I only have one sailing experience.
During my senior year of college, one of my friends invited a few of us to his family’s lake house near the North Carolina coast for the last weekend before graduation. The house was located in a cove just off the coast. The family’s beautiful (and expensive) two-seater yacht was tied securely to a post by the water.
Those with more experience went out first. Some of my classmates grew up near the sea and knew how to handle sails. They made their way up and down the cove and it looked easy. Once that was done, another beginner and I got up to pull the rope. Once off shore, we rocked and pulled, tilted and lunged, stood and sat, but barely moved. Of course, the others were even more pleased to see us struggling than they were during the voyage. After a while we were tired and hungry from the hard struggle, so we pulled the boat ashore and went to eat dinner.
Early the next morning, a few willing sailors woke us up and asked us where we had gotten off the boat. “Of course it’s on the coast. Where else should I put it?” “Did you pull it into the grass?” “Um, no.” “Tie it?” “Um, no.” “Oh, no. The ship is gone.” If you’re an experienced sailor (or just a common sense person), you know what I learned that day. The tide rises at night, so the boat must be anchored or it will drift adrift. I immediately started counting every dollar I owned. (It didn’t take that long.)
A few of us rode up and down the coast in a motorboat, desperately searching for any sign of a sailboat. Indeed, after many hours it was damaged and perhaps even destroyed. After another hour or two, it was empty. I couldn’t see anything. And no one we looked at saw anything. I still remember the long walk home. My stomach hurts.
This ship came to mind again recently when I read Tim Keller describing the tools he has used for years to discern the health of the soul (especially the health of the prayer life). Ta.
Which boat represents you?
Keller describes the image of a voyage as follows: “Imagine your soul as a boat. Imagine it as a boat with both oars and sails.”prayer, 258). In that scene, he asks his four pointed questions. Are you sailing? Are you rowing? Are you drifting? Or is it sinking? Speaking of me, is your spiritual life similar to my sailor captain friends who walk up and down the coves, or are you two newbies working hard and wondering where they are? Is it similar to a place where you can’t go or an empty yacht drifting aimlessly?
This tool helps in two ways. First, it helps you evaluate and maintain your boat. How often have you thought about rowing when you’re actually floating, or floating when you’re actually sinking? Second, this tool gives you a window into other people’s boats. It’s a simple and vivid question that cuts through the shallows of a relationship (the part that wants to swim in it) and cuts into the heart of the person, what state he or she is in. Really Are doing.
Although Keller did not add specific texts to the four different boats, the Psalms come to mind as a possible example because they model the highs and lows of the human soul with unusual vulnerability and emotion. I did. So I set out to identify at least a few lines that express each of these four spiritual states.
1. Are you sailing?
Do you feel the wind at your back when you think about your spiritual life now? Does prayer feel easier and more enjoyable than usual? Reading the Bible every day shines like a treasure in the field? Do you have? Have you found yourself actually looking forward to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday mornings and the opportunity to sing and serve at your local church? Do you find spiritual conversations natural and enjoyable?
If you’re currently enjoying the sweet thrill of sailing, you might pray like King David does in Psalm 16:6-9.
This line hit a sweet spot for me.
Indeed, I have a great heritage.
I bless the Lord who gives me advice.
Even at night my heart instructs me.
I always put the Lord before me.
I will not be shaken because He is at my right hand.
Therefore my heart rejoices, and my whole body rejoices.
My body also lives safely.
As we will see, David did not always feel this spiritual high. He often suffered and had to fight hard for his faith. Sometimes he fell into the valley of despair. But in these verses you can feel the wind lifting his sails and moving them. Anyone who is on the spiritual wind can relate to his explanation. it’s not You wish he was going through it.
2. Are you rowing?
If you are rowing a boat, you are still making progress, but it will be slow and hard fought. You are moving forward, but you are really earning the waves that pass you by. “Rowing a boat means that praying and reading the Bible feel more like a duty than a joy” (259), Keller writes. It’s a chore you keep doing, but honestly it feels like a chore. You keep attending church services, training yourself to listen, participate, and even sing, but you often walk away distracted and tired. You try to put your mind in a different place, to feel differently, but you haven’t felt the strong wind in a while.
If you are currently engaged in the tiring task of rowing a boat, you may want to pray like David did in Psalm 63:1.
O God, you are my God. I want you with all my heart.
my soul is thirsty for you.
my body faints for you,
Like a dry and weary land without water.
“The vast majority of castaways and sinkers drift and sink alone.”
In these verses, he’s not praying from the comfort of Psalm 16. Now he’s on his knees in the wilderness, “a dry and weary land where there is no water.” But when the spiritual wind stops and the ground beneath him dries up, he doesn’t give up and lie down in the boat. No, he starts rowing again, keeping his eyes on God.earnestly I’m looking for you. ”
3. Are you adrift?
From a distance, drifting looks like rowing a boat, but as you get closer to the two boats, you’ll notice one major difference. effort. The castaway stopped trying. You stop praying seriously. You stop reading the Bible regularly. I stopped paying attention (or stopped participating at all) during church meetings. Tired, discouraged, and perhaps even disillusioned, you lay aside your oars and passively wait for a gust of wind to come to your rescue.
This condition is probably the most difficult to combine with the Psalms. This is primarily because the psalms themselves are prayers. So even in the darkest of times, they model what it’s like to keep rowing in the dark: keep praying, keep gathering, keep searching. However, in Psalm 42, dangerous conditions prevent the psalmist from going to the temple (“When shall I come and appear before God?” v. 2), but he is still able to pray; Other important means of grace are cut off.
When will I come and appear before God? . . .
These things I remember are;
While pouring out your soul,
how to get to the crowd
and lead them in procession to the house of God
With shouts of joy and songs of praise,
A festival to protect many people.
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you confused in me? (Psalm 42:2, 4–5)
The castaway has a desire for more, and although she remembers when she experienced mental health and community, she has lost the will to keep fighting. His soul is depressed, so his boat wanders aimlessly from app to app, show to show, task to task, meal to meal, week to week. He wakes up farther and farther from where he wants to be spiritually, yet his determination to change his direction grows weaker and weaker.
4. Are you sinking?
Is the boat inside you calmly drawing water? You’ve been adrift for a while, but then you hit a major event like a job loss, heartbreak, illness, or death, and the water starts to drip. Now, weeks or months later, your faith is gasping for air. You don’t long for the days before when you had a stronger, more satisfying faith. You’re wondering if it really happened. You don’t think about restarting your prayer life, finding a Bible reading plan, or joining a small group. I’m looking for answers elsewhere (or avoiding the question altogether).
Again, even the psalmist was dealing with moments of sinking souls. Listen to Asaph’s heartache and despair as he reflects on the dark night of his soul.
All I tried to keep my mind clean was in vain
Then I washed my hands innocently. . . .
But when I thought about how to understand this,
It seemed like a tedious task to me. . . .
when my soul was in trouble,
When my heart pierces,
I was savage and ignorant.
I was like a beast to you. (Psalm 73:13, 16, 21-22)
He remembers a time when he lived in spiritual danger. Do you feel your heart slowly growing resentment toward God? Is your pain crystallizing into self-pity? Has confusion turned to bitterness and resentment? Are your doubts ripe for indifference? Is your boat full of water?
Obviously, a ship that is about to sink requires extreme caution. One of the benefits of such a tool is that it simply puts a sinking ship on someone else’s radar. How many souls sink unnoticed, at least until it’s too late?
Floating and sinking alone
At the end of that long day, just as I had almost given up hope of finding my friend’s yacht, I received a call from a neighbor who lived below the cove. It landed on their shores. Surprisingly, there is no damage. The boat was adrift for more than a mile.
Despite my previous failures riding very expensive fiberglass, my first friend and I did one thing right that day. That was going out together. When it comes to our mental health and joy, the vast majority of castaways and sinkers drift or sink alone. And the vast majority of rowers and sailors row and sail with others.
Keller concludes his book with the following line:
If you like sailing, you might find these voyage images useful. However, a metaphor often used in the Bible to describe communion with God is that of a feast. . . . Eating together is one of the most common metaphors for friendship and fellowship in the Bible, so this vision powerfully foretells an unimaginably intimate and intimate fellowship with the living God. doing. It evokes the sensual pleasure of savoring exquisite cuisine in front of beloved friends. The “wine” of perfect communion with God and our loved ones will be an endless joy. (260–61)
An image of a feast where you can enjoy the fulfilling feeling of a voyage. It is also unity, But.Some people may eat alone, but no one eats. feast alone. And spiritually speaking, no one sails alone either. A richer communion with God requires a richer communion with other souls in the Church.
So when we find ourselves adrift, or worse, in our walk with God, the first step to righting the ship is to find a place more crowded than the seafarers and rowers inhabit. is to maneuver a ship into a body of water.
