April 21, 2008  

We Need to Know Jesus

One of the main ways for healing to begin (a most powerful way, very important for contemplatives) is to learn to listen to God.  We must learn to listen for His Word.  We take the Father seriously on Mount Tabor, when He says, "Listen to Him - listen to Him."  He did not say, please listen to Him.  It would be really nice if you listen to My Son.  He says, "Listen to Him."  Contemplatives learn to listen.  We need a contemplative Church, don't we?  We need that listening Church again.  There is a healing power in God's Word.  There is a healing power in the Scripture.  In praying the Scriptures, we have the actions and the words of Jesus Himself04-21-08 We Need to .  We do not have to continue guessing what Jesus wants to do and what He wants to say.  Listening is a powerful healing tool that God Himself uses.  This method of listening to Jesus through the Scriptures comes from the lesson of the Road to Emmaus.  When Jesus walked that road with His disciples, He simply used the Scriptures to respond to what they were saying.  They would ask Him a question and He would ask them something. Scripture tells us that He finally opened their minds so that they could have the revelation, the understanding, of what He was saying.  And what did they do?  They ran and told everybody.  They used then the Word of God themselves, to share. 

I was reminded in this level of healing, how the power of it, is what helped Brother Rick when he first got the word that he definitely had cancer from all that bleeding.  He said, "Lord, give me a word."  He turned immediately to the Scriptures.  He had done that all of his life - contemplatives do.  We turn right away; this is where we go, to the Scripture, to the Word.  "I need a word; I need to hear from You."    And he got it.   He knew it when he just opened the Bible and there it was.  It gave him the release to totally surrender to God's will.  That was when he could come forth and say, "Why not me?"

He was healed, but not of the cancer. He was healed from any alienation from God.  Jesus used Scripture with him and it brought hope; it brought hope to the discouraged.  He heard from God.  We can hear from anybody in the world, but it is different when we hear from God.  It touches the heart, it changes the heart, it heals the heart.  
The Scripture on the road to Emmaus is so important for contemplatives because it definitely shows us the way of faith.  Not long ago the Lord was showing me more deeply that when He rose from the dead, Mary Magdalene mistook Him for a gardener, because He looked like the gardener.  He did not look like the Jesus that she knew.  He had another body of some kind; He was risen.  He did not look like Jesus on the road to Emmaus; He looked like a stranger.  They did not recognize Him.  His own apostles did not know who He was on the seashore while they were fishing.  And He began to show me how important it is to have this gift of faith to spot Jesus and no matter what the attire is, no matter how He wishes to appear. We need to know Jesus.  We need to listen and to know Him in His word, as He lives within each one of us. 

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Introduction to Inner Healing," Omaha, 2004