Begging the Question

What does God want – not from you, but for you?

I’ve been thinking about this question for weeks now, asking myself what it is that God wants for me. The question has real power, I think, to disrupt me from religious thinking, from the slow, subtly creeping notion that God’s just someone else that’s asking just one more thing from me. It has power to dislodge from my heart the view that I must do something for God and all that flows from that and replace it with the view that God wants me to simply be (Which is so much deeper… instead of the typical, “What am I supposed to do for God” response, now the question begs, “Lord God, what am I to be – who have You created me to be and for whom have You created me?” It is a much more personal way to relate.)

I’m dwelling on this question, beginning to ask God what it is He wants for me instead of from me. In response, I’ve only heard so far something to the effect of, “I’ve shown you my heart. What do you think I want for you?” Maybe he’s asking me to go deeper into the question, like he did with the man at the pool of Bethesda.

What’s really striking, though, about the question is my first reaction to it. At the very first, I thought to myself, “That’s not a very good question. Is that really what the Gospel is about – God giving us something? No way, it’s about what God expects of us.” How revealing of my own hesitation to accept “the handout of amazing Grace,” that God in Christ really has come to give me what I lost and could never get back on my own: Life.

Somehow, to really trust that all God’s thoughts toward me are bent on bringing me into that, that all his actions and ways towards me and all his plans for me are aimed with that purpose: to give me life… I think it would change everything. What a perspective. What a way of seeing.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
-Romans 5:5

The Cost of Freedom

Father God,

I feel light, tossed. There is a weight to my heart that I have felt, that I have seen others glimpse. It frightens me – less so than it used to, but the fear is still there. Somehow, though, I think I more fear living from something else than I do living from it. I think I fear not living at all and am beginning to understand where real life is found – walking with You, even into and through the dark nights and winding forests of this world, fully alive to You from my heart.

But I play it safe. I sit at the shore and dig for seashells – dead temples to once shimmering creatures. I build sandcastles to occupy my time. And so the waves ebb and flow. These castles I build are, come high tide, dissolved and taken, particle by particle, into the depths. All I hold to, all I grasp, runs through my fingers like soup through the hands of a starving vagrant.

And so I’m left standing empty-handed...

...But, and this is a great mystery to me, I'm empty-handed, but not empty-hearted. There’s a call here. It’s subtle, mysterious, but powerful, like the invisible pull of the moon on these waters now washing at my feet, slowly pulling away sand from where I stand so that I sink a little more. Oswald Chamber’s words come to me, “The call of God is like the call of the sea. It can only be heard by those with the essence of the sea within them.”

Ah, yes. Diving right into the long end of the endless immensity of the sea sinks the setting sun. Its reflection upon the waves is like a long hand outstretched in invitation. Its heat still light upon my face is the echo of a deeper warmth, a deeper burning, emanating somewhere from within.

Christ, too long have I come to the edge of the world and looked over the cliff cautiously. Too long have I refused the jump yet wandered back and chattered as someone flying. I speak well the scuba-depth language, but with only sun-scorched back burned from too long snorkeling. My heart, in desperation, resounds the cry of St. John of the Cross, “I no longer want just to hear about you, beloved Lord, through messengers. I no longer want to hear doctrines about you, nor to have my emotions stirred by people speaking of you. I yearn for your presence.”

Come, Jesus, rescue me. I give myself back to You, to be Your man, Your friend, Your beloved, Your son of thunder.

Amen.

Surrender

As originally posted on relevantmagazine.com


It's an early summer day in May. I'm high in the Collegiates of Colorado. The sky stretches over this raggedy-edged part of the earth like saran wrap over a heaping bowl of cookie dough. I’m beat – defeated by this enormity of this land. The climb behind me was grueling; I’m deaf to all but my fast, rhythmic breathing, and I realize that I can't turn back. If the climb this far was this tough, this dangerous, then the descent via the same path would be brutal. No, my eyes are set ahead of me – only a few more feet to the peak, and it’s there the real Adventure awaits.

I put on the harness, snug the belt, and double-check the clips. The belayer fastens to me the single rope that will become my lifeline, the only thing to tether me in my drop. He directs me to the edge of the platform. Did I mention I’m backwards, facing the cliff, my backside turned to face eternity? I listen intently to my last bit of crucial instructions, and then it comes. The Ruth with Naomi moment. The decision to jump into the unknown or go back to something safer (if that’s even possible now). I have to sit into the harness. Sit. As in, the harness becomes a chair that dangles me over what feels like an eternity of nothingness. Backwards. My legs must become horizontal, my head level with what was my footing. The bottom of the 100-foot cliff feels a mile away, but I can’t think about that now. I’m concentrating on the surrender into the belts, the rope, the belayer. After slacking a few feet down, I’m ready for the vertical descent…


…and I go for it… all the way… no holds barred. I find myself flying down this mountain face, the horizon stretching forever away from me, the clouds increasing their distance, the vertical rocks my road. No, my runway. I am lost in the thrill of the dare, in the desire for the heights taken form as a freefall into nothing, in the pursuit and adventure so big all I can do is surrender. The words of Aslan, the Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, resound in my ears, “Do not dare not do dare.”

A few jutting boulders, a slippery bit of graveled edge, forms my stopping place. It’s not the bottom of the mountain, not by far. But it’s here I unleash myself from the harness. It’s here I rest for a bit from the momentum, here I look up to my journey thus far. What I ride, I hear myself say under my gasping breath. My legs, weakened by the surge of adrenaline through my body, barely give a firm stand. It’s not over, but it’s here I find the courage to be still after the dare of saying “yes” to the invitation to fly.

For a few seconds I’m thinking on the fear that had held me down from here, that had kept me from taking the trail that led to the peak in the first place. Would I make it? Would I find the strength to get far enough, or would I have to back down? Would it be good if I did make it? And once I climbed and reached the destination (that wasn’t really a destination at all), would I have the courage to let go? And if I did find the courage (I since learned it wasn’t so much about courage, but rather desperation and surrender), would the Tether hold? Would I have what it took?

Mountain aspen is thick in these parts. Their stature is bold, noble. They swan dive straight into the sea of sky above. Their might is tested in the winds and the storms that rage across the landscape. But they don’t shrink back. They don’t hide in shadow and shade. Their surrender to what they were made for becomes the glory of their Creator.

And so it is in me.