The Slow, Subtle Work of the Holy Spirit
HOw a centuries-old prayer practice awakened us to God’s daily presence
*This is a repost of a journal article we wrote together a few years ago, when we were living in Northern California. The journal is no longer active, so as we approach Pentecost, we want to share it with you!
Mateus Campos Felipe, Unsplash
Praying with the Spirit
I bow my head and invite the Holy Spirit to fill me afresh. “Come Holy Spirit, come. Guide me as I review my day, noting the places where you’ve been at work. Give me eyes to see you in moments I wasn’t paying attention. May I give them back to you in simplicity and gratitude.”
This is how we usually begin the prayer of Examen. This prayer practice became especially significant in separate seasons of transition, uncertainty, and aimlessness—seasons in which we each needed the healing salve of the Holy Spirit’s presence.
In his book WITH, Skye Jethani calls the Examen “praying with the Holy Spirit,”[1] a contemplative form of praying with the Spirit that neither of us was familiar with until a few years ago. Both of us have been individually shaped and formed by charismatic theology in different seasons of our lives, and our experience of the Holy Spirit was limited to powerful encounters during worship and prayer services or baptism of the Holy Spirit.
The concept of the “crisis experience” (or instantaneous sanctification) like Spirit baptism has led to a focus on the initial and the powerful in spirituality. Oliver McMahan notes that at its beginning, "spirituality is a powerful experience,” likening it to the headwaters of a river—swirling, tumbling, and unpredictable:
Having drawn from the flow of living water, they want to stay in the flow. But more does not necessarily mean farther or deeper. Rather, at times to charismatics and Pentecostals it means more of the same. Drifting downstream in the journey of Christianity, they desire to go back to the refreshing source. Their perception is that recaptured initial experiences of the Spirit are purer, fresher, and more enriching.[2]
But as a Christian journeys through their life in Christ, they float downstream in the river of the Spirit, and the waters calm and slow. For many, though, the goal is getting back to those powerful headwaters, that beginning place when God’s presence was tangible and exhilarating. Sometimes, the discovery of whatever the Holy Spirit has for them in the present moment is lost.
We’ve both experienced the radical, “headwaters” type of spiritual encounters with God, and these experiences helped to build a solid foundation of faith. They fostered a hunger to know and follow Jesus, to read scripture and spend our lives in service to God. And they were deeply meaningful. But in seasons of transition, spiritual drought, or slow struggle, they also left us wrestling. What about the moments when it seems impossible to sense the Holy Spirit’s power and presence? What about the ordinary moments of life? How can we be attuned to the Spirit when we’re sitting in traffic, making a grocery list, or adjusting to a major life change?
In specific seasons of transition and asking such questions, we’ve found praying the Examen to be a means of noticing the slow, subtle work of the Spirit. In these seasons, we learned that the “whole joyful and painful adventure of laboring and living is itself an experience of God. Becoming more conscious of God is not so much about seeking a mystical, out of this world or end of life’s road kind of religious experience, but rather developing a deeper awareness and appreciation of how our everyday experiences abound in the mystery and presence of God.”[3]
(You can find more on how to pray the prayer of Examen here.)
Bryan’s Experience
I (Bryan) came to Christ in a charismatic mega-church, where the word “revival” was thrown around frequently during Sunday morning services and Wednesday night youth group. “We are going to change to world!” the preachers would say back then, with their booming voices in a sanctuary filled with kids as passionate and sincere as I was. If we were Spirit-filled, then there was nothing that could stop us! We would be like those who turned the world upside down in Acts 17.
At the end of the sermon, we were often invited to the front of the stage to receive an in-filling of the Holy Spirit, so that we could go out to our families and schools and bring about this promised revival to everyone we knew. I sensed something big and powerful going on in these moments, and I didn’t want to miss out. With the procession forward came the promise of change. Instantaneous sanctification, healed and delivered on the spot, empowered to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth--this was the Holy Spirit’s work. This is what I needed. Testimonies would roll forth and the worship team would play, drawing you further into the experience. I would walk to my car afterward, surging with energy, feeling the Holy Spirit’s overflow and dreaming about starting the next great revival. I’d return home invigorated, entering into my quiet time crying out to be a world-changer.
These high-energy experiences shaped the narrative of my early faith, and I carried this narrative through college, into my early career, and then into seminary. I believed that the Holy Spirit existed to empower me to do “big things” for God. He would sanctify me and make me look like Jesus, sure, but only so that I could do even bigger things for him. This subconscious theology only reinforced the protestant work ethic in me. “Holy Spirit, make me a world-changer!” was my refrain. If I just had more of the Holy Spirit, the more revival I would see. Conversely, if I wasn’t seeing evidence of revival, then there must have been some sort of block in the way: my sin, my immaturity, my lack of faith, something.
As I continued on into adulthood, the pace and pressure of work, seminary, and ministry were becoming unsustainable. My prayer subtly shifted from, “Make me a world-changer,” to “Holy Spirit, help me to make it through the stresses of today.” No longer concerned with changing the world, I just wanted to get through my work day with enough energy to stay awake in my evening seminary class, only to go home, struggle through a night of sleep, and do it all again the next day. I was also a newly-wed and serving with multiple ministries. I couldn’t keep up with the demands. Eventually, the burnout and exhaustion took their toll, and I stepped down from my job to focus on school and rest.
I had learned the prayer of Examen in one of my seminary classes, but hadn’t engaged it much until this particular season. Leaving my job and entering into a few months of rest made room for me to pray the Examen. As I integrated it into my daily prayer routine, I discovered that the Examen wasn’t just a good formula; it actually changed my theology and how I experienced the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was doing far more than acting as a glorified spiritual caffeine hit. I started to notice the Spirit’s gentle care for me in a multitude of ways: an act of kindness given or received, a simple revelation or encouragement from scripture, the delight of a meaningful conversation over a good meal, the support of a community and a loving spouse, the beauty of an old gothic-style church that we lived next to.
My response to noticing God at work in these simple ways was gratitude, which then became the new narrative of God’s presence in my life. The Holy Spirit wasn’t just present and empowering me the grandiose, but also in the minutiae. Everything was fair game for his glorious work, and the Examen helped me to pay attention. Repetitive, formational attentiveness is itself a means of grace. While the notion of something repetitive can seem negative in a culture that screams for new and fresh, it was precisely the repetition of the Examen that helped me enter more fully into the experience. The more familiar I became, the more I was able to notice. I became more settled and stable with what God was already doing. Paradoxically, it seemed to prepare me for what he was going to do next. It was through this season that God led Rachel and I to accept a pastoral opportunity across the country in Northern California.
Rachel’s Experience
In college, I (Rachel) was awakened to charismatic spirituality. I grew up in a loving, generous small-town church community, but I’d never experienced worship services quite like the ones at the church I attended in college — hundreds, sometimes thousands of people gathered together, singing in unison, hands raised, some dancing without a care, praising God and longing to encounter his presence.
Like Bryan, I know that God moved in these significant moments — moments when I heard his voice, when I could physically sense the power and magnitude of his presence, moments when my emotions were stirring and my head was buzzing and I felt alive.
But God is just as present in the ordinary, the mundane, or even those seasons of the soul that feel dry or stagnant. Too often, I've felt guilty in such seasons, as though I need to stir up some Holy Spirit juju by throwing on a live worship album or pouring over favorite scripture passages like Ezekiel 37, when the Spirit calls dead bones to life. Sure, those are great things — I still do them! But sometimes, stagnant seasons of the soul are an invitation from the Holy Spirit to lean in, to stop striving, to stop wearing myself out in seeking the adrenaline rush.
I experienced this type of spiritual season just three years ago, after Bryan and I moved to Northern California from Colorado. He’d been offered a job at a wonderful church in a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and we felt as though this was a call from the Holy Spirit. As Bryan settled quickly into his new role with ease and excitement, I felt lost. I’d spent my entire adult life leading and working in ministry, and suddenly I didn’t have any idea where my giftedness or my calling fit in this new place. Not only that, but a family situation back in Colorado made me feel guilty for having moved so far away. My faith was shaken, and though I still believed God had led us to California, I struggled to understand why. I turned to my time-tested devotional habits, journaling and pouring over scripture, but God’s voice felt distant, muffled, silent. I cried out to God for months, expecting him to change my circumstances or show up in a burning-bush, angel-in-my-dreams kind of way.
Instead, though, he was teaching me how to approach him with a new kind of vulnerability and honesty. The Spirit was beckoning me, inviting me, making room for me to commune with him, without pretense. Just me, in all my angst, doubt, and restlessness. I’d lament and I’d cry out, and then I’d sit quietly. And I started to learn how to listen.
About six months after moving, both Bryan and I began training in spiritual direction, and I was re-introduced to the prayer practice of Examen. This centuries-old prayer is simple, an invitation to review the moments of my day from morning to night, and to pay particular attention to the moments when God’s presence felt near (consolation) or far (desolation). Such moments of consolation could be simple, like Bryan making me a cup of hot coffee (single origin, of course, and brewed in our trusty Chemex), or enjoying the warmth of the sun as I sit on my deck.
I was drawn to Examen in this particular because it felt familiar to me. For over a decade now, a group of eight friends and myself have sent each other almost-daily emails with a list of ten things we’re grateful for, ten moments in our day or week that reminded us of God’s goodness. The nine of us used to all live in the same city, but now we are spread all over the country. But this practice of noticing God’s presence, of taking time to pay attention to even the simplest, most mundane moments, has kept us knit together in friendship, across time and distance.
The power in a practice like Examen is that it makes space for a new kind of intimacy, a new kind of transformation. As I began praying the Examen a few times a week, I started to notice that the Spirit of the living God was with me, in the ordinary moments of my days. The simplest moments became graces, gifts from the Father just for me. As cliche as it sounds, taking time to enjoy sunsets (and resisting the urge to post the experience to Instagram) in the evening have become sacred spaces for me. We live in a house surrounded by rolling hills that faces west, with the coastal mountains in the distance and a perfect view of magnificent sunsets every night. I’ll just stand in my driveway, watching the oranges and pinks and purples in the sky melt together and shift, leaving a soft orange glow on the hillside next to our house. In those few minutes, I feel the warm presence of the Holy Spirit. I feel held and known and safe.
Little by little, as I grow in attentiveness to God’s presence, slowly and subtly, I’m being changed. I can’t always fully articulate how the Spirit is changing me; I’m still finding the words. But I’m continuing to become aware of God’s daily grace, and he’s transforming me, from glory to glory.
The Slow and Subtle Work
The prayer of Examen was a catalyst for both of us to experience God’s presence in a new way: in the slow, subtle work of the Spirit. Instead of defining our spiritual lives through the mountaintop and valley-floor experiences, we’re learning to cultivate a life rooted in Christ, noticing him in the everyday. Now, the simplest moment becomes holy ground.
We’ve both come to appreciate a growing attentiveness to God’s presence, and an openness to encountering Him in the unexpected. Scripture promises that when we seek the Lord, we’ll find Him--and He is a God that wants to be found! He longs for us to see Him, to know Him, to behold Him. We are changed when we begin to notice His presence. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul tells us that as we behold Jesus, we are transformed more and more into His image, increasingly reflecting His glory. And we’ve been given a renewed hope that full, abundant life is as possible in commonplace, daily experiences as it is in those more visible encounters with the Holy Spirit. Intimacy with Christ is deepened in the ordinary stuff of life.
Those mountaintop God-encounters still carry a weightiness, though; they’ve become ebenezers, markers along the banks of the river that remind us of God’s faithfulness and His majesty. But we don’t wrestle with the compulsion of chasing after those headwater experiences anymore. We hold the possibility and expectation of encountering God however He desires to make Himself known, in the mundane as much as in the magnificent.
BENEDICTION
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ[4]
[1] Jethani, Skye, WITH: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2012), p. 181.
[2] McMahan, Oliver, Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls: A Guide to Christian Approaches and Practices (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press: 2004. Kindle Edition), Kindle locations 2117-2119.
[3] Stairs, Jean. Listening for the Soul: Pastoral Care and Spiritual Direction (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2000. Kindle Edition), p. 37.
[4] Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, SJ. “Patient Trust,” Ignatianspirituality.com. https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/prayer-of-theilhard-de-chardin/. Accessed July 1, 2019.