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A Prayer for Weariness and Division
As we journey with individuals and groups over the course of a year, there are a few themes that seem to come up again and again.These are two of them: Weariness and division. These experiences have deep roots. They take us into the reality of our hearts and into our experience of God.And can help us to glimpse a facet of God’s character and power that we wouldn’t otherwise see. They also help us to see ourselves, our habits, our needs, our natural responses to limitation and brokenness. And these are powerful areas to cultivate honesty in a prayer life. What would it be like to talk with God about your weariness What would it be like to share space with God and consider areas of division?
As we journey with individuals and groups over the course of a year, there are a few themes that seem to come up again and again.
These are two of them: Weariness and division.
These experiences have deep roots. They take us into the reality of our hearts and into our experience of God.
And can help us to glimpse a facet of God’s character and power that we wouldn’t otherwise see.
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes ”
Things like Weariness and Division also help us to see ourselves, our habits, our needs, our natural responses to limitation and brokenness.
And these are powerful places to cultivate honesty in a prayer life.
What would it be like to talk with God about your weariness?
What would it be like to share space with God and consider areas of division?
If this hits home with you, take a moment and pray through the prompts below, and see where He is already-active in the midst of your situations…
Start with praying this:
“God, here I am, I bring all of my heart and mind to You right now, I want to be open to You…”
Pause in His Presence.
Choose one prayer below and linger in it or proceed through both, as led by the Lord.
A Prayer for Weariness:
“God, underneath I am feeling something like weariness. I’m not just tired, it’s not just physical, there’s something deeper there. When I look inside I feel…”
Tell God what comes up in the weariness…pause with Him.
Then Pray…
“God, I know You have infinite resources and You love me, even when I don’t feel it.
“But I don’t necessarily know how to approach You in my tiredness, what do You do with a weary heart like mine?
Share with the Lord what it’s like being you right now. Anything that comes up. Let Him look with You on those thoughts, areas, emotions, themes.
In your weariness, lean on His untiring strength, lean on His everlasting arms.
Now read one or more of these Scriptures below, when something about that verse stands out to you, notice it. Stay with it. Rest it in. Talk with the Lord about it. Ask Him His thoughts about this.
End with Praying:
Lord Jesus, You know my heart, I can’t just change myself, and I can’t just muscle my way out of this. I truly need You. And though that can feel hard internally, it’s ultimately a way I can see You more.
Whatever You’re doing in the midst of this, I want to stay with that. If there’s healing for me or new patterns of living, Lord, I want to respond to Your work there. If there’s rest or new routine, Lord, I’m open. If there are blockages still, or things that seem to get in the way, I lean into Your ability to guide me, provide for me, and shelter me, no matter what’s next.
I receive afresh Your power and wisdom that You give generously, pour it out on me now for these very real things I’m facing. Let me see You more and know You more, for that is the only true thing that will satisfy my heart. And bless those who are on this journey with me, in Your name. Amen
A Prayer for Division:
“God, underneath I am feeling something like anger or offense, maybe even some hurt in a relationship. I’m not just frustrated, it’s not just a reaction anymore, there’s something deeper there. When I look inside I feel…”
Tell God what comes up in the anger or hurt…pause with Him.
Then Pray…
“Jesus, I know you have such forgiveness for me and You love me, even when I don’t feel it.
“But I don’t necessarily know how to approach You when I’m feeling this way, what do You do with a heart, like mine?
Share with the Lord what it’s like being you right now. Anything that comes up. Let Him look with You on those thoughts, areas, emotions, themes.
Receive afresh His forgiveness for you. His washing over your thoughts and emotions.
If there’s hurt beneath the anger, let Him see that. Tell Him why it hurt. Let His justice for you rise up and meet you.
Let Him see and know what was wrong about that area. And share what your reaction has been to that, talk openly with Him there.
Consider too, that He has such forgiveness for you in your broken places, and consider what it means that the other relationship/dynamic is broken too. Talk with Him about this.
Now read one or more of these Scriptures below, when something about that verse stands out to you, notice it. Stay with it. Rest it in. Talk with the Lord about it. Ask Him His thoughts about this.
End with Praying:
Lord Jesus, You know my heart, I can’t just change myself, and I can’t just muscle my way out of this. I truly need You. And though that can feel hard internally, it’s ultimately a way I can see You more.
Whatever You’re doing in the midst of this, I want to stay with that. If there’s healing for me or new patterns of living, Lord, I want to respond to Your work there. If there’s rest or new routine, Lord, I’m open. If there are blockages still, or things that seem to get in the way, I lean into Your ability to guide me, provide for me, and shelter me, no matter what’s next.
I receive afresh Your power and wisdom that You give generously, pour it out on me now for these very real things I’m facing. Let me see You more and know You more, for that is the only true thing that will satisfy my heart. And bless those who are on this journey with me, in Your name. Amen
Take a moment to rest-into all God has been speaking to you in this time…
Wrestling with God This New Year & Free Resource
The time between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day has always been somewhat sacred to me. In a sense we’re between celebrating the birth of baby Jesus and also the birth of a New Year. All of the momentum of December, all of the meaning of Advent, suddenly has some space to breathe after the festivities. And, naturally, I begin to reflect. For some, this may bring natural gratitude and worship for all that God has done. For others, the past year carries loss, questions, or even regret. What stands out to you about last year? One of my favorite poets, George Herbert, an…
The time between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day has always been somewhat sacred to me.
In a sense, we’re between celebrating the birth of baby Jesus and also the birth of a New Year.
All of the momentum of December, all of the meaning of Advent, suddenly has some space to breathe after the festivities…
And, naturally, I begin to reflect.
What has this year brought?
What memories stand out?
What do I celebrate—areas God has moved or been active?
What still remains unfinished or unanswered?
For some, this may bring natural gratitude and worship for all that God has done. For others, the past year carries loss, questions, or even regret.
What stands out to you about last year?
One of my favorite poets, George Herbert, an Anglican Priest in the 17th century, wrote a beautiful poem wrestling with his thoughts as a priest going into the new year.
It’s called “The Collar” because that is what a priest wore in his service—a collar around his neck—and for Herbert this was a symbol and image of his year. He wrestles with freedom and responsibility. With God’s promises and potential, the limited harvest, and his own limitations too.
Herbert wrestles with who God is, how God works, his own purpose, and most deeply His heart with the Lord. He asks God honestly, “Is the year only lost to me?”
“Herbert wrestles with who God is, how God works, his own purpose, and most deeply His heart with the Lord. He asks God honestly, “Is the year only lost to me?””
You’ll find him realizing at the end, that his emotions and wrestling were really a sort of lament, and he comes as a child before His Dad, “as I…grew more fierce, I heard one calling “child,” and I replied, “My Lord.”
So take a moment this New Year and reflect with George and Jesus,
I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.
I love that in the midst of his “ravings” of legitimate questions, doubts, and inner movements, He gets a nudge from the Holy Spirit—“child!” And his immediate heart response is “My Lord.”
It’s so telling, because, in one sense, we recognize that in comparison to all that Herbert was saying beforehand—that God's voice is way more important. That One voice is so powerful and subtle that it stops all the momentum of his roving thoughts.
And it's easy to conclude that Herbert's thoughts were unimportant, irrelevant, or wasted.
“But, I’d like us to consider, what if Herbert hadn’t gone into that place where He wrestled and processed and poured his heart out before the Lord?
What if he wasn’t in that open, heart-pumping, existential place with God where those very real questions bubbled up to the surface of his heart?”
But, I’d like us to consider, what if Herbert hadn’t gone into that place where He wrestled and processed and poured his heart out before the Lord?
What if he wasn’t in that open, heart-pumping, existential place with God where those very real questions bubbled up to the surface of his heart?
· Would he have heard that voice?
· Would he have noticed that nudge?
· Would he have known the obvious difference between the voice of God and his own?
Hebrews 5:13-14 says, “Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
How do we grow in discernment, how do we train to hear the voice of God over and against our own?
“How do we grow in discernment, how do we train to hear the voice of God over and against our own?”
By practice. Constant practice.
I’d suggest that George Herbert, in the Collar, was putting in full-color the display of discernment training needed to distinguish good from evil. To distinguish God from ourselves.
Where do you need to hear from God this year?
What is on your heart? Your area where you want Him to show up?
Likely you’ll need to open your heart before the Lord like George did.
“Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us,” (Psalm 62:8).
What would it be like to begin spilling just a drop or two of your heart before the Lord right now?
If this feels difficult, use this resource below to Write Your New Years Prayer and take a deeper step with the Lord this New Year.
Free Resource - Write Your New Year’s Prayer for 2024 - click Here!
And have an amazing time celebrating these next days ahead.
God bless your New Year!
What if Thanksgiving Isn’t Working for Me? - Part II
What if in trying to be thankful, it feels like we’re only contrasting what isn’t working? Sometimes our focus on the good-things can seem to only shed light on how much darkness there is. Well, later in the New Testament, Jesus calls us to remembrance too. It’s on that last night with His disciples, during the last supper, He instituted an act of remembrance called Communion…For those who are really in it, walking through dark seasons, it is this remembrance of the Cross, that can be so healing. Jesus didn’t just stand at a distance…
“
Well maybe it’s a better thing
A better thing
To be more than merely innocent
Oh, but to be broken then redeemed by love
Well maybe this old world is bent
But it’s waking up, and I’m waking up
’Cause I can hear the voice of one
Crying in the wilderness
”Make ready for the kingdom come”
Don’t you want to thank someone for this?
To thank someone for this?”
In our last post, we considered how God calls us to look back in order to move forward. Israel called these Ebenezers, stones of remembrance or help. The God-moments help us remember and remembrance shifts our present moment.
It’s beautiful, and yet, sometimes even these God-moments seem so few and far between. What if in trying to be thankful, it feels like we’re only contrasting what isn’t working? Sometimes our focus on the good-things can seem to only shed light on how much darkness there is.
“Sometimes our focus on the good-things can seem to only shed light on how much darkness there is.
”
Well, later in the New Testament, Jesus calls us to remembrance too. It’s on that last night with His disciples, during the last supper, He instituted an act of remembrance called Communion. The broken bread was a picture of His broken body. The dark wine was a picture of His split blood on the Cross. Such violent and heavy images, but needed, especially for those living in darkness.
For those who are really in it, walking through dark seasons, it is this remembrance of the Cross, that can be so healing.
Jesus didn’t just stand at a distance and tell us to be thankful. He actually entered our darkness. He came into our reticence to be thankful. He carried the cross that we deserved. He came into human brokenness, our brokenness, and didn’t shy away.
“Jesus didn’t just stand at a distance and tell us to be thankful. He actually entered our darkness.”
In this, Jesus shows us God’s heart, God’s power. And in our areas of darkness and death--as we give them to Him—He is able to and willing to bring life.
All those areas that we aren’t thankful for. That we’d rather not have in our lives. Those are the areas Jesus came to deal with.
That is where the Cross can become the greatest Stone of Help. The hardest things, the things we would never stack as Ebenezers, can actually become an altar where His sacrifice affects our area of deepest need.
We can rest all the areas of death and sin we’re facing on that ultimate death of Jesus. For in Jesus, death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:54). Wow.
It's not just that we are thankful for the little things, instead, in Jesus, everything coming against us is literally the thing He already paid-the-price to resolve. We're just needing to draw near to Him in that thing.
“It’s not just that we are thankful for the little things, instead, in Jesus, everything coming against us is literally the thing He already paid-the-price to resolve.”
What if Jesus died not just for you to be thankful, but to bring love and power into every area you’re just not thankful for. Could it be that He’s that good? (Rom. 5:17-21, Rom 8:18-28)
And for us whom the giving of thanks is deafened by the volume of death around us, consider, just minutes before Jesus instituted Communion—before His declaration of death transforming into life…what did He do?
“And for us whom the giving of thanks is deafened by the volume of death around us, consider, just minutes before Jesus instituted Communion—before His declaration of death transforming into life…what did He do?”
He got down, wrapped Himself in a towel, and washed His disciple's feet.
He came as a servant.
And maybe instead of mustering up thankfulness today, you just need to come again to Jesus, the Servant, and receive.
Allow Him to wash your feet.
Talk with Him about what you’re going through.
Let Him look you in the eyes.
And see what He’s about.
See His heart again.
Tell Him why it’s hard to be thankful.
And let Him know where you're at.
Be with Him there.
Because, I’d suggest, that’s the type of Thanksgiving that Jesus really wants this holiday.
What about you?
Video Reflection
Take a few moments to be with Jesus this Thanksgiving season. Talk with Him. Remember together.
Let this calming worship song lead you into His presence.
What if Thanksgiving Isn’t Working for Me? - Part I
What is thanksgiving? I don’t just mean the holiday—but the actual word. That verb. The action of giving thanks. During the holiday of Thanksgiving, we commemorate that idea of giving thanks but can lose the vitality of what it is we’re actually doing. What’s going on here? Thanks + Giving = What?
“But when you see the morning sun
Burning through a silver mist
Don’t you want to thank someone?
Don’t you want to thank someone for this?”
What is thanksgiving? I don’t just mean the holiday—but the actual word. That verb. The action of giving thanks. During the holiday of Thanksgiving, we commemorate that idea of giving thanks but can lose the vitality of what it is we’re actually doing. What’s going on here?
What does it really mean to give thanks?
What are we giving?
And to Whom are we giving this?
Of course, most of us have heard the treasured tales of the first Thanksgiving, and later the amazing declaration of Abraham Lincoln in the wake of Gettysburg and in the midst of Civil War, to turn to God, to give Him thanks in the middle of…everything.
But Abe and the first settlers were pulling from a deeper theme in Scripture. In the struggle for survival and the devastation of war, they drew back to God’s command to remember.
From Genesis through Revelation, God tells His people to look at His ways, His mighty acts, His victories among them—and mark that moment as a God-moment. To remember that moment as a moment when God moved.
Would you say you’ve experienced a God-moment?
Israel practiced this as a nation. They would take account as a people, point to a moment that God came through, and say that right there, that was a moment God showed up. For our people. For us. For me.
They would mark this with a Stone of Remembrance, an Ebenezer—see 1 Samuel 7:12 (check out an article on Ebenezers here).
These Ebenezer stones were stacked and marked a physical spot where Israel worshipped God for His breakthrough. These testified to them in future moments, especially when it was hard to see, the heart and power of the Living God toward them. They were telling their future by looking backward.
“They were telling their future by looking backward.”
Thanksgiving is looking back at these moments of breakthrough where God showed up and remembering—despite everything we’ve faced—that is Who God really is. And translating God’s heart and power from that time into this moment.
When circumstances, struggles, or sins pile up against us—where do you reorient? Who is God when things are hard?
Thanksgiving—remembrance—is the act of turning back to those God moments, to our best memories with God in order to look forward.
The biblical call to thanksgiving points to those moments God showed up, where we can say without a doubt, “That was God.”
And then, in a breath saying, “And that is who God is. Who He is truly. Who He is to me now, too, even if I haven’t seen it yet.”
With everything that changes and shifts in this life, God doesn’t change. He has revealed Himself, in Scripture, yes, and in my life. And He will continue to be the same God.
And in thanksgiving…as I remember Him…suddenly, I connect again to that truth of Who God is. My God-moment “back-then” beckons a now-moment.
“My God-moment “back-then” beckons a now-moment.”
The physicality of those Ebenezer stones were intended to endure as a remembrance for Israel and to their next generations—a generational prayer for God to “Do it again!”
Prayerfully consider and wonder with God…..
What are the areas where you’ve seen God’s help? Where have you seen God’s work in your story?
What did you notice about God in that season? What was His heart toward you?
Did you experience His love? His presence? His healing? His forgiveness? His peace? His Spirit? What was it for you?
If God doesn’t change, what would it be like to come to Him, that God, your God, afresh today?
And, if trying to remember God-moments is only highlighting the contrast of struggle, grief, or pain in this season, then check out:
Part II of What if Thanksgiving Isn’t Working for Me?
And take a step deeper into your heart during this holiday season…
Remember…
“The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”
Video Reflection
As you’ve been reading, what is coming up for you?
Are you noticing a desire to remember all that God has done?
Or perhaps He feels distant or uninvolved?
Take a moment to listen to this video below…
And reflect with God over the areas of your life where He is present…
Also, consider where you still need to see Him involved in meaningful ways right now…
How Is My Imagination Formed? - Part 5 in the Buried Imagination
The significance of the imagination is deepened when we consider how our imagination is formed. I watch Hope, our 1-year-old daughter, toddling through her days, touching, seeing, reacting—learning everything for the first time. Her experience is constantly intaking the new. She touches the order God created—and the image in her eyes reoccurs as a first form in her mind. Over her first year, she is watching and hearing interpretations of those forms from…
The significance of the imagination is deepened when we consider how our imagination is formed. I watch Hope, our 1-year-old daughter, toddling through her days, touching, seeing, reacting—learning everything for the first time. Her experience is constantly intaking the new. She touches the order God created—and the image in her eyes reoccurs as a first form in her mind. Over her first year, she is watching and hearing interpretations of those forms from me and my wife, and, of course, has her own natural reactions too. Her soul absorbs conclusions about herself and the world even before she is even conscious of concept. These are the first glimmers of the primary imagination, the landscape in which she will live her days.[i] It is beautiful but can be scary at times too.
All this informs Hope’s little soul before she is ever conscious to say, “Yes, I like that. I will believe that. I trust that. That is true. That’s good. Bad. Scary. Wonderful.” She is soaking up everything, all the beautiful and the awful around us. And as she grows up, amongst the wonder and discovery, she will also find disappointment, fear, loss, sin, and drudgery interwoven into the fabric of this landscape. These are the first movements of her imaginative world. And she will spend a significant part of her life living in, and in a way, unweaving her experience of herself through the modes of imagination so she can see herself and her world a bit more clearly. And as her parents, we are shaping all three modes of her imagination now, but as she grows up, she will need her Heavenly Father to come in through the Holy Spirit to reveal, rebuild, and, redream over that her life will become.
The goal of the imagination is to chase after our Father by using these three modes to actively partner with the Holy Spirit in ways that re-image our minds and hearts after the Image of the Son in our lives and contexts. “The imagination has…a duty…which springs from [man’s] immediate relation to the Father,” said George MacDonald, the mentor of imagination for C.S. Lewis, “that of following and finding out the divine imagination in whose image it was made.” As a repetition of the creative act of God himself, there is a rightness to the imagination, for God himself is righteous, holy, true—and imaginative.[ii] The modes of imagination are true, good, and beautiful as they are orchestrated under his care. This means each mode can be a space to encounter and connect with God. All our longings, prayers, wonderings, doubts, fears, and griefs, can become founts of the imaginative life, spaces where we can fellowship with God. The heights of heaven and dark seasons that haunt us can be brought into conversation with the love and power of Jesus.
But entering this imaginative space, doesn’t mean just “cleaning up” our imaginative landscape. Some will find their intuitive response is to whitewash their imagination into a “safe version” or “our version” of our soul. We imagine that we can just “delete” or “edit” certain images before God, rather than letting God be the one to shape and work amidst our imagination. Instead, consider the imaginative landscape as the central space for Christian experience of God and self. Invite God into each mode of your imagination. Let him rule there. Though broken, the image still reflects something, and in God’s love, it can be repaired.
[i] G.K. Chesterton says, “Nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”[i] The whole wonder of entering a story is to repeat afresh—to reenact and reinterpret—the original formation of our imagination. This can present new insights of root images and can shift and repair broken or bent ones—hopefully leading to new imaging-forth.
[ii] “For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. It is, I confess, undeniable that such a view indirectly implies a kind of truth or rightness in the imagination itself.” - C.S. Lewis, Bluspels and Flalansferes: a Semantic Nightmare
Skeptics, Belief, and a Biblically Rooted Imagination - Part 4 in the Buried Imagination
Today, one might hear it said in Church that “The heart is deceitful…and desperately sick,” but not always rounded out with, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.”[v] Of course, the former scripture validates the fact/value division, while the latter begins integration into a whole-hearted person.[vi] We separate imagination from the intellect and reason from faith, when these ought to work in tandem, serving each other underneath the love of God.
“Lewis wrote about these deep longings of his heart and the quest to find the object of these longings.
I knew the longings first hand, but I had never read anything where someone described so clearly what I felt in my own heart. In this way, Lewis gave me a vocabulary for my soul.”
Does it matter what we see?
In this famous sketch, the artist captures two perspectives.
Depending on how you look at the image, you may see the enchanting chin of a beautiful young woman.
Or you may glimpse the bent nose of an elderly lady. Both realities are in the same image. But without realizing it, we operate on one half of the whole image.
And this makes a profound point. When there are two realities captured in one image like this, we can either miss it. Or, as we see both, it forces us to transcend what we’ve always seen into the deeper, at times even eternal, truth.
In this image, seeing the two-in-one, makes us reconcile that within youthful beauty also is the daunting reality of old age. And within old age still remains the youthful blush of beauty. There can be two realities, that are better captured as One reality.
And with the imagination, we sometimes make false distinctions between things like reason and faith, mind and heart, logic and intuition, etc. that are really pictures of the whole. What I want us to consider is how did we get to this place where the imagination that is so vivid in Jesus’s ministry, and so integral to human existence and flourishing, could be so widely diminished, jeered at, and even worrisome in many circles?
Let’s consider this together…
Despite it’s everyday use, there are a variety of skepticisms about the imagination. These rise from everything from the pain and loss of a dream. The grief of ordinary or extreme suffering. The questions of news, institutions or even what we read on the internet. We make internal adjustments, yet even the adjustments are works of the primary and active imagination, adjusting the way we view our current and future circumstances to avoid pain, to pursue a goal, to seek truth, etc. Avoiding the imagination is impossible. And it’s presence is a crucial underlying dynamic in our faith (or lack thereof).
Skeptics and critics of the imagination remain in the pews. This results from a historical false division in Western culture between fact and value that still affects us today. In this division, fact statements—statements of science, research, and objectivity—make up the foundational “stuff” of reality.[i] While value statements—statements of experience and subjectivity—remain on the one side of opinions, options, beliefs, etc., as areas of skepticism and relativity.
Facts are conceived as value-free data, underived and uninfluenced by culture or religion. The inherit claim is that facts arrive without outside-influence, emotion, or agenda. The fact/value model proposes that one could build a reasonable and secure life on facts, not explaining how that life would be barren of meaning and experience. It doesn’t take much digging to realize that Reason builds her achievements on the back of imagination’s exploration.[ii] And though it’s impossible to live without the three modes of imagination, beginning to glimpse our society’s distinctions can help diagnose why the imagination is so misunderstood.
In the 20th century the Church wrestled with this fact/value division, as movements of textual criticism and progressive moral values pushed the Church to either justify faith by facts or become increasingly irrelevant. So, the Church unwittingly separated worldview and theology into this realm of fact.[iii] Meanwhile, experience of God and spirituality stayed in the “squishy” space of value statements.[iv] The short-term gain solidified the fact/value division within the broader Church and skepticism about spiritual experience, imagination, and emotion grew increasingly suspect.
Today, one might hear it said in Church that “The heart is deceitful…and desperately sick,” but not always rounded out with, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.”[v] Of course, the former scripture validates the fact/value division, while the latter begins integration into a whole-hearted person.[vi] We separate imagination from the intellect and reason from faith, when these ought to work in tandem, serving each other underneath the love of God.
When the truths of scripture are separated into the realm of facts, Scripture becomes a source of static ideals. One can rightly say, “I have been crucified with Christ,” Or “Love is patient, love is kind, it keeps no record of wrongs,” as transcendent facts. But if they remain only facts, and not realities that invite us into an experience, then the modes of imagination begin to wither. We lose the powerful fuels of the imagination, like desire, dreaming, hope, and longing, that would engage us in a process of becoming the sorts of people who embody these truths we study. One has social permission to study scripture all day, but it’s whole different issue when the scriptures come alive in our minds, hearts, or convictions through the modes of imagination.
Consequently, great gulfs emerge between our ideals and the reality of our lives. This distance can create significant feelings of frustration, isolation, and discouragement. Our minds, bodies, and prayers need space where the active imagination can imagine what the process might look like to become a person “filled with the Spirit”. We need the permission to engage our God-given identity to image-forth that process by trusting and experiencing our hearts “crying, “Abba! Father!”[vii]
And as we face hurdles, disconnects, or failures, we need the primary imagination to consider, reflect, wonder, and integrate the truth with aspects of the journey that didn’t work and discern the best routes forward with God. All these activities fall under the God-given capacity of imagination in which Reason is a participant and co-creator.[viii]
In a healthy Christian—paramount in Jesus himself, of course—is where the fact/value division breaks down. In Jesus we see the transcendent, objective truth of Scripture finding its home, incarnated into the mind, heart, and experience of a real human being.[ix]
All three modes come alive in Jesus: 1) Jesus is the fulfilled image of God by which we see God fully and are restored, 2) he opens the disciples primary imagination to see and perceive the Kingdom of God in him through the Holy Spirit and 3) he is celebrated for his perfect use of the active imagination in his parables, poetry, and prophesy.
I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:
Lord, what has stoked my imagination in church or worshipping communities?
What has drawn me in? Drawn me toward seeing my heart? Toward seeing You?
What has disrupted or even repelled me from seeing You or myself clearly?
What must it have been like for Jesus to have an imagination?
What would go through His mind and heart in an average day?
Where is my imagination most naturally connected to Jesus?
Where is my imagination protective? Distrustful? Hesitant? Or Skeptical?
Take some time to talk with the Lord about this and invite Him into Your imagination.
We’ve been considering this God-given capacity
Called the imagination in a series of posts:
[i] In response to Western culture, which arises from Greek Philosophy, Renaissance ideas, and Reformation theology, a few authors, philosophers, and theologians shape what is called the “Romantic” tradition, the movement in Germany and England to see the transcendent in nature. Prominent figures, Wordsworth and Coleridge, form a friendship and a major body of poetry and philosophy that later impacts such writers as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald and others. These voices become major influencers for the imagination in the Protestant and Evangelical traditions. But it’s worth noting that other Christian traditions have major voices who speak about the imagination as well. In the Roman Catholic Tradition, we see Saint Ignatius forming practices, prayer models, and whole modes of Spiritual Direction shaped around encountering Christ in Scriptures through the imagination. In the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, we have a rich theology of sacramentalism that roots the logos of Christ in the literal images and forms of creation (see Maximus the Confessor). The study and theologizing of this central capacity is spread across the Christian traditions and in each one is reclaimed by rich and profound thinkers, which can encourage each of us to partner with the Holy Spirit as he shepherds us through images, forms, and creativity in our own lives and traditions too.
[ii] “’But the facts of Nature are to be discovered only by observation and experiment.’ True. But how does the man of science come to think of his experiments? Does observation reach to the non-present, the possible, the yet unconceived? Even if it showed you the experiments which ought to be made, will observation reveal to you the experiments which might be made? And who can tell of which kind is the one that carries in its bosom the secret of the law you seek? We yield you your facts. The laws we claim for the prophetic imagination. ‘He hath set the world in man’s heart,’ not in his understanding. And the heart must open the door to the understanding. It is the far-seeing imagination which beholds what might be a form of things, and says to the intellect: ‘Try whether that may not be the form of these things;’ which beholds or invents a harmonious relation of parts and operations, and sends the intellect to find out whether that be not the harmonious relation of them—that is, the law of the phenomenon it contemplates.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts
[iii] Of course, Scripture is fact, it’s just not fact alone. And when we converse with the culture from this fact-only point of view, we need to make clear what kind of facts we’re considering. Are all the stories literal? Well, yes, but some are illustrative too—like the parables. Are all the statements in scripture promises facts that God will fulfill? Well, some are, but if we’re not clear about who those facts were written to, who was writing them, what they would mean to those who read them, etc. we can suddenly demand ourselves and others to believe facts alone, shutting down the invitation into experience, faith, and encounter that the Scriptures have always been for the people of God. We never want to lose Scripture as fact, but we need to review the divisions we’ve made with value and invite ourselves and others into an experience of God, which requires an active imagination and room for reliability of the data we find in the landscape of experience.
[iv] The problem becomes apparent when we consider how one arrives at what a fact is and how it can be established that it has a sort of standard that transcends other systems of value. Whatever route one choses to prove a fact is value-free, requires a philosophical move that enjoins itself to a system of value (for example, facts are neutral is a value statement, that limits our knowledge to certain range of science and study). Wherever one draws that line is, it remains self-refuting. Then when enforced in our realms of knowledge, it becomes a sort of law by which we can police, judge, control, or undermine the quality of knowledge or persons in their value statements.
[v] Jeremiah 17:9-10 and Ezekiel 36:26
[vi] As a result of minimizing the imagination, one side of the Church can tend to minimize the role of the struggling, in-process, and grieving places that are rooted in imagination, cutting short ones ability to enter-into experiencing the truth of Scripture. Another side the Church as a corrective jumps into the subjective side of the fact/value division, seeking to open the space for the grieving and marginalized, often at the cost of blurring objective truth and moral values.
[vii] Romans 8:15 (ESV)
[viii] “There were no imagination without intellect, however much it may appear that intellect can exist without imagination. What we mean to insist upon is, that in finding out the works of God, the Intellect must labour, workman-like, under the direction of the architect, Imagination.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts
[ix] John 1:14
Beautiful Poem from Mount Hermon Trail
Place of Repair, O blessed place of refuge!
How gladly will I come to meet Him there,
to cease awhile from all the joy of service,
to find a deeper joy with Him to share!
Place of Repair, for tired brain and body!
How much I need that place…
Place of Repair, O blessed place of refuge!
How gladly will I come to meet Him there,
to cease awhile from all the joy of service,
to find a deeper joy with Him to share!
Place of Repair, for tired brain and body!
How much I need that place just out of sight,
where only He can talk and be beside me,
until again made strong by His great might!
Place of Repair, when trials press upon me,
and God permits the unexpected test,
'tis there I learn some lessons sweet and precious,
as simply on His faithfulness I rest.
Place of Repair, to wait for fresh enduement,
I silently alone with Him would stay,
until He speaks again, and says,
"Go forward, to help some other sheep to find their way."
Place of Repair, O trysting place most Hallowed!
The Lord Himself is just that place to me,
His grace, His strength, His glory and His triumph,
Himself alone, my all--sufficiency.
How Does Our Imagination Actually Work? - Part 3 in the Buried Imagination
Sixty years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien argued against critics who said his fantasy works led people into escapism. Critics remarked that, at their best, his books were an excursion from reality, and at its worst a lie that created self-deception.Tolkien said in response, “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go…
“The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
In the late 1980’s Walt Disney trademarked a term that had been in circulation during wartime America—the term “Imagineer”. The team at Disney was attempting to create language around the vast creative force as they pioneered theme parks, cruise lines, music, movies, etc. “[We call this] Imagineering—the blending of creative imagination with technical know-how.” They're pie-in-the-sky ideas that seem impossible at first, then become reality with the partnerships of creativity, skill, and of course cash.
One associate of Disney in the 60’s described their culture of imagination this way:
““Walt Disney is involved in every operation of every show,” an associate reports.
“He approves the ideas, the scripts, and everything else. You can’t call this a one-man operation—hardly, with 900 employees working here in the studio.
“But we’re all guided by Walt’s ideas and vision: good taste, imagination, and creativity. A man who worked for him years ago summed it up perfectly. He made up a word.
“He called it imagineering, and it’s applicable.””
Now, with whatever you think about Disney currently, it’s been a powerhouse for imagination—and what I want to focus on is the felt-unity of separate creative acts that become one under a single leader. We experience an animated movie, a day at a theme park, a ride on a roller coaster, etc., as one beautiful experience. But actually, these are the collaboration of a variety of acts and types of imagination that are underneath the head-creator’s creative mind.
And, Disney, with its magic and its faults, is only a microcosm of the power of the imagination that we inherit from the Creator himself.
Our imaginations, too, are multifunctional and if we take a moment to consider them, we’ll see the layers of wisdom God has created in us through the power of image.
Our imaginative capacity can be divided into three different modes:
1) image as our identity, being a creature of God’s own imagination,
2) imagination as a landscape (the primary imagination) and
3) imagination as active choice (the active, or secondary, imagination). [i]
First, we see imagination as identity in the Scriptures—we are created as image bearers of God’s own nature. As the image of God, we are images ourselves. As a reflection of him, we express a finite pattern of the nature of God on earth.[ii] Out of this, our lives, actions and interior world become a vessel by which we interact with God while reflecting his heart and personhood. An image is who we are—we are the live outworking of his imagination.[iii] Not only does this give huge value to our lives and actions, but it makes sense of the layers of personality we find in the imagination—is it any surprise that this vast capacity reflects our infinite Creator?[iv]
Second, imagination is a landscape in which our souls live—the clay of our spiritual formation. Our soul, as God created it, is a landscape of images and forms that make up the texture of our experience of self, God, and others. All these images were once raw impressions, all have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time, and all are God’s original design and dream. Much of the positive and negative spiritual formation in our lives arises from the repetitive use and reinterpretation of these forms. To the degree the landscape of our imagination is in God’s order and under his rule, we flourish. And to the degree it is out of alignment, we wither and perish.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls this landscape the primary imagination—the perceptive capacity of our souls by which the symbols and images that make up all of God’s creation arise in our individual mind.[v] These perceptions that become our mental image of a tree, a fish, or a cross are a “repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.” In a way, God is actually re-creating the image of those realities he first created within our individual perception. How beautiful![vi]
Consider that the very formation of all the ideas and symbols that cross your consciousness from the womb until now are a repetition of God’s work—his voice fashioning once again the things he first delighted in thousands and thousands of years ago. And these forms and images become the metaphors and meanings that fill our language. The content by which we relate with each other and with God.
The primary imagination includes our inner thoughts, emotions, dreams, desires, longings, griefs, anxieties, appetites, perceptions, motives, impressions, even language itself—all the mental and emotional space we inhabit—this is the landscape of our primary imagination. These layers of images and ideas become a playground or battlefield depending on the formation of this space.
The cross of Christ is a great example of how the primary imagination works. We hear the word cross, without our permission our minds imagine the materials, wooden beams fashioned to fit together and stand vertically. Then, equally as quickly, our minds recall the perpendicular wood beams as a Roman device of extreme torture. Lastly, most gloriously, as believers we locate this as that holy and terrible moment where Jesus took on Death and formed it into Life. Our imagination integrates all three of these images into the central Christian symbol that points to our salvation. We may speak of the cross as the truth of the gospel, the reason for our faith, but it arrived in our mind as layered images relying on the primary imagination. And as the layers of meaning impress upon our mind, our heart is moved toward this Jesus, his sacrifice, and we worship him for the cross he bore that we know as our victory.
Third, imagination is engaged as an active choice. In this mode, known as secondary or active imagination,imagination is a creative movement that ancients called “genius” or our “muse” that would impel an individual to create some expression as a cultural act for a community or an individual act of self-disclosure. At times, a savant will create a symphony or poem that moves us to tears. Other times, writers, sculptures, actors, musicians engage lifestyles of creative-acts, making this secondary imagination a specialty profession.
But many of us use the active imagination on an everyday level, creating in meaningful spaces of our homes and work almost without realizing it. Perhaps for you this a gardening space, a sketch pad, designing the interior of a home, or organizing a meeting—all of these are acts of secondary imagination. [vii] If you think about it, the whole of culture and civilization is an accumulation of active imaginations. The goal and work of the active imagination is not to escape or hide in a false reality, but actually to discover more of reality, to follow after the Creator himself and discover how his mind and heart work in all his manifold ways in creation.[viii]
I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:
Lord, what is coming up when I consider these layers of my imagination
What is my initial reaction to being made in Your image? To being an image of You?
What goes through my mind when I think about the landscape of my imagination? Is there a place in me where images naturally flow through my mind? When is that? What sort of images? Have I shared those with you?
What early images in my history might have shaped who I am? Are their longings or hopes? Loss or dreams connected to images when I was growing up?
What sort of ways do I use my active imagination? Is it around the house? At work? With others? When I’m alone? Who does my imagination impact? What sort of things “come out” when I imagine?
What would it be like to share my imaginative space with you, God? What comes up when I think about letting You be in this space? Love me in this space? Reign in this space? Lead this space?
What would this landscape look like if God was there?
We’ve been considering this God-given capacity called the imagination in a series of posts (Click here to check out the first post in the series)
Footnotes
[i] “It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of superstition and idolatry; in the latter, of schism, heresy, and a seditious and sectarian spirit.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit
[ii] “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion….So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them,” (Genesis 1:26-28, ESV) also, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,” (Psalm 8:4-6, ESV).
[iii] “But when we come to consider the acts embodying the Divine thought….we discover at once, for instance, that where a man would make a machine, or a picture, or a book, God makes the man that makes the book, or the picture, or the machine. Would God give us a drama? He makes a Shakespeare. Or would he construct a drama more immediately his own? He begins with the building of the stage itself, and that stage is a world—a universe of worlds. He makes the actors, and they do not act,—they are their part. He utters them into the visible to work out their life—his drama. When he would have an epic, he sends a thinking hero into his drama, and the epic is the soliloquy of his Hamlet. Instead of writing his lyrics, he sets his birds and his maidens a-singing. All the processes of the ages are God’s science; all the flow of history is his poetry. His sculpture is not in marble, but in living and speech-giving forms, which pass away, not to yield place to those that come after, but to be perfected in a nobler studio. What he has done remains, although it vanishes; and he never either forgets what he has once done, or does it even once again. As the thoughts move in the mind of a man, so move the worlds of men and women in the mind of God, and make no confusion there, for there they had their birth, the offspring of his imagination. Man is but a thought of God.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts
[iv] “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end,” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
[v] “The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.” – Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
[vi] The novelist and poet, George MacDonald, too, describes that the created order is “an inexhaustible storehouse of forms…the crystal pitchers that shall protect his thought and not need to be broken that the light may break forth…God has made the world that it should thus serve his creature, developing in the service that imagination whose necessity it meets.” We are saturated with images and forms that contain the very creative power of God, and we are joined to his first creative act in our very living, thinking, speaking, and emoting. It’s as if the Holy Spirit that brooded over creation, is also brooding over all the beauty of our lives—literally inside the perceptive and cognitive powers of our human mind and heart—to, once again, form order from chaos.
[vii] Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls this the secondary imagination—the intentional, willful creation of a phrase, story, language, poem, song, script, novel, etc. This is what we commonly refer to when we talk about imagination and child’s play—pretend. And yet, for adults, the secondary imagination explains why art, stories, and song move us so deeply—the secondary imagination is singing or sighing with the perceptive-art of the author. Moving deeper, the stories of our lives—the ones we dwell inside—are potent with “crystal pitchers” of light, meaning-filled containers that arise from self or God. This is the sacred space we witness when we listen with God’s heart to another’s story. For this is how God is perceiving our stories, the very capacities, the structure of our imagination is architectured after the Creator’s imagination. And Jesus is both incensed and set-on his disciples using their eyes to see the Kingdom and using their ears to hear the King. This isn’t optional for him in Matthew 13, this is literally the difference between faith and unbelief.
[viii] “Licence is not what we claim when we assert the duty of the imagination to be that of following and finding out the work that God maketh. Her part is to understand God ere she attempts to utter man. Where is the room for being fanciful or riotous here? It is only the ill-bred, that is, the uncultivated imagination that will amuse itself where it ought to worship and work.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts
Is Our Imagination Reliable? - Part 2 of the Buried Imagination
Sixty years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien argued against critics who said his fantasy works led people into escapism. Critics remarked that, at their best, his books were an excursion from reality, and at its worst a lie that created self-deception.Tolkien said in response, “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go…
“The imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold.
It is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation”
Sixty years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien argued against critics who said his fantasy works led people into escapism. Critics remarked that, at their best, his books were an excursion from reality, and at its worst a lie that created self-deception.
Tolkien said in response, “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls…. If we value the freedom of mind and soul…then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” No one would disagree with the longing of a prisoner escaping into a greater hope.
As Christians, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.[i] And, in a broken world, it is the most natural thing for the imagination to escape into a more-real one, a heavenly one.[ii] And this hope can become a source to beckon people onward.[iii]
In fact, some scholars speak of the imagination as a truth-bearing faculty.[iv] Of course, not all we imagine in our minds is the truth-in-full. Sometimes our imagination can create anxiety, disillusion, or error.[v] But, no matter what, the objective truth always arrives in our minds by means of the imagination. The Christian imagination isn’t a flight of fancy or self-deception or even mere child’s play—it’s following after our Father—using our minds to follow after the patterns he’s created.[vi]
Further, as those redeemed by Jesus, we worship the One who is called, “The image of the invisible God,” and “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” We know imagination has led us astray in the Genesis account, but we also believe our imagination is being repaired and restored by the Holy Spirit.[vii] Because of Jesus, the action of imaging is not only central in Scripture, but it is in the nature of the gospel and a significant capacity by which we are able to be transformed “into the same image.”[viii] Because of Jesus, we have full permission to engage our imaginations in perceiving, receiving, dreaming, and healing in this Kingdom.
We’ve been considering this God-given capacity called the imagination in a series of posts (Click here to check out the first post in the series)
I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:
Lord, what has been my experience with imagination?
Do I think of my imagination as a place to connect with you, God? To find out more about myself? Am I concerned about being deceived?
What would it be like to find you in the midst of my imaginings?
What images come to mind most often for me?
What comes up when I consider that I’m made in the image of God? And that You, Jesus, are the Image of the Invisible God? What might that mean for me as an image of God now?
Footnotes
[i] Galatians 5:1
[ii] “Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object. And this, I think, is just what we find….If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy….In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
[iii] A great example is Tolkien’s relationship with C.S. Lewis, who was a deeply committed atheist, but couldn’t reconcile the deep longings he felt in stories and imaginative works with the dreary and empty landscape of atheism. Tolkien’s conversations with Lewis centered around mythopoeia or a myth/story becoming real—Tolkien said that our imagination points to a reality and that reality is a Person and that person is Jesus, and that real Myth is the life, death, and resurrection that the Church celebrates. It was through conversations about longings that awoke in his imagination that Lewis was eventually led into Christianity and became one of its greatest voices in the 20th century.
[iv] Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God
[v] Likely you will find great imaginations in those dealing with mental health issues, and sometimes the more prevelant or extreme imaginations are in those presenting with paranoia or delusion. Our minds can create very backward expressions of imagination as well. However, in Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton says, “Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain.… Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health….. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite….To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
[vi] “But while the imagination of man has thus the divine function of putting thought into form, it has a duty altogether human, which is paramount to that function—the duty, namely, which springs from his immediate relation to the Father, that of following and finding out the divine imagination in whose image it was made. To do this, the man must watch its signs, its manifestations. He must contemplate what the Hebrew poets call the works of His hands.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts
[vii] Colossians 1:15 (ESV) and Hebrews 1:3 (ESV)
[viii] “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another,” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)
The Buried Imagination - Part 1
Open your hand. Imagine I rest an old key in your palm. “Try this,” I say. You nod and look up—I am gone—and before you is the wall of a room inset with the frame of a door. Light emanates from its edges. The whole length of the door is inscribed with thousands of languages. Some which you recognize, others look only like symbols and signs. As you approach the door, you notice there’s a nob but no keyhole. Your fingers trace the frame, but it’s no good. The door is locked….
Open your hand.
Imagine I rest an old key in your palm. “Try this,” I say.
You nod and look up—I am gone—and before you is the wall of a room inset with the frame of a door. Light emanates from its edges. The whole length of the door is inscribed with thousands of languages. Some which you recognize, others look only like symbols and signs.
As you approach the door, you notice there’s a nob but no keyhole. Your fingers trace the frame, but it’s no good. The door is locked.
Gently, you place a hand on the nob. It won’t turn—but a warm sensation flutters on your chest.
Your hand reaches for the warmth—what’s that?
A small hole glows upon your sternum. The edges open into blackness. It’s not painful. And it’s shaped exactly like a keyhole upon a door.
Your eyes glance at the locked door. Your hand grips the old key. You lift the key to your chest. It fits.
You turn—it clicks.
The door swings open.
You take a breath and step inside.
As you cross the threshold into an open space—what do you see?
Anything might be there. It just takes another word or sound, and beauty may arise before you or fear terrify. Only a few words or images and we are inside a felt experience.
In this space, horror is just as far away as the holy.
As we engage, the reflection of our own ideas and dreams rise from the words and meld into a story before our mind’s eye. We are moved by it. Drawn into it. Ache melds with hope. Wonder evolves into questions. Risk beckons change. All this arrives through a vantage point in our minds.
And hopefully, the land we enter changes us—or, put another way, the landscape we inhabit changes in us. As G.K. Chesterton says, “We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them.” And no matter what we think of this capacity called imagination, it’s active in our faith, our fears, and our prayers.
Imagination—the root is from imago, meaning image, suffixed with “ation” that implies the action or process of doing something. “Action”, for example, is the doing of an act. “Revelation” is the process of revealing. So, imagination is the act and/or process of imaging. When we imagine, we are in the act of image-ing in our minds. It’s as simple as that.
We commonly know this as pretending or storytelling. But our capacity to imagine goes much deeper—into our very nature. As Christians, we know we’re made in the image of God. The image of God, in Genesis, is something God writes into Adam and Eve’s very life-breath.[i] Because of this, we’re always in the act and process of imaging. In a sense, imagination is our nature as the creation reflects the Creator. So, what might this imaging action and process mean for us?
We’ll be considering this powerful capacity for the next few blog posts.
I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:
Lord, what is coming up for me when I think of the imagination?
What areas are excited or expectant when I read this?
What areas are concerned, scared, or even skeptical?
When do I use my imagination? At work? At home? In relationships? When I’m alone?
Spend a few moments with God, talking about this capacity He’s given you, ask the Holy Spirit to show you more about your imagination, invite Him into this space…
Continue Reading —> Part 2 in the Buried Imagination - Is Our Imagination Reliable?
Footnotes
[i] Genesis 1:26
A New Year Prayer + Two Free Resources
What are you anticipating in 2023?
Perhaps goals are floating in your head about the future?
Perhaps you've made decades of resolutions and goal-setting is becoming less enticing?
Or perhaps, like others, you're just bracing for what's to come?
Well, as the clock is ticking forward,
we're offering two FREE RESOURCES
To stay connected to Jesus this New Year...
Happy New Year!
What are you anticipating in 2023?
Perhaps goals are floating in your head about the future?
Perhaps you've made decades of resolutions and goal-setting is becoming less enticing?
Or perhaps, like others, you're just bracing for what's to come?
What comes to mind for you
As you think about this New Year?
Well, as the clock is ticking forward,
we're offering two FREE RESOURCES
To stay connected to Jesus this New Year...
____________________________
Writing a New Year's Prayer is for you if you're needing to reflect and reorient in relationship with God in 2023.
In about 10+ minutes you will be praying and writing a New Year's Prayer that can shape your connection with God in the weeks and months ahead.
Click here to download Writing a New Years Prayer:
Consecrating Our Attention is for you if you've struggled with overdosing on media, news, or other attention-grabbers in the last season, and need a refreshing way to restore your mind and heart in the Love of God.
This facilitated prayer time with Scripture will take around 10-30 minutes and facilitate space to align your mind and heart once again to the One who loves you and made you for Himself.
Click here to download Consecrating Our Attention:
In the meantime, we bless you with God's nearness, encouragement, and deep care for you this New Year. That He would restore and renew you in the places you're bringing to Him, and lead you in His ways.
Looking forward to our paths crossing again.
The Fullness of Christmas Time
As we celebrate the arrival of baby Jesus into a broken world, a child that would grow up to be our Savior & King, sometimes our heart can forget how to receive this good news amid the busyness. Or we find that our days have left us feeling estranged from a once tangible wonder of Christmastime. How has this season been for you?
Merry Christmas!
As we celebrate the arrival of baby Jesus into a broken world, a child that would grow up to be our Savior & King, sometimes our heart can forget how to receive this good news amid the busyness. Or we find that our days have left us feeling estranged from a once tangible wonder of Christmastime.
How has this season been for you?
Perhaps you are delighting in the wonder of the Christmas season this year?
Or perhaps you are wondering how to find wonder once again?
And what it looks like to connect with God in this holy day?
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,
Born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons & daughters.
And because you are sons & daughters, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
- Galatians 4:4-6
Did you know that the sonship of Jesus--the fact that He dwelt with us as a little baby--means God welcomes all people in all seasons, facing any sort of need or longing, no matter what?
That is the power of His love.
And today, He's welcoming you into the Presence of the Father.
His arms are open wide.
Take a moment and receive this gift from Him.
Poet & priest, Malcolm Guite, in this Christmas poem A Tale of Two Gardens, writes about the disconnection we can experience with God, even at Christmas time, and how Jesus's birth can bring fresh life to our hearts.
God's very real pursuit of us through His Son can become a living relationship that leads us on a journey where perfect love begins to infill our broken places and paces. (1 John 4:18)
May these words refresh your soul as you celebrate today...
So now he comes to us again
Not as the Lord Most High
But weak and helpless as we are
That we might hear him cry
The strongest comes in weakness now
A stranger to our door
The king forsakes his palaces
And dwells amongst the poor
And where we hurt he hurts with us
And when we weep he cries
He knows the heart of all our hurts
The inside of our sighs....
May the Lord be so near to you this Christmas and may His arms welcome you into His New Year and all He has in store for you, as you journey with Him.
Looking forward to our paths crossing again
A Tale of Two Gardens
-A Christmas Poem-
By Malcolm Guite
God gave us all a garden once
And walked with us at eve’
That we might know him face to face
With no need to believe
But we denied and hid from him
Concealing our own shame
Yet still He came to look for us
And call us each by name
He found us where we hid from him
He clothed us in his grace
But still we turned out backs on him
And would not see his face
So now he comes to us again
Not as the Lord Most High
But weak and helpless as we are
That we might hear him cry
And he who clothed us in our need
Lies naked in the straw
That we might wrap him in our rags
Whom once we fled in awe
The strongest comes in weakness now
A stranger to our door
The king forsakes his palaces
And dwells amongst the poor
And where we hurt he hurts with us
And when we weep he cries
He knows the heart of all our hurts
The inside of our sighs
He does not look down from above
But gazes up at us
That we might take him in our arms
Who always cradles us
And if we welcome him again
With open hands and heart
He’ll plant his garden deep in us
The end from which we start
What Jesus Thinks about Death and Grief - Part I
s I’ve reflected on John chapter 11 the last few weeks, I’ve been impacted by Jesus’ intentionality during His last weeks of “earthly” ministry. Of course, His earthly ministry has continued for 2,000 years, but we’re talking pre-resurrection here ;) In this scene, Jesus is navigating a slew of conflicting factors regarding the…
As I’ve reflected on John chapter 11 the last few weeks, I’ve been impacted by Jesus’ intentionality during His last weeks of “earthly” ministry. Of course, His earthly ministry has continued for 2,000 years, but we’re talking pre-resurrection here ;)
In this scene, Jesus is navigating a slew of conflicting factors regarding the illness and eventual death of Lazarus..
Jesus has returned to the Jordan river where John the Baptist baptized Him into His public ministry. There, a messenger arrives with the news that His friend Lazarus is dying. Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s brother and Jesus’ close friend, are needing Jesus to come heal. But going to heal Lazarus means going into a high-conflict zone where the religious leaders are ready to stone Him and His disciples.
The crowds are already divided on who Jesus is and what His miracles mean for Israel. And Bethany, where Lazarus lives, is only two miles from Jerusalem, the religious center of Israel where Jesus ultimately will be crucified.
His disciples think they are ready to follow Him to death (viva la revolution!) but, unbeknownst to them, they are really in need of preparation and faith to endure Jesus’ upcoming arrest and sacrifice.
In the midst of this, Jesus is relying on the Father’s guidance for timing and ultimate direction as He shows His complete mastery of Death in all its forms—and then as He enters into it Himself.
Phew! That’s more drama than some full-length films!
One aspect of this that was challenging for me in the wake of the recent years was Jesus’ intentionality of showing His power over Death itself. We utilized a passage from Hebrews 2 for insight on Jesus’s overarching mission as He enters this milieu fraught with grief and danger:
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. ”
There are a few things that stood out to me here.
Death isn’t the problem. It’s the fear of Death that actually enslaves us. And the writer of Hebrews is harkening back to the ancient Jewish writings, affirming that Death (as separation from God) wasn’t just a nonchalant step away from God, but a step into relationship with another power at work in the world. The author of Hebrews notes that this fear of death is actually enslavement to a finite fallen angel—the devil—and this slavery is not a physical bondage, but a spiritual one.
Well, at first it’s hard to see…are we really in bondage? Or are we just living in a rough world? And it’s not like this devil is making bad choices for me, right? I can choose good…I can choose bad…is there really even a bondage at all?
We can be confident there is bondage because of the scriptures, but also, if we just adjust our lens and peer at the world from God’s perspective…we see sin, suffering, division, fear, racism, abuse, doubt, rejection, cynicism, faithlessness, idolatry, etc., etc., etc. You can glimpse how far we’ve diverted from a holistic, open, trusting relationship with the Father in the Garden of Eden to a world full of division.
It’s not that our decisions are predetermined, it’s that our realm is pre-programmed for death—situations that, apart from God’s intervention—always lead to separation from God and from one another. We—as a whole human race—are in bondage to death.
It may help to mediate on Paul’s reflection of the helplessness of bondage to death in Romans 7:
I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.
So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
-Romans 7.17-24 (MSG)
Does this resonate with you?
Now, here’s the powerful reality of John 11—Jesus shows His unlimited power against Death in raising Lazarus—which is a phenomenal miracle.
And the fallout of this move against Death was His own submission to carry the results of our separation/death from God and each other to the cross. Even our fear of death is an area we can see Him bring breakthrough and can glorify Him!
Jesus also wonderfully addresses Martha and Mary’s grief—this will be covered in Part II of this post. But in the meantime…
What do we do with our bondage to the fear of Death?
We name this powerful reality around us—this is why there is so much pain in the world.
We bring our grief in faith (like Martha and Mary) to Jesus, even when it doesn’t make sense.
We receive the Faith of Christ as a gift, and exchange it for the fear of death.
“But wait, I don’t have the faith of Christ!”
Well, Paul says we do in Galatians 2: 16:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
We want to emphasize that our saving faith in Jesus wasn’t based on our faith-capacity, but our trust in His faith-capacity. As we trust Jesus, it doesn’t require us to amp up our faith, but to turn from our fears and trust His faithfulness.
For example, all David brought was a sling to fight Goliath (a metaphor for Death in this case). And that little sling and His faith in God’s faithfulness was more than enough to break the slavery to fear that paralyzed all of Israel. Could it be the same for us in the New Testament Church?
Norm Nason, an Elder at our church, said it this way on Sunday, “the Bible says, ‘Faith is a gift’”. Isn’t that true!
We may not believe in the all-out defeat of death in our own powers, as we may be intimidated by death or grief; pain now or pain in the future….but Jesus isn’t! He defeated death.
We can receive His faith (or put another way, we can receive His faithfulness) and know that it is so so strong, it’s powerful over death, it endured death, and in the resurrection, for believers, it flooded Death with Life!
His death would be the death of Death in all its forms. And He would end the separation from God forever, bringing life into the areas where fear has taken root. His Life would flow everywhere, for where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
What comes up for you as you think about Death?
What do you see when you consider being in bondage to the fear of Death?
What would it be like to talk to Jesus about how He thinks of Death (and its symptoms)?
How might He respond to your thoughts? Your heart? Your needs?
Take a few moments to be with Him and, when you’re ready, thank Him for being your freedom from the fear of Death.
But what does Jesus think about our reaction to Death? Isn’t grief natural?!?
Take a look at Part II - What Jesus Thinks About Death and Grief to dive deeper into Jesus’s gentle and honest treatment of our hearts…
“The life we now have as the persons we now are will continue, and continue in the universe in which we now exist.
Our experience will be much clearer, richer, and deeper, of course, because it will be unrestrained by the limitations now imposed upon us by our dependence upon our body.
It will, instead, be rooted in the broader and more fundamental reality of God’s kingdom and will accordingly have far greater scope and power.”
Check out Dave’s Sermon on “The Lazarus Effect”
- What Jesus Thinks About Death & Grief-
Is Integration Possible?
A major question I’m noticing from first-time clients, is can I trust experience of God? Or for some, how do I integrate my experience of God’s Spirit with the Scriptures or my church community?
There is something true about this desire to be careful - God’s word encourages us to “watch over our hearts with due diligence.” But I am concerned also, about an underlying skepticism in our culture of the emotional-spiritual…
A major question I’m noticing from first-time clients, is can I trust experience of God?
For some, it arises from a conflict of priorities, i.e. what is more important, experience of God or study of the Scriptures?
For others this issue rises in wondering how the Scriptures ought to inform relationship with the Holy Spirit, especially in devotional/worship/prayer times where experience comes to the forefront?
For others, this issue arises in their theology of sin and humanity—if we’re fallen, how can we trust our hearts (emotions) or our mind (thoughts) of God? Didn’t Jeremiah say the heart is wicked and sick?
There is something true about this desire to be careful - God’s word encourages us to “watch over our hearts with due diligence.” But as a Spiritual Director and Pastor, I am concerned also about an underlying skepticism in our culture of the emotional-spiritual life. Dallas Willard says it this way:
“We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt.”
This skepticism has slowly leaked into the church and infected her posture toward truth and experience. This desire to “protect”—whether it’s our theology, scriptural authority, morality, compassion, justice, etc.—can actually undercut the “rivers of living water” that Jesus promised would flow out of His disciples. The problem is that the rivers of Living Water arrive by faith alone…that means if we our mark of maturity is skepticism or doubt, then we may not be as mature as we think.
Jesus often calls the disciples into faith. His whole earthly ministry took these underqualifed doubters and taught them in theory and practice how to be like Jesus. But even unto the end, they failed and scattered. It was only at the infilling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost when their life and faith took on the level that we call normal in the early church. And that faith—a gift of the Holy Spirit—is where we will find the rivers of living water too.
We too often relate to the pre-pentecost disciples as the standard of faith and maturity in the Christian life, when Jesus is calling us to relate to Him as our standard. Don’t compare ourselves to them—compare ourselves to Him.
“We too often relate to the pre-pentecost disciples as the standard of faith and maturity in the Christian life, when Jesus is calling us to relate to Him as our standard. Don’t compare ourselves to them—compare ourselves to Him. ”
Jesus says “Students are not greater than their teacher, and slaves are not greater than their master,” which means we’re not going to beat Jesus, but we better expect and lean into being like Jesus (Matthew 10:24, NLT).
Jesus even ends the Sermon on the Mount with “Be Holy as I am Holy,” this is the daunting task of Christianity, but let’s not make it seemingly more possibly by lowering the standard from Jesus to James, John, or Judas. It’s just not what Jesus had in mind when He lived and ministered on earth.
This issue of skepticism and popular doubt arises from living in a post-christian culture, where our language and history are Christianized, but modern flow of faith and morality is not. We’re building up or moral or theological mores so as not to become syncretized with a patchwork culture…however this very act is reactive formation. This conscious goal to stand on our convictions (a mental work) can unconsciously sabotage our hearts and create suspicion of the God who works in all circumstances, all seasons, and all places.
In an effort to not be deceived, we can accidentally cut of the source of our life. Throwing the baby out (the spiritual life in God) with the mixed-bathwater (the possibility of self-deception).
“In an effort to not be deceived, we can accidentally cut of the source of our life. Throwing the baby out (the spiritual life in God) with the mixed-bathwater (the possibility of self-deception). ”
There may be multiple reasons we experience a “blockage” in our spiritual lives (Spiritual Direction is a great place to explore this), and this mis-trust of experience is just one area we might face.
The funny thing is, the Bible never ever endorses skepticism or cynicism in either the Old or New Testament. Often it warns or condemns this vice now advertised as a virtue. the Bible does encourage good theology and pure morality, but these are the inflow and outflow of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
We don’t have to defend God to ourselves, God Himself is able to ministry the truth to our hearts and minds—that's what’s amazing about the Holy Spirit being the third person of the Trinity. He’s God in us. And no matter what we’re walking through or feeling, it’s good to trust that His authority is present and He is always at work.
“Even when I don’t see it, You’re working
Even when I don’t feel it, You’re working
You never stop, You never stop working
You never stop, You never stop working,”
It’s seems strange, but as Christians, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, witnesses to the Living God, we can also be the most cynical about the experience of God in our daily lives.
Jesus says we will be His “witnesses”—what are we to witness if we have little to no experience of His presence?
“Prayer is both conversation and encounter with God. . . . We must know the awe of praising his glory, the intimacy of finding his grace, and the struggle of asking his help, all of which can lead us to know the spiritual reality of his presence.”
How much can we actually trust the inner workings of our hearts?
How much can we trust the “nudges and voices” that run through bodies or minds throughout the day?
How do we connect our experiences of God to Reason and Truth?
Is their room in my theology for God to move in my body, my habits, my literal waking, sleeping, and working?
And is there a place for the traditions and history of the broader Church to influence and shape our experience of God?
We’ll explore some of these questions in the next couple posts. But know at the beginning, the theological method (the assumptions about the world, humanity, God, etc.) we bring to the Scriptures directly effects our theological conclusions. The assumptions we bring in direct our answers, and to the degree we’re predisposed or misaligned, our biblical answers pop out as self-fulfilled prophesies.
The goal is not to avoid having presuppositions, but to, as best as possible, have True presuppositions. And this means doing a little bit of philosophical reflection:
For example, if I hold to naturalism—the belief that God cannot work through and within Nature itself—and I study the Bible, I likely will assume the historic authors inaccurately interpreted unexplainable natural phenomena as supernatural events, or acts of God, and might search for clues in the writing for natural explanations that correlate with a “closed” universe.
Or perhaps, if struggle with self-condemnation, when the Bible speaks of denying oneself and taking up the cross—I will be predisposed to interpret these as sage advice for the inner life, and justify to denouncing having any desires at all.
Or if the transcendent, spiritual life, that is engaged through human emotions and touches our human spirit, is my understanding of the firmest ground for reality, then I may easily lift quotes or powerful spiritual experiences in scripture from their historical-physical context, and lose the grounded reality of the Scriptures and God’s involvement in real history.
There are countless more. What do these stir up for you?
I hope you can begin to see how these presumptions can impact the lens we bring to the Scriptures and to our world. And how that lens effects our lives, our connection to God, and our relationships with others and the world around us.
Consider with me:
What would it be like to explore the roots that can influence the ways you think about the world?
What comes up for you when you think about your basic presumptions about God, humanity, and Scripture?
What things are a few core things you hold to about God, the universe, humanity, and humanities origins, and the way forward?
Check out our upcoming posts for more on Is Integration Possible?
“Oh, the joys of those who do not
Follow the advice of the wicked,
Or stand around with sinners,
Or join in with mockers.
But they delight in the law of the Lord,
Meditating on it day and night.
They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
Bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,
And they prosper in all they do.”
The Weight of Weariness
Are you familiar with this verse above? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been experiencing a growing weariness during this season. And it makes me wonder about how God actually expects us to gain His strength in weary seasons.
It is redundant to say the words COVID, pandemic, race issues, election, riots, on and on. In my recent conversations, I’m noticing how, for many, the shock and unbelief of our circumstances in 2020 has dissipated and given way to a deep well of weariness. Weary of questions. Weary of news. Weary of updates. Changes. Regulations. Masks. Distance. Division. Opinions. Fear. It’s like the skills we’ve used to survive the last year are revealing their fruits in the new year, and, despite the multifaceted ways we’ve coped with worldwide change, and despite our best intentions, a similar fruit arises across our culture: weariness. It’s so much easier…
““Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly,
Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.”
”
Are you familiar with this verse above?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been experiencing a growing weariness during this season. And it makes me wonder about how God actually expects us to gain His strength in weary seasons.
It is redundant to say the words COVID, pandemic, race issues, election, riots, on and on. In my recent conversations, I’m noticing how, for many, the shock and unbelief of our circumstances in 2020 has dissipated and given way to a deep well of weariness. Weary of questions. Weary of news. Weary of updates. Changes. Regulations. Masks. Distance. Division. Opinions. Fear.
It’s like the skills we’ve used to survive the last year are revealing their fruits in the new year, and, despite the multifaceted ways we’ve coped with worldwide change, and despite our best intentions, a similar fruit arises across our culture: weariness.
It’s so much easier nowadays to relate to the words below from Moses, recorded in Psalm 90. Remember, Israel had spent 40 years following God through a desert wilderness. Moses watched God’s people die one by one while they waited for the promised land. A whole generation would be lost before they entered those sacred promises and finally arrive “home”.
“You have placed our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh.
As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away....
So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
”
Can you hear Moses’s weariness as he writes? And He knows God deeply, personally. In Exodus, the Scripture records, “The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend,” (Exodus 33:11 NASB). So, is this how God treats His friends?
Are the friends of God made to endure weariness? What is going on here?
And if so, how does this fit with the Isaiah 40 scripture above that promises renewal, restoration, and reviving for the weary?
Lets press into this together. Weariness is defined as:
extreme tiredness; fatigue.
reluctance to see or experience any more of something.
That second definition stands out in our current season.
What is it that you are not just tired of, but feel “reluctance to see or experience any more” of it?
In which area of life currently, is your heart saying “No more. I’m done. I can’t take it.”
What are you facing that triggers you to exhaustion, to just want to throw your hands up in the air and walk out?
That is weariness.
The first step in dealing with weariness is to recognize it. Good job. Pat yourself on the back. You did it.
Did you know that in Hebrew the word wait (quaval), as Isaiah 40:30 says, “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength…they shall run and not be weary,” that word “wait” (quaval) can be translated “bear”, as in bear a burden? It can also mean to “gather”, as in take account, find all the things, and add them up—bear them—and bring them to a certain place, or bind them together like a rope.
As you recognize these areas of weariness, you’re actually taking account, adding up, and consciously lifting these burdens together. Therapists call this self-awareness. And sometimes it hurts to add it up. Like the Psalmist, we pray, “Search me, O God, know my heart, try me, know my anxious thoughts, see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in your everlasting way,” (Psalm 139:23-24). Be encouraged, though it may feel heavy, this first step does lead somewhere. In God’s hands, these feelings are the beginning of healing.
The second step to dealing with weariness is to throw away what isn’t working. This may be a number of things, depending on how much you’re carrying. But the quickest way to access this is, as you total the burden, asking yourself:
What isn’t working?
What’s an added burden?
What are major patterns I notice?
What can be thrown away?
In the Old Testament, God uses an image that was familiar to the agrarian culture of the day. In sorting wheat, they would gather the dry stalks in bunches, bring them into a shed and, with a tool, toss the sheaves in the air. The heavy, valuable wheat would fall to the ground, but the “chaff,” the unusable, unbakeable, worthless stuff would fly away in the wind.
After a bit of sorting, the wheat would sit in fresh, beautiful, golden piles, and the chaff would be gone. In this way, they would find out what was valuable in their burden they carried in, and what was to be tossed away as trash.
This powerful image is a metaphor on many levels, but we can apply it to weariness. What in this weight of weariness is a valuable grain or wheat? And what is a waste? What is added work? Added exhaustion? What doesn’t belong in the life of your soul? You may not be able to change the World circumstances, and it can be slow to change our individual circumstances, but some good old fashion honestly and humility will greatly ease our current build-up of burdens.
It may be as simple as distractions, worry, or habits of fear. Or it may be other addictions or patterns of control. This may be bitterness or regret. This may be judgment or isolation. It may be stubborn independence or just a fear of being seen/known.
What is it that is hindering you?
Whatever it is, as you take account, consider these areas of waste with the Lord. How can He help you with this? Perhaps He’ll put His finger on an area you may not immediately recognize. What is God speaking to You as you take account? It would be very wearisome to miss His voice and power as You process, wouldn’t it?
Lastly, speak to God out of the weariness. Turn your heart and your mind toward what You know of Him, toward Him as a personal presence in your life. When we cut off what isn’t working, it becomes clear what is working. Especially when we’re talking to our Creator, who made us, and made our days.
What are the areas that are bringing life right now?
What is worth celebrating? What are the small things? What are the big ones?
What has been causing your soul to turn to God, to connect with Him in this season?
Now, nourish yourself on those. Now. Just begin to worship God for those places of life. Those gifts from Him.
Ask yourself, how can I build this nourishment more deeply into my habits, my routine?
How can I press more deeply into these life-giving things?
Share this with God in a prayer. Adjust your calendar. Lean into what God is doing.
This isn’t to gloss over what isn’t working, nor is it to ignore what needs to be done. Lament has its place, a needed place in our worship. This is when we identify the lingering chaff with God and its affects on our soul in the midst of life-circumstances that often seem so opposite to the abundant life we know He promises. This act of bringing our worst pains before God’s presence is a vulnerable and sacred act.
And so, perhaps lament is the place where you sense an invitation from Him? And, if that is the case, linger there with Him for a bit. But, if weariness is truly deep in your bones, then you’ll need to take the next step and, alongside your laments, feed yourself on God’s Life once more.
This isn’t an instant fix. Israel needed God’s manna bread everyday in the wilderness, a daily necessity that turned their eyes to God in the midst of unchanging circumstances. Even Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
Take the time to commit to restore your soul with the Lord. It’s so important to God that He sent Jesus to die for your soul. You can trust you are obeying Him when you’re caring well for this heart He’s given you. This heart that He so dearly loves.
Remember, Jesus came into the weary world.
When He said “Come to me all who are weary,” He added, “Take My yoke” and “Learn from Me.” Because of Jesus, you aren’t alone in weariness. You will have a burden, but it’s not yours, it’s His. And your burdens are shouldered by Him. This close relationship becomes a way of learning, growing, and knowing God deeper.
Weariness is a fruit, not just of living, but of living apart from God in a world that is systemically structured to live independent of Him. Moses was right. Psalm 90 speaks truth, and, if you read the rest of Moses’s Psalm, you’ll see as Moses lived through plagues and trials, He continually takes shelter in God Almighty, asking God to cut off what isn’t working and dive into the Life that He alone provides.
And this same relational invitation is clear in Isaiah 40 (our beginning Scripture). God was speaking to a deeply weary people, in a weary world, and invites them in their waiting to shift their hope. “For hope deferred makes the heart grow sick,” (Proverbs 13:12). This is a call to align their hearts again with the flow of Life that God provides.
Take a few minutes to reconsider the Scripture below from Isaiah 40 in context.
See how God wants to speak to your weary soul.
And pay attention to His invitation to you into whatever is next…
“Why would you ever complain, O Jacob, or, whine, Israel, saying,
“GOD has lost track of me. He doesn’t care what happens to me”?
Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?
GOD doesn’t come and go. God lasts. He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.
And he knows everything, inside and out. He energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts.
For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon GOD get fresh strength.
They spread their wings and soar like eagles,
They run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind.”
Lyrics
“It’s quiet
In this house upon a hill
You won’t mind it
Some things you can’t know ‘til you’re still
In the silence
Where your spinning thoughts slow down
In the stillness
Things have a way of working out
Allow me to introduce myself again
I’m the one that knew you before time began
I’ve been waiting for you to let me be your friend
Everything you ever need is everything I am
I am
Take your chances
There’s nothing here to lose
Ask your questions
I promise you the truth
As you’re ready
I wanna hear your heart
Is it heavy?
Where wounds have left a mark
Allow me to introduce myself again
I was with you every place you’ve ever been
I’m the one that held you when you couldn’t stand
If you’re wondering who can heal your brokenness
I can
I can
I’ll meet you
In the house upon the hill
How I want to
Show you I am real
Allow me to introduce myself again
I’m the love you used to think could not exist
I’m as sure as where you’re standing and as free as the wind
You don’t have to reach for me, ‘cause this is where I am
I am
I am”
Christmas In Our Deepest Wants
Sufjan, a believer, subtly introduces the truth of the gospel when he notes how Christmas can come, can arrive in the most ordinary of circumstances. It still surprises us how Christmas can come to us—the Christ-mas that is Jesus Himself—still arrives in the midst of loneliness, pain, fear, poverty, even, yes, in a manger in a forgotten town to a seemingly insignificant couple.
Sufjan's song, though echoing the sadness and loss of this season, actually teases out the true beauty of Jesus's coming to us and for us. He is the gift to a lost and broken world like ours.
He is the gift that comes, not into our ideals of Christmas, but into our reality this year, this very…
Christmas is often regarded as a season of childhood, whimsy, and belief. Even during the pandemic, children keep believing in Santa Claus, gifts are still given, holiday movies still treasured, and the nostalgic feelings of the "Christmas spirit" are still expected.
How is it that Christmas can arrive in the midst of uncertain circumstances like these?
While re-listening to a favorite Christmas song of mine, Christmas in the Room,written in 2008, I thought the lyrics errily echoed our 2020 pandemic-laden holiday:
Sufjan Stevens - Christmas In the Room:
No travel bags, no shopping malls
No candy canes, no Santa Claus
For as the day of rest draws near
It's just the two of us this yearNo silver bells or mistletoe
We'll kiss and watch our TV showNo traffic jams, no ice and storm
Far in the house the fire is warm
No Christmas tree, no great parade
It's just an ordinary dayNo parties planned, no place to go
It's just the two of us alone
And in the house we see a light
That comes what we feel insideI'll come to you, I'll sing to you
Like it's Christmas in the room
I'll dance with you, I'll laugh with you
Till it's Christmas in the room
Till it's Christmas in the roomOh, I can't see the day when we'll die
But I don't care to think of silence
For now I hear you laughing
The greatest joy is like the sunriseNo gifts to give, they're all right here
Inside our hearts, the glorious cheer
And in the house we seek a light
That comes from what we know inside
These song lyrics can sound a bit depressing, but in the tension of sadness and joy hides a vision of the true meaning of Christmas, the gift we have in Jesus.
Sufjan, a believer, subtly introduces the truth of the gospel when he notes how Christmas can come, can arrive in the most ordinary of circumstances. It still surprises us how Christmas can come to us—the Christ-mas that is Jesus Himself—still arrives in the midst of loneliness, pain, fear, poverty, even, yes, in a manger in a forgotten town to a seemingly insignificant couple.
Sufjan's song, though echoing the sadness and loss of this season, actually teases out the true beauty of Jesus's coming to us and for us. He is the gift to a lost and broken world like ours.
He is the gift that comes, not into our ideals of Christmas, but into our reality this year, this very moment.
This is such a different picture of Christmas. Yet, it is the truth of what we celebrate as Christians at Christmas.
The boxes, decorations, and trapings are really just ways to deck the halls--to celebrate the internal meeting of our souls with the arrival of the Lord Jesus. But the most important part—what is central—the only necessary part, is the very real Presence of Jesus the King with us this year.
And, as the chorus repeats over and over again, in the context of our lack, Jesus arrives and sings, "I'll come to you, I'll since to you/Like it's Christmas in the room/I'll dance with you, I'll laugh with you/Till it's Christmas in the Room/Like it's Christmas in the Room."
Do we really know the arrival-of-Jesus this way in our own lives?
In the Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens notes,
“ We choose this [Christmas] time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”
We may have enjoyed many holidays where “Abundance rejoices”, and may still in the future. Yet this year, the regulations surrounding this Christmas season can highlight the length and depth of adjustments and changes that we all have faced during the pandemic this year. This may arrive as a major loss from the pandemic, or a series of minor losses, or just an underlying weariness.
The lack of holiday festivities at the end of the year can function like a giant mirror reflecting the unresolved potentialities of an unusual and strange year. But for many, whether because of the pandemic or other circumstances outside our control, may in reality this year, be facing a Christmas where Want is keenly felt.
And I think this is the point of Sufjan's song.
Likely there are more people experiencing the Lack or Want this Christmas than there are folks experiencing the Abundance.
And Sufjan’s song reminds us that Jesus isn't just found in our Abundance, but He actually arrives in our Wanting places. And Sufjan—and Jesus therein—comes to you and sings to you like it's Christmas in the room.
What would it be like to invite Jesus into your areas of Lack or Want this Christmas?
What would it be like if He came into that "room" where that Lack is? Where the Want is felt most?
What if He could sing with you? Dance with you? What if you and Him could be so, so honestthat you two could actually laugh together?
It may not all be fixed. The holiday trappings might be missing. The pain might still be present. But how different to have the King of the universe there, spending this holiday with you.
Where is singing missing? Let Him sing to you.
Where is dancing lacking? Let Him dance with you.
Where is laughter quieted? Let Him laugh with you.
And if there are tears, let Him tend to you there too. For this is His holiday, and He wants to spend it with you if you'll just invite Him in.
Consider this picture Jesus offers to the early church in the midst of great trials:
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
Though the modern church often refers to this as a call to salvation, the early church heard this as a invitation for those already-in-relationship to Jesus, to open the door of their homes and their hearts to live-with, to dwell-with, to stay-with Jesus Christ in the very ordinary, and sometimes trying moments, of their everyday lives.
What difference would it make if Jesus actually spent this Christmas with you? For in Him, there is no Lack. There is no Want. He Himself is "Life and Life Abundant."
Might you take a moment to speak with Him about this now?
“Because thou hast made the Lord, which is thy refuge, even the Most High thy habitation.
There shall be no evil before thee, neither shall any plague come by thy dwelling.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.”
Social Distance Christmas
This certianly is a strange December!
There are usually so many fun, celebratory traditions surrounding Christmas that we treasure (and many are staying creative in how to celebrate).
But this year, our regulations can create a felt-loss that keeps us from celebrating the way we would like to, that way that usually leads to thankfulness and a recongition of God's special presence during Christmas. It’s healthy for us to recognize those areas of loss as well as engage with our God who births his own Life into our seasons. Just like the carol, Sweet Little Jesus Boy, we can often miss the covert ways that God invades our everyday struggles. When we miss noticing God’s…
“The scholars entered the house and saw the child in the arms of Mary, his mother. Overcome, they kneeled and worshiped him. Then they opened their luggage and presented gifts: gold, frankincense, myrrh.
After the scholars were gone, God’s angel showed up again in Joseph’s dream and commanded, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him.
Joseph obeyed. He got up, took the child and his mother under cover of darkness. They were out of town and well on their way by daylight. They lived in Egypt until Herod’s death. This Egyptian exile fulfilled what Hosea had preached: “I called my son out of Egypt.””
This certianly is a strange December!
There are usually so many fun, celebratory traditions surrounding Christmas that we treasure (and many are staying creative in how to celebrate).
But this year, our regulations can create a felt-loss that keeps us from celebrating the way we would like to, that way that usually leads to thankfulness and a recongition of God's special presence during Christmas.
It’s healthy for us to recognize those areas of loss as well as engage with our God who births his own Life into our seasons.
Just like the carol, Sweet Little Jesus Boy, we can often miss the covert ways that God invades our everyday struggles. When we miss noticing God’s involvement in our struggles, then we can miss opportunities to connect with the One who can use those very situations to shape, change and heal us.
“Sweet little Jesus boy
They made you be born in a manger
Sweet boy little holy child
We didn’t know who you were
Didn’t know you’d come to save us Lord
To take our sins away
Our eyes were blind, we could not see
We didn’t know who you were.”
Like the above lyrics, we rarely see Jesus when He arrives in the midst of struggle, and often it’s only when we look back that we realize, “We didn’t know who You were.”
Take a moment and consider:
What areas are you noticing this felt-loss?
What is unusual about this season for you?
What are you missing from years past?
What would it look like to begin to notice Jesus in the midst of your unusual circumstances?
DID YOU KNOW THAT JESUS
WAS BORN INTO A TIME OF TENSION TOO?
Jesus’s own birth was amidst a great slaughter of children, as King Herod attempted to murder the coming King of the Jews. Talk about political strife and division! Joseph and Mary listened to the Lord and escaped Herod's evil (though many families didn't escape this loss).
Joseph recognized God's voice in his dream, and they fled to Egypt.
But this narrow escape led to Jesus and his family being displaced and distanced from their people, their home, their places of worship.
Forced to flee, they lived among the Egyptians, in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar and unusual context. Jesus's first few years were among foreign people, apart from family, and apart from familiarity.
Uncertainty marked the childhood years of Jesus's life. Not only was he born into poverty, recognized only by insignificant shepherds, but his family was forced to live for years in uncomfortability and uncertainty, not knowing how far Herod's reach could go.
All Joseph and Mary had to rely for years was the angel's greeting and two dreams.
The only comforts and certainties they had were the words God had spoken to them years earlier.
Can you relate to being displaced, distanced from family, friends, community, places of worship, all that was safe and familiar?
What has God done in the past that you need to remember?
Are there important parts of your story with God that would be helpful to recall and rely on in this season?
Joseph and Mary didn't understand the whole picture. Joseph would pass away before his son began his ministry. Mary wouldn't even grasp the whole, powerful story of her virgin conception for over 30 years.
Yet even in the midst of great trial, fear, possible slander, and a story unfinished, somehow, "Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart," (Luke 2:19). You can hear the deep capacity she had to listen to God, even in the midst of great uncertainty.
““Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
You can hear the deep capacity she had to listen to God, even in the midst of great uncertainty.”
We're facing times where we're distanced from one another, living under social or political unrest (isn't nice our "King" isn't out to kill us!), and separate from our familiar places of worship and tradition.
Things will look different, but this doesn't change God's word (the Scriptures) and it doesn't change who He is for you and your life.
WE INVITE YOU:
Take a monent and pay attention to a few of these uncertainties you’re facing, and compare them to the ones that Jesus Himself faced as the Son of God.
Since Jesus went through something similar, what does that mean for you?
And, like Mary and Joseph, in your prayerful conversation with God, begin a dialogue about what seems uncertain and fearful and place those things into His hands.
If it’s helpful, hold your fist out before God, symbolizing the uncertainties you’re carrying, then when your ready, open your fist—maybe just one finger at a time—letting these things rest in God’s hands too.
Ask Him what He wants to speak into these uncertainties…
What would it mean to invite Him into your situation?
Use the honest moment to rest-into to God’s presence, His faithfulness, His closeness, His care for you.
LISTEN TO THE SONG BELOW
AND CONSIDER WHERE JESUS
MIGHT ALREADY BE PRESENT
WITH YOU DURING
THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON:
Adjusting Our Urgency
While sitting at my desk this morning, before jumping into the fray of the day, I took a moment to turn my heart to the Lord. Honestly, I knew I needed to. I was already behind. Woke up later than I’d wanted. Was already playing catch-up with my work. Faced a slew of tasks. One had already fallen through the cracks. My mind whistled like a steam engine, “Let’s go!”
I had tried, while in the bustle of getting ready in the morning, to turn my heart to the Lord. To multitask my relationship with God. Which, at times, can be a small victory. But, this morning in particular, it wasn’t an actual connection. It wasn’t long enough to…
“As they walked, Dallas Willard asked Dr. Bill Gaultiere what he believed the most important virtue of Jesus was. Naturally, Dr. Bill was a bit nervous as he pondered his response, because after all, he was being quizzed by a giant of the faith. As he considered some of the major virtues like love, kindness, and wisdom, he was about to formulate his answer when he turned around and asked Dallas the very same question. “Well, Dallas, what would you say?” Without blinking an eye, Willard responded confidently, “Jesus was relaxed!” ”
While sitting at my desk this morning, before jumping into the fray of the day, I took a moment to turn my heart to the Lord. Honestly, I knew I needed to.
I was already behind. Woke up later than I’d wanted. Was already playing catch-up with my work. Faced a slew of tasks. One had already fallen through the cracks. My mind whistled like a steam engine, “Let’s go!”
I had tried, while in the bustle of getting ready in the morning, to turn my heart to the Lord. To multitask my relationship with God. Which, at times, can be a small victory.
But, this morning in particular, it wasn’t an actual connection. It wasn’t long enough to see His face. To hear a bit of His heart and purpose. To remember who I am in Him.
So, now, sitting before the computer, I wanted to want to take that moment with Him. But I didn’t really, honestly, authentically want it. I just knew I needed it.
So, I sat for a moment.
A thousand thoughts ran through my mind.
Tasks seemed to shout out loud at me.
The computer screen beckoned with a million possible things I could accomplish.
And I found myself irritated.
Irritated? At what? Or at who?
Well, to be honest, God.
I could so easily just “get stuff done.” I knew I could. I have all the capacities. The where-with-all. The insight. The calling. The demand. The skills. The tools. I had all the reasons to go forward. God had provided the path, all I had to do was run.
But that irritation. It bothered me. Am I really irritated at the beginning of my day? Am I that frustrated to stop for one second and turn my heart to the Lord? What is going on?
There must be something off in my heart. I knew it. Just that little twinge of irritation said it all.
I began to consider what was going on in my relationship with the Lord.
I knew I needed to be at rest in order to work with God. I mean, I’ve studied this. This is what our ministry is about. It’s literally called Soul. Care. (with a hyphen).
So what was the difference between me being rest while working verses driving ahead of God in a subtle independence.
Seriously, what was I hoping to accomplish? What was I really driving my energy toward?
Was I trying to beat God to the punch? To get ahead of what He is doing? Was it to get there first, “get ahead”?
Did I want to show God I wouldn’t mess this day up by being “behind”? Or that I valued His work so much I would tackle it for Him?
Or was is it that I thought I could, in my own speed, do this better than Him? Maybe I thought my way would be more effect? Just think about how many tasks I could check off my list before the Big Boss showed up! Then He would think: “Wow, my my, what a good __________ !” (You fill in the blank).
This whole though project began to expose a lot of strange motives in my heart. Perhaps you’ve gone through similar motions. This incongruency between my calling and love for what God does, yes, even for who He is through me, and the struggle of actually working this co-laboring out in real time.
Surprisingly, I may align with God’s purposes, even hold-to theological treasures, but not relate-with, stay-with, and work-with God’s Spirit—the One who started, sustains, and finishes all these impossible tasks before me.
Really, the only way I could “accomplish” this day before me, is if I minimized the scope and vision of the tasks to things that a little human like me could accomplish.
And if I did that, then wouldn’t I be sacrificing the actual scope and vision of God Himself in this work and in our relationship?
Worse, wouldn’t I actually be shutting-down that vital, life-giving relationship that brings joy and power to my work?
And instead, I would be creating a tiny cage of self-made goals that don’t even accomplish the “goals of God” that I set out to “do” in the first place.
So even my original motive to “get stuff done for God,” would fail, because, unbeknownst to myself, I would really just be “getting stuff done for the feeling of getting stuff done for God…” which, in reality, is just getting stuff done for my own self-soothing. It’s not even what God wants. Dang.
“Even my original motive to “get stuff done for God,” would fail.
Because, unbeknownst to myself, I would really just be “getting stuff done for the feeling of getting stuff done for God.”
Which, in reality, is just getting stuff done for my own self-soothing.
It’s not even what God wants. ”
Now I’m beginning to be really thankful I stopped.
Actually, I’m beginning to see that I didn’t pause on my own volition. I’m wondering if it is God's Spirit in me, His slight nudges, that cause me to turn to Him.
Perhaps He wanted me to look at Him first?
Perhaps He wanted to “do” this day with me? To be with me first so we could then be together while we worked?
Well, then, maybe it wasn’t such a small misalignment after all?
Just consider:
What kind of work could I accomplish on my own that wouldn’t be infinitely better (literally) if I worked and paced myself with God’s love and presence with me?
How irrelevant do I think He is to my immediate tasks and urgent needs?
Does my urgency match His posture toward the day?
And which of us should adjust our priorities?
If I plow ahead of God, what am I missing out in?
And more importantly, what is He waiting for?
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.
Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
Take a moment
reflect on the above scripture
and
listen to this song.
Begin a conversation with God.
what’s going on in your heart?
what’s getting in the way?
what you want in your relationship with Him?
To Go deeper, take a look at
the upcoming post on “Freedom,”
Titled: Put Down Urgency Not Agency.
It will clarify how our distortion of this beautiful value
of freedom, so central to God’s kingdom,
has stolen from our delight in joyfully following after God.
Processing Fear
As part of Soul-Care, Keri and I often develop individualized and general prompts for prayer to encourage our clients/directees to bring their hearts, their inner-most-thoughts, the personal process to the Lord in prayerful conversation. The FREE resource below can help conversation with God, where fears can be spoken and transformation can occur. For some, this is liberating, for they finally feel the permission to share more deeply with God, while for others, this is intimidating as they tread-softly…
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
In the midst of riots, looting, racism, economic unrest, and world-wide pandemic, one word keeps rising to the top: FEAR.
How do we handle the uncertain times we’re facing?
Who do we run to for help and certainity?
What do we do amid trial, transition, and inevitable change?
How do we navigate these looming issues?
We all have different reactions to fear. Some run away from it. Some charge forward. Others reinterpret it. And others deny it. Whatever way fear has manifested in your life this season, taking the time to process fear in prayerful conversation with God can forever change how you navigate this powerful human experience.
As part of Soul-Care, Keri and I often develop individualized and general prompts for prayer to encourage our clients/directees to bring their hearts, their inner-most-thoughts, their personal process to the Lord in prayerful conversation. Conversation with God is where fears can be spoken and transformation can occur.
For some, this is liberating, for they finally feel the permission to share more deeply with God, while for others, this is intimidating as they tread-softly on holy ground. Either way, Psalm 139 affirms that God already knows our innermost thoughts. He has examined us thoroughly. And, no matter how hard we may try, there is no part of our being hidden from Him:
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.”
When we enter into a restored relationship with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God actually invites us into His throne room as beloved children (Heb. 4:11-16 & 10:19-22). We can say and speak as we need and receive relational interaction from God as well.
In order to develop this deepening relationship with God, we’re offering the below prayer prompt on PROCESSING FEAR:
Processing Fear
Often the very circumstances of our lives, the literal thoughts and emotions, are the best context in which God can work, move, heal, lead, speak and be present with you. As you explore these circumstances and peel the layers of your heart, your awareness of God’s work becomes clearer.
We recommend at least 5 minutes to sit/think/pray through each set of questions below, but follow His prompting, as you may feel led to linger. Any range of reactions present the perfect beginning for conversation with God. And for some, a good starting point may even be to talk to Him about what is arising in your thoughts/emotions as you simply sit with Him in the questions, let alone begin to dialogue with Him.
So, we invite you to acknowledge/name any expectations of what this time “should” be like, or how you would like it to be. Naming will help prevent them from having a voice of judgment over you. Then, let them go.
Now as you begin, seek to open yourself to any thoughts or reactions that arise, and then be willing to explore them with God, entering into whatever God has for you. If you’re stuck, you can talk to Him about what you’re thinking or feeling as you sit with Him in the questions. Step into interactive dialogue, which includes making space to listen. The goal is not to “finish,” but to connect.
Scripture
“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” – Deuteronomy 31:8
“There is no fear in love, because perfect love (complete love) expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love (complete love).” – 1 John 4:18
Time Frame
Begin by praying with God and asking Him to highlight which questions below that He’s inviting you to bring before Him in conversation (this may be one question or all of them).
Begin
1. Talk Honestly with God about the topic of Fear:
“God, this is one area of fear that I am currently experiencing: ___________________. I can tell it is fear because I keep thinking: __________________ and because I feel: ___________________.”
“I want to learn what You think about my fear. What could it look like to talk with You about these things? What would it be like to share my fear with You?”
2. Choose one area of fear. And begin a conversation with God:
“God, I want to explore this fear with You. What is beneath the surface of this fear? What is going on inside my fear?” Hold your fear before the Lord in prayerful listening.
Ask God, “God, help me unpack this. Where is this fear coming from in me? Is there anything out of alignment in my relationship with You?
Is there something from the past I’ve needed to talk with You about? Is there something in my present that is clouding my vision and keeping me from clarity with You? What is going on in my heart, God, please help me to see.”
Sit with God for a few minutes and ask His Spirit to lead you.
3. Exploring fear of the unknown:
“God, when have I faced uncertainty in the past? What has that been like? Lonely? Scary? Exciting? Vulnerable?”
“Who have I turned to in those times? What was a strength to me during that season? What was a weakness during that time? What was it like to experience fear then? What was I afraid of? Where did I turn for comfort?”
3a. Choose a current issue regarding fear of the unknown.
“God, how did fear affect our relationship during that season? What was the result of wrestling with this fear? What did I learn about You and/or how did I see You in that season?”
Talk honestly with God about how the situation played out. Ask Him for His perspective on that season of your life.
“God, what do You think about the unknown? What would it look like to experience Your love in the middle of this? How can I walk closer with You in the next unknown season?”
4. Exploring fear of failure:
“God, how often do I experience anxiety around failing You? Others? Myself? How would I know if I failed myself? Others? How would I know if I failed You?”
“How do You measure failure? How do you respond to failure? How do you view my past failures? How about my current potential failures?”
“What do You think of me when I fail? What do You think of me when I’m afraid of failure?”
4a. Choose a current issue regarding fear of failure.
“How do I know if I failed (or succeeded)? What would happen if I failed?”
“How does my fear of failure effect (help, hinder, etc.) my ability to engage in this issue? How does my fear of failure affect (help, hinder, etc.) my relationship with You while engaging in this given issue?”
“What would it look like to engage this issue with You by my side? How would this effect my fear of failure? How does this effect our relationship together?”
“What would it look like to experience Your love in the middle of this? How would this effect my current circumstances?”
5. Exploring God’s love amidst fear:
“God, what does it mean that Your perfect love casts out fear? How can Your love affect my tendency to fear?”
“When have I experienced Your love in the past? How did that affect my heart? What was going through my mind? How did that effect what I felt afraid of? What was it like to experience Your love in that moment/season?”
“What about this fear keeps me from experiencing Your love? What would You have to do to convince my heart that Your love is stronger than my fear?”
“What would it look like to be reassured of Your perfect love in the middle of this?”
“How might Your love effect the things I’m afraid of now? How might it effect the results of this fearful situation? How might it affect our relationship as I walk through this?
“What would it look for me to abide in your love throughout this season?”
End Prayer:
“God, I bring my fear to You. When I am afraid, I feel _________________.
I know in Your word You promise to be ________________. And that Your love casts out all fear.
I would love for You to be _______________ to me and I want to be _______________ to You.
Would You show me more of Yourself and keep my heart close to You?
Thank You for sending Jesus to make that possible in my life.
I lean-in to You, my God. Amen”
The Shedding of Innocent Blood: Injustice Demands Justice
Abuse. Murder. Robbery. Racism. To name a few. It is ingrained in humanity to demand justice when injustice is seen, experienced, heard of, or known. What is it about injustice that stirs people to action? These thoughts stem from the recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd. Pastor Patrick PT Ngwolo, who served with Floyd in the projects, said this about George….
Abuse. Murder. Robbery. Racism. To name a few. Suffering alone. Thoughtlessness. Slander. Hate. Evil.
It is ingrained in humanity to demand justice when injustice is seen, experienced, heard of, or known.
What is it about injustice that stirs people to action?
Wrong must be righted. Humans have put judges, presidents, queens, governors….and law enforcement in place for this purpose. And when those systems reveal corruptness, we plea for the systems’ hierarchy to vindicate. Injustice must stand before the judge and account for wrongdoings.
And in some circumstances, the unjust stand before a judge and are convicted. While in other circumstances, justice is evaded, twisted, or just isn’t possible.
But whether justice is experienced or not, our heart’s cry out for wrong to be righted. Something must be done! Blood must be spilt!
Some may feel this literally. Others metaphorically. Either way, justice must be served.
Where does this come from, this sense of justice?
When I have experienced and seen injustice, my heart ached for vindication and understanding. And yet, this didn’t always happen. But the pain and injustice needs to go somewhere. It needs to be understood. It needs to be spoken for. It needs to be dealt with. It needs to be paid for. It needs to be vindicated!
Cue Jesus.
God agrees! He hates evil. God’s Word even tells US to hate what is evil. The death and resurrection of Jesus can be seen or experienced as a place to receive forgiveness and reconciliation for our OWN sins, brokenness, suffering, etc. We are made clean, as he bore our sins on the cross so that we may have eternal life.
But it is also so much more!
Jesus was an innocent, perfect man without sin, whose blood was spilt to account for all the wrongdoings done to us. Injustice was taken onto the shoulders of a man who knows the depths of injustice. Who experienced the ultimate injustice. He wasn’t just an animal sacrifice to account for the sins/wrongdoings of one person/family, He was sent as God’s perfect Son, God in flesh, to bear the weight, and declared that He bore the weight, on His shoulders for the sins AND INJUSTICES of the world.
Though this is a past-tense event, it is a present-tense reality.
And so, the injustices we may personally experience or experience in our world, have a place to go!
As we rage and ache for justice to be done, God agrees, grieves with us, and says to put these injustices on Jesus’ shoulders to bear. Jesus will bear the weight. He will spill his blood, so that the injustice you experience can be justified. The wrong done will be paid for.
This Jesus is not some weak answer to make ourselves feel better about ourselves or give us an “out” in our ideology of the world. This Jesus is the powerful King, Ruler, Judge of this World that sees and agrees that injustice comes with a price. A price that He wants to pay for.
As some of you may have guessed by now, these thoughts stem from the recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd.
Pastor Patrick PT Ngwolo, who served with Floyd in the projects, connected Floyd’s injustice to the slaughter of Abel by his brother Cain—God’s response? ‘The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground’” (Gen. 4:10). Pastor Ngwolo “is still trying to processes the news, but one theme he keeps going back to is the shedding of innocent blood” (Christianity Today).
God agrees!
There must be consequences for injustice! There is an innate sense of justice we as humans demand. This sense of justice comes from the God of the Universe, who in the beginning created humans to live in perfect harmony. Adam and Eve committed the first wrongdoing against God. They ate from the forbidden tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were allured to the idea that they could be the judge of what was good and what was evil.
As they ate, pain and brokenness and sin and wrongdoing entered the world. For only God was meant to be the Judge. This knowledge they were tempted toward was the beginning of life experienced apart from the perfect Judge. Then God set up a whole system from the beginning to right wrong-doings through spotless animal sacrifice, so that blood was shed to pay for wrong.
Blood sacrifice has always been part of the story.
Pastor Ngwolo continues, “If you fast-forward 2,000 years, there’s another innocent sufferer whose blood spoke of better things than Abel’s…Jesus’ blood says he can redeem us through these dark and perilous times…I have hope because just like Abel is a Christ figure, I see my brother [Floyd] as a Christ figure as well, pointing us to a greater reality. God does hear us. He hears his cry even from the ground now. Vengeance will either happen on the cross or will happen on Judgment Day.”
Do you know this Jesus, the one that can account for the injustice that you know, that you have experienced, or that you see right now that demands justice?
He will pay for this injustice. He will receive the rage, anger, pain, and wailing cries that the innocent must be vindicated.
Pause and consider.
What would it look like, for you, to have Him bear the weight of injustice?
And if you have never known Jesus like this, or heard about this Savior, the invitation is open to you and you will experience vindication.