The Psychological Experience of Living With Jesus
My daughter started decorating our house for Christmas this week. We’ve been listening to Christmas music in the car since before Halloween, so my mind is mentally preparing for Advent and Christmas already.
One phrase we will hear frequently this Advent season is: “Immanuel, God with us.” This phrase sums up what the celebration of Christmas is all about. It was the core promise the angel made when announcing Jesus’s birth (Matthew 1:23). It’s also at the heart of Jesus’s promise to his followers in the sending of the Spirit (John 14:16). In fact the experience of “Immanuel, God with us” is at the very heart of the Christian experience.
And yet, I often find as I talk and pray with people that they don’t really know how to experience God with them, especially when they are navigating hardship.
Not long ago, I spoke with a friend who lost his ministry during the pandemic. He faced hardship and opposition throughout Covid, but in the end he just couldn’t continue business as usual. He had to close things down. I also spoke with a man who went through a divorce during Covid. The stress of working from home and distance learning for kids put a strain on his marriage that neither he nor his wife could bear. I’ve lived through my share of hard things as well. In the midst of these experiences, it feels very relevant to know how to answer this question:
“In what way is God with me in hardship, disappointment, and relationship pain?”
Answering this question is one of the primary fruits that comes from spiritual direction. As we pray, we discover that the purpose of God being with us is not primarily to help us overcome difficulties. It’s not primarily to make us successful or help us fix our marriage relationships. God’s presence and action within us is doing a different work than we expect. We discover what that is as we sit and pray through our hardships. Here’s the progression I notice:
1. The first thing to notice as we pray through our hardships is that God has not left us. We experience this in fits and starts at first. We can oscillate between feeling consoled and abandoned from day-to-day or prayer time to prayer time. But after a while, we are able to say, “I am not forsaken.” I may feel like God has abandoned my cause, but I am also aware that God is near. I’m aware that God still loves me in this hard thing. Even though things are not going my way, I know that I am not rejected by God.
2. The second thing to notice is that the felt sense of the nearness of God is the presence of Jesus. There is a different sort of familiarity to God’s presence than simply that of a distant Being. There is a nearness of brotherly love. There is a shared knowing between us that is rooted in the shared human experience. I’m aware that the nearness of God is the nearness of Jesus who knows what it’s like to face hard things.
3. The third thing to notice is that Jesus is bearing witness to all that we are going through. He sees all the circumstances, for sure, but his bearing witness goes beyond that. Jesus is also bearing witness to what is going on within us. He is bearing witness to the fear we feel. He is bearing witness to our sadness. He is bearing witness to our loneliness. He is bearing witness to our rejection. He is bearing witness to all our hurt. Jesus sees it all. More than that, he bears witness to the truth of it.
4. The fourth thing to notice is that Jesus does not act when he is saving us with his presence. He invites us to cry out for help and sometimes he may intervene miraculously. However, when Jesus saves us with his presence, which is what we really need, he does not intervene. He does not fix the circumstances that cause our afflictive emotional experiences; nor does he primarily comfort and console us with positive feelings of his love in order to save us from the inner turmoil we feel. I know some of you may resist this. I don’t mean God never comforts us. This is clearly something the Spirit does, and my overarching experience of living with Jesus is very comforting to me. But what I mean when I say he doesn’t primarily comfort us when we have difficult experiences and painful emotions is that his presence is not like a balm. If we use God to soothe us, this will hinder our development. The more we pray the more we realize this isn’t the goal of prayer. Jesus isn’t doling out consolation and comfort to numb us to the pain of living. He also isn’t running around fixing hard circumstances for us. The purpose of prayer isn’t to ease our pain so we can get back out there and face the hard realities of life. When Jesus is with us bearing witness and saving us with his presence, he does not intervene.
5. The fifth thing to notice is that Jesus is not bothered by our distress. This is where things begin to turn for us. It is in this experience that the center of our being shifts. No longer do we conceive of ourselves as our “self-in-the-world,” which is the “self” that exists in the minds of others. This is an image or a projection. It’s our attachment to this image that causes so much pain for us. As we notice that Jesus is not bothered by the bad things happening to this self-in-the-world, the center of our being shifts to the place where Jesus is. The place where Jesus stands and bears witness to all that is happening within us is at the very center of our spirit. After this shift, we see our truest self as being right there next to Jesus. With Jesus we are now able to observe all that is happening to us and in us. We can see the circumstances. We can see the reactive emotions. We can see it all. We join Jesus in bearing witness to what is happening to us and in us.
6. The sixth thing that happens is we no longer want to conceive of ourselves as the same as the self-that-is-in-the-world. Our real self is with Jesus observing our self-in-the-world. From this vantage point we can see the ruin of our self-in-the-world. As we watch hardship descend upon this self, we rest with Jesus in this place of bearing witness to it. We don’t want to identify with this self-in-the-world. We don’t feel anxious when we are insulted. We don’t need to strike back when sinned against. We don’t feel worried about future needs. We feel neither positively nor negatively about deprivation or surplus. We are not distressed about what others think of us, because the person they consider is only our self-in-the-world. This self is not who we really are.
7. The final thing that occurs is that we are able to relate to others differently. We no longer view others as if they are their self-in-the-world. We notice their self-in-the-world, but we know that it is not who they really are. The real person dwells beyond their self-in-the-world projection at their center where they dwell with Jesus. I love this person in you. I’m indifferent to your self-in-the-world.
This has been my experience of Immanuel, God with me. Jesus’s presence with me is what I desire more than anything else in the world. I desire this for you as well.
If you are going through hardship, I encourage you to begin with prayer. Maybe consider praying through your hardship with a spiritual director. Jesus loves you and is already with you. A spiritual director offers the gift of an embodied presence who bears witness to what you are going through much the way Jesus bears witness. A spiritual director will not fix the circumstances of your life with advice, nor will he/she save you from the afflictive emotions you feel through compassionate encouragement. Rather, a spiritual director will bear witness to the presence of Immanuel, God with you, through it all.