![]() ![]() The great pilgrims along the way have discovered that progress from superficial to substantive apprehension of God is not so much a movement from darkness to light as it is a plummeting into the ever-increasing profundity of the cloud of unknowing. God in His inner essence is a mystery beyond our comprehension we will never know Him as He knows Himself. God’s World, His Word, His Works, and His Ways But if we draw our life from loving communion with the caring, radiant, majestic, and unfathomable Being who formed us for Himself, our souls become noble as they grow in conformity to His character. If our heart’s desire is fixed on something in this world, it becomes idolatrous and soul-corrupting. We gradually come to resemble what we worship. ![]() We become like our focus as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are being “transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). But when we turn the focus of our love away from the idols of this world system to the beauty of Christ, we discover the liberty of the Spirit of the Lord. ![]() Hosea declared that the people of Israel “became as detestable as that which they loved” (Hosea 9:10). Scripture teaches us that we steadily become conformed to what we most love and admire. As we learn to fix our eyes on Jesus, not for His benefits but for Himself, we find that we have all things in Him. As we take the risk of seeking God’s pleasure above our own, we discover the ironic byproduct of a greater satisfaction and contentment than if we sought these things as ends in themselves. But as we gradually (and often painfully) transfer our affections from the created and finite world to the uncreated and infinite Maker of the world, our souls become great and glorious. In 1677, Henry Scougal observed in his little book, The Life of God in the Soul of Man that “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” Our souls become emaciated when their pleasure is affixed to position, possessions, and power, because these things are destined to corrupt and perish. It instills in us a passion for Christ’s indwelling life and inspires us to swim in the river of torrential love that flows from His throne of grace. It prepares our souls for the “mystic sweet communion” of living entirely in God and in one another as the three Persons of God eternally live and rejoice in One another. The impenetrable mystery of us being in the divine Us, and the divine Us being in us transcends our imagination, but if it is true, all else pales in comparison.ĭevotional spirituality revels in the glorious attributes of God and aspires to lay hold of God’s aspiration for us. I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me” (John 17:21, 23). Jesus prayed on our behalf “that they may all be one even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us. The magnificent God who abounds in personal plenitude has no needs, yet He invites us to participate in the intense and interpenetrating life of the three eternally subsistent Selves. In the superabundance of His joy and life, He is at once solitude and society, the one and the many, supernal being as communion. The infinite-personal Lord of all is an unbounded loving community of three timeless and perfect Persons. The implications of this, if we think about it, are astounding and pervasive. Ultimate reality is not the cosmos or a mysterious force, but an infinite and loving Person. The world tells us that we derive our existence from it and that we should live for ourselves, but the Word teaches us that all we are and have comes from the Father who formed us for His pleasure and purposes. We do not exist for ourselves-we exist for the Father and through the Son. “There is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Corinthians 8:6). ![]()
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