August 15, 2009

As I reflect back to my experiences playing the game with minutes the first few months I started, much improvement has occured! There were times in the first couple months where I felt like I wasn't making any progress, and I was tempted to give up. I had to keep reading Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach's writings to keep me going, by continually recasting the vision of how it would be like one day if I could have constant communion with God with all the immensity of intimacy that the Scriptures talk about, but what so very few Christians experience. Reading some Dallas Wilalrd articles/interviews helped keep me going as well.

Thsi game with minutes is no longer as "torturing" as it used to be. My mind is slowly but stedily adapting to the rigorous training applied to it for these past 5 and a half months. I still cannot get near 90% of a day, but when I keep on trying and trying, I no longer get mental fatigue. Especially when I am alone, away from other people. That time ist he easiest. I still do find it a challenge to keep god in mind as I interact in conversation with other people. But I am slowly grasping it, much like learning to ride a bike without hands. At first, only being able to let go half asecond, then a full second, then a few seconds, adding more seconds each time. It seemed impossible to keep God on my mind as I talked to others and read books before. Now it is slowly becoming more and more doable as each week passes.

I am sensing God's presence with me more and more aech month. It is very different from an internse/sharp feeling or emotion one gets at a Christian worship concert (e.g. Hillsong). Instead, it is a very subtle, yet semi-detectable presence in the "background" of my everyday ilfe. Borrowing an analogy from an author orignially ued to illustrate another point, this is very much like the faint peaceful musc in the background of a room. And over time, the "volume" of thismusic increases slowly, but steadily. I am "subtly", yet noticeably feeling god's presence with me where I am now.

It is like a person who is blindfolded, standing outdoors during the sunrise right at dawn, originally being faintly aware of the sun's rays, heat and light shining on him and all around him. As the sun rises more and more towards noon, the blindfolded person senses the sun's rays, heat and light more and more, creating a stronger and stronger awareness of the sun's presence in the sky, although he cannot see it with his eyes. By noontime when the sun is directly over him, he knows it is there, and little faith is required because he knows the sky's full of the sun and it gives him heat and light. It is a little like that for this experience. I have not reached the stage of "noontime" with the presence of God yet, but it gets closer and closer every month. Judging from the Great saints of chhurch history who have mastered this art of practising the presence of god though, it will take around 10 years to fully mster this discipline that eventually results in the full freedom of noon.

I remember when Frank Laubach first played this game with minutes in his first few months, he experienced the hand of God moving before him, observing that "obstacles that once seemed insurmountable have meled away". One instance of his were the fact that Muslim priests who were previously unfriendly to him started to treat him warmer and friendlier. It's very interesting. After I first played this game in March until now, I have seen the hand of God move in pretty extraordinary ways. In terms of my ministry serving in East Asia, I saw a lot more spiritual fruit in my students affter I started playing than before it (first semester in the fall, I saw no substantial fruit). In other "obstacles" such as the housing situation, God miraculously provided and allowed the school and police to make an exception in their city's laws just for us. When I returned to Tornoto, I saw God significantly working in the people I was interacting and grew up with all my life in unusual ways not seen before, as well as providentially arranging meetings with potentially like-minded people to partner with in starting something like a spiritual disciplines league next summer when I return to Toronto. I felt like God was piecing certain things together this summer. Externally speaking, God has been working around me where He has sent me after I started playing this game with minutes. It could very well completely be a "coincidence". But as one saint of intense prayer said before, "coincidences happen a lot more when I pray". I fancy taht this is the work of the Holy Spirit accessed through the discipline of the game with minutes. If we could only have 10 Christians in each Bible-believing church in Toronto do this, we'd see revival soon.

In terms of my spiritual life, this game with minutes has accessed more of the Spirit's power in producing in me the fruit of the Spirit. The biggest one has been pece. Things that once would have caused me to worry, "flip out", get angry, or upset about have lossed their power on me. I'm still human with emotions, but these things, for the most part (I still am stumbling from time to time) have lost their grip on me. When I encounter situations that tempt me to worry, "flip out", get angry, or upset, I no longer am mastered by those feelings. God has made me more peaceful during "heated" arguments (whether I'm a participant or observer), I generally have the peace of God more and more. As for the other fruti of the Spirit which are love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, I found that these have been a natural by-product of playing the game with minutes, it's amazing.

One reason why I think that this helps produce the fruit of the Spirit, is because it helps me dwell on godly thoughts. Not only that, it helps me correct my false, evil, and self-harming destructive thinking that tends to be subconscious. The majority of my harmful thoughts, I've discovered, usually occur below my immediate conscious awareness, and require rigorous mental alertness to detect. I do not write 15 page essays encouraing myself to be prideful. I can spend 15 minutes daydreaming subconscious prideful thoughts when I'm not alert though. And switching this type of subconscious thinking, since it is subconscious, is much like switching grammar structures. For example, in English, if I were to start switching a subject-verb-object structure (Chris eats apples) to a subject-object-verb structure (Chris apples eats), it would take time, alertness, training and discipline to successfully start using the alternate grammar structure naturally, without thinking it. Evil, self-harmful subconscious thoughts are like that. The difference is that speaking wrong grammar structures is detectable as soon as it comes out of the mouth. Evil subconscious thoughts though, aren't detected by my ears. These evil subconscious thoguhts will not set off "security systems" automaticaly in my mind as soon as my mind drifts into sinful thought patterns. This game with minutes helps me to monitor my mind more frequently, for the thoughts are where evil thoughts get their source from. This game with minutes helps me to switch the "grammar" of my subconscious thoughts and emotions when they lead me to think unhealthy and ungodly thoughts and emotiosn and switch my subconscious thoguths to think healthy and godly thoughts as well as emotions.

From time to time, I get a more intense/apparent feeling of God's presence. I had one instance last night, where, when I was in solitude, I really sensed Jesus sitting on my bed with me, and just being my King, brother, as well as friend, all in one. I "hugged" him, and I felt close to Him. It was a wonderful hour of solitude. About a week ago, I decided to ask the Holy Spirit to help my legs run as I was finishing the last 5 minutes of my 40 minute jog. i felt a strange presence in my legs that helped me run. (I was inspired to do this after reading about Frank Laubach praying to God to guide his arm moment by moemnt whiel he played tennis, and as a result, he played better. He then did the same thing to his opponent, and then he started to play better as well.)

The wonderful thing about this game with minutes, as there are multiple blessings of this game, is that one never really "gets used" to the stage on is at. I have a feeling that for the rest of my ilfe, as I keep on playing this game, the experience will continue to evolve forever in this lifetime. I also suspect that life with God in the afterlife will continually evolve in deeper and deeper quality in the intimacy with God.

As Ravi Zacharias says, this God is the God of perpetual novelty. I wonder how my experience playing this game with minutes will evolve in the next 2 months.