I spent most of my 30’s pursuing a deeper faith. I wanted to connect with God in new and profound ways. Much of the disciplines or habits I assumed or had been taught to me didn’t work. Maybe you can relate?
Listening to sermons or podcasts just feels like white noise?
Reading your Bible feels empty, and in some cases, traumatic. How many of us have had the Bible used against us as a weapon?
Listening to worship music or singing feels like going through the motions.
Obedience. When in doubt, just obey what Christ says, right? If we ranked the pantheon of people who obeyed Christ, Mother Teresa would be pretty far up there. Yet, she struggled deeply, writing to a friend in the late 70’s, “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “But as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves in prayer but does not speak…”
I’ve tried to connect with Christ in so many new ways over the past 10-12 years. It was an effort born of devastation (a friend’s suicide) and desperation (pastoring a church). Among my pursuits: conferences, workshops, monasteries, fasting, silence, solitude, writers and leaders from the far edges of Christian faith, every prayer imaginable (liturgical, contemplative, healing, listening, and more), attending Episcopalian mass, Roman Catholic mass, counseling, spiritual direction, and more. If I felt like I might find God in it, I tried it.
But there was one practice in particular that helped me more than any other. When I didn’t feel God in anything, this was the one practice I consistently found His presence…
When I don’t feel Christ, I picture Him.
I put myself next to Him. I imagine Him there, next to me.
I try to allow my senses to work: What does a 1st century middle easter Jewish rabbi look like? How does He look at me? I sit there, with my eyes closed, imagining us just staring at one another.
Sometimes He moves toward me, and I try to imagine what that feels like. Imagine Him putting his hand on my shoulder, and what that would feel like to have the actual Messiah, the son of God, put His hand on my shoulder while looking at me.
What does He smell like? A man that walks everywhere, dusty and sweaty.
Sometimes in my imagination, He speaks. What does His voice sound like? What does He have to say to me right then, at this particular moment in life?
I’ve discovered this contemplative and imaginative exercise tends to lead me out of my feelings and into His presence.