It has been said that God’s first language is silence, because, through Christ’s sacrifice of love on the cross, God no longer has anything to say against us. What if God’s silence is, therefore, not an absence but instead an affirmation of our acceptance? + AJ Sherrill, Being with God
Along with Red Skies, When Faith Fails, The God in the Garden, and Living Under Water, Being with God ranks up there as one of my favorite spiritual reads during 2022. Here is an excerpt that has helped me embrace leaning into solitude with the Spirit of God.
Have you considered what an astonishing promise it is that the Spirit prays in us, and does so “according to the will of God”?
Everything about church planting that one needs to know, but soon forgets, is implied in the term itself: the vocation requires the patience of a farmer rather than the efficiency of a machinist. Self-imposed deadlines, relentless fundraising, and chronic comparison tragically turn church planters into church mechanics. Several months into the church plant I was a part of in Southern California, I was exhausted at every level. I needed a breakthrough, but I wasn’t sure what kind of breakthrough I needed.
Around that time, a friend was hosting a workshop that centered on the life and ministry of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen had left a prestigious faculty position at Yale to serve and live alongside people with cognitive disabilities in a community outside Toronto called Daybreak.
Everything about church planting that one needs to know, but soon forgets, is implied in the term itself: the vocation requires the patience of a farmer rather than the efficiency of a machinist. Self-imposed deadlines, relentless fundraising, and chronic comparison tragically turn church planters into church mechanics. Several months into the church plant I was a part of in Southern California, I was exhausted at every level. I needed a breakthrough, but I wasn’t sure what kind of breakthrough I needed.
Around that time, a friend was hosting a workshop that centered on the life and ministry of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen had left a prestigious faculty position at Yale to serve and live alongside people with cognitive disabilities in a community outside Toronto called Daybreak.
Nouwen’s life had been characterized by the same struggles we all face: comparison, control, and consumption.
Those three Cs were the merry-go-round in my head … The more I talked with a new friend I met at the Nouwen workshop during a break, the more I realized I needed the disciplines necessary to move beyond talking at God to being with God. I wanted a deeper relationship with God (think Mary at the feet of Jesus, not Martha doing chores around the house) that was in line with those of the early church, the desert fathers and mothers, the monastic communities, and many other Christian traditions. It occurred to me that maybe it was time to stop riding the merry-go-round in my mind, that maybe there was a better conversation I needed to join. And maybe that conversation wasn’t taking place “out there” but was already present within me through the Holy Spirit. This is where Romans 8:26-27 comes into play. Marjorie J. Thompson, a Presbyterian spiritual director, says it well:
Have you considered what an astonishing promise it is that the Spirit prays in us, and does so “according to the will of God”? Perhaps our real task in prayer is to attune ourselves to the conversation already going on ... Then we may align our conscious intentions with the desire of God.
Spirit’s 3 Ss: Stillness, Silence, Surrender Counter
Our 3 Cs: Comparison, Control, Consumption
The three Cs of comparison, control, and consumption are subversive strategies we employ to strive in our own capacities … We equate strength with feeling equipped and competent in our abilities. We believe the illusion that comparing ourselves to others can lead to personal victory. We swallow whole the lie that if we can only control our lives through worry, manipulation, and striving, then we will achieve what we are hoping for. We are seduced into thinking that being fully alive means consuming the next product, latest gadget, or newest experience. Perhaps these are the very weaknesses from which the Holy Spirit — who lives within us — seeks to liberate us.
Finding our way back requires us to pursue the inverse of our natural impulses: stillness, silence, surrender.
Surrendering to the indwelling Holy Spirit connects us to the eternal dialogue happening within the Trinity. This conversation that the Trinity has been having since creation is a far better conversation than the one happening in our heads. And entering this better conversation reminds us of what is true. The truth is twofold:
1. We are probably less important than we think.
2. We are definitely more loved than we know.
When we first discover that we are less important than we think, the discovery can create a loss of significance. But this is a grace to us. It’s a grace because our self-worth no longer has to be forged and defended through comparison, control, and consumption. What liberation! When we get to that place, we then can fully embrace the reality that we are more loved than we know. This is why Christians claim wholeheartedly that identity is received, not achieved. God’s great love for us brings us, in Christ through the Holy Spirit, into the current of the Triune God. All we must do is surrender to it … enter the eternal conversation, where we can discover the joy and the mystery of what the Holy Spirit is constantly speaking with the Father and the Son. This conversation within the Trinity is full of sacrifice, acceptance, and creative love toward the other.
The essential task in prayer may not be to start a new conversation with God but rather to join the eternal conversation already happening within us.
The Triune God is already having a conversation within us, through the Holy Spirit. The contemplative life is about learning to join that conversation. Prayer doesn’t begin with us talking and end when we run out of things to say. Prayer is always happening between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit … always invites us to pull up a chair and join.
Paul’s instruction in Romans 8 is perhaps the strongest admonition in the epistles to quiet the mind and attune the soul to silence, for it is only in the silence that we hear God’s whispers of liberation that release us from the burden of establishing and defending our own significance.
It has been said that God’s first language is silence, because, through Christ’s sacrifice of love on the cross, God no longer has anything to say against us. What if God’s silence is, therefore, not an absence but instead an affirmation of our acceptance?
Christian contemplation is a dive into the Holy Spirit. Rather than falling into nothing, we fall into Someone. And the Holy Spirit never calls us to flee all desire. The problem isn’t with desire but with disordered desire. Through contemplative prayer, we realign our desires with God’s desires. We do not need to fear surrendering to God in silence and stillness, for it is the Spirit of Christ who awaits our company and invites us into the conversation.
Prayer Practice of Surrendering, Listening for the Spirit’s Groans
The Eastern Orthodox Church has long practiced the tradition of praying a few short lines known as the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer focuses on repeating a simple refrain:
Inhale: Lord Jesus Christ
Exhale: Have mercy on me
This condensed form of the Jesus Prayer centers our identity on the person of Christ. It acknowledges our inadequacy as sinners apart from the mercy of God, and it gives the mind something to focus on as we open ourselves up to the groaning of the Holy Spirit.
Read Romans 8:26-27
Bow your head toward your heart
Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and practice the Jesus Prayer.
If your mind wanders and/or when you realize your mind has wandered, don’t be hard on yourself or spend energy analyzing why you lost your way. Simply return to the Jesus Prayer.
Afterward, reflect on the experience in a journal.
Stick to this practice daily for a week and see what opens up for you over time.
Through contemplative prayer we can keep ourselves from being pulled from one urgent issue to another and from becoming strangers to our own heart and God's heart. Contemplative prayer keeps us home, rooted and safe, even when we are on the road, moving from place to place … Contemplative prayer deepens us in the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God. + Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus
Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:
A Time To Heal (Shalom); Red Skies; Story of God in a Sanitation Truck; The Artistry of What's Next; Days of Song on Spot of Scorched Earth; Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; The Church is the Most Corrupt Institution on Earth; The Seamless Life; A Good Calling; Inisheer Island; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Taste Grace in World of Seculosity; I've Seen What Hope Can Do; Ubuntu and the Family of God; Baptism as the Way of Life; Childlike Wonder; Listening to God's Voice; The Cross and Peacemaking Presence
With presence, peace, and many blessings,
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