Practicing Presence w/ Afrika Mills

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, we welcome Afrika Afeni Mills, who will be leading us through an exercise. It will help us practice and become more aware of the presence of God with us.

We invite you to co-create your own experiences of spiritual formation through personal and communal practices. We believe that through such personal and communal practices, we open ourselves and surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst grow us up into the healthiest participants in the ministry of Christ that we can be, to the glory of the Father.

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Afrika: Hello, I am Afrika Afeni Mills, and I serve as the Faith Avenue Champion at GC Steele Creek in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am so excited to talk with you about practicing being in the presence of God, and particularly, talking about a welcoming soul healing in God’s presence.

I have had the gift and opportunity to be a part of the School of Formation and Transforming Centers, Transforming Community. In those spaces, I have been learning a lot about what it means to relate to God in a secure way and, in a way, being reparented by God, as well.

All of us were raised by the folks who are our caregivers, and our caregivers do the best that they can. At the same time, all of us as human beings have fractures, and we have brokenness that sometimes causes a bit of challenge for us as we grow in our relationships with God. We can sometimes take some of those experiences and the brokenness that comes from some of those experiences and bring that into our relationship with God. We sometimes feel like he may be distant, not listening, or he is disconnected from what we are experiencing.

I want to talk about what we learn about God in the scriptures, what the scriptures tell us, particularly Psalm 23 says,

¹ The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. ² He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, ³ he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. ⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I love that passage. It is my favorite passage in all of Scripture because it reveals how present God is with us. All the references in that passage talk about God’s active engagement with us, God’s presence with us, God being with us, comforting us, and anointing us with abundant love and goodness.

When we think about being in the presence of God, it’s what I love to have anchoring my time with him. Also in Matthew 11: 28-30, Jesus says,

²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

That passage, also, is so encouraging because it is Jesus inviting us to be with him, just as he is Immanuel with us. That invitation shows how much he cares for us and that he notices where we are all burdened, where we have challenges, and when we are exhausted and need rest.

When I think about exhaustion, I think about that in our physical bodies, but also in our spirits. This invitation for Jesus to walk alongside us and to help us is such a warm and loving invitation, especially when he talks about being gentle and humble. We know that these things are true in Scripture, and we know intellectually, and even in our spirit, that we can be in God’s presence and that all these things are available to us.

Yet, we struggle because we are human beings who have had different experiences in our relationships with the people in our lives that make it hard for us to live into the reality of God’s presence. One of the things I wanted to talk about and share with you today is the practice of transforming or inner healing prayer.

I had the experience of participating in Odyssey in Christ’s “Experiencing the Trinity” retreat last in the fall of 2023. It was the first time I had heard about this spiritual practice. I had heard about several other ways of engaging with God, but this one resonated with me because it talked about and acknowledged that we do need such help from God when we want to go through transformation with him.

There are things in us that need to be healed. From the guide that we received as participants, it says, and I quote from the guide,

“Our growing love relationship with the Lord involves an invitation to participate with him in his ongoing ministry. One vital component of Jesus’ ministry has always been that of healing. He has come to heal the brokenhearted, to release and set free those who are in darkness, and to provide for those who grieve, blessing them with the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment in praise instead of a spirit of despair. [And that comes from Isaiah 63: 1-3.] The healing ministry of Christ involves the provision of restoration to wholeness at all levels of human concern. As with other aspects of his ministry, Jesus invites us to participate with him.” [p 35]

And then the guide goes on to quote from Richard Foster’s writing, Prayer, Finding the Heart’s True Home, and Richard Foster says,

“Healing prayer… is a clear recognition of the incarnational nature of our faith. God cares as much about the body as he does the soul, as much about the emotions as he does the spirit. The redemption that is in Jesus is total, involving every aspect of the person — body, soul, will, mind, emotions, spirit.”

Let us think about this exercise, this spiritual practice. I will go through the way I want to do the steps of the practice, and then I will talk through a bit of what my experience has been with that practice.

I am going to invite you to lean into your time with God, and to spend some time reflecting on each of the steps. I will pause between the steps so that you may do that in your own time with God.

We begin with an invocation, where we invoke the presence of God. That is really, on a basic level, asking God to be with you, even though we know he is always with us. We are inviting his active presence with us in this time that we are spending with him intentionally. So, I would like for you to pause for about a minute, and just spend some time inviting God to be with you.

[Pause.]

The next step in the exercise is that you would like to do — ideally, if you have someone who is like a spiritual director or companion or friend for you, would be able to invoke this blessing over you. But, if you are engaging in this by yourself, you can begin by asking the Holy Spirit to be with you and then wait in silence as you open your heart to the Lord.

I would like for you to do that now. I invite you to take about a minute to just sit in God’s presence and ask for God’s blessing over you during this time.

[Pause.]

The next step that you are going to engage with is conversation and preparation. So, you have already now invoked God’s presence. You have now either had a blessing asked over you, or you have asked for a blessing on yourself and have listened to what the Holy Spirit would say to you. In this third step for a conversation and preparation, you are beginning also with some time of silence, which I will invite you into again. This time is to sense God’s presence where you are moving into letting God know what it is that you are hoping for in prayer with him.

And if you’re not sensing God’s presence in the way that you might think — because sometimes, we expect that these times we spend with God to happen in a certain way and sometimes we are not sure if what it is that we are whether we have heard from God or not. But just be able to lean into the process and to prepare to encounter God.

You are acknowledging that you are anticipating God, experiencing tangibly God’s love and care for you, and you want to lean into the invitation to center your thoughts on Jesus. I invite you to spend some additional time in silence. We will take about another minute to just sit before God and to really be sensing God’s presence. And you can be praying verbally or silently to God. You are just going to continue to sit in his presence.

[Pause.]

Step four in the process is listening in prayer. This is my favorite part. Then, I will tell you a bit about what I experienced when I engaged in this practice. This is a time where you, either with your spiritual director or companion or on your own, where you go to a safe place in your mind, where you would enjoy meeting with God.

This can be a literal place or an imagined space with God. Do not worry if no place comes to mind, which is okay. Try to imagine a place where you would encounter God, acknowledge that God is your Lord, remember that God loves you dearly, and that he says in his word that he will never leave you.

You want to try to imagine a place like that. We want to spend some time, take about two minutes to spend time with God and imagining what this place would be for you. In that time, you are going to be inquiring of God what he would want you to know or to do.

Also, you are going to be waiting and responding to him as you begin to encounter God in this place that is in your mind. When we get toward the end of that two minutes, we are going to be definitely be engaging in thanksgiving and appreciation for God’s love and care for us and for you.

Let us take that time during these two minutes now to imagine that safe place in your mind.

[Pause.]

After you have had an opportunity to listen in prayer and to find that real or imagined place with God, the next step is to savor the moment. Having encountered God in that space — if that space came to mind for you — you would be affirming God’s love, care, and concern for you. I am thinking about, too, whatever you engage with, with God because as I talked about in the beginning, we bring a lot of our own scripts from our own families, part of our own brokenness or the fractures that we have experienced into our time with God.

So even in the place that you imagine with God, it may have been an experience that was abundant and bountiful for you. It may be a place where you needed to spend some time just having God receive your brokenness and your tears and your sadness, your disappointment or regret. Just know that this time, the listening, and the prayer, it can be whatever it needs to be between you and God.

You are savoring what happened between you and God during that time and being mindful of what happened for you with God during that time. Once we have that time to engage with God, we want to take some time to savor the moment. You are going to pause for about a minute or two and just allow God to have you savor the time that you spent together with him.

[Pause.]

The next step in the process is that you are going to be sealing the work. In the sealing the work part of the practice, you or the person who is serving as your spiritual director, companion, friend are asking for God to allow what he has done in this time of prayer to be sealed in your life, take root in you, and to produce spiritual fruit in your life.

As you are thinking about that, a lot of times what comes to mind for me would be the fruit of the Spirit and thinking about those various aspects. Not to say that you must think about all nine, but there are specific ones that jump out at you as you are thinking about the time that you spent together with God.

So, take about a minute to pray or to be prayed over and to seal the work that God has done with you in this time.

[Pause.]

The ultimate step in this exercise or in this practice is to process. If you have a spiritual director or companion or friend with you, then this would be time for you to think about how God has been at work with you during this time of healing prayer.

What is it that God is healing in you?
What came up for you in your time with God?
How are you thinking about the way that you engage with him?

If you are engaging in this process, just between you and God, then you might want to journal and write down what it is that you experienced. You might want to just talk with God, not just because it is important to engage with God in a way that works best between you and God, but to really use this time to reflect and process and think about what it means for you moving forward.

I want to allow about a minute or two to process what you experienced in your time with God during transformative prayer.

[Pause.]

So, I will talk with you a bit now about what my experience was like in this process. It was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have ever had. I have had the opportunity to publish a book, and I have been a writer for a long time, ever since I was five.

My mom has poetry that I wrote from the time that I was about five years old. You can see me writing in cursive. I am writing poetry, and I started keeping a diary when I was about seven. In that though, as I was growing up, I began to feel like my worth was in my writing. It was in how well I did in school.

I did well in school; I started school a year early. I skipped a grade. And I remember being praised a lot for how I did in school and the grades that I got in school, which at first glance doesn’t really feel like a bad thing. But as I have had time to have God heal me and be in the problem — I am not healed all the way yet; I do not think we are on Earth side — but to engage in healing about what my worth is. What does it mean for me to matter?

In this time of transformative prayer, what I was able to get to, especially in the time of listening in prayer, I was able to get to a space with God. The space that came to mind for me was my living room. We have a big, comfortable couch. It is not the best for your back, but it is cozy.

I imagined being there on my couch, sitting there with Jesus where he was on the chaise lounge part of the couch, and I was on the other part of the couch and my feet were touching Jesus’ feet. He said, during this time when I was engaging in this practice, that we needed to move out of the living room and go someplace else.

I really did not understand that at first. As I trusted Jesus, we were into another space, which was not a real space, but an imagined space. It was this beautiful meadow that was filled with trees, with a body of water, and with all types of plant life and flowers.

It was aromatic and beautiful. My couch was there as well, even though we were not in my living room. What Jesus said to me during this time was that it was important to move out of my living room because in my living room, there is a copy of my book. In a lot of ways, it is where I have gotten my esteem.

During that time when I engaged with Jesus, he told me that I am worth far more than what I produce. If I never wrote a thing, that he adores me, and that he so loves me, and he likes me. That was just such a ministering to my soul because I really needed to hear that.

So much of who I think of being and whether I matter in this world still tends to default to what it is that I do, not who I am as a person. During that time, I experienced God really ushering me into a place of knowing that and beginning to really embrace that my value is because he just loves me and because I am his and because I exist, and he created me.

That really helped me. It really was a balm for me. When I was able to savor in the moment, it was a beautiful experience. It was just what I needed to hear at that moment. It shook loose a lot of negative things that had been cemented in my soul that I really needed to begin to heal with God.

Then, getting to the part of sealing the work and processing, I really was able to start to practice. Yes, I wrote this book or yes, words come to me, and I can create these different experiences in my writing. That is a gift that God has given me, but that is not where my worth is.

The way I respond to him is that I honestly, in my time with God really go back to that meadow a lot of times when I am engaging in silent prayer with God, when I am looking to God for answers. When I think about how it felt to be in that space, I go back to that space and in my body, I can feel lightness and an embrace from God.

As we think about the exercise and after sharing my experience with you, I just want to come into a time of reflection. The scripture that comes to mind for me is in Isaiah 43: 1, where God says this.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”

That is a continuation of that experience with God, just really thinking about God saying that I am his.

It is so lovely to me. So much of my way of relating with God was bringing a lot of that performance-based way of thinking about myself into my relationship with him where I felt like I did not know if I was pleasing to God if I was not doing things for him.

I even had to change the framework of being “used” by God. I do not think in that way anymore. I think about being with God and participating with God and having myself that I belong to God that has really been blessing me. In John 10: 28-29, God says,

²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.

Finally, in Romans 8:38, Paul says,

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In reflecting on that, I belong to God, and nothing can snatch me out of his hand. Nothing can separate me from his love, including my own brokenness or the scripts that I have about my own worth. He is there to heal me from those things. As we close, as we think about who our loving God is, I would like to pray for us.

Holy God, Father, Son, and Spirit, we are so blessed that you are such a present God. You are not someone whose face is still in indifference toward us. You are passionately in love with us. You hold us in your hands. You walk alongside us. You invite us to be with you. You are never apart from us. You are not distant. You are not aloof.

You are concerned. You are so concerned with who we are. Your adoration for us gives us the opportunity to be transformed. We are so grateful to you, God. I pray that even as we conclude, even as we reflect on this transformative prayer, inner healing practice, Lord, we pray that we would come back to this space as often as we need to. It is your desire for us to be whole and for us to know who you are, who we are in you, and what your love for us means for us in this life.

We thank you so much for all you are and for all we get to be with you and with one another because of who you are. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

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Cara: Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at info@gci.org with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.