A lesson from Catherine Booth

I spend alot of time thinking about God. This is particularly the case because I am reading theology and training to be a Vicar. It has seemed to me over the past few weeks that these two things often don't have much to do with each other. This term I have learnt about the existence of dogmatics, natural theology, biblical theology, pastoral psycology and ethics. The whole process seems to be about acquiring more knowledge and cleverness and what I am so much more interested in is becoming the person God means me to be so that I can serve him as best I know how.

I read recently Gordon MacDonald in a fascinating article about the inability of Christian leaders to finish the task and his observation that many are left broken and disillusioned after 10 years of ministry. Why might this be? He went on the quote a letter William Booth's wife (founder of the Salvation Army) Catherine wrote to him when he was on the point of giving up.

"I know how possible it is to preach and pray and sing, and even shout, while the heart is not right with God. I know how popularity and prosperity have a tendency to elate and exalt self, if the heart is not humble before God. I know how Satan takes advantage of these things to work out the destruction (if possible) of one whom the Lord uses to pull down strongholds of his kingdom, and all these considerations make me tremble, and weep, and pray for you, my dearest love, that you may be able to overcome all his devices, and having done all to stand, not in your own strength but in humble dependence on Him who worketh 'all in all.'"

An apt quotation on the week that a major Christian leader in America has fallen from grace and lost everything. How easily I too could let me pride, ambition and decietful heart lead me to burn out in duplicity and falsehood. Not yet thank God, but who is to say that I will be able to sustain the race to the end. For MacDonald, it is all about formation and its radical neglect in the modern church. Worthy of note is that Catherine Booth wrote these words at the age of 23 and seems herself to have been a profoundly formed woman given over to prayer and other disciplines. Will I give myself over to learn these lessons as she seems to have done and get my heart 'right with God'. I pray so.