Copyright 2016 by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
The soul of the believer can enter into the sublimity of God\u2019s ultimate reality in all its forms, in security and love, as long as the Spirit of Christ is truly leading. It is then that we can safely lose our self-consciousness in being caught up in God\u2019s presence in such a way that He, and He alone, is our focus. Such are perhaps the most blessed moments in our lives on earth for they are, in reality, brief \u201creal-time\u201d experiences of the eternal existence that awaits those who love God.<\/p>\n
If this sounds a bit mystical it is because it is just that. Some degree of specifically Christian <\/em>mysticism has been part of the lives of many orthodox believers throughout the centuries. Some great saints have been gifted with more of these experiences than most, but I believe that few who have sincerely followed Jesus Christ for any significant length of time have not known something of what\u00a0C.S. Lewis\u00a0once called \u201cbirthday cards\u00a0from Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n These transcendent moments with God can manifest themselves at any time in any place. While they often occur in corporate worship with other Christians, they just as frequently happen in solitude. They may be directly linked with the reading of Scripture (and, in fact, must not be contrary to Scripture if not to be considered suspect), but not always. They may even come with just a \u201creading\u201d of nature. The natural world is a sort of portal which the Holy Spirit uses to reach many. Certainly what I like to call \u201cdirect Creation\u201d has often been the catalyst for holy flashes of glory that I have myself experienced. Music can also carry us into the ecstasy which God sometimes grants His children. Like nature sound and song can carry the scent of the eternal and be the divinely chosen instrument for initiating such experiences.<\/p>\n The Lord can use these and a seemingly infinite number of other circumstances to make Himself viscerally known to us. A factory worker focusing on the things of God in the midst of his daily work can just as easily be blessed in this way as she who beholds a breathtaking sunset on a solitary mountainside. God is not limited.<\/p>\n He is also not limited in the kind of mystical \u201cpostcards\u201d He sends those He loves. The ones I have experienced have often been intensely personal; I suspect this is the case with all of us who have received them. Human beings are, far more than snowflakes, unique individuals; we cannot effectively share these moments with even our closest fellow travelers because they are, in a sense, just between our Redeemer and ourselves. If we cannot share some of the moments of our deepest human<\/em> intimacy, we certainly should not expect to be able to relate all aspects of such moments with our Creator<\/em>. In fact some of this intimacy might be so deep that we would not share it with others even if we could.<\/p>\n There have always been those among our more fundamentalist brethren who would take me to task for using the term \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201cmystical\u201d in the same sentence. I have pointed out that any experience that clearly takes us away from the Spirit of the Word of God must be discerningly rejected but, for me, that is warning enough. Anyone who makes a sweepingly negative statement about transcendent visitations from the God of the Cross has probably not yet experienced one. These brethren are, of course, entirely entitled to their own opinions, but I pray that they, too, will at some point know of what I speak\u2026for the moments I have known of mystic experience with my Lord have been the best of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright 2016 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved The soul of the believer can enter into the sublimity of God\u2019s ultimate reality in all its forms, in security and love, as long as the Spirit of Christ is truly leading. It is then that we can safely lose our self-consciousness in being caught up in… <\/p>\n