Knowing as We Are Known: An Exercise in Inner Stillness (A 29 Day Journey)

Knowing As

We Are Known

An Exercise in Inner Stillness

(

A 29 Day Journey)

Eugene T. Yotka

Copyright © 2012 Eugene T. Yotka

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-5651-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5652-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012910863

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/19/2012

Contents

Introduction

Prologue

Contemplation (Week One)

Saturday Night: Preparation for Contemplation

Sunday: Pondering Stillness; Contemplating God’s Love

Monday: Pondering the Sinful Nature

Tuesday: Pondering God’s Love

Wednesday: Finding A Sacred Still Place (In the Midst of God’s Temple)

Thursday: Centering Prayer

Friday: Becoming Contemplative

Saturday: Solitude and Selah

Waiting (Week Two)

Saturday Night: Preparation for Waiting

Sunday: Becoming Still As We Wait For God

Monday: For Whom Do We Wait?

Tuesday: Waiting With Humility

Wednesday: Waiting Patiently

Thursday: Power and Strength Come From Waiting on the Lord

Friday: The Goodness and Humility of Waiting

Saturday Morning: A Waiting, Hopeful Soul

Hope (Week Three)

Saturday Night: Preparation for Hope

Sunday: Quiet Hope

Monday: We Place Our Hope in God’s Steadfast Love

Tuesday: | Hope in God’s Promise

Wednesday: Hope in the Name

Thursday: Hope In The Resurrection

Friday: Hope of Sharing the Glory of God

Saturday Morning: A Living Hope

Assurance (Week Four)

Saturday Night: Preparation for Assurance

Sunday: A Tranquil Soul

Monday: Tranquility in the Assurance of the Resurrection

Tuesday: Stillness in the Assurance of Faith

Wednesday: Tranquility in Knowing

Thursday: Tranquility in the Assurance of God’s Presence

Friday: Peace In the Assurance that God Is for Us

Saturday: The Necessity of Prayer

Works Cited

For my loving wife MaryAnn who sacrificed much so I could follow my passion. She has been my inspiration. And for my children and grandchildren, Beau, Kitty, Tara, Kurt, Victoria, Isabella and Kaya who constantly support me more than they know.

Introduction

I first presented this series of readings to my congregation in 2011 as a daily Advent study and devotional series titled Nurturing Tranquility. It included a liturgical reading and sermon study for each of the four Sundays of Advent, combined with a daily reading for each week day of Advent. Originally, the 32 days of devotional study, reading and exercises for Advent were designed to help the congregation wait and prepare for Christmas Day by focusing on deep inner tranquility, and as a way of preparing for the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Subsequently, several who participated felt that this would be a helpful process, at any time, for all who seek to nurture tranquility in their lives. They saw these writings as a way to practice the Presence of God more deeply and profoundly, suggesting I make them available as a resource to other Christians. Here now is the fruit of that suggestion—Knowing As We Are Known: An Exercise In Inner Stillness (A 29 Day Journey)

In conjunction with the readings in this book, maintaining a journal will help you capture your thoughts and reflections as you deepen your awareness of God’s presence in your life. I have personally found keeping a journal can be a fruitful spiritual discipline because it provides the vehicle by which I can ponder my thoughts both while I write them down and later on when I reread them. Furthermore, journal writing helps me to articulate my thoughts and emotions so that I might better capture their essence, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of my original thoughts, which I have found to be an improvement over relying strictly on memory.

I recommend that the reader make good use of the journaling aspect of our time together, so the overall experience of Knowing As We Are Known: An Exercise In Inner Stillness (A 29 Day Journey) will be greatly enhanced.

Prologue

The content of this 29-Day Journey is based on my own experience in learning to become inwardly still, an ongoing process for me. Much of this journey has been a path to self-discovery, as I search to know God more deeply in my life. In a real sense this is a journey of awakening and discovering, then discarding the many masks that I have worn over the years. Masks to impress people, to develop what I thought I should be, as well as masks to cope and even survive through difficult times. For the most part I learned these things early on in life, which I later mistook as my identity, who I was or who I should be. Being a good boy would invite the praise of others. Being a man with physical strength, intelligence, and wealth would earn me their love. Singing a song well would elicit their applause. And preaching a good sermon? Acceptance by the congregation would be mine!

My life became an ongoing attempt to please or impress, so others would accept me. I gradually formed my identity around those things I thought would make other people like and respect me. All along, however, I always felt unsettled, as if I could never quite live up to expectations. What made things even worse was that I learned to become quite adept at my own identity formation. Still, the more adept I became, the more aware I was I could not live up to the illusion I had created about myself. The fear of being found out was ever present. I had wrapped myself behind so many facades, worn so many masks, in order to be the person I thought I should be. It was not until about twelve years ago when I asked myself, Who Am I? that I discovered I had been kidding myself. I discovered that I had created an elaborate, quite impressive false self. Admitting that, I set out on a quest to find my true inner self.

Who did God create me to be? I had come to the realization that God had created me unique, but I had distorted my uniqueness with falsity. I wanted to discover who God created me to be, not who I had created myself to be. To do this I needed to begin identifying the false illusions that I had spun about myself, so that I could shed them and uncover my true self, the unique one that God had created me to be.

It was soon quite evident to me that although this was in many ways a very personal journey, it was in fact a journey every single human being must undergo if we have any hope of hearing God’s still small voice that tells us who we are. If we are to shed the lies that we have spun about ourselves in creating the false self, and finally discover the truth of which we are created and called to be, we need help.

The first astounding discovery I made was that I could not do what I had set out to do. I could not produce my true God-given self. At first quite disconcerting, it then dawned on me. If I am created in God’s image, and as a Christian saved by Jesus Christ, thus a person in whom the Holy Spirit lives, then this true self which I am seeking is already in the innermost depths of my being, my very heart, where God knows and speaks to me.

The search was not to obtain something. It was to discover something I already had, but was as yet unaware. This is the place where the Holy Spirit whispers to our spirit. The Apostle Paul, in Romans 8:16 states it thus, It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. NRS ¹ It seemed right and reasonable to me that the Spirit was speaking to that true self within me. All those years while I was trying to create an identity that would satisfy my need to be respected, and to relieve my fear of rejection, God was speaking and calling to me as God’s child. God knows this child, but does not know the false illusion that I had come to see as my identity. This is what Jesus meant in Matthew 25:12, when he said to the maidens who were not ready for the marriage feast; Truly I say to you, I do not know you. God knows the real me; the false me he does not know. Because the false me is an illusion, it is nothing, therefore there is nothing to know. God was already pointing to my true self while I was looking the other way developing the false self. As my false self becomes more and more evident I find that I can relinquish it and surrender to the true self that God is building in me. With this new-found self-knowledge, I am able to know God better because my true self is the very place that God knows me. The closer I get to God, the more I live out of my true self which is known by God. David Benner stated it quite succinctly in The Gift of Being Yourself ² when he wrote Knowing ourselves must therefore begin by knowing the self that is known by God.

The false identity I had created to impress the world was an illusion, but the self that is known by God is my true self. Only in the discovery of my true self, the one existing in the presence of God, can I hope for inward stillness, the shear silence within, where I can hear God’s still small voice and live in obedience to God’s will.

As I reflected on key aspects of the journey, which as I have noted is still ongoing, I discovered a map of sort, not a linear, step by step document, but a guide to a dynamic ever present set of doorways that open and close, yet always lead my true self closer to God. These doorways are Contemplation, Waiting, Hope, and Assurance, each operating within a superstructure of Faith. This is important because we cannot begin the journey to inner stillness through these four doorways unless each is grounded in a deep abiding faith in Jesus Christ. Trusting God stands at the very heart of the journey because, along the way, so many situations, both good and bad, have the potential of derailing us. Faith opens us up to the light of God that radiates from the presence of God. Thomas Merton writes, Faith is the opening of an inward eye, the eye of the heart, to be filled with the presence of divine light (New Seeds of Contemplation) ³. This is the place where the true self resides. This is the place where inner stillness is experienced. Faith in God allows us to thank God for guiding us in life situations that can cause disequilibrium and chaos. Trusting the Lord gives us doorways that provide for the re-orientation and respite we need along the way. These doorways help us strip away the façade, discover humility, open our lives to surprise and patience, and rest in the sure and constant presence of God. In this way we journey toward peace, tranquility, rest and inner stillness.

Let us look at each of these four doorways that lead to where the true self resides.

Contemplation: At its center contemplation is interior silence that opens up to God all that we are: body, heart, mind and soul. In so doing, we come to a point where we rest in the Mystery of God who is perfect love. We ponder God’s presence and envision God’s love in and through us and all creation. This contemplative vision brings forth contemplative action that subdues the chaos around us. In the stillness we ponder God’s love, especially God’s love for us within the context of our sinful nature. We enter into sacred stillness in the midst of ourselves who are the temple of God. We keep our true selves centered in such a way that we find ourselves acutely aware of God’s presence. Outward solitude gives way to inner solitude. Within the process of contemplation we surrender to God’s almighty power to bring us into the place of inner stillness.

Waiting: Those who practice spiritual waiting live a paradox. That for which they wait, they already possess. Spiritual waiting can be a great source of inner stillness as we can rest in the presence of a God who is always present, while at the same time we seek and desire more of God’s presence. However, what we wait for is not