Today is a special day: my 5th rebirth day! 5 years ago today, I stepped into a healing experience that forever rewired my belief system about God’s availability. Since then my spiritual life has gone from a rollercoaster of mountains and valleys to a steady upward climb into His heart. Man, Jesus is way better than I ever thought. I haven’t missed a day in the last 5 years of physically sensing His presence. Just now, I closed my eyes, and felt warmth go down my head and legs as though love were a liquid substance. The voice behind me says to my mind, “I never left you. You just didn’t know that I was here.” Sometimes the words are wild and uncomfortable. But usually he just says, “I love you. Don’t be afraid.” Sometimes he just sits there, knowing me. But always, always He is there.
Now I’ve done some thinking and listening about this strange experience and I’ve realized it is not all that strange if you talk to right people. Many people have tapped into a tangible interactive friendship with a God. Once they taste it they never want to go back. But many people DO go back to the dry trudging of spiritual aloneness. They do this for a million reasons. But the reasons all boil down to an attack on our willingness to be known in this way. It honestly gets uncomfortable, life gets stressful, we believe so many lies about ourselves and God. We drift away. In the process of drifting, we assign meaning to our deserts: Maybe God is teaching us something by pulling back our ability to experience Him. I don’t think so.
Here is my 5-year assessment of what this experience is, what it means, and what it doesn’t mean...
In my layman’s definition, we experience God’s presence when through a combination of environmental factors, true knowledge, and the practice of our will, our bodies and minds experience the resonance of alignment with our spirts which are connected to Jesus. This alignment might be called surrender. I like the less militant term, “willingness”. When I become sufficiently willing for God to be there (which usually involves the significant removal of false belief systems through emotional healing), I automatically experience him. Worship, which is just the practice of intentionally appreciating God through beauty, often creates a perfect environment for God’s Presence to be felt. The assertion of true facts about God does the job too. Brother Lawrence, the 17th century Carmelite monk who first coined the term “The Practice of the Presence of God” had the simplest practice of thinking about God as often as possible. This constant meditation on the person of God brought him (and countless others) into profound and consistent ecstasies. Maybe you’ve felt it before: someone says something so true it literally gives you chills. You can feel the resonance on the word. God loves that stuff and He wants to give you a life full of it. When I speak warmly about him, I’m sometimes so moved by Him that I physically shake.
I’ve known I can have this experience for a long time. What I didn’t know is that I could intentionally apply my will through specific habits that cause me to experience God pretty any time I want. Well I guess I did know that. What I DIDN’T know is just how simple and rewarding these habits could be. Let me give you a couple examples of easiest exercises that take almost no time but now consistently yield results.
*Taking a deep breath and imagining I am breathing in God.
*Picturing Jesus sitting across from me and sometimes seeing something in His hands for me or just watching how He interacts with me.
*Saying true things like, “I know I can’t get to you in my power, but I bet you would love to be here with me right now. You love me. Your power is perfect in my weakness, etc…”
*Looking, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting beautiful things and and then mentally appreciating God for them.
*Picturing my mind as a chasm into which God’s thoughts fall gently
*Reading and thinking about the Bible.
*Walking slowly down a hallway or down my street.
*Imaging God’s thoughts towards a person while they are talking.
Of course I do the harder stuff too and I love it. But my bread and butter is the moment-by-moment experience of God’s loving Presence. This, I firmly believe, is not a gift to certain individuals, but a birthright to every person who trusts Jesus with their lives.
What this DOESN’T mean is that the circumstances of life become easy. Some do: for instance, I’ve probably been sick a total of 5 days in the last year. My mental clarity is better. My diet has improved. I don’t entertain grudges or pity parties. So naturally I’m not as susceptible to the things that plague many people. But in the last 5 years I have experienced death, loss of relationship, betrayal, money stress, busy schedules, boredom, distraction, and the pain of raising 3 kids. Some of these things have stretched my capacity, but I’ve never missed a day of experiencing God at least once and sometimes for hours at a time. And in the hardest parts of the dry and painful season, I would describe my life as deeply happy.
In the last five years, I’ve also been dealing with significant areas where I am not yet fully submitted to Jesus. Some of these areas have been profoundly healed. Others he is still chipping away at. At the forefront: I still hate looking stupid and I still hate talking to strangers. Chip, chip. I also struggle with the idea that God’s acceptance of me is truly unconditional. Chip, chip. Could God really love all of me? Is he really as good as I’ve seen Him to be? Am I deceiving myself? Chip, chip. He uses friends and family to bring me along. This week, one of my friends has been hammering away at me, exposing lies, and helping me find new layers of profound growth and healing. But I no longer feel I’m a broken mess waiting to be made whole one day. I AM whole, and there will always be new and increasingly beautiful layers of wholeness when I partner with Him. This doesn’t preclude humility. In fact it takes humility to embrace the reality of what He thinks of us, because none of us did a darn thing to deserve it. The picture I get is of me stepping into the front door of Father’s house. I’d be happy to sit in the security and beauty of His front entryway for the rest of my life. But there are so many hidden little rooms and interesting things to do here if I want to explore.
These last few weeks, God has been tearing down pride and old mindsets in my life. Like shedding scales from my eyes, I find myself thinking in a way I never thought I could think. I’ve cried a lot, felt the deep value for other people (especially the women in my life), loved more than I thought I could… I’m embracing tenderness but can also feel intense power flowing through me when I interact with people. The work is more intense (I almost want to say savage) than usual, as though someone is tossing up my brain like a tossed salad. God is giving me step-by-step instructions throughout my day. He is giving me intense prophetic words through people I’ve never met. People are having dreams about me and waking up in the night to pray. It all points to a really good future in which the healing I’ve experienced these last 5 years will be powerfully used for the healing of many many people. I’m excited! But I’ve learned the strength of a ministry is largely determined by how deep the person in ministry is willing to go in their own personal formation. I’m submitted to the process, because it is far more joyful than painful and I’m so curious about where this is all going.
I think the next five years will be as much outward as the last five were inward. I’m grateful for a lot of space to do my own work, but now I think I’ll find more opportunity to share this gift with others. God will keep doing his thing, challenging my definition of a “normal” life. But every step of the journey will be good because I am certain that I will sense Him right next to me, loving me, carrying me.
