Christmas and Practicing the Presence of God

[00:00:00] Our Christmas gift to you this year is the long-awaited return of Paul Rizcala to the podcast.

[00:00:07] So in this episode, me and Paul are going to talk about our new series on Brother Lawrence's classic, Practicing the Presence of God.

[00:00:16] We're going to talk about what we mean by presence of God over against modern conceptions.

[00:00:20] We also discuss ways in which distraction and worldliness draw us away from God.

[00:00:26] And there's really no better time to think about this subject than Christmas, when we are celebrating the coming of our Lord in the flesh.

[00:00:34] What a great time to think about the presence of God among us.

[00:00:37] So Merry Christmas to you all. Enjoy this episode.

[00:00:45] You're listening to Thatll Preach.

[00:00:47] Paul is back with us again, hailing from New York City, the Big Apple, sitting there with his rolling chair in his 1970s AC unit right behind him.

[00:00:59] And it's great to see you, Paul.

[00:01:02] Likewise. It's good to be back, Brian.

[00:01:03] You're a military man now.

[00:01:06] Well, teaching at a military academy, yeah.

[00:01:08] Yeah. Did they put you through boot camp?

[00:01:11] No. You don't understand there are civilian positions at the Air Force academies?

[00:01:15] No, it doesn't make sense to me. I'm just going to make it up in my head that you were under barbed wire crawling around.

[00:01:21] It does feel weird.

[00:01:22] It's a fun philosophy.

[00:01:23] Not like everybody else is military and there's a smattering of civilian folks.

[00:01:28] So you do really feel out of place.

[00:01:29] Part of me is like, maybe I should do that. Maybe I should go back and enlist.

[00:01:32] Do you have to salute people all the time?

[00:01:35] No, but there's like a really strong culture of decorum and etiquette.

[00:01:41] It's kind of cool because you don't really get that in broader culture.

[00:01:44] We sort of don't care about rituals, but in the military, they really care about.

[00:01:47] That's awesome.

[00:01:47] Saluting the uniforms, the standing up, sitting down, like paying attention, respect. It's all there.

[00:01:52] Do you have to wear a uniform?

[00:01:55] I have to wear my professor's uniform.

[00:01:58] What is that?

[00:01:59] My tweed jacket.

[00:02:00] I was just kidding. It's going to be tweed.

[00:02:02] Yeah. Sweater vest. I don't even know.

[00:02:05] No, that's too...

[00:02:06] It's a little bit flamboyant for me.

[00:02:10] Is it though?

[00:02:12] No, I'm a flannel guy. You know me.

[00:02:14] I wear the bare minimum.

[00:02:16] I would teach in my shorts and flip flops like I did at Florida State if I could.

[00:02:20] What are you, a non-denominational pastor or something?

[00:02:23] I'm a non-denominational philosopher.

[00:02:27] Yeah, that's hilarious.

[00:02:29] Oh, that would be a great skit or something.

[00:02:30] The non-denom philosopher.

[00:02:31] You've got like Richard Swinburne who's standing there.

[00:02:34] He's in a tweed jacket.

[00:02:35] That's your Eastern Orthodox.

[00:02:36] Yeah.

[00:02:36] And then you've got like your Presbyterian middle of the road.

[00:02:39] Swinburne is Eastern Orthodox?

[00:02:41] Yeah.

[00:02:42] He left the Anglican Church because he thought it was too liberal.

[00:02:45] At least in England, the C of E, yeah.

[00:02:48] When did this happen?

[00:02:49] I remember he told me this.

[00:02:51] We invited him to give a talk at NYU.

[00:02:53] I'm going to become Eastern Orthodox.

[00:02:55] That's literally...

[00:02:56] He was like, I'm contemplating joining the Orthodox Church.

[00:03:01] And I was like, why, Dr. Swinburne?

[00:03:03] He's like, well, don't call me doctor because I'm not a doctor.

[00:03:05] He actually doesn't have a PhD.

[00:03:08] No, he doesn't.

[00:03:08] He's one of these old school British academics who just has a master's degree and was a professor at Oxford because that's what you could do back in the mid-20th century.

[00:03:17] Yeah.

[00:03:18] Anyway, he was like, the Church of England is getting too liberal for me.

[00:03:21] So I'm considering going.

[00:03:23] He said, either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

[00:03:25] But the Pope is fake.

[00:03:26] So I'm going to become Eastern Orthodox.

[00:03:29] Yeah, I guess if you don't want to be Protestant and you think the Pope is fake, you're like de facto.

[00:03:34] Like you are Eastern Orthodox.

[00:03:36] That's right.

[00:03:37] That's right.

[00:03:37] Like he thinks the Pope is fake.

[00:03:38] Like an animatronic, like...

[00:03:40] He's like, Paul, you don't understand.

[00:03:42] I think he's actually a robot.

[00:03:45] Not that the office is a false one, but there's literally no Pope.

[00:03:48] He's actually a hologram.

[00:03:51] It's like one step further than set of vacantism.

[00:03:54] Oh my gosh.

[00:03:55] Yeah.

[00:03:55] Wow.

[00:03:56] AI vacantism.

[00:03:57] There you go.

[00:03:59] Yeah.

[00:04:00] What were we going to talk about?

[00:04:01] Oh, you know what?

[00:04:01] Okay.

[00:04:02] Here's what we're going to talk about.

[00:04:03] So we're going to do a little mini-series on practicing the presence of God.

[00:04:07] Because Paul, you recently went to EPS, Evangelical Philosophical Society.

[00:04:14] And you gave a presentation on the presence of God, which I'm like, wow, that's a pretty interesting topic to look at.

[00:04:22] And you're drawing a lot from Brother Lawrence's famous work, Practicing the Presence of God, which I had never read before.

[00:04:30] And so in preparation for this, I read it and I thought it was really interesting.

[00:04:34] I don't know very much about him.

[00:04:35] So you're probably going to do a lot of heavy lifting on this.

[00:04:37] And I'm just going to come in with my ignorant thoughts.

[00:04:40] Yeah.

[00:04:40] As usual.

[00:04:43] But so I think for this first talk, we want to just say, okay, let's introduce the work.

[00:04:48] Let's introduce who Brother Lawrence is.

[00:04:49] But I'm curious about why you decided to do a whole presentation on this on the presence of God.

[00:04:56] I mean, the answer is not that impressive.

[00:04:58] I was invited onto a panel and they said, this is what the panel's about.

[00:05:02] Oh, really?

[00:05:02] It was the money.

[00:05:04] They didn't even pay me.

[00:05:06] They were just like, yeah, they offered to like pay for the flight.

[00:05:09] But yeah, I got no money out of this except for the inner satisfaction of being a philosophical,

[00:05:16] giving philosophical insights to the presence of God.

[00:05:18] Which is the greatest.

[00:05:20] That is the greatest.

[00:05:21] You don't even need a salary really is what you're saying.

[00:05:25] So you can give that money back.

[00:05:27] Okay.

[00:05:27] So they had you on a panel.

[00:05:29] So you did a presentation too, didn't you?

[00:05:31] I did.

[00:05:31] Yeah.

[00:05:31] Yeah.

[00:05:31] So talk through like your experience of studying this, this, this, this work from Brother Lawrence.

[00:05:39] And yeah, well, I, I, I didn't read the book practicing the presence of God.

[00:05:46] It's a little like 20 page PDF.

[00:05:48] I didn't read it till the night before giving the presentation.

[00:05:52] Yeah.

[00:05:53] I, I, I didn't even know that there was a book that the practicing the presence of God was based off of until like the week before.

[00:05:59] I just thought it was a concept, like a spiritual discipline.

[00:06:02] And then people tell me there's a, there's a book written about this.

[00:06:05] And so I went, that's what they were expecting you to comment on in that panel.

[00:06:07] And you read it tonight.

[00:06:09] What were you prepared?

[00:06:09] What were you doing?

[00:06:10] I had thought it was just like, they were, they wanted some thoughts on generally the, the discipline of practicing the presence of God.

[00:06:17] And then someone told me, you know, that's a book, right?

[00:06:19] From the 16th century.

[00:06:20] And that's where we get the title from.

[00:06:22] And I was like, Oh, I should probably read that.

[00:06:24] So I did.

[00:06:26] He's a 16th century monk and he's famous for basically giving us this category of a new, a new spiritual discipline, or maybe it's just a description of all the spiritual disciplines together.

[00:06:39] That's what it is to live the Christian life.

[00:06:41] It's to practice the presence of God.

[00:06:42] And basically what he says, um, is that we should, what it is to be Christian, what it is to live the Christian life is to live always with an awareness of God.

[00:06:55] And it sounds almost like metaphysical or spooky, but he says, that's what it is to be a Christian.

[00:07:00] It's to walk with God, but not in an abstract way where you're just like, yeah, everything that I'm doing, I'm doing for the glory of God in this like mundane sense.

[00:07:10] But really everything that you do is sort of suffused with an awareness of God's presence.

[00:07:17] Like when you look at another person, you see God in them.

[00:07:20] When you're in a difficult situation, you see God there.

[00:07:22] When you wake up in the morning, you actually see and feel God's presence in this very tangible way.

[00:07:27] And he thinks it's a spiritual discipline.

[00:07:29] It's a practice.

[00:07:30] And you can get good at this by moving your attention and forcing yourself.

[00:07:35] Maybe forcing is too strong, but training yourself to see the world in this sort of divine mode.

[00:07:43] That's more than just material.

[00:07:45] That God is really there in everything.

[00:07:47] He's not trying to be pantheistic.

[00:07:49] He's not like, it's not like Zen Buddhism, but really that God is in everything and everything holds together in God.

[00:07:55] And we can do some more like philosophical distinctions and try to make sense of what exactly it is for the presence of God to be in our lives.

[00:08:04] But it's a term that we see in scripture.

[00:08:06] It's a term that we throw around in evangelical Christianity or the Christian life in general.

[00:08:12] But yeah, that's the main gist of it.

[00:08:14] To live in a way where you see and are aware of God in everything that you do.

[00:08:18] And that's a practice.

[00:08:19] It's a discipline.

[00:08:20] You can get good at it.

[00:08:21] He talks about in his first letter, he speaks of a familiarity with God.

[00:08:28] Just kind of what you're talking about.

[00:08:29] That kind of moment by moment awareness of who God is and that he's present with you.

[00:08:38] And then he talks about often repeating these acts that they become habitual.

[00:08:42] And the presence of God is rendered as it were natural to us.

[00:08:47] So I think typically in an evangelical church, the presence of God, I think people mean like you're going to feel something.

[00:08:53] Like at the end of the day, when you boil it down, it's like, oh, the presence of God is here.

[00:08:56] It's like I feel, you know, the warm fuzzies or something like that.

[00:09:01] And I don't think that Brother Lawrence is saying that it is not an experiential emotional experience.

[00:09:07] In fact, actually, this is what was encouraging about this where it's like there actually is a dimension to that that, you know, if you're maybe more of a reformed guy, you'd be like feelings terrible.

[00:09:17] Right.

[00:09:17] You know, but there's a sense in which I think Brother Lawrence has a he's got a space for that.

[00:09:22] But he's also a little more profound.

[00:09:24] He's not going.

[00:09:25] It's merely this sort of tingle.

[00:09:27] It's actually it is a discipline.

[00:09:29] It's a it's a training, a habit of the mind to be aware of reality.

[00:09:34] And I think that what was fascinating reading through these letters is the sense that, like you were saying, God is omnipresent, not in a pantheistic way as if he's in everything or that there are these physical God molecules that just populate the world or anything like that.

[00:09:50] But he's transcendent.

[00:09:52] And because he's transcendent, he can be imminent and, you know, that whole thing.

[00:09:56] But when you are aware of God's presence, you're not sort of conjuring up this phantasm in your mind.

[00:10:01] You are actually being aware of reality.

[00:10:04] You are you.

[00:10:05] It is simply true that he is present to you.

[00:10:08] And through the mind, through the will, through these disciplines, we are training ourselves to be perceptive about the way things actually are, about the reality of God.

[00:10:19] And then also, I think more specifically as a Christian, the reality that we have a relationship with God, you know, a merciful kind of, he's a father to us.

[00:10:31] And that we're not just kind of tapping into the abstract or like we're not tapping into the force.

[00:10:37] You know what I mean?

[00:10:39] That we're actually relating to the one true and living God.

[00:10:44] And so I thought that that was helpful to kind of read these letters, which I'm actually curious about, like, the format of these letters.

[00:10:54] Who is he writing to?

[00:10:56] Are these just like journal entries?

[00:10:57] I mean, at one point he talks in the third person, one of his letters, but what's the context?

[00:11:02] He's writing these to either other monks or people in the community who are writing to him and asking, how can I get closer to God?

[00:11:11] And he's trying to be really deeply pastoral.

[00:11:13] I mean, he was a kind of, he was a monk, but he didn't live in a sort of secluded.

[00:11:17] He's not like one of the Desert Fathers.

[00:11:18] He lived in a monastery in France, serving the community.

[00:11:23] And so people began to know him as this figure who was, he was always talking about being in the presence of God.

[00:11:32] And so people, just ordinary folks would ask him, how do I, how do I get like that?

[00:11:37] What do I do?

[00:11:38] What are you, are you special that you have this sort of special connection?

[00:11:41] He's like, no, this is something that's available to all Christians.

[00:11:44] By virtue of the Holy Spirit, you can access God in this unique way, but it's something that you have to work at.

[00:11:50] And the way that I sort of, I opened the talk when I gave it with this little snippet from Prince Caspian, just so, because the idea of thinking about God or training yourself to see God or be aware of God might not be familiar to our ears.

[00:12:06] But in Prince Caspian, there's this great scene where the children are lost.

[00:12:13] They don't know where Aslan is.

[00:12:15] They've been, they're exhausted.

[00:12:17] They're tired.

[00:12:17] They've been climbing this, um, in this Canyon.

[00:12:21] And then, uh, basically Lucy has this awareness or this feeling that there is something nearby that the others can't sense.

[00:12:31] Um, Lucy said, Susan in a very small voice.

[00:12:35] Yes.

[00:12:36] Said Lucy.

[00:12:36] I see him now.

[00:12:37] This is Susan talking to Lucy.

[00:12:39] And she basically apologizes to her and tells her, I'm sorry that I didn't see Aslan.

[00:12:44] When you, even though you're the youngest of the group, Aslan was, was sort of guiding her from a distance and telling her to go up this gorge, do it again, even though you're tired.

[00:12:54] Um, the rest of the group was really, really against that plan.

[00:12:58] But, uh, Lucy says, I really see Aslan there.

[00:13:02] And it's, it's a kind of like her perception was, uh, focused on something that the others couldn't see.

[00:13:08] And even in scripture, we get this idea that those who, those who God has opened their eyes will have a special sort of vision of God.

[00:13:15] The pure in heart will see God.

[00:13:17] That's what Jesus tells him in the, in the sermon on the Mount.

[00:13:19] Um, so there is a special sort of sense of seeing God that either God can gift us or the gift doesn't necessarily have to be God giving it to us directly, but God giving us the tools and the discipline to train ourselves to see the world in a different lens.

[00:13:35] So really, I think brother Lawrence's insight is that, and this is what Lewis is saying as well, it's a special kind of seeing.

[00:13:41] It's a special kind of training your perception to see the world in a different way.

[00:13:45] Um, you think about cases in the old Testament where God opens Elisha's servant's eyes, for example, to see the world in a different way.

[00:13:53] That's basically what this sort of practicing the presence of God is supposed to be like.

[00:13:57] It's training you to see what is already there, not to sort of project onto reality, not to ask God to do something more than he's already doing.

[00:14:08] The reality is the way it is.

[00:14:09] Aslan is there.

[00:14:10] No one else can see him, but Lucy, because she has the right sort of disposition to heart.

[00:14:14] So I think that's maybe a less spooky way of putting the point.

[00:14:18] Because in this situation, they didn't like conjure up Aslan.

[00:14:21] Right.

[00:14:22] He was there.

[00:14:22] They just, nobody, nobody could see him because they were tired or they were exhausted or they were just focused on other things.

[00:14:28] And so their perception wasn't looking in the right direction.

[00:14:32] So how do we distinguish between, I mean, there's, there's different ways of talking about God's presence.

[00:14:37] I mean, there's sort of the general way in which the theological, his omnipresence.

[00:14:42] Right.

[00:14:43] I mean, he is, you know, I'm trying to think of the most technical way to say this, but I mean, in the sense that he is, he is present to all of creation in the sense that he's transcendent and all that stuff.

[00:14:56] So, but that, but that's not what Brother Lawrence, Brother Lawrence isn't talking about that.

[00:15:02] He seems to have a more narrow sense of God's presence.

[00:15:06] Is that right?

[00:15:06] I mean, like, how do we think about that phrase, God's presence?

[00:15:10] Yeah.

[00:15:11] So this is where, I mean, this is, this is, we can, we can sort of toss this back and forth a little bit.

[00:15:15] It's not clear what, what he means.

[00:15:18] He just uses the term.

[00:15:19] He doesn't really define it.

[00:15:20] But in scripture, it seems like there are two different ways that the scriptural authors use the phrase, the presence of God.

[00:15:27] Or when they talk about God's presence, they talk about it in that broad sense, like you talked about where God is just everywhere.

[00:15:33] This is the doctrine of omnipresence that God is by his spirit, in a sense, located everywhere.

[00:15:40] Or Jeremiah 23, he says, I'm a God who is everywhere, not in one place only.

[00:15:46] No one can hide where I cannot see them.

[00:15:48] Do you not know that I'm everywhere in heaven and on earth?

[00:15:52] And then Psalm 139, the psalmist cries out, where can I go from your spirit?

[00:15:56] Where can I flee from your presence?

[00:15:57] If I ascend to heaven, you're there.

[00:15:59] If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

[00:16:00] And then Isaiah, God is naturally present in every aspect of the natural order of things, in every manner, in time, and space.

[00:16:08] That's Isaiah 40.

[00:16:10] And then, yeah, Colossians, he's before all things, and in him all things hold together.

[00:16:13] After Paul's sermon, Acts 17, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him because he's not actually far from each one of us.

[00:16:22] So there is a kind of sense in scripture that God is ubiquitous.

[00:16:25] God is everywhere.

[00:16:27] God is near to us.

[00:16:28] God is not restricted or located to one space.

[00:16:34] We get this sort of message that God gives the Israelites in the Old Testament.

[00:16:38] Yes, you have the tabernacle, which is the special dwelling place of me.

[00:16:41] But do you think that I will literally abide in a house made by your hands?

[00:16:45] No, like you can't restrict God's presence.

[00:16:47] So there is a sort of broad sense of God's presence.

[00:16:50] It's subjective.

[00:16:51] Yeah, it's there.

[00:16:52] And that's what we call the doctrine of omnipresence.

[00:16:55] But then there's also a special sense of God's presence where God can give it to people and take it away.

[00:17:01] So Isaiah 43, God says,

[00:17:03] When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

[00:17:05] And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.

[00:17:08] When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you.

[00:17:13] Psalm 51, David prays after his sin, cast me not away from your presence.

[00:17:17] So there's a special sense of God's presence where God can cast people away from it.

[00:17:21] And Jesus talks about those who are going to be cast out of God's presence in the final days,

[00:17:27] cast outside the gates, cast outside where the worm and the fire do not are not clenched.

[00:17:33] They don't die.

[00:17:34] So there is a special sense of God's presence.

[00:17:37] Now, which of these is Brother Lawrence talking about or which of these is relevant for the Christian life?

[00:17:42] I think perhaps both.

[00:17:43] I do think that there's a special sense in which God can gift us his presence.

[00:17:48] But also, it takes a certain level of virtue and sanctification maturity even to recognize the doctrine of omnipresence.

[00:17:57] Like imagine how you would live your life differently if you really thought Jesus was here in the room with me.

[00:18:02] And in a sort of like special sense.

[00:18:04] Now, Jesus is actually spatially located.

[00:18:06] But there's a sense in which by his spirit, yes, he is present everywhere.

[00:18:11] God is present everywhere.

[00:18:12] And that changes how you live your life.

[00:18:14] But even that recognition that God is here to get to that point requires a certain kind of maturity and sanctification.

[00:18:22] So I think Brother Lawrence is talking about that as well.

[00:18:24] Well, there's a rigor to what Brother Lawrence talks about and a very sober-minded approach.

[00:18:33] I mean, he says, this is in his 12th letter.

[00:18:36] He says,

[00:18:49] So he recognizes there will be times when God might even hide himself as an indirect way of us being drawn to him.

[00:18:57] That we would seek him.

[00:18:58] It's kind of like he's, you know, pulling away from us that we might run forward and be drawn to him.

[00:19:05] So there's this kind of dynamic at play that I thought was interesting.

[00:19:08] But also to your point, I mean, the rigor and the discipline of the mind is it kind of flips things on its head.

[00:19:18] Typically, we think about the presence of God.

[00:19:21] We're like, what's the technique?

[00:19:22] Like, and I think there are practical, and Brother Lawrence goes to some practical ways you can do that.

[00:19:27] But there's this sort of, I think it's informed by technology and modernity and all that stuff.

[00:19:32] We're just like, the presence of God is this thing I want to drum up by this technique.

[00:19:37] You know, you read this book, you go to conference, you get the right synth playing, you get the right guitar chords, all this stuff.

[00:19:42] And you can sort of manufacture this experience.

[00:19:46] And I think that the issue isn't that you can experience God.

[00:19:52] It's just that that is sort of a superficial way of, you may not actually be experiencing God.

[00:19:58] You may just be experiencing just the normal rush you would get from experiencing those things in general.

[00:20:03] So I guess what I'm saying is he's not against experiential knowledge of God.

[00:20:07] He's against a sort of mechanistic, superficial experience.

[00:20:13] And he's saying, no, you've actually got to kind of work towards this.

[00:20:17] You've got to work to train your mind to perceive what reality is.

[00:20:23] And that's going to take like a purgation, like a purging of worldly desires.

[00:20:30] It's going to take, in another episode, we'll talk more about this attention.

[00:20:34] It's going to take a disciplining of the mind, the heart, and the soul to contemplate heavenly things.

[00:20:41] I don't think anybody who sat down and tried to pray for any length of time, you realize it's really hard.

[00:20:49] Because you get distracted.

[00:20:51] You run out of things to say.

[00:20:54] You kind of wonder, is this really doing anything?

[00:20:57] And you're sort of tapping your foot being like, you know, this doesn't feel like much is happening.

[00:21:03] And I wonder if Brother Lawrence is saying like, well, you've actually got to unlearn a whole bunch of instant gratification kind of instincts in order for this to really start to sink in.

[00:21:13] Hmm.

[00:21:15] It makes me think of the passage in Screwtape Letters where Wormwood tells Screwtape, anytime you see the saint sit down to pray, show him the pattern in the carpet.

[00:21:30] Make that exciting to him.

[00:21:32] Like little mundane things that you would never care about.

[00:21:35] When you go to pray, all of a sudden, not just like the busyness of life that tries to distract you.

[00:21:40] The stuff that you would never have paid attention to becomes so interesting and so fascinating.

[00:21:46] Because the natural instinct for us is to not want to spend time with God alone and quiet.

[00:21:52] And it's really difficult.

[00:21:53] And just the silence and the is this going anywhere?

[00:21:59] Is anybody listening?

[00:22:00] It really is a discipline.

[00:22:01] Like prayer is a spiritual discipline.

[00:22:03] And this is why it's so easy to want to be fascinated by the super boring, mundane stuff.

[00:22:10] Because that seems exciting compared to the life of prayer, which is really difficult in the moment.

[00:22:15] But to your point about doing the mechanistic stuff, that's one temptation.

[00:22:20] Trying to manufacture the feeling or the experience by a book or a conference.

[00:22:25] The other extreme, and this is one that I think perhaps the reformed crowd is inclined to, is just we don't practice at all.

[00:22:36] Maybe not reformed people specifically, but there is a culture in American Christianity where we sort of take Paul's phrase, pray without ceasing.

[00:22:45] And we make it so like, oh, I'm just always praying.

[00:22:48] I'm always practicing the presence of God.

[00:22:50] Because everything that I do is, you know, I'm eating oranges for the glory of God.

[00:22:54] I'm, you know, running to the glory of God.

[00:22:56] And there's a sense that that's true.

[00:22:58] There's a healthy sense in which, yes, you can do all things as acts of worship.

[00:23:02] You can offer your body as a sacrifice to God.

[00:23:04] That's true.

[00:23:05] But that doesn't come at a cost of neglecting the spiritual disciplines.

[00:23:10] There really is a method for building your soul.

[00:23:16] And you can't do that just by assuming that it's in the water.

[00:23:22] Like the presence of God is just there.

[00:23:24] Your prayer life is everything.

[00:23:25] When your prayer life is everything, your prayer life is nothing.

[00:23:28] There has to be some dedicated.

[00:23:30] It's like the person who says, oh, I'm always evangelizing because I'm always just living my life.

[00:23:34] And there's some truth to that.

[00:23:36] We don't want to totally, you know, neglect that way of thinking.

[00:23:39] But if everything you do is evangelism, then nothing is evangelism.

[00:23:43] You have to actually say something at some point.

[00:23:45] And in the same way, you have to actually do something to train your attention to think about God.

[00:23:51] And Brother Lawrence talks a lot about this.

[00:23:54] How can we pray to him without being with him?

[00:23:56] And how can we be with him without thinking of him often?

[00:23:59] We must know someone before we can love them.

[00:24:02] In order to know God, we must think of him.

[00:24:05] Thinking is an act.

[00:24:06] Like you have to actually use your willpower to bring God into your focus in a sense.

[00:24:16] Like you have to think about the person.

[00:24:19] We do this when we tell someone like, oh, I was thinking of you.

[00:24:22] That's a really nice gesture.

[00:24:25] Part of why that's a nice gesture is because your attention is like a kind of currency.

[00:24:29] It costs you something.

[00:24:30] So when you think about someone, it means that you're not thinking about other things.

[00:24:35] So you're forcing your attention off of the other things, which usually are self-centered things.

[00:24:40] We like to think about ourselves a lot.

[00:24:42] When you think about someone else, you have to use your willpower to take the eye of your attention off of yourself and onto another person.

[00:24:51] Brother Lawrence says we do that.

[00:24:53] We should do that with God in the same way.

[00:24:55] We should think about God.

[00:24:57] And that's one way of being with him.

[00:24:59] Like actually just contemplating who he is, contemplating his nature, contemplating his goodness, contemplating what he's done for us.

[00:25:06] Like the Old Testament talks about dwelling and meditating upon the words of the Lord.

[00:25:11] And those are enjoyable, delightful moments.

[00:25:14] That's a kind of skill.

[00:25:16] That's a kind of discipline.

[00:25:17] And so it's not just everything you do is practicing the presence of God.

[00:25:21] It does require you to move your attention off of yourself and off of everything that's on your plate and put God conceptually in view.

[00:25:32] And I think Brother Lawrence's insight is that that actually has a transformative effect on us.

[00:25:38] When we think about God, that's one way of being with him in a special way.

[00:25:42] And in the same way that you can go and read the letters of a loved one who's passed away, that has a kind of transformative effect on you.

[00:25:51] And it kind of puts you in their presence in a way.

[00:25:53] I think he thinks that there's something similar with the Christian life.

[00:25:56] That's what it is to spend time with God.

[00:25:58] And eventually you get to a point where your, one, it comes more easy to you.

[00:26:04] But two, you begin to see God in more places than you did initially.

[00:26:07] So it's tough at the start, but like once you get over that initial energy, like breaking the inertia, then it actually becomes more pleasant and not as difficult.

[00:26:17] The same way any activity that you begin practicing does.

[00:26:20] Well, maybe we just break the seal and just go right into talking about attention because I think that that's such a key aspect of what he's talking about.

[00:26:30] And I think attention is, I was talking to a friend who said attention is a moral act.

[00:26:37] That's what you pay attention to.

[00:26:38] There is a value judgment of like what, when you're, you should pay attention to things that are good and right and true.

[00:26:48] You know, that should be the focus of your attention.

[00:26:51] And so, but you have to make value judgments about that.

[00:26:53] And so when you choose not to pay attention to God, you're making a value judgment about the worthiness of God, you know?

[00:27:01] And so even the act of exercising the will to contemplate and think about God, which I would love to narrow in on what do we mean by that?

[00:27:10] But, but just the act of attention is an act of ascribing worth to God.

[00:27:14] And it is training your body to value things properly, to being like the most important thing right now is that I put my attention Godward.

[00:27:22] And again, not because God needs our attention.

[00:27:26] I mean, he doesn't need anything.

[00:27:27] He's not dependent upon us, but we need to pay attention to God.

[00:27:31] That God actually draws us to do that.

[00:27:33] He cares about our ultimate happiness more than we do.

[00:27:37] And so he's going, I want you to draw near to me because you need that.

[00:27:39] Not because I need it, because you need it.

[00:27:41] But when we talk about contemplating God, like what do we mean paying attention?

[00:27:45] It's just, it's just mulling on eternal generation.

[00:27:47] I mean, maybe that, maybe that could be it.

[00:27:49] Or are you just sitting there thinking about passages of scripture or, I mean, what are we talking about here?

[00:27:56] And maybe even on your panel, did people talk about when they're contemplating God?

[00:28:02] Like what, what, what does that mean?

[00:28:05] Yeah, this is where it gets, um, I guess there's, there's more room for debate.

[00:28:09] And I'm a philosopher, so we're not typically known for our practical, um, suggestions.

[00:28:16] Um, I'm, I'm a, I'm a maker of distinctions.

[00:28:19] I'm typically not in the business of making people better.

[00:28:23] But, um, my, my personal view is that the way brother Lawrence talks about it is, is kind of like the way you described.

[00:28:30] And it almost sounds like a caricature.

[00:28:32] He's not saying think about the doctrine of eternal generation.

[00:28:35] And from there, you get an awareness of God, but he does talk a lot about like willing your attention and willing your thoughts onto God.

[00:28:43] And he thinks that's what it is.

[00:28:45] Like that is how you cultivate a sense of God's presence.

[00:28:48] And he's a monk.

[00:28:49] You got to think like he's living in a monastic cell.

[00:28:52] He's got a tiny room with his little cot and maybe some scripture.

[00:28:57] And like, that's all he's got.

[00:28:58] So he's sitting there for hours a day and his mind is prone to wandering.

[00:29:01] He's just trying to focus it on God.

[00:29:04] He might do that by maybe reading scripture, maybe singing hymns, maybe doing some sort of liturgical prayers or daily office type stuff.

[00:29:12] But it really is by sheer force of will directing your attention onto God.

[00:29:19] Now, my, my, my pushback on that was just, it doesn't seem feasible for most people.

[00:29:24] I was just going to say that.

[00:29:25] I'm like, bro, you're, it's like your professional job to be in God's presence, you know?

[00:29:29] That's right.

[00:29:30] Yeah.

[00:29:31] And, and I know we're going to do a whole episode on practical stuff, but just to sort of give the, the argument that I gave was that we should approach this indirectly.

[00:29:42] That you cultivate a sense of God's presence indirectly by doing other things.

[00:29:47] And the, the most basic thing that we have to try to get good at is moving the eye of ourselves or the eye of attention off of ourselves and onto other people.

[00:29:57] And if we do that, that's sort of like first easier step in this ladder to cultivating the presence of God, because at bottom, it's the same root issue.

[00:30:07] The, the problem is our eye of attention is always focused on ourselves.

[00:30:11] Like the, the, the limelight is always on ourselves when we think about what occupies our time, what occupies our resources.

[00:30:17] So finding ways to move that off of ourselves and onto other people.

[00:30:23] It could mean thinking about other people.

[00:30:25] It could mean serving other people.

[00:30:26] It could mean spending time with other people.

[00:30:28] It could mean praying for other people.

[00:30:29] It could mean when you see the ambulance go by stopping everything and praying for whoever's in that, even though it's really difficult to do that.

[00:30:36] Like it might just take five seconds, but the fact that we find it so difficult is just more evidence that we really are just stuck on ourselves in these really, really narrow self echo chambers.

[00:30:47] And I, yeah, I think that's, that's probably a more practical way to talk to the everyday person about how do I, how do I begin cultivating these muscles?

[00:30:58] Jesus says, when you do things to the least, least of these, you do these for me.

[00:31:03] And there's a sense in which Jesus is actually there in other people.

[00:31:07] And so if we can begin to see people as bearers of God's image and begin thinking about ourselves less and thinking of others more, I think that can be a sort of indirect route to cultivating the kinds of muscles that eventually get us to God's awareness everywhere.

[00:31:22] Well, that's a great sneak peek on what we're going to elaborate on in future episodes, because I think attention and then the practicality and then getting your attention off of yourself to others.

[00:31:32] Is it, I like how you said that it's a, it's a first step.

[00:31:38] And, and I just, but again, back to the, to the, to the monk thing.

[00:31:43] I mean, it's like, yeah.

[00:31:44] Do you, do you have to go live in a monastery to even like, like how does the everyday person do this?

[00:31:50] And I guess what you're saying is part of it, but it's not exactly what brother Lawrence is saying, right?

[00:31:55] Like, would he say like, no, no, no, no, Paul, you actually have to like spend four hours in the morning or you're not going to get it.

[00:32:02] I don't think he's going to say you're not going to get it, but I think he thinks his strategy is a legitimate one.

[00:32:07] And he's probably right.

[00:32:09] If you've got that sort of time and maybe he's just really sanctified or virtuous that he can do that.

[00:32:15] But I, I struggle even to like pray for 20 minutes, let alone like four hours.

[00:32:21] I mean, he does talk about like, yes, you have set times of prayer, but he's more talking about a genuine sense of like moment by moment prayer.

[00:32:29] Like, I don't think he's saying you just sit in your room all day.

[00:32:31] I think he's saying, you know, when you go to the market, you go out, whatever you're doing, you just, you sort of, you do have these little touch points of praying.

[00:32:37] Now, when we say, when people say like, I pray all the time and they use that to excuse themselves from ever having any set times of prayer, that's different.

[00:32:43] He's saying it in the best way possible because I have these times of prayer.

[00:32:48] I'm able to actually, you know, I guess it would be like with your spouse.

[00:32:53] If you have intentional, you know, conversation and you spend quality time together, that helps kind of suffuse all the other normal moments with a deeper sense of intimacy and joy.

[00:33:04] Whereas if you didn't have those times together, then your everyday interactions would be missing a fullness that, that, that would be there if you had spent more intentional time, you know.

[00:33:13] And I get that sense from Lawrence, but, you know, it is one of those things where you're like, gosh, you know, who's got the time to, in our modern world to, in this economy to do all this stuff.

[00:33:27] Right. Was there anything, was there any pushback when you were doing your presentation about even brother Lawrence's methodology or the way that he thought about the presence of God?

[00:33:41] Well, I mean, there, yeah, there were, there were some folks who, um, there's actually one guy there who was a philosopher who is disabled.

[00:33:48] He's got cerebral palsy and he was talking about how actually his disability and his, the suffering that he sees in the world and that he experiences almost offer him a direct window into the presence of God.

[00:34:03] And he was talking about it as the, the suffering is almost like, um, what's the Spurgeon quote or the, the C.S. Lewis quote that suffering reminds us that we are citizens of another world.

[00:34:15] Yeah.

[00:34:15] That it sort of helps guard against complacency in this world.

[00:34:19] And he was talking about his disability almost as a window into God's presence that he, he sees the world for those of us who are like lives are going great and cushy.

[00:34:29] There's a temptation towards complacency and you don't see the world in a way that requires God in it.

[00:34:36] But if you're someone who your entire existence, like you're relying on other people, you're spending lots of time alone, for example, maybe you do just have a better prayer life.

[00:34:45] You, you see God in the world in a way that other people might not.

[00:34:50] And maybe this is like the Lucy Susan in the Narnia thing.

[00:34:55] Lucy sees God because she is much less self-reliant, right?

[00:35:00] She's like five years old.

[00:35:02] There's a sense in which the child has a kind of purity and sense of dependence and they're not choked up by pride and individualism independence the way that her older siblings are typically in the Narnia stories.

[00:35:15] And I think Lewis does that intentionally.

[00:35:17] And so maybe, maybe the dependence that we have or the independence that we have kind of clouds our ability to see God.

[00:35:25] We often talk about like, why, why is it that we hear about miracle accounts happening in sub-Saharan Africa?

[00:35:30] Why is it that we hear these stories of spiritual warfare?

[00:35:33] They never really happened here.

[00:35:35] Do demons exist?

[00:35:36] Do they not?

[00:35:37] Does God heal?

[00:35:37] Do they not?

[00:35:38] And you look at these parts of the world that are impoverished or just life is really difficult.

[00:35:43] We don't, it's not the same sort of cushy Western American high standard of living.

[00:35:48] Maybe there's something to that.

[00:35:50] Maybe you do get to see God when your life is not cushy.

[00:35:53] And there's a sense in which the, um, the independence and the self-reliance really do make it difficult to see God.

[00:36:01] Like the, the, the parable of the different seeds.

[00:36:04] Not, not, not that the, the wealth itself is extinguishing the gospel in our hearts, but it does make things difficult.

[00:36:11] And so, yeah, maybe if you do have like a disease or a disability does give you a kind of different perspective on life and you can see the world where God is there.

[00:36:21] I see you smart.

[00:36:21] I just, I just felt like when you said, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:36:24] I just, when you said, uh, it's not like wealth, uh, chokes out the gospel in your life.

[00:36:29] I mean, I felt like you're gonna be like, cause it does.

[00:36:32] And then like, you're like, I'm trying to be politically correct there.

[00:36:36] Yeah.

[00:36:37] I do think that's a whole, that's a whole, well, okay.

[00:36:39] Well, that's a whole other episode, but why you're a communist.

[00:36:42] And, uh, so I think you're right that there's, um, it's interesting when you talk about seeing, I mean, I think even just on a experiential level, you could say, well, I see people suffering.

[00:36:59] Maybe you could see somebody grieving the loss of a loved one, but if you actually go through loss or, you know, you really meditate on your mortality, you would see the same physical phenomena of somebody weeping, but you would also see something deeper.

[00:37:13] You would actually see the weight of grief.

[00:37:16] You would see mortality in a, in a clear way.

[00:37:19] You would actually have a greater sense of the finitude of life.

[00:37:21] And in that sense, your perception is beyond just you taking in the sense data.

[00:37:25] It's also an awareness about the truth of the matter, the truth of things.

[00:37:31] And I think that that is like, we have to kind of modify the way that we think about seeing.

[00:37:36] Cause sometimes we can have a, a, a childish in a bad way sense of seeing like God, if you're present, make that green light turn red or something like that.

[00:37:44] And I think that that's, that's, that's kind of a juvenile way of looking at it.

[00:37:49] Not that God can't change light or whatever, but I think that the, the kind of perception that we want to have is the ability to, with our minds and our will correctly perceive like the, the meaning of things, um, sort of have the proper narrative of our own lives.

[00:38:10] I know that sounds kind of abstract, but just even just the act of sitting down to pray.

[00:38:15] Think about that moment.

[00:38:17] You know, you open up your Bible, you sit down, you got a cup of coffee, whatever it is.

[00:38:21] And you have to tell yourself, you're like, I am in the presence of God.

[00:38:26] God is real.

[00:38:27] He hears me.

[00:38:29] I'm going to talk.

[00:38:29] And you have to kind of get yourself into that.

[00:38:32] Like you, you, you would feel very weird and mechanical if you just sat down and just been like, I'm going to chant these incantations and leave.

[00:38:38] There's an engagement that you want to have when you sit there and sometimes you get it.

[00:38:42] Sometimes you don't, but I think maybe we, we stopped too early, but I think all I'm saying is that when we actually try to sit down and pray, we have this sense of, we're trying to tune our minds into reality.

[00:38:54] We're trying to be like, this is real.

[00:38:57] And that is something that I think you do have to habituate because so much of our life, we're being formed in a way in which we go.

[00:39:04] There isn't a supernatural order.

[00:39:06] You know, man is the measure of all things.

[00:39:09] This isn't really, you know, a world with spirits and with God omnipresent, all these types of things.

[00:39:17] It's really just stuff and we just impose meaning upon it.

[00:39:19] Like no one would say that out loud, but the way that we use technology, the way that we talk to each other, the way that our modern world kind of is sort of, you know, this is what people talk about with like disenchantment.

[00:39:31] I think it just sort of sends that subtle message.

[00:39:32] And so you kind of have to reframe your mind to get into prayer and to be like, God really is present.

[00:39:39] Let me press into reality.

[00:39:41] But I think that's just really difficult in our world.

[00:39:45] Yeah.

[00:39:46] And the question is, how do we best accomplish that?

[00:39:49] How do we do the reframing?

[00:39:50] How do we begin building those?

[00:39:53] And there's a lot of different strategies and we've kind of hinted at some of them.

[00:39:57] You've got the Brother Lawrence approach really does seem to be purely like almost philosophical.

[00:40:02] Like you just, by the sheer power of your conceptual.

[00:40:04] Well, I mean, as someone who maybe this is just me acknowledging my own shortcomings and flaws, I can't imagine doing that for extended periods of time.

[00:40:13] So I sort of, I have to think about it.

[00:40:16] The way we talked about it on the panel was how do we practice the presence of God?

[00:40:19] Do we need training wheels?

[00:40:21] And maybe the training wheels are by doing other sorts of, you know, more mundane things rather than just use your philosophical conceptual powers to think about God all the time.

[00:40:31] It's a good point.

[00:40:31] It would sort of be like watching an athlete who's trained for years and you're like, wow, it's like effortless.

[00:40:36] And it's like, well, he also trained for years.

[00:40:39] And if you tried to do that, it might actually be counterproductive.

[00:40:44] You'd burn out.

[00:40:45] And maybe you just need to start dribbling the ball or start running a couple laps around the track or something like that.

[00:40:50] And I think that's a good point.

[00:40:52] But we'll get more on practical stuff once we figure it out and then we'll record an episode on it.

[00:40:56] Right.

[00:40:56] So we can figure out.

[00:40:58] So you're saying Brother Lawrence is like Steph Curry.

[00:41:00] And I'm like the Brian Zang basketball.

[00:41:06] It's all accurate.

[00:41:08] I'm actually looking forward to, as I'm reading through it, there's so much we can go through.

[00:41:15] I mean, like he's got an interesting view of grace, I think.

[00:41:20] I'm necessarily wrong.

[00:41:21] But, you know, there's some points where I'm like.

[00:41:25] I can see the I don't know how Protestant this guy is.

[00:41:31] Not very.

[00:41:32] Yeah.

[00:41:32] But I still think there's some helpful things to learn.

[00:41:36] But it was it was challenging.

[00:41:39] I think it's one of those things where you're like.

[00:41:41] You know, oh, there's so many charlatans and everybody's emotional and, you know, who's got time for this and that.

[00:41:49] And it's like, OK, all that aside.

[00:41:52] Never let the abuse of something stop you from its proper use.

[00:41:55] Like, do you spend time talking to God without the cheesiness?

[00:42:00] Fine.

[00:42:00] Don't be cheesy.

[00:42:01] Don't be cringy.

[00:42:02] Don't be all those other things.

[00:42:03] But do you?

[00:42:03] And I think you're just kind of like.

[00:42:06] No, you know, it's kind of like the is it Chesterton who said the Christian life has not been tried and found wanting.

[00:42:14] It's been found difficult.

[00:42:15] Hard and not hard and not tried.

[00:42:16] Yeah.

[00:42:17] I think there's something to that.

[00:42:18] And I don't know.

[00:42:20] I think this will be a fruitful little study.

[00:42:26] I've answered an African pastor say that American preaching is weak because they don't spend two hours in prayer for every hour preaching.

[00:42:33] I was like, wow, that's hardcore.

[00:42:36] Dang.

[00:42:37] That is hardcore.

[00:42:40] Well, there you go.

[00:42:41] Looking forward to doing these episodes and a Merry Christmas to everybody out there.

[00:42:46] This is a great time to practice the presence of God when we think about the presence of God, Christ.

[00:42:51] And I hope that everyone listening has a wonderful holiday and that the incarnation would take on a deeper meaning for you and maybe draw you in to do what Brother Lawrence is talking about and draw near to God.

[00:43:06] To experience all that he has for us.

[00:43:09] Thank you guys for listening.

[00:43:10] Thank you.

[00:43:10] Thank you.

[00:43:10] Thank you.

[00:43:10] Thank you.