Category: Wildman Journey (Page 74 of 85)

In the mid 80’s, I began to read Thomas Keating’s books on centering prayer.  They became foundational in my journey with the Lord. One quote from Keating on the silence of God stuck with me, yet for some time just did not make sense to me.  In these last years, however, it has become more and more relevant in my personal pilgrimage with Jesus.  Keating observed, “God’s first language is that of  silence.”  I thought of this quote as I prepared to preach on the gospel text of Matt 15:21-28.  It is the story of the Canaanite woman coming to Jesus.  The woman cries out in desperation for Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter.  “Jesus,” however, “did not answer a word” (Matt. 15:23).  He was silent.  The disciples tried to get rid of the woman because the silence made her pleading even more pronounced: “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

My sense is that we often have trouble with Jesus’ response because our Western mindset does not mentally and emotionally equip us to deal with the silence of God. We want to understand and to have control over our personal affairs.  It is, however, in silence that we begin to know more about ourselves and our relationship to God.  Euguene Peterson writes, “There’s a silence that deepens relationships.  It’s a reflective silence.  It’s a silence that absorbs all that is being said by the other person.  Intimacy is awakened in such silence.  Experiencing such silence, I discover that I’ve been listened to, that my words have been taken absolutely seriously, that I’m being responded to as a unique person – too important a person to just be turned off with a phrase.”

Men, I want to encourage you in your experience of the silence of God.  There will be times on your journey when God will seem very distant and uninvolved.  Your prayer life will seem fruitless.  You may even begin to question God’s love for you.  You may feel anger at your sense of his absence.  But remember, please remember, that God is present in the silence.  He knows all about you and even the thoughts and emotions you are experiencing.  Peterson observes that we are puzzled by the silence of God because we do not know him very well:  “For when he is silent, he is stil listening.”

During the times of God’s silence in my life, I have learned to listen in the silence.  In this silence I have become more aware of myself and my reactions to God.  I have begun to learn that God speaks loudly in the silence.  It is an awareness that goes beyond words and sensations.  It is the calm certainty that God loves me and that I am in his presence. I am able to accept the whole truth about myself, which includes the bad and the ugly.  It is in the silence that I face who I really am.  In facing the real me, I am able to be honest with God.  And in this honesty, I come to know God for who he is and not who I would like him to be in my life, what I’ve imagined him to be, and what I would like him to do for me.  As I have become more accepting of the silence of God, I have come to know more of the true God and my true self. This is not illusion but reality.  Real relationship is built not on illusion but on reality.

This morning I preached on the gospel text from Matt. 14:22-31.   In this storyJesus  has his disciples get in a boat to go across to the other side of the sea of Galilee, while He goes up on a mountainside by himself to pray.  John tells us that “they had rowed about three or four miles.”  Mark tells us that, “he saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them.”  So at about four in the morning Jesus comes walking to them on the water.  Mark  mentions that “he was about to pass by them.”  They thought it was a ghost, which, of course, made them terrified.  Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I.  Don’t be afraid.” 

Only Matthew tells the account of Peter wanting to come out to Jesus on the waves.  Jesus invites him to come.  His walk on water is going  just fine, until he begins to take his eye off of Jesus and unto the waves.  He begins to sink.  Matt tells us: “Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ‘You of little faith,’ he said, ‘why did you doubt?'”  As I worked on this sermon, I recalled some of the stuff I read in John Ortberg’s book “If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.”  He makes this statement regarding Peter’s failure in continuing to walk on water. “Failure is not an event, but rather a judgement about an event.  Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things.  It is a way we think about outcomes.” 

Yes, Peter seemed to be failing as he sank.  Think of the others in the boat.  They were playing it safe, not wanting to risk being out of control.  Those in the boat never learned the new level of trust that Peter did, when he was rescued by Jesus.  Listen again to Ortberg: “The worst failure is not to sink in the waves.  The worst failure is to never get out of the boat….Whether Peter sank or water walked depended on whether he focused on the storm or on Jesus.  But now he understood his dependence on faith much more deeply than he would have if he had never left the boat.  It was his willingness to risk failure that helped him to grow…Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.”

So, men, I ask you, “Are you willing to get out of the boat and become a water-walker?”  I know there have been times when I stayed in the safety of the boat and other times when I was willing to get out of the boat.  Remember in the story Jesus is not in the boat but on the water.  It is out on the water that we grow in faith and trust.  To be sure, you and I will fail.  But the fear of failure is what we have to come to grips with in walk with Jesus.  I love these words from Ortberg: “Let water-walking be a picture of doing with God’s help what you could never do on your own.”  Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from getting out of the boat.  Just as with Peter, Jesus will be there to rescue you.  He will not let you sink.  Don’t be like the guys back in the boat, playing it cool and safe.  They did not come to know Jesus in the new ways that Peter was experiencing Jesus, even in his failure.

I have started a new book entitled “Veneer’ with a subtitle “living deeply in a surface society.”  There is a quote from Jon Foreman of the music group “Switchfoot” that I would like to quote, because it expresses a lot of the sentiments of this blog site.  “There is a deeper portion of our being that we rarely allow others to see.  Call it a soul maybe; this is the place that holds the most value.  All else can drift but this.  When this dies our body has no meaning.  We handle this portion of our being with extreme care.  Life tears at us and scars us as children, so we adopt facades and masks to hide this part of us, to keep this sacred part of ourselves from the pain.  And yet, we long to communicate this deeper place….to connect with each other on this spiritual level, for we know that this is the only part of us that will last.”

As I write this quote I think of the words of Jesus in Matt. 16: 26, “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?  Is anything worth more than your soul.”  How much attention do we as men give to our souls.  Could it be that as the  above quote mentions, we have been so careful to avoid the pain in our souls that we live with facades and masks rather then from the strength that can be accessed in our souls. Remember the very presence of God dwells deep within, at the center; in the soul.  Paul prayed for strength to be found at the center.  “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in you hearts through faith. (Eph 3:16-17). 

 There is a part of us that desires deep connection.  This is the cry of our soul.  We as men have a hard  time coming to peace with the life of our soul.  We remain silent.  The Psalmist spoke often about being silent and the harm that it does to our inner life.  For example, “So I remained utterly silent, not even saying anything good.  But my anguish increased; my heart grew hot within me, while I mediated, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue” (Ps 39:2-3). I take this to mean that the Psalmist finally had had enough of remaining silent with the termoil in his soul. He finally spoke it out having become tired of playing the religious game of being “a niece, spiritual man.” 

I have found that when I am honest about my inner termoil and get it out before the Lord and another trust friend, there is relief.  One simple awareness for me has been to finally understand that God knows all that is going on within my soul and even the reasons for the termoil.  My job is to access that termoil and get it out.  I need to take responsibility for the part of the termoil that I have created.  The continuing surprise for me, is that I meet God in the termoil.  In that encounter I experience His love and acceptance of me.  This would never happen is I tried hard to keep the lid on.  Men it is true, God loves us in our stink.”

For those who read this blog, you are aware that I owe a great deal to David Benner, for being a spiritual guide, during these latter years of my journey.  Each of his new books are been food for my soul, and enlightenment to my mind.  I highly recommend his insights to you.  In the early years of my spiritual journey, I was aware that there was much more to my walk with Jesus then simply thinking good thoughts based on Scripture ( while important) and doing the right things, much of the time out of obligation.  There was a deep hunger within me that was not being satisfied, along with an inner cauldron of emotions and desires that I was almost afraid to experience.  

Benner has helped me to finally come to peace regarding this cauldron within me, while tasting my desire for God.  I can say now that in my opinion and experience, our deepest desires are from God.  Embracing our desires is vital on our journey with Christ.  Listen to Benner – “Our desires keep us molten, they keep us moving, and they keep us awake…Within  each of us is an unquenchable fire, a restlessness that renders us incapable of ever coming to full peace in this life.  Our longings will always be larger and more persistent than our satisfactions.”  Benner talks about “the inextinguishable burning bush” at the center of our being that he calls “our fundamental life energy.” 

It has been a terrific relief for me to realize that my sense of obligation to serve Jesus will not necessarily help me to become fashioned in the image of God that is intended for me in particular.  “Guilt may be strong enough to motivate religious behavior, but only desire can lead you ahead on the spiritual journey.’  While it has been difficult at times to face what is really going on in my soul, I am slowly learning that the journey inward to become aware of what is there, has given me greater freedom and confidence to be who I am intended to be in Christ. 

So men I encourage you to embrace all of who you are.  This will include the inner journey of going into that cauldron of deep desires and emotions that are from God.  I quote once again from Benner. “Our deepest desires call us to a place of both greater height and greater depth….the restlessness occurs in the depths of our soul, our desires also invite us to attend to these depths.  We are to soar on the winds of the Spirit and be grounded in the realities of body and soul.  They point us toward the self-transcendent but encourage us to us to remain anchored in the mundane and immanent.”  Part of living with reality is to be honest and open about what is within our souls.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am busy during these weeks with family visiting Judy and I on the lake.  The time I need to reflect on a post and then do the writing takes time.  I simply will not have much reflective time to write a post.  For me it takes time.  I do the work out of obedience, with the prayer that I might improve in my ability to communicate what is in my heart.  I do not want to stop writing.  Sometimes that would be the easiest thing to do.  But with God’s help and his grace I will keep posting.  I simply leave the results to God.  So here are some quotes from Tersteegen on prayer.

“What is easier and simpler than to open one’s eyes and see the light which surrounds us on all sides?  God is far closer to us than the light.  In Him we live and move and have our being.  He comes into us, He fills us; He is nearer than we are to ourselves; to believe this simply and to remember this simply, as well as one can, is prayer.”

“We do not need to bring this thing or that, put ourselves into this or that attitude, or see or feel much every time we pray.  We must just say simply and briefly what we are and what we would like to be; yes, it is not even necessary always to say it, we should just allow God, the ever-present, all-loving one to see us thus – but not perfunctorily: we should try to keep close in front of Him for some time, that He may have a good look at us and cure us.  We must tell Him nothing and let Him see nothing but what is in us, whatever it may be.”

“Pray, if you like, without words, but never without worship.”

“Prayer is looking at God, who is ever present, and letting Him look on us.”

This is an extended quote from Gerhart Tersteegen, whom I have quoted before.  I first read his small book “The Quiet Way” so twenty years ago.  At that time his words spoke to my heart, but now I find that I can more readilyassimiliate his thoughts into my spiritual life.  I am sending along this quote because I will be spending less time on my next two blogs.  I will we busy with grandchildren for the next three weeks.  Each blog I write takes time.  This reflective and writing time will be at a primium during this time.  So I am sending along some thoughts from Tersteegen.  Here is the quote.

“The mind of God and the light of God do not come in from outside.  They do not borrow thier certainty and strength from our minds or our senses.  They make themselves known in the heart’s core and have energy anc certainty in themselves, although these become darkened and disappear when the soul begins to search after clear certainty in her depths.  So do not go out so much into reflections.  Do not seek merely by reasoned, external methods to fin dsure foundations, but close your eyes like a child and confide yourself to the hidden Being who is so near to you inwardly.”

Here is a second quote.  “O that I could pour pour our my whole heart in tears and weep for the blindness of men!  They take their deceptive illusions and their trivial things for the essential, and the essential things of the spirit for imagination and error.  Yet it has been told us aforetime that the natural man, in contrast to the spiritual, can perceive nothing of the things of the Spirit of God.”

While I am at it, here is a third quote. “Even when all the powers of sin and wickedness are active within you, and you are aware of nothing but temptations on every side, say sincerely to God: ‘Lord, in spite of this, I will not sin.’  Withdraw your inward will gently but completely from the evil and incline yourself inwardly to God as best you can.  In Him and with Him no evil can reach you.  If you cannot do even this, then suffer quietly, as a rock suffers the raging of the sea and a tree hailstorms and thunder, until bright weather returns

Parker Palmer has argued that it is important to listen to our life rather than living on the surface of life, never paying attention to the inconsistencies between our inner life and outer life.  Instead of determining the shape of our spiritual journey, we need to pay attention to all of the factors that are influencing the way we choose to respond to life.  Much that influences us is hidden in our souls.  I assume that most of the men who read this blog desire to serve and follow the Lord.  One of the built in dangers that we face is trying to live with our christian “ideal self” and forget or even deny our actual self.  Living with the ideal, while denying the actual and real self  

Thomas Merton warned against our focus on the ideal self which he called “the false self.”  He maintained that the life of the false self was particularly tempting for spiritual folks who can so easily convince themselves that they are special and somehow different from and better then others.  Instead we need to  face the inconsistencies found in our souls.  “To deny the existence of inner realities is not to escape their devilish aspects but rather to fall victim to them.  To deny inner realities is to fail to truly know one’s self and to know one’s self is to risk becoming possessed by that which we have ignored.”

 Listening to our life means embracing our inconsistencies that are reflected in the way of false self manifests itself.  Denial of its presence only drives the false self into a hiding place, from where  it continues to influence of our lives.  To be truly alive and living in the Spirit we all need to welcome the parts of ourselves that do not fit easily with what we consider our presentable self.  We need to ask, as David Benner puts, “what uninvited and unwelcomed guests are present in the guesthouse of our souls.” 

Benner give this advice regarding these unwelcomed guest that make our life inconsistent and prevent us from being truly alive.  Identify the unwelcomed guests and see if you are able to make peace with the “unwanted parts of your experience.”  “Give up your battle with it.  You cannot defeat it, so you may as well accept its presence.  Do not ever bother to label it as good or bad.  Just accept it, and your life as it is.  Remember the truly alive person will always have parts of self that do not fit easily with other parts of self.  To be fully alive we need to embrace the mixed bag of contradictions that are part of our inner life.

Jesus warned against be contaminated with the Pharisees yeast which, of course, was a life of inconsistencies between the outer life and the inner life. “Watch yourselves carefully so you don’t get contamined with Pharisee yeast,  Pharisee phoniness.  You can’t keep your true self hidden forever: before long you’ll be exposed.  You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever: sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known.  You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.” (Luke 12:2-3 – The Message) I have had the experience of the mask slipping in my life as a pastor.  It exposed my inconsistencies.  Thankful I am on the way to recovery from being a pharisee. I call myself a “recovering pharisee.”

Here is a quote from Augustine that I read some years ago.  At the time I know it was speaking to my spiritual condition, but I did not quite know how to make the application to my walk with God.  Here is the quote. “My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it.  It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it.  It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide.”

When I could finally begin to accept my own “dark side”, not pretending or denying that it was a part of me, I was able to look within myself and see the ruins that Augustine talked about.  The reality was that there was much that did not please my heavenly Father.  With Augustine I was able to start saying “this I know and do not hide.”  I was able to pray with the Psalmist. “When I kept it all inside, my bones turned to powder, my words became daylong groans.  The pressure never let up; all the juices of my life dried up.  Then I let it all out: I said, ‘I’ll make a clean breast of my failures to God.'” (Ps 32:3-5 – The Message) The pressure of trying to hide my darkness prevented me from experiencing the vitality of God’s life that was already within my soul.  Jesus tells us, “Live in me.  Make your home in me just as I do in you.” (John 15:4 – The Message)

In the denial of my inner darkness, I became focused more on me then on the presence of God within my soul.  This wrong focus shrunk my inner capacity to experience the presence of God.  My soul could only be enlarged when I was willing to explore all that God was showing me about my inner life.  I had to welcome the good with the bad, since the bad was really a part of who I was.  God was not asking me to change my inner life, to make more room for the presence of God.  He was simply wanting me to give him access to the various rooms were all the darkness resided.  He would do the cleansing and what I like to call the rearranging of the furniture so that I could receive the light of his presence.

I confess to the readers of this blog that I have a long ways to go in allowing God to enlarge my soul.  But I can testify that the freedom and peace that comes in the enlarging is a gift from God.  I cannot explain what happens.  All I know is that when I become more honest with myself, by getting  acquainted with my true self the closer I become to God.  For God dwells at the deepest part of who I am.  

This process is expressed well in these verses from the Message. “Here’s what I want you to do; Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God.  Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.” (Matt. 6:6 – The Message)   Oh, how true.  When I am willing to be alone with God, I learn to face my dark side.  There is no role playing before God.  I face the true condition of my soul.  In the process there is a shift from me to the actual presence of God within my soul.  

Another quote from Augustine in this regard has been very helpful for me. “Lord, I went wandering like a stray sheep, seeking you with anxious reasoning weighted within me.  I wearied myself much in looking for you without.  If only I had desired you, and panted after you.  I went around the streets and squares of the cities of this world and I found you not, because in vain I sought without for you who were within.”  Men, we can weary ourselves with a lot of religious posturing hoping to find peace with God.  Most of this posturing does little in our search for God.  We have to simply face ourselves and know that God waits for us in love within our own souls.

Today is Father’s Day.  There are many men who are literally fatherless in our culture and many more who feel fatherless, both emotionally and spiritually.  Tom Wolfe maintains that “the deepest search of life” is the search to find a father. “The deepest search in life, it seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living was man’s search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, nor merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.”  No matter where we are on our spiritual journey, no matter what our age, as men we will continually be in need of fathering.  We are, in the words of John Eldredge, “unfinished men.”  There resides in our souls a hunger for strength and wisdom outside of ourselves that we can relate to in our search for wholeness.

We all have to acknowledge that we were never perfectly fathered by our earthly fathers, because our earthly fathers, no matter how affirming and loving they were, could not do what only our heavenly Father accomplishes in adopting us as His sons.  He fathers us as his sons. It is imperative that we give up the expectations of our earthly fathers to have done more for us.  It is vital that we work through our disappointments, anger, and resentments toward our fathers.  I know I had to go through this process in my life.  I began doing this in my thirties and it continued into my sixties, until my father passed away. 

I learned to honor my dad for who he was, while exploring those dark places in my soul that exposed my deep need for the affirming love that only my heavenly Father could pour into my soul.  My earthly father was not able to give me what I needed.  Learning to love my dad for who he was, and honoring him for being my dad, allowed me to clear a space within my male soul to receive to love that my heavenly Father so graciously and generously desires to grant me. I know more and more what it means to be fathered by my heavenly Father, to receive that strength and wisdom that Wolfe talks about.

So I encourage any man who has not done the inner “house cleaning” of his soul, where the hurt, emptiness and loneliness of not being affirmed by an earthly father, to allow the light of Jesus to come into those dark place.  Allow Jesus to bring you forth from places where you have lived for so long.   As you learn what it is to be adopted into his family, allow these words to penetrate into your soul. “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has also made you also an heir.” (Gal. 4:6-7).  As you turn to trust Jesus as you healer, similar to the prodigal son, you can turn toward home and are reconciled to your heavenly Father.  It is the Father, then, that grants each of us sonship. 

Here is a prayer from John Eldredge to pray in this regard. “Father, okay.  Okay.  I don’t know how much of this I believe, but I know this – I need a father.  There is so much in me that yet needs fathering.  And I don’t want to live fatherless anymore.  So come to me, and help me make the shift.  You have taken me home, through Christ, to be your own son.  I accept that.  I give my life back to you, to be your true son.  Father me. Father me.”   Surrender to the affirming love of your heavenly Father.  Listen daily for his affirming word, “You are my beloved.”  These words are a reality, because through Jesus you have been adopted into the inner circle of life within the very presence of God.

Surrender is not something that comes easily for men.  It is something we will practice only as a last option.  It is generally assumed that control is more of an issue for men then women.  Surrender for men observes David Benner “feels like failure and defeat” whereas for women surrender is associated “with abuse and the use of power to subjugate.”   Yet sincere, willing surrender can produce a freedom and flexibility in life that comes with letting go of the controls.   Control, which is the opposite of surrender in our personal lives, restricts, limits and eventually causes spiritual death in our souls.  The more control the more rigid and arid life can become.  Part of the joy of surrender is a sense that our life is enlarged, with an openness that anticipate, rather then fears. 

Listen again to the word of Jesus in this regard.  This is from the Message. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.  You’re not in the driver’s seat – I am.  Don’t run from suffering: embrace it.  Follow me and I’ll show you how.  Self-help is no help at all.  Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.  What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you” (Luke 9:23-24).  The danger of being in the driver’s seat is that we lose our real self, that is, we slowly experience a spiritual death.  But in surrender to Jesus we will find our true self.

Our journey as followers of Jesus will always be filled with vulnerability and risk.  Rather then living fully alive, fully awake, and fully aware, that is, being open in both our soul and spirit to whatever comes into our lives, we so easily choose control.  The more control we exercise the more we will become enslaved, stuck in our narrow, small egos, frightened to live life.   Preoccupations, which are the result of our trying to control life, will keep us asleep and unaware, not fully alive to the moment.  “The goal” states Benner, “is to anesthetize us to the terrors of real living in the face of the unavoidable mystery of being human.  It is this terror that we most want to control and from which we most want to escape.  The demon in the dark of our inner basement is nothing more or less than our fear of being fully alive.” 

  This fear of being fully alive can be deceiving.  But if we are willing to listen to our hearts, it will become apparent that there is a fear in the prospects of letting go.  If we are honest in our listening to our heart we also fear the actual “longing to surrender.”  We are made for intimate fellowship with God.  Deep down we long to be able to put our trust in someone or something greater then ourselves.  God sees us as his children. “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never engter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3-4).  So I encourage you as a man to allow yourself to embrace your deepest, God-given desires, which are the desire to surrender to God.  Picture your true-self-in-God as a child who has a loving and trusting relationship with his father.