Julian of Norwich
Facts not feelings. Over the years, I’ve heard many Christian teachers emphasize the need for disciples of Jesus to anchor their faith, not on their feelings or emotions, but on the truth of God’s Word. This is good advice. However, if taken too far and applied too rigidly, it is advice that has the potential to lead us into a spiritual desert.
By its very nature, our faith or trust as believers is not in facts, truths, or principles to be applied to our lives. No, our faith is in a person. Our faith is in Jesus. And it is this personal faith that fuels our spiritual passion and allows God to shape us into people who live our lives from the center, who live our lives from the heart.
It is for this reason that God often allows us to experience unexpected struggles and pain in our lives. Through these trials, we learn to trust Him, and not just truths or facts about Him. I can tell you that I am the man I am today, a better man, a more godly man, because of struggles that tested my faith and ultimately resulted in heart changes that have profoundly shaped how I see my world and the people in it. In my Personal Reflections every Thursday, I share some of these changes with you.
Enter Julian of Norwich. I mentioned Julian a couple of weeks ago. A fourteenth-century Benedictine nun, Julian is best known for the saying, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” But before Julian could write these words, she had to undergo first, a near-death experience in answer to a prayer to know her God in a more intimate and personal way. She describes her experience in her book Revelations of Divine Love.
Julian actually prayed for what she refers to as a “bodily sickness.” I realize this sounds a little looney, but keep in mind that this is a woman who lived during a time when life was fragile and cheap. The Black Plague wiped out half the population of Norwich.
In her prayer, she provides us with a good example of praying in God’s will. Here’s what she prayed -
“Lord, you know what I want. If it is your will that I have it, or if it is not your will, do not be displeased with my prayer, for I do not want anything that you do not want.”
But why in the world would anyone pray for a bodily sickness? According to Julian, “I intended this because I wanted to be purged by God’s mercy and afterwards live more to his glory because of that sickness.”
God answered Julian’s prayer. On May 13, 1373, at the age of thirty, she became deathly ill. On the third night of her illness, the priest was called, and last rites were administered. But Julian lingered on. “I lasted until the seventh day,” she writes, “and by then my body felt dead from the inside.”
It was at this point Julian experienced a life-changing vision of Jesus and His suffering on the cross. “I never asked for any kind of revelation or vision from God,” she tells us, “I only wanted to have the compassion I thought a loving soul would have for Jesus by witnessing his suffering.”
But God, in His grace, saw fit to allow Julian to experience this mystical, revelatory vision that changed her life. Many historians believe that it was after this experience that Julian became an anchoress, living beside the St. Julian church in Norwich. And it was from this church that she took her name. She devoted her life to prayer and offered spiritual counsel for those who sought her out.
I’ll have more to say about Julian of Norwich and her vision next week. For now, let me simply say that in a day when young adults who grew up in church are leaving in large numbers, with the majority giving as their reason for leaving that they never experienced God there, we need to emphasize the importance of both facts and feelings in our Christian lives. And while mystical experiences and visions are not something we seek, as Julian clearly did not, we should, like her, desire to be filled with the compassion of Christ and live our lives to God’s glory.
In Christ,
Dan
Julian of Norwich’s book, Revelations of Divine Love is available on Kindle, through Amazon. If you are a Kindle Unlimited member, it is available for free.
See Dick Staub’s The Culturally Savvy Christian, p.71-72, for more information on the George Barna study concerning why young adults are leaving today’s church.
Check out my podcasts from Church on the Edge and my books on Kindle.