Troughs and Peaks

Coaley Peak, Dursley, Cotswolds, England
By Peter Adams Courtesy of AllPosters.com

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Just when I think I've figured something out like dealing with the present issue my child is facing, it all changes. New circumstances, new issues, new unsolved problems must be taken to the Lord for prayer and to seek wisdom. This is the next trough to plow through. I wanted to celebrate the peak of the previous phase but there doesn't seem to be time. I feel overwhelmed all over again and stuck in finding the motivation to press on.

At times like these I find it helpful to understand that there is an enemy of my soul that seeks to discourage and distract. He wants me to forget the peaks and the places God has clearly guided me through. I've been reminded through C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters. Uncle Screwtape writes letters to Wormwood, the demon he mentors. His goal is to help Wormwood thwart God's plan in redeeming the human he has been assigned to torment.

My Dear Wormwood,

Humans are half spirit and half [creature]. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as [creatures] they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy [God] demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself --creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below [Satan] has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy [God] wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. Merely to over-ride a human will would be for Him useless…. He cannot ravish. He can only woo…. He is prepared to do a little over-riding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows the state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs-- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best….He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
Screwtape
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Several things cause me to wake up and take notice from this sneak peak of the enemy's mail.

• Change is part of living in time and I need to expect it and move with it as God has planned.
• God's love for me is immense and he is wooing me to desire to be more like him.
• God uses the difficult things for my good, my transformation to be more like Christ.
• When I feel like God isn't there and I still press on in obedience, He is very aware and this brings him incredible joy.
• When I mess up but have the intention to continue to follow the enemy's work on my soul is not gaining any ground.

Romans 8:18, 28- 30 says, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Sufferings and good seem to be opposed to one another unless you know what the goal is. God's goal for my life is to be conformed to the image of his Son. He uses the troughs more than the peaks to do this. The unanswered questions and situations that tempt my heart to be impatient are the very things that God is using to make me more like Christ. I can be persuaded to be patient for that because it is my heart's desire to be made like my Master. To Him be all the glory!