“Once as I rode out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love and meek, gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency, great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express—emptied and annihilated; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to serve and follow Him: to be perfectly sanctified, and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.” By Jonathan Edwards
It is a sad reality that we live in a world where this kind of Christianity — the kind that takes God seriously, the kind that seeks Him with the whole heart, the kind that longs for obedience, surrender, and true communion — is dismissed as “mystic.” To walk with God in the way Scripture describes is considered abnormal, excessive, or overly eager, as if pursuing Him deeply were some personal eccentricity rather than the very life we were created for.
What grieves me most is that the Word of God tells us plainly that this is the life we are called to right here, right now. We are not waiting for heaven to begin this journey. We are not waiting for a future age to know Him intimately. We are not waiting for some spiritual elite to show us the way. The invitation is already in our hands. The command is already before us. The Spirit is already within us. Yet we remain anchored to our limited perspective of who God is and what He offers through salvation. Our view of His grace, His goodness, His love, and His purpose for us is so small, so narrow, so domesticated, that we do not give Him the space to reveal Himself as He truly is.
What Jonathan is describing — this life of depth, surrender, and communion — is simply what happens when we let God teach us how to love Him and how to see Him. It is not mystical. It is biblical. It is not extreme. It is normal Christianity. It is the abundant life Jesus spoke of, the life that flows from abiding, surrendering, and obeying.
My heart aches because I have no words strong enough to convince others that this is the path Christ meant when He said He came to give us life, and life more abundantly. If I — someone the world would easily dismiss, someone who has been rejected, overlooked, and underestimated — can understand this life, then anyone can. If someone like me, the “worm” of Psalm 22:6, can taste the riches of His presence, then every believer is invited to partake in it. I am not putting myself down when I say that. Knowing myself as a worm is an honor, because it is impossible to encounter God in the depths of our soul, in our brokenness and surrender, and still see ourselves any other way.
And by brokenness, I do not mean the shattered kind that destroys a person. I mean the brokenness of a soul tamed by God — a will yielded, a heart softened, a life aligned. This is the brokenness that leads to wholeness. This is the brokenness that opens the door to the boundless riches of Christ.
This is what Paul meant in Ephesians 1 when he spoke of the riches of God’s glory and the inheritance given to the saints. This is what it means when we say, “He brought heaven down to us.” It is not poetry. It is reality. Heaven is not merely a destination; it is a life we begin to taste the moment we surrender to Him.
This is the tragedy: what Scripture calls normal, we call mystical. What God calls obedience, we call extremism. What heaven calls inheritance, we call optional. And all the while, the life we were created for — the life of abiding, surrender, obedience, intimacy, and transformation — stands open before us, waiting for us to step in.
