When I was 6 years old I told my mom I wanted God to talk to me. I had heard about little Samuel in the Old Testament. Apparently God talked to him in an audible voice, and I wanted him to talk to me too. Although my mom’s advice (sit in the tub and listen) only gave me severely pruned up fingers and toes, I experienced the first step to hearing God’s voice: silence.
My intellectual pursuits of God over the years has landed me somewhere between insanity and sainthood. But in all my reading, studying, and contemplation, I can find no better answer to life’s issues than Jesus Christ. Could it be that I had the answers all along as a Baptist preacher’s kid?
Hearing God (I’m not talking audibly) is a mystical experience. The adjective "mystical" means "hidden" in Greek. The voice of God, in fact, is hidden and cannot be discerned without a radio interface, like Jesus. God has hidden communication with us because we have a clogged receiver. The only thing that can clear the gunk out of the receiver (body and mind) is purification. This is the purpose of the Law and the Prophets (how to be clean), which Jesus fulfilled in short: Love God and people.
If you recognize the commandments for what they are, (not as a list of dont’s from a killjoy God, but as a path of life for those who would be happy and prosperous) you find joy in them. But once you are given ample opportunity to them, you find that the commandments are impossible to obey. It’s impossible because you are born a sinner. It’s in your genes, sometimes even your jeans. This was what Paul is discussing in Romans when he says something like, “What I don’t want to do, I do, and what I don’t want to do, I keep doing.”
Placing faith in the death of Jesus as the substitute for our own death (since the wages of sin is death), brings lasting tranquility to an otherwise troubled mind and heart. For this reason, I am identified with Christ. I am hidden in Christ. I am mystical in Christ. But what does this mean exactly?
I explore the Bible and other holy books with an open mind, not necessarily to contend with an oftentimes intellectually frustrating literal interpretation of the text, but to contemplate the deeper meaning by way of metaphor and allegory. Jesus himself hid great truths within his stories, called parables. Just as the "wise" would miss the pithy pearl within Jesus’ provencial tales, we often miss the best parts of his stories in the written Word.
How does one attain this wisdom?
Not by rational effort to be sure. Faith in Jesus is a special grace, a gift freely given if one would but only ask in the severest of earnestness for it. But before earnestness comes repentance. Before repentance comes the realization of need. Before realization comes silence. In the silence, ask of God what you must do to receive wisdom. Ask and ye shall receive. Freely given is the divine gift of saving knowledge. But you must ask and you must be receptive.
Living a mystical life is a journey toward God, not a single moment of epiphany or ecstasy on a timeline. I am not satisfied with a date and time in the distant past when I “got saved” or had a "conversion experience." I was baptized as a six year old, but for at least 30 years afterward, I felt about as dead as a doornail, spiritually, a lot of the time. To experience God in any meaningful way has been a process, a two-way pursuit.
We are all in pursuit of happiness. But where will you find it? In pleasure? In things? In people? Pursue God and you will find happiness.
The kingdom of heaven is within you, said Jesus. But union with God is a hard concept to swallow. God is so beyond us that it seems silly to try to talk about his presence. It might be wiser to contemplate God in his absence. For we all have experienced the dark, lonely night after a betrayal or the painful ending of a serious relationship. That perceived absence of God is utter torment; therefore the opposite, His presence, is complete joy.
My rebellion, like the falling star Lucifer, dropped me far from my homeland, where simple Christian faith (naïveté?) had once protected my soul from the terrors of God's wrath, the devil, and my own corrupt flesh and blood. But armed with little more than a desire for worldly pleasure (fame, fortune, and freedom) and true knowledge (insatiable appetite for philosophy and religion), I ate of the ancient tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Actually we eat the forbidden fruit throughout our lives (whenever we choose to grasp an object of desire and we become aware of the right and wrong of it), but sometimes we take a bite out of some pretty big fruit. I choked on the core.
I'm not trying to be vague or poetic. I'm just laying it all out as I understand it. You can go out and discover for yourself the profound emptiness of life without a relationship with your creator, (relationship being the whole reason you were created in the first place), or you can take it on faith from those who have been beaten and bruised by their own folly and have concluded the same.
King Solomon, arguably one of the wisest men who ever lived, proclaimed, "Everything is meaningless." This is why Israel, God's favorite ethnic group (teacher's pet), was given the strict warning: "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5 NASB). Here in no uncertain terms, Moses was telling God's people how to save themselves the trouble of wrecking their lives only to conclude at the end that God will have his way with us.
This is a confusing concept, one that I misunderstood for years and probably still don’t fully appreciate. I would often become angry when I was told, usually by a stern-faced Calvinist, that God was in the business of glorifying himself, and that one day every knee will bow and every mouth will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. I was born and raised Southern Baptist, and in general, I wanted to please God and obey his Word. But this kind of harsh, heavenly dictatorship struck me as cruel and unusual, especially if God is “Love”.
But God isn't some guy up in the clouds with arms and legs and a furrowed brow. He's not tallying up scores of sins to be posted on Judgment Day. No, God's wrath is a natural event which occurs as a direct result of our transgressing the laws of the universe, which are established in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, among other holy books from the world's great religions.
God's wrath isn't like human revenge. God's wrath is karma from bad action. The Apostle Paul says that we burden ourselves with God's wrath (Romans 2:5). I personally think this is why, when Paul directly states that God inflicts wrath, he qualifies his statement immediately by saying he is speaking in human terms. Therefore, the wrath of God is an intricate part of the mechanics of the material world (i.e., the works of the law - Romans 3:20) from the quantum level to the macro world. Paul goes on to say that God's judgment is based on his righteousness.
Jesus said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." He isn't talking about God's angry judgment against those who judge others. No, those who continually judge others will in effect judge themselves (Romans 2:1). Be careful, then, that you don't accuse someone else of something you are guilty of. The mysterious laws that govern the physical world have a curious way of revealing our own shortcomings when we speak about them against others.
The bottom line is, God is love, not wrath. God's wrath is justice for infractions against the law. But God imputes righteousness to us when we exercise faith in the death of Jesus Christ. Imputation means that we are declared righteous like instant potatoes. There’s no process of works to be accomplished. He paid the whole penalty for our sins. Just add water, and you're done. We are, therefore, Not Guilty in God’s court of law. God revealed his righteousness by the forgiveness of sin through faith in the work of Jesus (his bloody death). The power of this work is manifested by the resurrection, which is beyond my comprehension.
God is not angry with you when you sin. You are no longer under judgment. All human beings are guilty of sin (mistakes, infractions, slips, bloopers), so God's wrath would stand if not for Christ’s work. But God wants none of his children to perish (death being sin’s ultimate consequence) under his wrath.
This is where the mystery of the atonement (the “at-one-ment” with God) comes in. Being hidden in Christ is to remove the "I" from my identity and delve completely in Christ, to become one with Him. Such a difficult task! It is why Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven. Jesus was saying that those who worship the material world (You cannot serve both God and money) are irreconcilable to heaven. (The eye of the needle, by the way, was not a sharp object, but the gate of a city. Camels in the ancient world would have to kneel in order to stoop low enough to enter. The key point here is humility.)
Here it is: God made you (for his enjoyment). You rejected God (through your first father Adam's sin). Christ bought your life back (by his bloody death). You receive salvation by faith.
My hope is that you will never stray from Jesus. But if you find yourself wandering alone in the wilderness, know that Jesus is not far off. He is looking for you.
Discern the gift freely given. THROUGH CHRIST’S DEATH all is forgiven. Take this fact on faith, and you are saved.
Faith is a special grace that is bestowed upon those who receive it. Christ paid the whole price on the cross. We paid nothing. So what should our response be? Our response can only be one thing: receive it. That's all we can do.
So, if you ever find yourself traveling in the dark, won’t you run back to the cross?
"I kneel at the cross. Here before me stands the immovable symbol of my guilt and my salvation, the beautiful cross of the Christ. O that His blood might flow down and drown my racked flesh and rescue my burdened soul. Or I shall bury myself in the dust if only to die underneath his blood-flow.
Heavenly Father, although I am a stranger and prodigal, I summon the audacity to look upon this sweet monument of my shame. I trust in you and your perfect compassion. Help me. Give me faith. I cannot live one more minute without you. Bury me in Your Son's wounds and wash me sufficiently so that I may live again. Increase my hunger for you, and transform my will into Yours. I have no other prayer. Bury me with Your beloved Son that I may die no more. Amen."
My intellectual pursuits of God over the years has landed me somewhere between insanity and sainthood. But in all my reading, studying, and contemplation, I can find no better answer to life’s issues than Jesus Christ. Could it be that I had the answers all along as a Baptist preacher’s kid?
Hearing God (I’m not talking audibly) is a mystical experience. The adjective "mystical" means "hidden" in Greek. The voice of God, in fact, is hidden and cannot be discerned without a radio interface, like Jesus. God has hidden communication with us because we have a clogged receiver. The only thing that can clear the gunk out of the receiver (body and mind) is purification. This is the purpose of the Law and the Prophets (how to be clean), which Jesus fulfilled in short: Love God and people.
If you recognize the commandments for what they are, (not as a list of dont’s from a killjoy God, but as a path of life for those who would be happy and prosperous) you find joy in them. But once you are given ample opportunity to them, you find that the commandments are impossible to obey. It’s impossible because you are born a sinner. It’s in your genes, sometimes even your jeans. This was what Paul is discussing in Romans when he says something like, “What I don’t want to do, I do, and what I don’t want to do, I keep doing.”
Placing faith in the death of Jesus as the substitute for our own death (since the wages of sin is death), brings lasting tranquility to an otherwise troubled mind and heart. For this reason, I am identified with Christ. I am hidden in Christ. I am mystical in Christ. But what does this mean exactly?
I explore the Bible and other holy books with an open mind, not necessarily to contend with an oftentimes intellectually frustrating literal interpretation of the text, but to contemplate the deeper meaning by way of metaphor and allegory. Jesus himself hid great truths within his stories, called parables. Just as the "wise" would miss the pithy pearl within Jesus’ provencial tales, we often miss the best parts of his stories in the written Word.
How does one attain this wisdom?
Not by rational effort to be sure. Faith in Jesus is a special grace, a gift freely given if one would but only ask in the severest of earnestness for it. But before earnestness comes repentance. Before repentance comes the realization of need. Before realization comes silence. In the silence, ask of God what you must do to receive wisdom. Ask and ye shall receive. Freely given is the divine gift of saving knowledge. But you must ask and you must be receptive.
Living a mystical life is a journey toward God, not a single moment of epiphany or ecstasy on a timeline. I am not satisfied with a date and time in the distant past when I “got saved” or had a "conversion experience." I was baptized as a six year old, but for at least 30 years afterward, I felt about as dead as a doornail, spiritually, a lot of the time. To experience God in any meaningful way has been a process, a two-way pursuit.
We are all in pursuit of happiness. But where will you find it? In pleasure? In things? In people? Pursue God and you will find happiness.
The kingdom of heaven is within you, said Jesus. But union with God is a hard concept to swallow. God is so beyond us that it seems silly to try to talk about his presence. It might be wiser to contemplate God in his absence. For we all have experienced the dark, lonely night after a betrayal or the painful ending of a serious relationship. That perceived absence of God is utter torment; therefore the opposite, His presence, is complete joy.
My rebellion, like the falling star Lucifer, dropped me far from my homeland, where simple Christian faith (naïveté?) had once protected my soul from the terrors of God's wrath, the devil, and my own corrupt flesh and blood. But armed with little more than a desire for worldly pleasure (fame, fortune, and freedom) and true knowledge (insatiable appetite for philosophy and religion), I ate of the ancient tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Actually we eat the forbidden fruit throughout our lives (whenever we choose to grasp an object of desire and we become aware of the right and wrong of it), but sometimes we take a bite out of some pretty big fruit. I choked on the core.
I'm not trying to be vague or poetic. I'm just laying it all out as I understand it. You can go out and discover for yourself the profound emptiness of life without a relationship with your creator, (relationship being the whole reason you were created in the first place), or you can take it on faith from those who have been beaten and bruised by their own folly and have concluded the same.
King Solomon, arguably one of the wisest men who ever lived, proclaimed, "Everything is meaningless." This is why Israel, God's favorite ethnic group (teacher's pet), was given the strict warning: "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5 NASB). Here in no uncertain terms, Moses was telling God's people how to save themselves the trouble of wrecking their lives only to conclude at the end that God will have his way with us.
This is a confusing concept, one that I misunderstood for years and probably still don’t fully appreciate. I would often become angry when I was told, usually by a stern-faced Calvinist, that God was in the business of glorifying himself, and that one day every knee will bow and every mouth will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. I was born and raised Southern Baptist, and in general, I wanted to please God and obey his Word. But this kind of harsh, heavenly dictatorship struck me as cruel and unusual, especially if God is “Love”.
But God isn't some guy up in the clouds with arms and legs and a furrowed brow. He's not tallying up scores of sins to be posted on Judgment Day. No, God's wrath is a natural event which occurs as a direct result of our transgressing the laws of the universe, which are established in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, among other holy books from the world's great religions.
God's wrath isn't like human revenge. God's wrath is karma from bad action. The Apostle Paul says that we burden ourselves with God's wrath (Romans 2:5). I personally think this is why, when Paul directly states that God inflicts wrath, he qualifies his statement immediately by saying he is speaking in human terms. Therefore, the wrath of God is an intricate part of the mechanics of the material world (i.e., the works of the law - Romans 3:20) from the quantum level to the macro world. Paul goes on to say that God's judgment is based on his righteousness.
Jesus said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." He isn't talking about God's angry judgment against those who judge others. No, those who continually judge others will in effect judge themselves (Romans 2:1). Be careful, then, that you don't accuse someone else of something you are guilty of. The mysterious laws that govern the physical world have a curious way of revealing our own shortcomings when we speak about them against others.
The bottom line is, God is love, not wrath. God's wrath is justice for infractions against the law. But God imputes righteousness to us when we exercise faith in the death of Jesus Christ. Imputation means that we are declared righteous like instant potatoes. There’s no process of works to be accomplished. He paid the whole penalty for our sins. Just add water, and you're done. We are, therefore, Not Guilty in God’s court of law. God revealed his righteousness by the forgiveness of sin through faith in the work of Jesus (his bloody death). The power of this work is manifested by the resurrection, which is beyond my comprehension.
God is not angry with you when you sin. You are no longer under judgment. All human beings are guilty of sin (mistakes, infractions, slips, bloopers), so God's wrath would stand if not for Christ’s work. But God wants none of his children to perish (death being sin’s ultimate consequence) under his wrath.
This is where the mystery of the atonement (the “at-one-ment” with God) comes in. Being hidden in Christ is to remove the "I" from my identity and delve completely in Christ, to become one with Him. Such a difficult task! It is why Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven. Jesus was saying that those who worship the material world (You cannot serve both God and money) are irreconcilable to heaven. (The eye of the needle, by the way, was not a sharp object, but the gate of a city. Camels in the ancient world would have to kneel in order to stoop low enough to enter. The key point here is humility.)
Here it is: God made you (for his enjoyment). You rejected God (through your first father Adam's sin). Christ bought your life back (by his bloody death). You receive salvation by faith.
My hope is that you will never stray from Jesus. But if you find yourself wandering alone in the wilderness, know that Jesus is not far off. He is looking for you.
Discern the gift freely given. THROUGH CHRIST’S DEATH all is forgiven. Take this fact on faith, and you are saved.
Faith is a special grace that is bestowed upon those who receive it. Christ paid the whole price on the cross. We paid nothing. So what should our response be? Our response can only be one thing: receive it. That's all we can do.
So, if you ever find yourself traveling in the dark, won’t you run back to the cross?
"I kneel at the cross. Here before me stands the immovable symbol of my guilt and my salvation, the beautiful cross of the Christ. O that His blood might flow down and drown my racked flesh and rescue my burdened soul. Or I shall bury myself in the dust if only to die underneath his blood-flow.
Heavenly Father, although I am a stranger and prodigal, I summon the audacity to look upon this sweet monument of my shame. I trust in you and your perfect compassion. Help me. Give me faith. I cannot live one more minute without you. Bury me in Your Son's wounds and wash me sufficiently so that I may live again. Increase my hunger for you, and transform my will into Yours. I have no other prayer. Bury me with Your beloved Son that I may die no more. Amen."
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