Journey into Light

How can we gaze upon God when we can’t see him? He is invisible. No one can see him and live he tells us. Yet he wants to reveal himself through the eyes of our faith. We see him through the Word, nature, circumstances and in many other ways. But he also can reveal himself through our contemplation. What’s that?

I recently read a book entitled Embracing Contemplation – Reclaiming A Christian Spiritual Practice. Many of my thoughts that follow are based upon this book.

Biblical contemplation is gazing on the face of God as he reveals himself through the Spirit. “One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple” (27:4, NIV).

We depend on him to reveal himself. We don’t conjure up the presence of God and dictate what we see. Instead, we expect to receive an experience of his presence as he chooses.

This makes my “skin crawl” even as I write this. I am a conservative evangelical and have been trained to cling to the Word and mediation to insure purity of experience of God. In practicing contemplation, we depend on God to show himself to us as a direct experience through the Spirit, not indirectly through nature, circumstances, and people’s lives.

We trust God to use the Word to reveal himself in a deep way to our hearts. It’s one thing to know God loves us; it’s another to experience it. “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully” (Ephesians 3:18-19, NLT). God uses his Word and our minds to reveal to our hearts how much he loves us.

Why mess with biblical contemplation? After all, it can be risky. It’s subjective. It requires depending on the Spirit to reveal God. But don’t we depend on the Spirit to interpret Scripture – if not we run the risk of legalism – taking it literally but missing the spiritual truth?

Biblical contemplation helps us avoid a dull, lifeless spirituality that’s practices at the thinking and behavioral level and misses the heart. We can learn to embrace the Christian life as an experience of God and not just knowledge about God. “So, all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NLT).

We can’t make it happen. We depend on God to reveal himself. Our job is to prepare our hearts to receive what he wants to show and tell us. It can involve meditating on Scripture but goes beyond just thinking about God, but also communing with him.

I have been practicing contemplation lately to request him to reveal a happy memory. I then ask him where he was in the scene and if he wants to say anything to me from the scene. I often ask him to keep me from forcing an image or putting words in his mouth. I then wait, but usually not long for an image or his words. All this serves to build an experiential relationship with him of trust and love.

We do need to pray and concentrate on what he wants to reveal and expect he will.

May we learn to experience the love of Christ in a deeper way through the Christian practice of contemplation, so we “will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” (Ephesians 3:19, NLT).