The stages of spiritual life: how your spiritual life grows

"How can I grow spiritually?" "Can I know where I am on the spiritual path?" "Is there a way for me to be more intentional about my spiritual life?" These are the kinds of questions people often ask me when we sit down together. And if they don't ask them exactly, these are the questions that hide within the other questions and struggles they bring into the counseling conversation.

The short answer is, yes, you can grow spiritually. Yes, you can have some understanding of where you may be on the path. And yes, there is a way for you to be more intentional about your spiritual life. What's more, doing so is rewarding. We are spiritual beings, made by God, breathed into life by God, and we were made to experience the joy, peace and meaning of union with Jesus Christ in the Spirit.

Church leaders often talk about growing the church, but when they do they usually look at age stages or social categories and how each stage and category requires certain programs. They program for young people, families, singles, middle-aged and older adults. But while age stages and social categories are helpful for developing certain kinds of programs, they are not the most helpful ways to think about spiritual growth for people. A person can be young but quite spiritually advanced. An older person can be newly awakened to the life of the Spirit and relatively immature spiritually.  If we think of spiritual growth in only age-stages or social categories we can get stuck, living a more superficial spiritual lives than we were intended to live.

Over the next few weeks, my posts will explore the time-tested stages of spiritual growth and how understanding them will help you grow into "maturity, the measure of the full stature of Christ" (Ephesians 4.13).

These stages are informed by spiritual teachers as diverse as St. John Climacus and the Fathers of the ancient church, the Cloud of Unknowing in the Middle Ages, St. Teresa of Avila in the Renaissance, more recently the observations of Ken Wilber, a contemporary philosopher.  The six stage framework is drawn from contemporary writers Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich (who was my New Testament professor years ago).

To grow in prayer, get this simple book

If I could keep with me only two books and a journal, this book would be one of the books. As far as I'm concerned it's the most important book (and among the most influential) on Christian prayer in the last two millennia. We don't know the author's name, but only that he was a British monk, living in the fourteenth century. The Cloud of Unknowing is a personal letter written to a young person seeking fulfillment in Christ through prayer. The author's lesser known companion essay, The Book of Privy Counsel, is a follow up letter to the young disciple, providing simple yet profound instruction for the life of contemplative prayer.

Carmen Acevado Butcher's new translation is a gem. She draws the earthy language of the fourteenth century into the idiom of our own. You'll feel like the monk is speaking directly to you.

Why silence is essential in prayer

There are certainly times when we tell God things in prayer. We tell God our fears and desires. We tell God what we or others may need. We tell God of places and peoples in the world that need God's intervention.

Many of the Psalms invite us into this kind of praying. But we while the Bible gives us a warrant for such boldness before God, we must also take care that we don't invert the relationship. We can wrestle with God, fight with God, challenge God, but in the end we must always yield to God.

If our relationship with God were a sentence, God would be the subject performing the action and we are the object upon whom and within whom God acts. The Subject of prayer---the real Mover of prayer---is the Holy Trinity who prays in us.

So when we pray, we're not so much working to connect with God. We are, instead, working to remove everything that prevents us from the experience of intimate union which is the goal of our lives.

This is why silence is an essential part of prayer. In fact, silence is the highest form of prayer. In silence, all that competes with God for our attention is exposed and we must confront and release everything that stands in the way between us and the Beloved. We must even abandon even our piety, for piety---even the warmest feelings about God---can ending masquerading as God, hooking us to a manifestation that is still not God as God is.

In stillness and silence we release everything that prevents us from resting in God and listening in the depth of our hearts for that Voice that cannot assure us of our belovedness until we're no longer listening to any lesser voice or sound.

The Voice of the Beloved comes to us in the "sound of sheer silence" (1 Kings 19.12).

Cultivating a prayerful heart, seminar, Saturday, June 25, 2011

I'm leading a prayer seminar this Saturday in Turlock, California.  If you're in the area, please come. CLICK HERE for more information.

• Saturday, June 25, 2011
• 9:15am-3:00pm (registration opens at 8:45am)
• Cost $10.00, includes lunch
• Monte Vista Chapel - WJB Travertine Room

CLICK HERE to register

Removing thought-clutter

Why do we purify the heart? It is the chosen dwelling place of God. It is the "palace of Christ in which he retires" (St. Macarius). It is the very seat of eternity, the gateway between heaven and earth---the Holy of Holies. If your heart is like a house where clutter (beautiful and good things as well as ugly and evil things) is the rule, then all that's holy is hidden, covered, and ignored.  Tragic . . . for you can know so much more.

The key is not merely to get rid of the clutter, but to become so unattached to it (and that which causes you to love it and keep it around), so that you no longer feel compelled to have it around anyway.

This is the fruit of interior prayer---that watchfulness, awareness, and non-attachment to thought-clutter that comes from continual, unceasing returning to Christ in prayer.

Cleaning the house, purifying the heart, make it more hospitable to the indwelling of Grace.   Nonattachment keeps it open and pleasing to the fullness of the Trinity of love.