Growing in Trust

I got to spend the weekend and then a three-hour drive with my dad this week. I realize I’m incredibly privileged to have a father like him. He was the epitome of character, integrity, graciousness, and willingness to follow God even at great risk to relationships he treasured.  I watched him be lied about by close friends and not defend himself, to be called names because he wouldn’t conform to what others wanted. This was not only my father according to the flesh, but also he is my father in the faith, setting the example of a man who would carve out time in his life to cultivate a closer relationship to Jesus, to listen to him, and to do whatever he put on his heart.

Spending time with my dad and talking over things we’re both thinking about and struggling with, is better than any book I can read, any conference I could attend, or any counselor I’d know. It is a rich, rich time that helps center my heart, shift my priorities, and adds nuggets of wisdom to my own journey.

After I dropped my dad off, I spent a few hours with another friend, Dave Coleman, who was my co-author on So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. I enjoy time with Dave in the same way and with the same results. Between those two men in a single day, I gleaned over 170 years of experience of learning to know who Jesus is and and how to follow him. What an outstanding resource they both are! And, I know many more like them all over the world—men and women  in their 70s, 80s and 90s—who have been seasoned in walk with Jesus and picked up some amazing lessons along the way. Yet, they spend countless hours at home, alone. Few people come to visit, to ask questions, to not only offer them company but draw from their fountain of wisdom as well. And, I don’t just mean about spiritual things. These people know how to raise families, run businesses, cultivate healthy relationships, and put the welfare of others above their own.

In fact, after I left Dave’s, I met with some others who know him. They asked me how he was doing. It seemed so absurd to me. I live 250 miles away and they ask me how someone is doing who lives down the street from them. “He lives right here, you know?” I asked comically, though, I was also making a point. I know Dave would love to spend time with any of them, and they would all go away, enlightened and encouraged.

A few years ago I met with Jack Gray, a ninety-year-old in New Zealand, whose life and wisdom in Christ I’ve come to appreciate deeply. The man who drove me to that appointment joined in our conversation and after I came back home, he got a few more friends and went over to visit again and continues to, because of how helpful it has been to them. Jack told me those conversations have revitalized him and he looks forward to every one.

To its detriment, our culture has diminished the wisdom of age. Yes, I know many people grow old, bitter and more reclusive, but many others don’t. It’s as if we put their vast resources of wisdom and compassion on a shelf and ignore it, all the while trying to find the right book or speaker that might give us the wisdom we think we need. Don’t fall for it. There are brothers and sisters right around you that have what you seek and would love to help you discover a great life in Jesus. And you won’t just get platitudes or principles, but a living example and the honesty of their struggle.

If you know one of them, just invite them to lunch, or ask if you might visit. Get to know them and see what treasures spill out of their heart. If you don’t know what to talk about, here are some suggestions:

What are some of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned on your journey?

What are you thinking about these days?

What’s the best advice you ever received about marriage (or business, or relationships, or discipleship)?

Tell me some ways God has made himself known to you?

What has been the hardest thing for you to entrust to God?

I promise you, you’ll make their day.  And yours too!

Often I hear people say that God doesn’t speak to them. I never believe it. He’s been whispering his reality into your heart since you first took breath, it’s just that we’ve gotten used to listening to other voices until his fades into the background of our own fears and anxieties. The ubiquitous noise of our culture drown him out and the lies of religion have us looking for an accuser’s voice that we’re not enough, rather than the tenderness of the Abba’s voice.

Learning to quiet the noise and hear his heartbeat again is one of the great joys of this journey. Discovering that some of those thoughts running around your head are not you talking to you, but are addressed to you by someone who loves you more than anyone on this planet ever has or ever will. It helps to know what to look for. If you’re looking for accusation, condemnation, and disappointment, you’ll miss him. His are words of endearment, comfort, wisdom, and life! Yes, they may be challenging, but in a way that invites us into a greater reality, not that makes us despise ourselves.

Many have heard him who just haven’t recognized him yet. It may help to know some of the kinds of things God says. Over the years people have told me stories of recognition and freedom that came when they heard him speak to them. I love the things he says to people that are illuminating and liberating at the same time.

Here are a few of the examples I’ve heard:

• To someone lost in a temptation or addiction, “What are you doing? This isn’t who you are.
• To someone complaining about difficult circumstances, “You talk to me as if I am your adversary.”
• To someone drowning in feelings of abandonment, “I wish you knew how much I love you.”
• To someone with overextended commitments, “I didn’t ask you to do any of this.”
• To someone being battered by religious leaders, “They are not your shepherds. I’m your shepherd and I will never treat you like that.”
• Dealing with criticism and judgments of others: “What they think about you doesn’t define you.”
• To someone finding new freedom not to react out of their flesh, “I really enjoy you this way.”

This little two-minute video illustrates this all so perfectly as comedian Michael, Jr. talks about his baby hearing his voice for the first time. Watch the recognition and the immediate change in his newborn daughter. (Sorry about the ad!) And listen to what he is quite naturally saying to her in her disoriented fears.

If you knew Father was whispering similar things in your heart today, wouldn’t it change everything? “Daddy is right here. Everything will be OK. I love you.”

That’s what he is saying to you, whether you can hear it or not. Be still. Find a quiet place. Listen. Lean into the reality of his love, not the lies of our culture or your religious heritage.

I realize a lot of well-meaning people think that fear will endear people to God. They pull out any passage that can be interpreted to terrify people, thinking that fear will lead people to holiness. Well-meaning perhaps, but horribly ignorant of the Gospel itself.  Jesus taught us that only love leads to holiness. Fear will not draw people to God. It will either draw them away from him, or it will make them so focused on their failures that they can’t find mercy and grace when they need it most.

The entire Bible story was written to draw people out of their fear and feelings of condemnation when they think of God, to see him as a loving Father drawing them into his love and his reality.  Look at Jesus. When he was among us he was not terrifying people with his power, but reaching out to them “as harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.” I am so sick of religious teachers twisting that story by pulling out those moments where God has to intrude into human history to preserve a line of salvation and concluding that they define his nature. His actions are still one intent on rescue, not destruction.

I emailed you last year shortly after reading your book He Loves Me the first time. I love your book! Since I read it,  I am trying to change my perspective and “live loved”. I really want to live my life for God and do His will without fear.  But I have a problem with different fears since I am a child. Right now, I am seeing a therapist for it (he`s not a Christian) and we are working on it. I think God is working on me, too. I realize His love especially through brothers and sisters that I meet and circumstances. However, there are still great fears in me  because of passages in the Bible that I do not understand. They really disturb me and make it harder for me to believe in a loving Father.

The passages I am talking about are where God hardens the heart of Pharaoh, Romans 9, the story of Annanias and Sapphira, God trying to kill Moses, God saying he loves Jacob but hates Esau, the fate of Judas, the passage in Matthew 7 where Jesus warns that not everyone calling on His name will be saved, and some passages in Hebrews. Reading all these passages create a fear in me that God may choose to harden my heart as well, or suddenly punish me one day or make me “an object of his wrath — prepared for destruction” (Romans 9) – for I know that there are still dark sides in my heart, that I am far from perfect, and not obedient all the time. I really fear that I might get lost or loose my faith one day, that God chooses to do so because of my sins & doubts.

In this regard, I thought about Judas a lot. Did he ever had a chance? Was he meant to get lost since the day of his birth?  And finally, how do I know I am a “real believer” and do not have to fear Jesus warnings in Matthew 7?

I am often telling myself Bible verses that speak of Gods love and that I do not have a Spirit of fear. I also think of your words that fear never does make anyone holy. I talked to some Christian friends about my fears and they said that we will never understand God completely and that I just have to trust & obey him. They said that “nobody can take me out of His hand”, but I wonder, is that true? What about my doubts and sins – can they not take me out of His hand?  I am really trying to learn to trust God but whenever I think of those passages I feel discouraged and fearful. These fears make me doubt God and in the end, I do not only feel awful because of my fears, but also because of my doubts, which in turn increase the fear again that God leaves me/hardens me because of my doubts, and thus, this becomes an endless circle.

I am telling God about my struggles often and ask Him often to give me a trustful, fear-free heart, but obviously, it does not happen yet. I am telling myself that He is still working on me but sometimes I fail to believe that.  How can I loose my doubts and fears and trust God whole-heartedly, knowing that He will not leave me?

It’s easy to understand why these passages cause such concern. It’s just like the alcoholic father who comes home and beats his wife and kids.  He may only do it every few months, but if he does it at all, his family will live on pins and needles always afraid when he comes home that this might be the angry dad. I hate that religion has made our God look like that and creates an environment where people have to either totally trust God or be terrified of him. It isn’t honest and it causes paralyzing fear in people God simply wants to invite to know him better as he teaches them how to live in his love and grow in their trust.

Here’s what I wrote back to this young woman.  Perhaps it will be helpful to others of you as well:

There are many more passages (even in the Old Testament) about God’s “lovingkindness is better than life”, where his faithfulness is great, and where his love endures forever.  You’re pulling out the most extreme circumstances and applying them in ways they were not meant to. Of course it would take a while to drill down into all of those stories and explain what’s really going on there as a loving Father is trying to keep creation from falling into complete darkness and preserving his work of redemption in the world. His actions in these moments are like a surgeon removing a cancer that will spread, than an abusive dad blowing up in his anger. I recorded a video series (8 hours +) to help people work through all of this.  I know that is a lot of time, but it is at least free.  It’s called The Jesus Lens and seeks to help people interpret passages like these through the eyes of Jesus.  It will help, but I realize it will take some time.

Part of the problem may be that you feel as if you must trust God whole-heartedly and never have doubt.  Wouldn’t that be awesome?  But it is also unrealistic.  God wins us into ever-deepening layers of trust as we grow more secure in his love. Jesus is the “author and finisher” of our faith, because we can’t do it on our own.  We all have doubts and God does not reject us for it.  Instead he wants to be invited into our doubts, where we can pray, “What is it about your love God, that if I understood it, I would not have this doubt.”  This is a journey out of fear and doubt into love and trust.  It is a lifetime journey. You can relax in this process as he teaches you.  Look at Jesus’ patience with the disciples when they kept misunderstanding what he was about.  He gently kept inviting them in closer so they could relax in his love.

Don’t try to completely trust him.  Just trust him today as much as you can. Be honest about your doubts and know that he sees you as his beloved daughter and he wants to teach you how to respond to his love and grow in trust.

I don’t believe Judas was condemned at birth.  God might have known the choices he mad,e but he was not forced int to hem. Scripture makes clear that God always responds to the slightest attempts to look to him and follow him.  Focus on those passages that demonstrate his magnificent love.  Those that provoke fear, ignore for a time. Ask God to show you what’s really going on there in his time. But know that his perfect love casts out fear.  Fear will not serve you today in any way God wants access to your life.  Fear drives us from him not toward him.  He doesn’t need it.  You don’t need it.  Your heart is his or you wouldn’t write the things you write here.

How will you know?  Look to him. Watch how Jesus treats the people around him, especially those who are struggling to believe him. Listen to your own heart as his Spirit lets you know how the Father feels about you. You don’t have to trust what others say, or sort through competing conclusions from Scripture. Simply knowing him will make it absolutely clear to you.

I pray you will have the freedom to relax in his love. Walk in it where you see it today. Let the passages you do understand shape your heart, and put those you don’t understand on a shelf until God makes them clear to you.  Do so again tomorrow and you’ll find your freedom growing.

I love when healing comes suddenly, quickly and completely. God does that, but not nearly as often as many seem to think. This false expectation may be the result of too many altar calls where people come forward for prayer in hope that that alone will fix the probelm. Many go away feeling better, but when they wake up the next morning with the same brokenness they end up condemning themselves for not believing enough or going back home and “losing their healing”.

This theme kept coming up in many of the conversations I had on my last trip. I met so many people disappointed, confused, and frustrated that they can’t seem to find the freedom in God they so desperately seek. As I listened, however, It seemed so many of them were caught up in the expectation of immediacy and missing the progress God was making in their heart and mind. Any evidence of the ongoing struggle seemed to sidetrack them, assuming God was not at work. Instead of growing in hope, they give in to despair because their healing wasn’t immediate and it caused them to wonder if God was neglecting them or if they were preventing it somehow.

As I’ve watched many people come to greater freedom and emotional healthy over the years, I am more convinced than ever that for most people healing is a process. That’s because God is not just taking a problem away, he’s transforming how we think and live from the inside. Most pain comes from within us, not the circumstance we blame it on. Those circumstances may have started it, but it lives on in us because of our unworthy thoughts about God our ourselves. Healing comes by transforming our false thoughts about him and ourselves, or freeing us from the false security we get from some of our coping mechanisms.  And that takes time.

So rather than get discouraged when it isn’t completed yet, we can continue to embrace him in the transforming process that will not only bring us freedom, but a transformed way to live as well.

What I look for in this process is not immediacy, but growing freedom. So however your brokenness is exposed, either by anxiety, distress, fear, hurt, bad memories, hurtful feelings or anything else, just keep leaning into God’s reality. As you do you’ll find the pain…

• will grow less intense,
• then will last a shorter duration,
• and finally we will find longer gaps between those cycles of pain.

Converesely, you will find times of joy growing in the same way.  Moments of joy and freedom…

• will come more often,
• then they will last longer,
• and finally they will grow more real.

That’s what the renewing of the mind actually looks like. I’ve been through this process with a number of people and it is always a joy to watch.  If they are only focused on it ending, they will never see it and grow more and more discouraged. If they can see the process, which is where cheerleading friends and spouses come in, then they will be encouraged by the process until times of pain become increasingly distant and eventually impotent.

How we help is by being less obsessed with our own healing, by learning to enjoy him each day and seeing what he has for us rather than trying to get him to do what we want. Then we will be able to trust him to complete it in the best possible way and be able to cooperate with him.

This is a compelling story. I received it in an email last week as someone wanted me to know how much some of my things had touched them. But it is so much more than that. This is the honest struggle of someone who has grown up in a legalistic tradition, finding their way into what it means to live in his love. And it’s still in process even after six years. I love that. So many people want easy fixes and quick answers, but this journey really unfolds by simply following the nudges in her heart even if she didn’t understand them or they seemed scandalous, like buying a potentially heretical book from WalMart. It keeps unfolding by sorting through yet unanswered questions or not being sidetraced even by a cancer diagnosis.  

With her permission, I share it with you. I love hearing how people are finding their way into the light and into Father’s freedom.  I love her honesty, the reality of her struggle, and the freedom not to get to answers more quickly than Jesus gives them.  I hope it encourages you wherever you are on your journey.

It’s been 6 years since I first read So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore followed by He Loves Me! a year later, and The Shack a few years after that. Even before I read the first book, God had been stirring in my heart. In the year previous to reading So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, I was startled to realize that I didn’t really know what Jesus taught. I had been a Christian since I was 11, but the church I was a part of spoke so little of the life Jesus lived and held out to us. I didn’t know the kind of life He wanted me to live. I didn’t know the truth He taught. I didn’t know him, period.

That realization began an in depth study of the Gospels, and what I read startled and scared me. My first reading and study of the Gospels showed me how far away I was, how far away the church group I was a part of was from the life He portrayed. Coming from a fear-based religion, that realization only terrified me as I keenly realized that I did not measure up! Everything was so far away and so twisted: pride, power-hungry leaders, top-heavy organization, fear, and rules. I dimly saw that my life needed a radical change, regardless of what happened around me, but I had no idea where to start. The journey to change started with a prayer: “God, I don’t know what You are calling me to, but something in my life and the religion around me is radically wrong. I don’t know what this will require of me, but I want to know You at any cost.” I prayed that prayer with fear and trembling because I knew that such a prayer, prayed with sincerity and faith, will be answered. And I knew enough of God’s ways and my humanness to know that the journey could be long and convoluted. But I was exhausted with the life I had known until then.

Soon after, I stopped by the bookshelves at my local Walmart, as I did occasionally, to peruse the Christian/religious titles on display. The book So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore was there. Out of curiosity, I picked it up. Two hours later, after having skimmed 3/4 of it while standing in the aisle leaning on my shopping cart, I put the book back on the shelf and walked away. The book was shocking, but mentally had me saying, “Yes! YES! These are the questions I’ve been asking and the things I’ve been struggling with!” However, according to the teaching I’d received in church, the book was practically heresy! Did I dare? Was it even Biblical? I did the rest of my shopping, returned to the shelf, put the book in my cart, and then put it back on the shelf, and left. For the next few weeks I chewed on the startling thoughts I had gleaned. Finally, one day I returned to that Walmart and picked up the book, determined to read it through and discover for myself whether this was truth or heresy. So I continued my study of the Gospels, simultaneously reading So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. I read, and I underlined, and I highlighted, and I made notes and I compared the book with the truth before me in the Scriptures.

I remember the moment my life changed. One morning, while reading and praying over chapter 3, I read this sentence: “There’s not one thing you can do to make Him love you any more today; and there’s not one thing you can do to make him love you any less, either. He just loves you.” I sat there, absolutely stunned, as all the lightbulbs came on and flashed neon. He loves me! HE LOVES ME! He loves me like that. No wonder I was so frustrated! No wonder I lived in such fear! No wonder I was terrified at all the commands I thought I was missing! No wonder my struggle with addictions got nowhere! I was trying to earn His love when I already had it! Not a single thing I could do would change His love one iota!

That was when it all changed for me. Oh, it wasn’t instantaneous! Far from it! But it was the start of my journey into the Father’s love, an amazing journey that will never end until I reach glory. There’s been so much stumbling, and learning, and growing, and changing. Since then, the journey has been largely unexpected and startling and painful and glorious all at the same time.

I’m still a part of the “church” organization I was 6 years ago when it all began. I’ve been deeply saddened, often dissatisfied, often frustrated, but so far, I’m still here, largely because I have not felt that nudge from Father saying, “I have another place for you to be.” I often think to what you said in So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. “If he were asking you to leave today, I think you’d know that. If he hasn’t made it clear to you, then wait.” So I’ve kept waiting, meanwhile seeking to live the life He wants me to live where I am.

However, the longer I am on this journey, the more my “yuck meter” goes off lately. How do I stay in a broken organization when it takes 4 days to recover from the dose of fear and and commandments preached every Sunday? How do I stay when all around I see Christians living in fear and my heart breaks? How do I stay when what I hear on a Sunday morning is so far away from the full life the Father gives us? How do I stay when the real connections occur over Chinese eaten at a local restaurant and not in the stilted atmosphere of the Sunday service? I attend Sunday services as little as possible, attending just enough to escape reprimand for my lack of attendance, but even the little I attend is difficult, and I draw a breath of relief when I’m home again. My inner life is so disconnected from the part of the body of Christ I’ve identified with that it’s harder and harder to stay. Living with a “yuck meter” that is way off the charts is an uncomfortable place to be. I’ve been asking Father about how he wants me to live in his family. The hard part is to not look for “the” answer but to follow his pull on my heart.

One of the “convoluted” ways that God has led me over the past 6 years has been my cancer diagnosis for the last 3 1/2 years. My cancer has relapsed multiple times. I’m doing chemo for the 3rd time, radiation and a stem cell transplant already behind me. Cancer, one of the diseases that strikes fear into most people, has been an amazing journey into the Father’s affection, an amazing gift, even on the hard days. My cancer has been a unique way for me to speak of the journey Father has led me on. I was startled to learn how few of the Christians around me live with the deep assurance I have of the Father’s love for me. I was startled how many are actually afraid to die because they were scared they didn’t measure up and therefore think they aren’t worthy of heaven. I was saddened that they didn’t see death as simply a “going Home” as I do because the blood of Jesus has brought us home to Father. I was surprised how many were amazed at my honesty about the struggle of living God’s full life in the hard things of cancer and pain and the unknowns, and then I realized how little the “church” organization speaks honestly about life and the daily learning and struggle and joy of it all. Instead, we all are to present these facades that we are “good Christians” and the deep pain and struggles and questions and fears never get spoken of. It does make me laugh a little because many of the views I hold about “church” are seen as nearly heretical if I speak about them, but those same people who think it is heresy envy the relationship with Father I live in every day.

Have I stumbled? Have I sometimes lost sight of the glory of it all when it all just gets too much? Has my faith sometimes limped? Have I cried? Have I honestly “had it out” with Father during the hard times? Have I been afraid? Am I still very broken and in need of so much more change and healing? Yes, to all of those. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that I am His child and nothing can change that. What matters is that He is never done with me and what lies before can only be better yet than anything He has led me to. What matters is that when I stumble, He is carrying me and I never lose His presence, even when I’m too human or too exhausted to feel it. What matters is that this life isn’t dependent on me and how well I do it, but on Him and His life in me. What matters is that, life or death, I am secure.

All this to simply say thank you! Thank you for allowing the Father to use you and your writing as a catalyst for change in my life. Thank you for providing some of the signposts along the way. Thank you for the honest conversations in the books and blogs I’ve read and the podcasts I’ve listened to.

May Father continue to lead you, Ellen, as you awaken into the reality of the new creation as it keeps stirring in you. And I pray that as well for everyone touched by these words and seeking to follow the nudgings of the Spirit as he works in you.

___________

If you’d like, you can reach Ellen here.