The ministry of Leanne Payne has been of great benefit in my spiritual growth as a male. I have learned a great deal of what it means to be masculine before God. I am sure as I continue to write about the wildman on this blog, her ideas will become more apparent. She has written several important books on healing. For now I will only mention two: Crisis in Masculinity & Healing Presence. She makes the point that we have forgotten our souls. The soul belongs to “the unseen real.” That which is not seen or understood with our minds is more real then physical reality. Men have a difficult time with this truth because we want to control and understand. God dwells by His Spirit in our soul or heart beyond our control and full understanding. The presence of God is not a feeling, experience, or a thought. It is reality. God welling at the center. C.S. Lewis suggests that we can envision God’s presence as being heavier than matter. “God’s presence is radiant like gold, heavy like lead, molten like lava.” God’s presence with gives us a sense of being. It is God who affirms us in our maleness, giving us a strong inner place from which we can come forth like Lazarus from the tomb, into real life.
For most of us men, we are unaware of this reality within. We are to busy going around and aroung in our minds. I love the phrase from Payne when she talks about “a man walking alongside himself.” This means a man really does not know himself, but is continually searching for others or circumstance to affirm and recognize his masculinity. Only God can give that to a man. What is needed for the healing of our masculine soul, is the awareness of God at the center, in our hearts. As men we need to learn the practice of becoming aware of God’s presence at the center. This entails listening with our spiritual ears and learning to see with our spiritual eyes, so that we can hear that which is “inaudible” and to see that which is “invisible.” We need to learn the practice of going with our minds into our heart and there being in the presence of God. There we learn and discern the healing Word that God is continually sending forth.
Much of the blog will be devoted to this practice of going with our minds into our hearts, so that we might see with the eyes of our heart. I cannot stress the value and importance of Paul’s prayer in Eph 1:18-19, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
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