Our film & podcast with John Ortberg of @become.new is being released this afternoon. We hope you’ll join us and sit in on this milestone conversation for Abiding Practice.
There is a Reality that we easily forget. A Truth that we recognize again and again: We are living in The Presence of God.
Each time we turn our souls attention to this Abiding Reality, we harmonize with the ways things really are.
We cannot escape God’s Presence, but we can resist it. When we surrender our resistance, the blessing comes back.
Reminding us that every moment is ripe with peace, connection, and clarity. For those with the eyes to see.
The roots of our lives are planted in God, but the fruit comes when we choose to remain in Him. Abide.
To become a vessel of attention is to surrender to being seen through.
God is not merely before us - He is within the seeing itself.
We turn toward Him,
and find ourselves already inside His gaze.
Awareness is made in communion with Him.
To be seen through by Him, and see Him for who He rightfully is.
He is with us.
Abiding Practice is a shared space for people who love God and want to live deeply, but feel stretched thin by the pace and noise of modern life. Many of us carry a quiet sense of longing—for presence, for clarity, for a life that feels more whole.
It is an ongoing posture—one we return to again and again through reflection, prayer, creativity, and a multitude of other pathways.
Through short films, writings, and other artistic expressions, we’re creating space to pause, to notice, and to let formation happen slowly over time.
For artists, makers, and culture-shapers, creativity isn’t something we put aside to grow spiritually.
It’s the place where God’s formation is already taking place in us and through us.
We believe that creative work can become a meeting place—where faith can bloom, and God’s Presence can be revealed in quiet, surprising ways to the world around us.
To read more about the Abiding Together -- check out our most recent Substack post.
We are so excited to Abide with you.
What do you hear? What comes to you in the quiet? Feel the rumble come to a still as you take in this precious moment.
We cannot stop time. We move with it. We also try to dominate time and rule over it. We control it because we are afraid of what time will do to us if we don’t “make the most of it”… We think through input/output scenarios that can get us up to achieve more, do more, and become more. Such a thing isn’t inherently bad, but when we control something we were actually made to live into and let become simply, we put unnecessary expectations on ourselves and forfeit our souls' experience of God.
To quote the words of Brother Lawrenece, “All we have to do is to recognize God as being intimately present within us”. All we have to do is pause, and become aware of a God who is not only with us, but within us.
Awareness brings us to live in harmony with time. It is to be inflow with time. It is a repositioning of our posture to align with the fact that God is intimately present within us, and therefore we can be intimately present with him. We find harmony in pausing. It is the door that opens us to greater awareness of God around us — and time begins to slow, as we can live into the seconds that are no longer passing by, but are being lived into.
Find a space to pause. What actually makes you aware of God? Where do you go to find him?
You’ve been showing up. Putting in your time.
Listening to the right podcasts, sermons, and audiobooks, but God’s Presence is still hard to find.
You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you have this sense that you are disconnected from God, your calling, and your community.
I believe that many of us feel this tension in our lives and it’s not because we haven’t tried hard enough.
It’s because our lives are so full, everything is changing so fast, and we live in a world that’s only getting more complicated.
We feel scraped too thinly. What then is the way forward?
Abiding Practice is a shared space to explore the art of living in God's Presence. It's not a program to complete, but a practice we return to again and again.
We look forward to walking alongside you to ever increase your Awareness of God.
God’s Presence is not abstract.
It is felt,
experienced,
encountered.
Beauty is a primary language for Presence—not just a pretty decoration,
but a declaration.
Artists who abide, seek to make this beauty visible.
Giving form to what is unseen and often unspeakable.
When an artist abides,
beauty begins to flow.
Their work becomes a bridge—
pointing beyond itself and back
towards the Presence it came out of.
Leading culture closer,
to The Beautiful One.
Psalm 27:4
Society is filled with stories—
stories that tell us who we are
and who we should become.
These messages sink into our bones,
passing from person to person,
often without a single word being spoken.
Artists are the makers of these messages.
Which is why the soul of the artist matters—because it shapes the soul of their work,
and the soul of their work shapes the soul of society.
Leading her toward deeper communion with the Imago Dei, or pushing her into further disconnection.
The formation of the artist is forever bound to the formation of culture.
As an artist:
the shape you take
is the shape you make.
Abiding is an Art. It’s not a formula. It’s nothing you can strategically think through, master, analyze or graduate from. Abiding in the Presence of God is to practice Sacred Art. It is a way of being in the world and attending to Reality, as Reality Truly is.
To see our abiding in God as an art, is to learn the craft of experimentation, intention, and intuition.
What worked yesterday, may not work today. The place you found God last year, may not be the same place He is revealing Himself to you this year. Abiding requires a flexible responsiveness.
As Brother Lawrence would put it, “…our sanctification does not depend as much on changing our activities as it does on doing them for God… He thought it was a shame that some people pursued certain activities (which, he noted, they did rather imperfectly due to human shortcomings), mistaking the means for the end”.
Abiding is about getting in touch with our great “Why”. Why do I do what I do? Practice these disciplines? Pursue God in this specific way?
It is about co-creating a life with God that is true, authentic and faithful, but ever-changing as well.
We practice the art of Abiding In God.
When the seasons change, we adapt. We put on sweaters, we turn on the heater, we stay inside when the chills of winter arrive. Through the changing of the seasons we learn how to protect ourselves from the elements.
Our souls however, don’t have the option to take cover. Our souls feel the brutal chill of winter, the freedom of summer, the glorious freshness of spring, and the satisfaction during the harvest of fall.
We cannot avoid experiencing the seasons in all their fullness and unique differentiation between them.
The added layer, bound up in time and defined by the changes, is the strange space of living in-between seasons.
We feel spring when spring arrives, but the feeling of the previous winter lingers long before the flowers are in full bloom. Although the sun is shining, the air still carries a heavy chill.
The in-between seasons are hidden moments, and we often feel expectant and hopeful for what the new season will bring.
Existing in the threshold moments is an art in its own right and there is a wisdom to be learned in these unique times.
As a new season unfolds, it might reveal a new chapter, a new channel, a new side, of the One who never changes, but is always revealing something new within each seasonal transition.
The bridged spaces can become teachers if we allow them to.
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Check out our film, “Through”, on YouTube to see this idea displayed through artful cinematography, as well as an article on our Substack, “Are You Stuck Between Spiritual Seasons” where you can dive deeper.
