See Yourself Truthfully

Categories: uncategorized

Tags: Faith, church, Henri Nouwen

Date: 11 May 2008 22:51:07

DSCN4359 I feel that over the last week or so I have met with God in the strangest of places. Those times have been both sublime, and painful and tonight at church I had the same experience. The theme this evening was about the Holy Spirit and I nearly didn't go, partly out of fear, and partly because I was knackered. My previous experiences of 'Holy-Spirit stuff' has often been of hyped up worship, pseudo-spiritual experiences and over-the-top emotion. I don't like feeling out of control. I want to experience God in a quiet, hopeful, peaceful, gentle way. In some ways I need to experience him like that, because otherwise I get flashbacks to the previous story.

Tonight gave me a little bit of hope that this experience of God may not be so far out of my reach. Once the talky bit was done they encouraged people to do up for prayer, something that I resolutely did not want to do, but in the end I did and I had a wonderful experience. What was said over me was spot on and reflected so much of what I have been thinking about over the last week. I have wept more over the last week than I have done in a long time, but all of it has been cathartic, rather than unhealthy. The tears were not uncontrollable, they were gentle, cleansing, soothing and full of hopefulness.

This little quote from Henri Nouwen's book The Inner Voice of Love probably sums up better all the recent experiences I have been having...

“You continue struggling to see your own truth. When people who know your heart well and love you dearly say that you are a child of God, that God has entered deeply into your being, and that you are offering much of God to others, you hear these statements as pep talks. You don't believe that these people are really seeing what they are saying.

You have to start seeing yourself as your truthful friends see you. As long as you remain blind to your own truth, you keep putting yourself down and referring to everyone else as better, holier, and more loved than you are. You look up to everyone in whom you see goodness, beauty, and love because you so not see any of these qualities in yourself. As a result, you begin leaning on others without realising that you have everything you need to stand on your own feet.

You cannot force things, however. You cannot make yourself see what others see, you cannot fully claim yourself when parts of you are still wayward. You have to acknowledge where you are and affirm that place. You have to be willing to live your loneliness, your incompleteness, your lack of total incarnation fearlessness, and trust that God will give you the people to keep showing your the truth of who you are.”

(Thanks to a certain person for picking up this book and reading this out to me... it so makes sense!)