This is part 4 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker: RICH VILLODAS for the month of APRIL. The Conference was entitled "How to Engage God About Your Story." Session 3 was entitled: "The Contemplative Life." This talk was by Rich Villodas.
To live a contemplative life, this work will require a different pace of life. You are going to have to change the way you operate and the way you do things. Oh my goodness is that true for me! I have realized that the way I approach people, my family, my life was not working for me! Am I willing to turn on a dime and start something new. Am I willing to truly learn to be with God?
You need a CONTEMPLATIVE SPACE. You need a MONASTERY. Rich went to an actual monastery and stayed there for six hours with only a journal. Could you sit somewhere for six hours and just "be with God"? If not, why not?
Who is a contemplative? A contemplative is one who slows down to BE with God. The challenge with much of our praying is that it is often transactional. How do we hold together petition and articulate our longings for God and at the same time, not regard God as a cosmic vending machine?
A contemplative is someone who slows down to be with God -- to withhold the beauty of God. Check out Psalm 27 for more on this! (Verse 4 is the essence of a contemplative life.)
The world BEHOLD might be the most important world in the Bible because it is about fixing our attention to the presence of God.
What is contemplation?
You can define this as the unburied, opening of oneself to God through silence, scripture and self-examination. The Bible is full of examples of this invitation to a CONTEMPLATIVE life. God shows up in these places of silence and solitude. Think about Moses in the burning bush. Or how he shows up to Elijah. God wasn't only in the whirlwinds or fires. He shows up as a still small voice. God shows up in the sound of sheer silence.
There are a few philosophical principles that we need to ground ourselves in for this:
1. God is Closer to us than we are to ourselves
From one man he made all nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not farm from any one of us. "For in him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17) We are his offspring!
2. Christ's work on the Cross opens the door to accessing the presence of God
Christian contemplation or contemplative prayer is grounded in an orthodox view of original sin requiring the work of Christ in the new covenant to reconcile humanity to God. Apart from this, the human spirit cannot experience the Spirit of God." (Eph. 2:5) John Coe, Embracing Contemplation
Communion with God is not some kind of human achievement, but is always a gift from God -- a gift most profoundly seen in Christ's work on the Cross.
3. We are invited to dwell with God.
Check out John 15 for this! Pay attention to a particular passage of scripture in John 15. Repeatedly John says "Abide in me and I in you." In John's writings, the word ABIDE shows up 63 times in John's writings! He uses ABIDE, REMAIN, STAY.
"Contemplation usually assumes the tangible reality of God's love, our shortcomings, and the inexplicable possibility of reunion." Barbara Holmes
Growing a Contemplative Life entails:
Our hearts are prone to wander! Contemplation is a reminder to come back to God. Contemplation has nothing to do with our personality types! Being introverted and a contemplative is not the same thing.
To become a contemplative you need to be ready to:
1. Befriend silence
2. Normalize boredom
3. Reframe distraction
4. Embrace the truth that prayer is not something we master, but an act that forms us.
5. Trust that God is always waiting for you with open arms.
A few other notes:
- The same Bible that says "Rejoice in the Lord Always" also has a book called Lamentations.
- Our pace of life can be violent in not allowing us to spend time with God. The contemplative life seeks to resist the violent pace of life.
He encourages us to truly find a weekly SABBATH! We are not made for the unrelenting pace of life that damages the attempt at contemplation.
How hard is it for you to just BE WITH YOURSELF!
Are you willing to make a countercultural commitment to resist the insane pace of our cultural moment? We are not living as human being are designed to be. We are designed for wonder, curiously, play and rest.
The byproduct of trauma is that there will be no rest for you, all your remaining days. Can you just rest and be with YOURSELF?
I have totally changed my life after my collapse in 2024. God is different to me. My priorities are different to me. I am taking the time to be contemplative and want to strive to continue to do that.
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