What we came to realize and value deeply from our experience is the necessity of spiritual intimacy with God. Love needs to grow in the heart. Jesus's followers must learn to desire him above all life's treasures. Anything less misses the heart of the Gospel leaves us to chase after trifles. Without passion for Jesus, people gradually numb spiritually and sink into a religious life of spectatorship and consuming. Religious routine supplants persistent vigor and pursuit of God's heart, mind, and will in all things. Spiritual intimacy creates and sustains hunger for the Presence of the Living God.
The truly amazing reality of learning to be in the quiet with Jesus listening for him, talking from the heart with him, and being opened to Love astonishing in its depth and generosity, is it settles in you a longing to know him so that your heart might become free to unite with his. What God cares most deeply about matters more and more to you. Listening to the still, small voice of the Spirit, and searching the Scriptures to see him as he is slowly but surely conforms your nature to his. You gradually want what he wants in who you are. It is transformation to the spiritual core. You truly become a new creation.
As with any relationship, communicating is a doorway. Listening and being listened to create understanding and identification with the other. A connection is made and people open in trust because they feel taken seriously. It's no different with relating to God. Listening and talking to God establishes a lifelong spiritual dialogue of knowing and being known. God becomes the Realest of realities to you. His nature and will frame your life and give it meaning. You find your truest self as God speaks into your life experienced from day to day - the ups and downs, joys and sorrows, victories and losses, all of it. You go through them with him because you have gotten to know his voice and heart toward you.
So how does this intimacy with Jesus lead to living the mission of the Kingdom?
1. As you experience his heart in the quiet with him, love grows and the call to "love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength" gradually becomes a way you live. You desire for him to be known because of his wondrous goodness toward you. Gratitude grows from time alone with him. Friendship takes hold.
2. Intimacy with Jesus transforms what matters most to you which means where you give your best time, effort, talent, and material resources turns toward establishing and furthering his Kingdom. It has become THE STORY giving the most meaning to your story. You want to be about his business in the world because it has become your "prime directive": family life, work life, church life and community life become "staging areas" for the redemptive Kingdom mission of your Lord and Friend. Eternity hangs in the balance for you in a way it hadn't before.
3. Because you've spent heart to heart time alone with God it has become your way of life so you no longer live a disconnect between your "normal" life and your spiritual life. Everything now has spiritual import and weight to it. Your perspective stays on "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is already being done in heaven." You have adopted a missional mindset and see all of life as spiritual opportunity for opening people to God so they can see him.
So what should you do to find intimacy with God?
1. Learn how to listen to his voice. Read Dialogue With God by Mark & Patti Virkler. Then begin this spiritual discipline and work at it daily. Read everything you can on the Christian spiritual life, including the great masters over the centuries who have left teachings about it John of the Cross, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila, etc.
2. Find a wise and skillful Spiritual Director in your area and get into spiritual direction. Being able to talk with someone regularly who can help you learn and practice the contemplative spiritual disciplines is crucial. Tricia and I are available to do that, including over the phone.
3. Make a habit of going on at least one contemplative retreat each year where silence, solitude and listening are central to the retreat. Today there are more retreat centers offering such retreats. Tricia and I are available as well to lead group Listening in Christ retreats.
4. At least twice a year, take a Quiet Day where you can get away to listen, pray, reflect and journal.
5. Read everything you can on the Kingdom of God and living missionally. You might start with:
- The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical - Shane Claiborne
- Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God - Francis Chan.
- Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope - Brian McClaren.
- Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
7 comments:
Great post. We've been wrestling what it means to hear the voice of Jesus and to follow him (John 10). Jesus is the shepherd who leads us out of sheepfold and into the wilderness (I believe, highlighting the missional character of the Kingdom). Often times we try to be missional by wandering out into the wilderness without allowing Jesus to lead us as our shepherd/King missionally, relationally, sovereignly, and pastorally.
That text has been central to our spiritual formation and retreat ministry for over 2 decades. So many folks don't understand the centrality of the Shepherd who calls out his sheep and leads them day to day. You are quite right about folks trying to be missional in the wilderness without being led by the One who knows the way.
Great topic great thoughts. Oh how we need to have intimacy with Jesus in our lives today, all day, every day. Spending time with the Father and learning to Listen to Him is crucial as we walk with Him. Jesus said that His sheep hears His voice and they follow Him. Another passage is Behold I stand at the door and knock and anyone who hears my voice and opens the door, will have intimacy with Him. Notice he didn't say those who hear the knocking on the door but rather hears His voice. I am reading a book by Watchman Nee called Sit, Walk Stand. How appropriate. We need to first sit at the Fathers feet (and listen) and then Walk in His ways and then Stand against the opposition in the power of the Holy Spirit. Great post Kit, keep them coming. Charles Spurgeon once said the he would rahter teach one man how to pray than 100 men how to preach. Amen? Serving with you, Brett
I love this post Kit and have found it to be the center of my spiritual union with God, that of listening, talking with God, reading those authors that speak to my heart about God, finding scriptures that say God's words to meet my daily needs. I found it interesting that there were no directives to work harder at my religious activities, but to let my work be that of putting myself in the position of intimacy with God. It took me years to let go of the guilt of not "doing" enough for God, to the place of simply being with God and letting Him direct my doing. The only thing I've found that keeps me close to God is that love and goodness you spoke of that He showers me with, even amidst pain in my life. When one has tasted of this love, it is hard to stay away from it.
Anonymous, it has been my experience that when I feel the love of God by being near him in the silence frequently, my desire to make him known becomes more and more a passion. I am freed and opened to follow him with more of a surrendered heart.The two are inextricably linked in my opinion.
Kit,
I just wanted to thank you again after reading you post. So much of my life is now out of real intimacy with God my Father and Jesus my Brother. I will never forgot the image of that which came to me as you prayed for me at the prayer retreat. That image has only expanded and deepened over the years. I am transitioning to working with men, fathers, and sons. And I hope to be able to guide many men into this type of intimacy with the Father. God bless you, Kit. I am now signed up to receive your posts regularly.
Thanks, Bill. Isn't it astonishing how God frees us into our Kingdom destinies! May countless men come to know holy intimacy with Jesus because of your work with them.
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