Leanne Payne - The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ

The Healing Presence

Other Books by Leanne Payne

Real Presence
The Broken Image
The Healing of the Homosexual
Crisis in Masculinity
Restoring the Christian Soul through Healing Prayer
Listening Prayer

Copyright 1989, 1995 by Leanne Payne
Published by Hamewith Books
an imprint of Baker Publishing Group
P. O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49576-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Previously published in 1989 by Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois.

E-book edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any meansfor example, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-5855-8745-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, the Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked NEB are taken from The New English Bible. The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge Unversity Press 1961, 1970. Reprinted by permission.

Scripture quotations marked JB are taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd, Ltd., and Doubleday and Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible, the Lockman Foundation 1954, 1958.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971, and 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are from The Living Bible, copyright 1971 by Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois. Used by permission.

To
Lynne, Connie,
Patsy, and Lucy

Contents

And he [Moses] called the place Massah [testing] and Meribah [quarreling] because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

Exodus 17:7

Man is not genuinely human without the Spirit of God. This is the testimony of the Scripture and tradition of Gods people. This is the witness of those made competent to disclose the meaning of things because of their living union with God. This is the doctrine of the prophets, apostles, and saints. This is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thomas Hopko
The Spirit of God

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, inquire for and (insistently) require, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord (in His presence) all the days of my life, to behold and gaze upon the beauty (the sweet attractiveness and the delightful loveliness) of the Lord, and to meditate, consider and inquire in His temple.

Psalm 27:4 AMP

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus....

Hebrews 12:2

W hen I began this book, now six or seven years ago (other writings crowded in, demanding to be attended first), I had what seems in retrospect an unusual seeing or vision. I had been praying about how to begin such a book, one about the Lords Presence with us, and was keenly feeling the weight of the task and my own inadequacy. At the time I lived in a little third-floor attic, one with few windows and therefore not much light, especially in the long, dark winters. There was one window, however, that made the little eyrie livable both summer and winter. Its mullioned face peered through the graceful, widespread boughs of a magnificent mountain ash, and directly onto the beautiful shoreline and ever-changing surface of Lake Michigan. There in front of that window, as the sunshine bounced off the blue-green waters and tumbled into my little attic space through the topmost branches of that red-berried, green-leaved tree, I did my most earnest work of praying, studying, and writing.

God loves all His creatures: myself, the lake, the tree, the sun. On this day, as I prayed, His other creatures seemed almost to dance before Him. Sparkling and seeming to rejoice in their own creation, they poured themselves in through my window in their fullest array of light and warmth and color to bless me too. It was then that I had the vision, one not easily explainable.

The vision was of a painting, yet not a painting, for Christs living face glowed through it. While it was the Divine Face, yet it was aglow with and framed by the richest of earths sun-baked hues. It was a vision of Incarnation, the Uncreated shining through the created. Deeply quieted, I experienced a heightened sense of well-being and of His Presence filling and completing all things: surely a small foretaste of the fullness of being all creation will one day experience. In the gentle joy of that moment, I began this book with these words:

I see a smiling face, many times larger than life, and it glows in sun-drenched, earthly colors. Strongly through earths rosy hues streams the Uncreated Light, and I, a creature, bask in the face of Jesus, the God-Man who died and rose again. The Word of God our flesh that fashioned (Jesu Joy of Mans Desiring) smiles through the incarnate Son of Man, still dusty with earths radiance, and the two are one. And He is behind me, overlooking my work; in front of me, blessing me as I look up to Him. He is all around me; He is even within me.

Now as I return to the book, I find that this vision, yet vivid in my memory, still best expresses what this book is all about. How is it that God (the eternal) shines through us (the finite)? The Uncreated through His creatures? How do we minister in His name and power? How do we move in the healing gifts of the Spirit? How is it that we become persons, that we find our true selves and are completed in Him? The answer has always to do with His sovereign Presence over us, with us, within us: Incarna-tional Reality. That is what this book is about.

In Him we become fully human. In Him we begin to do His works. This involves incarnation, a descent of the Spirit into our deepest being and lives. In Him, the will, intellect, imagination, feeling, and sensory being are hallowed and enlivened. We begin to fully live, to participate in the eternal, the immutable, the indestructible.

We live in a day, however, when feweven among those who call themselves Christianbelieve in Christs Real Presence with us. Pope John Paul II made the sobering statement that for modern man, the sense of God is vanishing from the earth.

I am personally grateful that the circumstances of my early adult life, though extremely painful at the time, brought me to the place of seeking the face of the Lord with all my heart. In the midst of great personal need, I found the Healing Presence of Christ. I found all the treasure Christs gospel promises to the poor, the brokenhearted, those bound by their own and others sinfulness and pride. The ship in which I moved through life had foundered on the jagged, sharp shoals of divorce, and I was left with no doubt whatsoever of my need for a Savior, One who would