Spiritual direction is a process in which the directee engages with a director, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, to deepen their relationship with God. Connecting with God involves deep listening from both the director and the directee, as the Holy Spirit speaks within those sessions. This essay focuses on one precondition for connecting with God, as Henri Nouwen describes it: belovedness. It then shifts to Richard Sibbes’s work and brings this idea of belovedness into the concept of the bruised reed.
The spiritual director should begin the relationship with the directee by seeing them as someone beloved by God. Nouwen expands this concept beyond spiritual direction to everyday life: when we see others as beloved by God, we can begin to see ourselves as beloved by God.[1] Nouwen explains that he sees the baptism of Jesus and the proclamation of the Father’s belovedness of the Son (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22) as the “decisive moment” of Jesus’ ministry and the moment his identity became clear.[2]
“You are my beloved” is the most “intimate truth” about who we are, no matter who we are.[3] Doubting this truth tears our relationship with God and tempts us to “trust alternative identities.”[4] I have to embrace this truth before I can even begin to entertain spiritually directing another person. How can I convince another that God beloves them if I do not first believe it? When I see myself as beloved of God, my identity rests in God, not in my work or my possessions. I am beloved. My directees are beloved. The person who cut me off in traffic is beloved. The truth of this belovedness must be the foundation of everything we “think, say, or do.”[5]
This is why Nouwen insists that the discipline of prayer is important. When I encourage my directees (and myself, for that matter) to listen in prayer with the careful attentiveness of obedience, their identity deepens as they are encouraged that God loves them with omnibenevolence.[6] It doesn’t mean that all of our prayers are wonderful and joyous. Sometimes we feel discouraged and lonely. But in prayer, my directees and I find our identity and our belovedness.
A lack of identifying with the belovedness of God may be one of the key sources of misery for what Richard Sibbes calls the bruised reed (taken from Isaiah 42:3 and Matthew 12:20). For Sibbes, the bruised reed is a person in some sort and level of misery as a result of their fallen nature (the presence of sin).[7] However, Sibbes also states that one must be a bruised reed before stepping into faith. The Holy Spirit must “make way for himself into the heart by leveling all proud, high thoughts” so that we can come to the point of our need for God.[8]
The enemy wants us to ignore how God truly views us. “Ungodly spirits” would have us dwell in our misery and shame; but God wants more for us.[9] God does not want us to remain bruised reeds, but to bring us into a fuller life with him. Jesus calls us in our woundedness and brings us into healing.[10] This is the spark of what Sibbes calls “the smoldering flax,” which is hope in God in the midst of doubts and fears, shame and guilt.[11] The tiny, burning desire to know God comes first from God through the Holy Spirit.[12] Second, this burning ember to know God produces the heat of love in some measure (be it small or large).[13] Third, the light this desire gives points the soul toward God, not away.[14] Fourth, there is discernment in what is of God and what is not.[15] Fifth, the person is willing to reform that which is not God.[16]
As a spiritual director for my directees and in my own life, removing the image of the bruised reed and sparking the image of the smoldering flax depends on understanding that God absolutely loves his beloved. As I develop in my faith and help guide my directees in developing theirs, the small burning ember of desire to know God intimately grows ever brighter, grounded in the deep knowledge that I and my directees are truly beloved.
[1] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, Kindle (HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 27.
[2] Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, 28.
[3] Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, 28.
[4] Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, 28.
[5] Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, 34.
[6] Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, 34.
[7] Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (1630; Kindle, Old Glory Press, 2026), 8.
[8] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 8.
[9] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 9.
[10] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 11–12.
[11] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 7.
[12] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 38.
[13] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 39.
[14] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 39.
[15] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 40.
[16] Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 40.
