Do you Feel Something is Lacking in Your Christian Life?

If you feel something is lacking in your Christian faith, this is when your Christian life can begin in earnest. In an earlier post Elder Archimandrite Aimilianos told us it begins when we have the feeling of being separated from God, a feeling that something is lacking in the practice of our faith. He also said this feeling is necessary if we are to begin  to walk the path to salvation as promised.

Saint Theophan the Recluse says,

We become aware of this incompleteness, and see the incorrectness of our way of life and the instability of our efforts. And so we turn from outward to inward piety. We are led into this either by reading books about spiritual life, or by talking with those who know what the essence of Christian life is, or by dissatisfaction with our own efforts, by a certain intuition that something is lacking, and that all is not going as it should.

He tells us that this awareness of something lacking comes when we have lived what is normally seen as a good life, but we do not have inner peace and do not have what Saint Paul says is promised, “peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14.17). He says,

Once this troubling thought is born in us, then by talking with people who have knowledge he will come to realize what the matter is, or we may read about it in a book. Either of these things will enable us to see the essential defect in the order of our life, namely our lack of attention to the movements within ourselves, and our lack of self-mastery.

It is when we realize that something is lacking in the practice of our faith that we become motivated to seek what kind of changes are necessary for us to become united with him so we are able to endure whatever life brings, doing His will, and living with inner peace.

Saint Theophan tells us that this is when we begin to understand that the solution lies in the condition of our inner being.  He says,

We understand then, that the essence of the Christian life consists in establishing ourselves with our mind in the heart before God, by the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is in this way we are enabled to control all inward movements and all outward actions, so as to transform everything in our self, whether great or small, into the service of God, the Trinity, consciously and freely offering ourselves wholly to God.

This is when we can benefit from studying the Ten Point Program For Living an Orthodox Life booklet to learn how to live the Orthodox way of Life. This gives us the path to what our soul is seeking, union with God.

Finally Saint Theophan writes,

Once one has become conscious of what the essence of Christian life is, and has found that it is something that he does not yet possess, he sets to work with his mind in order to achieve it. He reads, thinks, and talks. And so he comes to realize that the Christian life depends on union with the Lord.

Reference: The Art of Prayer compiled byIgumen Chariton of Valamo, p 165