September 19, 2017
 
 
 
 
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Led by the Holy Spirit,
St. John's mission is to inspire people to grow into the heart and mind of Christ by engaging together in worshiping, serving, and spiritual formation.

 
 
 
 
 

Embarking on the Spiritual Journey Session 7:
Serving God from a place of deep prayer

 
 
 
 

This is the seventh (and final) of seven readings and questions to ponder for our fall Adult Spiritual Formation series “Embarking on the Spiritual Journey.” Please read and save this column. Spend some time reflecting on the questions, and jotting down your thoughts. Plan to gather after 9:30am worship on November 5th for small group discussion. Material is drawn from pages 97-121 of “An Invitation to the Spiritual Journey” by The Rev. John P. Gorsuch, and is used with the generous permission of his family. For the introduction to and all seven issues in this series, please see our website.


Spiritual practice gives us nourishment for the journey, a journey which includes serving God in the world. Without this nourishment, says Gorsuch, “we fall prey to the lesser spirits of greed, undue self-importance, violence, dependence on the opinion of others, overweening attachment to things less then Spirit to give us meaning, and defensiveness. Under all these destructive spirits is fear. We fear we are nothing and so must create vast amounts of clutter about ourselves to be something.” We grow disoriented and burn out because we are “simply unable to carry the banner of compassion indefinitely.” We become (says Henri Nouwen) “so dominated by [our] fear of tomorrow that [we] miss the gift of the hour.”


Gorsuch observes that Thomas Keating, in addition to being a contemplative monk, was also a social activist. “Whatever he wrote or did as an activist was forged on the anvil of his interior life with God.” Gorsuch also lifts up Mother Teresa as an example of someone who served God out of her interior life with God: “Her service flow[ed] from a deeper place than her own solitary action. Those who prayerfully serve may do at least as much or even more than those who work out of their own energy, but paradoxically those who pray and serve do less of the work, for they know that it is God who is the Doer.”


“God is the well of living water, the reservoir of life force just beneath the surface of our lives. That submerged power is like a sunken treasure chest, full of marvels, waiting for us to discover what is there and bring it to the surface. Mostly it lies untouched and neglected, but it is there, filled with love and energy beyond imagining. Being told to serve or admonished to love doesn’t go deeply enough. We learn to love by opening the windows and letting God’s life touch the inmost rooms of our souls. When we learn to open ourselves to this Spirit, we find that we serve the world less and less out of our own energy and more and more out of the vast power of God which moves through us to bless and help. God is the Doer. And in that knowledge comes joy.”


“When people know something of this joy, they embrace the whole world. They serve not because they expect anything or are forced to act with dutiful kindness but because that is the essence of their being, like the shining of a star or the blossoming of a tree. Service like this is the spontaneous outflow of divine inner communion.”


As we spend more time with God, promises Gorsuch, our perspectives broaden and deepen beyond their prior limits, and we begin to “see in universals because God is universal.” Our empathy grows for the sufferings of others, and we want to help them move through suffering and “experience the beauty of God.” Gorsuch is clear that service to others “has to start and end with prayer [, for] only prayer opens the doors to the deepest reservoirs of grace.” The journey into divine love is not an intellectual one, but an experiential one, and prayer is the vehicle for that experience. Prayer aids us in “moving into the [presence of God] with the consciousness of generosity rather than fearful anxiety.”


As that “consciousness of generosity” rises in us, “we learn that we don’t have to close down to be safe. We begin to sense God’s hand at work, guiding us. Sometimes, we discover, God opens up fuller perspectives to us…or helps us discover what lessons we need to learn as we take our next steps. Sometimes God gives us very down-to-earth blessings as doors are opened to whatever is right for us at this stage of the journey. Sometimes we are in the desert but find that God is there, too, wanting to help us grow.”


Gorsuch concludes his book by emphasizing the importance of the spiritual journey: “The most challenging and important task we humans have is our spiritual development. We avoid it because it threatens us to shift the center of our consciousness to that which lies within from that which is without. Yet history bears witness that God’s children have tried everything under the sun and moon to satisfy the hunger that only God himself can fill. In all the universe, there is only one way to gratify this hunger, and that is through the integration of our surface lives with the Divine Self which lives in our depths and to which we are joined.”


“We need to trust our deepest instincts for the Divine. We need to trust that the same divine pattern that makes up the universe is also true of us. Within the pattern of our beings is the image of the living Christ, waiting to come forth.” Gorsuch compares us to mustard seeds, which hold hidden within them the pattern of what they will become. “It is no more obvious to our surface minds what we are than the pattern in a mustard seed is to the naked eye. Yet as the pattern in the mustard seed is locked within its life force, awaiting proper conditions for release, the Christ pattern is locked within us, awaiting our willingness to let God plant, water and nourish that which God eagerly calls us to become.”


“That which is deeply wise in us knows the truth. We are here to be in a permanent and abiding communion with the One who calls to us from the center of our souls.”

 

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

1. Can you identify an occasion in your life when you have become involved in social action spurred by “fear of tomorrow” and can you identify a different occasion when you have become involved in social action not as a result of your own energy but instead as a result of “the vast power of God which moves through us to bless and help”? What differences can you identify between these two experiences of serving?

 

2. According to Gorsuch we each hold within us the image of the living Christ, the pattern of what we will become. As you review your life thus far, what pattern have you seen emerging; who are you in the process of becoming?

 

3. Gorsuch says that when we allow a “consciousness of generosity” to rise within us, we begin to sense God’s hand at work, guiding us. Can you identify specific times in your life—especially recently or currently—when you have understood that God is indeed beside you and guiding you?

 

SCRIPTURES TO CONSIDER

Matthew 13: 31-32     The Parable of the Mustard Seed