Even If i Walk Alone

Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus

Imaginitive Prayer

God with Us

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I just finished reading Greg Boyd’s latest book (“Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now“), and I cannot recommend it enough. The book deals with the spiritual discipline of “practicing the presence” of God. Essentially what this means is to keep God first and foremost in our thoughts at all times. I have read Brother Lawrence’s classic, “The Practice of the Presence of God”, and while I loved the concepts he spoke of, I was never able to personally apply them to my own life. Boyd’s work provides plenty of exercises to help you apply this discipline in your own life. I was slightly concerned that the exercises would be “hokey” or that I would feel silly engaging in them, but these fears proved to be unfounded. As I write this I am indeed learning to practice the presence of God in my own life.

Being consciously aware of God at all times is not easy, though the reasons why escape me. We devote our lives to Him, we forsake everything for Him, but we cannot keep our focus on Him? What are we missing, and how weak is our faith that we can’t regularly stay in His presence for an extended amount of time? It makes me sad to realize that had I been with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I too would have probably fallen asleep (Mark 14: 32-42). We have become self-absorbed and self-indulgent people. We give lip service to God, but turn immediately back to our own endeavors. We are distracted by the slightest interruption or diversion. It is frustrating to me how I can be absolutely devoted one minute and anything but the next.

Being mindful of God in every moment is both restricting and limiting. The restrictions, however, are both welcome and necessary. Being aware of God’s presence as you engage in conversation with someone else not only restricts the words you say, but also alters your attitude towards the one to whom you are speaking. Seeing that person as someone for whom Christ died, someone whom Jesus loves just as much as you, allows us to put aside our judgmentalism and see that person the way God sees them. People cease to be unwelcome distractions or uninvited interruptions; instead they become divine appointments. In case you were unaware, as representatives of God’s Kingdom, every encounter we have is, by definition, a divine appointment.

The choices we make and the thoughts we think are greatly impacted by being mindful of God’s presence. At last, I am truly learning how to take every thought captive. My initial, judgmental thoughts when seeing someone are immediately filtered as I bring to mind the fact the God is in our presence. When practicing the presence, being aware of God in your midst, you are able to stop a negative thought in midstream and redirect it to a God pleasing and affirming thought. Smiles come easier and stress becomes far less frequent or relevant. Temptations no longer seem so inviting. Imagining God in your midst (for indeed He is) makes it profoundly difficult to choose a sinful thought, word or deed. Once we become aware of God’s presence in our lives on a moment by moment basis, our thought patterns are radically altered. We no longer have the ability to slip into a sinful behavior; instead we must now purposefully choose the sinful path. Once we have slowed down the decision making process to a conscious choice, it becomes amazingly simple to reject sin and choose Christ. This is incredibly freeing and the true beauty of practicing the presence. Not only will our lives look more like Jesus, but we will be filled with the purity of walking in His light.

If you let it, this spiritual discipline will radically rock your life. You will find freedom from patterns and behaviors you had long given up on defeating. We have lost sight of the fact that one of the names given to Jesus was “Immanuel”, literally, “God with us”. By practicing the presence we are able to rediscover the truth that God is indeed with us in every moment of our lives. I encourage all of you to purchase a copy of this book. You can do so by clicking here or going to your favorite bookstore. Once you’ve read the book, I encourage you to come back and leave a comment about how it impacted you, and how you’re doing on “practicing the presence” in your own life. Remember God is with you no matter where you are, or what you’re doing. We need only be awakened to the reality of His presence.

A Foundation of Love

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What is it you really want out of life, what do you hope to accomplish?  In the end, what will it all matter?  I have a lot of dreams and goals, but none of them will count for anything if I don’t get one thing right; that one thing being how well I reflect the love of Christ.

Putting everything else aside for now, let’s focus on that one thing.  What do we need to do today to best reflect the love of God?  Have we become too busy, so much so that we don’t take the time each day to just stop and communicate with Jesus?  Many people set aside time at the beginning of each day to do this, and that’s great.  There’s nothing magical about what time you do it, the important thing is that you do indeed take the time.  You can choose morning, afternoon or evening as long as you don’t let anything get in the way of this time with Christ.

What inevitably tends to happen is that instead of scheduling a set time to be alone and focused on God, we try and squeeze this time amongst the other activities of our day.  This never works!  Adding God to your life will always result in a low impact and uncommitted walk.  We can’t add God to our life, He must be our life.  If there is room for anything else we can add that on, but life must start and find its centrality in Christ.

This one change, this one way of changing how we do life will prove revolutionary.  Let nothing get in the way of your time with God.  Once you have established the time, don’t let outside distractions cheapen it.  Talk to God, sit quietly in His presence, listen and dream with Him.  This may take some getting used to, but I assure you it is more than worth the effort.

Starting with God as the foundation allows us to build up other areas of our lives.  Should we face trial or failure, even if we lose everything, our foundation will remain.  Hard times never seem as bad when we realize we are defined by our foundation, not by anything else.  We are His and He is ours.  Before attempting any other drastic changes in your life, make certain your foundation is solidly set.  With Christ as our foundation, we cannot but help but pour out His love on those around us.  With His love as our foundation, it will simply permeate our entire being.  True love cannot be shaken and will never be defeated.  Set your foundation in His love, and then use that strength to encourage others to do the same.  Watch your life change as everything you do flows from a basis of love.  Reflect Him in everything you do.

Lessons From the Temptation of Christ

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I am endeavoring to chronologically work my way through the Gospels, reimagining each of the familiar stories through the use of imaginative prayer. If you are unfamiliar with imaginative prayer, I highly recommend reading Greg Boyd’s excellent “Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer” and check out his ‘Animate’ sermon series on the topic as well. Today I am considering the temptation of Christ found in Mark 1:12-13, Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13.

The fasting of Jesus in the wilderness for forty days is a testament to what a person can withstand when their entire focus is on God. It is hard for most of us to imagine going without food for a few hours, much less forty days! I think the key here is that Jesus was so enraptured with being in the presence of God that He truly needed nothing else. We are spiritual beings at our core, and the story would seem to point to the fact that proper spiritual nourishment trumps the physical. When Satan tempted Jesus to turn the stone into bread, Jesus replied that “Man does not live by bread alone”. His fast was on God’s schedule, and He wasn’t going to break it even though He easily could. Satan was obviously not trying to help Jesus, but rather sought to have Jesus take nourishment from the things of this world rather than from God; Satan tried to get Jesus to focus on the temporal, physical side of things rather than the spiritual and eternal. The lesson is that we should always be in diligent conversation with our Heavenly Father, while at the same time realizing our communion with God is infinitely more important than our physical comfort and pleasure. In refusing Satan’s attempts to get him to focus on His own physical needs, Jesus demonstrated a total reliance on the Father.

The second thing Satan tried to tempt Jesus with was power and a desire to have great wealth as the ruler of all of the earthly kingdoms – if only He would bow to Satan. Jesus responded by telling Satan to “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only”. No power or achievement in our life will ever be worth turning away from Christ. It is far better we be poor and powerless, yet serving God, than to have our fill of this world’s “success”. We need to remove any idols we have in our lives that would keep us from worshipping God alone. Idols can come in many forms: tangible possessions, social status or personal desires. Anything that we value more than God, even for the slightest moment, is an idol. In refusing to worship Satan in exchange for earthly power and wealth, Jesus demonstrated total devotion to the Father.

The final test of Jesus occurred when Satan tried to get Him to step off the highest point of the temple, to test whether Jesus really had faith in God to protect Him. Jesus replied, “Do not test the Lord your God”. We see a couple of principles in play here. First, God blessed us all with the ability to think through the various situations in our life. We need to constantly pray for wisdom, and also seek the counsel of trusted men and women. Acting with wisdom, we can trust that God will walk with us. We can’t simply act foolishly, without thought, and expect God to bail us out. Secondly, avoid sinning simply because you have faith that you will be forgiven. I believe this is also testing God. If we truly love Him, we will want to turn away from sin, not see how much we can get away with. By refusing to “prove” His faith to Satan, Jesus demonstrated a confident faith in the Father; He knew God would always walk with Him through the turbulent times to come.