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Augustine of Hippo, following Jesus, freedom, joy, justification, rest, sanctification, silence, spiritual power, the new self, the old self, the promised land
God’s Hand keeps us secure – always
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)
What is the goal we will reach after a comparatively short justification process and very long sanctification process? Actually, I want to offer you some food for thought here.
Although I believe that only a handful of people experienced that blissful condition of having died to self completely, it might be interesting to read Augustine of Hippo’s thoughts about how our whole inner life will have changed as soon as we have entered the invisible kingdom of God.
If to any man the tumult of the flesh grew silent, silent the images of earth and sea and air: and if the heavens grew silent, and the very soul grew silent to herself and by not thinking of self mounted beyond self: if all dreams and imagined visions grew silent, and every tongue and every sign and whatsoever is transient – for indeed if any man could hear them, he should hear them saying with one voice: We did not make ourselves, but He made us who abides forever: but if, having uttered this and so set us to listening to Him who made them, they all grew silent, and in their silence He alone spoke to us, not by them but by Himself: so that we should hear His word, not by any tongue of flesh nor the voice of an angel nor the sound of thunder nor in the darkness of a parable, but that we should hear Himself whom in all these things we love, should hear Himself and not them: just as we two had but now reached forth and in a flash of the mind attained to touch the eternal Wisdom which abides over all: and if this could continue, and all other visions so different be quite taken away, and this one should so ravish and absorb and wrap the beholder in inward joys that his life should eternally be such as that one moment of understanding for which we had been sighing – would not this be: Enter Thou into the joy of Thy Lord? (Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 9, pp. 158-159).
If we have merely had a foretaste of how these joys of heaven on earth might feel like, we know that we won’t stop following Christ until we can fully agree with Paul who said,
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2:20 ESV)
Entering the Promised Land 
Breathtaking. The quotation put me mind of the mystic, Teresa of Avila (who, I know, is, also, a favorite of yours, Susanne).
The other thing that came to mind was a little analogy I heard long ago. As children, we cannot imagine anything more wonderful than chocolate — in milk, in the form of chocolate bars, as hot cocoa, over ice cream. The very thought was scrumptious to us. (And is not so far off today!)
But, as adults, most of us would rate a passionate relationship above chocolate. Those blessed with wisdom would rate a long-term, loving relationship above even that.
We can look back and laugh at our childhood selves. Not until we make it to the next plateau in our physical development, however, can we grasp that there were limits to our earlier understanding.
The same can, I think, be said about our spiritual development.
Thank you, once again, for a challenging climb, Susanne!
With love,
Anna ❤
PS. Anytime you have excess chocolate lying around, by all means, send it my way. I am sure I can put it to good use (LOL).
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Thanks so much for your sweeet comment, dear Anna! 😀 By the way, I have always loved chocolate, too, like you. 😉 And I do love your analogy. So very true!! The following statement nails it right smack on the head. You said,
“Not until we make it to the next plateau in our physical development, however, can we grasp that there were limits to our earlier understanding. The same can, I think, be said about our spiritual development.”
Yesss! As it is with our physical development, it is with our spiritual transformation. We might look forward to experiencing a completely new level of understanding, but there’s also a kind of fear of the unknown that lies ahead of us involved. At least, that is the way it has been for me – always. Since entering a new level means I need to let go of things I was used to, whether old habits are concerned or my thought patterns that got somehow stuck. However, God helps us through it all and we will look back one day and be able to say, “It was ALL worth it!” 🙂
Much love ❤
Susanne
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Anna, you are a great encourager for me! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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My prayer for all is this–Father if WE wont jump then get behind us and push us!
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Well, dear Ken, your thoughts could have been my own thoughts as well. 😉 By nature I am someone who has the tendency to resist ANY change, even a change that might bring improvement in its wake. I guess I am somehow “ultra conservative”. 😀
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Its kind of like the father who says to his child–you need to take swimming lessons and the child resists…so the father takes em out in his boat to the middle of the lake and pushes them into the lake and says…now you will learn to swim…and you know the rest of the story.
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Yes, I think I know the rest of the story, Ken. And I remember how it was for me to be thrown into deep water when I was a rather small child. Although it was NOT my father (I guess I would have hated him for doing so). Instead, it was a well-intentioned swimming instructor who had been taught himself that this would be the only way to make anxious little girls get going. However, what that man would not know was that I feared deep waters since I had almost died by drowning on the neck of my mother about two years before. So, that method even increased my fears and although I have always been a passionate long-distance swimmer, I never got rid of that fear – ever.
I was just thinking of Jesus who saved Peter from drowning. That is the picture of God as a perfect and loving Father I have in mind. He would never force anything on his children which He knows they are afraid of. Our Lord is the Good Shepherd, not like that one who breaks the legs of His sheep to make them obey Him.
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Sometimes I wonder, Ken, if He doesn’t drop kick us through the goal post of life!
Love you, my brother.
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I enjoyed the post and all the comments. The thought as I read them is that it is crowded in my inter man. Jesus is in my inter man, but my flesh is there also. My flesh needs to die, then the environment will be pure. We quote scripture as if it is our testimony. Galatians 2:20 is Paul’s testimony. I pray that it will become my testimony.
I love and appreciate you my sister,
Pat Orr
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Mmmhhh….. I enjoyed reading your comment, dear Pat! 🙂
Yes, it is absolutely the same for me as you so perfectly verbalized it above:
“My flesh needs to die, then the environment will be pure. We quote scripture as if it is our testimony. Galatians 2:20 is Paul’s testimony. I pray that it will become my testimony.”
AMEN! That’s my prayer too.
I love and appreciate you, my sweet sister ❤
Your Susanne in Him
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Susanne, I had to read this Augustine quote about five times to get the depth of what he was saying. When we experience God’s Spirit through special gifts from Him or visions or dreams and such, we can so relish these gifts and special revelations that we want to cling to them and get out of them all we can as often as we can because they are pleasing to the flesh as well… they make us feel special and even as “better” than those Christians that don’t have them. This is flesh hitch-hiking on what the Spirit is doing.
So, what is God forced to do? He just takes us deeper into the valley of the shadow of death where there is a cross waiting for us to embrace with our name on it. Gone are the green pastures and still waters where we frolicked in the sun. “Daddy, don’t you love me any more?” we cry. Oh, yes, He does love us, so much that He wants us to enjoy HIM for who HE is, not for what we can get from Him. So, he strips away all our spiritual “props” we relied on so heavily as tokens of our spirituality and acceptability in His sight. He wants all our love and heart not just or love for what He can do for us. He wants us to love Him and His presence and knows that it is only there that we will find true happiness that this world and its circumstances cannot take away and spiritual gifts and revelations can not hold a candle to.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies: you anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” (Psalms 23:5-6 KJ2000)
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Dear Michael,
I read this quote several times too. All that you said above related to Augustine’s words I can fully agree with.
Yes, these valleys of death are anything but pleasant because we grieve and weep. We cannot grasp why a God who loves us lets us suffer that much. Okay, we might have read that He chastens his children so that they won’t be condemned with the world. But does that help in such moments of deep spiritual agony? Not really…
However, I was just reminded of an analogy. Imagine we would attend an exhibition, let’s say an art gallery. There is a highly talented painter who wants to show us his works of art and, best of all, he does not sell them because it’s a charity event. Therefore he gives them away for free. Looking a bit closer to that setting, we might suddenly detect people who scramble to get the best painting. Yet the painter is standing in a corner all alone. Nobody is interested in him. I guess that’s just about the way God might feel at times when confronted with our fleshly desires. A saddening picture, indeed, don’t you think?
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Yes, Susanne, your analogy is accurate, but a sad one. To think that this is how people treat the Giver as nothing as long as they get their gifts or only “love Him” as long as He keeps gifting them. Yet, when one has sought out and received the greatest gift of all that our Father has to give, His agape love, that person seeks out the “Artist in the corner” and wants to know this Person who paints from His heart! They want to KNOW Him to the very depth of His heart and will accept no shallow substitutes. I think that this is what Augustine was really saying.
May we all be so gifted and not settle for anything less than “the greatest of these is love.” Thanks so much for you thoughtful reply. 🐻
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You’re so welcome, Michael.
I do think you were right on as to your interpretation of what Augustine had said. Also, I believe that as soon as God has thrown out everything that clings to the flesh and to this-worldly interests, even to mere spiritual things, our hearts cannot help but longing for the ONE who made them so fearfully and wonderfully (Ps 139:14). As for me, I can say that without being able to enjoy His presence where the greatest of all – LOVE – can be found (and only there), life is a meaningless succession of trivialities, sorrows, worries, and pain. Maybe with little joys and pleasure in between.
Thank YOU for another profound comment, my dear brother.
Love,
Susanne 🐱
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This is, I think, how Jesus felt about His own miracles. He used them to demonstrate His credentials, alert others of the presence of God on earth, and exercise His great compassion. But the crowds sometimes viewed them as entertainment, a way to get something for nothing, overlooking His message entirely.
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YES and AMEN, dear Anna. Very well said! God-inspired words!!! ⭐
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Yes, my dear sister and friend, once we have experienced His love in such a personal way, all the the things of this world and all the rest of “spirituality” that we once thought was really something… it all loses its appeal and charm. “The greatest of these is love!”
I do not know why sometimes He takes the feelings of His intense love away as you seem to be going through, but as I read Song of Songs, I see this very thing happening to the Shulamite woman. He comes and then He leaves, but the end result is her no longer looking to herself in this relationship, but only to HIM.
“You that dwell in the gardens, the companions listen for your voice: let me hear it. Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of spices.” (Song of Solomon 8:13-14 KJ2000)
In our Beloved’s love,
Michael
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Michael – you nailed it. Wow!! The reference to Song of Songs fits perfectly for me. Thank you very much for these particular words! 🙂
In His great love for you,
Susanne
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Susanne, this is a quote from an article by George Davis that speaks of our progression as we grow into a perfect unselfish love for our Lord…
Likewise, the Shulamite maiden’s love for her beloved had to grow in fervor and purity before she could rightly love him. Love was being set in right order within her. She made three proclamations that reveal her growing passion of heart and the gradual displacing of her self-love with a genuine sacrificial love for her beloved. Her journey began with her first proclamation, which is found in chapter two, verse sixteen.
“My beloved is mine, and I am his. He browses among the lilies.” (2:16)
At first her relationship to her beloved is very one-sided. Her beloved had become a wonderful addition to her life. “My beloved is mine. . .” Although it is clear that she loves him, her love is out of order, in that early on she shows little consideration for her beloved’s feelings and desires.
Her second proclamation is found in chapter six, verse three.
“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies.” (6:3)
She is beginning to become aware of her beloved’s desires. She is starting to put His interests before her own. But still, she is very much alive to her self-love and quickly follows with her previous refrain – “my beloved is mine.” She is in transition, but she has not arrived yet.
At last, through much searching for her beloved and hungering for his embrace, love was set in right order in her heart. Her third proclamation reveals an even more perfect condition of heart, in which all thoughts of what she would get out of the relationship were gone.
“I am my beloved’s. His desire is toward me.” (7:10)
Once she had thought that her beloved was her possession, but now she has come to see that she is His. Once her love was egocentric, making her beloved a slave to her desires, but now she has finally come to value His desire above her own. She no longer lives for her own appetites but for his pleasure. From now on, all the energies of her life are spent with a view toward his delight and glory (7:13). “The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.” She is lost in his love. It has been a long journey but she has finally arrived. http://awildernessvoice.com/RightlyLoveYou.html
I hope that this blesses you,
Michael
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Dear Michael,
Yes, George nailed it, for sure!
But as for me right now, I have difficulties to tell you where I might stand since I have no love for God in my heart unless He lets me feel something which happens rarely and only for a short moment. Then He hides me in His silent darkness again. I think I experienced the first stage and the second, but also the third one as a mere pretaste. However, now everything has disappeared and I have no idea where He takes me nor whether I might ever reach a “goal” whatsoever. A strange condition, indeed, since I somehow lost track of all things I thought I had known before. Pheeeeew! 😛
Every divine blessing to you,
Susanne
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Susanne, it sounds like the stripping that Paul wrote about in 1 Cor. 13 to me… Be assured of one thing,.. when He is done, these three shall remain, faith, hope and love.
In that love for you,
Michael ❤
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Thank you so much, Michael! ❤
Love you too,
Susanne
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Thanks so much for a special thanks, Michael! 🙂
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My joy and pleasure, dear Susanne! 🐻
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🙂 🐱
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