I just read Andrée Seu’s post-for-today over at WorldMagBlog: Battling fear and doubt.
I haven’t read any of her stuff in a long time. I’m glad I read this one:
God keeps showing me the moment-by-momentness of the Christian life, and the inauthenticity of anything else. Recently it happened when I was planning to share a few fears and doubts with a friend in a letter that I was planning to write later in the day. I knew my friend to be a good counselor, and I expected that he would talk me out of my funk and back to sanity.
It was then that it struck me: In order to share those fears and doubts with my friend, I would have to hold on to them until the evening when I had time to sit down with a pad and pen. That means I would have to refuse to allow any other thoughts to intrude on my funk, if the Spirit should want to try to wedge in there with a little light or a redirection of thought.
This, I think, also points out a potential problem in the Christian counseling enterprise. Counseling, at its best, is great. But if we are not careful it can foster a kind of spiritual laziness as we, the counselee, take on the role of a waiter waiting around for rescue by a human custodian of wisdom, rather than doing our own rebuking of doubts and fears and all things contrary to the truth of God.
“That means I would have to refuse to allow any other thoughts to intrude on my funk, if the Spirit should want to try to wedge in there with a little light or a redirection of thought.”
I don’t know if I ever thought of it that way before.