8. Obstacles
In a perfect world, we start our journey, everything goes smoothly, and we arrive at our destination quickly and effortlessly. In the real world however, things are not always this way. In this chapter I want to talk about some of the obstacles we might face in the journey and some tactics to overcomes them. Obstacles are common part of any process, and the process of engaging our spirit is no exception. It is important, when we come across them, not to get discouraged. Experiencing obstacles happens to everybody, it is not just you, and it is not personal. Below is a list of some of the common obstacles we will experience and what we can do about them. There are three main areas where we will experience obstacles: our soul, other people and hostile spirits.
Our Soul
The first area where we will experience resistance is with our soul. When we start out on this journey, our soul will either not be aware that our spirit exists, or if it is aware, it will be irrelevant because we never give it any space, in other words there is no conflict of interests. Until our spirit actually engages and our soul starts to experience its presence, then everything is fine. Our soul will be happy enough to talk about our spirit, study it and even become an expert the theory of it: so long as we do not actually do anything. When our spirit starts to engage however, our soul can very quickly become alarmed and take up a defensive posture. In some cases this is just mild alarm because the spirit is taking some of the soul’s time, but it can get a lot more hostile than that. This analogy might help us to understand the impact. The situation is not like having one pet and a second one coming into the house; rather, it is more like when a pet has been the child of the house, and suddenly a real child comes along. The pet can become very insecure.
Remember, that our soul is the product of our environment. The beliefs and influences of the world we were born into - a combination of the influences of our family, teachers, friends, and cultural heroes. It follows therefore that if we were fashioned by a society that doesn’t place any value on the human spirit, then our soul is going to be prejudiced against our spirit. It will find the practice of intentionally developing your spirit offensive and uncomfortable, and it will find lots of “friends” in the culture and our environment to gather around it for moral support.
In practice, the obstacle looks like this. We will begin to experience lots of doubts and fears and even outright hostility. Thoughts like “why are we doing this”, “this is uncomfortable”, “this stuff is all just nonsense”, “this is just weird and scary”, “I know that something is happening, but I don’t understand it and I don’t feel safe, so let’s stop”, or simply “I just don’t have time for this”. What you will soon begin to learn is just how crafty your soul is and just how creative it can be in distracting you from this purpose.
How then do we deal with this? There are three strategies we can use. The first is to remind ourself of the distinction between spirit and soul. That can be hard when our feelings and thoughts are very strong. In this case it is best to wait for the storm to blow over and then take a step back and ask: “were those thoughts and feelings coming from my spirit or my soul?” Or you could ask your spirit what it feels about it. The second strategy, is to remind ourself that our soul cannot function at a spiritual level, and it does not need to. If the presence of our spirit makes our soul uncomfortable, we should realise that it is just our soul that is uncomfortable, and it will with time and patience adjust. Finally, there is no substitute for patience and determination. If the adversity is very strong, then take some time out and agree not to make a judgement on it until the process has had a bit longer to run. This will buy some time for our spirit to recover from any bullying.
Other People
Another common area where will experience obstacles is with other people. This is very understandable. As we begin to develop our spirit, we will start to transform. We will begin to behave differently, react differently and deal with situations differently to what we did before. In general, the people around us, like most people, will like things to stay the same. We all like a predictable world to live in that we can understand. So when we start to behave and react differently, the predictable world starts to become unpredictable, which can make even the people closest to us uncomfortable. There is another factor at work as well. It is impossible to hide from the souls and spirits of the people around us the presence of our spirit. They will sense it and know that something is up. Because they won’t have experienced their spirit before, it will be as disconcerting to their souls as it was to ours.
Probably one of the most challenging obstacles we may encounter will be in church. This is not always the case, but in some cases the people around us in our church will be very happy with a Christianity that is oriented towards the soul and not be ready for much more. We can find ourselves experiencing this obstacle when we start reacting differently to the things that we used to enjoy about church. This can cause us to stand out a bit and others to become uncomfortable, because they will see that our heart just is not in the same activities we used to be in to. This will be because our spirit is making its needs and wants felt, and it will start to let us know that it is not being fulfilled by the things of the soul and would like something more.
How then do we deal with the obstacles we encounter that involve other people? Fortunately, there is much guidance on this in the New Testament. The first and absolute principle is the Law of Love. Practically that means taking a generous attitude to those who are happy with where they are and who might be offended at you. This is not about being holy and pious, it is about staying on the journey. If we allow ourselves to be affected by other people, and get into that dangerous place that the Bible calls “strife”, then our spirit will begin to withdraw and recede, because our spirit is very gentle and also very communal - it is designed for community. The second strategy is covered in the previous chapter, specifically in the section on rebalancing relationships.
A final note on church. I have found that even a church that is very oriented towards the soul can be a very positive experience, but what will happen with time is that you will engage with what is going on at a different level. There are always very interesting spiritual dynamics at play in every service, especially when God makes Himself present, which impacts the spirits of all in the service and causes them to come to the surface. Church can be a very rewarding experience, but just in a different way. You can enjoy the parts of it that are oriented towards the soul, and at the same time find tremendous stimulation for your spirit by engaging at a very different level.
Hostile Spirits
As much as I would prefer to avoid talking about it, there is no getting away from the fact that there are evil people in this world working either knowingly or unknowingly with diverse kinds of hostile spiritual entities to do all sorts of harm. I would be remiss not to spend a little time talking about this, although I would prefer not to dwell on it, as sometimes we can put too much focus on this area.
As we begin to develop our spirit to get our freedom, there is a good chance that we might encounter some of these hostile spirits along the way. I do not really want to focus on these forces, I just want you to be aware that you may come across them and that they may try to harass you, deceive you, or distract you either directly or by means of others using the tools of your environment. The good news is that they are generally quite straightforward to deal with and as you go further and deeper, you will develop ways to minimise their impact and ignore them. The other good news is that there is a lot of help available.
So, how to deal with these? There are lots of technical skills you can learn, but there are three particular strategies that can be very effective. Firstly, we can always go to God for help: this journey of spiritual freedom is not for us to figure out on our own. It is a partnership - and God is a lot more willing than we think to help us. Secondly, we can ask God to shine His light on what is going on: hostile spirits always works in darkness and shadow through misdirection, lies, and subtle deception. This is because they are a lot weaker than you and cannot survive any kind of direct conflict. If we cannot figure something out, and as we ask God to shine His light, situations can clear up almost immediately. Finally, we can use our rights of citizenship: when we became a Christian, we gained certain spiritual rights, just like we did by being born into the country we were born. That means, we are citizens under the protection of a spiritual government that we can call on any time to help us, in other words, we can invoke our rights as citizens. I would strongly advise that taking a little time to learn how this works is very worthwhile. We have a wealth of help at our disposal.
Eph 2:19 - So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God
Summary
As I mentioned a lot earlier, God has designed us for challenge. We can see this clearly in his mandate to Adam
Gen 1:28 - fill the earth, and subdue it
The core concept behind the word subdue is to overcome. I would therefore encourage you to think differently about the obstacles that you encounter on the journey. They are part of what makes the journey so rewarding as they are challenges to overcome, and overcoming challenge is what we were designed to do. It is supposed to be fun.
Finally, if you look at developing any part of yourself, resistance is a key part of development. There is no way to develop your bodily muscle without resistance - overcoming that resistance is what produces growth, and growth is exactly what we are aiming towards. As we persevere, our spirit will grow and become stronger, and we will become more complete.