He Wants to Make You Whole

From the very outset, the aim of Jesus is to make you whole. 

It’s written all over the Gospels. He came to bind up the brokenhearted, give sight to the blind, restore the ears of the deaf. Everywhere he goes, he’s bent on healing those he meets. He tells the Pharisees, “Those who are well have no need of a doctor. I didn’t come for the well, but for the sick.”

This morning I read a line of Scripture that speaks so much tenderness of this each time I meet it: 

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.

— Matthew 9:35-36

When you walk with Jesus, this is what he’s about in you. Healing. Wholeness.

He wants to do this with your life: Orient you in truth. Establish you in strength. Root you in love. Blossom you in joy. 

In what ways might he make you whole? 

This Is the Beginning, This Is Prayer

This week we’ve been talking about what Jesus has to say to you.

We heard him say that you don’t have to clean yourself up first before coming to him. We heard him say that he can handle all your truth. We learned that the main thing — the most blessed, precious thing — that he wants is simply to be with you and to know you. We explored one picture of what that kind of knowing can look like. 

Today, he is standing on the shoreline with this offer. 

And the offer is himself.

He is offering himself to you for a lifetime of receiving what it means to be deeply known, deeply loved, always guided, never alone. 

This is where it begins: stepping up to him on the shoreline and saying yes.

Choosing to walk with him. Choosing to let yourself be known by him. Choosing to walk in silence with him sometimes. Choosing also to listen.

This is prayer. This is the beginning. And we choose it again and again. 

Will you receive the offer of Jesus — the offer of himself, the gift of being known, and known, and known — 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.

He Wants to Know You

Yesterday, when Jesus said out loud that he can handle all your truth, the very next words out of his mouth were: 

“I want to know them.” 

And I thought, “Yeah. I guess that makes sense. I guess that is pretty clear.”

For him to say first thing that we don’t need to clean ourselves up and then to say he can handle all our truth, it becomes clear he wants mainly — more than anything — to just know us. To be with us. 

Don’t worry about getting clean. Don’t worry about whether your truth is too hard or too dirty or too much. 

Just come. 

He wants to know you. 

He Can Handle All Your Truth

Do you know that moment when sunlight hits a person’s eyes and their eyes become so clear you feel you can see straight into their soul? 

That is what I saw in Jesus’ eyes this morning. 

We were on the seashore, walking into the rising sun of mid-morning. I was a few steps ahead of him, turned to face him as he walked straight ahead, and I was waiting for the next words out of his mouth after those he spoke yesterday regarding you. 

The sunlight hit his eyes, and he said it: 

“I can handle all their truth.” 

What is it like for Jesus to be able to handle all your truth?

I think it’s kind of like a young child in the presence of their parent, scared to tell them the truth of something they’ve done. To them, it is the worst possible thing they can imagine having done in the small sphere of their whole wide world that they’ve experienced up to this point in their little life. 

But to the parent, there is nothing the child could have done that the parent can’t handle.

Why? Because the parent has a larger sphere of knowledge and experience. The parent’s scope of life is broader and deeper and stronger than the child’s. They can handle truth from a child-sized view, whatever that truth may be. 

That’s just a small glimpse of the way Jesus is with us. 

His scope of knowledge is broader and deeper than we can imagine. He knows all things — he is the source of all that exists, after all. He created it. He created us. And he has complete knowledge of us already.

So whatever we tell him isn’t a surprise. It doesn’t break him. He is too strong to be broken. 

If Jesus is strong enough to handle all of your truth, what truth would you speak to him?

You Don't Have to Clean Yourself Up First

In my prayer times with Jesus the last few months, we’ve been walking on a beach, going back and forth along a sandy shore, sometimes walking into the sunset and sometimes walking the other direction into the sun as it’s rising in the morning hours. Sometimes we stop and talk intently about something. Sometimes we play in the waves. 

A lot of the time, he’s enjoying me enjoying him. 

But today was different.

Today it wasn’t about my relationship with him and how he’s speaking to me personally. Today it was about you and what he wants to say to you in this space. 

I have a feeling he has a lot of things he wants to say to you. 

And so this morning, I was watching him as we walked and listening hard for what he had to say. “What do you want to say, Jesus?” I asked. “I’m listening.”

I listened and I listened, occasionally looking at him as we walked, waiting expectantly for him to share what was on his mind. 

The first thing he said was, “They don’t have to clean themselves up first when they come to me.” 

I thought of Peter and James and John and Andrew, how Jesus met them at their fishing nets while they worked in the afternoon sun, doing what they always did. He met them in the midst of their normal routine. They didn’t have to clean themselves up first before they followed him. They didn’t have to wash their hands of that fishy smell and stickiness. They just followed. 

I thought of the woman caught in adultery. Who knows how much clothes she was wearing when she was dragged out of that house, caught in the act? Maybe she had only a blanket draped over her as they cast her onto the ground at Jesus’ feet and accused her of wrongdoing. But Jesus didn’t freak out. He didn’t tell her to get dressed and come back when she looked presentable. He dealt with her accusers, and then he knelt down in the dirt and talked quietly to her. 

I thought of the woman at the well. She’d had five husbands in her life and was now living with her boyfriend. She was a social pariah with no friends, and Jesus knew it. But he didn’t tell her to get her act together before she followed him. Instead, he showed himself to be who he was — the Messiah — and she ran into town telling everyone. Even in her ministry of the truth of Jesus, her life was still in a bit of a shambles. 

That wasn’t the point for Jesus. The point was his knowing them, and their knowing him.

They didn’t have to clean themselves up first. And neither do you. 

Will you let Jesus meet you right where you are right now? What does that mean for you personally?

What Has He Revealed to You?

Oh, I’ll guard with my life what you’ve revealed to me,

   guard it now, guard it ever.

— Psalm 119:44 

One of the best parts, for me, about talking with people about their life with God is learning how he is revealing himself to them right now. 

It could be an image that shows up and represents the current invitation of God in their life. It could be a passage of Scripture that keeps resounding over and over, inviting them deeper and deeper into what it speaks of their own life and heart. It could be a circumstance of life that teaches them a truth they can’t shake.

Together, we go deeper into those images and invitations and realizations. I get to witness what they have to teach each person. I get to be with a beautiful soul as they hit upon revelation, as they are pressed into wordlessness at the deeply personal invitation of God, at the intimate way he knows them. 

We savor. There is no hurry here.

Here, there is room for revelation to sink into the depths of one’s heart. Here, there is room for encounter with God and for response to be what it truly is. 

There really is nothing quite like it, for me.

It’s the most holy work I can imagine, and I am continually ecstatic, grateful, and humbled at the privilege of getting to do it over and over again.

That opportunity to notice where God is and to savor its truth and flavor is such a gift, I think, because it implants the learnings deep inside of us. 

Those revelations become true of our lives and journeys. They become road markers that tell us what is true of us. They become touchstones. They stay with us. 

It’s like what Psalm 119 says: we guard with our lives what he has revealed to us, guard it now, guard it ever.

What has God revealed to you? It it something you’re guarding with your life, now and ever? Why or why not?

How Is He Leading You?

I love talking to people about their life with God. I can’t tell you how excited I get — literally, my heart starts pounding a little faster, I get a huge smile on my face, and sometimes I even get goosebumps — when talking with someone about their life with God and I start getting glimpses at what God is doing there. 

There’s really nothing like it in the rest of the world for me. 

This morning, I read a short passage in the psalms that highlighted a similar thought. The psalm said: 

You’re blessed when you stay on course,

   walking steadily on the road revealed by God.

You’re blessed when you follow his directions,

   doing your best to find him.

— Psalm 119:1-2

This is what our life with God is like. 

He reveals the road, the next steps, and we say yes. He has the plan in mind, and our part is to notice and respond. 

We’re blessed when we stay on his course, walking steadily on the road he reveals. We’re blessed when we follow his directions, doing our best to find him. 

What is God doing in your life right now? How is he leading you? 

"Blissfully Unaware": A Valuable Spiritual Practice

When I wake up in the morning and choose to say yes to Lady Wisdom’s invitation to start my day, then checking my phone for e-mail is not the first thing I do. Getting up to date on Facebook’s news feed is not the second thing I do. Reading my Twitter timeline is not the third thing I do. Scrolling through my Instagram feed is not the fourth thing I do. 

When I say yes to wisdom’s invitation in the morning, I check my phone for the time, and that is it.

Then I stretch out and feel the softness of the pillow against my face. I revel in the coziness of the flannel sheets and heavy blankets keeping me warm. If Kirk is still in bed beside me, I turn to him and enjoy a few moments of conversation and connection. 

Then I make a french press pot of coffee and take the piping hot tumbler to my desk. I open my worn blue Message version of the Bible to the psalms, then flip to the other sections of the Scriptures that I’m steadily making my way through at the moment. I give Diva attention as she sits and begs for affection at my feet or jumps onto my lap or stands beside my Bible on the desk. I look out the window at the day unfolding before me — the wind waving through the moss hanging from the trees, the color of the sky, the squirrels running around on our driveway and our lawn.

On those days I say yes to wisdom’s invitation, I’m present to the morning, to the quiet, to my own heart, and to God in ways decidedly different than the mornings I launch straight into the clamor of technology. 

These are the days I feel centered. I feel rooted. I feel focused on the most important things. 

But when I connect to technology first, the day — and even my body — have a completely different feel.

I shake my leg at my desk and impulsively grab my phone to check for updates every few minutes. It’s hard for me to get quiet inside. Pulling my Bible in front of me and settling into its pages doesn’t hold much appeal. 

The day garners a frenetic energy, and I lose momentum on the most important things. I have a hard time being present to Kirk, much less anyone else. I feel lost and confused and unsure which way is up or which direction I should go next. 

It’s hard to remember sometimes, in those few seconds after waking, that ignorance really is bliss when it comes to starting my day. But hopefully, as I continue to notice the decidedly different feel the two different starts to my day offer me, I will choose more and more to be blissfully unaware from the start. 

Can you relate to this at all?

Where Is the Strength in Your Life?

In the early days of dating Kirk, he shared something that really stuck out to me. He said:

“If you’re the strongest person in your whole world, you’ll get really exhausted.”

It’s so true.

Think about it. If everyone else looks to you for strength and you’re the one propping your own self up, when do you get to rest? Where is the place you get to go to let go of holding it all together? Where can you just be held in someone else’s strength? 

I’m certainly familiar with this paradigm. I spent the whole of my life being a strong one — both for myself and for other people — without even realizing that was my guiding compass for life. And once the lightbulb turned on and I realized my whole existence teemed with that unrelenting dynamic, I got really, really tired. 

It’s like I suddenly realized I’d been holding up the whole world, a self-chosen and self-made Atlas, and I really didn’t have the strength to do it for one more minute. 

Would anybody ever hold me?

Thankfully, I found Jesus. He now gets to be the stronger one in my life. 

And learning vulnerability with other people — trusting them to carry strength they can offer to me if needed, too — has been a saving grace in my life more and more these days. 

Even though I often slip back into earth-shouldering Atlas mode still today, it’s such a relief to realize I can let go of that burden once I realize I’m doing it and choose, instead, to find strength that holds up the world elsewhere.

Who or what is shouldering the strength in your life right now? Is it God, yourself, other people, something else? What is it like for you to live in that reality?

He Is Laughing With You

Today, in the place I am with Jesus, I see him laughing with me. 

And when I’m laughing with him in this moment, it’s on the shoreline of a beach. Sometimes we go into the water, get our feet and legs all wet in the surf and play around in the waves, but other times we’re standing on the wet sand, talking and laughing together. 

It’s that laughter that arrests me today.

He’s got such a beautiful smile. Joy is in his eyes. His laughter comes from the deep. His enjoyment of the present moment with me is full. He enjoys me, he enjoys the sand and water, he enjoys the sun, he enjoys himself, and he enjoys our laughter. 

Every little thing we notice together, he enjoys. Even the funny-looking sandpipers and seagulls strutting about in all their antics. 

What are you enjoying today? Where is laughter emerging? Will you allow Jesus to join in that laughing moment with you?

With You in the Storms

It seems everywhere I’ve looked in the last 24 hours, there have been reminders of storms.

But in each storm, God has been present to still and overcome them with his mere presence or a word.

For example, last night I recorded a lectio divina exercise for a small group of friends, and the passage selected for the exercise was taken from Matthew 14. This is the passage where Jesus walks on the water and then invites Peter to walk on the water, too.

Did you know that in that story, Jesus came walking on the water in the midst of a great storm? The passage says that it was an evening when the disciples were being “battered by the waves.” Also, when Peter walked out on the water to Jesus, it was a glance at “the waves churning beneath his feet” that made him lose his nerve and start to sink. 

Jesus reached out a hand to keep Peter from sinking further into the tumultuous ocean. And once he and Peter climbed back in the boat, the ocean became as still as glass. 

Here’s another example. Later in the evening, Kirk and I listened to the daily Pray as You Go podcast, which we like to do together as a devotional way to end the day. The sacred music selection for this weekend’s recording held the following words: 

Calm me, Lord, as you calm the storm

Still me, Lord, keep me from harm

Let all the tumult within me cease

Enfold me, Lord, in your peace 

And the Gospel reading for the podcast was yet another storm-related story — that of Jesus being asleep on a boat while a great storm came and assailed it on all sides. Here is another place where Jesus, once woken by the disciples in their fear, spoke a single word to the storm and made it calm. 

And then this morning, the psalms offered yet another encouragement concerning the presence of storms: 

Sea storms are up, God

Sea storms wild and roaring,

Sea storms with thunderous breakers.

Stronger than wild sea storms,

Mightier than sea-storm breakers,

Mighty God rules from High Heaven.

— Psalm 93:3-4

Our God is mightier than the storms. Though the storms may rage around us, turning us toward fear, the presence of God and a mere word from his lips is enough to slay them and bring back calm.

What storms do you face in life today? In what ways are you assailed and battered by waves? How does the near presence of Jesus or a mere word from his lips bring the size of the waves down to mere calm?  

Maybe, Just Maybe, He Wants to Hold Our Cares for Us

It’s no secret this week has been a rough one for me. And if you read two posts I wrote in one of my other blog spaces this week, you’ll learn even more of the context for why that is. 

So this morning when I woke and still found myself battling “the heavies,” I sat down for a while in my small hallway — back against one wall, bare feet propped against the wall in front of me, and a heavy blue yoga mat adding cushion to my seat upon the hardwood floor. 

I sat in tucked in that little hallway space for a while, plenty far from the distractions of my computer and my cell phone, and just stared at the wall in front of me and prayed. 

Inside that prayer time, I could see Jesus and me at the beach.

We were thigh-deep in the ocean water, and we were smiling and laughing with each other. Every once in a while, I would spin myself around in the water, play-dancing with him a little bit, letting him delight in me as I delighted in the beauty and freedom of that present moment. 

There was such lightness and joy in that scene, and it seemed to be my true self at peace and at rest and so carefree in the presence of my Lord. 

And yet I sat on the floor in my hallway and told Jesus that scene just felt so far away. 

My true self was also nestled between the beadboard hallway of my house, heart-heavy and sad about the state of the world, of history, and of my own dark demons. 

The distance between here and there could not have been more poignant: one light and carefree and full of joy and laughter, the other heavy and burdened and full of sadness and grief. 

My true heart grieves. My true heart also trusts. 

The invitation from Jesus in that moment seemed to be not to carry it alone. He reminded me of this invitation: 

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” 

— Matthew 11:28-30

Maybe, just maybe, he wants to carry the truth of my grief. Maybe, just maybe, he wants to carry it while walking with me and talking with me about it. He doesn’t want to negate it is there. He doesn’t want to deny the reality of my cares. He gave me the cares that I have — he made my heart care for these things.

He simply wants to hold the weight of those cares as we walk and talk together about them.

And maybe, in the midst of all that, he also wants to let me play.

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?

Our Role Is Simply to Say Yes

I’ve been reading the book of Romans lately, and I keep getting stuck at chapters 3-5. These are pretty mind-blowing chapters that teach us so much more than I can even wrap my head around about what God does and what we do. 

These chapters say things like this: 

God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness. 

God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it. 

Abraham entered into what God was doing for him. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own. 

It was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God.

This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does.

We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us.

God is the one who does the work. Our job is simply to say yes — to receive and enter into what God’s doing.

I look at my life and see that I may participate in the burnishing and refinement process of my life — the hot fires that make us pliable as he forms us into the image he has always had in mind for who we are — but God is the one doing the actual molding all along. He is the one who conceived of the original image he wanted to create in me from the beginning. He’s the one who went about working with conditions and creating new conditions and then molding and forming me through those conditions into the image he wants in me.

All I have had to do is allow it to happen. 

But let’s be truthful: this “allowing it to happen” isn’t always easy.

It pushes against what we’ve learned so far in life and how we normally operate. It can bring us face to face with pieces of ourselves that aren’t so pretty, and we’d much rather look away or brush them under the couch or push them into a corner closet and then close and lock the door. We may be scared to death of what God’s doing or wants to do because we can’t see the outcome, because it means relinquishing control, and because we’re not (yet) so sure he’s worth trusting with the reins of our lives.

But this, too, is something true: God’s original image of you is brilliant. Glorious. Beautiful. Perfect.

It may take hot fires and great discomfort and courage to live into that original image, but nothing else on earth compares to the result.

Where in your life is God inviting you to say “yes” to his touch right now? 

The True Self is Un-Self-Conscious

I was laying in bed this morning, contemplating the words my spiritual director wrote on my Facebook wall for my birthday today.

She called me her friend “who adores Jesus.” 

First of all, I love that she knows me so well — knows that I am indeed in love with Jesus and that I find my life revolving around him more and more with each passing day.

But it also got me thinking about my session with her last week, in which we discussed the true self and the false self. In that session, she had recalled for me what my true self really looks like. I was reminded that my true self walks and talks and sits with Jesus. I remembered that my true self twirls and dances with Jesus. 

And I realized this morning: my true self is not self-conscious at all. 

I could see so clearly that in those places where I walk and talk and sit and dance and twirl with Jesus, I’m not focused on myself at all. I don’t care what I look like, nor am I judging at all what I’m saying or doing. I’m aware of those things, obviously, but not focused on them.

I’m not the main thing. Jesus is. 

He is the focus of my attention, the one of whom I can never seem to get enough.

What he looks like, what he says, how he looks at me, what his gestures are like, how he smiles, what he looks like when he’s thinking or when he’s listening, the ways he teaches and guides or corrects me … all of him captivates my attention.

In this place, there’s no need or room to be self-conscious. 

It’s a wonderfully relieving place to be — not to be preoccupied with myself, but to be concerned fully, instead, with him.

Have you ever experienced un-self-consciousness? What was that experience like for you?

Oriented Toward Encounter, No Matter the Circumstance

“I remember a time when I used to be much godlier. It was sometime in junior high and my room was clean. It must have been beautiful weather outside because the lighting was very nice in my room where I was reading my Bible every day and feeling really good. It was quite clear to me that my sanctification was progressing very well. …

But God took me out of that life and threw me into the rock tumbler. Here, it is not so easy to feel godly. … Here, there is very little time for quiet reflection. … The opportunities for growth and refinement abound here — but you have to be willing. You have to open your heart to the tumble.”

— from Loving the Little Years, pp. 13-14

I’ve connected with a few friends recently who are in the soul-sanctifying work of motherhood every day.

One of them shared with me that no station in life has presented her with the reality of her sinfulness so much as motherhood. Another shared that life is an absolute sprint from the moment she wakes until the minute she falls asleep. Still another shared a glimpse into the tension between loving one’s child and one’s God — putting their needs and desires above her own — and the reality of emotions and desires and hormones and personal needs. 

I heard that nothing has so fulfilled these women as being a mother — I saw the joy in their faces and heard it in their voices — even though they have found it to be the most demanding and humbling work they have ever done.

I also heard these friends share that intentionally connecting to God in this place is difficult.

How is stopping to orient one’s self and connect to one’s inner heart and an intangible God possible in the middle of a full-out sprint that involves Fruit Loops, spit-up, sibling rivalry, and getting everyone cleaned, dressed, fed, brushed, strapped in, scooting around town, and eventually sleeping safely in their beds every night?

There is bewilderment in this place. What does connecting to God look like here?

I am sure these friends of mine could answer that question much better than me. I am not a mother, and they are. They are the ones presented with the question each and every day who are finding their way through to the answer the best way they know how.

But I share these stories and ask these questions to draw our attention to this: God is here. 

Ours is a God who met a childless woman each and every year she came to the temple and did not fail to hear her prayer (Hannah). Ours is a God who met a king in the midst of his sin and called him to repent (David). Ours is a God who wrestled with a man so strongheaded that he bulled his way into every reality he wanted to create for himself (Jacob).

Ours is a Jesus who knew exactly how to speak to an adulteress, a blind man, a remorseful fisherman, a traitor, a thief, a mother weeping over her son, a government official, a leper, a pair of sisters, a man throwing Christians in jail, a prostitute, a man sneaking off to talk with him in the dead of night, and the list goes on and on.

If the Scriptures teach us anything, it is that ours is a God who knows how to connect and relate and speak directly to us, no matter the situation or circumstance in which he encounters us.

As the quote at the top of this post declares, finding God in the rough and tumble (the author speaks to motherhood, but I would expand this sentiment to include any and every station we might live out) simply asks of us an orientation toward encounter.

Openness. Awareness. Receptivity. 

Are you open to God meeting you exactly where you are? What might encounter with God look like for you today, right here and right now, in the midst of your exact circumstances?

How Do You Connect to God Right Where You Are?

In the last several months, I’ve noticed a theme crop up in numerous conversations with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. That theme has, at its root, a question:

What does it look like for me to connect to God in my specific life station or personality type? 

This has a lot of bearing on the work done here at Still Forming, and I’ve begun to take this question seriously.

For instance, the foundation of this site is a week-daily invitation to a moment of stillness in your day. But what if moments of stillness rarely exist in your world? What do you do if quiet reflections of the heart are a luxury you can barely fathom?

Or, what if you’re an extrovert? What if you’d rather be outdoors than sitting quietly at your desk, reading the scriptures? What if you need to see and hear and touch God to know he’s real, rather than use your intuition?

In other words: 

Is there room for me and God to connect, no matter where I am in life or how I’m made? 

My response to that question is yes. And I’ll share more of my thoughts on this here with you as I continue to explore and consider the question. (Some of my thoughts on the question have been previously written here, here, here, and here.)

But for now, I’d like to open up an opportunity for you to share your input. 

Where is God where you live right now? How are you finding God in the midst of your current life station?

How do you connect to God through the way you’re made? How does he make himself uniquely personal to you and the person that you are?

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?

Pulse Check: Your Relationship with God?

Hello there, friends. 

Today is the first official day of the new year for me, as we traveled for three weeks and just got stationed back inside our home and normal routine this past weekend. I’ve stocked the refrigerator, paid the bills, run some errands, and am sitting back at my favorite place in our home: my desk. 

All feels right with the world again, and I’m ready to start afresh. How about you?

At the start of this new year, I thought I would institute a new occasional feature here on Still Forming, called pulse check. This will be an opportunity for us to stop and take a look around at our personal worlds and consider some things: how are we doing in certain areas of life? what do we need? what are we noticing?

Every once in a while, it’s helpful to stop and look around. Don’t you agree? 

So today, let’s take a pulse check concerning our relationship with God.

What is that relationship like for you these days? Is God present? Absent? Talkative? Silent? Are you finding yourself connected in new ways to God right now? Is something different, puzzling, exciting, or particularly hard? How would you describe that relationship right now?

Here’s my answer to the question, and feel free to share yours in the comments.

Although I absolutely love to travel, I am pretty much a homebody and incredible creature of habit. I need my quiet, my familiar environs, and the sacredness of my morning routine. These are things that help me connect to God, to find a still point and center from which to live out my days, and to sit in the stillness before Jesus and learn what he wants to offer to you here in this space.

So traveling, as much as I adore it, always takes a bit of a toll on me, and these last three weeks away are no exception.

Today was the first day in quite some time that I opened my Bible and spent time reading and reflecting on its pages. It was the first time in quite a while that I closed my eyes, met with Jesus, and asked him what he wanted to say. It was the first time I’d opened my mouth to sing a few hymns out loud in the silence and solitude of my little corner of our home. It was the first time in ages that I pulled out my prayer mat and knelt and then lay face-down on it to pray. 

Since I’ve been out of practice at taking this extended time of quiet with Jesus, it was a bit harder than usual or expected to quiet my brain and really focus on him. The ticking of the new clock on my desk distracted me to no end, and my mind kept flitting to to-do-list tasks and what to make for dinner, among other things.

But eventually — through a line of the psalms that jumped off the page and landed in my heart, echoing my own prayer; through the incredible stories of Peter and John in the early chapters of Acts; through the story of Elijah throwing his cloak over the unsuspecting Elisha; and through the glorious imagery and victory of the last chapters of Revelation — my focus began to return. 

I’ve missed my connection to Jesus these last few weeks. Even though we’ve been connected in more everyday ways these last few weeks — in conversations I carried with him in my heart on our car rides and plane trips, in conversations I carried with Kirk and with others about spiritual matters, in prayers offered from the bathroom tile floor when I was sicker than a dog, and in a regular sense of his presence carried with me as I drove around town or walked the aisles of a grocery store — it is really the quiet, extended routine at my desk each day that keeps me connected in meaningful ways to Jesus right now in my life.

I’ve missed him, and I’ve missed this routine, and I need it. I’m so glad to be back at home.

What about you? If you take a pulse check of your relationship with God right now, what do you find? Feel free to share your reponse in the comments. xo