Practicing the Presence of Jesus with Wally Armstrong
An interview with
Wally Armstrong,
author of Practicing the Presence of Jesus
There
has always been a deep desire to be an authentic believer and pursue a closer
relationship with Jesus. He just seemed so unapproachable for many years. I
didn't feel worthy and did not feel I had achieved the level of understanding
or performance that I needed to get to that higher level.
In
Practicing the Presence of Jesus, I
talk about the series of events that happened when I picked up a book by Dallas
Willard on spiritual disciplines and was tipped off on a book from the 1920s
about friendship with Jesus. It was when I started reading the first paragraph
of the book’s prologue titled “A Modern Vision of Jesus” that the hunger was
heightened. For the next two hours, I totally indulged in this new experience
with Jesus that took me to the beginnings of living life on the highest level.
It was completely different than how I had envisioned, and it all had to deal
with having the truth become a reality.
There's
a big difference between believing something is true and experiencing something
as real. Before this experience, I believed Jesus was alive, but I had no idea
that he wanted to be my friend and companion every moment of every day. The
picture I have in my mind now is
standing shoulder to shoulder with Jesus facing my sin together. I
always felt alone and that he would have nothing to do with me in the midst of
my sin such as, impure thoughts or unfair criticism of someone.
In
the spring of 2004, I drove up to Augusta to follow the King – Arnold Palmer. I
had no idea that I was going to see Jesus standing there in the flesh talking
to another golf professional like me. The Jesus I encountered behind the 18th
green had no sandals or beard or long flowing robe, but was dressed like every
other spectator at the event with a golf shirt and slacks. He only stood out in
the crowd because people had seen the movie The
Passion of the Christ that winter and recognized Jim Caviezal’s face as
that of Jesus. So when they saw Caviezel, they were saying “look Jesus is
talking to that Pro over there!”
When
I came around behind the 18th green to meet my friend Jim Hiskey and his
granddaughter, Rachel, I had no idea that I was going to see Jesus there
talking to another player. It was just God's timing that Jim asked me to come
up there and meet his granddaughter or I may have missed this whole encounter.
It was the affirmation that this was the picture that I needed to secure the
truths that I believed in as well as validate the personal encounter I had with
the real Jesus four months before.
You
see months before I found myself in my library reading a book which encouraged
the reader to envision what Jesus would look like today if he showed up in your
world as someone like you or me. As I thought of this, I envisioned Jesus as a
fellow golfer and all of a sudden he became approachable and alive and real for
the first time. The truths about Jesus became a reality. So I began to engage
him mentally, not only as my Savior and Lord, but as a friend. A friend who is
up-to-date and spoke my language. I always heard the scripture “I am the way
the truth and the life,” but now I realized that this was just not encountering
truth or discovering a way or a lifestyle. He is a real living person who was
always there, I just never saw him in that light.
Back
to Augusta – Later that evening when I was on the phone being interviewed live
on a national radio sports talk show, it all gelled and made sense when I began
to describe what it was like to see Jesus in the crowd. It must've been similar
to what the disciples saw or maybe Zacchaeus saw from up in the tree. He saw
that Jesus as one of them. The moment I finished the interview I felt as though God were saying to me, “now
this is a wonderful way for people to connect with Me on a level they were
created to experience, so tell others so they can meet Jesus as their personal
friend in this simple uncomplicated way.”
Q: Growing up, you struggled with being
“good enough” for your own father. How did that translate over to your
spiritual relationship with Jesus and the feeling of not being able to measure
up?
Growing
up as a child of an alcoholic you become a human “doing” rather than a human
“being.” You find all of your significance in your performance and attempts to
please your father, and to be recognized by him as being okay. There was so
much energy spent on meeting his expectations. You're just looking for that nod
of acknowledgment that you’re special or have done well, but when it never
comes, the energy builds up and it gets transferred to other ways of gaining
that affirmation such as winning golf tournaments, writing books, speaking to
hundreds of people, and doing golf clinics. Over the years, I have found many
ways of gaining that affirmation. So your greatest strengths become your
greatest weaknesses. Unfortunately, I found my significance and got my
affirmation from the praise of other people.
This
same quest for affirmation was transferred over to my relationship with God the
Father and Jesus. After accepting Christ I read about a father who really loved
me and my energy was transferred into that new relationship. I was driven in a
new direction, but I was on the treadmill of performance again, but this time
it was spiritual in nature. I still felt like I fell way short of God's
expectations, and even though reading the words of Jesus in the Scriptures gave
me great comfort, subconsciously I was still restless and working so hard to be
okay, to get to the next level where I knew I had to be. I was trying to be a
disciple on the highest level, but I was getting there on my own effort and
understanding, based upon what I had read about in other books. No one really
shared with me that Jesus was really alive, and beside me and in me, every
moment of every day—whether I was doing well or doing bad, whether I was
honoring him or dishonoring him.
I
read the truth of Scripture telling me about how much God loved me and how
special I was to him but this didn't deeply impact my heart until I encountered
Jesus as real and began to practice his presence. I began to hear the voice of
my Savior and friend affirming me of his love for me, not based on me doing
anything but being his friend. That's the big difference between changing and
transformation. Change requires effort and trying and earning to be okay, but
the transformation requires letting God love you for who you are and receiving
that affirmation without trying to change to earn that love.
Q: What is the chair experiment?
The
chair experiment came about when I read the book I mentioned earlier, and the
author’s own personal experiment of desiring “the friend’s” comforting presence
and envisioning him in his office. The writer told the story of a man that a
pastor once visited. The old Scotsman was ill and had a chair beside his bed.
He made the Savior real by imagining him sitting in the chair and talking to
him eye to eye as though he were his friend. When I read that from his old book,
I decided to jump right in and visualize Jesus in my room and to imagine him as
real.
Once
that connection was made, and I saw that I could receive his gift of friendship
as if he were a loving friend, I turned my desk chair to face me in my reading
chair and began to imagine Jesus sitting across from me. I visualized what he
would look like and how he would speak to me. This became a habit, and I could
not get enough of this relationship every morning. I would get up and imagine
him in the chair and mentally speak to him. Then, I would listen and imagine
how He would be sitting and how he would be talking. The friendship was
developed and nurtured day after day. To me it's finding space, a place for him
not only in the morning for our special times together, but throughout the day
whether it be imagining him in the car sitting next to me, on the golf course
walking down the fairway together, or playing with my grandchildren. My desire
is for him to be involved in my daily life and to acknowledge his presence in
the good and the bad, knowing that everything is okay because he is there and
as much alive today as he was with Peter and the disciples when they were on the
beach cooking fish.
Q: What does it mean to practice the
presence of Jesus? What steps are involved?
Practicing
the presence of Jesus is something that takes discipline and work just like
building a friendship with anyone else. It requires spending time with them and
being totally transparent with them. It requires learning about them by asking
sincere questions, sincerely listening and hearing with your heart.
My
first waking moments start with meeting him wherever I am, whether it's in a
hotel room on the road or at home in my den. This is the time when I am most
alert and alive. It's an acknowledgment of his presence and his sovereignty and
his love, the time when I talk to Jesus eye to eye and worship the Father for
who he is.
I
read his word in Scripture and visualized him speaking the same words to me in
a modern setting with modern language. I know that he is present in all of my
activities throughout the day, so there is an acknowledgment that he will be a
part of everything I do and everything I think. It's more than a relationship
but a companionship. A relationship is on and off, but a companionship is alive
all the time because he lives in me and walks beside me every moment of every
day. I desire for him to enjoy my life, and that I would be a loyal friend to
him wherever I am and whatever I am involved in.
As
I come to situations, circumstances, decision-making, and meeting people, I
desire to have an awareness of his presence and check in with him during the
day. Some days I may go for hours without this actively happening. I just think
you develop a mindset to look back and to look ahead in order to have the
assurance that He has been a part of it and will be a part of the future
whether you want him to be there or not. It's a lifestyle and the mindset that
follows the Scriptures of “come to me,” “learn from me,” and “fix your eyes on
me” so His joy may be in you. The truth is because of his presence he
experiences our life with us, now that an incredible truth to ponder.
Q: Why do you think we too often see
our Christian lives as performance-based rather than relationally-based?
We
are living in a performance driven society where everything is based on the
curve. You're constantly being graded and everything is achievement oriented.
From the time you understand this force, it becomes more and more drilled into
you. Relationships take time and, most of all, risk. It’s much easier to
perform a task than to develop a relationship. God wants people to be involved
in being real with each other and be in relationships that are genuine and
filled with integrity. With Jesus and others, risk is the path to certainty. If
you don't risk, then you'll never be sure that relationships are real and
sustained. This is where so many opposites come into play. In order to be a
leader, you must be a servant. To be a true follower of Jesus requires looking
at life in a whole different way. You make choices every day to follow his lead
rather than your own common sense or instincts. Jesus said my sheep hear my
voice and they follow me. So as we live our life in this interactive
companionship with Jesus, it requires looking at him and stepping out onto thin
ice, or as Peter was encouraged to do, by walk on the water to Jesus.
Q: We often think of Jesus as being
condemning, but He was nothing like that with His disciples, was He?
As
I read in the Scriptures about Jesus’ relationship with his disciples, there
was a tremendous amount of patience with these numbskulls. They were very numb
to what was happening around them. Jesus was teaching a whole new way of life
than what they were used to experiencing. Jesus lived an upside down life and
was encouraging them to follow him in the same way. You have to go back and
understand the culture that they lived in to see how incredibly upside down
Jesus was turning everything. He wasn't condemning people except those who were
religious fanatics or cruel to little children. He loved the disciples and
corrected them, but he realized that they were not filled with his Holy Spirit
yet, so their spiritual insights were not fully developed yet. When they got
connected to Jesus after the resurrection, then the Holy Spirit helped them to
see Jesus clearly and connect with him and live life on the highest level. So
there is no condemnation, only corrective love.
Q: What do you mean when you talk about
not only accepting Jesus as a Savior, but as a friend?
There
is such a reverence to Christ and a loyalty to his sovereignty that some people
like me keep him at arm’s length in the sky as a royal judge. They see him as a
task master who requires them to shape up and get to work. They're not
comfortable sitting at his feet and resting. They have no time to learn from
him because they're too busy learning about theology and doing all kinds of
benevolent things for others. They're becoming disciples on their own efforts
and the have never been taught the first step of how to follow him as the
living person he is and the friend that he wants to be.
They
don’t see the gift of his friendship that is offered. We are talking about a
living person who is a brother and is an advocate (someone who comes along
beside to help). He is someone who is approachable and has walked in your
shoes, experiencing everything to the same level that you experienced them.
This is a side of Jesus that very few people see and understand. They have not
been enabled to see a simple way of entering into this friendship.
That's
what I am hoping that this little book will do: open up this side of Jesus that
is personal and intimate and that people will enter in to this invitation he
gives to be his friend and develop intimacy (which means – “in to me see). Now
that's what friends are for.
Q: What can we learn about Jesus by
looking at His relationships, especially with His father?
Jesus
was the actually the first disciple, a disciple to his father. And because
Jesus was the first disciple, we can learn many things by looking at the way
that he described his relationship with his father. Then we can realize that
these are the same opportunities we have to enjoy fellowship with the father
and the son. It was his desire that we would be living together in communion
with the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. In the Lord's prayer, Jesus
encourages us to live on earth as it is in heaven, so we just live on this
Earth with the triune God as it is in heaven. We are invited into their family
as a son or daughter. It was once said, the son of God became a son of man so
the sons of men could become the sons of God. God is in the business of
building a family of sons and daughters who will live with him forever and
ever. Jesus was sent to start the ball rolling again. He was mankind’s second
chance. The best second chance ever and it's all about being saved by grace. On
Earth as it is in heaven.
Q: You say that you waited a number of
years to write this book. Why did you wait so long?
I
was a busy bee, writing another book and traveling to support other ministries
with my speaking and clinics. As
I began to practice the presence of Jesus and study his word I began to put
many of my thoughts and experiences down on paper in my Journal, so the book
was written over many years. I'm an avid reader and usually have three or four
books I am reading at one time and because of this, I'm constantly learning
from others new ways of looking at this interactive life with Jesus.
As
I began to get deeper into this friendship with Jesus, I realized that I had
many misconceptions of the truth. I began to categorize these within my
Journal, so when I had enough of them together I wrote out my story. I started
the first rough draft about five years ago, then I had a number of writers take
a look at it and doctor it up, so the book just kept growing and being refined.
Just
like in golf instruction, there's nothing new under the sun, so this book is a
giant compilation of many things that I have read from other people and
listened to other people talk about. It's always been my desire to share with
others the simplicity of the gospel. I've spent my lifetime refining the golf
swing into its simplicity and teaching it so people can play golf and enjoy it
for what it was meant to be not for what it has become. This is the same desire
in writing this book – that people could be freed to live life on the highest
level in the simplicity of a friendship with Jesus.
Armstrong invites readers to visit his website www.oldprobooks.com for more
insights about receiving the gift of
friendship Jesus offers us, and check
out www.wallyarmstronggolf.com for free golf tips.
Practicing the Presence of Jesus: Experience the
Gift of His Friendship by Wally Armstrong
(Summerside Press,
October 2012, ISBN 978-1-60936-702-2,
$12.99)
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