silence

Be Still and Know I am God. Psalm 46:10

I’ve been learning a bit more about prayer over the last few weeks. Prayer has been the focus of a book I have been reading by Jeanne Guyon entitled “Experiences the depths of Jesus Christ”. It’s a short book but I’ve found to be of great help and I highly recommend it. Written in the latter half of the seventeenth century, this book was publicly burned in France at some stage and it has also been received by seeking Christians as one of the most helpful and powerful Christian books ever written.

I’ve been teaching myself to be still in the presence of God, practicing this while being in a very quiet place and emptying my mind of all things – I’ve found emptying my mind to be quite hard, it’s amazing how many things – random things – keep popping into my brain. It’s becoming a little easier the more I practice but still a challenging thing to do. Thinking momentarily of a verse or silently calling on God - helps me to be still.

The result has been amazing, as I’ve had a little faith to know that God is dwelling inside of me, as I turn inwards to myself I have been able to experience a joyful lavishing of Gods’ love. I’ve learnt that no words are better than any words and in fact I’m struggling to find the right words to describe the experience. It makes sense though, we all know, listening is way more important (and harder to do) than talking when it comes to communicating with people. How can we really experience what God has to say if we don’t be still, observe or expect communication in both directions?

I feel I’ve only just scratched the surface of understanding all of this and there are further depths God can unveil if it’s his favour for me to experience more. Has anyone else had such close experiences in the silences of their prayers?

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. Psalm 62:1,5

My child, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways. Proverbs 23:26

To everything, there is a season. Ecclesiastes 3:1

The kingdom of God is within us. Luke 17:21

Check out the description of this book here.

One

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have not told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. John 14: 2-4

I have been busy as usual exploring relationships with school kids over the last couple of weeks. Part of our journey has been values, one of the exploration points being sex before marriage – ok or not ok…. It is fair to say that most thought it was OK to have sex before marriage, and the idea of marriage wasn’t looked too favorable. Perhaps that’s a reflection of the age of the students (marriage is far in the future) or maybe a reflection of their experiences of marriage breakups, failed relationships of significant adults in their lives. After all, the stats on relationship breakdowns is sadly very high.

It has made me think about how God views marriage and also explore how God designed marriage to be. There seems to be a sense that when two people come together they become one “in flesh”. It’s a bit like how our lives become “one in Christ with God” – there is a lot of this “oneness” language in the bible – God being one, us being one with God, us becoming one in intimate human encounters.

I was amazed to learn something new about scripture passage at the top of this entry – it connects with this oneness, it is wedding language. Yes it seems that within the oneness we share in God’s circle of divine relationship, God wants to be “married” to us!!

Around the time of Jesus these words were used as an exchange between engaged couples - the man speaking to the woman – said after the marriage proposal. It was the mans way of saying he had a home for her – in his family home, but he had to go off and build a new room for them - a bedroom, within the house – that’s the “prepare a place for you” part. Under the watchful eye of his father, the husband-to-be would build on this room, and only when it was deemed good enough in the eyes of his father would be able to go back to his fiancées home and take her to be his bride – the celebration would begin.

When Jesus spoke these words to his disciples, Jesus had just predicted Peter’s denial of Him, things were heating up in Jerusalem about Jesus and they were scared. Jesus comforted his disciples with these words and the disciples would have immediately recognized it as wedding language – they would have heard these words before. If they truly knew who Jesus was, if they knew in their hearts that Jesus is the divine in human flesh – I reckon they would have been cut down with awe and wonder and felt overwhelmed by God’s love for them.

We too are invited to share in marriage with God – perhaps we are in courtship at the moment – engaged…

Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. Revelation 19: 6-8