Ten years ago, I met Jesus.
No, I didn’t have a vision of Him, nor did I have a near death experience where I saw Him in heaven.
But I know I met Him.
Ten years ago, I embarked on a nine-month prayer adventure called the Ignatian Exercises. Once I finished, I was never the same. The experience stained me forever. And it’s a privilege now to lead others through the Exercises.
So what happened there that opened the way for me to personally meet Jesus? Let’s first start with a little explanation about the Exercises.
What are the Ignatian Exercises?
The Ignatian Exercises are an 500-year old way of discipling others into a personal relationship with Jesus. First put together by St. Ignatius, they have consistently proven their value in leading folks over the centuries into encounters with Jesus. In fact, the whole goal of the Exercises is to help you see Jesus more clearly so that you can love Him and follow Him the rest of your life.
There are five basic parts to the whole adventure. You first spend time soaking in God’s personal love for you. Then you move into dealing with sin around you and in you. Next you start walking with Jesus through His whole life and ministry. After that, you watch Him in the last week of His life through His crucifixion. Finally, you encounter Him in His resurrected life.
Each day you are given a Scripture to meditate on and ways of praying that help guide you through the entire adventure. In addition, you meet weekly with a spiritual director like me to process what is happening.
Why are the Exercises so transformative?
Here is where the story gets interesting for me. I had already spent a good part of my life reading and thinking about the story of Jesus. So what made the Exercises so different? It was a way of praying that I had never been asked to do.
I call it the secret sauce of the Exercises: imaginative prayer.
Pretty soon into if, I was asked not to simply read and think about the Scripture passage, but to imagine it. It felt like I was being asked to stand on my head and drink water. I had never used my imagination in prayer. It felt clumsy, difficult, even tiring. But I stuck with it.
Over time, I began to imagine all the scenes from the gospels with Jesus, putting myself in them as one of His disciples. I started experiencing life with Him, feeling all the fear, joy, shock, wonder, and surprise those first disciples must have felt.
I started encountering Jesus.
The one story that I will never forget
But there was one moment when I knew I met Him. I was imagining the scene before His entry into Jerusalem when He asked two of His disciples to go and get a colt for Him to ride in on (Mark 11:1-6). As I imagined the scene, it was early one morning. Jesus was washing and drying His face, and He called me and another disciple over and told us that He had a job for us.
As we huddled together, He told us exactly what to look for and what to say to the owner of the colt. Then He looked straight at me and winked! I was completely caught off guard. It was a wink of both kindness and connection. He was saying to me something like this: “Hey, friend, I know you, I love you, and I’m glad you’re here with Me.”
In that moment, Jesus personally connected to me, just as He did to everyone in the gospel stories, with kindness, curiosity, and love.
It was a wink I will never forget.
Interested to hear more?
I have shared a bit of my experience with the Ignatian Exercises to help you see into them. But I do so with a word of caution. Your experience with the Exercises will be different than mine. You will meet Him in a unique way suited to your own individual soul.
Jesus will find a way to connect to you that is just meant for you.
Curious to hear more? Contact me this month. During June and July, we go through a process of discernment to see if the Exercises are right for you at this time. This time framework gets us ready to start the actual Exercises in September and end in May.
I hope you will really consider taking on the adventure of the Exercises. Like all good adventures, you will end up in places you never imagined!
Bill
