Losing Heart

I’ve been a believer for three days now, this time around.  For almost two days before that, a total agnostic. Thirty-six hours of godlessness.  I didn’t pray.  I didn’t even lift my head.  I didn’t want to hear from God.  I wasn’t even sure He existed.

I was angry and hurt.  Exhausted.  Pissed.  Something was seething underneath, breaking through like oozing lava, fiery hot and ready to destroy.  Cars on the freeway.  People in the office.  My family and friends.  It didn’t matter.  Everyone was a target.

And then, as quickly as it came on, it left.  God broke through with the words, “You’ve lost heart, my son.”

“What?  Lost heart?  What are you talking about?”
“Yes, lost heart.”
“Me?  When?”  But even as I asked it, I knew He was right.  He must have known, too, because there was no specific reply, only an invitation to reflect on the previous hours of marked change in my perspective, in my outlook on things.
“What happened, God?  Why?”
“You lost heart because you lost hope.”

I knew it was true.  There had been several things that happened at once in my life, several things that seemed to break at the same time.  News of friends’ dissolving marriage.  A close family member sick.  Disappointment.  Pain all around.  It seemed too much to bear.  I couldn’t hold onto all of it.  I couldn’t hold onto hope that God would come through in all of it.  It felt too easy to kill hope, since it was too painful to hold onto, embrace a kind of cynical despair.  I did it without even thinking, and the result could not have been more disastrous.

I was suddenly reminded of the scripture speaking of hope being the springboard for both faith and love (Colossians 1:5).  That reflected in my life that day and a half.  My walk with God was stunted, even paralyzed.  And I could not love well.

It’s not an unfamiliar place, I suspect.  There are more godless days in my life than I’d like to admit.  Less than there used to be, but they are still there.  Days when I don’t really expect God to show up.  Days I let him off the hook, and plan everything so that if He didn’t show up, I’d still be okay.  I wouldn’t expect anything from Him.  Most of the friends I’ve spoken with about this recognize it well, too.  In fact, searching the Scriptures, I find that the Bible is quick to point out that most friends of God at one time or another crumbled under the weight of a fallen world.  Abraham.  Moses.  Jonah.  Elijah.  All his disciples.  The list goes on.  We’re in good company.  In His mercy, God is quick to pick us back up, dust us off, and set us again on the road by His side.

But we must learn from the Master how to live well, how to “live a life worthy of the calling we’ve received” (Ephesians 4:1).

That’s why God reminds us constantly not to lose heart.  In Hebrews 12:3, for example, we’re told to consider Jesus — think on Him, think of what He endured while on earth — so that we don’t grow weary and lose heart.  He endured more than we can imagine.  We need to learn from Him how He did it.

For one thing, we are being transformed.  It’s not by our good deeds, but by Jesus’ love for us.  We are being made into His likeness.  All we must do is trust Him enough to make this happen in us (2 Corinthians 3:18, 4:1).  Trust that He will come through for us.  Trust that He is for us.

When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, several workers fell to their deaths before it was decided, halfway through the construction to put a safety net underneath the structure.  The second half of the work was completed nearly twice as fast as the first half, since the men knew they were safe.  Several still fell; no one died.

We are not condemned when we fall.  We are free men and women, free in the love and life of our God.  Jesus is, in a very literal sense, our safety net.  Like He did me just days ago, He will pick us up, dust us off, and set us back again on the Way.  He is our light through this world.  He lived, more than any other man before or since, He was alive.  And His life is our light as well, too, come alive.  (see John 1:4).

 

One Thing

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

-Paul

The suffering that Paul speaks of here is the gap created between desire and satisfaction. Paul was not a sated man. Contended, but not satisfied. He longed, aspired, desired, hoped, dreamed, and, because of that, he prayed. And he enjoyed fellowship with Jesus because of it.

Our desires are generally quite paltry. (Instead of Paultry, maybe?) We want the things we want that get us through the day. Let me stop there. I don’t want to talk about “us.” I’m not sure I have the energy. I really only want to confess, and in doing so only then can anyone of “us” take something from this. I want to “hold out the word of life,” as Paul had it (Philippians 2:16).

Suffering is hard. I suppose that’s a no-brainer. But I mean it. After awhile, you wear out. I know this because eventually, and usually unconsciously, I water down my desires. I dilute them. I dumb them down. Why? Because I do not have in this life all that I want, all that I am made for. I am aiming toward it. I am growing toward it. I am increasing in my capacity for it. But I do not yet have it. And so I suffer. Greatly. Like Jesus.

“There are only three kinds of people,” wrote Blaise Pascal. I love the sentences that begin like that. They’re normally cheesy. Maybe my favorite is the one that goes, “There are only two kinds of people in this world. Those who believe there are only two kinds of people in this world, and those who don’t.” But in this one, Pascal perhaps got it right. He said, “There are only three kinds of people. Those who seek God and have found him. These are both happy and wise. Those who seek God and have not found him. These are unhappy and wise. And those that neither seek God nor have found him. They are neither happy nor wise.” I told this to a friend, and he said, “Perhaps there should be a fourth category, for those who seek God and have found him but remain hungry still.” I agree, but I think that’s implied in the first. We seek, we find, and our pangs of longing only grow. It is like the saints. As they grow in holiness, they realize all the more how unholy they are.

I think we need to have instruction on what to do with this pain so that we can live in it well, because only in living in it and dealing well with it will be know the fellowship of walking in it with Jesus. I won’t go so far as to say that only by suffering will we know Jesus, but certainly Jesus was only able to endure the call on his life by looking forward, with deep joy, for what awaited him. We must do the same. We must anticipate what awaits us in Christ. But here’s the rub: we can only do that if we know we are enjoying Jesus in the here and now as we go. Otherwise, we dumb down our desires and quell our thirst, or else sate it with something less than the Living Water (see John 4:1-26). What are we after? Only if we are after Christ will we find him. That’s the way the Kingdom works, apparently.  Our Lord told us that if we are after anything other than Christ, even Christ and something, then we will not see God (Matthew 5:8).

 

Conversatio Morum

NEWS?

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All of us have hang-ups when it comes to praying. Sometimes we get tripped up and stumble around for awhile trying to figure out how to pray. Some of us at various times wonder if we should pray. At other times, we know we can, we know we should, and we even know how, but we simply do not have the desire to pray. Some of us have been stuck in dry, empty routine for some time. Others have completely given up on the hope to really connect with their Creator in any meaningful way.

Books have been written on this subject for hundreds of years. And a few that I’ve read are very good! (Wow, what an arrogant statement.) I have neither the calling nor the wisdom to offer more now on the subject, except for a bit of personal experience that I bet most of us can relate to.

Looking back over the last few months, I’ve discovered a certain theme in regard to the ways I’m approaching God through prayer. I rarely begin where I am. Rather, I always feel like I have to crawl to some certain place to where God is before I can set out to really share my heart with the Lord or hear from Him. Like I have to ascend a mountain or climb to some spiritual level to reach Him. It’s not penance. I don’t mean that I feel like I have committed a certain sin that keeps me from His presence. I mean, rather, that I feel as though I have to earn His ear, like I have to clamor for His attention. Do something fantastic, even if it’s reaching some level of humility so that I can come before Him (forgetting that I immediately become proud of my humble attainment anyway).

The feeling, if I were to put it into words, goes something like this: “I am not worthy of God. He’s really busy. He’s not that interested in me or my life. So I’ll just be really cautious in the way I approach Him.” Translation: “I am not worth anything to God. He is limited in power and limited in love. I will be faithless and godless and only pretend to be holy so that I can feel better about myself.”

My devotions have become routine. Communion with God has been replaced with assumptions (“I think this is what God thinks about this or that”). Obedience has become guesswork (“I guess God would want me to do this or that”). And the zeal and zest for life, that expectancy that Paul spoke of when he said he approaches God with an anticipation of “What’s next, Papa?” has been usurped with dull and drab predictability. “I wonder what’s next” is spoken aloud to no one in particular.

It’s all certainly a step away from “fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace” found in Hebrews.

I’ve noticed this for a few weeks now. I’ve been paying attention to the way in which I approach God, or don’t. And why. I had conversation with a friend and afterwards wondered why I wasn’t asking Jesus in that moment how to encourage him or what I was to take from our time. I have decisions to make at work. Have I consulted God about them? There are hundreds of men gathered on a mountain right now to meet God, and I have been called in to intercede for their time. Am I asking Jesus how to do so? What of my own heart? Am I coming to Him with the ache and confusion and hope — eyes wet with tears or fists raised to the sky, whatever the moment calls for — or am I biting my lip and putting on a smile and faking my way through?

How I’ve gotten here isn’t so important as the question of what I am to do with this reality. What do you do with that? It can be a bit despairing, actually. Okay, so I’m blowing it in a big way. Great. Whew, that’s a relief. Glad to hear it.

The options are pretty few, actually. As I see it, I can either 1) continue with what I’m doing now, or 2) recognize what I see as less than what I want and move toward change. Given those two choices, I’d think the second is the most appealing. The problem is, though, I’ve tried this. I’ve tried to get up earlier to pray more. I’ve tried to read more Scripture. I’ve opened a couple of those books I mentioned on prayer. Nothing seemed to make any lasting change, though.

The reason none of them worked is because in doing them, I’m still living in the first option. It’s the same thing. I’m not going to God. I’m trying to get myself together, get to a better place of prayer, but I’m not actually praying at all. I’m doing it on my own. Which was the source of the problem to begin with. So this is what I finally decided to do. A few days ago, I asked Jesus something very simple, “Stir in me the desire to seek You.” That’s it. Nothing profound. I can’t even say it was particularly heartfelt. I didn’t wait until it “felt” good at all, or until I “felt” passionate desire for it. I’d wait forever and never approach Him if that were the case.

And then yesterday a friend shared his story of having conversation with God. It was over something really simple, something so small, in fact, that I thought, “You can’t do that. Can you? I mean, God doesn’t care about something like that. Does He?” Turns out, God did care. And He showed my friend that He cared. And He honored my friend by his coming to God about it in prayer. He met him, right where he was. This friend of mine was the first to admit that it wasn’t a particularly nice place he was in. He was irritated and selfish. But he came to God anyway. And God honored him for it with friendship.

Well, this story pierced me. And anytime something pierces me I always assume that it’s God’s doing. Most of the time, anyway. Certainly this time I felt it was, since I just asked God for help. Then there were two more things that happened. First, after I heard that I asked Jesus if there was anything that was keeping me from hearing His voice. (In John 10, Jesus promises that we would hear His voice.) I listened, and I heard His reply. He said, “only you.” In other words, only my refusal to come “boldly” into His presence. That’s it. Not my sinfulness, not my selfishness, not my irritability, not my weariness, not my insolence. It’s not a matter of time or attention or spiritual warfare. It’s a matter of trust. Do I believe Him when He says that I really can have intimacy with Him, that I can commune with Him on matters of the heart?

The second thing that happened is that I read somewhere that all the things that keep us from praying are not important. “Never mind them,” the author said, and I received it as confirmation for what Jesus told me. Nothing can keep us from Him.

And so, there’s this subtle change that is taking place in my heart. It is a shift of orientation. (“Orientation,” by the way, comes from the word “orient,” which means “to face toward the east.”) It’s a small shift, but the effects of it are great. Therapists call this change “generative,” meaning a small change on one level has momentous effects on another. Thinkers and writers of old had a phrase for this kind of change — conversatio morum. Death to the status quo. Richard Foster explains its meaning as “constant change, constant conversion, constant openness to the movings of the Spirit.”

I’m re-opening myself to these “movings of the Spirit.” It’s been a combination of my desire to be done with the status quo and the Lord’s kindness that has led me back into His presence. It’s a cliché to say this, I know, but the truth of it is so profound: God is always present. He is here and available to us now. “The sheep listen to his voice and heed it; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them.” This is the promise of Scripture.

We must begin here, with simply coming to our Shepherd as sheep in need. Maybe again and again. Everyday, maybe. Or maybe just for the first few seconds of prayer, a kind of recognition that we come into the throne room of grace by grace. Not because we’ve ascended to where it is, but because God has condescended to us in Jesus. Anything else would be unbelief, a refusal to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ. And from that place, from a conversation already happening, then we can grow in intimacy with our Lord. But it must begin with recognizing that He’s come to us. I can’t remember who said it, but I remember hearing once that every other religion is man’s attempt to get to God. Only in Christianity has God come all the way to man. All the way. We start there. The easy fellowship and light burden of walking with God must begin with our response to His invitation to draw near now.

 

Treasures of Darkness

As I write this, I am in a café, sitting in the corner, trying hard not to make a scene. I am weeping, suppressing groans and cries and wails so that I won’t be asked to leave. I came to read and study for a class I have in a few hours. Instead, I am humbled and awed and stunned into… into weeping.

You will understand a bit better after I explain in brief what happened this weekend. I have a friend, a friend I have known all of my life (who I speak of here), who has lived a crushingly destructive life. The choices he makes consistently wounds those around him, and the closer they are, the more he is meant to love them, the more he cuts and tears at them. His wife and children come to mind.

A couple of weeks ago I came to the end of my patience with his actions and choices. I love him too much to be passive and watch as he destroys himself. I wanted to call the true man into the ring. I set up a time to meet with him. There were two things I needed to get across at this meeting. One was that I wanted him to begin seeing the damage he has caused, the hurt and destruction his life has left in its wake. I wanted him to take a serious, unflinching glare into it. And second, I needed to let him know that I would no longer relate to him on any level except the most authentic: his damaging lifestyle. I would speak to him on no other plane except to bring him to reality and then, to help him to change only if he so chose. But that would come later. First, I wanted him broken and humbled and contrite at what he has done to himself and others.

Not an easy task. I felt going into the meeting a bit like Jeremiah, the prophet of hard sayings, the weeping prophet whose message from the Lord to Israel was brutal and harsh, since she had turned from her Lover-Lord to pursue other bedfellows. Someone had to bring her back to her senses. I knew that chances of success were higher if he were to come to an autonomous decision and understanding of his predicament through exploration and insight into his life, rather than having someone thrust upon him in impotent explanation what he is doing. He needed to see for himself, from his heart, the effects of his choices.

I realized this was my desire for this man.

What happened the day the meeting came is hard to explain. I almost want to fall back on the mythic tone of Scripture to describe the nature of the events, the way that I participated in something already going on, that I had a front-row seat to some deep and mysterious and even mystical change in the core recesses of this man’s very soul. And I use the word “soul” in the most literal sense, as that aspect of the whole being “that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self,” as Dallas Willard defines it. The “life-center” of the human being. My wrenching and mourning heart calling his to the same.

But he was already there. It was breakfast. We sat down to eggs and bacon and coffee, this man and me. I was prepared for what I’ve come to see as his typical defense against seeing the truth of his life: manipulation, control, threats, escape. I imagined him decking me or stabbing me with the yoke-soaked fork or just walking out, unable to hear what I was burdened to bring him.

Instead, he choked on the first words out of his mouth, words that I could barely understand but heard as “I am a bad father.”

I was stunned. I sat quietly while he tried to regain his composure. I came to speak honestly, man to man, and so I only said, “Yes, you are.”

The next four hours – four hours – we spoke about the decisions he has made in his life, of the way he cannot do what he has sincere intention to do (Romans 7), of the demons that have gained control over various aspects of his life, of what it means to be a father and a son and a brother and a friend of God, of repentance and forgiveness, of wounds and the messages about life interpreted from them, of his growing up and about his God.

Somehow, through it all, I came to see that I wasn’t doing anything but observing what was already going on in deep places in him. Before I arrived, I wondered how I would possibly be able to speak to the real man, to the deep and true person underneath the defenses and walls erected throughout his life to protect himself from abandonment and rejection. But I never had to. His heart was already ripe for the harvest, so to speak.

Understand, I love this man deeply. I want him to change for his own sake and the sake of his family. But I knew that in order to do so he had to recognize the way he lives first. The prodigal only began the trek back home when he looked around him and saw himself eating from pig troughs and remembered his father’s home. I came to meet this guy at feeding time and wanted to invite him to look around himself.

James tells us to “grieve, mourn and wail” and to “change our laughter to mourning and our joy to gloom.” And this is why. To look honestly at our situation and predicament often calls for that: mourning. This friend this day was mourning. God was “cutting the bars of iron” in the rescue of his soul (see Isaiah 45:2-3). And I got to witness it. I got to plunder the “treasures of darkness and hidden riches” of his soul and the vision of it redeemed. I got to participate so that I would know that “the Lord called me by name.”

I am barely able to write through the tears. This is what it means to praise the Living God, to be so grateful that you fall before Him speechless.

What I wrote a month back (in this post) about this friend and his situation was that “the love my wife and I have for [he and his family] is not enough to ransom them from this snare. They need the unyielding ministry of Christ in the deepest places.” And this is, it turns out, a great picture of what is happening for this man now: Jesus painfully and violently breaking him out of the illusions with an unyielding intention to bring him into truth and life. It is a severe mercy, this ransom of the treasure of his heart from darkness.

 

Revealed

Underrepresented. I had sat for some time to find the right word. Everyone else had answered, and so I offered mine last. Looks of confusion and “Hum”s went around the room. I felt it was right, though, and so I stuck with it. We could say nothing more about it. One word, and only one word, was what the leader had asked for.

It had been an interesting meeting, our first one together as a formal “group.” Awkward silence filled the room at the beginning, as the leader had told us that this was our group, and so we would set the pace and tone. We would own it as our own. Soon enough, though, we found ourselves offering stories and listening in on one another’s journeys that brought us to this room this very night.

I offered mine, or rather, as much of mine as felt appropriate without stealing the time away from the others. Inside, I felt like my bones burned with the immediacy of the adventure I have been on with God over the last several years. The new life I’ve found in Christ has been… what word do I use?… what word suffices? The agony and ecstasy are both too profound to speak of. The “me” that is realer and truer than the “me” that is projected… how do you get that to come across? How can I be authentic enough that my skin is transparent and my inner life is seen. Is it even supposed to be seen?

When I had finished, I felt… underrepresented. Like I had laid out an incomplete picture of myself for others, expecting that they use that to know me. It wasn’t that it was untrue. It just was incomplete. And I have come to see this as simply being misunderstood. And being misunderstood is the most painful of all human experiences.

This is what Paul was talking about when he wrote to the church in Colosse that “your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (3:3). It is a life tied, bound, inextricably, to that of Christ’s, a life that is constantly “deepening and expanding” (Romans 10, The Message). And it is hidden not because it does not shine forth or appear even now glorious in the freedom and fullness in which you live it, but rather because it is too endless and infinite to be completely expressed in this life. The glory of a heart alive to God is blinding, and few in this world have the eyes that could bear it. It certainly is that way with the Lord God (see Mark 9:2-7 to see what I mean — even Jesus’s closest friends could not bear the glory of his life fully revealed). “The Kingdom of God,” writes Dallas Willard, “is in secret… in the presence of God’s secret seeing.” (Jesus mentions the “secret” and hidden way of the Kingdom four times in Matthew 6.)

But then Paul continues, and this is where it gets really good. He says, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.” (3:4). This is it. This is how we bear the pain of being misunderstood, the experience of just being missed in this life. Even in our most intimate moments with another, those say of sex where you feel so connected, there remains a pang of longing to be fully known. And Paul says that our real lives are still hidden with Christ just as He is “hidden” in the heart of his friends, not yet fully revealed to the world in his unveiled glory. Yet when He does return, we will be revealed as well. Think of it. The veil will be finally and forever lifted. Our fear of exposure will melt in exchange for the anticipation of being revealed, for we shall be like God. For those of us who belong to the Lord, we will be known, fully, to God as well as to one another, and we will be delighted in knowing one another that completely. It will not be our shame. It will be our glory.

Glory will be revealed in us (Romans 8:18) when we as sons and daughters of God are reavealed (v. 19). It will be a “glorious freedom” (v. 21) for which all of creation eagerly waits (v. 19).

Until then, the human heart longs and strives to make itself known to others, or else shrinks back in fear of that very thing and protects itself from it with performing and posturing. And it is usually a chaotic mixture of both. But as we are transformed more into the glorious image of Christ, with every increasing glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), we shall be growing constantly in our anticipation of finally and fully being known, our stories and our lives redeemed into something unapologetically and staggeringly beautiful. (It is helpful to remember, too, that even now we are known fully to God, 1 Corinthians 13:12.) Our greatest challenge becomes, then, the simple trust that the life we inhabit in Christ will, when He is ready, be revealed in all its splendor. We, as adopted sons through Christ (Hebrews 12:7). That adoption has not yet been fully realized. Our lives in God, full as they are, are only the firstfruits of His promised Spirit in us (Romans 8:23). Until then, we ache and groan along with the Spirit Himself for that day (2 Corinthians 5:1-5). The revelation of Jesus Christ will be the revelation of those of us who are His, as well, when we are released as grown sons and daughters in the great house of our Lord. We must allow our longing to turn to anticipation, as we wait for and put our hope in this (Romans 8:24-25, 1 Peter 1:13).

 

I’m Just Me

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit… small. Misunderstood. Grumpy. Irritable. Far from use in the Kingdom. I wrote the following as an exercise some time back when I was in a similar place. I’m posting it now so I can bring it up often in these days of myopia and reread it until the light of the truth of God’s love of and call for me blind me from myself and give me clearer vision again of the life offered me. The life I, on my best days, find myself even now walking in. The life that extends into eternity and finds its source in Jesus Himself. Here’s the confession and the promise…

And I’m just me. I’m not a spiritual giant. I have no special real estate on God. I’m often irritable, grumpy, and unloving toward others. Mostly because I often fail to fall into the wild, crazy, furious love of God in the face of Christ who has come so far in pursuit of me. But even that doesn’t keep me from His love. I’m not always passionate in seeking after God – often lukewarm and displeptic. I don’t spell everything correctly. I sometimes don’t make sense when I talk. I get confused, weary, jaded, and cynical. My teeth aren’t as white as I want them to be. I am skinny and not well-built. I can be exceptionally lazy. I tend to whine and complain when comforts I feel I deserve somehow pass me by. My mind can be a haze of jaded and cynical thoughts, usually resulting in biting judgementalism toward others. I can lie and steal and hate. But somewhere, down beneath all this that makes me a broken and fallen human being, deep within my core, dwells the Living God, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End, who, in all His annoyingly and life-giving persistent love makes all things new. He heals and restores and rescues and brings life again. Even in me. One day I will be like Him. But that hasn’t yet been revealed. I’m on my way, but I haven’t made it yet. Not yet. But it’s coming. And one day He will take my hand, and pull me up, and all that I once feared that wouldn’t happen and dreaded that would will melt away and all these illusions I’ve held to will fade into the eyes of my God as I peer into His glory. A glory even I will share in. A glory generously poured out for me, so that I will know life. And in these days between now and then, I get to participate in that Something Big. I get to love like He loves. I get His eyes when He wipes mine with mud. I get to live big and live free because, even though I am so far from perfect, I am His. Forever. Promised. Sealed. Delivered. I get to know God and let that be my greatest and truest desire. Whom have I in heaven but Him, and what else could I desire here? And when all is said and done, that’s all I’ll be able to hold to anyway. And that’s so much that I won’t have room to hold onto anything else. Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.

 

A Confession and a Plea

There’s a lot that I need to process, to unpack, to bring up into conversation with God. Some of it I already have. Some He has brought up with me. Some I have faced through unavoidable circumstances, reminding me of what Frederick Buechner said about God speaking to us through the daily events of our lives. But now, I’m not even quite sure where to begin.

Maybe this is the best place to start… Jesus, what… where do we go? What do you want to speak to me? What do I need to hear?

Richard Foster says that we should pray about whatever it is we and God are doing together. And so it’s here that I have a confession. I’ve bought into the subtle notion that there’s not a whole lot Jesus is doing here, with me, in and with and through my life and marriage and home, that the real work of God is out there somewhere in major ministries and movements. Of course, that flies in the face of Paul’s revelation that we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, “predestined” – destined! – to that end. That’s our destiny. More that that, it goes against the very present reality and promise of the Evangel, that God is here, engaged, inviting me to live life, and live it large. Not meaning to go out there somewhere, but to “come,” to be home with Him, to pursue and seek Him, to learn the new language of the New Way, to be conformed to His image and transformed into His likeness – by His grace and to His glory.

I’ve been seeking the Lord God on a particular decision, needing so much to hear Him say to go either this way or that, and I’ve been frustrated and angry for not being able to hear Him speak. Is He silent on the matter? Am I unable to hear Him? Is there too much warfare or noise pollution around me? In the midst of these looming questions, my wife broke in with a brilliant thought last night: “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Maybe God doesn’t want you to ask which way to go, but rather what His heart is for you.” The implication is, of course, that His heart for me is where He wants me to go. It leads me to the freedom to follow Him wherever it is He’s going.

And so I need to hear from you, Father, not about next month or the one after that. Not even about tomorrow. I need to hear Your heart for me. I need to lean close to hear Your heartbeat. Help me hear You. I am Your sheep, and I hear your voice. I am Your servant and son. What’s more, I am Your friend in whom You confide. Reveal to me what You are doing and what Your desire is. Reveal Your heart for me. Show me the way, Jesus.

Amen.