Today’s post presents excerpts from David G. Benner’s Book, Sacred Companions – The Gift of Spiritual Friendship and Direction, published by Intervarsity Press:
“No account of Christian spirituality is complete if it fails to give a central place to love. God is love. He has poured this love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Offering us his love, he desires that we become like him – great lovers.
John Wesley described sanctification as the process of renewal in the image of Christ. Central to what this meant for Wesley was loving as Christ did. And how did Christ ove? He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and his neighbor as himself. Christian spiritual transformation is, in the language of the Wesleyans, being made perfect in love – Christ’s love becoming our love.
The ordering of the commands in christ’s summary of the law is important. Love begins with God. Hence our transformation into great lovers begins not by loving ourselves more deeply, nor even by loving our neighbor more purely, but by falling head over heels in love with God.
How do we learn to love God? The answer is by coming to know him. But the knowing that leads to love can never be simply a head knowing – a knowing about God. The knowing that leads to devotion must be based on a heart knowing. To realy know God we must know his love experientially. I begin to love God when I know – not simply believe – that God loves me. When the thing about me that I most deeply know is that I am deeply loved by God. I have taken the first step tward a heart knowing of God. Have also taken the first step toward becoming genuinely loving of others.
The practice of the presence of God presents Brother Lawrence’s simple secret of prayer that he learned while washing dishes in a monastery kitchen for a significant percentage of the seventeenth century. His “secret” is alarmingly simple; it entails a loving turning of his eyes toward God at all times. Brother Lawrence’s prayer method is in fact nothing more than a discipline for the cultivation of a love relationship. How does one come to love another but by paying loving attention to that person?
To know God we must think of him, not simply about him. We must learn to become attentive to his presence with us. We must learn to spend time gazing on him, being still before him and focsed on him. And we must learn to listen to him. These disciplines of loving attention form the basis of the development of a love relationship with God….. (pages 32-33)”
“How I wish God had set something – almost anything – other than love as the supreme measure of spiritual progress. Recognizing the impoverishment of my love of both God and others is so discouraging. It’s the most depressing thing I have encountered in my Christ-following.
My first response to the limitations of my love is always the same – to try harder. I pray for love with more fervor. And I try to love with more diligence. But nothing seems to change. Then I recall that once again I have got it backwards. God doesn’t want me to try to become more loving. He wants me to absorb his love so that it flows out from me.
And so I return again to knowing myself as deeply loved by God. I meditate on his love, allowing my focus to be on him and his love for me, not me and my love for him. And slowly tings begin to change. My heart slowly begins to warm and soften. I begin to experience new levels of love for God. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, I begin to se others through God’s eyes of love. I begin to experience God’s love for others.
Only love is capable of genuine transformation. Willpower is inadequate. Even spiritual effort is not up to the task. If we are to become great lovers, we must return again and again t the great love of the Great Lover. Thomas Merton reminds us that the root of Christian love is not the will to love but the faith to believe that one is deeply loved by God. Returning to that great love – a love that was there for before we experienced any rejection and that will be there for us after all other rejections take place – is our true spiritual work.
Embarking on the journey of Christian spiritual transformation is enrolling in the divine school of love. Our primary assignment in this school is not so much study and practice as letting ourselves be deeply loved by our Lord. (page 34)”
