As Jesus performed acts of healing or other miracles where He revealed His divinity the Scripture records that the crowds were astounded or amazed. This is not the sort of “how’d he do it?” amazement that we might experience at a magic show. The Greek words that stand behind the reaction of the crowds indicate that they themselves were experiencing a transformative spiritual presence that was flowing from Jesus. One of these words is ekstasis from which we get our word ‘ecstasy’ (present in Mark 5:42; 16:8; and Luke 5:26). According to Thayer’s Greek Lexicon a state of ekstasis is …a throwing of the mind out of its normal state,… A person in a state of ekstasis is …
“…transported as it were out of himself, so that in this rapt condition, although he is awake, his mind is so drawn off from all surrounding objects and wholly fixed on things divine that he sees nothing but the forms and images lying within, and thinks that he perceives with his bodily eyes and ears realities shown him by God. (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).”
As Jesus ministered to the crowds through healings and miracles He was making place for the actual presence of God to become manifest to the men and women who stood around Him. This is the same ‘witness’ that we have to give to world around us. I often think about how we serve others, which is an important part of how we identify ourselves as Christians. Surely that outward focus points us in the right direction. But here is the crucial question: How much of serving others really does engage our created design enlivened by the Holy Spirit within us? How much do we look inward to flow outward?
There is no doubt that we feel good about helping people. But if we keep our helping on a ‘feel good’ level it doesn’t often result in deep changes in a person’s life. Transformative helping calls forth a whole different dimension. Rather counter-intuitively the focus actually shifts from what we ‘do for’ that person to how we ‘be with’ him or her as God has created us to be; that is, in our enlivened inner nature.
God has designed us to be a transformative influence in the world around us. Other things, however, tend to creep into the picture of reaching out. Obligation, expectation, reputation… even a desire for good feelings tends to dominate our motives for helping. Real transformation is not always accompanied by good feelings. It is, after all, a painful process. A person in transformation may go through times of grueling self-doubt, of fear, anger, confusion, envy ... all of the myriad unpleasant emotions that accompany the disorientation of real change. As we become enmeshed with this struggling person we may even become painfully aware of the disfigurement of our own souls. In my own experience the light of the emerging sacred space begins to reveal much in myself that makes me feel inadequate to help anybody. As the good feelings of helping turn into doubts and deep questionings about, “Why am I even doing this?,” it is here that the only answer simply has to be, “Because God has purposed me to.”
In helping others we seek an outward expression of something both human and divine within us. It is usually the case that we get halfway there. We set out to express that desire in our service to others but we don’t very well tap into those deep inner wells where the real source of healing lies. Our task is not to impose our own expectations on how our helping should make a difference in a person’s life. Rather it is the painful work of digging through the layers of our own distorted surface nature, conditioned by the world around us, to tap into those inner springs of spiritual life. As we do this a spiritual space enlarges within us and expands outwardly making place for healing in the souls and lives of others around us.
Struggling through this process deepens us – both helper and the person being helped – because the spiritual space does not belong exclusively to either one. It is God’s deepening work in all involved. It is not really me ‘fixing’ you in a directly intentional manner. It is me opening my inner being up to the work of the Holy Spirit to produce an ever-surfacing sacred space which spreads outwardly beyond my own skin. And so I invite you into this space. It is not up to me to change you. Yet I do not stand apart from you and just ‘do for’ you. I am with you in the struggle because we are both here in this spiritual space struggling toward becoming all that God intends for us to be.
Jesus Himself came into a state of ‘ekstasis’ as He healed those around Him. Mark 3:19-22 records:
There is no doubt that we feel good about helping people. But if we keep our helping on a ‘feel good’ level it doesn’t often result in deep changes in a person’s life. Transformative helping calls forth a whole different dimension. Rather counter-intuitively the focus actually shifts from what we ‘do for’ that person to how we ‘be with’ him or her as God has created us to be; that is, in our enlivened inner nature.
God has designed us to be a transformative influence in the world around us. Other things, however, tend to creep into the picture of reaching out. Obligation, expectation, reputation… even a desire for good feelings tends to dominate our motives for helping. Real transformation is not always accompanied by good feelings. It is, after all, a painful process. A person in transformation may go through times of grueling self-doubt, of fear, anger, confusion, envy ... all of the myriad unpleasant emotions that accompany the disorientation of real change. As we become enmeshed with this struggling person we may even become painfully aware of the disfigurement of our own souls. In my own experience the light of the emerging sacred space begins to reveal much in myself that makes me feel inadequate to help anybody. As the good feelings of helping turn into doubts and deep questionings about, “Why am I even doing this?,” it is here that the only answer simply has to be, “Because God has purposed me to.”
In helping others we seek an outward expression of something both human and divine within us. It is usually the case that we get halfway there. We set out to express that desire in our service to others but we don’t very well tap into those deep inner wells where the real source of healing lies. Our task is not to impose our own expectations on how our helping should make a difference in a person’s life. Rather it is the painful work of digging through the layers of our own distorted surface nature, conditioned by the world around us, to tap into those inner springs of spiritual life. As we do this a spiritual space enlarges within us and expands outwardly making place for healing in the souls and lives of others around us.
Struggling through this process deepens us – both helper and the person being helped – because the spiritual space does not belong exclusively to either one. It is God’s deepening work in all involved. It is not really me ‘fixing’ you in a directly intentional manner. It is me opening my inner being up to the work of the Holy Spirit to produce an ever-surfacing sacred space which spreads outwardly beyond my own skin. And so I invite you into this space. It is not up to me to change you. Yet I do not stand apart from you and just ‘do for’ you. I am with you in the struggle because we are both here in this spiritual space struggling toward becoming all that God intends for us to be.
Jesus Himself came into a state of ‘ekstasis’ as He healed those around Him. Mark 3:19-22 records:
The word used here for ‘beside himself’ is existemi which literally means to stand outside of one’s self; that is, to not be in one’s normal mind. This is how others saw Jesus at this moment. What might have appeared to these on-lookers, and, indeed, the scribes took it as demon possession, was most probably that He was taken up in that same Spirit of healing that He was pouring out on others. As we yield ourselves to the Spirit working within us so it is that same Spirit that pours out into the lives of those that God has purposed us to serve.
Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, "He is beside himself."
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