Hideaway 5

This post is a little bit longer than the other Hideaway posts.  It is also the last one for the Hideaway series, if you will.  I hope that my lessons and musings have thus far contributed good to your own journey.  I have included the bibliography here as well.

Johnson, Jan. When the Soul Listens: Finding Rest and Direction in Contemplative Prayer. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1999.

———.  “SF 611 Christian Formation and Soul Care Intensive.” Class notes, Intersession course, Colorado Springs, January 20-24, 2014.

Willard, Dallas. Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. updated and expanded / by jan johnson. ed. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2012.

God speaks, and silence is the context from which He speaks.  That is to say our attentiveness invites The Lord into conversation, and not necessarily our lack of words or activity.  When we pay attention to Him, we notice when He reveals to us basic truths about who we are, or challenges us about what existence apart from Him looks like, or else shows and invites us to share His deep longings.[1]  It is a silence of soul, which allows our spirits to cry “Abba! Father!” by His Spirit (Romans 8:15).  From this posture we can hear and receive all that our gracious God would offer to us, and reciprocate with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength (cf. Matthew 22:37).

Perhaps more to the point, silence is the context from which we can more readily hear God.  Our Creator is not rude, but is patient to wait for and hear our cares and concerns, and endure our lapses in attention and affection, until we have come to the end of our words, after which we might come to realize the comfort of His presence, and rest therein.

As we have been made each from the love of God, and as we all are attempting to abide in that love, God is changing our perception of one another, that we can regard each other according to His perspective.  This includes care with our words for the sake of others.  I do not know how much or how explicitly this is stated among God’s saints, but I believe that God chooses His words carefully.  If we were to discern our current functional image of God, for example, and then seek to receive even more of who God is, we would certainly find that He fulfills and yet deepens our correct assumptions about His nature.  Keeping this in mind, we also, who desire to develop a lifestyle of communing with God, know that He is not harsh in revealing the divine nature to us.  When we discover the limits of our faith we joyfully long for more, regardless of our often timid advances toward that end.

I am grateful for what I have learned from four days spent away from many distractions.  During this class, which took place in the context of a retreat, I encountered God as my Beloved Friend.  I interacted with others both in silence and simplicity, in addition to the times of noise and laughter.  I was reminded of the journey on which God has brought me thus far, and I am encouraged to see the ways by which He is making me more like Him.

From this retreat, my view of God has developed, and I am more assured that He delights in me, cares for me, and wants me to be beside Him so that I can cooperate with Him in the transformation of my soul.  In once saw God as an aloof though beneficent Boss who basically had His own glory in mind and allowed me to have my small role in bringing that glory to Him.  I have come to realize the error in this way of perceiving the Almighty.  Though I am still learning what our friendship with one another looks like, I know that His strength is for me, because of His love for me.  He calls me to His glory.  God delights in me, simply because.  He is attentive to my life, and even to my words.  He longs for me—and all of us—to encounter Him experientially: to reveal Himself as the Love from which I find life, and to communicate to me that He wants communion with me, until I am found to be hidden within Him, and He in me.  This is the marvelous love of the Lord!  Imagine if Monday through Friday of every week were filled with opportunities to encounter this God.

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[1] Jan Johnson, When the Soul Listens: Finding Rest and Direction in Contemplative Prayer (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1999), 155-181.

Hideaway 4

Wednesday, Dr. Johnson challenged us to a new (to me) practice from lunch until evening.  It is called Simplicity of Speech.  It is a discipline which calls for using few words, wisely and with godly intention and fullness of meaning.  As our morning session concluded and we all prepared for lunch, the most prevalent sound was the silence that filled the space around the tables for the first few minutes of dining.  Many of us were wary of speaking in ways that could be characterized by something other than simplicity.  Gradually, someone at one of the tables would venture a comment, then someone else, until we had all relaxed slightly and engaged in some light conversation.  The people with whom I ate spoke most frequently of their motives, and said little else but to explain why they felt particularly prone to reticence at the table.

Retrospectively, I am intrigued that silence preceded our discussion.  It signifies to me that, in some large part, many of us think that we say too much to begin with.  If we were somewhat assured that our speech was worth listening to, or at least that we spoke as well as we knew how, then I would venture to say that we would not alter our pattern much.  So, then, either we actually do not know how to speak well, or else we are evidently going against our consciences most of the time we open our mouths.  “Grace-filled, simple speech is critical yet extremely difficult.”[1]  That we embraced silence first, tells me that we recognize the truth of this statement all too well.  Looking to God then, I am beginning to understand that just as lover’s delight in one another’s attributes, so also lovers value one another’s words.

Dr. Johnson mentioned throughout the course that the apparent theme for the week was “Trust Me.”  Within that framework, I was mainly reminded that God speaks.  In each of the lecture sessions, one of us would ask her a question about discernment of either God’s voice to us or God’s wisdom for us in the decision-making process.  She would offer helpful insights from her life, which we were also able to read in one of her books, When the Soul Listens.  After she had given these advices, though, she would say, “Ask God.”  The first couple of times I heard it, I pondered the statement intellectually, as I mentioned earlier.  “Yes,” I thought to myself, “we should ask God.  He knows everything, and is able to reveal Himself and great truths to us if we will but seek Him with a listening heart.”  With each session, and each time I heard those two words from her mouth, my intellect began to invite my emotions into my inner conversation.  “What would it be like if I went to God with my questions?  What would happen in His presence?  Could He—would He—speak to me about the details of my life?  What if He answered me and what would it be like to enter into conversation with God?”  As my intellect and emotions were thus engaged, naturally my will joined in.  “Should I ask God?  Of course I should.  When should I do that?  Right now, obviously, and always.  Why have I not done so before?”

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[1] Johnson, Jan. “Fewness & Fullness of Words.” Class notes, January 22, 2014, 16.

Hideaway 3

Likewise, being a part of this course granted me the opportunity to be in contact with the lives of wise and thoughtful people in the Christian Formation and Soul Care program.  Throughout the week we spent together, they have been willing, especially in the contexts of the small groups in which we were involved, to share their insights and struggles about the ways in which they see God moving in their life, and the desires He has begun to awaken in them for His glory.  There were four of us in a predetermined group.  We joined together several times and we reflected on the very real necessity of time and intentionality that is required to make the most out of our shared relationship with God.  One of us mentioned with clear conviction that when she had a few minutes at the end of any given day, television rather than God would win her attention.  Someone else highlighted the paradox of spending time alone in God’s presence with his seemingly insurmountable academic workload.  A third insight was that it is difficult to have companionship with a God she knew was real, but whose love she was not experiencing.

Listening in this way to the depths of another human’s being is among the most humbling experiences there are.  It is not only reception, but also can include offering.  I was blessed to be in a group in which we all did what we could to articulate our place in our journeys of faith, and to be present with one another as we sought out clarification and next steps to consider.  There were definite “gray areas,” and I am grateful to Sarah for pointing that out to me years ago.  My previous, formulaic understanding of the ways in which God communicated with us and by which we responded to Him would have been less than helpful in these conversations.  Just as well, Helen’s challenge and redefinition of friendship had continued to spur me toward genuine discussion rather than a guarded, incomplete expression.

God had His sights set on my heart, and had no intention of slowing His pursuit by the time of this retreat.  The first day, the other students and I were given some time to be alone with God between the first and second lecture sessions.  I decided to go outside and walk between the trees.  As I walked, I noticed a tree stump and decided to sit down there.  We were prompted beforehand by Dr. Johnson to ask God what He thinks of us.  So I did.  He allowed me to feel His pleasure when He looks at me, like the sun that shone and the light of which light covered my skin evenly, completely.  What is more, he showed me that the two of us were like mutual lovers, who contented themselves to gaze upon their Beloved.  His smile was contagious, and I could not help but to laugh a little, but I felt that this whole notion was only delightfully absurd at best.  How should I be the one who elicits a smile from the face of God?

Then I read Zephaniah 3:17 and came to the segment about God taking great delight in me.  If I had looked over the passage before asking God His opinion of me, perhaps it would be more understandable to have envisioned the image He had just revealed to me.  The opposite had happened, and so in my new assurance I rested awhile.  That God is pleased when He looks at me, is a truth that I had for a time relegated mostly to my intellect.  That Monday, my heart opened a little more to the truth of God’s affection for me.  God and I are lovers, free to get lost in one another’s gaze.  My business is to take pleasure in Him.

Hideaway 2

I started taking notice of His desire for full engagement with me, through relating to Sarah.  Sarah and I met during my senior year in high school.  We were in the same graduating class, and have remained friends to this day.  I entered this senior year with a solid belief in the strictness of God’s standard of holiness.  I was countries away from my parents that year, with a younger brother to guide and a reputation to build.  I was in a new environment and was unsure whether or not I would enjoy or make anything meaningful out of those nine months of formal education.  As time passed, though, having met and befriended Sarah, my prior conceptualization of what it means to be in relationship with God underwent direct attack.

Because of her, I had to begin processing the “gray areas” of human life.  Before this, I had basically written off people who considered life to have any such facets, maybe due to what I believed to be their lack of thorough consideration of God’s Word.  Before knowing her, I was absolutely secure in the definitive distinction between what was godly and ungodly in sweeping generalizations.  When Sarah came along, my worldview was shattered.  In each of our conversations, I felt a little of what I had held on to, in terms of right and wrong, wrenched from my hands.  In all, she showed me that actual people have to face dilemmas that have not ready explanation or solution.  It is only in accepting others that I might to appreciate their struggles, and in appreciating their struggles that I could see God in ways I would have missed otherwise.

Whereas Sarah stressed an honest look at the world, Helen emphasized the necessity of frankness in authentic, thriving human relationships.  We met one evening at dinner in the cafeteria during my undergraduate years.  She was direct with me in the most shocking way that night.  “Do you want to be friends?”  she asked.  “Sure.”  I responded.  “No, I mean do you want to be honest and open with me about everything in your life, and do you want to hear everything I have to say about myself and my life, and do you want to listen even if I don’t have anything good or easy to say?  Because I don’t have time for any friendship that doesn’t mean those things.”  That was the effect of our very first conversation!  Stunned, I took a few, precious moments to seriously consider her words.  Initially, they seemed quite surprising to me, jarring to my sensibilities.  Upon further reflection, I came to realize that what Helen had done was to take the unarticulated desire I already had and to bring it to the conscious level.  How often had I thought of friendship without these explicit terms!  In the cafeteria that evening, they looked daunting and demanding.  At the same time, she had expressed exactly the kind of friendship I thought of as genuine.  With the meaning of the word clarified, Helen and I became friends that night, and have remained so.