Healing Presence

Leanne Payne

Description

Leanne Payne explains the basis of her counseling ministry--Christ's indwelling presence that brings the power of the incarnation into wounded lives.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 août 1995
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781585587452
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Healing Presence
Other Books by Leanne Payne
Real Presence The Broken Image The Healing of the Homosexual Crisis in Masculinity Restoring the Christian Soul through Healing Prayer Listening Prayer

Copyright 1989, 1995 by Leanne Payne Published by Hamewith Books an imprint of Baker Publishing Group P. O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49576-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
Previously published in 1989 by Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois.
E-book edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means-for example, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-5855-8745-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, the Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. www.lockman.org
Scripture quotations marked NEB are taken from The New English Bible. The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge Unversity Press 1961, 1970. Reprinted by permission.
Scripture quotations marked JB are taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd, Ltd., and Doubleday and Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Scripture quotations marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible, the Lockman Foundation 1954, 1958.
Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971, and 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Scripture quotations marked TLB are from The Living Bible, copyright 1971 by Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois. Used by permission.
To Lynne, Connie, Patsy, and Lucy
Contents Preface Acknowledgments Part 1 The Power of the Presence 1. Celebrating Our Smallness 2. Practicing the Presence 3. Spiritual Power and Authority 4. Separation from the Presence: The Fall from God-Consciousness into Self-Consciousness 5. Creative Power Part 2 Incarnational Reality: The Presence of God within Us 6. The Presence of God within Us 7. Incarnational Reality: The Christian Union with God Part 3 Imagery and Symbol 8. Perceiving God Aright 9. Imagery and Symbol: The Imagery Really Matters 10. The Terrible Schism in the Heart of Man 11. The True Imagination 12. Introspection versus True Imagination 13. Incarnational Reality: The Key to Carrying the Cross 14. Renouncing False Gods and Appropriating the Holy Conclusion Notes Index
And he [Moses] called the place Massah [testing] and Meribah [quarreling] because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, Is the Lord among us or not?
Exodus 17:7
Man is not genuinely human without the Spirit of God. This is the testimony of the Scripture and tradition of God s people. This is the witness of those made competent to disclose the meaning of things because of their living union with God. This is the doctrine of the prophets, apostles, and saints. This is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thomas Hopko The Spirit of God
Preface
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, inquire for and (insistently) require, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord (in His presence) all the days of my life, to behold and gaze upon the beauty (the sweet attractiveness and the delightful loveliness) of the Lord, and to meditate, consider and inquire in His temple.
Psalm 27:4 AMP
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus. . . .
Hebrews 12:2
W hen I began this book, now six or seven years ago (other writings crowded in, demanding to be attended first), I had what seems in retrospect an unusual seeing or vision. I had been praying about how to begin such a book, one about the Lord s Presence with us, and was keenly feeling the weight of the task and my own inadequacy. At the time I lived in a little third-floor attic, one with few windows and therefore not much light, especially in the long, dark winters. There was one window, however, that made the little eyrie livable both summer and winter . Its mullioned face peered through the graceful, widespread boughs of a magnificent mountain ash, and directly onto the beautiful shoreline and ever-changing surface of Lake Michigan. There in front of that window, as the sunshine bounced off the blue-green waters and tumbled into my little attic space through the topmost branches of that red-berried, green-leaved tree, I did my most earnest work of praying, studying, and writing.
God loves all His creatures: myself, the lake, the tree, the sun. On this day, as I prayed, His other creatures seemed almost to dance before Him. Sparkling and seeming to rejoice in their own creation, they poured themselves in through my window in their fullest array of light and warmth and color to bless me too. It was then that I had the vision, one not easily explainable.
The vision was of a painting, yet not a painting, for Christ s living face glowed through it. While it was the Divine Face, yet it was aglow with and framed by the richest of earth s sun-baked hues. It was a vision of Incarnation, the Uncreated shining through the created. Deeply quieted, I experienced a heightened sense of well-being and of His Presence filling and completing all things: surely a small foretaste of the fullness of being all creation will one day experience. In the gentle joy of that moment, I began this book with these words:
I see a smiling face, many times larger than life, and it glows in sun-drenched, earthly colors. Strongly through earth s rosy hues streams the Uncreated Light, and I, a creature, bask in the face of Jesus, the God-Man who died and rose again. The Word of God our flesh that fashioned ( Jesu Joy of Man s Desiring ) smiles through the incarnate Son of Man, still dusty with earth s radiance, and the two are one. And He is behind me, overlooking my work; in front of me, blessing me as I look up to Him. He is all around me; He is even within me.
Now as I return to the book, I find that this vision, yet vivid in my memory, still best expresses what this book is all about. How is it that God (the eternal) shines through us (the finite)? The Uncreated through His creatures? How do we minister in His name and power? How do we move in the healing gifts of the Spirit? How is it that we become persons, that we find our true selves and are completed in Him? The answer has always to do with His sovereign Presence over us, with us, within us: Incarna-tional Reality. That is what this book is about.
In Him we become fully human. In Him we begin to do His works. This involves incarnation, a descent of the Spirit into our deepest being and lives. In Him, the will, intellect, imagination, feeling, and sensory being are hallowed and enlivened. We begin to fully live, to participate in the eternal, the immutable, the indestructible.
We live in a day, however, when few-even among those who call themselves Christian-believe in Christ s Real Presence with us. Pope John Paul II made the sobering statement that for modern man, the sense of God is vanishing from the earth.
I am personally grateful that the circumstances of my early adult life, though extremely painful at the time, brought me to the place of seeking the face of the Lord with all my heart. In the midst of great personal need, I found the Healing Presence of Christ. I found all the treasure Christ s gospel promises to the poor, the brokenhearted, those bound by their own and others sinfulness and pride. The ship in which I moved through life had foundered on the jagged, sharp shoals of divorce, and I was left with no doubt whatsoever of my need for a Savior, One who would remain with me, uniting His eternal life and fullness of being to my creaturely finiteness, immaturity, and incompleteness. Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you (Heb. 13:4) and other Scriptural promises were never far from my lips. So their truth and vitality sank as pure light into all the darkened and lonely spaces of my soul.
Also, though by nature optimistic, I knew beyond all shadow of doubt that my Savior must be my guide. I no longer cherished naive illusions about the benignancy of the world, or about my own natural capacity to make my way through it. Mary s great affirmation became mine: Be it unto me according to thy word. I sought His will, not my own, and found my way in such Scriptures as these:
Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, This is the way: walk in it.
Isaiah 30:21
. . . guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
Psalm 25:5
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
John 16: 13
I was learning to see the invisible with the eyes of my heart, to hear the inaudible with the ears of my heart. In other words, I had come to rely on God s Healing Presence with His people. The pain of having arrived at the utter end of any confidence in myself had brought me into the haven of God s love and care. There, in His Presence, as one would spread an extremely valuable but shattered vase before a master craftsman, I could dare to lay out the broken pieces of my mind and heart. There, in fullest confidence in His healing love, my eyes fixed on Him in obedience, I watched as He not only mended my broken he