Spiritual poise is required for the mature life. This is demonstrated by calmness and the quiet center. There is no panic in the control tower. It is evidence we have the inner reality, and this inner reality expresses itself in an outward, simple lifestyle. Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline says, "Because we lack a divine center, our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. We buy things we do not want, to impress people we do not like. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over." The quiet center is a place of equilibrium and lack of vibration, just like a perfect note. The hungering and striving no longer exists. It is, like golfers say, "the sweet spot" of life.
The core of calmness is really found in the spirit of truth. In the scripture we read that the comforter will bring us the "spirit of truth." This is comprehensive, like encompassing both the spirit and the letter of the law. This is the totality of truth. This is the desire, the knowledge, the application of truth. Recently I read People of the Lie in which Scott Peck talks about the permeating "pretense" of our society. He's pointing out that psychiatry has never recognized the fact of personal evil in the world and this evil expresses itself by making us people of the lie who continually live by pretense.
Once talking to an egotistical minister whom I disliked very much, I
wondered how in the world we could both be happy in heaven. Suddently I realized that we will have the "spirit of truth" —— we will both desire perfect evaluation. A person of genuine truth would hate to be over-rated as much as they would hate to be under-rated. People of the pretense want the opposite.
If we are people who are operating in the spirit of truth, then our motivations are pure and we have no desire to use people or to manipulate people. The bottom line on most motivational books is "how to get people to do what you want them to do," which is not motivation at all — it is manipulation. People of the pretense become expert in manipulation. In our communications if we have the spirit of truth, we have a simplicity which the scripture refers to as "let your yes be yes and your no be no." It simply means that for a really truthful person, yes and no are generally adequate. I've been reading a very thick book on all the rules of golf, developed on the premise, "don't give yourself an unfair advantage." I have always enjoyed playing golf to understand a man's real ethics. In heaven when we play golf we will be possessed by the spirit of truth and the rules book will be very thin. The scores may be somewhat higher, as well.
Elijah found God to be in the calm, not in the wind or the earthquake. A simple, life worth living is centered in quietness and the spirit of truth.
