Faith At Work Magazine 2004 #2: Gordon Cosby – The Invisible World
Nothing in the Christian life works unless we get the hang of prayer. Christianity as a theological system, as an ethical and moral system, simply won’t do. Unless we can connect with another order of reality, the whole thing is just too exhausting to try to work through.
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Prayer is learning the art of the connection. It is the heart of what the Christian life is all about and because it is so central, we’ve always had a basic discipline of prayer and meditation for every member and intern member of the Church of the Saviour. Unless we are lying to ourselves, the Holy Spirit, and the community, each of us is working each day in a set aside time in the art of prayer. We believe, if we continue to be faithful, the time will come when our lives will be broken into by another order and we will be transformed and as transformed will become transformers. As a reminder to those of us who have been praying for many years and as guidance for those who may want to get started in prayer, I suggest three elementary truths about prayer.
1) We have to have a basic, fundamental conversion, a metanoia, or turning around. The most fundamental way of describing this conversion is that we become aware of the invisible world. The central conversion of metanoia is to pass from the visible world into the invisible world of the almighty uncreated energies of God as the foundation of all reality. We have to make a decision that it is in this invisible world that we are going to live. |
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I’m quite aware there are many things we cannot accomplish by the will. “Those things which I will I do not and those things which I would not those I do. Woe is me. Who will deliver me from this body of death?” The depths of our lives, the unconscious, is so deep that many things we decide with our wills are simply not possible. But I believe we can be brushed by another world, an invisible world, and we can either go back to live in the visible world or we can decide we will look to the invisible as our source of meaning, joy, peace, direction and power. And that’s a fundamental conversion that has to take place before prayer has any reality, because if the world’s not there, then to seek to enter into it really doesn’t have much meaning. It is a matter of affirming God, saying to Him: You are.
We can sense God, however, and at the same time feel cut off from Him like the young disciple of Elisha whose eyes had not been opened. Our consciousness is conditioned against perceiving God, but we can decide to find our meaning in the invisible, in the realm of the spirit. It’s a matter of what Morton Kelsey has described as getting out of the box, the space-time box, the box of cause and effect, the box of rationality, the box of feeling that the thing which is important is consciousness, which is really just the tip of an unlimited, exciting reality. Von Heugel talked about God as being the stupendously rich reality. But I can experience the invisible, and all of us have, and essentially remain in the box. If the invisible is to be real to me, I must set aside time to train my spirit to sense a whole new dimension of being. Most Westerners remain in the box all their lives. We may be among those who never break out. So the first step is simply to work with the assumption that the other world is there and that it is not rational as we think it to be. 2) Recognize that this whole order of being, this world which is there, is a gracious reality. It is ready to flow into me if I can open to it as a gracious reality. It is for me. This coming into me will bless me, thus it is a blessed reality. My problem is that I’m wounded and your problem is that you’re wounded. At bottom this means that we feel rejected, not wanted, not cherished. And because our need to be loved and to give love is so deep and central, to be denied this makes us angry beyond the conscious knowing and an angry person consciously or unconsciously is tempted to destroy, to kill, and often does. Most people in the world are deeply angry. That’s the reason you have to watch them. A person so wounded finds it difficult to open to this gracious reality, this One who loves us and who comes in blessing. Dare we let it in? How can we be sure? We’ve been wounded before and hardly survived. To open to this infinite flow of reality could be a final wounding if it proves not to be a gracious reality. Herein lies our awful dilemma: to open or not to open. If we open, what will fall into us? What will come into the wellsprings of our inner life? What will come into us through our unconscious breaking into our consciousness? We are not sure what kind of spirit this Holy Spirit is. Many of us feel this Spirit, this Christ working in or knocking on the fast-barred doors of our lives, is a judge ready to pass sentence on us. Our guilt is such because of our cut-offness. A part of us feels that such a sentence is justified. In fact, we’ve already passed sentence on ourselves and for years we’ve been living in a prison. We wouldn’t dare break out. But if one is to pray, it is necessary to take this terrible risk, this risk of assuming that this infinite life and energy and power, ready to break into us, is gracious and is working and will work for our good. Christ has an infinite love fashioned for us, not to wound us, not to devour us, but to give Himself to us that we can experience the transformation, the transfiguration, the resurrection, which he experienced. Paul describes this reality in Romans 8:28: “In everything God cooperates for good with those who love Him.” And then he says, “If God is on our side,” (and the assumption is that He is on our side) “who is against us?” There’s nothing that can be against us with any ultimate power. Jesus said, “Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” God is on our side. Who is against us? He did not spare his own Son, but surrendered Him for us all. With this gift how can He fail to lavish upon us all that which He has to give? He has already surrendered that which was most priceless to Him. I find that I start almost every prayer of mine remembering this graciousness of God. He has already bestowed on me, in Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. I remember that in Christ my release is secured and my sins are forgiven. This then prepares me and gets me ready. It makes me want to open myself. 3) I f I’m aware that that realm is there, if f I’m aware that it is a gracious reality, then I have a possibility of surrendering to the ocean of love which is ready to pour in on me. And what pours in? Christ pours in, the Holy Spirit pours in, the Father pours in, this trinitarian life actually, literally comes into me as I open, as I surrender with abandon to the whole realm of reality which is there. Christ comes through the door once closed but now opened and He brings everybody with Him. Often when He comes in I find that He has His arms around my mission group members, and all of His Church. He brings with Him all of the broken ones. These broken ones are within me, these wounded ones are within me, the murderers are let in, and the idiots are let in. I find by this opening that my abandoned surrender puts me in touch with the whole panorama of being. Life is now flowing back and forth. I’m connected with this infinite nourishing quality of being and in this moment I feel in a new way that I belong to a totality. Something has happened; there’s been a shift and I find that rather than struggling with rejection, I feel loved beyond my capacity to receive it. I work with this day after day. My acceptance by God at infinite cost becomes such a reality that I can hardly remember the rejection and loneliness which used to be so very real. Trust in the invisible world gradually deepens until one day I’m aware that the visible things that used to draw me and seemed to be important and demand unspeakable energy simply have no power to draw me. I don’t have to be detached from creatures, but I just can’t get interested in them in the same way because another world has become real. One final thing I’ve noticed is that when I take time for this kind of prayer then I see the future and hope, which has no rational basis, wells up within my spirit. My mind is a well of increasingly discouraging trends and events but this has no power to quench the hope. Christ gives me, personally, the assurance that all is well. His new order is well and healthy; nothing is wrong with it. And I am able to see a tiny portion of the immense plan which constitutes His purpose. I can see my little place in that plan and in those moments the problems and the difficulties seem small and the wonder of it seems overwhelming. No one can convince another of this. Only God himself, in prayer can come and reveal these things to us. Gordon Cosby is the founding pastor of The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. Although the church now exists in a number of small communities, Gordon still preaches at the ecumenical service on Sunday morning and teaches regularly in the Servant Leadership School. This article was reprinted from F@W, March, 1976. Gordon’s collection of sermons, By Grace Transformed is available from Faith At Work for $17. |
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