SEEING GOD WITHIN Losing to Win #5

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 16^th 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.