Calling on the Name of the Lord Take 4

If you have read the first three messages on this theme (here, here, and here), and practiced the exercises I suggested, you shouldn’t be surprised at the direction this post is taking.

The path of silence.

If you’ve practiced those exercises, you should have some familiarity now with calling on the name of the Lord Jesus, calling upon Him as quietly as you can, and calling His name with as little use of your mouth as possible.

Now, practice calling His name silently. Are you using your mind, your heart, or your spirit? Yes. Ideally, you’re using all three.

Call His name now, silently.

(“Lord Jesus”)

Try this: When you call upon Him silently, try gathering as much of your innermost being as you can, and pour your heart into calling His name, all while exercising no (or barely any perceptible) effort on your part. This may sound paradoxical. Yes. 

I like to think of it as a needle to thread.

Call His name again.

(“Lord Jesus”)

Now, you might be thinking, why on earth would I call upon the Lord this way? Well, sometimes, silence is golden, as the saying goes. For instance, someone who is mentally ill and armed with a gun might be threatening your life on the subway. 

Or perhaps you’re in the midst of a heated argument with your spouse. 

Or maybe you have a broken jaw and the doctors have it wired shut so you can’t speak a word if your life depended on it. 

Being conversant with an exercise like this can come in quite handy in these kinds of circumstances, and undoubtedly many more.

Ultimately, I want to give you as many options as possible. And as you practice these, perhaps the Lord will reveal a few more to you, just for you.

And the way I see it, the more ways you have to call upon the name of the Lord, the more likely you are to do it. 

Remember, this particular exercise is not just about calling upon the name of the Lord silently. And it’s not just about calling His name silently with all of your heart. It’s about calling upon Him silently, with all of your heart, and then waiting. Waiting until you either sense His presence near you, or until you feel His life moving within you. Or, waiting until you remember that He is in you and that you are in Him, and you just abide in divinely-given faith in that divinely-given fact.

There are many times when I have called upon the Lord’s name and not felt His presence near me or His life move within me. At least not at the outset. But then when I remember that I am in Him and He is in me, suddenly some sense of Him comes to me.

Now, it’s not the Lord who is the primary variable here. It is us and our fallen humanity. Some days we may just be tired, or grumpy, or perhaps we have some sort of physical issue distracting us. That’s okay. The Lord is steadfast, and so is His love toward you, and so is His presence within you, just you are in Him. Some days you’ll feel it, and some days you won’t. But it is always true.

Just continue to come before Him, accepting by faith your union with Him in spirit. Eventually, your subjective experience will follow the divinely-given faith in the divinely-given fact of oneness with and in Him.

May the Lord be with your spirit always.