Be Broken Ministries

Life is a journey and sometimes a battle. Frequently, it seems life is both simultaneously. As I write this, I am still moving in my own personal journey of knowing God more intimately. Just as you do in your life, I struggle against the hectic daily demands of our post-modern contemporary society to make space for Him in contemplative prayer. There is always the challenge, perhaps temptation would be a better word, to coast back to knowing about God, rather than maturing in our relationship with Him. I was thinking about my own spiritual journey this past week, as I struggle with moving higher upward and further inward to know God. I was encouraged to read in Jeremiah 9:24, “But let him who glories [boasts] glory in this, that he understands and knows Me (personally and practically, directly discerning and recognizing My character), that I am the Lord Who practices loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight says the Lord."¹ God as our Creator gives us a hint that the most important thing in life is knowing Him.

Do you understand how “knowing about” is different from knowing Him? The closest analogy would be that “knowing” is equivalent to the mystery of marital oneness that occurs with sexual intercourse within the holy covenant of marriage. God pursues us to know Him intimately, understanding Him in a personal way. He wants us to know him practically, directly discerning, and recognizing His character. To know that He is a Holy God, Who practices loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness. And He delights in our knowing Him. He wants us to make space in our lives to know Him, not just for us to be content with an intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.

I know that making space for knowing God can seem a daunting task with unclear benefits so I want to share a glimpse of the beginning of my own personal journey. But before I do, I want to add a caveat so you can perhaps gain encouragement before you jump into this unknown. As you begin this journey, you must understand that there is no secret formula. God meets us each where we are, because we are each equally His divine creatures. He will meet you exactly where you are and not expect you to be a giant of faith before your time. So, as I write on the topic of contemplative prayer from my own personal journey, there may be things that you may not understand. This means neither that I am a giant of faith nor that I am somehow better. But it is evidence that God meets us where we are. It also does not mean that you should give up or be discouraged. Consider what C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:

"There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the outside, before you have become a Christian. But there are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road. These things are purely practical, though they do not look as if they were. They are directions for dealing with particular cross-roads and obstacles on the journey and they do not make sense until a man has reached those places. Whenever you find any statement in Christian writings which you can make nothing of, do not worry. Leave it alone. There will come a day, perhaps years later, when you suddenly see what it meant. If one could understand it now, it would do one harm." ²

It is not unusual to find passages that, at the moment of reading, do not seem to make sense. Like Lewis recommends, whenever you find any statement in Christian writings which does not correspond with your views, do not be troubled. Leave that portion and take what you can from the work. It may not be yet time (in God’s great and perfect timing) for you to understand it. You may also hold different doctrinal views but allow me to suggest that God is not defined by denominations.

In a previous column, I mentioned that I have a Protestant mind, but a Catholic heart. That statement is a preface to the beginning of my realization that God could not be put into a denominational box (or any sort of imaginary box for that matter—because God is so much more infinitely great than anything we can imagine) that began when I was still a boy. And that realization has grown, and does continue to grow every day of my life journey. So, be prepared to stretch and revise your understanding of God as you come to know Him.

A significant chapter in my spiritual growth occurred while just a boy. I grew up in a rural, isolated area. My dad was a sharecropper dairy farmer. I was the firstborn of three boys in a family with strong Irish Protestant roots. Our county was predominantly Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant. My paternal grandparents owned a small farm across a field from where we lived.

Farm life involved a lot of hard work, but in retrospect there was a rhythm to life in that rural setting. When there was a brief interlude for leisure, I would grab a cane pole and head for a nearby creek. Listening to the stream move along lapping at the stones along the side of the creek fed my soul. These introductory lessons in solitude taught me the importance of carving out time to listen to God, which is critical if we are going to discover who we are and find the purpose for which we are created. These calm moments of reflection also prepared me to know God at a deeper level.

When I was ten years old, one Sunday in August my grandparents took me to church picnic. My parents were nominal churchgoers. When they did not go, Grandma made sure I went with her. My grandfather did not go to church at all, because he was mad at God, but he would go to some church social functions. My grandfather was Irish Protestant, although I never saw any evidence of faith, and he was very vocal about his disdain for the Irish Catholic. In retrospect, in our county we were a minority. I did not understand my grandpa’s contempt towards our neighbors.

Late that August Sunday as we cleared a woods about two miles from the farm my parents sharecropped, the horizon looked strange. When we arrived we found that the barn had ignited by spontaneous combustion and everything burned to the ground except the farmhouse. It was a horrible tragedy for my parents. They lost livestock, and farm equipment. Most devastating to me was that nearly all of our family pets perished in the fire.

We still had cows to milk and life had to go on—that same day in fact. My parents desperately needed help, and an amazing thing happened that planted a seed in my heart. It was our Catholic neighbors who came from miles, not our Protestant church family, to bring food and help my parents through that day of crisis and the days that followed. I met people I never knew existed. Those dear people walked alongside my parents to encourage and help us. To God’s glory, my grandpa’s ignorant prejudice fell by the wayside in the face of the love being ministered to us by a denomination he had totally misrepresented. Without me understanding, God was showing me that He is not limited by any one denomination. God is much bigger than any box we might try to put Him in.

In retrospect, as C. S. Lewis wisely wrote, “There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the outside.” At that point in my journey I knew about God, but I did not know God—I had not come to faith. I was, however, at a crossroads in my journey of recognizing the difference between those individuals who knew God and those who just knew about Him, by the action of their good works. The most important thing in life is knowing God.

¹The Amplified Bible. Bracketed KJV. Author’s emphasis

²C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952), 112.