How to come to know Jesus, to commune with Him, to discern His presence? The first decision is to devote as much time as possible to Him: read, study, return to what you don’t understand. Accumulate “Christ-hours” until the information coalesces into a recognizable face and study becomes an encounter. It seems that after a certain number of hours a door should open. But you can stand before that door your whole life without having figured out which way it opens.
Thousands of hours studying Jesus do not guarantee drawing near to Him. A person can spend them reinforcing his own convictions, to which he has quietly affixed the name of Christ. One can learn to explain His words so they never touch your life. Scholars of the Scriptures stood before the living Jesus—and some looked for a way to silence Him. Knowledge became a guard that would not admit the One for whom it had been gathered.
Coming close to Jesus requires an inner energy—a force that overcomes the inertia of our being. He called people to seek, to knock, to enter by narrow gates. You can study forgiveness for years and only encounter real resistance when you must forgive a particular offender. What will move us closer to Christ across time, internal distances, and the unknown dimensions of the spirit? Sometimes the whole journey begins with a decision for which we do not yet have the strength.
To become thirsty for truth a person sometimes needs to shift to a new energetic level: to gain the capacity to endure uncertainty and to reassess the foundations of his life. Yet all available energy can be spent on maintaining the old equilibrium. Following Jesus then requires strength from another source. Not everyone will withstand the transition: the old supports are already crumbling, the new ones have not yet arisen, and the person remains above an abyss that cannot be crossed by understanding alone.
The ability to follow Jesus depends both on a person’s inner state and on the circumstances of his life. One person needs only a question to begin the search; another needs years of security before he will allow himself to doubt. The demand for immediate spiritual transformation may be unbearable for someone who is barely keeping his life together. Maturing takes time, though the mere passage of years does not guarantee it. You cannot command a person to possess a freedom that is still forming within him.
The rule “leave it; let it grow” expresses trust in the hidden work of the spiritual life. In Jesus’ parable the owner is ready to cut down a barren fig tree, but the gardener asks for time and offers to tend the soil. The absence of fruit does not yet disclose everything happening inside the tree. A person, too, matures in a way that is not subject to another’s timetable. Helping his growth means participating in a process of which you are neither creator nor manager.
Can God make a person better without his consent and effort? If spiritual maturation happens naturally, why study Jesus and strive against oneself? Perhaps personal effort and involuntary inner change are two wheels of development. A person takes the step that is available to him, and what he experiences transforms him more deeply than he can consciously direct. The new state allows the next step. Thus human participation alternates with maturing that cannot be produced by command.
Spiritual assimilation can continue after a person has finished reading about Jesus and reflecting on what he read. The musician puts down his instrument, but at the next practice a movement that was previously uncooperative sometimes becomes available. In a similar way what we have heard and experienced quietly reshapes our perception. This image does not explain the whole mystery of spiritual growth, but it helps us understand why personal effort needs time and space to ripen.
The chief mystery of communion with Jesus is the meeting-place itself. Physically we do not see Him, and spiritually we often imagine Him far away in the heavens. A person turns to Him as if sending a signal across boundless emptiness, and listens to the silence. But before trying to bridge that void, it is worth testing the initial assumption: is the One we seek really that far away?
In fact Christ is already present in the spiritual depths of our “self.” The power necessary for growth is different in origin, yet present internally. A person does not need to create the source of spiritual life by his own effort. A plant appears because the seed is already in the soil. Perhaps the thirst for truth arises precisely where invisible life has already begun, even though consciousness knows nothing of it yet.
Being born from above can be pictured by the image of physical origin: the father’s seed meets the mother’s soil. Christ’s seed enters the depth of the natural personality we received from our parents and becomes the primary cause of a new “I.” Awareness comes after the beginning of life itself. Therefore a person can search for Jesus without suspecting that the capacity to search is already being nourished by His presence.
When does Christ begin to work within a person? The moment of spiritual awakening can be vivid, but it does not necessarily coincide with the start of hidden growth. The man who spoke with Jesus at night tried to understand birth from above in terms of familiar order and heard of the Spirit whose movement does not submit to human control. We notice changes without being able to reconstruct the whole path of their arising. The date of conscious turning does not reveal the mystery of the sowing.
What if spiritual life begins long before the conscious turning to God? In every person who comes into the world the original Light of the Heavenly Father is already present, and Christ, through the Spirit of Truth, sows in the human depths the seed of a new “I.” This is one way to understand the source of spiritual growth: we begin to seek God when He is already at work in us. We face two main possibilities: to ignore that presence or to recognize it and deepen the communion. The mere appearance of the seed is not our achievement.
Communion with Jesus can begin by closing your eyes, gathering your attention, and turning to Him within yourself. If Christ is already present in our depths, He does not need to be fetched back from a distant heaven each time: He does not disappear from fatigue or from lack of knowledge, though we can reject Him. For indistinct features to gain clarity it is necessary to study His convictions, principles, character, and ideals, measuring our own inner movements against them. The “Christ-hours” spent become the labor of recognizing the One who is already ready to reveal Himself. The door to the encounter opens inward.
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