Dear Derek,

I want to thank you for responding to my post about feeling God’s love. You were so honest in how you described your feelings of discouragement, and the deep wrestling that are undergoing. My heart grieved for you when I read that you have not felt God’s love for over a decade.

It’s Not Hiding When God Knows Where We Are.

What might it look like for you to hide in God, rather than from God? Hiding ourselves in God means we disclose our hurts, our guilts and shames.  And yes, this can be hard and dramatic. We disclose ourselves, not because God is not aware of our lives, but because in our confessions we place ourselves in the arms of the one who comes to seek and to save. In doing so, we release ourselves from what binds us, and we rob condemnation of its power.

Ask for that goat.

What are some of the good things of God that you would like to experience? What do you hope for? Do you seek those loving gifts from our heavenly Father? Or do you assume that such blessings will be withheld?  Despite God making God’s way to you in the person of Jesus, and offering you the purest expression of love and grace imaginable, do you still assume that you must earn your keep?

Revisiting a simple faith

Here's the truth of the matter: our life with God is simple.  Simplicity, as defined by Richard Foster, is a “single hearted focus on God and God’s kingdom.”  What this means is that we reach out to Jesus as the very basis of our lives.  This is where we start. Yes, external frameworks can help us, yet they must be secondary to our primary task of simply reaching out to Jesus.

Alive and Loved

Bobby Flay’s cat has more Instagram followers than I do. This fact plays havoc on my self-esteem. As someone who battles the constant torment of comparison, the fact that a celebrity feline makes a bigger splash in people’s lives speaks only to my own self-judgement; I can’t help but condemn myself.

Unringing the Bell of Condemnation

I once sat with an elderly gentleman who told me that whenever he would step out of line, his father would wag his finger and declare “God will get you for that.” He heard this phrase so often that it stuck with him, becoming the very basis of his picture of God. Despite his years in the church, the countless sermons he listened to, and the hours spent in prayer and ministry, he couldn’t unhear a message of condemnation. It was like a bell that could not be un-rung.

Shedding My Labels

Labels are a fickle thing. They do not describe what, or whom, they are intended to describe. Instead, they speak only of preconceptions, assumptions, and judgements. Is anyone truly the label they are associated with? If I’m not progressive enough for the progressives, or evangelical enough for the evangelicals, what does that make me?