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Season 3 Episode 2: What Is God Doing in Our Lives When We Feel Stuck?
112 Plays2 years ago
Mentioned in this episode:
Introduction to the Spiritual Life by Brant Pitre
RLF Season 2 Episode 10: How to Keep Growing When You Feel Stuck Spiritually
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of Root Like Faith
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, I'm Ruth Schwank and I'm so thrilled you're listening in with us at Root Like Faith. It is our deepest desire to encourage and equip men and women to be rooted in God's word, transformed by the love of Jesus and moved by his mission and the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more important.
Starting Season Three: The Unstuck Spiritual Life
00:00:18
Speaker
Well, as we said in our last episode, we are back with a brand new season. This is season three. And to kick off, we have started a new series called The Unstuck Spiritual Life. And last week, we really got into talking about how we all feel stuck at certain times. And it's OK. That's normal. And we want to continue today talking about what God is doing when we feel stuck.
Understanding Spiritual Stages
00:00:46
Speaker
and why understanding the different stages of the journey can be so helpful. Speaking of being stuck, sorry, did I cut in on you? No, go ahead, honey. It's all right. I'm sorry. I was going to try to change that in 2022.
00:00:58
Speaker
I was thinking the other day about how, speaking of being stuck, do you realize that we started the podcast? Like you said, we're in season three. Do you feel stuck in our podcast? No, not at all. Oh, okay. And if I did or if I do, it's a happy stuck. Well, and you wouldn't be sharing it right now. I wouldn't be sharing it now. Yeah, that's true. This would be incredibly awkward, more awkward than it is right now.
COVID Impact and Spiritual Highs vs. Daily Reality
00:01:16
Speaker
Isn't it weird that when we first started the podcast, it was right as COVID hit?
00:01:22
Speaker
It was. Root Like Faith has never known a world without COVID. Isn't that strange? Yeah, that is odd. We're in season three and we started, yeah, like in March, I think was our first episode, right? Right around that time. Well, it's not getting us down. No way. We're going to keep going. No way. We are pressing on. And so anyways, not that that has anything to do with today's content. Well, not really. It came to my mind and I wanted to share.
00:01:43
Speaker
All right. Well, we talked about last week the spiritual life and how it's like this journey that we go on. And then there's different seasons in our life where we can feel like dry. Well, I kind of said it was, could feel like a wasteland, which sounds so dramatic, but it's true and you feel like God, where are you? Right. Blah. Um, even if you're not to the extreme of saying God, where are you? You definitely can feel blah and just kind of.
00:02:09
Speaker
Apathetic I guess and so but that's normal and I think you know I'm reminded of retreats that I've gone on in my life when it's like yes, and you're on this spiritual high And I feel that way every Sunday. No really especially when I preach But you know yeah if only you could sort of live in that that space right being
00:02:32
Speaker
you know, in a place of joy and intimacy with God. And then you come back to reality, you know, Monday rolls around and it's like, Oh, back to reality. And you're tired, tired. And yeah, you don't have somebody cooking for you. Like they do on the retreat. It's like when we go on family trips. Yeah. Really? You know, we're all pumped up. I mean, think of all the, the work that goes into packing for all of us. Remember when we drove from, I don't know if we've ever talked about it on the podcast before, but this was way back. I mean, our kids were,
00:02:58
Speaker
Actually Noah Sophia wasn't even born yet so Tyler Bella and Noah Noah was maybe one so he's 15 now so you're talking you know for if my math is right 14 years ago and we drove from Toledo Ohio we're living in Toledo at the time and our friends allowed us to use they
Personal Stories and Spiritual Journeys
00:03:17
Speaker
had a
00:03:17
Speaker
kind of a condo or something out near Lake Dillon and we drove all the way from Toledo Ohio to Colorado and we you know that was before like not the drive not the drive but but it was I mean remember we that was like before you had like DVDs and in cars and so we bought you know you're making us sound so old we are old just embrace it
00:03:38
Speaker
And so I just remember driving and like, yeah, that, I mean, we drove 10 hours, I think we drove to Omaha, Nebraska and stayed overnight and got the next day and drove from Omaha into Denver and then beyond. But yeah, like any kind of long trip, you know, you start out with great enthusiasm. And I just remember like, you know, the kids were so excited to go see the mountains and we were excited to get away. And then we drove for like 30 minutes and somebody had to go to the bathroom and, you know, my hamstring was, you know, cramping up and like, it doesn't take very long.
00:04:06
Speaker
No, no, no, no, okay. For things to start to go awry. Well, and I think that was the trip that we were literally, Noah was great, so he was a baby, and he was great until like the last, I don't know, couple hour or two, and he cried the whole time. Did he? Okay. Yes, and that was the same trip that we were- We were having some car issues. We were doing great until we got to the mountains, and our car would go up, when we started going up the mountain. Yeah, there was something wrong. I can't remember if it was a sensor. It was a sensor, and so then it would stall out, and we-
00:04:34
Speaker
by God's grace and actually honey that's the at the end of that trip how we got to our condo was in a tow truck with the car on the tow truck we rolled into the back of a flatbed tow truck well if that was up there that isn't the picture of the spiritual
00:04:54
Speaker
That's how we're going to roll into heaven, a little beat up.
Exploring Spiritual Growth Stages
00:04:57
Speaker
But again, making the point is that in the spiritual life, in the Christian life, as we're walking with God, there's those different seasons. Sometimes we start out with great enthusiasm and we're excited to get to know God and to learn His word and to serve Him.
00:05:12
Speaker
And you don't get very far in the spiritual life and things start to break down. It gets challenging. It gets tiring. We run up against opposition. And that's really what we've been talking about in this series, the unstuck spiritual life, is that being stuck, there can be some real, legitimate, dangerous reasons to be stuck.
00:05:29
Speaker
And yet at the same time, being stuck can be a really good thing. It can be an invitation from God to go deeper and to learn and to grow and maybe experience healing and forgiveness. We talked about some of those things in the last episode. And so being stuck isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's an invitation for us to open our hearts and our minds to more of God's grace and His love and His truth.
00:05:49
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And you know, what we want to talk about today is just, you know, what has got up to, you know, in the spiritual life that there's these different stages that we experience and God is doing something in each of those stages. And it's, you know, maybe important for us just to kind of understand some basic characteristics of what each of those stages are.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah and before we talk about those stages though I think you know it's always helpful to have that end goal in mind because I think we can get lost in the stages and we need to just we need to see ultimately what is important and obviously that's God that's the ultimate goal is a friendship with him it's it's knowing how to
00:06:28
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walk with him in an intimate way where it's not rigid and lifeless. And so I think if we can keep that in mind, that helps along the way. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I think we mentioned this in the last episode that we want to begin with what we were created for and we were created to know God. We bear the mark of His image. We were made in the image of God.
00:06:52
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so we might be able to be in a relationship with Him, and He desires that relationship, that God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have existed in an eternal relationship, and that we were created out of that loving relationship that has been theirs for all eternity. And so the reason we exist is because of God's love for us, and the reason we go on existing is because God's love sustains us, and we were made to know God, to be in a relationship with Him.
00:07:18
Speaker
So when you think about growth or transformation or being changed, that kind of doesn't make sense if we don't start with that foundational truth that we were made to know God, to love Him, to serve Him, to glorify Him in all that we do. So it's so important that we start there. And even as we think about being a student of Jesus,
00:07:35
Speaker
You think about what the New Testament says about Jesus, that he's the image of the invisible God. In other words, as we follow Jesus, as we become his disciple, as we orient our life around his, he shows us what it looks like to be the perfect image bearer of God. And so to follow him, to become like him is to really, to grow into what we were originally created for, that relationship with God. And so yeah, it's so important that we start there.
00:08:01
Speaker
Okay, so I'm going to let you, honey, really kind of talk through these stages because I feel like you'll do a much better job just being honest here. I don't know about that, honey. A much better job than me. Just explaining them concisely, just for the sake of time and for understanding.
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, I grew up, I mean, I don't know about you, but like, I think for a lot of years, like I didn't even really understand that there were different stages of the spiritual life or that that was a thing. You know what I mean? Like that people talked about that or wrote about that. And so that I think for me over the last couple of years has just really been eye opening and just understanding. Like I just thought, you know, you became a Christian and you tried not to sin and someday you died and you went to heaven.
00:08:41
Speaker
I didn't understand that God takes us through different seasons or different stages and that each of those stages are marked by different characteristics that God is doing something new or different in each of those. And so that was really new for me. And so yeah, that's what I would love to do is just sort of really briefly unpack some of those characteristics of the three stages we're gonna talk about today. Now we've talked about
00:09:06
Speaker
in the past, different stages of spiritual growth. And there are different ways that people talk about these different stages. We talked about a book in episode, or I'm sorry, not episode two, but season two, called The Critical Journey. And they talk about different stages. And I know we got lots of feedback from those episodes that we did. And that's an excellent resource. We can link to that. That's one way. But there's another way that is also, I think, a really common way of understanding the different stages
00:09:35
Speaker
of spiritual growth. And I'll mention another book that might be helpful. This book in particular is not exclusively on the different stages of the spiritual life, but it's just a great book on the spiritual life and about virtue and vices. And I just read it. It was recommended to me not too terribly long ago. It's called Introduction to the Spiritual Life. And we'll link to that in our show notes. And there's some good descriptions in there.
00:10:02
Speaker
as well. But let me just highlight three different stages of the spiritual life and give some characteristics, and hopefully this is helpful for us. But the first one, and again, these are different stages. They've been described in different ways throughout church history. Sometimes they're called the three paths or the three ways. And so the three, and I'll just state them up front, is the purgative
00:10:24
Speaker
and then illuminative and then unitive. And so let me just kind of take each of those and explain them. So purgative comes from the word to purge. And so as we enter into that purgative stage, as the name would indicate, it's that stage of the spiritual life where we're becoming more interested in purging our life of sin.
00:10:45
Speaker
Again, growing in holiness, growing in righteousness becomes more attractive to us. I think about Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, for example, I've been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, the life that I now live by faith. I live in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Paul's saying, it's not my life.
00:11:06
Speaker
that I live the life of Christ who lives in me, and I've been crucified with Christ. I'm daily dying to myself, to my desires, to my wants, and I've been raised to new life through my faith and my baptism in Christ. And so- We don't love our sin anymore in this stage. Yeah, there's a growing detachment to sin, and we'll kind of talk about that a little bit more. You know, one analogy that I think is helpful, I know when we first bought our house,
00:11:31
Speaker
here in the Ann Arbor area. It didn't have a yard, you know, and so I was, for a moment, do you remember when I was contemplating? Oh my word, honey, yes I know. Seating the yard and doing it myself. Yeah, you were going to re- That would have been for a marriage and family and for me personally. You just don't realize the amount of work that goes into, because you have to flatten the ground and you have to take all the rocks out. I mean- I mow the grass and I change light bulbs.
00:11:57
Speaker
That's about the extent of my manliness. It's not like we have a huge yard either. And so I don't think it's just you don't realize how much work it would be to make sure the ground was flat and all the rocks were removed. That right there. And so the point of that, as I remember, is we had a friend come over and he's in turf management and he was giving me some advice on it. And that was one of the first sort of tips he gave was you need to get the big rocks out of the yard first. And so I started.
00:12:26
Speaker
You know, kind of going through the yard and pulling the big rocks out first. And that was the first goal was to get those large rocks out of the yard. And then you went back and you got the smaller ones. And so if that is sort of a helpful illustration or analogy, that's what the purgative life or the purgative stage is oftentimes marked by. It's really looking at by God's grace, again, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
00:12:48
Speaker
those big rocks in your life. And again, asking God to take those out of your life. This can be a really painful stage, a really painful season, because you're purging your life of what really displeases God, what might be hurting your marriage or your family.
00:13:07
Speaker
And so you become increasingly aware of just your own sin. And there's just this new desire to purge your life of what displeases God. In fact, we oftentimes become sick of our own sin during this stage. We begin to become aware of just how significant. And so there's a real struggle that's going on. There's this temptation to kind of go back and forth to hate our sin, but then to love our sin. And so that oftentimes is what
00:13:31
Speaker
The the purgative stage looks like and I want to just mention that that as you go through these different stages It's not like you just go through one and then you're done with it. Well, that's true It's not a linear model if you will And so just sort of keep that right because those little rocks are still probably hiding and you're still going back Absolutely. Yeah all the time and I would actually graduate from one and then move on to the next I mean that there is
00:13:54
Speaker
growth and progress but but it's not as linear as it may sound. Yeah and I think you you know you mentioned that it can be really painful during this you know as you do as you get rid of your sin it can be painful but it also can be very very freeing because there's a weight that comes with rocks.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, before we move on to the illuminative stage, 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verses 24 through 27 is a good example of, again, just that call to walk in holiness or righteousness. Paul, you know, writing again to the church in Corinth, says, do you not know that in a race all of the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last,
00:14:39
Speaker
But we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, or in light of that, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike and blow to my body and I make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. Now, the point in this is Paul is saying, listen, you don't just accidentally become holy.
00:15:02
Speaker
You don't just accidentally become righteous. That there really is this training elsewhere. Paul will say, train yourself to be godly. That there really is a work of God's grace in our life that we're responding to. But we don't just accidentally become more and more like Jesus. It takes training. It takes responding to God's grace. But this first stage that writers throughout church history have talked about and experienced is really marked by this new desire to love God and to purge our life.
00:15:31
Speaker
of sin, and we become more sick of our sin, and there's this battle going on, I love my sin, I can't live without it, but at the same time, boy, I'm sick of it, because I know what it's done to me, I know what it's done to those around me. Here's the second stage, the illuminative, and this just comes from that word, to illumine.
The Illuminative Stage and Spiritual Freedom
00:15:49
Speaker
or to give understanding, greater understanding. And so we are still in need of purging in this stage. We love virtue. We love holiness. We begin to see it as a blessing. And so in that first stage, you're kind of, you're like, I know that this is the right thing to do. And I'm purging my life of those big rocks, but in the illuminative stage, now you're starting to just love righteousness. You're starting to do what Jesus says in Matthew five, when he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We're actually starting
00:16:19
Speaker
to hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is interesting because I think when you are releasing and getting rid of your sin and you're feeling freedom from that, you begin to understand what a blessing holiness really is. And that's what's happening here. You have the greater understanding of why it makes a difference to walk in holiness when you start to release and get rid of some of that sin.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yep, you're exactly right. And I think in that stage, we begin also just to experience greater detachment. That's a word that maybe somebody who comes from a Catholic background will recognize, where we become more detached from the things that we really valued before. We become detached to people's opinions of us.
00:17:04
Speaker
We become detached from, you know, material possessions. They don't mean as much to us anymore. You know, certain hobbies or, you know, not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but because God is becoming more and more of our treasure and because we're desiring Him and we're being satisfied by Him, more and more those things of the world that we really maybe found our identity in or found satisfaction in.
00:17:26
Speaker
they kind of begin to lose their appeal. And so we become detached from them in greater ways. And so during the illuminative stage, that's what God is up to. He's setting us free. He's detaching us from our slavery to approval, to possessions, to
00:17:43
Speaker
pleasure in all of the wrong things. And so the illuminative stage is oftentimes marked, again, by just a new desire to love God and to spend time with Him in meditation and prayer, in scripture reading. I love that. Hebrews 12, verses 1 through 3, I love this passage. It says, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles.
00:18:06
Speaker
and let us run with perseverance the race that's marked out for us. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. And so again, that idea of really casting off anything that has ensnared us or entangled us so that we might experience that freedom that you were talking about that's really meant to be a blessing to us.
00:18:23
Speaker
And then lastly, the unitive stage. And this, again, that comes from union with God. And we want to be really careful here. We don't mean that we're becoming God throughout church history. That's been a really important thing to distinguish. And so it's not that we become God, but we experience just greater intimacy with Him. And we enjoy an increasing growth and faith and hope and love. And here we begin to see that we
00:18:48
Speaker
It's not that we want to be righteous, but we love the righteous one. And what I mean by that is that what happens in this stage is we just want to be with Jesus. We just want to be with God. And we enjoy being in His presence, and that's what we want more than anything. And even the pursuit of holiness, even the pursuit of righteousness now, it's not even necessarily the pursuit of those things,
00:19:11
Speaker
But first and foremost, it's the pursuit of God that that's what matters most. And you know, I think about the classic biblical example, you know, the psalmist says this in Psalm 27, verse four, he says, one thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all of the days of my life to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.
00:19:32
Speaker
I mean, we become more undivided. We just we love God. We treasure him. We want to be with him. He becomes our greatest prize, our greatest treasure. And so we just want to be with him. And one of the interesting things I think about this particular stage
00:19:47
Speaker
is that love is just what we do. We have to try less hard to love people, but God's love has been formed in us through the work of the Holy Spirit. For example, titles don't matter as much. Even results don't matter as much. We just are content in being obedient to God and loving Him and loving those around us.
00:20:11
Speaker
And there's something that happens in that stage where we become undivided, our life becomes more simple, and we just want to love God and love others. And so I know that's a really, really brief sort of description of those three stages, but I think it's really helpful for us just to kind of have that as a framework as we're continuing to walk with God and get to know Him, and we experience different seasons that may be feeling stuck.
Practical Advice on Spiritual Stages
00:20:35
Speaker
That this is one way of thinking about what God is up to in the spiritual life these different stages can help us understand Where we're at what's going on and really what God is trying to do in our life Yeah, and like you mentioned it's it's not that we're done with one and we're on to the next right we're going we're experiencing
00:20:57
Speaker
things in each of these stages throughout our whole life. Like we're always going to be getting rid of the rocks and we're always going to be having greater understanding, but there is a progression towards these and then once we continue to experience all of them,
00:21:16
Speaker
Ongoing I love that so much I think that this is so so powerful And so is all of this that you were talking about today in that book introduction to the there's some of it Some of it what we just talked about today is kind of drawn from a variety of different sources But there's a you know a pretty short at least at the beginning of that book description I think one of the things that's so helpful in that book that I mentioned is just then beginning to unpack You know what a virtuous life looks like and and we talked a little bit about again like
00:21:45
Speaker
just what's working against the spiritual life. And I love that in that book, it really talks about some of the different temptations that we face. And so there is a short description of what we just talked about, but then there's a whole lot more in terms of just understanding like what we're up against as we're trying to live this Christian life and follow Jesus, that it doesn't happen in a vacuum, that we have real sin that still lives inside of us. We have a real enemy.
00:22:10
Speaker
We have real temptations that have plagued every follower of Jesus from the beginning of time. And so that could be a really, really helpful book for somebody to follow up and read if they're interested in kind of going a little bit deeper than we did today. Yeah. And we'll make sure we put, obviously, some of this information in the show notes. So we want to wrap up with some practical takeaways now that we kind of have that framework and that understanding.
00:22:36
Speaker
How can we walk away from here practically? What do we actually do when we're feeling stuck? I think we mentioned this last time, but I would say the first thing, even though we just talked about understanding the different stages, is first of all, don't get obsessed with where you are. Yeah, never getting out of stage one. I've shared before that you have a spiritual director, a friend who I've met with over the last couple of years.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I remember talking to him, you know, and I remember him, we were at his house one day and he pointed to his bookshelf and he said, you know, there's a lot of things that I could point you to to read. But he said, I think God has you exactly where he wants you and what he's teaching you is enough right now. I love that. I was a little frustrated. I'm like, come on, Tom, like I want to, I like to read. Tell me what to do next. But his point was that he just focused on what God is teaching you right here and right now. Don't get obsessed whether you're in this stage or that stage and what the next stage is. And his point was just focus on God.
00:23:31
Speaker
in how the Holy Spirit's teaching you. And I thought that was really helpful. I think the second thing is don't get discouraged. I think when we think about the spiritual life and just even our own sin and where we're at and our own appetite for God, it's really easy to get discouraged. And the enemy would love to condemn us. The enemy would really love to say, you're a fraud. You're not really a Christian. If you were a Christian, you wouldn't still be struggling with this. And so we really, really need God's grace here to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit louder than we hear the enemy. And so not to get discouraged.
00:24:00
Speaker
and not to give up, not to grow weary, because God is doing what he wants to do. And he's not in a rush with us, that God is incredibly gentle and kind and patient and forgiving. And so don't get discouraged.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I think those first two things that you mentioned are where we find ourselves so often, you know, being obsessed like I'll never, because you do always feel like you need to get to the next thing. Like, this isn't good enough, I need to be better. And I think really leaning into where you're at and letting God work there, that's a really powerful thought. And then, of course, in the midst of all that, you can become discouraged because you feel like you're not getting anywhere.
00:24:38
Speaker
And then I think another practical takeaway is just, um, which we've already mentioned this, but there's not like this clean, like you're not going to start with the purgative move to the illuminative. Like, like again, this is a whole lifelong process and we are in all of these stages all the time. And I think that's just really helpful to, to understand it that way. And I think, you know, lastly, this is where we started. So it's a good place to end is just to remember that, that the focus isn't on necessarily our growth or,
00:25:06
Speaker
It's to focus on God, you know, and to keep our eyes on Jesus. And that's what, you know, the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12, you know, fix your eyes on Jesus who he's the author and perfecter of our faith. And so just remembering that, you know, it's just good to be with God. It's just good to walk with him and to be with him. And he has promised that what he started in our life, he's going to bring it to completion. And to remember that, like, that's enough for us just to be content.
00:25:31
Speaker
in focusing on that relationship with God. And He's going to do that work of growth and transformation. And so, yeah, not to give up, not to grow discouraged, not to focus necessarily on what stage we're in, but to keep our eyes on who God is and His love for us. And that's the foundation.
00:25:49
Speaker
That's like the perfect place to land and that's so, so good. And we are just so grateful that you have joined us friend.
Community and Social Connections
00:25:57
Speaker
And if we haven't met yet, we want to get to know you. I say this every week, but we're serious. So be sure to follow us on Instagram.
00:26:05
Speaker
at Patrick W. Schwank and at Ruth Schwank or on Facebook. And also don't forget, we will put everything that we talked about today in the show notes at rootlikefaith.com forward slash slash podcast. I'll make sure I list that book there and anything else that we mentioned. Again, we welcome you into our family here at Root Like Faith. That's how we see it. We feel like we're a family. So we can't wait to get to know you. We will chat soon and we hope you have the best week.