[Music] [Music] welcome back to part four of 10 in our Jesus trip series on contemplation you'll remember I'm just taking nuggets here from our full 20-hour extended ecourse on contemplation which you can find at johnc crow. now many of you will want to check it out and don't just binge watch it take your time with that course engage in practice along the way and even with these shorter free Jesus trip series videos I'm putting out go back and watch these in order this this minseries it's all on our YouTube page look contemplation itself is not just a sterile intellectual exercise This is Love and adoration in the Western World We believe the mind does the thinking and the heart does the feeling but there's a nonduality unlike mental prayer with words contemplation is more embodied more sematic the felt or immediate presence of God and it's always presence and never absence and it is foremost intimate and this embodiment aspect tends to reverberate and spill out in every area of Life The Mystic real realizes we move heart first it's from the heart that the mind is ultimately informed I guarantee many of you felt the truth of the Gospel in your heart long before your offended mind caught up to it the 19th century Mystic theophan the recluse said God should be with you like a toothache great name for a saint huh theophan the recluse out here on the farm with my two miniature goats and miniature donkeys I've become Crowder the recluse anyway Cynthia bouro she says that we might have preferred a different metaphor but this picture of the toothache does speak forcefully to the fact that our quote concept of God is sensate remembrance of God is not a mental concept it exists deeply embodied as a vibration a homing frequency to which we can become increasingly sensitively attuned it's walking in the spirit being aware cognizant of his abiding presence in that inner Dy damic which resonates beyond words no one can drum up walking in the spirit that's something we can only sink back into we learn to allow the spirit to carry us we taste and see that the Lord is good and this changes our minds and our Behavior follows now as we've gone forward with our series I've slowly begun to Define contemplation some people think it's just not talking and they missed the transformative spiritual elements to the practice one thing is not optional if we do not learn to pull aside amidst the constant noise and instant gratification of this world and find the deeper infinite joy of the one who is less than a breath away and the Very Solitude of our own being we simply will not survive the onslaught and Chaos of this world's noisy but shallow Madness Carl roner the great Catholic Theologian famously said the Christian of the future will be a Mystic or will not exist so to contemplate means to gaze contemp PLO in Latin theoria in Greek it is the Christian practice of looking at gazing at being aware of God this doesn't happen uniquely in silent prayer alone but it's the heartbeat of it it's the culmination of all worship and devotion just being with God abiding without any extraneous commentary any inner intimate knowing and being known you you could roll that in as as being contemplation If my people would only acknowledge me says the Lord all prayer in fact the very purpose of your life is summed up in looking at God in love Christ is both the word of God and the silence that stands between all words he is in fact Beyond silence as Isaac the Syrian prays in this beautiful prayer quote Oh mystery exalted Beyond every word and Beyond silence who became human in order to renew Us by means of your voluntary Union with the flesh reveal to me the path by which I may be raised up to your Mysteries traveling along a course that is clear and tranquil free from the illusions of this world gather my mind into the Silence of prayer so that wandering thoughts may be silenced within me during that luminous Converse of Supplication and mystery filled Wonder guys we all crave his silence and yet it's not as simple as just shutting up and doing it or we'd all be doing that already he has guidance for us there are ancient paths Saints and Mystics and good Shepherds whove navigated these Waters to help us with the Hang-Ups and frustrations that we think are limited only to us you say well for some reason silence is difficult for me again welcome to the club but in the light of Grace we realize God's silence is our very home where words are not necessary and that Embrace of his all knowing and endlessly caring love and mercy there are some practical tools to help us many of you are coming from different degrees of experience in your contemplative Journey so I'm catering this series in a way that attempts to provide helpful spiritual direction for everybody to the one who may not even really know what contemplation is over the next few sessions we're going to look at simple accessible entry tools and simple disciplines to get you started we don't like that word discipline but we'll come back to that and for those of you a little further down the road who've already developed a more consistent practice of Silent prayer I'm giving some language to some of the deeper interior dynamics that you're encountering along the way but to drill down with some tools some practical applications to use the word disciplines to even suggest that there are transformative aspects to this practice well that's going to get some people's fur raised on end and that's why I'm calling this session the Grace of contemplation see if we view contemplation as a work we're looking at it all wrong you're literally saying that rest is a work this is not some add-on to the gospel no more than theology is an add-on to the gospel could you perceive it that way sure plenty of people do and I have plenty of friends who are gracest who view everything through this black and white filter of Grace versus Works look Grace has to be drunk straight no water no ice surely no ginger ale but theology is not an add-on it's a means of helping us understand the gospel of grace contemplation is not an add-on it's our very means of Engagement with MrGrace I mean if I just myopically view everything as a work and therefore bad well don't breathe that's a work don't pray that's a work Don't Preach that's a work and whatever you do don't actually go to work because that's a work the only problem with works is when we view them in a salvific sense as an add-on to his finished work but like Paul the Apostle of Grace who outworked everybody else Grace actually empowers a more productive life because the performance orientation is out of the way the real issue here is one of performance orientation and unlike verbal prayer unlike mental prayer contemplation is one of the very keys to obliterating our performance orientation it's the purest form of prayer because it is pure Repose not struggle it is the act of drinking pure grace it is awareness of our Union nobody's making you do this forcing you to sit down and enjoy Jesus but part of the reason the western church is so mechanical cerebral dry why its spiritual senses are so dull why it's so exhausted well obviously because many are clueless about their Union with Jesus which is the gospel but it's also because people are never taught how to pray prayer is presented as this thing you do this B production of asking God for stuff he already knows you need mostly he's already done telling him stuff that he already knows we're running ragged in in a world full of busyness noise and our own interior lives are full of constant chatter and inner dialogues and we're veritably starving for silence silence is a very Grace to us but if some of the tools the concepts that I present to you in this series are not particularly helpful for you at this this moment just glean what is helpful for you now some of it may seem Irrelevant for your current place in life however carving out regular moments of silence and Solitude really is not optional it's possible some of the concepts that I'm presenting here might make more sense to you 10 years down the road so wherever you are in your journey just be patient with yourself your exploration is your own so don't think in terms of right and wrong ways of doing things we indeed grow along the way but contemplation is not about stages or levels so we must dispel with those kind of Notions from the start otherwise it becomes about acquiring or arrival and in today's society of Western consumerism which has unfortunately infiltrated the church we are prone to view spirituality as something to be mastered or commodified and contemplation is just not another spiritual Gadget to be added to your tool belt now contemplation is ultimately relationship it's about engaging with the one who's always been closer to you than your very breath the the one who inhabits the very silence we run from with our smartphones Netflix Facebook Tik Tok there's no arrival no ladder to be climbed no esoteric discipline to be Master this is about a mode of being an ancient mode of being of truly being a human being engaging with what already is and always was though we attempt to fill every empty space every moment of quiet with noise to avoid the deafening Silence of his presence that speaks deeper than any word we're learning to as Bonaventure said to engage with the one whose Center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere so as we start transitioning to tools to contemplative practice what is practice how does this work most of us aren't monks but there is something about pulling aside and cultivating a time of refreshing quietude you've got kids you got jobs but there's a way to take the courageous step of carving out some Solitude if you don't already have an established contemplative practice I'd encourage you to actually start allowing yourself time of real silence not verbal prayers not Hill songs it's not about the clock but if you start in increments you may find yourself going 15 20 30 minutes a day or more curiously it becomes addictive I'm talking about complete silence that might not be normal for you or it may feel strange you may wonder if you're doing it right doesn't matter may even be difficult even awkward because stuff will pop up to the surface when you sit for that long especially if you aren't used to it memories trauma to-do list and that's one of the reasons we avoid silence and if you're here today you either appreciate silence or at least the idea of it that deep down inside of you you know that you're in dire need for it for some of you silence may be a love that you lost a long way back and you're hoping to find that love rekindle just remember although I'm giving you ancient tools this is an exercise in Grace it's not an internal climbing toward God but it is a remembrance and a release into the realization that you are in God he is in you at a level that runs deeper than the intellect and contemplation you harmonize with him as an echo of who he himself is and thus contemplation runs beyond your 20 or 30 minutes of Silent practice it becomes a mode of being in a sense it cannot even be taught or defined you can't just chart out a schematic definition of what the practice of the presence of God actually is but we can still use words to throw at this mystery and one of the fellas that does it most beautifully is Thomas Merton who writes contemplation is the highest expression of our intellectual and spiritual life it is that life itself fully awake fully active fully aware that it is alive it is spiritual wonder it is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of Life of being it is gratitude for life for awareness and for being it is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in US precede from an invisible Transcendent and infinitely abundant Source contemplation is above all awareness of the reality of that Source it knows that Source obscurely inexplicably but with a certitude that goes beyond reason and Beyond Simple faith for contemplation is a kind of spiritual vision to which both reason and Faith Aspire by their very nature because without it they must always remain incomplete yet contemplation is not Vision because it sees without seeing and knows without knowing it is more profound death dep of Faith knowledge too deep to be grasped in images in words or even in clear Concepts it can be suggested by words by symbols but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows the contemplative mind takes back what it has said and denies what it had affirmed for in contemplation We Know by unknowing or better we know beyond all knowing or unknowing again Merton writes this contemplation is also the response to a call a call from him who has no voice and yet who speaks in everything that is and who most of all speaks in the depths of our own being for we ourselves are words of his but we are words that are meant to respond to him to answer to him to Echo him and even in some way to contain him and signify him contemplation is this Echo guys you may not realize how many of the church fathers Merton is summarizing here in such a poetic way now although I'm going to be giving you some tools for practice in upcoming sessions because there are tools do not mistake any form of practice for this most important fact what contemplation truly is it's relationship not just an accumulation of mental exercises now at first the tools will be important for you in cultivating some simple discipline but eventually you will not think about the tools we don't throw away the tools they're just there as fencing to help us maintain our gaze this is relationship not methodology God's presence in silence is not something to be attained or acquired through any practice therefore contemplation is a gift that's already been given to us which we are learning to explore uh Carl mccoleman says silence is a gift of Grace that is given to all of us and we are invited into that when we enter into this place of wordless prayer and Vincent pizo says the summit of the Christian Life is the fullness of life in Christ a fullness that cannot be obtained by our own efforts only accepted as a given it cannot be achieved only received as pure gift pure grace thus the contemplative life is not simply about adopting meditative methods and techniques but about entering into an interior silence that deepens our relationship with the Triune God who dwells within now especially as a beginner but also even as a regular practitioner one of the first things you'll notice as you're praying is that you are praying and then you'll try not to think about the fact that you're praying and then you get frustrated because the more you try not to notice it the more you do notice it and then we think about the clock look this is completely normal it's okay we're working at relaxing here at St Paul says striving to enter the rest so let your thoughts do what they're going to do again we aren't chasing thoughts or trying to do a mind over matter trick here we gently calmly accept what's going on allow ourselves to let go and just let that stuff pass by allowing ourselves the Liberty not to analyze every thought that passes by we're handing it over to the Lord and just sinking deeper and there's so much grace because it it's like a massage we don't even realize we're carrying all this pressure and there's this tension but then when the masseuse finally releases that knot boom something happens but when we sit down we aren't trying to make something happen we sit with no expectation listen zero expectations this isn't a hyped up Revival event we aren't going for light shows and visits to heaven and smoke and all this especially not make belief okay we are sinking into the gentle presence of God and allowing ourselves to be enveloped in a union that is deeper to us than we are to our own selves and stuff is happening even and especially when we don't realize stuff is happening below the surface we aren't just here for a product or the benefits or the fruit we are allowing not just our mind but the Gaze of our very heart to be captivated by the Trinity which is already here closer than we are to ourselves folks we're not ascending we're not gaining new levels or stages that mentality is the very thing we're shedding you are united to God in the very Humanity of Jesus Christ We Begin continue and end all from a place of Union with God in Jesus Christ what's happening in contemplation is that the club of our thoughts that blind us to him begin to lift as we actually sit and give ourselves over to the silence and I know this can be scary there's a reason we fill all the silence in our life with noise and media and news and vain battle we're afraid to see what's in there we got built-in reactions to things from childhood but we aren't trying to dig around and do inner healing stuff right here despite our fears what awaits us is actually a vast endless Chasm of divine love the very thing we were running from was the very thing we desired and were made for you aren't becoming holy through this you already are in Jesus what's happening is that the way of our being is learning to synchronize with the truth of our being at a place beyond mere intellectual agreement with theological truths because we're Experiencing God not just ideas about him and Experiencing God is infinitely Beyond just what our emotion framework can comprehend either so at times it's going to feel great at other times you may feel frustrated this is not a mental exercise or just emotionalism Although our minds and emotions will become more ordered as we learn Stillness as we learn some degree of solitude in our lives and even for those of you nursing mothers with toddlers And CEOs whose phones are always blowing up there is a way to carve out moments of solitude it's not a luxury to be afforded see the truth is you actually can't live without this and the insanity of this mad clown world we see around us which has lost its mind is actually the fruit of a Humanity that has forgotten Solitude we've untethered from the anchor not realizing that he has never untethered himself from us if we can just learn to press pause from time to time God doesn't want you quiet time he wants your time the goal is a life of awareness of his presence yet without those intentional moments of pulling away from everything else we quickly find ourselves numbed in our sensitivity to him so we aren't shadowboxing this illusory false self in order to apprehend The God Who has already apprehended Us in Jesus you have been drawn up into the ineffable wonder of the son's own perfect knowledge of the father and this knowledge consists not of mere information but communion the spirit reveals this inexhaustible love to us deafening us to the lie that silences separation the spirit speaks not with many words but the word whose speech is Embrace and whose Embrace is embodied quietude this is the very Silence from which we've run trying to fill it up with fistfuls of sand thrown into an Endless Sea is not a Chasm of absence it's an eternal sstn of presence we've forgotten ourselves because we're starved for True contemplation missing the very one who fills all things in every way it is in silence that we come face to face with so much of our delusional thinking and we begin to realize it for what it is as powerless it only thrived on our own belief in its lies the lies that we aren't loved the lies that keep us scr rambling with busyness to escape some false sense of shame or insecurity concocting shallow vain hypocritical self-images to to earn love to earn approval but we're embraced in a sense of love that disempowers all this delusion contemplation is communion that dispels all of this because contemplation is just the mode of our participation in the gospel truth of Jesus Christ gazing upon the one who tells us who we really are God is Not relegated only to our prayer closet you are a prayer your whole life is an incense a fragrant Aroma of Christ unto God whether you're mowing the lawn or doing taxes there's no disembodied spirituality Jesus is not just your spiritual life he's your life yet there is still something of learning and some Detachment of pulling aside so that we're more centered in that Earthly life and not just thrown around in it by every thought every worry every care having to form an opinion on every political argument on Twitter without a grounding in an anchor of presence in this place of Silence we get grounded in a sense of love that transcends all thought and a peace that surpasses understanding it's cultivated within us so contemplation is walk in your dog it's going fishing it's working in your garden for brother Lawrence it was washing the dishes so the practical prayer tools that I'll be starting with next week are not an exclusion to that stuff okay to our active life the first discipline we'll actually cover is just carving out a space and time for some silent Detachment for just being with him alone and ironically it'll help you to recognize him all the more in those other daily even mundane activities Jesus had a very active Earthly life eating drinking with his disciples doing stuff but he also pulled aside for contemplation and centering with the Father which was the Hub out of which his entire life operated so there's no true Christianity apart from contemplation Eugene Peterson said the contemplative life is not a special kind of life it is the Christian Life nothing more but also nothing less but lived we've got some fun in-person Gatherings coming to a region near you in 2024 so before you go let me tell you where I'm headed I'll be in Albuquerque New Mexico in August I'll be in New England coming to Massachusetts in October in November I'll be with DrC bter Krueger in Germany as well as in Switzerland and I'll be in Middle America in Ohio in December check it out John crowder. edu at the new Mystics it's where I give live fulllength lectures interactive Q&A sessions plus you have hundreds of hours of archived teaching Bible commentary found nowhere else and your small membership fee helped support our orphanages and missions around the world so it's a win-win finally please visit our main site John crow.
where you can find upcoming events like this ministry cruise to Alaska September 202 4 with myself and DrC Baxter Krueger you'll find our extended on demand ecourses like this 20h hour module on christology we've also got 20 hours just on contemplation a really fun one drunk church history it's about 30 hours long and our most recent on the Book of Revelation that will change everything you thought about the apocalypse so visit the page and you'll see we also have our longest ecourse to date coming up live this summer 2024 with myself DrBaxter Krueger Rod Williams we're spending three whole months on Holy Spirit and for those taking the online course at the end of those 12 weeks we will have an optional in-person activation gathering in Florida that is absolutely going to explode find everything at John [Music] crow. plunge into the depths of the gospel of grace and sign up for Kaa new wine Seminary explore the heart of the Trinity the ancient Faith the finished work of the Cross It's Supernatural and presence oriented the online format makes it an extremely affordable theology course and it's a rare opportunity to drink from some amazing teachers once a week catch the early bird discount rate at ka. Holy Spirit is often referred as the third person of the Trinity but is the Trinity a hierarchy is Holy Spirit truly God in a recent poll among 3,000 evangelicals the majority believed holy spirit is a force not a person yet the early church adamantly declared that Holy Spirit is the Lord The Giver of Life who spoke by the prophets and who is worshiped and adored together with father and the son many charismatics though open to the spirit's interaction likewise think of Holy Spirit as a power or energy which comes in degrees holy spirit doesn't come in portions Holy Spirit comes in person what does it mean that Holy Spirit has already been poured out on All Flesh holy spirit is hovering over Humanity pointing us to Christ who reveals the father for a truly trinitarian grasp of holy spirit that is both theological and deeply experiential we would like to invite you this summer for a 3-month extended online ecourse with myself John Crowder together with seaer Krueger and Rod Williams exploring the often neglected person of the godhead Holy Spirit each week we'll gather online for live interactive discussions with students and participants June through August 2024 live sessions are time zone friendly for the USA the UK and Europe at the end of the course we will cap it off with an optional in-person gathering on the Emerald Coast of Florida with Warren Sylvester leading worship holy spirit is Illuminating and making the reality of our Union with God known to us in super abounding Wonder after 12 weeks of deep teaching on Holy Spirit this in person Gathering is about tangible impartation as we come together to experience a deeper Divine reality than words can express find out more about the course as well as the impartation weekend and take advantage of the early bird discount at John crow.
