggestions, basically, for things we could talk about underneath that description of this—the—part of the description of the discernment track, here. So, if you want to bring any of those up, I’ll be glad to share something about these. But let’s open the floor now, and you can ask any question you want to, or make any points you want to. Comments?
[The recording ends here.]
Copyright © 2022 People of Praise, Inc.