Journey Through The Wall
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Journey Through The Wall
— John Harding
Today I want to share with you some thoughts about how we can sometimes get stuck in life, stuck in our emotions, stuck in our experiences, and how we can begin to journey through those things, through that wall, into greater freedom.
My talk is inspired by a book by Peter Scazzero called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. And in particular, in a chapter in his book that's called Journey Through the Wall, where he talks about how in life, all of us at some point can hit an emotional wall, we hit this wall and how we can get stuck in that space and how we can begin to journey through that wall with Jesus. Now, all of Scazzero's books that he's written, and he's written a whole range of books on emotional health and spirituality, but they all hinge on this idea that it is impossible, it is at least incredibly difficult to grow and mature as Christians, to be spiritually mature whilst remaining emotionally immature. And he argues, and I really do agree with him, that we have to tend to the health and the well-being of our hearts, our souls, that place of emotion, if we're to experience more of the fullness of Jesus in our lives, spiritual maturity. And he gives this little equation in his books, which I've adapted to say this,
Emotional Health + Deep spirituality = Transformation
What does it mean to Hit a Wall?
Scazzero says that hitting the wall is another way of talking about these crises in our lives that turn our lives upside down. Maybe a divorce, a job loss, the death of a close friend or a family member, a cancer diagnosis, a disillusion in church experience, a betrayal, a shattered dream, a wayward child, a car accident, an inability to get pregnant, a deep desire to marry that remains unfulfilled, spiritual dryness or loss of joy in our relationship with Jesus. Ever experienced any of those things? When we hit one of those walls, what happens is we start to question ourselves, we question God, we question the church. It's like our faith doesn't seem to work at that moment. We cannot sense God. We don't know what God is doing, where He is going, or how God is going to get us there. When will it even be over? We've hit a wall. Ever experienced that? I know that I have. And the question is, when we hit a wall like that, what then? How do we move on? How do we move forwards?
Now the phrase "hitting the wall" or "journeying through the wall" comes from the world of endurance athletes. I'm not sure if you've ever run a marathon. I have never run a marathon and I have no desire to ever run a marathon. But marathon runners talk about this moment where they're running and everything's going great, then bang, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. It's like your body goes no, no, no hang on a second here mate, that is quite enough running for today. And they say it's a bit like your legs turn to jelly. And you'll see people hitting this invisible wall in marathons, you can google images of it, and they have to crawl on their hands and their knees over the finish line or someone has to literally carry them over the finish line. They hit the wall.
Some Hitting-the-Wall Moments
The closest physically that I've experienced that, was when I did the UK National Three Peaks challenge where in 24 hours you have to climb the highest mountain in Scotland, Ben Nevis, and then you finish that at nighttime. You drive overnight through to climb the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike and you go up and down that mountain then you drive over to Wales and climb the highest Welsh mountain, Snowdon. You've got to do it in 24 hours and on this occasion, I was absolutely smashing it. I was on the final mountain on Snowdon and I was on the final descent of the final mountain. Then out of nowhere, bang! It was like my legs just went no, I don't think so. Quite enough. And then they turned to jelly. And I was literally thinking at that moment, I could just stay here. I've just done the mountain, I can't go any further. And it's like every single step became a choice. It became a challenge - to stay put or to get off that mountain. I'd hit the wall.
But what about in life? What about emotionally? What about when we get hit by a challenge in life, and it feels like it is just too difficult to keep going? What then? Like the time when I was crossing the road with my twin brother, and he was a few steps ahead of me and he got hit by a car. And I waited with him whilst the ambulance arrived, and he was taken through to hospital with a fractured skull. Probably the first time in my life that I was ever aware of that hitting a wall type of moment. Praise the Lord, he miraculously recovered. Or the time during the early years of our marriage, when Kirsten, my wife and I, hit a wall in our marriage. And it felt like our marriage was on the line. Or the financial pressures that we lived in, in our 20s in the early years of our marriage due to some bad financial decisions that we made. Just some examples of my own hitting-the-wall type of moments, moments in life where we think "this is the worst moment of my life". And I had a moment like that. The moment we can't see God, we can't see a way forward. It's all just so painful. We just can't see a way to figure it out and get unstuck.
The Christian mystic writers like Teresa of Avila, and Hildegard of Bingen, call this the dark night of the soul where you're freaking out, you're grappling around in the dark, you can't see God, you don't know where you are, you don't know how to move out of the dark and move forwards. The brilliant Catholic writer on discipleship, Richard Rohr, in his book Falling Upward, talks about the ascent, and then the decent, two halves of life. And in his book, he talks about this first half of life, the ascent, you're usually young and ambitious, and idealistic. And we're smashing life, we're really going somewhere. It's like we're on the ascending upward trajectory, and then bang! Something happens, you hit a wall. And it's like, it all starts to come tumbling down. What do we do then?
And if you've not had that sort of experience, if you've not hit a wall like that, if you've not experienced the dark night of the soul then I'm sorry to say, at some point, you will, it's just a fact of life. I'm not saying that because I have a lack of faith. I'm not saying it to speak a negative confession over you. I say it because there is always the cross before the resurrection. We have to journey through the cross to truly experience resurrection life. So all of us at some point in life will hit a wall. The question is, will we stay at the wall? Will we camp out at the wall? Will we get stuck at the wall? Or will it become our identity? Will it shape the next 10, 20, or 30 years or will we journey through the wall to the other side? Because the other side of the wall is wondrous. On the other side of the wall, we find a wide open space of God's presence and grace and mercy and hope and peace. It's in the descent of life that God takes us to greater depths of His love and grace and mercy. There is beauty for you beyond the wall.
And Richard Rohr says that after the ascent comes that decent. It's in the descent that we really, really find God. It's in the descent, the downward trajectory that we really experience the depths of God's love and joy and peace and grace. It's in the descent, the darkness of the night, that we find the fullness of life.
Now I often say when I read the Bible, at times, it makes me deeply uncomfortable. I find it deeply challenging. I hope you find the Bible challenging. When I read it, there are times when I can't say Amen. I can only say ouch! So let me just share with you a couple of uncomfortable "ouch" verses. And the first one is from the book of James. James 1, verses two to four, and James says these words,
Ouch. Consider it pure joy when you hit the wall. How on earth could James say that? How could someone say consider it a joy in those moments of pain, anguish, and trial? I'll tell you how James could say it because he was looking at life from the other side of the wall. James had journeyed through the wall, or maybe walls. He'd been through the agony and the pain of life. He'd endured persecution, you know that from his letter. And he pushed through that into the wide open space of greater union and peace with Jesus. He found more of Jesus on the other side. And so he could say, consider it pure joy.
Let me read to you another uncomfortable ouch verse. This time from the Apostle Paul. He says this in Romans 5, verses three to five,
What? How on earth could Paul say that? I mean, it's outrageous, isn't it? It's almost offensive to say, look, I want you to glory in your suffering. Rejoice in your suffering. Don't you know what I'm going through, Paul? Don't you know my pain? Don't you know my story, Paul? And you're telling me to glory in the suffering at the wall? How could Paul say that?
Of course, the apostle Paul knew what it was to hit a wall in life. You only have to read 2 Corinthians 11 to know that. In that chapter, he talks about being imprisoned, flogged, beaten with the rod he says on three occasions, and shipwrecked for a day and a night in the open sea. I mean, just imagine, the Apostle Paul holding on to a wooden bit of boat floating out in the Mediterranean Sea at night, Paul had hit a wall on many occasions. But now he's looking at life on the other side. He's saying rejoice, glory, glory from that wide open space of hope and peace and intimacy in a union that we find on the other side in Jesus. He says, Rejoice. Glory when you hit a wall because on the other side, is the fullness of life.
And please hear me. I'm not saying this is easy. I'm not saying it's quick. I'm not saying we won't experience other walls when we journey through the wall. In fact, I'm saying quite the opposite. A wall is a wall when it's a moment that you describe as one of the most difficult moments of your life, a challenging moment of life. But what I am saying is this, it is worth the effort, it is worth the work, it is worth the pain of journeying through, not getting stuck, don't get stuck in that moment. There is beauty and life for you beyond this moment, beyond the wall.
How do we journey through the wall?
I'm going to share with you three ideas that have really helped me based on Peter Scazzero's book.
#1 - Vision
We have to have a compelling vision of a life beyond the wall, beyond this moment. And I suppose that is the main point I want to make today. Get a vision for life beyond the wall, for the oversight of the crisis, the pain, as you journey through towards Jesus. With Jesus on the other side of the wall, we find this wide open space, the fullness of life, deep intimacy in union with Jesus, hope, peace, and joy in abundance in and amidst the challenges and trials and living in a broken world.
And I think part of that vision has to be a reframing of how we view pain. We need a more rigorous, more biblical vision of pain and suffering. We need to debunk some of those Christian myths that say well you know, if you just do everything that God wants you to do, then you'll have a life of health, wealth and prosperity. If we just have enough faith and believe it enough, then we'll live a life free from pain and suffering. But we know that that is just not a biblical way of thinking. I hope you know that. I mean, we've just seen in those verses in James and in Romans, both of those verses say that suffering, trial, and pain, are essential elements, essential ingredients that make up a life of hope and maturity.
One of the books that have really helped me reframe how I view pain is a book about Paul Brand called Ten Fingers for God. And Paul Brand was a doctor who pioneered leprosy treatments in India. He discovered that if you had leprosy, it affected your nerve endings, it meant that you couldn't feel pain. And so people with leprosy, would pick up objects from the fire and damage their fingers, or they would walk with stones in their shoes and not know that it damaged their feet. And so often, leprosy victims would lose their limbs. And Paul Brand talks so powerfully about his work with lepers, to give them the gift of pain, and he applies his idea of the gift of pain to the Christian life.
So to move through the wall, to keep moving forwards through the dark night of the soul, we need a compelling vision of what lies beyond this moment. And we need a healthier, more biblical perspective of the pain and the suffering that we're experiencing.
#2 - Forgiveness
You see, unforgiveness traps us, unforgiveness imprisons us, but forgiveness empowers us to let go and to move forwards. And this is how Jesus talks about forgiveness in the parable of the unforgiving servant, in Matthew, chapter 18. Unforgiveness imprisons us, and I know it is not easy, it is a process, we will need trusted people to help us to forgive and to release those who sinned against us. We may need to invest in professional counselling. But you see, unforgiveness will keep us stuck at the wall. Forgiveness frees us and empowers us to journey into freedom and new life.
And I was so challenged by the life of Corrie Ten Boom. She was imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp by the Nazis in the Second World War. And she tells a story in a book of how many years later, she was in a church and she was preaching on forgiveness. And as she was doing so, she saw one of her former concentration camp guards. I mean, imagine that! And she says how, in that moment, all of the pain and the humiliation came flooding back to her, and she says that that former guard came up to her after her sermon on forgiveness. He didn't recognise her. And he explained to her how he'd become a Christian, how he'd repented of his former life, and how he'd received God's forgiveness in his life.
And Corrie Ten Boom recalls how the guard then put his hand out towards her, and the guard asked if she would forgive him. She talks about how it felt almost impossible, the most difficult decision you'd ever made. She simply couldn't do it. But then she remembered the very things that she'd been preaching about. She remembered how forgiveness is an act of will and not an act of emotion. So she prayed silently there. And then at that moment, as the guard's hand was outstretched towards her, as she prayed and asked Jesus to help her, she asked Jesus to supply the emotion. And she says, she thrust her hand out into his hand. And as she did so, at that moment, God filled her entire body with a love that she'd never experienced before. She says she cried out to the former guard, saying, I forgive you. I forgive you with all my heart. The former guard and the former prisoner, forgiven. Unforgiveness keeps us trapped at the wall. Forgiveness empowers us to journey into a life of freedom, a wide open space.
#3 - Encounter
The final point is encounter. You see, an encounter with the love and the grace and the mercy of Jesus helps to get us unstuck at the wall. It helps us to move forward into new life.
Now Kirsten, my wife and I, we've been married 24 years. And I remember around seven, eight years into our marriage, we really got a little bit stuck. We were at this impasse, things were not good. There wasn't a lot of love in our marriage. And one Sunday we were sat in church together, just going through the motions. And there was an invitation after the sermon, to be prayed for. The sermon wasn't about marriage, the prayer invitation wasn't about marriage. But we both in that moment, decided to go forwards and to be prayed for. We asked someone if they'd pray for us and pray for our marriage. And let me be honest, it's not like the prayer at that moment fixed our marriage, it didn't. But we describe it a little bit like this. At that moment, we encountered just enough of the grace and mercy and presence of Jesus, just enough of his love to get unstuck. And so, after the service, we started to put a plan together, to strengthen our marriage and heal our marriage. An encounter with the grace and the mercy of Jesus can get us unstuck at the wall.
Conclusion
See, all of us will hit a wall at some point in our lives. And walls are places of pain where we can get stuck. How do we journey through that wall? We need number one, a compelling vision of a life beyond the wall, not a false vision of health and wealth and prosperity but a vision of the peace and union of Jesus that awaits us. Number two is forgiveness. Unforgiveness will imprison you. Forgiveness empowers us to move on. And number three, encounter. See, it's at the wall where we find Jesus afresh. Some of my greatest, most precious moments of encounter have been at the walls I've cried out to him.
Psalm 23, that famous Psalm, talks about Jesus, our good shepherd. And Jesus our good shepherd extends his hand towards you now. His hand is outstretched towards you. Will you take him by the hand? Will you allow him to lead you up and out of the darkest valley of death? He wants to lead you into green pastures. He wants to lead you beside still waters. He wants to restore your soul. Don't get stuck at the wall. Take him by the hand and allow him to lead you on. Amen.
CONVERSATION STREET
With: Matt Edmundson & Anna Kettle
What is Conversation Street?
Conversation Street is part of our live stream, where the hosts (in this case, Matt & Anna) chat through John’s talk and answer questions that were sent in through the live stream. You can watch the conversation in the video, it starts at 33 min 14 seconds into the live stream, or you can go straight there by clicking here. This week’s questions and topics of conversation are:
What stood out to you from John’s talk?
Why do people sometimes get disillusioned with their faith and God?
Did you have a compelling vision of a life beyond the wall when you went through suffering?
How to help someone who's going through hard times?
Bible Verses to Help You Journey Through The Wall
Psalm 9:9,10 - The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Psalm 32:7,8 - You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.
1 Peter 1:6,7 - In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 40:31 - But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
1 Peter 5:10 - And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
2 Corinthians 4:17 - For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
2 Timothy 3:12 - In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
James 1:12 - Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.