Prayerful Thoughts from the Ignatian Exercises Part 2

I’ve continued reflecting on the themes and prayers of the Ignatian exercises. There are so many memorable thoughts, so I decided to share some. May God continue to use them.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

These thoughts were inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September 2021, please contact me. You can also read more here, or see specifics for the coming year on my flyer.

Offering Our Failure to the Lord

In part one of this series I reflected on some of the ways we typically respond to failure and noted that the gospel is not that we never fail, but that God meets us in and through our failures. In part 2 of this series, I looked at failure as an opportunity for us to find our true identity in God and failure as an opportunity for God to free us from the shame that plagues us. In this final reflection, I will explore the invitation to abandon ourselves to the Lord as a response to failure.

When failure comes crashing down upon us, when our efforts seem to come to nothing, we are invited to abandon ourselves completely to the Lord. In times of failure, we experience our weakness and our need for God. We were not created to be heroic individuals. We were not created to be heroic communities. We were created to be humble people who give ourselves completely to God. 

Unfortunately, when we are experiencing failure, we typically don’t feel like giving ourselves to God. We believe that we should be giving ourselves to God in success. When we have failed we don’t believe that God would want us in our state of failure. Why would God want damaged goods like us? Who are we in failure that God would desire us? We would prefer to make a glorious offering of ourselves. And yet God loves us and welcomes us even in our failure. We are invited to give ourselves completely to God.

Many of us are aware that we don’t give ourselves completely to God, we may desire to, we may try to, but we know that there are significant parts of ourselves that are not given over to God. We don’t see that most of what we hold back from God are the parts of ourselves we are not proud of, the parts we try to suppress or eliminate from our lives. We don’t give our failure to God. We don’t give our fear, our doubt, our anger, our resentment to the Lord. 

What would happen if we gave these parts of ourselves completely to God? For one thing, we would be a lot more given over to God. Secondly, God would rejoice and delight to have these beloved parts of ourselves brought back and offered to him. We often underestimate how much God loves us, that God loves all of us, and that God particularly loves these parts of ourselves we have held back. 

Giving our failure to God also allows God to be at work in those areas we have so long withheld from him. God wants to redeem all parts of us, bring each part individually and together as a whole person, into the healing light of his love and grace. What freedom we receive when we offer ourselves more completely to him, allowing his love and grace to allow us to accept our own humanity, our true identity as beloved children of God. 

And so I leave you with this question… In what way is the Lord inviting you to offer your failure to him?

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Prayerful Thoughts from the Ignatian Exercises Part 1

I’ve been reflecting recently on the themes and prayers of the Ignatian exercises. There are so many memorable thoughts, so I decided to share some.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

These thoughts were inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.

Failure as Spiritual Opportunity

This is the second in a series of posts on failure.

In my first post, The False Path of Failure, I reflected on some of the ways that fear of failure becomes an obstacle in our spiritual lives. I suggested that the good news is that though we are failures, God loves us and meets us in our failure. But let’s be honest, we have a hard time hearing that good news. Instead, when we face failure, we are devastated, discouraged, we feel hopeless. We wanted so much to feel like we are successful, but now we have failed.

Failure and identity

It’s hard to personally come to terms with our failure. We’ve fashioned a false identity of success for ourselves and now that false identity comes crashing down which has shielded us from the truth of reality. And we are terrified of the truth. What if we are a failure? What if we are worthless? How will we live with ourselves?

We may find ourselves taking on a new identity, a failure identity, one of discouragement and self flagellation, but that also is a false identity. And we may cycle from our success identity to our failure identity and then back again, never knowing our true identity.

There is a truth about our identity for us to discover. We are neither awesome successes or terrible failures. We are human beings, flawed and sinful creatures, but also beloved, gifted, children of God. That is the truth of reality; that is our true identity. God loves us and sees us just as we are, the good and the bad, the gifts and the flaws, the holy and the sinful. God always sees us as we truly are, in all our complexity, while we keep constructing false images or identities.

But when we fail, the Lord sees it as an opportunity to strip away some of our false identity and show us a glimpse of who we really are. God takes failure and turns it into an opportunity for good. In failure, we recognize our need for God. We turn to Jesus. We confess our frailty, or brokenness and our sin. When Jesus meets us he looks us straight in the eyes and pronounces us beloved. In the midst of our failure, we are invited to see ourselves through his eyes, to experience his love, his care, the truth about who we are.

What a gift! When we see ourselves truthfully, we can relax. We don’t have to strive. We can rest in being known and loved and accompanied by the living God, “for in him we live and move and have our being” -Acts 17:28

Failure and Shame

Failure is not only a personal thing, but it’s also a social thing. When we experience failure, we typically feel shame. When we fail, we want to hide from others because we don’t want them to see us as failures. Shame may be the thing we dread most about failure. Wherever failure goes, shame follows close behind

Jesus is not deterred by our shame; Jesus sees it as an opportunity. Jesus has borne the cross on our behalf, taking it’s shame upon himself, taking our same upon himself. We may want to hide in shame from him, but once again, Jesus looks us straight in the eyes and is not ashamed of us. He calls us friend. He lifts us up from the dust and restores our souls. He invites himself to our house like Zaccheaus. He touches us when we feel unclean. He smiles and welcomes us into his kingdom, where the last shall be first, where the meek shall inherit the earth, where the Lord is close to the lowly.

When we open ourselves to Jesus in the midst of our failure, Jesus takes our shame away. To be freed from shame is such joy. We may discover that through our failure we are now closer to Jesus.

Sometimes we are freed from shame and it never returns, but many times we experience it coming back upon us in the days to come. But having experienced Jesus embrace us in our failure, we now see that the shame is not from the Lord. It is a temptation, a snare of the evil one, who wants us buried in shame and back in our false identities. We begin to notice shame as it begins to work on us and we have the opportunity once again to open ourselves to Jesus, to let him meet us in the midst of failure.

If you struggle to open yourself to the Lord in the midst of failure, consider meeting with a spiritual director. In spiritual direction you can explore failure in a deeper way and find ways to let failure draw you close to Jesus.

Stay tuned for part three of this series on failure coming soon, as I explore the theme of abandoning ourselves to the Lord as a response to failure.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Receiving the Mercy of God

I continue to notice how many of us have a reflexive feeling that God is harshly critical or judging us. Sometimes we feel this acutely due to a particular sin or failure in our lives. Other times we have a generalized feeling of God’s displeasure or judgment.

There is a place for the prick of conscience when we have done wrong, when we have sinned or when we are living in willful disobedience of God. But when we are seeking to love and follow God, I believe it is often the voice of the evil one, who likes nothing better than to try to keep us from going to the Lord. God always wants us to turn towards him, to come to him. Satan always wants to turn us away from, separate us from or put barriers between us and God.

Consider Adam and Eve in the garden. They disobeyed God and now they hide from God in the cool of the evening. They have done wrong, they feel ashamed and so they hide. It’s like the evil one is whispering in their ear, “God is harsh and angry and will never receive you with mercy.” But Satan is a lier. God wants their restoration. It is not God’s will that they should be separated from him, and so God seeks them out. If only they would run to him, confess their sins and be restored.

I recently came across this helpful quote from Pope Francis.

“The Lord always looks upon us with mercy;…let us not be afraid to approach him! He has a merciful heart! If we show him our inner wounds, our sins, he will always forgive us. He is pure mercy! Let us go to Jesus!”

— Pope Francis

God sees us with mercy. Let us soak these words deep into us. God longs to restore us. Be gone Satan, tell us no more lies! May we always run to the Lord to find forgiveness and mercy.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Responding to the Deaths that Surround Us

As a spiritual director, I am privileged to see the Lord bringing new life in people, seeing them find life in the midst of death. Having this perspective into life in Christ also gives me some perspective on the death I see all around me.

In a provocative post, Chuck DeGroat says that some of this death is necessary, and therapists and spiritual directors should not intervene, but instead, let it take its course. This led me to reflect that there are many kinds of death and that they are quite different.

I see people dying in a multitude of ways, some helpful and some quite destructive.  I see people being chewed up by the principalities and powers, sinful and broken structures. Some die as they shed their faith and move away from Jesus. I see people realizing that their faith had them living in death and they have to die to that death and find new life in Jesus, one that is more connected into the heart of God.

On a corporate level here in the US, the church is dying in many ways and some of those dyings are needed and we should not resist.  Other dyings are more like Psalm 11:3, where destroyed foundations damage God's people in harmful ways that will have long term consequences.

Regardless of the type of dying we face, our call is to turn to the living Lord in the midst of the death.  We come to the Lord in our weakness and death, asking to join him in his death, that he might raise us, give us hope and new life.

If you are facing into some type of death, consider spiritual direction as a way to seek the Lord and find new life.

The False Path of Failure

As a spiritual director, I have been reflecting a lot about failure recently. I see the ways our perspectives on failure interfere with our relationship with God, and I’m discovering a different way to approach failure, one that leads us to God. Here is part 1 of a series of blog posts on failure and the spiritual life.

Failure surrounds us. Pressure to perform. Pressure to succeed. American culture teaches us that we are supposed to be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Disney movies tell us that we can fulfill all of our dreams. More than ever, we start building our resumes in childhood, anything to get into the right school, the right career, all to have a successful life.

All the while, in the shadows something is lurking, the specter of failure. What if I don’t succeed? What if I don’t fulfill my dreams? What if I don’t get into that school? What if I fail? What if other people see me fail or see me as a failure? Failure is terrifying. We will do anything to avoid it. And so we push it away, distract ourselves, seek social media affirmation, tell ourselves lies.

But still, this nagging fear gnaws at us. What if I am a failure?

Surely our faith can help us with this… but unfortunately, our faith is infected with the same sickness. We become good Christian people and suddenly our standards for success are even higher. As a Christian, I’m supposed to have my daily quiet time and love it. I’m supposed to be full of the fruit of the Spirit. I’m supposed to have a wonderful marriage and perfect kids. I’m supposed to be loving and generous and forgiving. I’m supposed to be someone that people will look at and say, “look how successful and wonderful that Christian is, I want that. Tell me how I can become a Christian too, to be a success like you.” We even start thinking that eternal salvation, rides and falls on our success.

And our churches become places where have to work hard not to show our flaws, always presenting our best selves. And then in our spiritual lives, we feel ashamed of our sins and failings and hide them from God, like Adam and Eve in the garden. We only go to God when we feel righteous. We begin hiding more and more of ourselves from God.

And God becomes our success evaluator, our judge, a harsh taskmaster, always requiring more, always seeing the ways we fall short, always frustrated with our failure. It’s no wonder we don’t want to pray, we find ourselves avoiding intimacy with God.

That’s all completely the opposite of the gospel. The gospel is that we are failures and God loves us, meets us in our failure and offers us new life through our failures. Such good news! Our failure doesn’t separate us from God. Instead, our failure is an opportunity to grow close to God.

Read more about failure in my followup post entitled Failure as Spiritual Opportunity

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Celebrate

In the story of the woman and the lost coin, God celebrates when the one who was lost is found. Jesus the Good Shepherd rejoices over the lost sheep who is rescued. The Father throws a party when the prodigal returns.

As a spiritual director I am privileged to be able to see the amazing work that God does in people’s lives. And when I see God’s miraculous work, I often sense that God wants to celebrate, throw a party.

And so, when God overwhelms you with His love, heals you, frees you from a burden, forgives you, takes away your fear or shame, go and celebrate. You can’t celebrate too much.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Dutiful Faith Versus Joyful Faith

I’ve been a very dutiful person. I have wanted to know what is right and true and to live it out. And there’s a real value in this kind of serious discipleship and faithfulness. But I think there is a downside. Have I and have we become dutiful Christians versus joyful Christians?

Let’s explore this in the context of prayer. What kind of prayer does God really want from us? Well, God, of course, wants us to spend time with Him, but it also matters the spirit in which we spend that time. I think that God longs for us to have our hearts in it.

While we all have times where we have to make ourselves pray, ultimately God wants us to want to spend time with Him and enjoy spending time with Him. Do you like spending time with people who are making themselves spend time with you? I don’t, and I think it isn’t God’s favorite either.

The Ignatian Exercises rocked my world in this. I as I prayed and encountered Jesus I discovered that I wanted to be with Jesus. I loved Him and loved being loved by Him. I wanted to care about the things he cares about, and love the people he loves. I found my experience of God transformed from a demanding taskmaster to a God that I wanted to be with and who met me daily with comfort, challenge, encouragement and joy. I would hear Jesus asking me “What do you want?” and I found myself answering that what I most wanted was Him and to give myself to Him.

I am blessed to be surrounded by Christians and be a spiritual director to Christians who take discipleship seriously and have attempted to make their lives about following Jesus and give their lives to the body of Christ. I am truly grateful for that. However, sometimes I see much more duty and obligation than I see joy in the Lord.

One of the biggest things I do in spiritual direction is to walk with dutiful Christians as they grow in having desire and joy become more their motivation. I don’t want them to throw out serious discipleship, but instead want to help them find a new motivation for their serious discipleship, desire and joy. The Ignatian Exercises are designed to do this and Jesus Himself always seems to call people to deep desire and joy as they pray through his life. Maybe that is why I love the exercises so much.

I have a long way to go in having desire and joy be my motivation. But it is a journey I am glad to be on with the Lord. It is easy to fall back into duty, but Jesus loves it when I step into desire and joy.

“Dale what do you want?” “I want you, Jesus.”

“Give me only your love and your grace. That’s enough for me.” -Ignatius of Loyola

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

This reflection was inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.

Thoughts on the Exercises: A Generous Heart

I'm always encouraged when people connect deeply with Jesus and find that He's given them a generous heart. In Scripture, we see it in the story of Zacchaeus. He encounters Jesus and suddenly his life is transformed and he starts thinking of others.

Sometimes in the Ignatian Exercises, or when a directee encounters Jesus, they discover generosity welling up within them, looking for a place to flow out to others.

Has God ever given you a generous heart? Would you like to have a generous heart? It's a wonderful gift to be given.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

This reflection was inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me. You can also read more here.