01. Introduction
The Christian spiritual journey is one that moves us with surprising opportunities, changing invitations, and new challenges. God asks us regularly to change, to grow, to step into something unexpected. What, then, encourages us to accept the Holy Spirit’s invitations toward something new? Most of us enter the Christian faith within the context of one or two of the streams of Christian spirituality. Those streams become our “home base.” Sometimes our faith community may encourage us to explore another stream. Often our faith community suggests we stay put, or sit tight, within the stream where their comfort is highest.
All development theories with regard to faith are similar. They describe an unfolding pattern, with stages. A rough approximation of these stages includes:
- Awakening to God’s love and commitment to God (conversion)
- Study and learning about God
- Questioning
- Receiving and giving—reaching out to serve God and others
- Going deeper with God—being drawn to intimacy with God. There are many seasons in which we are invited to release ourselves more fully into God’s love rather than being in charge of our spiritual lives ourselves. This is deepening entrustment of ourselves to God, a kind of surrender.
- A “radical outlaw” stage—in which we decide whether or not to surrender to God completely
- A stage of deepening trust—in which we acknowledge the mysteries of good and evil, and a willingness to trust God in difficult seasons. In this stage, we yearn for a more Christ-like compassion and love for God, our neighbors and ourselves.
No matter what our beginning place, we are challenged by change. Sometimes this seems exciting; sometimes it feels threatening. Most often there is a mixture of exploration and holding back. We surrender our hearts to God in Christ and continue on this path with prayer and discernment. Often, we will find ourselves in circumstances that God is using to broaden our perspective on who He is and how He works. The Holy Spirit draws us into an expanding awareness and appreciation for the whole family of Christians. This includes those who are different from ourselves.
02. How Do We Risk?
I began my journey in a combination of the streams of the Evangelical and Virtuous Life (the Holiness Stream). I grew up hearing about the love of Jesus and responding, “Yes!” My community was steeped in biblical preaching; we memorized Scripture and desired to live a life of purity. Deeply involved in church life and relationships, we found the Lord’s Supper a time of remembrance and gratitude. For many years, I would have questioned whether or not people from some of the other streams of the Christian tradition were “truly Christian.” Across many years and seasons, both gradually and suddenly, God has brought me into the other streams.
My own experience may offer a hint of how change begins. On a blustery day, my mother and I stood for six hours in line outside the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago waiting for the doors to open for a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting.Kathryn Kuhlman was a charismatic evangelist and woman of faith who ran “healing crusades” from the 1940s through the 1970s. What had brought us there? My mother was concerned about a family member born with serious visual difficulties. She wanted to take him to a healing meeting. I was wary. I wanted to protect them from being duped. What were we getting ourselves into? I wondered. I needed to figure out what I believed about healing, what the Bible said, what was possible, and how we could (or if we even should) pray. This introduction to the Charismatic Stream was dramatic. I was concerned about validity and emotionalism. I asked God to protect me from the “lunatic fringe” and teach me whatever God wanted me to know. But even then we were hesitant. We sat in the back because of my reticence. Later, when the healing began and the Love of God was palpably poured out, I wanted to get a better view. Not long afterwards I sang in the front row of the choir at a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting to “see for myself”—which opened up endless questions for me.
This journey took me into charismatic worship filled with glorious singing in tongues. Eventually, I served with a prayer ministry team, witnessed God’s transforming presence, and received significant inner healing. Then, I was dipped into the Incarnational Stream and recognized the real presence of Christ in Communion. I asked, Why would Christ, who promises to be with us always, not be present in Communion? My journey through expressive, engaged Charismatic worship then carried me through wordiness into a quieter place. A gentle intimacy gathered me ever deeper into the heart of God—the Contemplative Stream. This change occurred not by my choice but by God’s transforming life in mine.
03. Will I Plunge or Not?
During the Ceauşescu Era, I traveled to Romania with a group carrying food and clothing to the family of Romanian friends who had defected to the United States.In the 1960s and 1970s, Nicolae Ceauşescu became head of the Communist Party (1965), head of state (1967) and assumed the newly established role of President of Romania in 1974. Our friend’s husband had been ordered by the government to divorce her. When he refused, he was imprisoned. When we arrived, he was still in prison.
Everything felt unsafe. We sensed the danger when we landed in Bucharest, Romania. The city was literally dark. Each family was given a small quota of electricity usage each month and it was very expensive to use more. There were frequent outages when no one had power, and in the winter months thermostats were set at 55 degrees. We saw long lines of cars being pushed toward gas stations in the darkness. When we asked if we were safe, we were told we were the safest ones in the country because we were being “watched.” Late at night we journeyed perilously with a Romanian woman to deliver what we had brought. The next day our group was traveling in the only air-conditioned bus in Bucharest. We passed the Eastern European bloc leaders riding in the dilapidated hot bus we had used the day before. We concluded that our air-cooled bus must be bugged. Our guide was probably a member of the Secret Police.
Swimming in the Social Justice Stream of the compassionate life felt dangerous and at the same time divinely appointed. I did not plunge in voluntarily. I was called in and gradually did what seemed right.
Before the trip I remember writing in my journal words that seemed to be from God: “There are things I want to show you but you must be in a particular place to see them. Eventually you will say, ‘I wouldn’t want to have missed that.’ ”
04. “Not Like a Tame Lion”
As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is “not like tame lion.”C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 182. Surrender to God will always have its perilous edges as we allow ourselves to be less in charge and seek to respond moment by moment to divine invitations. We are like Brother Lawrence in his kitchen practicing the presence of God. It was said of him that no matter what tensions or demands he experienced as a kitchen worker, he remained willingly available and open to God’s love.
Sometimes God seems to teach us before we have words to describe our experience and reality. At the seminary at which I worked, students came asking me to listen and pray. In the context of prayerful listening, I was being taught from within the Contemplative Stream about spiritual direction and transformation. I learned a way of being together—with people and the Holy Spirit—and listening for God’s invitations—not prescribing or deciding the agenda—trusting that the Holy Spirit would bring forth whatever was needed. Little by little I witnessed God’s presence in the Contemplative Stream, the stream of love resting in the love of God, trusting that all the previous grounding in Scripture and in Christ was the foundation so this would be “safe,” yet knowing it does not always “feel safe” in any of the streams.
God invited me more fully into the Contemplative Stream through lectio divina—the slow soaking in Scripture with the intention to listen for the Holy Spirit. God drew me into listening prayer with fewer words—perhaps with only a simple “love word” that invites the Spirit. In that quiet and inward exchange, I received and responded to God’s love.
In my journey, as in yours, the streams ebb and flow within God’s tender love. God invites our vulnerability, attentiveness, intentionality—all these are ongoing in the midst of our ordinary lives.