5 Stages Of The SoulSample

Persevering Love—Invitation to Intimacy 

TRANSFORMATION THROUGH SUFFERING

For many of us in Stage Three, the tearing down of idols— including the idol of our “false self ”— may require divinely orchestrated circumstances or other earthly trials we can’t control or explain but that God works through. My husband, Ray, had lost his job as an executive in the retirement industry. He had been unemployed for six months with no viable prospects. Our children were young at the time, and our family had no income and no answers to prayers. Ray and I were scared. Back then, I would have described myself as a “good” Christian doing all the right things. In fact, I naively believed that I was “doing” the Christian life so well that God was glad I was on His team! Consequently, it was painful and distressing to me that God did not seem to be answering our prayers for a job.

One day, the thought came to mind, “What if my faith is a myth? What if everything I have believed about God and Christianity is just a nice tale that worked for a while but just doesn’t work anymore?” I struggled all day with the rationale that if I had bought into a myth, I could choose to not believe that myth anymore. I even imagined what I would say to my friends: “Christianity just didn’t hold the intellectual validity I thought it did.”

Then, like the prodigal, my disruptive moment happened, and I “came to my senses.” Suddenly, I was undone by the presence of God—not a quiet, tender presence, but the holy, powerful, and captivating presence of my Heavenly Father. At that moment, I sensed Him saying, “If I never bless you again, I AM.” I was shaken to my knees and could not speak. My life was not my own. My motives and pride were exposed. My pharisaic heart was revealed. I realized that my prayers were fueled by the expectation that because I was doing the right things for God, then He would do His part as I thought it should be. God revealed Himself as Truth and Holiness. I was undone by the total otherness and majesty of who He is. God was using our painful circumstances to reveal Himself and to purify my stubborn and willful heart. In the days and weeks that followed, my eyes were opened to His love and provision in ways I would not have seen had I continued hanging onto my own religious false self and how I thought God should provide. I would have gone down a path of self-righteousness to cover for my unaddressed fears and insecurities.

In this stage of persevering love—invitation to intimacy, we have seen how God uses suffering to beckon us into a deeper knowing of Him. He strips away all the things that inhibit us from drawing close to Him—our wrong thinking, misguided values, unhealthy attachments, and even our unbiblical assumptions about Him—and exhibits more of His presence. 

Yolanda was a woman Brennan Manning describes as one who, by God’s grace, was able to stand up under life’s pressure as she faced her last days of a battle with leprosy. She was thirty-seven years old, a mother of two teenage children who were not allowed by their father to visit their mother. Before the leprosy had destroyed her body, Yolanda had been breathtakingly beautiful; now she was dying, her body disfigured by the horrible disease.

As Manning anointed her head with oil and prayed with her, the room was filled with a brilliant light. He gazed upon Yolanda’s face and commented to her that she seemed happy.

Manning explains what happened next:

With her slight Mexican-American accent she said, “Oh, Father, I am so happy.” I then asked her, “Will you tell me why you’re so happy?” She said, “Yes, the Abba of Jesus just told me that He would take me home today.” I vividly remember the hot tears that began rolling down my cheeks.

Yolanda died six hours later. Manning later found out that Yolanda was illiterate and had never read the Bible, although the last words she spoke were full of joy in the Lord and reminiscent of those in the Song of Solomon. Yolanda encountered a road that humanly seemed impossible to travel and was met with the fully satisfying presence of God. In the next stage, as we continue to die to all that is not of God, we will find our lives taking a trajectory of joy we never could have imagined.