Lately, I’ve been sharing about spiritual maturity, and specifically how spiritual practices relate to maturity. Part 1 and Part 2 were really leading up to this post.
I wanted to conclude this series with some reflections from a great little book called Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubauch, who was a missionary to the Philippines in the early 1900s.
The book is basically a journal of Laubuach’s attempt to be mindful of God throughout every minute of every day. Literally.
His goal was to call attention to Christ one second of every minute of every day. He writes of his successes and struggles in this endeavor, and it’s really inspiring to read about how devoted he was to being mindful of Christ in every task while he was awake.
What struck me when reading this account is not the intense discipline and focus he demonstrated (as impressive as it is), but how doggedly committed he was to this practice because of how much he loved Jesus.
He desperately wanted to submit to God’s will, and therefore he disciplined his thought life to call its attention toward God whenever possible.
Again, his spiritual practice/discipline was not a measurement of spiritual maturity, but instead it was a catalyst toward loving and submitting to God more readily.
This is a practice I’ve begun as well, albeit with mixed results. Every person I’ve committed a sin against in the past couple of months can readily attest to my failure.
But as my good friend Jay likes to tell me, “Progress, not perfection.”
Perhaps you can join me in 2012 to commit to minute-by-minute “conscious listening to the inner voice, asking without ceasing, ‘What, Father, do you desire said? What, Father, do you desire done this minute?’”
I think God is telling me to stop writing and go exercise now.
My heart is so in agreement with the general sentiment of all three of these posts, Drew. Though the Christian life for me in the beginning was so much about the particular things I did, the more I pursue God and get to know him more, it has eventually become a state of being, a consciousness, if you will. I worry less about what I’m doing and much more concern myself with how my heart is positioned towards God. No matter what I’m doing, where I am, what time of the day it is… there is nothing apart from God. It all sounds so “spiritual” or whatever but I’ve simply re-oriented my existence towards him so that in my sin and in my good, I know I am not outside of his presence. I’ve really struggled with how to describe this, so I guess I’ll just leave it at that.