“The objective truth creates the context and conditions to give ourselves deeply to the process of putting off and putting on, so we can name the truth of our subjective experience to the God who offers himself to us in love.”- Kyle Strobel and John Coe
Kyle Strobel and John Coe concludes Chapter 7 of Where Prayer Becomes Real as they talk about the struggle of recollection. Most significantly, a real struggle with putting on Christ involves this feeling. We barely sense that we’ve actually put Christ on. However, our feelings aren’t certain and clear measures of reality. Rather, our feelings only show us how our hearts respond to reality.
Above all, the authors counsel, we must not assume that, as mature Christians, we shouldn’t feel what we do. Because when we make that assumption, then we attempt to defeat those things in our flesh. Things we have no hope of confronting outside of Christ.
Thus, to draw near to God, we seek Him personally. And with our whole heart. Yet, the authors observe, there’s a threefold struggle we discover in the prayer of recollection:
- We struggle to lay down what we use to ground our identity before God, ourselves, and others. People who struggle most deeply with this link their identity with their calling. However, before the face of God, our only security exists in Christ.
- Trying to put off the old man by reading through the prayer of detachment. This struggle occurs when we find our hearts absent to the putting off section. Therefore, the antidote consists of talking honestly with God about what’s really going on within us.
- Seek out sight rather than faith. As Kyle and John observe, we love the instantaneous. But we struggle with the process. Thus, we shy away from the need to navigate our remaining sin and brokenness before God. Instead, we want God to make them disappear.
Our desire for sight betrays us. For our eyes tell us things different from Scripture about how the world works. Finally, Kyle and John state:
“Sadly, fantasy and self-deception are sometimes easier to embrace than the reality of God’s kingdom, because reality may not make a lot of sense. . . . By faith, we truth that God defines these realities.”
Today’s question: How do you recollect subjective struggle to objective truth? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “The prayer of examine – set aside time”
