Knowing Your Belovedness

I shared yesterday that I struggled this week with an acute feeling of aloneness. Thankfully, a book by Henri Nouwen helped broaden my scope to remember that all of us struggle with that same experience. 

Aloneness is a prominent experience of the human condition. 

I’ve been continuing to think about that feeling of aloneness, and it’s caused me to see that part of the reason I experienced it so acutely on Tuesday was because I’d gotten disconnected from the knowledge of my belovedness. 

When I’m connected to the truth of my belovedness, I’m not alone.

I’m connected to God. I feel his delight. I feel free of pressure or expectation or criticism or condemnation because the power of love dispels those dark, negating things. 

I’ve come to deeply and firmly believe that life — salvation — is about discovering our belovedness, exploring the truth of it to better understand and believe in it, squooshing ourselves all around inside of it so that it covers and fills every part of us, and then connecting to its truth again and again and again. 

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said to “abide in his love” (John 15:9). 

Do you know your belovedness? 

Everything He Creates Is Beautiful

Every single morning of the gift that this week on Captiva Island is, I sit on the lanai porch of the condo with my tumbler of coffee and spend time in the quiet, just like I do at home. 

Except that here, there are dolphins. 

For pretty much the entire time I’ve been staying here, at least one dolphin — and sometimes two, three, or even four — are moseying around in the marina right outside our porch lanai. Back and forth they go, enjoying the swim, usually casting back and forth for fish to eat.

And the amazing thing I’ve discovered is this: 

Every single person responds the same exact way to a dolphin sighting. 

There’s the initial screech of discovery. “Oh my gosh, look! A dolphin! A dolphin! Come here, come here, come here — hurry! You have to see it — the dolphin!” And then they stop and linger for sometimes up to an hour, offering their complete focus to the water, watching the movement of the dolphin, seeing where he’ll pop up next. 

This morning, I saw one of the dolphins swat a live fish up out of the water with his back fin and then jump up and capture it. The splash he made upon landing back in the water caused quite a ruckus, given his weight and size, and it was such an image to me of his total abandonment to the moment and his strength. 

I shook my head and smiled, totally overcome with wonder. God’s creatures are amazing.

Here’s a similar thing I noticed this week.

Around the corner from our condo, there’s a small manatee lagoon. A tiny wooden dock juts into the midst of it, and yesterday about ten people crowded on it — three adults and the rest small children ranging from three to seven years old — scouting out the manatees.

“Do you see him? He’s blowing!” I heard one dad crow to his youngsters. They were totally preoccupied with the moment, intently focused on this wonder of life and beauty. 

And I sat here on the porch lanai this morning, taking all of this in and thinking:

You are beautiful, just like all this.

Do you know that?

As much wonder and delight as we take in the sighting of a dolphin or manatee or other creature in its natural habitat in this world, Jesus takes the same delight in you. He made you just as wondrously beautiful and delightful.

Do you believe this? 

Love Makes Us Still

I’ve written before that my girl kitty, Diva, teaches me so much about God and our connection to him. Early on, I shared that she teaches me about contemplative prayer. I’ve written how my love for Diva teaches me about God’s love for us, particularly as humans. And more recently, I shared that she teaches me about nature versus nurture. 

This morning she taught me something new — namely, that love makes us still. 

I’ve noticed a pattern with Diva.

For several days at a time, she decides she’s just not that into me. I try to engage her as she’s resting on the couch, and she doesn’t return the interest. I call to her from the bedroom in the evenings, which usually sends her scurrying to my side, but instead she stays planted in the other room. She’s just not that interested. 

It gets rather lonely for a few days, and I miss her.

But then, pretty much like clockwork after a few days, suddenly she’s everywhere I am. She is clingy in an over-the-top-even-for-Diva kind of way. She just can’t get enough of my attention or affection. And since she seems to need it rather a lot, I gladly give it to her. (Between you and me, I’m so glad for her return. I miss her companionship when she’s in those several-days-away hiatuses!)

And then things return to normal. She jumps on our bed at 5 a.m. wanting attention, then settles down and lets us fall back to sleep once she’s received it. She jumps off the couch to follow me a few hours later, once I get up and moving about, fully entrenched in our usual morning routine of sitting at my desk for coffee and prayers for a few hours each day. She alternates between prowling around at my feet and jumping up on my lap and desk during the first chunk of time I’m sitting there. 

And then she becomes very still. 

Just like in the photo above, she will sit on my desk for long lengths of time, completely content to just sit there. She stares at the same exact spot on the desk or out the window for extended moments. She moves her head slowly to look at me if I rub her head, not really inclined to move around.

She’s just content. Just being. Near me.

This morning I realized it’s because she’s fully resting in love. She’s received her usual fill of attention and affection, received during that first big chunk of time we’re together at my desk, and now she’s able to just rest in it. 

Can we do the same? 

Perhaps you can relate to Diva, going away from love for long stretches at a time, preferring to make it on your own for a while, only to scurry back to the source of love after you’ve been away, then drinking it in huge gulps because your thirst has gotten so parched. Or finding yourself in a normative rhythm with God, spending time prowling around at his feet or sitting on his lap and letting him love you each day. Or perhaps, maybe sometimes, you find yourself completely content in that love, settled into a place of stillness and peace as you allow yourself to just be you, fully inhabiting yourself and fully loved, in the presence of God.

Where in this picture are you today?

He Has All the Time in the World

I’ve shared with you that I’ve been walking through a season of difficult questions. I keep bringing those questions to Jesus — sometimes in anger, sometimes in grief. And I shared yesterday that I’m aware through all this struggle that Jesus values me and the struggle. 

I shared that he values you in the same way, too. 

This morning, I became aware of yet another aspect of Jesus in the mix of all this: his infinite patience. 

At this point, it feels like Jesus and I have been talking about this struggle for forever.

Really, it’s just been about a month.

But every time I join him on the beach in a time of personal prayer, this is the immediate place I go. Sometimes we’re walking into the sunset. Sometimes we’re sitting on the shoreline crest. Sometimes we’re stopped in the sand, facing each other, and I’m waving my hands wildly about, bumping up against the limits of my human understanding. 

He just keeps being with me in it. 

A lot of times in the struggle, I’m talking so much that I won’t let him get a word in edgewise. He’s fine with that. He keeps listening. 

Sometimes in the struggle, my heart is pained so much that I don’t want to listen to him, even if he did have something to say. I put a wall between us as I look out at the ocean and contemplate the waves and my struggle. He’s okay with that, too. He gives me my space. 

So far in this struggle, I have received his ongoing infinite patience.

He has all the time in the world with me on this.

When I did finally give up one day and surrender my stymied questioning, at least for the moment, he didn’t try to talk back to me about it. All he did was hold me and sing over me. 

This morning was perhaps the first time in all of this long struggle that I actually listened to him.

I made my case yet one more time, and then I listened. It was morning, perhaps around 8:30, and we were walking south on the beach. The sun was not yet warm. The sand was cold and wet beneath our bare feet. 

I had stopped talking, and we walked quietly for a few moments. He knew I was listening. 

And do you know what he did? 

He looked up at the sky for a minute. He looked over at me and smiled. And then he looked back up at the sky and started, slowly, talking to me about the creation story. 

He took me back to before the beginning of time. 

It was a long story. We are still, in fact, talking about it. And I became so aware during this morning’s walk that he will take as much time as is needed to do this conversation justice. 

There were several times in the conversation when I grew impatient. I had things to do and people to see today. I couldn’t take the fullness of time needed to cycle through the entire creation story, attendant with all my noticing and my questions along with it, all in the space of one morning walk. 

That was okay too. We’ll still be there tomorrow. He’ll still be there. Ready to pick things up right where we last left off. 

How might you receive the patience of God toward you right where you are today?

He Values You

Earlier this week, I shared a peek into a struggling season with Jesus I’ve been living through. It doesn’t dominate my every waking moment, but some days and hours are harder than others. 

One of the greatest gifts from Jesus through these difficult patches is his valuing of me.

As we sit on the shoreline crest and I sputter out my confusion or anger or sadness, I’m aware that I have his full attention. He’s not trying to sweep my struggle under the sand. He’s not telling me not to question or feel the things I do. He’s listening. He values what I feel and think and say. 

This morning, as we were walking on the beach again, I asked him what he would say to you today. 

He said he values you. 

Whatever you’re walking through today, he values you. You have his full attention.

He will walk with you and listen. He will look fully into your eyes. He will hold your hand if you’d like him to. He will put his arm around your shoulder. He will give you space if that’s what you need. 

This is a relationship of full and dignifying value. He values you completely. 

What is receiving value from Jesus like for you today?

What Does It Mean for Him to Know You?

It’s such a valid question.

If God already knows everything, then what does it mean that he wants to know us? Doesn’t he already know us?

This actually has more to do with us — with the experience of being known that we receive by opening ourselves to him.

Here’s an example. 

Let’s say you are a thirteen-year-old girl trying out for a theatre production. You’ve practiced and practiced your audition for weeks, and the part is hard. You have to sing and put a little personality and even choreography — if you’re brave enough — into your performance of it. The scripted lines require you to take some bold steps out of your usual reserved self and to be a bit brash, even a bit comedic.

The day of the audition comes, and you nail it. You give the best audition you could possibly give. 

Your mom was in the audience while you gave the audition. She saw how well you did. She knows how hard you worked. She’s been with you through every practice and every fear. She’s been with you on this whole long journey to the stage that you’ve taken all these years. 

She knows what this audition meant to you.

But afterward, in the car, she wants to hear all of it again. She gladly lets you bubble over and replay every single moment out loud — several times, if you want to. She nods and smiles right along with you through every play by play. She celebrates. She joins in. 

In this moment with your mom, you feel deeply known and know that you really are.

That’s how it is with Jesus. 

He may already know everything about you. He may already know the highest heights and lowest lows of your life. He may know the mundane details of your daily life and the struggles and questions you are holding right now. He may know all of it. 

But his knowing it already isn’t the main thing. 

The main thing is his sharing in it with you.

His great joy is the conversations he shares with you about every single bit of it and the being in it with you. 

That’s your great joy too: Being known. Being loved. Being celebrated and enjoyed and comforted and held. Being given every single thing you need. 

This is Jesus knowing you. This is what he wants.

Our Most Vulnerable Places, with Love

I’ve been encountering the vulnerability of courageous, beautiful hearts lately, and such visions make my own heart seize up at the tenderness of it, make my own heart melt, make my breath stop short, make tears slide down my face. 

Words written from a deep-down place that feels like prayer, yet shared in the public spaces of a book’s pages, inviting us to see what that deep-down prayer is like for her. Her true heart. Courage.

Lyrics laced together from a deep-down place of truth meshed with hope and pain and sadness and longing, strung along notes that surprise us with a voice that arrests us. A different voice than any we’ve heard. A songstress giving us her own true heart. Courage. 

Images pieced together and collaged, laid over with words that speak the tender longing of a lonely, sad, but hopeful heart. Her courageous prayer.

Poetical words pieced together on page, confessing and yearning, hoping and fearing, all at once. Her true heart, full of so much beauty.

It isn’t easy to get to those deep-down places.

Such revelations require safety. Warmth. Invitation. Love. 

They require courage — courage that learns to muster when surrounded in warmth, invitation, safety, love.

In these places, our true glory dwells.

These are the places God lives. This is where he wants to meet us. It is where he wants to lead us. It is where we really live. 

Do you know your deep-down honest voice? Can you hear what it is saying now?

What Does He Say to Our Shame? The Benefits of a Reverse Perspective

God doesn’t like me right now. 

He doesn’t want to spend time with me. 

He’s telling me I better shape up.

I’ve heard these words fall from the lips of people I love in recent days, and my immediate response has been to call those words out like the lies from hell they are:

He always likes you.

His enjoyment of you never ends.

He always, always, always wants to spend time with you.

Those aren’t God’s words to you.

That isn’t his voice. 

Why is it so easy for me to see that truth so clearly when it comes to the people I love? It’s another story when it comes to me. 

Today is another day of discouragement for me, just like yesterday was. But it’s different from yesterday, in that yesterday’s heaviness had to do with feeling oppressed by the darkness of the world and the powers at work in it that make the light and love that I have inside me feel so small. 

Today’s discouragement has to do with me.

Barking, snarling voices in the back of my mind tell me everything I’m doing wrong. They yelp about all the ways I’m falling short and failing. They diminish me. They make everything and everyone else feel so big, almost monster-sized.

They make it hard for me to reach Jesus — to see him or hear his voice or even sit still enough to let him find me.

Thankfully, I have the experience of a really good friendship that has taught me a thing or two about how to receive love in moments when I’m feeling particularly unloveable.

This friend and I have been gifted with many moments of realization in the years of our friendship that the love and acceptance we feel toward the other person might — just might — be the same love and acceptance they feel toward us.

It’s always a healing aha moment when we can turn the tables on ourselves in a particularly heavy moment and offer ourselves this kind of reverse perspective:

Hmmm. If you told me that you feel about yourself the way I’m feeling about myself right now and that you feared I would feel that way toward you, too, I know without a doubt that I’d feel the exact opposite than what you fear.

So perhaps — just perhaps — you feel the opposite toward me right now than what I fear you feel. 

Reverse perspectives can be so helpful and such a gift. I think every time I’ve exercised a reverse perspective in a friendship, I have been set free from my heaviness and fears. I’ve been able, thankfully, to accept the possibility of love and open my heart to receive it. 

So today, just a little while ago, that is what I did with God. 

In the midst of all those snarling voices barking at me, I remembered those responses I’d shared the last few days with people I love who have voiced to me their dark beliefs about God’s perspective of them. 

He always enjoys spending time with you. 

He always wants to be near you. 

He never grows tired of you. 

He does not condemn you.

And I turned those words back on myself. 

It really helped. Those snarling voices faded away, seen for the lying dogs they are, and the light of God’s truth shined brighter and brighter still. 

Today, I’m going to keep moving toward that light. I’m going to keep advancing toward Jesus and the truth he speaks over me.

How might a reverse perspective help you in the midst of your own feelings of shame or discouragement today?

He Makes It Beautiful

All Sons and Daughters, “Brokenness Aside,” run time 6 minutes, 15 seconds

If you can’t see the video in your e-mail window, click here. 

—-

Today’s been an interesting one so far. I’ve cried three times! (That’s not usual fare for me.) And each time, it’s because the beauty of God and the preciousness of Jesus have moved me to tears.

God is just so beautiful. And I want you to know and see that beauty, too. 

It’s difficult to know how to describe it, though. Words are so vastly insufficient. 

But in the midst of so much insufficiency (on my part), this song above has kept ringing over and over inside of me. It’s a song that builds upon the previous post written here about God’s grace giving room for you to breathe. It speaks of God’s all-encompassing welcome of you, no matter what the state of your wretchedness might be, and how he — the beautiful One — makes us beautiful, too. 

PS: My apologies for the advertisement that plays before the video begins! This really is the best video rendition of the song that I could find, but you might choose to mute your speakers during the 30-second ad spot. That’s what I do, at least. :-)

Room to Be Yourself

I’ve shared here before that my path to an authentic relationship with God began with an honest confession that I really never had come to understand grace or my need for Jesus, and that this confession was followed by a prayer for God to teach me both. 

That was 13 years ago, and my life has been an ever-winding journey toward the answer to that prayer ever since. 

I’ve learned some things since then — about God, about myself, about the nature and intent and process of formation — and the very first one has to do with grace.

Grace is that aspect of God that invites us in wholeheartedly and without a single reservation. 

This is what Jesus makes possible: full access to God. 

And not just access but welcome! We are ushered in with the unending invitation to draw nearer and nearer and nearer. 

My reading yesterday morning in the psalms affirmed this truth with these words: 

You’ve always given me breathing room,

   a place to get away from it all.

A lifetime pass to your safe-house,

   an open invitation as your guest.

You’ve always taken me seriously, God,

   made me welcome among those who know and love you.

— Psalm 61:3-5 

Love is first full of grace. Of welcome. Of invitation and full acceptance. 

Can you receive this gift of grace from God today? What is it like for you to receive an irrevocable invitation into the safe-house of God, a place that offers you unending breathing room, a relationship with One who always takes you seriously?

On Being Tied to Others

Recently, I had an experience that was pretty visceral. I was feeling pretty beat up and insecure, and I put out an SOS call to my spiritual director, Elaine. Thankfully, she had some time to connect with me by phone that day, and after pouring out my woes, I landed on an image to describe the way I felt. 

In the image, I was three years old with a ponytail on the top of my head, and people were grabbing me by that ponytail and banging me around at whim. 

Ouch. Pretty visceral, right? 

What absolutely broke my heart was seeing my own response inside that image. I was flinging my arms out wide in a desperate attempt to grab the leg of the one(s) flinging me around, trying valiantly to grab hold and hang on tight, as if to say, “Love me! Care for me! Approve of me! Want me!”

Ouch again. This is me in one of my most vulnerable places. I struggle with things like this.

Thank goodness for Elaine. She asked if Jesus was there, and he was.

I wouldn’t have seen Jesus if she hadn’t asked me to notice him. 

But when she asked me to notice Jesus, there he was, sitting on a set of steps in front of a brownstone walk-up residence off to the side. All that flinging and flailing was happening in the middle of a neighborhood street, and Jesus sat quietly on the brownstone steps, facing the street, watching the scene unfold before him.

I found it interesting he didn’t try to rescue me. He didn’t get off the steps and interfere in the incident. Instead, he looked at me with calmness and knowledge in his demeanor and his eyes and simply communicated, “You don’t have to take that.”

It was like I had a choice. Really? 

So I gave it a shot. I disentangled myself from the abusive swinging and banging around, and I went to sit by Jesus on the steps. And as soon as I sat down, it was like I came back into possession of my whole self. I was 32 years old, inhabiting the fullness of my story, my life, and my body. 

I was whole and pulsing with aliveness. Jesus and I sat shoulder to shoulder, looking out on the neighborhood street before us, and talked like two adults who know, love, and respect each other. 

Do you struggle with something similar — being tied to the whims of others, enslaved to their approval or treatment? What might it be like to receive the full acceptance and respect of the companionship of Jesus instead? 

A (Small) Glimpse into Formation

In the Look at Jesus gospel immersion course I’m teaching right now, we’re enjoying the privilege of doing just what the course title suggests: looking at Jesus. And when I look at Jesus, I can’t help but fall in love. 

Here is God, hanging around on earth with all kinds of people full of earth and grit. And he doesn’t recoil. Instead, he touches them. He invites them to share his meals. He takes time each day to teach them about the kingdom of God and spends vast amounts of time healing their battered and broken bodies. 

In short, he shows us that God is about coming to where we are and being with us. And not just being with us, but giving us more than we had before.

When I first began learning this aspect of Jesus — I mean, really getting that it was true — I fell completely in love with him. Never had I experienced such love and acceptance. Jesus comes to me. He doesn’t expect me to come to where he is.

What’s more, I noticed that we moved. If I was laying on the floor, curled up in a ball, Jesus met me there. He didn’t hurry me off the floor. He didn’t condemn me for being there. He met me. 

But eventually, I did sit up. Or stand up. Or walk. Or move around.

I learned, through an ongoing process of experiencing this over and over, that Jesus moves with me at a pace that is natural and required to bring about my growth. It’s not forced, but it does happen.

I’ve also learned along the way that there’s a point when something shifts. 

After a time of being with Jesus in this way, being built up inside his love, becoming rooted and established in it, receiving all the love and acceptance he has to offer, the natural course of events begins to push us outward.

We go forth into a new territory, and in that territory, we are much less focused on ourselves.

It’s not so much about Jeus meeting us where we are anymore (although that will always continue to happen throughout our lives as we keep growing). Instead, it’s about us meeting other people where they are, just like Christ met us. And it’s about venturing out to meet God at our own initiative, too. 

It’s about loving God and loving neighbor. And it starts to just happen.

I think this happens because of the love of Christ compels us.

When we truly experience love, it roots us down, and that gives us the strength and room to grow branches outward. We start to grow outward, much less focused on the inner work of growing down roots from a tiny seed, because that’s what we were ultimately made to do.

But it’s a process, and each stage of that process is necessary and beautiful.

Where in the process are you?

The Light Is Bright, but It's Good

I’ve been sharing with you lately about the image of a city that Jesus keeps giving to me regarding you. It is a huge and massive city inhabited by a great many people. Tall buildings have been erected in that place. People live and work inside those buildings. It is a busy and bustling city, and everyone moves around inside it, doing what they are expected to do. 

But their hearts lack hope. 

This is the place where Jesus has entered and is setting out to find and give you life. 

I mentioned in one of those previous posts that he is unrelenting in his plans to find you — that he will seek out every nook and cranny and even the dark and hidden corners in order to bring you the life and love that he has to offer you. 

This morning, I sat with that image of dark and hidden corners.

I could see a deep, dark hallway nestled into one of those tall, concrete buildings on a busy thoroughfare. The hallway’s entrance was just off the street. And I could see a person pushed deep into the dark corner of that hallway. 

That dark corner had become their safe place. It had become their home. It had become their place to hide from all that is dark and scary and threatening and unsafe in the outside world, just outside the hallway on the street and beyond. 

Jesus sees that hallway and that person — perhaps that person is you — and is entering into it. 

When I thinking about Jesus entering into that dark hallway to encounter the person hiding there, I can imagine it might feel intimidating.

It makes me think about what happens when I come home late at night and enter the bedroom to turn on the light and find my little girl cat, Diva, asleep on the bed. The sudden infusion of light in the room startles her, and her eyes wince against it. She’s disoriented and not ready to wake up, and it takes a few moments for her to get her bearings and warm up to the idea of being awake and re-engaged with the world around her. 

So I wait for her to adjust to the light, and I stroke her head as I sit and wait. 

I know that once her eyes adjust, the connection we’ll enjoy together in the light is better than the solitude she experienced in the dark. In that dark solitude, she could experience nothing of her surrounding reality. There was only darkness, and she was alone.

But in the light and connection of our shared time together, she receives love and attention and enjoyment and touch. She can play. She can rest. She can ask for what she wants. And she can see so much more of her surroundings. Her reality is broadened. Her experience is more full.

Can you see yourself in this picture? Do you identify with the image of the darkened hallway? What is it like to consider Jesus coming into that place with you, bringing the light of his love and truth to meet you there?

Will You Let Him Hold You?

For the last couple months, Kirk and I have been attending a new contemplative eucharist service at the little episcopal parish around the corner from our house on Sunday evenings.

We’ve visited the church off and on over the last five years, and every time we are drawn in by the teaching and joyful spirit of the rector, Father Rob, as well as the holy feel of the beautiful chapel with its high beams, polished wood pews, incense and candles, and beautiful stained glass. It’s truly an inspiring place we’re thankful to have found, and this new contemplative eucharist service, with its slow pace, long periods of silence, candles, and sacred music, especially invites my heart settle into its more natural posture of rest before God. 

Last night, during the short reflection the rector offers after the Scriptures are read in the service, Father Rob spoke about God’s primary response of mercy toward us. He quoted an old traditional prayer called the prayer of humble access, which says: 

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.

I thought of that prayer this morning as I brought my heart before God to start the day. My spirit felt heavy, and my heart low and weary. I looked at Christ this morning, who is full of such strength, and I had not the strength in myself to rise and meet him. 

I just needed his tenderness. 

This need for Christ’s tenderness this morning reminded me of a sweet and intimate prayer time he and I shared several weeks ago. I had begun to learn some of the ways he is inviting me to partner with him in the work he is about in this world, and a little voice inside me began to wonder if I had lost my unique specialness to him. Was I simply going to be an appendage to his work now, a convenient pair of hands that he can use? 

I hated asking those questions because they ran so contrary to the truths I’ve learned of Jesus and of my value to him. But there they were: those questions that queried my unique worth beyond what I could and would do with and for him. 

On that day several weeks ago, Jesus stopped what he was doing — all the preparations and activity he was about concerning the work we are going to be doing together — and came near. He sat down next to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and drew me close. He let me rest my head upon his chest for as long as I wanted. And when I looked into his eyes, I saw how much he knows and loves me.

I am not just a pair of hands. I am not just a worker in his fields. I am known.

I wonder today if you need a similar moment of quiet tenderness with Christ. As the prayer says, God’s first instinct toward you is always mercy, always love. He will come near and hold you if you’d like him to. 

Will you invite his arms around you right now?

Oh, How He Loves Us

If you can’t see the video in your e-mail or RSS feed, click through to watch.

A number of weeks ago, I mentioned a favorite song that I play on repeat quite often in my home that talks about God’s love. It’s a song that moves from tenderness to a grand passion, and I love the way it resounds over and over with the words, “How he loves us … oh, how he loves us.”

At the time I mentioned the video, I didn’t share the song, but I asked the question, “How do you experience God’s love?” Do you, in fact, experience God’s love? Would you like to?

Today I want to share that song with you. The lyrics take me deeper and deeper every time I listen to them, offering more meditation on the nature of God’s love and who I am inside that love each time. I hope it offers some reflection for you, too.

How does this song touch you?

Healing Is in His Hands

If you can’t see the video in your e-mail or RSS feed, click through to view it here.

I mentioned last week that my prayer times with Jesus lately have evidenced his deep intent to come to where you are — that he is praying over you and cares for you with a great compassion and a fierce urgency. 

As I continue to spend time with Jesus each day, I see him continuing to pray with great intent over the place you live. As he prays and prepares to enter in and find you, I am looking upon a great city and know that he will come to each and every place inside of it to find you. He will enter buildings and walk on streets and sit inside taxi cabs to encounter you and have you know him and be known by him. 

He will even come to the lost and forgotten places in the dark where you may hide.

He will not overlook a single nook and cranny. He will not give up his search for you. He will enter your dark places with the light of his love and truth. He will encounter you on the sidewalk and offer you new life. He seeks to enliven and redeem and restore all of who you are.

The song above is his promise. No matter where you are or what you have encountered, no matter what you feel or what you believe, his love for you is strong and wide and deep and high and never-ending. All the healing you need and seek is found in his capable and redemptive hands. 

Will you allow him to find you?

What Jesus Is Here to Offer You

Jesus did not begin his work of ministry on the earth until he was 30 years old.

For the first 30 years of his life, he grew up in his family home with brothers and sisters, learned the family trade to become a carpenter, honored his father and mother, and engaged the leaders in the synagogue regularly concerning the teachings of the Scriptures.

The book of Luke says that as Jesus grew up, he “grew strong in body and wise in spirit. And the grace of God was on him” (Luke 2:38). It also says that “Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people” (v. 52).

But it wasn’t until Jesus was 30 years old that he came into the public eye as the proclaimed Messiah that Israel had been waiting for.

At that time, he went down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. Then he received the Holy Spirit and went straight into the desert for 40 days to fast. While he was in the desert, the devil tempted him several times to give up his position as the Son of God and the work of ministry he was about to set out to do.

But he emerged from those temptations victorious, and when he came out of the wilderness after 40 days of wandering around inside of it, he went straight to the temple in Nazareth to begin his life of ministry among the people.

Do you know what Jesus said to the people to officially mark the beginning of his purposed work? He told everyone seated in the temple that day what he, the Messiah, had come to do. He opened the scroll to the book of Isaiah and read these words: 

“The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me

   because God anointed me.

He sent me to preach good news to the poor,

   heal the heartbroken,

Announce freedom to all captives,

   pardon all prisoners.

God sent me to announce the year of his grace —

   a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies —

   and to comfort all who mourn,

To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion,

   give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes,

Messages of joy instead of news of doom,

   a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.” 

— Isaiah 61:1-3 

Here is what Jesus has to offer you.

He comes to bring you welcome news. He comes to heal you. He wants to set you free from bondage. He comes to pardon you. He is here to bring you comfort. He comes to destroy your enemies. He’s here to care for your needs. He brings you beauty instead of ashes. He brings you joy instead of gloom. He is here to fully restore your languishing heart.

Do you want to receive this gift from Jesus? 

How Do You Receive Love?

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the intention Jesus has toward you and the way he is coming for you and wants to know you and be known by you.

This is motivated by his deep love and care for you. 

I’m curious to know what that notion of love means to you. Do you have an idea in mind of what it means to be loved by someone? Do you know what it feels like to receive love? How comfortable are you with being open to the experience of receiving love? 

I know that for me, when I began to receive love from Jesus, the thing that changed everything was the way I felt seen and heard by him. There was a moment in time — a distinct experience in prayer (which I look forward to sharing in full detail with those enrolled in the Gospel immersion course this fall!) — where, for the first time, I got to know the way Jesus looks at me and listens to me.

It was completely unexpected. Never before had I realized he looked at me that way or listened to me so intently. And never before had I realized my need to be seen and heard in such an intent, loving, accepting, and safe way in order to experience and receive love. 

I can say with confidence that my experience of Jesus in that moment changed the way I began to receive and experience love from that point on. It not only changed the way I experienced my belovedness before God, but it also began to filter into my daily life and the way I experienced myself in the world and in relation to other people. 

When you think of the notion of receiving love, what does that look like and feel like to you? What would it take for you to feel completely safe and vulnerable before another person, in order to receive the experience of being loved?

He Is Praying Over You

One thing I’ll say is that Jesus and I communicate through images a lot. If you’ve ever followed along on my personal blog for any length of time, you’ll know what I mean when I say that. In that space, over the last several years, I have occasionally shared stories of how God has shown up in images to me and used them to teach me about himself and his heart toward me, and also to teach me about myself. 

The same is true in this space.

For the last couple months, ever since I began the commitment of writing these week-daily reflective posts for you, I have sat in prayer with Jesus every morning and talked with him about what he wants to say to you here each day. In those times of prayer, he and I are often walking and talking together about you. Sometimes we stop and sit on a bench for the conversation. Other times he has led me to surprising places, such as the large and sturdy rock he wanted me to show you. 

Each of those daily conversations inform what I write in this space for you each day.

Yesterday, I shared with you that a sense of urgency has evidenced itself in my prayer times with Jesus of late. I told you that he has set his face toward you and is very intentionally walking faster toward the places where you are. 

That sense of urgency began to crop up in these morning prayer times in the last week or two. On the very first morning it happened, we went from walking and talking together at a slow and even pace to suddenly walking much more quickly up a hill. Rather than walking side by side, Jesus was leading me somewhere. I followed, wondering what was on his mind and in his intent.

He led me to the top of a hill, and together we looked down upon a city in the distance. It was the city where you live and move each day. He showed me we were going there. And then he drew my attention to this passage of Scripture:

Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd.

— Matthew 9:35-37

Jesus has come upon the place where you live, and his heart has broken for you. As we stood atop that hill, he looked down at that city where you live and prayed over you out of the fullness of his heart and the compassion that moves him to care for and come after you. 

He is coming to where you are, and he wants to give you life. 

Will you let him enter the place where you live? 

He Is Passionate for You

Every morning, I sit at my desk in a small, windowed corner of my home and talk to Jesus about you. Every day, the questions are the same: “What do you want to say today, Jesus? What do they need to hear?”

In the early days of writing these week-daily posts for you, there was a real sense of slowness, of care, and of gentleness and sometimes stillness in God’s heart toward you in this place. The posts, therefore, took on a similarly reflective and gentle pace.

But more recently, Jesus is revealing to me his heart of real passion and intentionality toward you. 

He wants you to know him. 

And the truth is, he is coming for you. In my prayer times with Jesus, I see him walking faster toward the places where you are. His face is set toward you. He wants to be with you. 

What is it like for you to hear of Christ’s passion for you and his intent to reach you? What is it like to imagine being reached by him?