LOSING TO WIN #5
SEEING GOD WITHIN
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I turned around “inwardly
gazing Godward” to find the antidote for the disturbance of my heart. That is where I rediscovered Christ…within. Christians throughout the ages, at least as
far back as the 1600’s, have recognized and acknowledge God within. The French church reformer Francois Fenelon
wrote of the experience; “Let us seek God within us, and we shall find Him
without fail.” However uncertainty about
how to turn my own vision inward or exactly what I could expect to “see” caused me
to misapply this God ordained method.
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I approached the inward
recognition as if it were a self-monitoring cognitive therapy technique. I tried them all. Applying the normal array, including self-supervising methods,
recovery steps, sin avoidance disciplines, and thought control procedures failed
to free me from the grip of sin following my loss of Christian ministry. Deliberate and disciplined God-focusing exercises
worked well during normal everyday life.
However when things got tough, maintaining my God focus was
inconsistent. During bouts of fear,
disappointment, anger, or guilt I would lose sight of God within. One moment I soared above temptation,
experiencing the most glorious freedom from decay, but when a rough patch troubled
my focus down I came again. It resembled
the old spiritual rollercoaster. Worst
of all, my hope of communion with God’s Holy Spirit teetered on my wavering will
power. Personal holiness became dependent
on how strong I felt at the moment of temptation.
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I remember thinking, “I need some kind of reminder that God is within me, at the instant temptation grabs my attention.” That very morning, August 19, 1996, five years
into that relentless depression, I picked up a copy of My Utmost for His
Highest, by Oswald Chambers. The
devotion of the day was “Self-consciousness”.
It described my predicament to a “T.”
“God
means us to live a fully-orbed life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when
that life is attacked from the outside, and we tumble into a way of
introspection which we thought had gone.”
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Reading on I saw a glimmer of
the device I needed. It was such a tiny
flicker…so small I am surprised I saw it.
“If
we come to Him and ask Him to produce Christ-consciousness, He will always do
it until we learn to abide in Him.”
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I read ahead to the next
day’s entry, where he reinforced his advice by recommending,
“Say- Lord, prove Thy consciousness in me…ask
the Lord to give you Christ-consciousness.”
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The suggestion seemed a
little silly and somewhat insulting. The
idea that a juvenile prayer could accomplish what thoughtful actions and agonizing
pleas for deliverance could not was humiliatingly simple, besides it smacking of a
superstitious incantation or a magical chant.
However I knew God said that we must become as little children. (Mat. 18:4,
Mark 10:15, Luke 18:17) Secondly, asking
God to make His presence known in me was His will, and therefore neither superstition nor
magic. (John 14:17) Thirdly, it is an act
of faith to seek God within, where He said he would be. (John 17:23) Fourthly the prayer takes the supplicant’s
eyes (my eyes) off of the problem and turns them toward the solution, Christ’s life
within. (Heb. 12:2)
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I tried it. I prayed that little prayer
for Christ-consciousness, and God honored it.
I gained a new perspective on my problem, “Christ in me the hope of glory”. (Col. 1:27) Later that day, temptation’s old familiar
enchantment presented itself. “Father,” I immediately prayed, “Give me Christ-consciousness.” Remarkably, that moment I was aware that He was
living in me. Suddenly, I no longer needed that
“thing” to fill my heart's deficiency…He was in me, and I knew it.
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I tasted the same Divine
connection with God’s Spirit, which was mine twenty years earlier. I was once again conscious of God’s presents
within. The recognition was at a deeper and more satisfying level than mere emotion or cognition. Thank God, He provided Himself as the solution. Prayer is the method and temptation is the reminder. The
old 16th century French Roman Catholic, Fenelon, was right when he
wrote, “The practice of the presence of God is the supreme remedy.” Others of
that era and area like Brother Lawrence practiced that same approach to
Christian life, as evidenced by Lawrence's book, “The Practice of the Presence of God”
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That brings me to the
question of recognition. What does it
mean to “see God within”? Seeing assumes
two things; (1) A subject in view, which can be distinguish from its setting and
background. (2) A receptor which can recognize and receive the image.
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A Subject
Focusing on a subject assumes
that a subject exists. When the subject
is Christ’s Spirit within, we must be willing to rely on a faculty that is
neither emotionally intuitive nor rationally imaginative. Only the spirit of man, by virtue of its intimate
connection with God’s Spirit, can experience that unique communion. It is a recognizable intimacy,
not because of our spirit and His are similar, but precisely because they are different. C.S. Lewis, discussing awareness of God within
saying, “…the creature should apprehend God and, therefore, itself as distinct
from God.” Lewis,referring to our
“consciousness of God”, said spiritual recognition is based on our “contrast
with an ‘other,’ a something which is not the self.”
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His point as it relates to
God’s contrasting presents within is that there is “something,” or in this case, someone within
that is unlike us. However, emphasizing
the recognizable contrasts between our spirit and the Holy Spirit does not imply
that we do not share positive spiritual similarities, as well. Our shared characteristics are unfortunately
assumed to be virtues of our own personality. “Kindness” is one of those, and
yet we know that we daily violate our own ideals of benevolence, and God never
violates His. Another, Lewis says is
“Shame.” Even though we try to convince
ourselves that shamelessness is a virtue, we still conceal or ignore our own
personality flaws. This hypocrisy indicates a standard within that is not our
own. A third example he gives is
“feelings of real guilt.” The sense that
something inside is making moral demands upon us that we are unwilling or unable
to achieve.
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My personal view is, that
because we so readily accept internal virtue as our own goodness, we normally
overlook God’s internal presence. Therefore,
we remain unaware that we actually see God within our heart. When Paul admitted “nothing good lives in me”
(Rom. 7:18) he was speaking for all of us.
Seeing anything God within us is actually a God sighting. I believe this is the point Jesus was making
in His response to the flattering inquisitor who called Him, “good teacher.” Jesus answered, with no deceptive modesty, “No one is good - except God
alone.”(John 18:19) Furthermore, I don’t
believe it was a misprint of the Old Testament prophet that declared,
“The heart
is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” (Jer. 17:9a KJV)
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The point is, when we see virtuous impulses in us we are not seeing ourselves, but God within. I know that without God’s influence over my
life, there would be few more selfish narcissists than me on the planet. For
that reason alone, any honest person recognizing something other than “selfishness” within their heart, is seeing a spiritual presence, which is not their own. The "Subject" seen within does exist, and He is God's Holy Spirit.
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A Receptor
The fact is, God is so
glorious that not even spiritual eyes can steadfastly gaze directly at His holy
presence. Therefore, our view of Him is,
“through a glass, darkly” (1Corinthians 13:12 KJV). Despite the limitations of our spiritual
eyes, recognition of God’s Spirit is certain.
Paul describes in physical terms both the limitation, and the certainty
involved in seeing God within.
“Now
we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully,
even as I am fully known.”
1Corinthians 13:12 NIV
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The mirror does not block God’s
image but it does represent a boundary, which does exist in our union with God’s
Spirit. The Spirit to spirit union is
not a melding of spirits, as the more radical Christian mystics of old and the present
day pantheists believe, but a communion of individuals…One Divine the other
human. Married partners, though separate individuals, share an
intimacy so close that they are reckoned as, “one flesh”. (1 Cor. 6:16) In the Spirit to spirit union Jesus said, “I
have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:
I in them and you in me…” (John 17:22 &23b)
Paul described it like this, “But he who unites himself with the Lord is
one with him in spirit.” (1Corinthinans 6:17) Nevertheless as a married
couple’s oneness is not a fusion of flesh into one body, neither is the union
of spirits a fusion of spirits. It is
nonetheless a oneness in spirit, shared by two distinct beings within the human heart.
Our spiritual recognition is further reassured
by the Apostil Paul.
“For
God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our
hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God in the face of
Christ.” 2Corinthians 4:6 NIV
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The receptors God gave us for
this recognition, spiritual eyes, is faith... faith in Jesus Christ.
(Galatians 2:16 & 20) Believers enter
Christian life by faith and are expected to operate daily in that faith,
“looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2) The way A.B. Simpson puts it is we should,
“…just accept the fact that the Spirit is in your heart and act accordingly.” A.W. Tozer expressed my opinion well saying,
“the whole tenor of the inspired Word,” as he wrote in, The Pursuit of God, “concludes
that faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.” Our spirit gains authority over our soul by
gazing Godward, and thereby yield to God’s Holiness.
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I hope my struggle against
the grief of loss marks a clear path to recover for others dealing with its
accompanying personality disruption. We can
summarize five fundamentals from the previous “Losing to Win” series as follows.
(1) The Spirit to spirit
connection when recognized relieves our painful thoughts and emotions.
(2) Our heart is comforted
knowing we remain undiminished by loss when we are conscious of God’s indwelling
presences.
(3) A completed personality need
never kneel to sin’s offer to satisfy some sense of incompleteness.
(4) Aware of God’s Spirit
within and therefore assured of God’s reconstruction, the heart can yield to
God’s desire rather than its own.
(5) Turning around and seeing
God within is as simple as a prayer, “Father, Give me Christ-consciousness.”
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I sincerely hope you will click
to the introduction and the other entries in this 5 part series and the conclusion(#6). If you have, please
know I am praying the series will help you or a loved one experience a healthy
recovery from loss’ disruptive effects on our personality. Recovery can and should mark an important
transition leading to a new and wonderful future…as it has mine.
May God bless you and those
you love.
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