Are You Awake - Part One

For the Supersaints Only?

 

            When many Christians first hear about the practice of the presence of God, it strikes them as an impossible discipline. Perhaps supersaints locked up in monasteries can attain this level of awareness, but not us average folk who work nine-to-five jobs and raise families! It’s hard enough to pray ten minutes a day and make it to church once a week! For us ordinary Christians, trying to remain aware of God’s presence moment-by-moment seems like a hyperspiritual pipe dream.

Are you awake?

            If you’re inclined to feel this way, it might be because, like everyone else in modern Western culture, you’ve been brainwashed by what is called “the secular worldview.” In this view of the world, what’s real, or at least what’s important, is the physical here-and-now. When we’re brainwashed by this worldview, we experience the world as though God did not exist, for we habitually exclude him from our awareness. We may still believe in God, of course, but he’s not real to us most of the time.

            Because of this we go about our day-to-day lives as functional atheists. We may pray and worship God on occasion, but these are “special times,” isolated from our “normal,” secular day-to-day life. So thoroughly are we brainwashed by the secular mind-set that the very suggestion that we could routinely experience the world in a way that includes God strikes us as impossible.

            If you’re looking for an explanation why so few contemporary believers experience the fullness of love, joy, peace, and the transforming power that the New Testament promises, I think you’ve just found it. The secular worldview causes us to compartmentalize our life, isolating the “spiritual” from the rest of our experience. Our relationship with God is boxed into special prayer and devotion times along with weekend church services, all of which have little impact on us. But in the process of segregating God from our “normal” life, we block the love, joy, peace, and transforming power of God.

            I wish to make all see that everyone can aspire…to the same love, the same surrender, the same God and his work, and thereby effortlessly achieve the most perfect saintliness.

            J.-P. de Caussade

            If we’re ever going to experience the fullness of Life that the New Testament promises us, we’re going to have to tear down the walls that compartmentalize the “spiritual” and “normal.”¹ We’re going to have to accept a new definition of “normal,” and this means we need to get over our mistaken idea that the practice of the presence of God is only for the “superholy.”

            God is only asking for your hearts. If you truly seek this treasure, this kingdom where God alone reigns, you will find it. Your heart, if it is totally surrendered to God, is itself that treasure, that very kingdom you long for and are seeking.

            J.-P. de Caussade

            The call to practice the presence of God is not a hyperspiritual exercise. On the contrary, it’s the core of what it means to surrender our life to Christ. Though few realize it, this practice is woven into the very fabric of the New Testament, written for all followers of Jesus. Aspiring to remain awake to God’s ever-present love is simply an aspect—a foundational aspect—of what C. S. Lewis referred to as “mere Christianity.”