Category: Level: Intermediate

Many of us will face seasons in our lives when we cannot sense God anymore. We will feel like he left us, or maybe doesn’t even exist. This usually happens after we have overcome most of our major external sins and then made considerable progress in loving God and others. But in spite of our progress, we still can’t connect with God. We think back to times when we felt God’s presence or could clearly see his activity in our lives. We remember the pleasure we had with God, especially during worship, reading scripture, or prayer. But suddenly our spiritual life seems dry or even dark. We don’t feel the enthusiasm for God we had before. Yet, there are many benefits of spiritual dryness. This stage of the Christian life has been experienced and written about by many of the great Christian teachers since the earliest centuries. Some have called Continue Reading →

Contemplation is simply gazing on something in order to absorb it, not to analyze it or figure it out. Other words that describe contemplation are attentiveness and watching. We could also call it quiet receptivity. An example of contemplation that many of us do is watching a sunset. Usually, when we watch a sunset we just gaze and enjoy. We don’t need to analyze the physics of a sunset or really think about anything; we are just observing and absorbing. You benefit from contemplation through experiencing whatever you contemplate. Contemplative prayer is simply contemplation directed at God. It is not meditation, which is ruminating over something and trying to gain understanding. Meditation is good but it is different from contemplation. In contemplation we simply become attentive to God or whatever we sense God might be doing inside us. In the Pentecostal/Charismatic tradition people sometimes use the phrase “being in God’s Continue Reading →

After turning away from the more obvious sins in our lives, we may begin to think that we are fairly godly. But that is when we face the real battle against sin. Sinful thoughts and attitudes remained buried deep within our hearts and control us in ways we don’t realize. If we saw all our sinfulness at once, it would overwhelm us and drive some of us mad…which is a warning against excessive self-examination. Yet we still desire to grow in godliness. We want to share in His nature and reflect it to others, and to do that we must continually give Him permission to uncover deeper areas of our lives. Better yet, we should eagerly ask Him to do so and pursue it with our whole heart. Then our heart will have an attitude of continual openness to His promptings. We will be more willing to open the door Continue Reading →