A Knowing That Goes Beyond Words

I am a learner by nature. I am always curious and always want to know everything about everything.
knowledge
It drives my husband a little crazy. He often feels that I am giving him the third degree about his opinions, while I think I am only being curious about why he thinks the way he thinks.
We’ve both had to learn a lot during our 17 years of marriage.
My penchant for learning and research serves me well in many areas.
In some ways, it also serves me well in my walk with God.
In other ways, however, this piece of who I am has shown itself to hinder my knowing God.
knowing
There are different ways of knowing someone.
It is helpful in a relationship to know about a person, to know their character, to know what they have done and how they think.
You do have to know about someone to be able to know them.
Yet this alone is insufficient.
This is not truly knowing someone.
knowledge
God delights in being known by us. He wants us to seek for Him, to seek after knowledge of Him.
He also wants to make Himself known to us, and He often makes Himself known through other means than our logical mind.
… (at times) God no longer communicates himself through the senses. He does not make himself known through the analytical mind, which synthesizes and divides ideas. Instead, he begins to come through pure spirit, through simple contemplation, untainted by discursive thought. ~ St. John of the Cross in Dark Night of the Soul
St. Ignatius of Loyola, an early 16th century Spanish priest and theologian, wrote a series of prayers and meditations to help people seek after the will of God and devote themselves wholly to Him. As a part of the instructions, he writes that it is by contemplating the nature of God that a person will deepen his understanding of God and divine grace,
… for it is not an abundance of knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul but rather an interior understanding and savoring of things.
I hunger after that abundance of knowledge, but God is teaching me that this kind of knowledge is not enough.
Hungering after the knowledge of God is good and right, and it is insufficient on its own.
knowing
There must be a knowing that goes beyond facts, beyond words. There must be a deeper knowing that leads to falling in love.
Madeleine L’Engle puts it this way:
There is a kind of knowing that comes in silence and not in words — but first we must be still. ~ in Walking on Water
I have been learning this way of knowing, this knowing that comes out of being still before God, and I will testify that it is deeply satisfying.
Knowing about God leaves me thirsty for more.
Knowing God fills me to overflowing.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Art credits: Fairy Tales by Jessie Willcox Smith; all other photographs are my own, copyright Made Sacred 2021

This is what we are desperate for in this chaotic world_ an inner peace and joy that remains in us as we begin to look more like Jesus. This is what God promises us as we learn to abide in him. copy
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When You Feel as Though Nothing Is Happening

The book I recently published, Beyond the Front Door: Cultivating Rhythms of Abiding in Jesus, says a lot about being still before God, about the practice of silence and solitude.
stillness
One of the cautions I give in the book is to understand that you will not always feel something during your times of stillness. The work of God is slow and subtle, and an emotional experience of God is a rare gift. A welcome gift, to be sure, but rare.
St. John of the Cross
I recently read Dark Night of the Soul by 16th century Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross. I wish I had read it earlier. There was so much in his writings that I wanted to add to my book! It is too late for that, but I want, nevertheless, to share with you some of what he is teaching me.
St. John writes much about the beginners on this spiritual journey of knowing God and becoming like Him, and one of the points he continues to come back to is that beginners strain toward feelings of pleasure. They become so attached to the idea of experiencing God through their senses that when no feelings come they believe they have failed.
St. John admonishes us:
Don’t they realize that the sensory benefits are the least of the gifts offered by the divine? God often withdraws sensual sweetness just so that they might turn the eyes of faith upon him.
He notes that anyone who searches for “sensory sweetness” ends up turning their face away from the bitterness of self-denial. Rather than seeking after feelings, we are to simply offer humble praise and reverence to God within ourselves.
silence
I am certainly guilty of feeling as though my time with God was a failure because I did not feel anything. Because nothing seemed to happen. Yet St. John calls this a “negative judgement against God.”
It is a lack of trust that God will accomplish His promised work inside of us regardless of whether we see Him working.
The idea that there is great benefit to God removing any sense of His presence is another idea St. John returns to again and again. When we feel satisfied, we tend to move toward practicing our own inclinations and weaknesses rather than leaning wholly on God. When we lose the feeling of God being with us, we wake up to our deepest desire for Him.
Without the turnings away, they would never learn to reach for him.
I hope this encourages you as it does me.
solitude
When we feel as though nothing is happening in our time with God, it is most likely that we are receiving even greater gifts than pure sensory benefit.
When we cannot sense the presence of God, let His seeming absence force us to trust more deeply in His promises and rouse us to reach out for Him.
He is, after all, always there.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Art credit: John of the Cross by Francisco de Zurbarán; all other photos are mine, Made Sacred copyright 2021

BTFD Instagram Post Updated

Beyond the Front Door

Creation and Life from Silence

I apologize for being absent last week. Perhaps none of you even noticed, but in the six years of writing in this space I have missed posting only a handful of times as I want to be faithful to what God has asked of me. I was sick almost the whole week, and am grateful to be (almost) well and writing again.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

 

We are surrounded by words.
words

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Buy me! Eat me! Need me! Love me!

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In our ears and in our eyes, in our hearts and in our minds, words penetrate us every where and every time.
power
Words are losing their power.
Words are losing their meaning.
Word
In the beginning and out of the silence God spoke.
God’s words had power. Power to create.
God’s words brought (and bring) life.
silence
Our words used to have the same power.
We had the power to create beauty and joy and peace, to bring life to others.
When we only speak out of noise, only bring words out of other words, our own words lose their life-giving power.
Only from the silence can we speak words of creation.
Only from the silence in which we have listened to the Word can we speak words of life.
The Word of God is born out of the eternal silence of God, and it is to this Word out of silence that we want to be witnesses. ~ Henri Nouwen
We must find regular times of silent listening. We must be quicker to listen and slower to speak when out in the world of words.
listen
When we pour out words, our words lose their power.
When we Christ-followers pour out words, the Word in us loses His power to create life through us.
I don’t understand why He allows His power to depend on these weak vessels, but He does.
silent
Words people speak have dynamite in them and a word may be all it takes to set somebody’s heart on fire or break it in two. ~ Frederick Buechner
Practice silence.
Practice regular times of going away to be silent before God. Practice being silent when surrounded by others.
Be silent.
From your silence the Word of life will speak, bringing life to yourself and to others.
Wait in silence.
For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Him comes my salvation.

Art credits: Times Square photograph by Daniel Wildman; billboard photographs by Jay Simmons; street signs photograph by Michal Zacharzewski; all other photographs copyright Made Sacred 2018

Be Still and Wait

Be still


Hush


Wait



Advent


Do you hear it?


It is a whisper in the darkness.


He is coming!


Can you feel it?


It is a gentle touch on your heart.


Love is coming!


Wait.


In the stillness, we feel it — His movements. In the stillness, our hearts leap — His coming! In the stillness, we know it– what falls down upon us — breath of heaven. ~ Ann Voskamp


Will you be still? 

Will you give God this one gift, the gift of you, of your full presence?


In the excitement and the sparkle. 


In the loneliness and the hurt.


Wait.


For just a few moments, hush and listen. Listen for that small whisper in your soul. Pause to feel God’s Spirit love your heart.


Love.


Peace.


Joy.


He comes!


We wait…and find that He has been Emmanuel, God with us, all along.


art credit: The Nativity by Antonio da Correggio; Advent Wreath carved by 15-year-old Caleb Voskamp (click on the link to order your own…he gives all proceeds to Compassion)

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