Lifestream. Letters to the Bride

Chapter 20: Stand By

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Chapter 20: Stand By

Note: This is the twentieth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. We have already released the first part of this book in print. You can also access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to ensure you don’t miss any of them, you can add your name here.

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I was hoping you would give more practical advice about what we need to do if this age is coming to an end. We can’t just sit around and wait. Don’t we have to do something?
Tyson, a farmer and father in the plains of Iowa

Hi Tyson,

Let’s imagine two warhorses in a pasture. Both are equally strong, but one stands quietly, grazing on the grass at his feet. Every so often, he raises his head and looks around, ensuring all is well. Then, he continues eating. The other stomps his feet on the ground and snorts into the morning air. He’s agitated and nervous, running one way, then another.

Which will be most valuable to his master when he comes for him?

Obviously, the first one. He does not need to bluster because he knows what he is capable of doing. He stands ready for whatever his master might need and does not wear himself out with his fears and insecurities.

My Greek professor in college told me the Greek word for meekness is a word picture of a warhorse at rest. Strong and fearless in battle, he is calm and controlled outside of it. Xenophon, the Greek warrior-philosopher, used that word for warhorses, not referring to their toughness in battle but rather to their standing calmly when they’re not. Meekness is not weakness; it is incredible strength without aggression, arrogance, or anger.

No wonder the meek will inherit the earth. That’s the way Jesus was. Though he held all power in his hands, he was gentle and tender, never having to prove it. I’m sure it took more strength and character to stand before the false accusations of the Pharisees and unjust tortures of Roman guards than to level them all with a legion of angels.

When the Time Comes…

That’s the picture I want you to have, Tyson, as we talk about those alive at the end of days. They will be like warhorses at rest in the company of their Master. They will act when he directs, not lash out in fear or anxiety.

This seems particularly important when Scripture talks about the end of time.  After a series of visions that revealed a broad sweep of the future, right up to the end of the age, Daniel was overwhelmed. “When will these things be?” Daniel asked the angel who had appeared to him, and what was he to do about them?

The angel answered, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end. Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked . . .  But as for you, go on your way until the end. You will rest, and then you will arise to your inheritance at the end of the days.” Daniel 12:8-13

It’s a constant refrain throughout Scripture—don’t fret about the days to come, especially the last days. There wasn’t anything Daniel could do about it at the time, and he needed to entrust it all to God. Whatever part he had at the end would be revealed to him when the time came.

There’s immense curiosity about end-time prophecies, and many want to understand what they need to do before he comes. They want instructions and provisions well in advance of when they are necessary, I suspect, to reassure themselves. But God doesn’t work that way. It seems our trust is more important to him than any advance strategy. We talked about this in the last chapter—living with enough of Jesus on the inside that we’re free to roll with his leading as life unfolds. That will serve us well now and in the days to come.

Be Ready in the Moment

That’s what Jesus told his followers.  “But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.  You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm, you will gain life.” (Luke 21:12-17)

All of that certainly happened to the disciples in the first century. It isn’t always easy for us in the Western world to remember that this is happening today and is likely to grow even more so as the age comes to an end. So, what can we do, according to Jesus?

  1. “Make up your mind not to worry beforehand.” Anxiety is such a part of the human experience, especially when we confront potential difficulties of the unknown. But we can decide not to go down that road and bring ourselves back to confidence in him whenever we feel the tentacles of worry reach out for us. By focusing on him and his power, we can lean out of anxiety into trust.
  2. Don’t be shocked when close friends and relatives betray you. Most humans cannot muster faithfulness to a relationship when their personal expedience is at stake. Now is the time to practice doing so whenever people treat you unfairly or accuse you falsely.
  3. Stand firm in him and what you know to be true against every onslaught of darkness, regardless of what others might say about you. He will protect you, and in doing so, we’ll find his life and joy coursing through our veins.
  4. Let the words you need come to you in the moment. You do not need to practice what you’ll say to defend yourself. He will give you words that will be irresistible and incontrovertible. If we have already planned our answers, we won’t hear his. I know it’s hard, but we’ll be better armed in difficult moments if we trust him to show us the way, rather than scripting our words in advance.

We don’t have to wait until the end of days to develop these spiritual muscles. Practice them now in whatever circumstances or challenges you face today. Since we have no idea what will unfold or what our part in it might be, preparing for specific events is impossible. But we can cultivate a relationship with God strong enough to hold us through anything that comes.

We have a great heritage of previous generations of followers of Jesus who stayed true to him despite persecution and threats. His grace and presence have always proved sufficient for the darkest days. It’s why Paul was singing in a Roman prison after being unjustly beaten, and it opened the door for God’s love to flow to the jailer and his family.

To stand firm means we trust the truth we know about Jesus and his love for us, no matter what our circumstances or emotions may be telling us. We all have those moments where angst tries to displace our trust in God. Returning to what we know to be true by relying on the Holy Spirit will ground us in trust. It means risking everything that God is who he says he is.

We Have to Do Something

When the Egyptian army bore down on the children of Israel with chariots and weapons after letting them go, Moses encouraged the people of Israel. “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:13

How hard was that? They could have panicked and fled for their lives, but the Egyptians would have slaughtered them. Standing still before the approaching army would allow them to participate in God’s plan to free them and demonstrate his greatness in the face of overwhelming odds. That lesson was critical for them if they were going to trust God enough to lead them into the Promised Land.

Scripture often encourages us to stand firm and wait for God to act rather than resorting to our own devices and ingenuity. That’s not easy for many of us, preferring to do what we can see to do, which often makes matters worse. Busyness and activity give us the illusion of productivity and safety, but that’s all. If we trust his love enough to wait until he calls us to act, we will find options we never would have contemplated.

The urge to do something, in the face of threat or fear, is one of the most significant deterrents to our life in Jesus. So many bad decisions happen in that moment between feeling threatened and God revealing his solution. Some of the worst things I have ever done on God’s behalf started with someone saying, “Well, someone has got to do something.” Immediately, that focuses on ability and wisdom, rather than standing firm until God reveals his. Beware the person who preys on that impulse by giving you things to do on God’s behalf instead of waiting for him. Follow Jesus, not your frustrations.

Life at God’s Pace

To help my wife heal from the traumas of her childhood, I’ve had to learn to live at Sara’s pace, which is much slower than my own. While pulling weeds one day in Sara’s garden, I hurriedly reached for a weed that was just out of reach. I didn’t realize that, however, until I lost my balance. Moving my foot to keep from falling, I stepped on a stalk of beautiful irises and crushed it. Knowing how much she loved those flowers, I felt I had crushed something in her.

“You need to slow down.” The words crossed my mind instantly. That’s where God began to teach me that my rapid pace wasn’t helpful to Sara’s freedom. Since then, “Life moves at the speed of Sara” has become part of my vocabulary. It applies to everything I do, from driving to preparing dinner to our conversations. I discovered I actually like living at a slower pace, making me more attuned to what’s happening around me or what others are feeling.

Slowing to her pace also helped me recognize how much I outpace God. I’d already noticed that he seemed to move slower than I would like, and many of my prayers were trying to get God to catch up to my ambitions or hopes. Learning to live at his pace, which is even slower than Sara’s, took some time. Waiting on the Lord isn’t a test of patience; it’s the recognition that we move more rapidly than he does.

When we’re having trouble seeing God or listening to him, maybe it’s because we are rushing ahead of him. Have you noticed he is far slower at doing things than any of us would like? His work is much more deliberate, incubated in love, not fear, in trust, not anxiety. He’s doing real work inside while we try to get him to plaster cosmetic fixes on the outside. Jesus invited us to follow him, which means we must walk a pace behind him. You can’t follow from in front. Then we can do what we see Father doing, just as Jesus did.

That’s why we’re told to be still and know that he is God (Psalm 46:10), and to discover “the unforced rhythms of grace.” (Matthew 11:29 MSG)  Both require us to slow down and enjoy his pace.

In the Meantime…

So, how do we live with the end of the age in mind? Some have encouraged people to sell their goods and move into communities off the grid. I know people who have quit their jobs and gone on an evangelism binge because they think the time is short. But none of these ever bear fruit unless they come at his leading. We don’t know when the end is coming, so don’t make life-altering decisions until it is clear what he’s asking of you.

Like the warhorse at rest, we don’t need to be anxious about the days to come or devise a plan to cope with what might happen. Jesus indicated that those who would be most ready are not those focused on the date, but simply living in his goodness each day. That means loving your spouse and others around you, caring for your family and for others who cross your path, and growing in God’s goodness while encouraging others to do the same.

When you live at rest in God’s goodness, you’ll find the renewal that will keep you ready whenever God has something for you.

  • Actively look for ways to engage others near you—family, co-workers, neighbors. Practice hospitality, generosity, graciousness, and getting to know others, and all the more as the world convulses in the final birth pangs. People will need help with fear and uncertainty. Getting to know them now will make it easier to help them then.
  • Find the rhythm that lets you marinate in his love, recognizing it through your struggles and resting in the growing confidence that he will care for you.
  • Practice learning to listen to his thoughts and nudges in the challenges you face.
  • Let him keep untwisting what sin, the world, and trauma may have done to you. Discover the growing freedom that trust will lead you to experience, and how it will demonstrate his glory to the world around you.
  • Pray for other followers of Jesus that they will not be led astray by those who want to “do something” or are intimidated by others’ voices. Pray they will have the courage to trust what they hear, even if it contradicts the comfort of their friends and family.

Tyson, you don’t need specific instructions on what you should do if this is the end of days. He will show each of us what our part is when the time comes. He is preparing a bride for what is not yet. Now we need to learn to stand by, waiting for his instructions.

So, come sit with Jesus often and gaze with him at world events as the future unfolds. There’s no better place to bring your heart to stillness in the face of the unknown and to ready your heart to respond to him whenever he calls you.

Confident in his wisdom and power, you can be like the warhorse at rest until the time comes. Fearless about what may come, you’ll be quick to respond as redemption reaches its fulfillment.

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Order Part 1 of It’s Time from Amazon in Kindle or paperback, or read previous chapters online.

Chapter 20: Stand By Read More »

Chapter 19: Children of the Day 

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Note: This is the nineteenth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. We have already released the first part of this book in print. You can also access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to ensure you don’t miss any of them, you can add your name here.

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How can you write with such conviction about these things when you hold to a point of view a lot of other Christians don’t share? Don’t get me wrong, my heart is in sync with almost everything you’ve written, but I’m always second-guessing myself because I know so few people who see it the way I do. 

Marcellus, basketball coach and father of two in Virginia

Marcellus, 

First, if I had followed the Christian crowd throughout my life, I wouldn’t know Jesus the way I know him today. I didn’t start out to be a nonconformist. In my early days, I could work Christianity as well as anyone, and I so much wanted its affirmation. But the choices I was presented with kept knocking me off that path, either because I couldn’t compromise something I knew to be true or because Jesus invited me in a different direction.

That used to frustrate me. Why couldn’t I fit in like everyone else? It wasn’t because I thought I was wiser; I just could not do otherwise. I love that you second-guess yourself if that doesn’t overwhelm you or dissuade you from following him. Humility, as I wrote about earlier, is a gift, especially when we recognize that we only see in part. I hope this book encourages people like you to follow their heart without the arrogance of thinking they have all the answers. There’s much I don’t see and don’t know, but I try to follow where he leads. 

At the same time, I don’t mind expressing what I see as honestly as I can and entrusting it to the reader to discern what is true. I know many will reject much of this book, but I am not trying to convince people who are locked into Christianity as a religion, but rather to encourage those who seek a more authentic faith in Jesus than what it can sustain.  

Jesus warned us that the broad road leads to destruction; only the narrow path leads to life. I can’t help it if few people want to follow it. Twelve men went into Canaan to spy out the land, but only two thought God big enough to give it to them. No one would face the giant Goliath, except David, the shepherd boy. Jesus miraculously fed five thousand people, who abandoned him the next day when he spoke words they didn’t understand. At the end of his ministry, Paul said that “all in Asia” had deserted him, including some of the New Testament’s key congregations. 

What it takes to embrace genuine life doesn’t seem to sustain crowds. Even Jesus wondered if he would still find faith on the earth when he returned (Luke 18:8). Resisting the darkness to keep our faith in him is challenging for any of us. It is not easy to deviate from the crowd and suffer the judgments of others. Because we mistakenly measure success in this kingdom by crowd size, book sales, or Internet followers, the temptation to distort the life of Jesus for popularity and money is ever-present, and the person succumbing to it can convince himself that God is leading them.  

Whenever the person of Jesus is displaced at the center of our faith so that we follow a program or agenda in his place, we are on a road to disaster. That’s why finding our affirmation in the acclaim of the masses won’t draw us more deeply into him. Following him in whatever he reveals to you is not a matter of thinking you’re better or wiser than others; it is simply being genuine with the light you see. That will serve you well in the days to come. 

 

Children of the Light

Paul warned us that the Day of the Lord would come as a thief in the night, taking many by surprise. “While people are saying, ‘Peace and security,’ destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” (I Thessalonians 5:1-3)

Those are ominous words and have been used to terrify many in Christianity’s relentless strategy to manipulate people’s fears. But Paul didn’t stop there: “But you are not in the darkness so that this day should overtake you like a thief. For you are all sons of the light and sons of the day; we do not belong to the night or to the darkness…. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him. Therefore encourage and build one another up, just as you are already doing.” (I Thess 5:4-5, 10-11)

“Live together with him” is such a beautiful phrase. That’s the theme of this book. We get to live with him no matter what comes, and he will take care of us. While we live in a time of great darkness, we don’t belong to it. We are children of the day. Our hope is firmly staked in a kingdom that embraces a reality far beyond this age. 

The kingdom doesn’t come by human strategy and cannot be fulfilled by our religious institutions. Jesus didn’t give his followers an organization to protect, but his Spirit to follow. Yet, on the day he ascended, they were still looking for him to take control of the world on Israel’s behalf. If not now, when? His answer invited them to look in a different direction. “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.” (Acts 1:7)

Those preoccupied with prophecies and dates are looking at the wrong horizon—where the sun sets, not where it rises. Children of the day have their eyes fixed on a different dimension where the kingdom of God thrives. Though it hasn’t yet come in its fullness, that is still their primary citizenship, and they are loyal to that kingdom above all else.

Instead of looking for political fulfillment, Jesus told them to wait! And wait they did, until the Spirit came upon them. They learned at the outset that God didn’t need them to bring the kingdom, but only respond when he does. What amazes me about the book of Acts is that nothing happened by their strategic planning or prayer meetings. Filled with the Spirit, they responded to what Jesus was doing around them. That’s what it means to live as children of the light. 

Peter and John weren’t looking to heal a lame beggar at the temple; the opportunity crossed their path, and they were ready to respond. Afterwards, they weren’t tempted to start a supernatural ministry school to train others to repeat what they had done as a new evangelism strategy.  

It wasn’t Peter’s idea to take the Gospel to Gentiles. God set up the circumstances through dreams and visions that Peter willingly followed, even beyond his prejudices. When the Spirit fell on them, Peter recognized that God had incorporated them into his kingdom. Then he had to come back and explain it to his fellow Jews, who were appalled at the story they heard. 

Paul’s journeys did not result from structured itineraries, but from his willingness to follow the Spirit along the way. Everything helped shape that journey, from avoiding persecution to dreams that changed his plans. He even found passage to Rome as a prisoner, falsely accused by the religious leaders in Jerusalem, who had hoped to murder him. 

Jesus wanted his followers to watch him work and respond rather than substitute their ingenuity and planning. They didn’t become champions of the political or religious world. They didn’t fit into either and were persecuted by both. They were lied about, stoned, imprisoned, and martyred, and yet the life of Jesus found a way through it all to reveal himself to the world. 

Children of the light are not perfect people, but sensitive followers of Jesus, with a trust in him stronger than their own perspective.

 

Succumbing to the Night

It isn’t easy to live as children of the light when everything about this world seeks to draw us back into the darkness. It can happen so subtly that we don’t even realize it, until we feel empty and lost. Jesus warned his followers that the end of days would be particularly challenging to keep our hearts embedded in the light. “At that time many will fall away and will betray and hate one another, and many false prophets will arise and mislead many. Because of the multiplication of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:10-12) He added that the very elect would be deceived unless he cut the days short. 

Whenever we abandon love for any other agenda, we are easily deceived by power, just like the Pharisees. They had divided the world into those who were acceptable to God and those who weren’t. They were more concerned about law than life and found it easy to hate those who were not like them. That’s why they didn’t recognize God’s Son when he stood right before them. They got caught up manipulating the politics of the day instead of looking for a city whose builder is God. 

We already see false prophets leading God’s people astray, putting their hope in a political leader who advances their desires. Even though he is the moral opposite of Jesus Christ, those prophets have anointed him as the political savior of Christianity, and by doing so, their love for God and others has grown cold. Those who follow them are playing in the realm of human power and have lost sight of the day. 

They still give lip service to Jesus despite losing touch with his nature and love. They are so preoccupied with the quest for power to fulfill their ambitions or seven-mountain mandate, thinking the eternal kingdom can come by coercion, manipulation, and arrogance. And don’t think the same dynamics aren’t at work in the political left. This is not a contest between liberal and conservative, but between darkness and light. This is not about what policies you prefer, but the fear and anger that an elite class manipulates to gain power over a nation. 

The majority Christian view has almost always been on the wrong side of historical crossroads—from crusades and inquisitions to colonial conquest and slavery to racism and Apartheid, even to Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany. Whenever Christianity aligned itself with the power of empire, it was seduced into tactics of the night, forsaking the priorities of God’s kingdom. There was a day when you could engage the democratic process without compromising participation in Jesus’s kingdom, but that’s nearly impossible today. The amount of money, lies, and anger that are part of our process on both sides negates the love of Christ. 

That’s why many feel they just don’t fit in anymore—not to the religious environment they grew up in or the political party they championed at a younger age. Over the last thirty years, Jesus has been calling his bride back to himself, raising up followers who can see through the illusion of Christianity as a human-built religion made up of doctrines and regulations that emptied the cross of its power. 

Sadly, some of those have gone on to try to recreate their own systems promising a more authentic experience and have been found wanting. But others have spent time in the wilderness of faith, looking for the truth and community that only Jesus can provide. That has taken many of them out of the institutions in which their faith was nurtured so that it could grow. They have been scorned and mocked, the quality of their faith questioned because they no longer conformed to the expectations of their family and friends. 

In the process, however, they have reconnected to Jesus as a real presence. Their faith sent roots deep into God’s character and nature. Trusting in his love for them, they know how Father’s love holds them in the storm and how his presence and wisdom can guide them through anything. They have become children of the day without the fear or anger that others can manipulate.

 

Simeon and Anna

Children of the day were like Simeon and Anna when Jesus first came—two elderly people who hoped they would see the Messiah before death. Sure enough, in the temple courts, they saw an infant barely a month old and recognized in him the salvation of Israel. They saw in that baby a reality that more educated minds couldn’t recognize in a thirty-something man who had been healing and teaching throughout Israel.  

They were tuned into a reality others could not see. Many in Israel were so focused on overthrowing Rome and claiming their country back that they missed him when he came with a greater redemption than political change could accomplish. They were not ready to embrace the infant at the temple, or the itinerant preacher who spoke wisdom they could not manipulate for their ends. 

In the last days, people like Simeon and Anna will wait patiently for a promise against all hope. They will see the signs leading to his return. They will see him standing at the door, ready to fulfill in his own humanity what God had in mind from the Creation of the world. The darkness of those days won’t overwhelm them because their eyes are fixed on a brighter light. 

The final chapter of redemption’s story is about to be written. This is a contest for the soul of the universe, pitting love and light against selfishness and darkness. Some live oblivious to this conflict, while others are discerningly aware. 

In preparation for those days, he is calling a people who will bear his glory in the world. They will be known for their love and for upholding God’s justice in treating others with graciousness and compassion.

 

Comfortable in Uncertainty

The greatest joy of finding security in the presence of Jesus is that people no longer seek it from worldly circumstances. Confident in his love and care, they realize he can guide them through anything. Their comfort is set to his presence, not their desired outcomes. 

Years ago, I began to meet people who were comfortable with uncertainty. I was intrigued because it seemed so foreign to me. My Type-A personality was more inclined to manipulate my circumstances, or more honestly, trying to enlist God to do so, for whatever I desired. It just so rarely worked because God was not invested in my agenda. Living that way was exhausting, borrowing anxiety from future events that never happened and for which there was no provision.

I was intrigued by those who could take each day as it came. They didn’t have a lot of resources in earthly terms, but didn’t seem to need them. They were confident that God would give them what they needed when the time came. They learned to hold their fears of the future in suspicion because they could rarely foresee accurately what was to come. Never panicking, never manipulating, and never fearful, they walk with a growing trust in the Father. 

Through crisis and tragedy, they had learned that God was faithful to provide for them each day whatever they needed.  Worrying about the future became unnecessary. They came to see that God’s grace, like his provision, is served up in daily doses. We can be so distracted by our imagined future that we miss how he wants to guide us today. 

These were the people I wanted to be near, for they were at peace in times of extremity, able to listen and respond to Jesus’s leading. Also, they reflected his character invitingly, being people of compassion, integrity, and gentleness. Being with them constantly refreshed me and made me long to learn how to trust God like they did.

All the while, Jesus kept inviting me to find fulfillment in his desires and purpose instead of mine. That also came through moments of extremity and frustration when he provided answers I would never have contemplated. My anxieties began to whither, and with them came the exhaustion of serving them. 

Children of the light are comfortable in uncertainty because their confidence is in the nature and character of Jesus, not their circumstances. How do you learn to live this way? It won’t come from a book; it will come from interacting with him through your anxieties, scheming, and struggles. As you learn how unhelpful it is to try to control the outcomes of your own life, you’ll discover a better life awaits. 

Slowly, a growing trust in Father’s love will push aside the need to have circumstances turn out the way you prefer. Instead of being frustrated about what he isn’t doing, you’ll watch him care for you through times of struggle and pain in ways you’d never have imagined. On the day you realize he knows best about everything in your life, you’ll find yourself comfortable in the uncertainties of life.

That will allow Jesus’s character to find a home in you. Without the anxieties of what may come, you’ll be more present in the moment with his compassion and kindness toward others. Then you’ll not only live in that light, but you will become the light for others to see the glory of God’s goodness. 

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Order Part 1 of It’s Time from Amazon in Kindle or paperback, or read previous chapters online.

Chapter 19: Children of the Day  Read More »

Chapter 18: Holding God’s Pain 

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Note: This is the eighteenth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. We have already released the first part of this book in print. You can also access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to ensure you don’t miss any of them, you can add your name here.

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As I have read the previous letters, I can’t help but wonder what God is thinking as he views the atrocities of human history. Is he angry at the wars we wage, or the power the wealthy hold over the poor? Can we even know what he feels?
— Ivanna, wife and mother who also operates a bakery in Ukraine

Ivanna, 

I’m so sorry for what has happened over the past three years in your country. The uncertainty, devastation, and bloodshed must weigh heavily on your heart. You are in my prayers.

Of course, we can’t speak definitively about what God thinks or feels. His ways are much higher than ours; his perspective is beyond our finite view. He does not see death as an end. However, we get glimpses of his thoughts because he makes himself known to his people. I sense things about him when I pray for people or events. They are momentary glimpses, to be sure, but there would be no communion if there were no exchange of heart and mind. 

Honestly, I don’t sense much anger in him, which is shocking for someone who grew up with terrifying stories about an angry God. When we’re victimized, anger rises quickly, and we want God to share it. But when Jesus lived among us, we didn’t see him angry or seeking vengeance. What we see is love, and in that love, sorrow and grief for what we suffer and for those who refuse him. He didn’t come to bring condemnation but forgiveness and salvation. Maybe we misunderstood those Old Testament stories after all. 

His redemption is not powered by anger but love, meriting our trust, not our fear. This may be most critical for last-day believers. I want to share with you a personal encounter that has profoundly impacted me, and the doors it has opened in deepening my walk with God, and having more compassion for those who are lost in the darkness is profound. But before I do, let me remind you of that moment Jesus sought to share his anguish with his closest friends. 

 

Watch with Me 

The night before he died on the cross, Jesus was “consumed with sorrow.” He went to the Garden of Gethsemane to sort things out with his Father and invited three of his disciples to share that intimate moment. His pain was immense, distressed enough that his sweat became like drops of blood. What did he hope to gain by having them there, or what would it give them? 

Perhaps it’s as simple as Jesus did not want to be alone, and their presence would comfort him? Could he also have wanted to show them something about his heart? We don’t really know because they slept through it, unable to watch with him even for an hour. 

He warned them to “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” They couldn’t stay awake long enough and fell into temptation that night, abandoning their friend in his hour of need. Surely, they didn’t realize what was going on that night, and perhaps their slumber was a way to dissociate from the disconcerting talk of his leaving them.  

The redemption of the world hung in the balance, and to accomplish it, Jesus had to choose to endure the most horrific torments of unjust humanity. He was distressed at the prospect and hoped there might be another way to redeem humanity. And yet, he settled it in his heart with, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

Jesus did escape temptation that night, but I can’t help wondering what it would have been like for the disciples to share that moment with Jesus. Was sorrow and grief his alone to bear, or was there something for them to learn inside his suffering?

 

“Now You’re Ready to Hold My Pain”

Honestly, I would never have considered experiencing God’s pain except for an engagement I had with him over two years ago. I woke up early one morning for a medical appointment. As I got dressed, I felt deep sorrow and grief, which was strange since I hadn’t gone to bed that way. 

The previous three years had been brutal. My wife encountered a previously unknown childhood trauma, only to be told by her therapist that she must be married to an abusive husband. She left me when I was out of town, and it took us weeks to sort through the lies and find our way back to each other. Also, I had lost a meaningful, lifelong relationship when some in my extended family spread lies about me. 

Even though those situations had been mostly resolved by that morning, all the emotions were back. On my drive, I wanted to sort that out with God. I found myself praying, “Last year I lost every family relationship I valued to lies about me.” Tears streamed down my face as I relived it. And wanting to bring God into that pain, I added, “And you allowed it to happen.” As soon as I said it, I knew I was putting blame in the wrong place. 

So, I repeated my pain again, this time adding, “And you watched it happen.”  That was true enough, but again, not fair to him. He hadn’t watched as some dispassionate observer.

One last time I prayed, “Last year I lost every family relationship I valued to lies about me, and you were with me in it.” There it was! He had been with me through it all to bring healing where he could and guide me where others weren’t open to it. Into my pain seeped his love and even joy that I had not been alone. 

After reveling in the sanctity of that reality, a strange thought ran through my head. Now you are ready to hold some of my pain. It seemed like God whispering to me, but I had no idea what it meant. What pain did he have, and why did he want me to hold it? Then, a second thought explained the first. I lost every relationship I value to lies about me. 

It took a moment for that to sink in. From the serpent’s lie in Eden, down through history to those who reject him today because they don’t know who he is, God has been the victim of the worst lies. Thinking of what God has suffered by human unfaithfulness, I began to weep again, overwhelmed with a sorrow greater than my own. I know I only got a small taste of his pain that morning, but I find him inviting me there often.  

 

The Fellowship of His Suffering

When Paul referred to the fellowship of his suffering in Philippians 3, I have always taken it to mean that Jesus comforts us inside our pain. He understands what we go through because he has experienced more pain than we ever could. Shared suffering lets us know him at a depth we would miss otherwise.

However, I never noted that it’s his suffering we fellowship in, not just our own. I skipped over that part since his pain was already past. What would he suffer now? My conception of God is that he exists in victory and dwells in peace and beauty. We hope to join him there someday. If the state of the world pained him, wouldn’t he just fix it?

Since that morning, I’ve learned that the world’s brokenness touches the Godhead deeply. Jesus didn’t just suffer during his week of passion. It wasn’t just Gethsemane, his trial, or the cross, but also at Lazarus’ tomb for the grief of his friends. Earlier, he had looked at the crowds with compassion and saw many who were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” The writer of Hebrews told us he often offered loud cries and tears to God. (Hebrews 5:7) 

As our empathetic high priest, he holds humanity with intense love even as many reject him. How could he not suffer, not just then but now? This broken creation offers up constant tragedy, war, abuse, oppression, disease, and lies that devastate people he loves. Wouldn’t that touch God more deeply than it touches us?

My greatest tears have been shed not for myself but for the pain or loss of people I love. What is worse, our own suffering or that of our children? That morning, I discovered the agony inside of God for the lostness of his Creation. It was not pain for his loss but for ours. He holds us in his heart, quite aware of our suffering, and it powers his desire to bring redemption in the most devastating circumstances. I have come to view the world through that lens. 

 

Holding God’s Pain 

In Chapter 11, I wrote about how learning to gaze with God changed my prayer life. I no longer found myself trying to convince him to do what I wanted, but to help me see the events in my life and the world through his eyes. Knowing a small measure of his loss in the broken creation has brought me closer to him. As I gaze with God at world events, I find greater freedom from my self-preoccupation, which allows me to find a deeper place in his heart. 

How do I hold pain with God? I sit with him, gazing at the circumstance that concerns me, contemplating it from his perspective. I wait until I have a sense what he feels in that. Sometimes, it takes days or weeks, as I wait for him to show me.

As I get a glimpse of that, I reflect on the emotion or insight he brings. It has shaped my prayers in interesting ways. I don’t try to fix his pain or offer my ideas for a way out. I hold my heart alongside his and see what comes. I reflect on his power and wisdom as I remind myself that everything is in his hands. That helps me look beyond the pain to hear the refrain of his love seeping through. He is not alarmed or disturbed because his plan is unfolding. He’s the Redeemer in this story and will prevail overall.

This may not be for everyone. Indeed, don’t start here. Until you’ve tasted deeply of his love for you in your own anguish and learned to trust him, trying to imagine God’s pain will only draw you into despair. Let him share your pain before you look to share his. He’ll invite you in when you are ready, but I suspect I’m not the only one who has tasted this. 

I find it curious that Jesus didn’t need a lot of people to do this. He only asked three of his disciples. I wish at least one of them had stayed with him through it. It’s a tender moment to be in fellowship with his suffering and to know his heart for lost people. Sharing that is a deep place of intimacy. I am intrigued and excited at what might lie down this road for me and others who feel a similar call. 

 

How It Has Changed Me

Why would he want any of us to watch with him in this season of redemptive history? 

I’m honestly not sure what it does for him. It may simply be what friendship does; it holds each other’s pain as well as their joy. The pain I felt when my wife was gone is my teacher here. What I felt for her then and now puts me in touch with what God feels for the brokenness in his creation. It has changed me in a variety of ways. 

First, I see world events differently. A few decades ago, my world was conveniently divided into a home team and an away team. God loves those who acknowledge him. I could pray with passion for God to alleviate their suffering. God hates the away team, and we can pray down his vengeance on them, which gave me false comfort in my anger and helplessness. Dividing the world that way made it simpler to route my grief and fear in times of tragedy. 

I just don’t believe any of it anymore. Love taught me how misguided I was. God’s heart breaks for the whole of humanity, for those who know him and those who don’t. Today, he holds the same grief for the Palestinian mom mourning her child as he does for the Jewish mom grieving hers. That doesn’t discount the horrible evil people bring into the world, but it does change the way I pray both for victims and victimizers. I’ve been invited to a different kingdom where love defines our responses, not vengeance or righteous indignation. Just how did we think Jesus would tell us to love our enemies and think God gets to hate his?

Second, I don’t want to add any more pain to the planet. I am more mindful in my engagements with people to treat them fairly, lovingly, and honor my relationship with them. I also want to live generously toward those in pain to help relieve my Father’s anguish on their behalf.

Third, I’ve discovered how these moments with him expose the deeper places in my heart. Solomon said, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for a sad countenance is good for the heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:3) We all crave times of joy, but it is sorrow and grief that allow us to drill down to the deepest places where we discover what is most important. 

Fourth, I read Scripture differently, seeing an anguished Godhead rather than an angry one. While we may want to lash out and blame others for our suffering, Jesus is not inclined to do so. As I read the Old Testament prophets now, I see anguish for the wayward, not anger. This is the power of the laments. It is not just our pain being held there but his too. And at the same time, we see his capacity to spread redemption in the world amid human suffering.  

Fifth, it has changed my heart for the lost. Now, loving my enemies becomes possible because I see them as those convulsing in pain for living outside of God’s reality. Truly, they do not know what they do to others as they compensate for their loneliness and believe the lies of darkness. 

 

Ecstasy and Agony 

Ivanna, lest you think holding some of God’s pain leads to a despairing life, I assure you it does not. Remember, God not only grieves for humanity, but he is also the most joyful presence in the universe. Jesus said he wanted his joy to be in us so our joy could be complete. 

Because of him, I now know that agony and ecstasy can co-exist in the same space. I once thought they were mutually exclusive. Times of pain overwhelmed everything else and drove out my joy until they ended. Now, I can hold my pain before him and at the same time look for his joy to be there as well. I have learned that from watching him. As much as he feels the brokenness of humanity, he also delights in the redemption he brings to it. 

One friend said, “It seems he wants us to hold in our hearts the agony of the world and the victory of the cross simultaneously.” I love that. That may not make much sense until you experience it, but once you do, you can find contentment in whatever situation you are in.  

Jesus’s friends couldn’t hold his pain on the eve of his crucifixion, but we can today.  Over the past two years, it has transformed my thinking—how I view others and how to find the redemption story in the unfolding realities of our ever-darkening world. It saves me from giving in to anger and vengeance and finding a place for love to thrive in my prayers and heart.

As the earth moves relentlessly towards its inevitable conclusion in Christ, we can partner with him by holding his pain and praying to advance his purpose in current events. If I don’t see what he sees, I’m only left to offer up fruitless requests for my comfort or agenda in the gathering darkness. 

The people who will be most helpful at the end of days are those who know both his agony and his ecstasy.

 

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Chapter 17: Embracing God in Your Pain

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Note: This is the seventeenth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. We have already released the first part of this book in print. Or you can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to ensure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

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To be an evangelical in rural France is to be a minority of minorities. Even my family has ostracized me. You talk about God using our troubles to transform us, but I don’t see how he does that. I’ve spent my entire life avoiding pain, asking God to end it when it comes, and being angry when he doesn’t. How can I come to appreciate God at work in my suffering?

—Jean-Paul, a young father living in the Loire Valley in France

Dear Jean-Paul,

You ask a critically important question. It has taken most of my life to discover how to embrace God in my suffering. Like many, I grew up with the silly notion that God would protect me from pain. I could quote Scriptures that seemed to suggest it, except for persecution, of course. And, since I live in America, that isn’t supposed to happen.

So, whenever I felt in pain, I would ask God to take it away. Rarely did he, which led me to doubt his love, the quality of my faith, or whether the Bible was true. Even the culture was enamored with the question of suffering. How could a loving God create a world with so much pain?

He didn’t, of course. The suffering in our world does not come from him but from the chaos of a creation out of sync with its Creator and the weakness of humanity with arrogance, greed, and selfishness. Calamities happen, people will take advantage of you; sickness, disease, and injury are a constant threat, and daily needs can overrun you. Looking back, I am amazed at how I missed all the Scriptures about how God works in incredible ways through suffering and that those who walk by faith will often find more trouble because they’re walking against the ways of the world.

So why didn’t I hear more teachings on how to suffer graciously or find what God is doing through it? It seems we would rather hope for a quick miracle and deal with the frustration of it not happening than embrace suffering. Some of the most painful conversations I have are with people who genuinely believe that if God loved them, he would ensure that nothing bad could happen to them that he wouldn’t immediately fix.

So, thanks for your question, Jean-Paul. Let me take a stab at helping you transit pain in a way that brings God’s goodness out of it. Finding God’s love at the extremity of human suffering is a sacred gift. Here are the thoughts that help me when troubles come.

 

Invite God Along

I know that seems simple, but it’s easy to push God out of our suffering and try to handle it with our own strength. We do that in several ways. The most common is to blame him. Whether you think he orchestrated or just allowed it won’t matter. How do you run to someone for aid and comfort when you think they’re the source of your pain? He certainly isn’t, but many think he is. However, he can walk us through it, even utilizing it to do a deep work within. 

Another way we push him aside is to try to ignore our pain. Denial and overcompensating with coping mechanisms will crowd him out as well. Embrace the pain you’re in and invite him into it. This is where the children of the New Creation can shine brightest. When you find redemption in the difficulties of this world and demonstrate what it is to be his beloved child through it, the world is yours.

Finally, we push him away by only thinking that our circumstances will be resolved through healing or miraculous provision. Many people mistakenly set their perception of God’s love based on how he answers their prayers or resolves their circumstances.

That’s not to say we won’t rant and question him when we are surprised by pain but don’t expect many answers there. When we treat God as our adversary, hearing him say, “I’m sorry you’re going through this,” is nearly impossible. And knowing he’s empathetic to our struggle allows us to lean into his care and listen to his heart. So, hopefully, when trouble hits, we can find a way to settle into his love and invite him inside our pain. The fellowship of suffering is deep and intimate.

Embracing God at moments of extremity always involves surrender, laying down my fears and accusations, and being determined to find out how he loves me through this. Whether it is a marriage breaking up, grief, cancer diagnosis, betrayal of a friend or family, or needs bigger than my resources, I find a place of surrender to him. “If possible, take this cup from me, but if not, I choose to trust you through it” is where I best recognize him.

It allows my heart to stay open to a miracle should he desire it but, at the same time, honor the pain that has entered my life. When God is no longer your adversary or even the reluctant Father who won’t give you what you want, you’ll realize that no matter how dark things get, he is working for you. From his experience, Jesus knows the pain that life can deal out and how it is to find his Father in it. When you do that, you’ll begin to see his way through it and the fruit he is developing in you.

He can show you if you suffer from reaping something you have sown. If you suffer because of your arrogance, indulgence, and selfishness, he will still be with you, leading you to repentance, humility, and further freedom. However, undeserved suffering opens doors into the depths of God’s heart. That’s why Peter warned the early Christians to take care to ensure they don’t deserve what they suffer. Hardship caused by the sin or injustice of others opens a greater pathway to God’s heart.

 

Embrace Hardship as Discipline 

One of the things that helps me face suffering comes from Hebrews. “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children.” (Hebrews 12:7) If you think of that as chastisement, you’ll miss the point entirely. He’s not referring to an angry father punishing you because of his disappointment; this is a loving Father who uses the brokenness of this world to teach us the discipline of his ways.

Every trouble we encounter is a training ground to deepen our walk with him. God recycles everything, even the injustice of others, as a tool to draw us more deeply into his way of thinking. What you go through today prepares you for what may yet come down the road. We always hope our current moment of suffering is our last, but life in a broken world will continue to throw difficulties at you, and all the more as we come to the end of the age.

Those of us raised in more comfortable circumstances usually have a real aversion to pain. We’ll do anything to avoid it. And our only approach when it comes, is to seek immediate relief, even trying to enlist God’s help to do that. None of this prepares us to manage our pain redemptively.

Paul had a different approach. Listen to how he negotiated the horrible things that befell him: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” (2 Cor 4:8-10) Paul drew a fantastic distinction between what could happen to him and what Jesus could do with it on the inside. 

Hardship offers us a doorway to transformation as well as a doorway to anger and bitterness. If we can embrace whatever suffering comes our way and, more significantly, embrace God inside of it, we’ll find the door to life. The writer of Hebrews adds this, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of justice and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11)

A friend from South Africa and I recently discussed how love cannot be learned as a technique without being experienced. He added, “But we can learn how to lean deeper into love, accept suffering as the training ground to diminish the ego, and so learn how to let love flow out even to those who hate us and those who spitefully use us.”

That is a powerful way to live. None of us like to have our ego diminished, but that is how we learn to love in this world. Even Jesus learned obedience amid loud cries and tears through the things that he suffered. (Hebrews 5:7-8) How important would it be for us to learn the same way? Don’t waste your pain; let it change you, leaving you more surrendered to the God who loves you more than anyone else ever has or ever will.

If you want his glory to be revealed in you, learn to embrace hardship rather than run from it. “Rejoice; inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12–13)

 

Ask Answerable Questions 

The first question we are prone to ask in times of trouble is, “Why?” Why me? Why didn’t God protect me from this? I have discovered that ‘why’ questions almost always lead down a darker road of grief and doubt. In my experience, they are usually impossible to answer because our finite perspective is too limited for a satisfyingly logical answer.

I used to challenge God with those questions before I learned to live in his love. “Why are you doing this to me?” “Why won’t you give me a miracle to take it away?” I have even prayed vengeance on those who have caused my anguish and, by doing so, lost sight of love. Thus, for all my whining, I never got a helpful answer.

I discovered a few years ago that I had stopped asking such questions without realizing it. Two decades ago, I was talking to a friend who wanted me to explain why God allowed his wife to leave him. It was then I recognized how long it had been since I raised that kind of question with God, and it felt awkward. That’s when I realized my questions had changed from why to where or how. “Where are you in this pain?” “How are you making your love available to me here?”  “How do you want me to navigate this trial?”

Answers to those questions seep into my heart over time. I switched to those questions because they were more answerable. They allowed me to grasp his love and wisdom rather than seeking some contrived justification unbefitting his character.

 

Stay Inside the Day

We add to our suffering whenever we get too far ahead of ourselves. Pain is best managed one day at a time. Rather than worrying about how long it will last, it is far better to ask, “Do I have what I need to get through today?” That’s all we are promised. Grace is meted out in daily portions. Jesus explicitly warned us not to worry about tomorrow, for today has enough challenges of its own. (Matthew 6:34)

When I was diagnosed with a fractured vertebra and the cancer that caused it, I was shocked. I had no idea this was coming. As my doctors charted out my next few months, including back surgery and a lifetime of chemotherapy, it was too overwhelming to consider. I intentionally decided to take on this challenge one day at a time. What do I need to get through this day?

Did I pray to be healed?  Who wouldn’t if you believe he does such things?  But I did not put all my hope in a miracle I couldn’t guarantee. So, I would talk to Jesus about healing, but I would look for his leading to walk through each day of this. I certainly was not going to try and earn it.

That meant I would do whatever I saw to do each day. Sara and I made decisions about our medical options, and when that became back surgery, I did what I could each day to manage the pain and keep looking to him. I left my questions in trust with Jesus, and I knew he would answer them when I needed them.

Also, staying inside the day allowed me to look for his presence, joy, and beauty each day. If I wait for joy until a miracle, medicine, or endurance has its work, I’ll be worn out with sorrow. Each day, find something that brightens your heart by getting out into nature or gazing at it through your window or video. Listen to music that calms you. Talk to people who inspire you.

 

Don’t Go It Alone 

None of us were meant to bear our struggles alone. Invite your community along for the ride as a source of encouragement and wisdom. This is not posting your need on Facebook or submitting a prayer request to the congregation’s website or bulletin. Invite three or four people to walk through the crisis with you.

Ideally, these relationships are already close. You have offered them the same presence during their struggles that you now ask of them. You know they will talk to Jesus about you and allow him to put Scriptures or other encouragements on their heart. Hopefully, you will check in with each other every few days.

With my recent cancer diagnosis, I had three friends located in three different countries who I knew were suffering from this same disease. Their empathy and information were a calming influence as my own journey unfolded.

Protracted suffering or a chronic condition can provide a unique challenge here. Ensure you are not just using your friends as targets of grumbling or complaining. You can be honest about that too but don’t stay there. People who want to be alongside you will be exhausted by hopeless complaints or only praying for a miracle that is not coming. You are looking for a conversation about how God navigates your heart through it, so there is hope and encouragement. That may not be an easy road to find, but community will make it far easier than going it alone.

 

Look for Ways to Be Redemptive

Just because you are in need doesn’t mean you have to focus all your attention on yourself. Pain is easier to negotiate when you can find ways to bless others.

Every day, I’m reminded how much Sara discovering her trauma has reshaped the trajectory of both of our lives into such an incredibly beautiful space. It has been excruciatingly painful, but I love the fresh air here, clearer perspective, and greater trust in Jesus through uncertainty. And her ability to encourage others in similar struggles helps her navigate her own.

When I see how holding my pain encourages others to navigate their own, my heart rejoices, and my endurance is enhanced. As you discover his goodness during dark days, look for ways to share it with others. Here’s where suffering does its most beautiful work. When we are less focused on ourselves, the load becomes easier to bear. And having traversed deep waters, you’ll be able to stand with those who face them as well.

When you suffer injustice from others, you’ll never want to do it to anyone else. When you are lied about or betrayed by someone you love and don’t grow bitter, you’ll never want to do it to anyone else. When you’ve suffered heartbreak, disease, or grief, you’ll have more empathy to offer others and wisdom as well.

 

Don’t Forget the Glory to Come

In the verse preceding Paul’s statement about the Creation longing for the children of God to be revealed, which is the theme verse of this book, he wrote,  “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)

Suffering in Christ always gives way to glory. That’s why it’s worth it, Jean-Paul, to embrace Jesus in our pain and suffering. Not only can he get you through it, but he will leave you a better person in its wake. While we can often see how that bears fruit in this life, we don’t yet know how that will reveal his glory in the ages to come.

But I suspect it most certainly will.

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What Others Are Saying about It’s Time

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I hope this means my new book hasn’t gone to the dogs already. People have been sending pictures as well as comments, so if you haven’t ordered a copy yet here’s what others are saying about my new book, It’s Time: Letters to the Bride of Christ at the End of the Age.

“Thank you for your latest book, It’s Time. I can’t think of anyone else I would choose to write such a book! I will be sharing it liberally and recommending it wholeheartedly.” Tom in Texas

“Every chapter has brought comfort and encouragement to my heart!”  Mary in Missouri

“Your new book is so perfectly apropos for this moment. I am reading it slowly, meditatively, and prayerfully.”  Mark in Oregon

“My wife rarely reads any Christian literature, but as soon as your book arrived, she picked it up and expressed how happy she was to read it after reading the first few pages.  I am savouring each chapter, and it is an excellent read. It is so refreshing to read something that doesn’t try to line up all the dates and prophetic ducks.” Len in Canada

“I want you to know how much I am enjoying it and how my spirit is resonating with your words. They paint such a beautiful picture of Jesus’ love for his bride and his purposes at the end of the age.  Thank you for publishing this book.” Kim on Instagram

Thanks to those who have already written to me about this book. I appreciate your thoughts. If you don’t have your copy, you can order it from Amazon on Kindle or in paperback. The ebook is only $4.99, and the paperback is $7.99.

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Chapter 13: Riding the Wind

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Note: This is the thirteenth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to ensure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

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My life is a disaster. If it’s not car repair bills, it’s sick children or someone gossiping about me at work. Why does life have to be so difficult, especially since my husband passed away? I try to get God to fix things, so my life is smoother, but fail at it. What am I doing wrong?

Charmaine, 32-year-old accountant and single mom in Atlanta, GA

Dear Charmaine,

I’m so sorry your life feels so complicated; you are a single mom doing extraordinary things with your two delightful children. I’m sure you miss their dad every day. Sometimes life is like whack-a-mole, one thing after another. Honestly, however, feeling in control isn’t always the blessing it promises to be.

The most control I’ve ever had was walking onto a football field under the Friday night lights as the head official of a high school football game. That was one of the ways I paid for my university expenses. For the next two and half hours, my word was law. Every decision I made would be final as two teams battled each other. The coaches could yell all they wanted, but all the power was mine, and I loved it. 

When you’re young, everyone else makes decisions for you—parents, teachers, coaches, employers, and older people. Part of the maturing process is to take increasing control over your own choices. In adulthood, depending on whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee, a homeowner or a renter, chairperson or committee member, people seek out as much power as they can muster. Most divorces are not caused by disagreements over finances, sexual frequency, or other “irreconcilable differences”, but control. Who gets to make the decisions? 

If growing to adulthood is about gaining control, I’ve learned that growing through adulthood is about letting go of the power you’ve gained for a greater good. Better opportunities present themselves when we are not manipulating others or trying to control every circumstance. A maturing marriage will learn to share power so that neither feels like the victim of the other.

So, Charmaine, you’re not doing anything wrong. Life in a broken world will confront us with a host of challenges. Riding the wind of the Spirit is not only about discerning his voice but also about surrendering to our circumstances, knowing he’s at work in them, too. To stay in control, you have to grip tightly and always be on guard; to flow with your circumstances only takes a submissive heart and a listening ear. 

The calamities that befall us now can help shape us to live at the end of the age when our challenges will be beyond us all. You won’t be able to insure, buy, or pray your way out of them. We are already seeing major catastrophes that destroy lives and cost billions to pay for recovery. The things that need to happen to bring redemption’s story to its conclusion are not the things we would choose for ourselves. The only question is how will we live in light of them.

 

Power Isn’t All It’s Cracked up to Be

Those who have learned to give up control and entrust themselves to God’s care and keeping will be able to thrive in the difficult days to come.  

In Revelation, John saw an innumerable multitude in white robes coming out of the tribulation, and one of the elders told him, “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”  (Revelation 7:17)

Out of much suffering and struggle through the darkest pages of human history, they will arrive in the final Kingdom provided for and comforted, never to suffer again. To survive those days, they will need resilient trust in God that can take them through the darkest of circumstances, still leaning into his care and voice, especially when it disappoints their most ardent expectations.

Those who do will have to let go of the need to control their circumstances and rely on the guidance of Jesus through their fears. We dare not be like the three-year-old toddler who cries when he doesn’t get what he wants instead of learning the ways of his parents, which would be for his own good. Besides, the people who fight for control are rarely pleasant people to be around. They are like that three-year-old, serving their own needs at the expense of everyone else around them and fraught with frustration and anger. 

In my younger days, when I still fought for control, I mistakenly believed prayer was the ultimate weapon for gaining it. You can’t do better than enlisting God’s power to get what we think we need or thwart anyone trying to derail you. I would quote Bible verses about God’s ability to do anything and pray endlessly for what I wanted. It doesn’t take long to realize that prayer is not for meeting our control needs when our unanswered requests start piling up.

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” (Psalm 23:4) David knew that God rarely wants to do away with the valley but to walk with us through it. The time and energy we waste attempting to use prayer to leverage control of our lives is astounding. I’ve known people to pray in mortuary freezers for multiple weeks, just certain God is going to raise their loved one from the dead. Can God do such things?  Of course he can, but our attempts to get him to do it at our whim will waste time and energy that would be better put toward learning to lay down our lives in love. 

We live in the chaos of an ever-darkening world, and calamity falls on the just and the unjust. We cannot wish it away or even pray it away, but we can come to rest in our circumstances as we ask Jesus to help us navigate them. 

 

The Great Illusion

I found it much easier to give up control when I realized it was only an illusion, and what drove me to seek control was my lack of trust in my Father’s work. No matter what dangers you can mitigate by whatever power you gain, you can’t get them all. Who would have thought four months ago that I would need back surgery and, barring healing, have to navigate cancer for the rest of my life? 

As powerful as I felt walking onto that football field, I was still at the mercy of the weather and the cooperation of the players and coaches. In recent weeks, there have been many people in Los Angeles whose futures have been decimated by the wind and wildfires that destroyed their homes and neighborhoods. No amount of planning or power could stop what had happened. Yes, you can manipulate some circumstances and people, but not all of them, and trying to do so is not how we follow Jesus.

The desire for control is mainly driven by fear, fear we’re not enough, fear that we’ll have to suffer, and fear that God won’t take care of us. If fear is the opposite of love, as I said in the last chapter, then we would instead go where love leads us and not where fear does. You cannot love someone you are trying to control, even if you convince yourself you’re only looking for their best interests. 

It isn’t easy to give up our fears, but that is where love can help us most. Whatever I fear, I need only ask, “What is it about your love, Father, that I don’t understand, and if I did, I would not be afraid. Ultimately, giving up control, or our illusion of control, is about finding freedom from our fears inside his love. 

Without giving Sara all the power over the future of our marriage when her trauma exploded, I would not be inside her healing today. Or, If I had tried to take back my position with the institutional power I had when my co-pastor betrayed me, many people would have gotten hurt, and I wouldn’t have come to know the truth about God’s love that I know today. That’s why community is rare in religious settings because people often fight over power instead of loving each other.   

But let me be extra careful with those of you who have significant, unresolved trauma in your past. You’ll know because you’re afraid of every potential threat. Your amygdala lights up and triggers responses to try to take back control of the situation, even when there is no need to. Asking people like that to give up control is like asking a bird not to sing. You’ll never be able to give up control until you first let Jesus process your trauma with you. Until Jesus disarms the fears that drive your need to control others, you won’t be able to let go of the control you think you need.  

 

Jesus’s Passion

The best example of someone giving up control is Jesus himself. That might have been what his gut-wrenching prayers did in Gethsemane that night. He had to let go of his desire to control the situation coming at him and be at rest enough to follow God’s heart through his anguish for the next day. Remember, Jesus had the power to stop it all at any point. 

Giving up the desire to control what we can has to begin with the same kind of honest, raw, and submissive prayer Jesus offered in the Garden. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) He was honest about his reluctance to follow God through all the suffering that lay ahead for him, though he was never deterred from the result. He wanted to find another way to our redemption, but in the end surrendered to the way it had to be. 

That’s the reason Jesus told us to deny ourselves. He wasn’t encouraging an ascetic lifestyle of self-denial but warning us that if our foremost desire is to have what we want we’ll get caught up in the mistaken notion that our business is the Father’s business. When we are no longer resisting our circumstances, it is easier to discern God’s will in them. 

That night Jesus gave himself over to the disciple who would betray him to the others, who would flee from him to the religious leaders, who would lie about him to Pilate, who would make him a pawn in his political games, and to the soldiers who would beat him and then execute him. Choosing not to resist any of it, he found a Father big enough to hold him through it. 

There’s something strangely liberating about not having to resist the painful circumstances that befall us. Trying to change our circumstances when God is at work in them will frustrate us with questions about how hard or how often we need to pray. Letting God walk you through dark circumstances allows all of his goodness to be in play, and when it serves him to change them, he can let us know.  

Sometimes the greatest act of love is to stop fighting, surrender to your circumstance, and see what God wants to do. Persevering in prayer is something Scripture encourages us to do, but not when our desires conflict with his. The time and energy we waste trying to change our circumstances when he is not in it would be better used to grow our trust.

 

Navigating Without Control 

In learning to give up control, I have found these ideas helpful. Perhaps they will be so for you as well.  

1.  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Jesus could have called a legion of angels to avoid going to the cross. Imagine if he had! When we live by control, we always do what we can to get our way and miss so much that God wants to do in the things we resist. This is where we need to be led by his Spirit rather than by our fears and doubts.

2.   Just because God can doesn’t mean he will. Prayer needs to focus on God’s activity far more than our desires. Jesus only did the things he saw his Father doing.

3.  Don’t make it about yourself. Self-centric thinking is a death-knell to being available to the work of the Spirit. My friend Luis had a dream one night with Jesus and him talking on a park bench. Jesus asked him if he knew why Jonah did what he did. Thinking for a moment, Luis responded that his fear of the Assyrians listening to him and repenting was more than he could bear. He wanted them destroyed, so he ran. 

Then Luis realized he was talking to Jesus, so he asked why Jonah did what he did. What Jesus said next in the dream is the best commentary I’ve ever heard on the book of Jonah, and it is in five words: “He made it about himself.”

Just hearing those words gives me chills. How often have I made it about myself and shaped my prayers and efforts around that? Luis and I stood at a wedding not long after watching the family drama around who would do what at the wedding. Tempers were flaring, and tension was rising. We just sat back and watched. They were making it about themselves when the bride and groom were all that mattered. 

4.  How can I not make it about myself?  Follow what love brings, not fear. It’s hard, I know. Love whispers to us; fear has a megaphone and blasts its agenda in both ears. Quiet yourself in his love and follow that.   

5.  Ask yourself, what is God saying/doing in this? Is there a higher redemptive purpose here than my comfort or getting my way?  My rule of thumb is this: when I don’t know, I surrender to my circumstances, looking for God to give me the wisdom and courage to face them. In other words, he doesn’t have to show me my need to submit to them because that’s my default. If he wants to change them, he can show me that, too.

6. If you’ve resisted some circumstances through effort or prayer, and they persist, then you know God is using them. When I was first diagnosed with cancer, Jesus and I spoke about it often. I’d love for him to heal it without medicine, but despite my prayers and those of hundreds of others, it hasn’t happened. So, I stopped trying to get God to heal me and asked him how he wanted me to walk through the difficult process doctors are using to put it in remission. I use my strength there rather than constantly second-guessing how I should pray.  

Letting go of the need to control is not to become a victim of circumstance. It’s quite the opposite; riding the winds of circumstance is how we find victory over them and watch God work in them for his glory. 

 

Out of Weakness… Strength 

Paul tried to get Jesus to stop a messenger from Satan who harassed him and his ministry. He begged for it to be taken away three times but with no success. Then Jesus told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

So, Paul concludes, “For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” That’s someone riding the wind of circumstances instead of being conflicted by them. 

The secret to following Jesus comes by recognizing he works out of our weakness more than our strengths. His strength comes in the midst of the things we beg him to remove. But it is in those times when we are beyond our limit that he appears to do his greatest work in us. 

The more we resist our circumstances, the more they own us and the less focused we will be on what God is doing in them.

Chapter 13: Riding the Wind Read More »

Chapter 12: Rise and Shine

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Note: This is the twelfth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to ensure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

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I love your books Wayne, but this one is making me nervous. If I’m going to be alive at the end of this age, how would you tell me to prepare myself? Scriptures tell us to be alert and persevere, but I don’t know if I will not stick with Jesus if life becomes too difficult, and that could happen living in Israel. 

Benjamin, a university student in Tel Aviv studying IT 

Hi Benjamin, 

Let me encourage you not to try to prepare yourself. Like most things in Jesus’s kingdom, the direct route rarely serves us best. I remember as a child, through a critical miscommunication I ended up on the bus home from school without any of my three other brothers aboard, which never happened. When I arrived home an hour later, my fears had convinced me that I’d missed the rapture, especially since my parents were nowhere to be found.

I thought the only chance I had left to be saved was to prepare to face the Antichrist and resist the Mark of the Beast. That’s a tall order for a twelve-year-old in an afternoon. Fortunately, my family came home a few hours later, and we sorted out the misunderstanding. My crisis was averted, but looking back, I realize how crazy that was. To think I could prepare myself for anything like that, even at my age today, would be the height of hubris. 

The drive of human effort is a well-set trap. It eats up our time and energy, with nothing meaningful to show for it. We think if someone gives us a plan, we will be able to follow it, but doing it is not in our power. I used to read Jesus’ encouragements about being alert and diligent, loving my enemies, or laying our lives down without reminding myself of the most essential one—“Apart from me, you can do nothing.” 

In these last few chapters, we’ll discover how followers of Jesus will be equipped for the last days, but I want to be very careful how I invite people into that. This is less about how we prepare ourselves for what is to come and more about how we let him prepare us. Never let “apart from me, you can do nothing” get far from your awareness. It’s not skills we need but increasing awareness of and dependence upon him. 

It has taken me decades to lose the religious sensibilities of Christianity that distorted the life of Jesus in me rather than enhanced it. If I can shorten that trajectory for anyone else, this book is worth my time. There is so much to unlearn and so much to discover. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can only offer some tips to help you recognize how he leads you.

 

The Dawn Is at Hand

I love Paul’s advice to the Romans, which both warned them not to be distracted from true things by their daily necessities and encouraged them to wake up to a larger reality.

“But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed.” Paul (Romans 13:11-12 MSG)

If Paul was asking first-Century Christians to live with this in mind, how much more those of us who live at least 2000 years later? It is nearer for us than it ever was for them. And yet, how much easier is it for us to get lost in the demands of daily living that we miss the greater calling that rests on us? We belong to a greater kingdom, culminating in the redemption of all Creation. All he asks of us is to stay awake. 

You may have read He Loves Me and discovered the God you hoped for was real. You may have read The Shack and knew there was a different way to know God inside your pain. You may have read So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore and discovered that your hunger for authentic community can be fulfilled. Now, it’s time to hear God summoning a people whose loyalty is to him alone and whose spirits are attuned to his heart and the times we live in. 

When we lose sight of his purpose in the world, it is easy to get lazy in our faith. When Jesus invites us to awaken or challenges us to stay alert, it cannot be out of fear. Fear is unsustainable and triggers responses internally that will make you less sensitive to him. We stay connected best by enjoying him and looking with anticipation at the possibility of his coming. 

Those who enjoy their walk with Jesus will have all they need at hand. Those who live in fear will lack at every turn. As we will see, fear is not a motivation in this kingdom. If we get to know him well enough, we will find no fear inside his love. 

 

Is That Why He Waits? 

I have often wondered why God seemingly delays the second coming of Jesus. Has he set a specific date in the future, or is he waiting for the world to grow darker than it already is? Certainly, it has gone on far longer than the earliest followers of Jesus would have believed; they thought it would come in their lifetime. 

Now, I wonder if God is waiting for a generation of his followers who will prepare the way for his coming, as John the Baptist prepared the way for his first one. I don’t see one person doing this, but might the bride of Christ, in her collective beauty, prepare the way for the second? And by the bride, I don’t mean all those who attend religious services; I mean those whose hearts belong to him and are learning to listen to him. 

Perhaps already Jesus stands at the threshold of human history, knocking and waiting for enough of his followers to invite him inside to finish the story of redemption. It may be that God awaits a generation who can say wholeheartedly, “Even so, come Lord Jesus,” in the full weight of knowing the risk they are taking. We’ll never be those people as long as we enjoy the world the way it is or fear the days of his coming. 

 

Challenging Times Ahead

The Day of the Lord will be a great day. Jesus will appear in the clouds as he makes his way to Mt. Zion to subdue the darkness of our world and redeem the Creation from the devastation and trauma of human selfishness. However, the days that precede it are dark and brutal. 

My opening illustration about missing the rapture came from the fear-based religious environment in which I was raised. No one wanted to miss the rapture because it was our ticket out of the horrors the world would go through at the end of this age. But that came from the mistaken belief that Jesus would evacuate the faithful before the world got too dark. I don’t believe that anymore. 

Read Jesus’s account of the end times, or the book of Revelation, looking for when Jesus actually comes. It is always as after the troubles that ravage the earth at the end. That has caused some to argue for two appearances by Jesus, one to rapture out those who are his and a second one where he comes back with them to redeem Creation. In my view, Scripture doesn’t support that possibility. 

For those alive at the end of the age, there’s no doubt they will live through challenging times. Three critical challenges await—the deception of darkness, the calamities of nature, and persecution against the followers of Jesus. It’s fitting to be reminded that Christians already endure all of these today somewhere on the globe. It will just be more widespread at the end of time.

So, what do we need to live through those challenges? We will need a heart that seeks the truth to combat the lies of darkness, as I wrote about in chapter eight. If we are not looking for truth above comfort in our lives today, we’ll be led by anyone saying what our itching ears want to hear. For the calamities of nature, we will need a growing trust in God’s ability to sustain and provide for us, even by supernatural means, if need be. Finally, for persecution we will need to draw on God’s grace when we need it most. Previous generations have shown that this is not only possible but preferable. Persecution has always focused his people and made them stronger.

Jesus promised us that our safety in all these things depends on him, not us. “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28, emphasis mine)

You dare not face the challenge of those days trusting in your own strength. Trusting his is what you want him to cultivate. No matter the circumstance, he is big enough to hold you in the storm. He will show you the truth if you want it, provide for you through any calamity, and strengthen you to stand in any persecution. 

 

He Is Already Preparing You

Where do we get this trust to endure the unthinkable? God can supernaturally give it to us in the last moment if he needs to, but he’d prefer that we learn to live there in the challenges we already face today. That’s why the New Testament writers said to rejoice in suffering; it can produce the very things we’ll need most in the last few days—perseverance, character, and hope. (Romans 5:3-4) The truth is, we need those things today, too. 

Whatever troubles we go through with him today will prepare us for more difficult challenges ahead. One of the motivations of my own journey is to take whatever life throws at me—betrayal, scarcity, aggression, disease, even persecution—and bring it inside my relationship with Jesus. Our stresses today can prepare us for greater challenges to come if we lean on him and do not give in to the bitterness of self-pity. 

Ask him to teach you how to rely on his grace daily; when the time comes, you’ll be ready for whatever happens. As you seek what’s true, even when it challenges you, when you trust God’s provision both physically and spiritually at the end of your rope, and when you suffer for being a follower of Jesus, absorb the pain inside his love. That’s where you’ll find Jesus’s presence, wherever love draws you, and in whatever way you can offer that love to others, even those who wrong you. 

Remember, apart from Jesus, we are insufficient for any of this, but with him inside us showing us the way, we will learn some incredible things. When we find love in less challenging days, we’ll grow to trust his love when in more difficult ones. 

You cannot learn this from a book or a seminar because it is not a matter of technique but growing trust in his love and in learning the power of love in times of crisis. That is what Jesus wants to shape in you as you learn to follow him. I can’t give you a standard approach because we all start from different places and face different challenges. Yet, he will shape our hearts through the very circumstances that we experience, both pleasant and painful. 

 

The Power of Love 

Love is the opposite of fear, so when we are afraid, we know there’s more we need to learn about love. We dare not give in to fear in the circumstances we face or even about the events at the end of the age. Anything we do from fear is destined to fail in the same way our own human effort will. It also desensitizes us to his work and his voice inside us. The first thing we all need to learn is to lean out of fear and into love, where we’ll find the freedom we seek. 

The same trust that will get you to the end of the world is the same trust that will allow you to triumph over the struggle you’re having today. 

It may seem unfair if you find yourself alive in that last generation. Why should we have to face a more significant challenge than those before us? It reminds me of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, wishing these events had not happened to him. 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

Whether his coming is in two years or two hundred, if you’re alive during those times, it’s because God has chosen you to be, and his love will be sufficient to carry you through it. Take hope in that and know that all those who have gone before you will be cheering and praying for you to succeed in the face of those troubles that precede his coming. 

 

Your Light Has Come 

The end of this age is “crunch time” for the followers of Jesus. This is where it all resolves, and if you focus on the challenges of those days instead of the opportunities, you’ll be defeated before you begin. 

Our focus for the last days does not need to be on the challenges but on the glory to come. One day, Jesus responds to the invitation of his bride in the words of Isaiah 61, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.”

Those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes, who learn to love as he loved, will be a bright light in the growing darkness of a world separating itself from God. That’s how we anticipate his coming, not hunkering down with all the challenges it might present, but with an awakening to the reality that God the Father as the Ruler of All will be revealed in his children.

In those days his light will arise, and the glory of God will rest on his children. This is why we remain on this earth: to reflect his glory. We do not belong to the night; we are children of the light. 

That’s how Paul encouraged the followers of his day: 

“But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.” (I Thessalonians 5:4-5)

Those who follow him will not be surprised when these darker events unfold; they’ll see it coming and respond with joy—the bridegroom is at hand!

 

 

 

Chapter 12: Rise and Shine Read More »

Chapter 11: Love, Rest, and Play

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Note: This is the eleventh in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

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I have been to every prayer school and intercession meeting that came into my orbit. I have pounded on heaven’s doors for the redemption of the world and for so many healings and miracles only to see meager results. I am rarely able to discern how he might respond. Can you help me understand how to engage God more consistently?
Tisha, 83-year-old widow who describes herself as a frustrated intercessor

Dear Tisha,

Unfortunately, I don’t think your experience is uncommon at all. It seems we both grew up in a time where being a radical follower of Jesus meant praying earnestly, sometimes hours a day in hopes of getting God to act on our behalf. For the first 40 years of my journey, I thought the key to an effective prayer life was intensity and desperation. That’s what we thought we needed to get God’s attention and ingratiate ourselves to him.

Groveling in repentance, repeating our requests repeatedly with a rising pitch, and trying to convince ourselves that if we believed enough, he had to give us what we prayed for. I spent countless hours in rooms full of people praying fervently, only to walk out having to convince ourselves that God was moved even though we rarely saw those times producing any fruit. Believing harder, praying harder, and trying to live more righteously didn’t endear God to our requests.

It appears you’ve been more tenacious in this than most, who gave up at much younger ages, convinced that they didn’t have what it took to engage God. I hope you’ll be able to take the passion you have had to discern God’s ways and perhaps channel it more effectively.

Gaze with Me

Four years ago, I helped start a gathering of men and women from different countries to pray about God’s work in the world. I’d known all of them for multiple decades and had witnessed them making choices to follow Jesus even when it cost them deeply. We shared a concern for the growing delusion among many Christians, who were no longer following the heart of Jesus but pursuing their own political and economic gain.

From the early days of our prayers, God revealed insights that have shaped many of us in our prayers together. Early on, he taught us how to gaze with him and not at him. That may sound like a small distinction, but it’s not. In many of my prayers, I would offer to God the need I was concerned about, placing it before him, hoping to catch his gaze and, by that, get him to act.

Gazing with him was a different thing entirely. We were still bringing our requests to him, but instead of standing between us, he invited us to stand alongside him and view our concerns from his perspective. It changed us. Standing with him in his might and power altered our perspective, and we learned to see our concerns inside his purpose instead of our desires. What would glorify his name and further his purpose in the world?

It’s difficult to be desperate when you’re standing inside his purpose, with all his resources at hand. Instead of praying out of our anxieties that God wouldn’t do what we hoped, he showed us the environment in which we best engage him, not only with our concerns but, more importantly, coming to know his. Three words summed up the spirit of our engagement with him—love, rest, and play. They became the watchwords of our engagements with him. Whenever we would lean toward anxiety or desperation, they would invite us back to the environment where our time with him offered greater insight and more effectiveness.

As we discovered the power of love, rest, and play, we spoke less to God as our adversary or as the reluctant rich uncle who needed to be prodded. Instead, we found a generous God deeply steeped in his desires to win the world into his goodness and drive out the darkness, not by the sheer force of his word, but by the gentle transformation of his people.

Jesus encouraged his disciples not to give into anxiety or the idea that worrying would add anything to God’s work. In the words of Eugene Peterson, he told his disciples, “What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving” (Matthew 6:31). What a shift in thinking! I spent forty years trying to get from God—get saved, get a healing, get a ministry, or get my prayers answered. Instead of working through my prayer list every day, I began to ask a simple question. “Father, what are you giving me today? Who are you giving me to love? What do you want to show me about yourself? How do you want to resolve the crisis I’m in?” Quite naturally, I abandoned my agenda and kept my eyes open for what He was doing around me.

Shifting from desperation to love, rest, and play is a steep learning curve. Nothing in my religious background prepared me for it and risking some of the methods of old made me wonder whether we were on a fool’s errand. It didn’t turn out that way at all. Instead, it allowed us to enter into his work with a relaxed heart that allowed us to see what he was wanting to say to us.

So how do you experience love, rest, and play with God? I’ll break it down for you in the rest of this chapter but, believe me, this is not something you’ll learn from an article, book, or seminar. You can’t mimic someone else’s language and hope to see results. This is a journey the Holy Spirit wants to take you on so that as a genuine expression of your own heart and life, love, rest, and play become the measure of your life in him.

Love

What Jesus accomplished on the cross was to prove how much the Father and Son love us, even when we struggle with sin or doubt. As beloved sons or daughters, we are welcome in his presence without the need to grovel for acceptance. Our invitation there is marked with confident belonging. We are loved by him more than we love ourselves, and his desires to work in us and around us have greater aspirations than our own.

If we come to God intimidated by his majesty, fearful that God won’t be enough, or that his way won’t be the best way, we have blinded ourselves before we begin. We may think we know what God wants, but so often we are wrong. While we want the direct approach to our comfort, God takes the eternally transformative route, which rarely means he wants to fix every hard or painful circumstance. I don’t believe for a minute that he causes hardship for us; he knows the world is dark enough to challenge us. He just wants to thwart that darkness, rarely by removing the challenge, but by using it to transform us ever more into his faithful children.

Learning to be confident in his love is a powerful process that can take significant time in our journey. As John described it late in his life, “And so we have come to know and come to rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” (I John 4:16) Even though John was one of Jesus closest disciples he had a learning curve as well. Early on he wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn up the Samaritans not realizing that spirit in him seeking retribution was not the Spirit of God.

In time, though, he came to learn just how loved he was and how to live out of that love toward others. So much so that he also said that’s how you know someone is born of God, because they live out of love (I John 4:7-8). When you know you’re loved, then you can engage God about the things that concern you with gentleness. Desperation has no place because you know that his love will be big enough to walk you through whatever may come. And not trying so hard to get what I want makes it easier to see what he is already doing.

Living in love is a beacon all its own, lighting the dark places with the quiet confidence that Father is at work around me and wants me to participate with him. Trusting his love will even set us at ease when he seems quiet, because we’re confident of his working even when we don’t see him.

Rest

Even the Old Testament teaches that we are best able to know God’s heart when we are at rest in him. “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it” (Isaiah 30:15). For some reason we prefer to earn our own way, which is impossible with the things of God. That’s why he gave them the Sabbath, to remind them to trust God’s provision and not strive endlessly in their own flesh. Instead, they came to see the Sabbath as its own laborious taskmaster.

But the Sabbath rest in God’s eyes was about far more than to take a day off once per week; it was a way of life. Hebrews 3 and 4 underscore that reality. The writer said that Israel never entered into God’s rest, even with their preoccupation for all the Sabbath rules. So, he reminded the followers of Jesus that a rest remains for us to embrace where we “cease from their works, just as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:10).

How can we live at rest in his work? As he deepens our trust, we will come to rely on his power, instead of ourselves and our performance. Even the act of praying with desperation and “crying out to God” is an attempt for our efforts to impress God and compel him to act. False religious thinking almost always focuses on performance and proving ourselves worthy of the answer we seek. How many of us in desperation have tried to impress God by acting more righteous or more confident than we really were? As long as we invest the success of our engagement with God by our own abilities, we will miss how he works. When we finally realize that our human effort cannot accomplish any Godly thing and that “apart from him we can do nothing,” then we are ready to learn the power of engaging God already at rest in his work, instead of trying to push ours.

That doesn’t mean we do nothing, parking ourselves on a sofa and leaving it all up to him. He wants to share his work with us, and when you come to recognize how God works, then you will know what he wants from you. You’ll no longer lash out in fear and doubt hoping to manipulate God with your attitude or actions.

That’s where life becomes exciting because we don’t have to accomplish anything for God, just simply respond to him however he may guide you.

Play

References to love and rest are easily seen throughout Scripture, and knowing how they shape our relationship with God, it’s easier to see. But play is a different story; the only scriptures that refer to play accuse Israel of “playing the harlot.”

But one cannot read the Gospels honestly without seeing a playful Jesus, inviting people into his kingdom. Whether it’s with a Samaritan woman by a well, or a Pharisee late at night trying to understand what it is to be born again. And one cannot know God without realizing he is the most playful presence in the universe. I often see his playfulness in the unfolding of circumstances or “coincidences” that bring a smile to my face at the same time they speak safety to my heart.

For example, one day I was grieving the loss of a close relationship because of some lies spread about me. On my way to meet a friend at a restaurant, I struggled with what I should do to repair the relationship. I sensed he wanted me to leave it in hands and not fret over it. As I walked into the restaurant, signed up for a table and sat down, the refrain of Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds, which was playing over the sound system began to wash over my soul. “Don’t worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” I smiled, certain that God was winking at me. And you know what, everything did turn out alright.

I don’t really know you can wrap your heart around this reality until you discover for yourself just how playful God can be with you. Some of the most humorous thoughts I’ve had seem to have come from him. And, yes, this is far, far away from my religious sensibilities as a youth. I used to be terrified of God, thinking he was austere and serious about everything and any attempt to bring levity into the presence of God was considered blasphemous.

Any good teacher will tell you that humor and play are the best ways to help people learn, just like any father would do with his children. Play connects us to intimacy while allowing us the distance of humor to grasp the power of truth. The Scriptures that help us connect with play are those that speak so positively about laughter, joy, and childlikeness. “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Children are always at play; humor and laughter draw them into a conversation, and if you can engage that way, you will be able to teach them far more than yelling at them will accomplish.

It is possible for us to become so serious about God and ourselves that we shuffle our way past what God wants to reveal to us. Why wouldn’t a light-hearted approach to God be more fruitful than a heavy-hearted one? I find when I come to him with a childlike heart, I’m more attuned to him and relaxed enough to recognize his thoughts as well as to enjoy the relationship with him. Being playful with God is not disrespectful or sacrilegious since it originates in him. That doesn’t mean God isn’t serious when the times call for it, but with his children he often plays them into his reality with a wink and a nod.

I visited a family outside Edmonton, Alberta, Canada one fall and I could not believe how many toys they had to go out and play with in the ice and snow, and how much cold weather gear filled the closets and garage. When I remarked on it one day, the father responded, “It is so cold here for so long that if you don’t learn to play in it, it will own you.”

The same is true of the darkness and brokenness of this world, especially as we approach the end of the age. If you don’t learn to play with God in the pain and challenge of it all, it will own you. I’m discovering that afresh in a recent diagnosis of bone cancer that has already destroyed a vertebra in my back and has landed me on chemo to bring it to remission. In times past I would have lain awake in tears and pleading with God to spare me this stretch of the journey. This time, I’ve been able to entrust it to my relationship with God, knowing I’m deeply loved, that he is at work in some way amid  this extremity, and that I can be playful with him while we see where this goes.

I can’t imagine any posture being more helpful at the end of the age than those who can navigate difficulties inside love, rest, and play, especially when we know the outcomes of all these things. In time, whether in this life or the next, all will be well!

So, Tisha, when you sit down with God or take a walk with him in the woods, cultivate the environment where you can be confident in his love for you, at rest in his work on your behalf, and at play with his goodness. This is where you’ll find yourself at home in him and he will be at home in you.

There’s no better place to be attuned to his heart and able to see how his goodness is unfolding in you despite the situations that surround you.

 

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You can access previous chapters here.  Stay Tuned for Chapter 12.

Chapter 11: Love, Rest, and Play Read More »

Chapter 10: Only One Thing Matters

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Note: This is the tenth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

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In your last letter you wrote, “The performance-based approach to God blinds us to the relational journey.” Can you unpack that more? Every day, I succumb to temptation, when I know better, struggle to apply godly disciplines, and feel his disappointment far more than I feel his love. I’ve been at this for over twenty-five years and want to find my footing on an authentic journey with Jesus.
Leo, surgical sales rep, and father of two in Tennessee

Thanks for writing, Leo. Your email makes my heart sad because I hear it so often. As much as Christianity teaches that Jesus has “paid the price for our sin” or “met all the requirements of the law,” it still loads us up with behavioral expectations that keeps us focused on our failures and blinds us to his love growing in our hearts. 

Even those who believe Jesus declared them righteous still labor under the obligation to appease him. Intuitively they know that the cross had to be about more than perpetual immunity that lets us live by our own desires without consequence. However, all our solutions to mitigate that put people back on the performance treadmill, which fails to yield the fruit Scripture says are ours—love irresistible, life in abundance, peace through trouble, and fullness of joy even in desperate times. Then we’re left to wonder where we went wrong or how God failed us? 

Let me see if I can help you get off that treadmill, Leo. It is well-designed to keep us so preoccupied with our personal righteousness that we miss the only thing that matters. Like the serpent’s lie in the garden, it preys on our best intentions. Who wouldn’t want to be like God, which is what our preoccupation with trying to be righteous seeks to do? It just doesn’t work because it depends on our effort.

 

A Different Way of Living

 

Jesus showed us how to live differently and then gave us everything we needed to walk as he did. He was not preoccupied with sin or living in fear of God’s punishment. He didn’t pursue personal piety or think himself excluded from God by the lack of it. 

But he was God, some might argue, so he didn’t battle the same temptations we do. Scripture tells us he did. Though he never gave into sin, it came for him unrelentingly, in ways we could never imagine. He experienced every temptation we do, and yet they couldn’t win over him. Why? Was he just strong enough to resist? Or did he hold a place inside his Father’s heart where temptation lost its appeal? 

I’m convinced it is the latter, and that is exactly what he offers us. Trying to gain personal righteousness is the greatest distraction I know to true discipleship. Those who focus on sin, especially those who work to abstain from it, will find themselves in a perpetual whirlpool of failed effort and its resulting shame, or they will pretend to have success in “major” sins as they seek refuge in the delusion of self-righteous arrogance. The second of those is far worse than the first. 

Both scenarios completely miss the point of God saving us from wherever our lives got twisted or broken. The salvation Jesus offered is to give us freedom from darkness and invite us into his life. By making it about heaven and hell instead, we emptied the cross of its power. We were taught that a “sinner’s prayer”, a commitment of faith, inviting Jesus into our heart, or being baptized, seals the deal. Having our eternal destiny secured, knowing his love became optional and no longer connected to the essence of salvation.  

You can’t live long in Christianity without being plagued by a call to righteousness and the competitiveness and comparisons it engenders that pit fellow believers against each other. And when we tie God’s favor to that, it gets even more destructive. If we do enough, he will bless us, answer our prayers, and keep us from harm. So, any time we endure hardship, we can blame ourselves for falling short of his righteousness, which leads to endless self-effort and second guessing our motives, or God’s. 

That’s why people can campaign for a biblical morality even as they treat people around them with indifference, anger, or deceit. The religious view of righteousness cannot produce a life of love. Perhaps Paul himself is the greatest example of that. Even though he was faultless as to the law, he became the “worst of sinners” by murdering God’s people. 

 

Aren’t We Supposed to Seek Righteousness?

 

Given all that Scripture says about righteousness, these may be difficult words for many to swallow. Christianity has landed on a fixation with righteousness that produces the opposite of what it intends. Personal godliness is not the goal of our faith; it is the fruit of a life lived inside God’s love. If you’re not living in that love, nothing you do externally will make any difference for you or for God. 

I have long known that our preoccupation with personal piety and trying to fight temptation is the greatest distraction to people experiencing the love and life of Jesus and the fruit that bears. And yet, the quest for righteousness fits so well into our religious paradigm. Of course, God wants us to be holy. So, we think that means we must work against sin by devotion, commitment, and accountability. And while those can help us overcome specific sins, they will not lead us to his fullness. 

What if the word ‘righteousness’ is not even in the Bible? I know what you’re thinking, and I thought it too when I first heard that from a South African theologian. His email couldn’t have been timelier, since I was already well into this chapter when I got it. Even still, it took a while for me to understand what he was saying. At first, I was ready to delete the email, thinking this was yet another nutjob spouting some weird doctrine. Of course, righteousness is in the Bible. I could think of at least fifteen verses mentioning righteousness just off the top of my head and knew there were dozens more. In fact, it is difficult to talk about the Gospel or Christianity in our day without using the word righteous. 

But what if it is a mistranslation of a Greek word? That’s what Tobie van der Westhuizen from Bloemfontein, South Africa had concluded after eight years of study. The more I read, the more convinced I became that he was on to something. His research could have profound implications in what the Reformation left incomplete. With his permission, I share a bit of it here. 

How did he come to such a conclusion? Part of it was by reading Plato’s Republic in Greek. More than three hundred-and-fifty-times Plato uses the word our Bibles translate as righteousness. But reading Plato’s book with that in mind, it made no sense. Then he found English translations of that text that used ‘just’ and ‘justice’ instead of ‘righteous’ and righteousness’. Except for a few exceptions, only in the Bible is this word translated as ‘righteousness.’ 

Tobie began to read the Scriptures substituting the word ‘justice’ and ‘just’ for ‘righteousness’ and ‘righteous’, and it made much more sense. As I read the Scriptures that way, I realized God’s love had already won me into that reality even though I hadn’t had this language for it. We are currently airing some of my conversations with Tobie on my podcast at TheGodJourney.com. 

Any Bible scholar will tell you that righteousness and justice are related words, and most Greek dictionaries use justice as one of its definitions. However, justice offers a wider lens than our popular ideas about righteousness. Whatever you love about God’s righteousness is already inside justice, though justice expands it to include how we treat others. That’s why Jesus could say that love will fulfill the whole law. You can’t lie about or steal from someone you love. 

To most people, righteousness speaks of sinlessness, personal piety and devotion. Focusing on those things is a valuable tool for the religion we’ve sculpted around Christianity, but it puts people on the religious treadmill, striving for something they can never attain. It keeps them guilty and in fear, and thus much easier to manipulate. The only way to survive guilt is to take Martin Luther’s tack that our righteousness is imputed in Christ. Thus, we are declared righteous, no matter how we live. It allows people to live under a perpetual immunity at an abstract level, while still captive to darkness of their flesh. 

 

God’s Kind of Justice

 

That’s why people focused on righteousness never experience the life of God growing inside them. Jesus’s kingdom was not about a declaration; it was about a transformation. If God is focused on justice in an unjust world, it changes the emphasis throughout Scripture. Jesus’s new command to love one another as we are loved by him makes more sense. Instead of being focused on our personal piety, the gospel becomes relational—experiencing his love for us and sharing it with others. 

If you’re equating God’s justice with human justice, you’ll still misunderstand my point. Many think of justice as a legal proceeding often wrapped in vengeance—people getting what they deserve. But God’s justice is not about law at all, and no law could ever bring it about, even his own. God’s justice is laced with love, forgiveness, and mercy as he is more interested in setting things right by resolving our injustices through love. 

Think less about legal systems and more about the power of a just man or just woman living in the earth. I like to think of the “justness” of God—always for what is true, right, and fair, but in a context of mercy and grace. The outworking of forgiveness is not amnesty or immunity, but the opportunity to make right what damage we have caused another. That’s why God’s justice could never come through a system of law one can fulfill by checking the boxes. 

Take three verses for example, substituting justice for righteousness: 

  • Matthew 5:20-21 – For I tell you that unless your justice surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven…
  • Matthew 6:33 – Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice and all these things will be added to you.” 
  • Romans 1:17 For in the gospel the justice of God is revealed—a justice that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The just will live by faith.” 

Do you see how the emphasis changes? As our hearts are shaped by his love, we find ourselves empathetic for others instead of using them to our benefit. That’s why Jesus said that doing to others what we would have them do to us would fulfill all the law and the prophets. This is how we participate in God’s justice—putting ourselves in the place of the other and treating them the way we would want to be treated if you were them. We all hate being treated unfairly but so easily miss when we do it to others. 

Of course, our preoccupation with justice can be just as much a distraction as a quest for righteousness, especially when we do it by our own effort. God’s justice flows out of a heart won into his love. Thus, our passion for God’s kind of justness fulfills itself in growing closer to him, not trying to act better. So, we seek justice by reveling in his love and watching it flow out of us to others. In the end, our preoccupation is with the Father, Son, and Spirit from whom all love and justice flow. Only by seeing how God sets things right in us with his love can we joyfully share that mercy, wisdom, and grace with others. 

In the end, it’s all about love. Give up thinking you can earn God’s, or that your struggles with sin negate it. God’s love is not something we attain; it’s a reality we relax into. It is the very essence of the Gospel itself. That’s why Paul wrote: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Galatians 5:6. 

All other preoccupations are decoys, and religion has given us many. When we focus on personal piety, missions, pleasing a religious leader, or our calling in the world, or even how the church should function, we lose sight of the Head. All those things are simply the fruit of a life of growing trust in God’s love that manifests itself in caring for others. 

Leo, I know this is going to sound strange, but if you are seeking to find the essence of godliness, don’t focus on righteousness or trying to abstain from sin. It won’t lead you to God or his life. What will do that is your awareness of his magnificence and discovering how deeply he loves you.

If our forebears had understood that, they would not have wasted all the time, money, and effort creating religious systems to try to manage people. Our focus on love would have engaged the world even more than our arrogant piety alienated them. Imagine a world where everyone is treated fairly and one that champions mercy above sacrifice. Is it possible in this fallen world? I hope so, but it is possible for me and you to do it in our corner of the world. Our wisdom and generosity can make up for the injustice others have suffered, as is true of God for us. 

 

Making Disciples

 

Wouldn’t this completely alter the way we try to make disciples? By focusing primarily on theological knowledge, disciplines, or sinlessness, religion draws us back to the Law, even if cloaked as “New Testament principles.” Conversion, according to Tobie is not believing the right set of doctrines; it is an engagement with love that converts us from slavery to our narcissistic flesh to an others-focused life of love and mercy. 

Thus, the kingdom Jesus envisioned is not an enclave of like-minded religious thinkers cloistered away from the world while holding fast to doctrines and rituals for comfort. He saw a growing company of just men and just women who would embody his love in the world, living as ambassadors of God’s kingdom in a world gone mad. 

What would discipleship look like then? It would most certainly be less about disciplines, rituals, checklists, and accountability to stop from sinning. It would mean coaching people to recognize and yield to the revelation of Jesus’s love in their own hearts and how to embrace that love as it renews their mind. Then it would encourage them to discover how to share that love freely with people they encounter. And where we struggle, we know that God’s love has still more to teach us. 

That’s it. It may be hard to believe but engaging that kind of love will change your life, freeing you to live inside God’s nature. You’ll discover the Scriptures are a valuable resource to help you know him, learn to engage God in prayer, and discover the conversations of community that will nurture our journey, but you will learn it relationally, not just as an obligation. 

That’s where you will find the connection you seek, Leo. Learning how to participate in his love will accomplish all that the law and prophets were meant to do, and it will happen where it does not depend on human effort. Slowly, you will find yourself living differently in the world because this love will change you at your core. It’s not an excuse to hide your dishonest and selfish ways but will increase our empathy for others so that we can no longer use them for our benefit or watch them suffer unjustly. That’s how love and grace will teach you to say no to fear, selfish ambition, and vain conceit. 

Then you can embody his kingdom in the world by living out easily and freely what Hosea said God wanted.  

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8) 

Let love teach you the power of living justly, the wonder of sharing mercy, and the gentleness of walking humbly, just as God does with you. There is no greater joy than discovering that freedom and no greater purpose than being a light for justice and fairness in a world desperately craving for both. When the end of days comes upon us, those are the people who will bear his light and love in the darkness.

 

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You can access previous chapters here.  Stay Tuned for Chapter 11.

Chapter 10: Only One Thing Matters Read More »

Chapter 9: Eyes to See, Ears to Hear 

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Note: This is the ninth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

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I know there is a supernatural world all around us, but I don’t seem to be tuned into it. What did Jesus mean when he said some were given to know the mysteries of the kingdom and others were not? Would he leave me out? 

— Marcus, former pastor, now car detailer and father of 3 teenagers in Arizona

Marcus, 

I love your hunger and appreciate your concern, but you can rest assured that Jesus wants you to see into his reality more than you want it. 

Unfortunately, many followers of Jesus have only learned to follow the Scriptures or some leader and not his Spirit who guides us into God’s reality. It is so easy to look with our physical eyes or listen with our physical ears and think with our own reasoning, that most people never learn the joy of life in the Spirit. 

Our physical senses and scientific instruments can only measure the physical world, and the more advanced science becomes, the harder it is to recognize the spiritual dimension affecting everything around us. But there is. And yet, our view of the supernatural has been so over-sensationalized in Christian sermons and novels most people miss the genuine while seeking after audible voices or physical engagements with angels and demons.

As mysterious and powerful as the supernatural can be, it mostly doesn’t come to us that way. My encounters are far more normal and natural when they happen than most people would think. It’s only when I look back that I am awed by all that God did. In the retelling, it is easy to embellish and exaggerate stories in a way that cause people to think they are made up, and reject the supernatural or discourage them from seeing it in their own lives. That’s not to say some encounters can’t be awe-inspiring in the moment, but those are extremely rare by design, and if you’re looking for those to be normalized, you will miss just how his Spirit works. 

I’m glad you haven’t given up that hunger, Marcus. There are no rituals or principles, even biblical ones, that can replace a life of perceiving and responding to his work in you. The wind of the Spirit blows across our lives every day inviting us beyond the world that is temporal, and fraught with pain, illusions, and selfishness, so that we can anchor our hearts in the kingdom that is eternal, unshakeable, and true. Learning to sense his movements around us will lead to a growing fullness in his presence as well as provide the courage and wisdom to navigate any difficulties we face.  

He can show you what he wants you to know, feel the emotions God wants you to feel, and to ensure that you see what you need to see to know how to respond to what’s going on around you. I wish more people were tuned to the realm of the Spirit, which is what this letter is about.  

 

What Many Long to See

Jesus told his disciples that “Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” (Matthew 13:16-17) What an amazing gift we’ve been given to see the world around us as God sees it. That hasn’t always been true. Before Jesus’s redemption on the cross that removed our shame and allowed us to rest confidently in his presence, people could not behold him. Still, spiritual blindness can be a problem. 

That’s why Jesus said things like, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them (Matthew 13:11),” or, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Mark 4:23, et al).” It is easy to conclude that only a selected few get to see into the supernatural world. So, Marcus, your question about being left out is a fair one. Many don’t see Jesus engaging them in a way they can recognize, and wonder the same thing. 

Looking closer, however, the ability to perceive was not in Jesus’s hands. He was aware that the realities he was bringing inside the human experience were so incredibly different from the world they lived in, that most people would miss them. That’s what he meant when he talked about a narrow road, “Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Mark 7:14). He wasn’t distinguishing between saved and unsaved, but recognizing that those who learn to follow are going to be few. 

That’s not to say he would only reveal himself to a select group of people, but that only a few would be ready to see and follow. I’ve no doubt Jesus wanted to include everyone, but not everyone was ready to be included. Having eyes and ears that can perceive spiritual reality is available to anyone who is ready. Tuning into that frequency is where we discover what’s true about God, ourselves, and the choices we face, as I talked about in my last letter. 

He wants you to have eyes that see and ears to glimpse into that world enough so that we can live freely in truth. In these ever-darkening days, we will need to be more sensitive to him than ever. 

 

Calluses and Veils

 

So how do we cultivate a heart that can see and hear the secrets of the kingdom? Let’s look at how Jesus spoke of it. 

He said those who could not see had “callused hearts.” (Matthew 13). By that he meant their hearts were hardened to what’s true because they lived so long by their own wisdom and desires, even using the Scriptures to make doctrines of their own preferences. 

So, while seeing, they couldn’t really see, and hearing, they couldn’t really hear. They interpreted everything in their own self-interest. Thus, Jesus disguised his words in parables, so they wouldn’t have to reject him yet again. Each time they ignored his leading, the calluses grew thicker. Those who were ready, he pulled aside for more detailed explanations. 

This same problem impacted the early believers as Paul warned them, in the last days hardened hearts would embrace “a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). It’s easy to turn religion into a practice at the expense of presence. He also wrote of false teachers who acted with hypocrisy and lied habitually because their “consciences have been seared” (1 Timothy 4:2). 

The callused heart or seared conscience seems to result from bypassing the overtures of the Spirit in deference to our own ambitions. This is not people making honest mistakes, but those who persistently ignore the Spirit’s overtures to them until it becomes nearly impossible to recognize him anymore. 

So, it is possible for us to be near God’s things but be blind to his reality. In I Corinthians 3 and 4, Paul spoke of a veil that blinds us to his working. This result from substituting religious performance and arrogance for the desire to know him. He specifically tied it to the reading of Moses, which brings a veil over our hearts (3:14-16) The performance-based approach to God blinds us to the relational journey. And yet, many Christians today want to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms or promote Moses’s example of leadership as a guide for church life. That’s the veil, trying to see God through a legalistic lens.

In the next chapter, Paul wrote of how a similar veil influences the world. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ…” (4:2-4). It is why he preached Christ, because only he can lift the veil to let them see clearly, which is exactly what he wants to do for us. 

So, if you find yourself unable to sense his presence in and around you, or feel you’ve been ignoring his nudges, you may need to turn back to him and ask him to soften your heart. He forgives so readily and over time you’ll begin to recognize his nudges again. But for most people like you, Marcus, I suspect that you’ve not had the opportunity to discover how his Spirit is making himself known to you. 

 

The Prayer

 

The prayer Paul held in his heart for the Colossians (1:9-14 Message), is often one I pray for myself and others:

“(I am) asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works…. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work…. (with) strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.

There is so much in those few words; let them capture you. Holding them in my heart helps me tune to the Spirit’s frequency as I recognize how he is working around me. This is where guilt, self-blame, and desperation are not helpful. Trying to be good for God or filling your head with Bible instruction won’t help either. 

Asking him and being patient will help you discern the spiritual world around you and how his Spirit blows through it. This is less about miraculous signs than it is a growing discernment of what he is doing around you and how he is revealing Jesus to you. Celebrate each nudge you feel, each bit of his wisdom that he puts in your mind, and follow where he seems to be leading you.

Rest and quiet are your friends here. Desperation in prayer or action puts us right back in human-effort mode. Staying relaxed in Jesus’s love allows him to show us what we need to know when we need to know it. If he’s not revealing anything to me today, all I need to do is stay open so I’m ready when he does. Trusting him with timing will help immensely; begging for answers we want will only distract you. His timing isn’t anywhere close to what we’d expect. 

Seeing his world in yours is a slow process with a glorious arc. Don’t pressure yourself for quick results, and let him relieve you of unrealistic expectations. This counsel from Julian of Norwich, who lived in the latter half of the 14th Century, is helpful. “We need not worry if we cannot “find” God, for we are only responsible for seeking; no formula exists for finding. The revelation of the Divine Presence is always unpredictable and surprising.” (All Shall Be Well by Ellyn Sanna)

Don’t look for “words” and visions, bells or whistles. What you’re looking for are glimpses into his kingdom in thoughts and nudges that cause you to think differently than your natural inclinations. As you begin this journey, his Spirit will want to help you discover just how deeply loved by God you are, and free you from shame, guilt, and fear that makes it more difficult to see. That’s how he removes the calluses. 

As you awaken further to the Spirit’s work, you’ll have a growing sense of what’s really going on around you and not just what you think might be true. Seeing into his world will be a powerful source of comfort, peace, and courage in the face of your most challenging circumstances.

 

Glimpses of God’s World

 

Most people have misconceptions about the supernatural that limit their ability to engage with it. This is often complicated by those who claim to listen to the Spirit as they manipulate others or build a following. There are many charlatans afoot who dazzle people with their miracle stories, contrived smoke-and-mirror “encounters”, or made-up prophecies. It is easy to fake such things with a crowd, either to build a following or harvest a financial windfall, but it confuses the genuine seeker who doesn’t see the Spirit working like that in their daily lives.

Don’t be fooled by the counterfeit and be careful not to use it as an excuse to reject the genuine. Pretenders can be spotted when you see their “prophecies” don’t come to pass, honest questions provoke their arrogance and anger, and how extravagantly they indulge themselves. The true work of the Spirit leads to increasing authenticity, humility, generosity, tenderness, and an honest portrayal of the supernatural in which everyone can participate. 

Thinking of God as “up there” somewhere as your prayers bounce off the ceiling will impair your ability to glimpse into his kingdom. Heaven, where God dwells, is not primarily a geographical place but a spiritual dimension that surrounds us at every moment. Beholding that world will continually shape in a wonderful way how you live, see, and listen. 

 

Putting Together a Puzzle

I hope this can help you, Marcus. Recognizing the spiritual world around us is more like assembling a puzzle than a list of instructions or a crystal-clear vision. We sense it in bits and pieces as we go about our day and then watch his Spirit fit them together to help us understand what he wants us to know. 

Certainty isn’t even possible here. Paul admitted his own limited perspective, “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist” (I Corinthians 13:12). Don’t you love his honesty? Those who claim to see spiritual things with absolute confidence are making it up. Perfect clarity will only come when our redemption is complete at the appearing of Jesus. 

Until then, we peer into realities greater than us all, not trying to figure it all out, but simply to recognize what the Spirit might be showing us each day. Paul used the word ‘enigma’ to describe how we see his kingdom. It’s like a puzzle or a riddle for us to explore as he gives us greater understanding. Watch for the fingerprints and nudges of the Spirit; make note of them, but avoid rushing to your own conclusions. That’s what we often do and then we’ll find ourselves chasing our own wisdom again instead of being more settled in his. 

Discerning the Spirit or the times we’re in is not about “getting a word” from God; it’s about letting the wisdom of the Spirit seep into our consciousness. It will seem like a puzzle with lots of clues until the penny drops and we see what he has for us. It’s extraordinary, how the nudges, glimpses, and conversations help us see into his world. Pieces of insight will come from Scripture, random thoughts he brings to our consciousness, conversations, observations in nature, dreams, song lyrics that jump at us, or movie scenes that move us deeply.  

Resist the urge to read into things on your own, as if everything is a piece of that puzzle. Doing so, you’ll contrive your own insights again. Let the Spirit highlight what is from him. Look less to get specific questions answered as seeing what he is revealing. The first puts our focus on him, the latter puts it on us. What the Spirit reveals may have nothing to do with what we are asking of him. He is simply showing you the way things truly are, so you’ll know how to live. He will give you a different way to think about him or something you’re facing. 

Why does God choose to engage it this way? Couldn’t he just be clearer from the outset? I don’t know that God has chosen to speak to us in riddles, I just think it looks that way from our side. The Creator connecting with his creation is a reality all its own and we wake to it like a small child growing to appreciate the world she is in. Everything comes in bits and pieces as she learns to navigate the world outside the womb. 

When glimpses come, ponder them in your heart and see what other clues or confirmation the Spirit might bring to clarify his work in you. As the Spirit shows you where God is working, he will confirm in multiple ways what he wants you to know. 

Having a community of friends who are on a similar journey and comparing notes is incredibly helpful. Don’t look for people who are spooky or super spiritual with “revelations” about God that put others down, but find down-to-earth, genuine people who are learning to embrace Father’s love and being honest about their uncertainties and mistakes. 

If you find one or two who have more experience than you, all the better. Ask if they’ll help you learn to see better. I’ve been fortunate over my lifetime to have continuing engagements with “older” followers of Jesus who encouraged me in different ways to relax into the flow of the Spirit. They didn’t teach me techniques or try to control me; they just allowed me to watch as they followed, gave me honest feedback about my perceptions, and encouraged my spiritual hunger. 

I realize people get nervous whenever someone encourages others to sense and follow his Spirit. They, like me, know too many people who claim to be following God’s voice when they were pushing their own agenda. Most people who use “God told me to…”, use it to justify their own desires or to end an uncomfortable conversation. Don’t fall for it. Don’t let anyone else tell you what God wants of you unless it confirms how he’s already been leading you. People who know God would never say, “God told me to tell you,” but instead would express, “I had a thought the other day and I’m wondering if it might be helpful to you.” 

Maybe the value of uncertainty in the Spirit’s leading is how easily it exposes those who speak with false confidence. Those who are really learning to listen hold their conclusions more lightly and would never tell someone else to do what they think is best. They actively seek the input of others to help them wrestle with what the Spirit might be saying. Over time, you will become more confident in following the Spirit’s nudges, but far from certain that you have it all right. 

In the meantime, know that he will never lead you in a way that violates God’s nature as the Scripture reveals it. He won’t direct you to lie, betray, cheat, injure, or accuse others of malicious motives. He’ll be teaching you how to live in his love. He will show you the way the world is, God’s order to the universe beneath the games of darkness that broken humans play. You’ll discover the power of gossip and jealousy destroys relationships, the lengths people in pain will go to survive, even if they hurt people they love. You’ll recognize the controlling cadence of political speech and religious services, the empty formulas behind popular entertainment that dulls our hearts to God, and the hype used to manipulate the emotions of a crowd. And you will know these things because you’ll recognize them first in yourself. Doing so will transform you to a wiser and kinder you, easier on others’ mistakes because you’re aware of your own. You’ll find the freedom to apologize for bad choices instead of doubling down on them to justify yourself. 

 

Life in the Spirit

It is said that people are either motivated by their intellect or by their emotions. Knowing which will allow you to manipulate them for your own ends. Jesus had something different in mind; that is, living out of our spirit instead of just our thoughts or feelings. Our spirit lies at the core of our being where his Spirit makes connection with us. 

Paul talked about life in the “Spirit” as the way we walk in the world. In the Greek, there are no capital letters, so translating that phrase with a capital “S” may have changed his meaning. When I was growing up, life in the Spirit meant obeying God’s instructions. In effect, we would become robots following preprogramed instructions from God, which were often Scriptures we had interpreted to our own comfort. 

What if Paul was inviting the followers of Jesus to live out of their spirit instead of their thoughts or emotions? What’s the difference? Instead of living by principles our intellect can understand, or being controlled by our capricious feelings, we would live out of that part of us that connects to God. Getting in touch with our spirit is where we gain the eyes to see and ears to hear. 

That fits the journey I’ve been on for some time. It allows us to participate in transformation so that our intellect and our emotions are informed by God’s reality and his purpose in us. When our spirit comes alive with his, we are partners in the joy of an ever-growing relationship—our person merging with his.

Living by “the spirit” is what flows out of that union. It isn’t following our intuition; it is deriving our motivations from eyes that see a better kingdom. This is where we come to know we are loved, begin to recognize his nudges, and find reserves of strength that go beyond our own. He doesn’t want to tell us what to do, but for us to become one with us, so that we’ll see his character increasingly reflected in our nature.

Having eyes to see and ears to hear will take us on an ever-unfolding adventure of his Spirit adding insight and freedom to our journey as we live by what’s true and what’s loving in the world of chaos. 

 

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You can access previous chapters here.  Stay Tuned for Chapter 10.

Chapter 9: Eyes to See, Ears to Hear  Read More »

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