INTEGRITY GROWS WITH PROPER ASSOCIATION. Our friendships not only define us but develop and energize us. I have found a new, profitable companion—Francois Fenelon, the French mystic of three hundred years ago. He and Oswald Chambers are my daily counsel. They differ in that Oswald Chambers was a teacher expounding principles to a group with each person applying it to himself or herself, while Fenelon was a mentor to an individual and focused on specific situations.
For forty-one years I have read Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest. I discovered Fenelon’s The Seeking Heart a short five years ago. After just a few pages, I was hooked. Fenelon was a contemporary and friend of Jeanne Guyon, and both suffered for their faith—she in prison for ten years and he exiled to oblivion after rising to one of the highest offices in the French court.
I include seven themes of Fenelon’s that have been most helpful to me. Other themes of his are woven into the fabric of the rest of this book. With our lives rooted in these immutable principles, we can be like the willow tree, with branches and leaves flexible to the changing winds and the roots stable in the realities of life.
1. Self-love is subtle.
I have a friend who points out how self-love constantly changes to keep from being recognized. It is like the way a virus changes to avoid extermination. For example, self-love can come in the guise of guilt: “How could anyone as good as I do anything that bad?” Or a desire for purity might be evidence of self-love—in our wanting God to make us a showcase example, desiring to sit on the right hand of God. Even the desire to be significant, rather than the desire to do significant things, can be a form of self-love.
Fenelon says, “Do not listen to the voice that suggests you live for yourself. The voice of self-love is even more powerful than the voice of the serpent.” Again, “Self-love brings great anxiety.” Or, “You will be tempted to speak out in a humble tone of voice to tell others of your problems. Watch out for this. A humility that is still talkative does not run very deep. When you talk too much, your self-love relieves his sense of shame a little.”1
Fenelon goes on to say, “Self-love is proud of its spiritual accomplishments. You must lose everything to find God for himself alone. You won’t begin to let go of yourself until you have been thrown off a cliff. He takes away to give back in a better way.” He follows up by saying, “Self-interest and pride cause you to reject the gifts of God, because they do not come in a way that suits your taste. He asks for nothing but death, but you desire nothing but life.
“Selfishly loving yourself shunts the spirit. You put yourself in a straitjacket when you are enclosed in self. When you come out of that prison you experience how immense God is and how he sets his children free. Be humble. Do not trust the old nature.”
Fenelon probes deeper: “So to strip self-love of its mask is the most humiliating punishment that can be inflicted. You see that you are no longer as wise, patient, polite, self-possessed, and courageous in sacrificing yourself for others as you had imagined. You are no longer fed by the belief that you need nothing. You no longer think that your greatness and generosity deserve a better name than self-love. However, you are further tormented because you also weep and rage that you have cried at all. What your old nature fears the most is necessary for its destruction.”
He further warns: “While on the outside you seem to be only concerned with the glory of God, the unconquered self nature deep within is causing you trouble. I am sure that you want God to be glorified, but you want his glory to be expressed through the testimony that he has made you perfect. Let me tell you that this feeds self-love. It is simply a covetous guise of the self nature.”
When I read that, I remembered attending Billy Graham’s sixtieth birthday in Charlotte, North Carolina, when dignitaries, both in industry and religion, had lavishly praised him. He stood to acknowledge their remarks and opened by quoting the Scripture, “God will not share his glory with another,” and then asked that they not tempt him with their praise even though he appreciated it tremendously. It was a high moment of worship.
Penelon continues, “The self-love which is the source of your faults is also what hides your faults. Self-love must be rooted out of you so that love can reign within you without opposition. Until you see yourself in God’s pure light, you really don’t know yourself. There is danger in thinking that you are perfect simply because you understand what it would be like to be perfect. All your beautiful theories do not help you die to yourself. Knowledge nourishes the life of Adam in you because you secretly delight in your revelation. Never trust your own power or your own knowledge.”
Oswald Chambers continually repeats that the knowledge of God comes through obedience, not learning.
It’s possible for a person to have a head for God but not a heart for God. With our head we intellectually understand— but with our heart we obey. Occasionally I talk to someone who feels so much arrogance about his knowledge of God that I suspect if God wanted to take a vacation, this individual would substitute for him.
2. Suffering is useful.
Fenelon speaks of suffering as God’s exercise program, his gymnasium, and I can hear myself complaining to God, “You’re getting me muscle-bound.”
Here are some excerpts: “Suffering is necessary for all of us. You will be purified by dying to your own desires and will. Let yourself die. You have excellent opportunities for this to happen. Don’t waste them.” For years I have liked the saying, “Never lose the good from a bad experience.”
He goes on: “My God, help us to see Jesus as our model in all suffering. You made him a man of sorrows. Teach us how useful sorrow is.”
Fenelon writes, “God never makes you suffer unnecessarily. He intends for your suffering to heal and purify you. The hand of God hurts you as little as it can. The yoke that God gives is easy to bear if you accept it without struggling to escape.” The yoke, I believe, is easy and comfortable as long as we pull together with the Lord, but when we try to escape, the yoke becomes more like the bit in the horse’s mouth.
Fenelon gives us hope by saying, “When I suffer I can never see an end to my trials and when relief comes I am so suspicious that the suffering is not really over that I hesitate to accept my rest. It seems to me that to accept both good and bad seasons alike is to be truly fruitful. Accept both comfort and correction from the hand of God.”
Sometimes we hear people trying to define the difference between God’s discipline and God’s blessing. I don’t believe that we can know, at the time, which is which. Indeed, often as we look back we can see that the discipline was the blessing.
3. One test of relation with God is peace.
Recently I was talking to a disturbed Christian business executive. I suggested that he immediately find a knowledgeable theologian who could help him find the spiritual source of his turmoil. Any Christian without peace needs attention.
Fenelon recommends, “Encourage peace, become deaf to your overactive imagination. Your spinning imagination will harm your health and make your spiritual life very dry. You worry yourself sick for no good reason. Inner peace and the sweet presence of God are chased away by restlessness.”
Fenelon also writes, “Peace and comfort are to be found only in simple obedience. Remain at peace, for peace is what God wants for you no matter what is happening. There is in fact a peace of conscience which sinners should enjoy as they are repenting. Suffering should be peaceful and tempered with God’s comfort.”
Regarding the future: “Live in peace without worrying about the future. Unnecessary worrying and imagining the worst possible scenario will strangle your faith.”
Fenelon warns that “there never is peace in resisting God.… Allow yourself to be humble. If you are silent and peaceful when humiliating things happen to you, you will grow in grace.
“The point of trusting God is not to do great things that you can feel good about, but to trust God from a place of deep weakness. Here’s a way to know if you are actually trusting God with something. You will not think about the matter any longer nor will you feel a lack of peace.”
It reminds me of the story of Babe Ruth hitting that famous home run for the sick boy. As he left the ballpark, someone asked him, “What if you had struck out?” With a surprised look, Babe answered, “I never thought about it.”
Peace does not mean absence of tumult; it can mean security amid the tumult. When I was a small child in church, I heard a minister tell the story of how a wealthy man wanted a picture of peace. Various artists tried different approaches, from a quiet pastoral scene to moonlit nights on the water, but the artist who won painted a bird’s nest in a small tree on the edge of a waterfall.
4. Silence brings blessings.
As I read Fenelon on silence, I was reminded of what Oswald Chambers wrote about thanking God when he “trusts us with silence.” Fenelon put great emphasis on the value of silence—not only environmental silence, but silence of the soul, stillness of the heart, and tranquillity of the mind.
Fenelon writes, “Sometimes the annoyances that make you long for solitude are better for producing humility than the most complete solitude could be. Do not seek God as if he were far off in an ivory castle. He is found in the middle of the events of your everyday life.
“Listen to the voice of God in silence. Be willing to accept what he wants to show you. God will show you everything you need to know. Be faithful to come before him in silence. When you hear the still, small voice within, it is time to be silent.
“Try to practice silence as much as general courtesy permits. Silence encourages God’s presence, prevents harsh words, and causes you to be less likely to say something you will regret. Silence also helps you put space between you and the world. Out of the silence that you cultivate you will get strength to meet your needs.”
Most of us aren’t silent often enough. A chief executive officer of a large corporation attended a weekend retreat recently. He told me that his most meaningful experience of the retreat was the exercise of listening to someone for ten minutes—without saying anything. He realized how much he learned in that listening silence.
5. Growth and change are the work of the Cross.
Reading Fenelon made me realize how often I do not deeply understand the familiar. I repeat and hear phrases and clichés without really having the depth of understanding that I need.
Fenelon has helped me to think of the work of the Cross—redemption—as the constant tension of growth and change as the old nature gives way to the new. It is a process that starts with the new birth and ends at the close of our earthly journey, by which time we are, we hope, more mature in the likeness of Christ. I’m reminded of the oft-quoted prayer: “Lord, I’m not what I ought to be and I’m not what I’m going to be, but thank you, Lord, I’m not what I used to be.”
Some well-meaning Christians confuse the thorn and the cross. The thorn, to me, is something God puts in our lives that keeps us conscious of our dependence on him. Paul had the thorn; Jacob had the limp. The thorn is a constant reminder, but each day I must make the conscious decision to shoulder the cross and go forward.
Fenelon writes, “Bear your cross. Do you know what this means? Learn to see yourself as you are and accept your weakness until it pleases God to heal you. If you die a little every day of your life, you won’t have too much to worry about on your final day.”
Then with assurance he says, “You and I are nothing without the cross. I agonize and cry when the cross is working within me, but when it is over I look back in admiration for what God has accomplished. Of course I am then ashamed I bore it so poorly.”
6. The focused life is the simple life.
God never complicates what can be done simply. The focused life is the powerful life.
The saints I have read seem to have a unified priority system. They are chiefly single-agenda individuals with purity of purpose. Actually, this is what I look for in business—people who are cause-oriented. Those with double agendas are like those with double-mindedness, against which the Scripture warns. When we focus and screw down the nozzle, we increase the force of the water.
Recently I was discussing decision-making with an investment banker. He had good advice: “Once you decide what you want to do and the strategy that will accomplish it, then decision-making becomes simple. You do the things that advance the strategy and avoid the things that hinder it.” If, however, you’re unsure or tentative about where you want to go, it is much more difficult to find the right road.
Our hidden agendas can poison the simplicity of a situation. The desire to do a work for God is simple enough, but I greatly complicate it when I add the hidden agenda of wanting to be recognized and appreciated while doing it.
7. Give grace to yourself and others.
I can almost hear Fenelon say, “Lighten up.” As a person of a humorous bent, I was intrigued that nowhere in his writing does Fenelon mention specifically a sense of humor. I have always felt that humor is one way we accept our fallibility; in fact, most humor lives between where we are and where we wish we were. However, Fenelon doesn’t fail to see the weakness and doesn’t suggest excusing the weakness, but he emphasizes the grace, the forgiveness, the mercy. These are much stronger than humor.
One of Fenelon’s biographers noted, “He was a pleasant person to be around. He had an admirable presence.” I have come to think of him as having the presence of Billy Graham, the optimism of Norman Vincent Peale, and the serving spirit of Mother Teresa, though I am sure Fenelon would rap my knuckles for writing that.
Regarding self, Fenelon writes, “Do not be surprised to find yourself overly sensitive, impatient, proud and self-willed. Realize that this is your natural disposition. Bear with yourself but do not flatter yourself into thinking you are better than you are but wait on God’s timing to transform it. Stop at once when your activities become too hurried. Do not be eager, even for good things.”
In another letter he writes, “Don’t let the compliments you receive from worthy people go to your head. On the other hand, do not let a false humility keep you from accepting God’s comfort when he sends it through others.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to say in reply to a compliment, “Your compliment is God’s comfort to me”?
About temptation he writes, “Temptation is a necessary part of a Christian’s life. Don’t be upset by even the most shameful temptation. Look at God and dwell continually in his presence. He will keep your feet from falling.”
Here I received some additional help from the theologian Peter Kreeft, who said that temptation becomes a sin only when we mix will with it. For example, when a wrongful thought comes into our mind, it is not sinful until by will we recall the thought or dwell on it.
Fenelon doesn’t encourage self-evaluation. I think the apostle Paul took this view by saying that he didn’t even judge himself. Fenelon says, “If you need to know you’re doing well, you’re not walking by faith. Constant evaluation is just a preoccupation with yourself. Constant introspection is itself a distraction. You are afraid to pray poorly but you pray best when you don’t even realize you’re praying. Continue to walk humbly with God without interruption. If you’re shown something that should be corrected, then simply do so without becoming legalistic about it.”
Regarding others, Fenelon writes, “The daily standards that you live by should not be relaxed in any way, yet you must deal gently with the faults of others. Learn to be lenient with the less important matters but maintain your firmness over that which is essential. Remember that true firmness is gentle, humble, and calm. A sharp tongue, a proud heart, and an iron hand have no place in God’s work. Wisdom sweetly orders all things.
“Stay away from people who sound good but never exhibit true fruit of the inward walk. Their talk is deceptive and you will almost always find them restless, fault-finding and full of their own thoughts. These spiritual busybodies are annoyed with everything and are almost always annoying.”
As I read Fenelon, I could almost hear him encouraging the readers of his letters the way Paul encouraged the church: “Follow me as I follow Christ.” Run the race with patience and complete the course and your reward will be “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Francois Fenelon, The Seeking Heart (Sargent, Ga.: The Seedsowers, 1992).
Copyright © 1998 Fred Smith, Sr.
