“I am with you” seems to be a recurring theme in my life as I grapple with what it means to live well in this world as a man, a dad, a Christian, a leader, etc. The word “with” seems to be the missing skeleton key for everything I’m trying to understand and it is surprisingly missing in the books, sermons, and podcast that try to teach me how I should live. I notice it now more than ever. I keep hearing descriptions of what it means to be happy, humble, holy, free, loving, and powerful all by myself. But most people seem to silently believe this comes through some kind of boot-strapping self-actualization. God provides the narrative framework, or worse; a set of non-relational principles we can use to help ourselves.
Actually, I wonder if in fact I cannot self actualize by myself. Maybe the point is relationship. It’s like… how do I do this with God? Or more like…. how do I let him do it with me?Sometimes I wake up from a Sunday nap and I hear the voice of Jesus say, “let’s make coffee together.” I feel a warm presence around me and I say, “sure, let’s do it!” I imagine Jesus holding the porta-filter with me as I grind the beans. Our movements are slow and deliberate. We watch together as the creamy espresso drips into the cup, we cut it with hot water, and I sip happily, feeling it warm my body and wake up my brain. It is so much more fun to do things together, to have someone to share beautiful experiences.
It is one thing to “know” that God is with me (because duh, God is everywhere). It is another to feel Him moving through my thoughts and movements, to really feel open to Him.
We have a relational gospel; a gospel of reconciliation, a gospel of intimacy. Relationship with God means becoming one with him. It’s a crazy thought. But it happens as we learn to do everything with him. This is why “gospel” means good news. Let me give a couple examples of how this works:
God seems to have impossibly high standards for people. Forget the law of Moses. Have you read the Sermon on the Mount? He literally says, “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” So how does that work? The problem with the law wasn’t that it was a bad idea. The problem was people tried to keep it all by themselves. They built rules around the rules so they could feel secure that they might not break a rule and become “unclean”.
But Jesus’ invitation is that if we do stuff with Him, we will hit the nail on the head every time. Yes practice is required. But the heart of God thrills in every earnest attempt to partner with Him. Not because he loves our effort but because he put that idea in my heart and he loves that I let the idea bear fruit in co-laborative action. David’s confidence to kill a giant wasn’t birthed by self-will or desperate desire but by the burning fire of indignation God gave him along with a certainty born of intimacy and experience that God would certainly be with him.
How do you understand God’s power to heal for instance? Why do some people experience miraculous healing while others continue to suffer? I’m no expert but my working theory is that Jesus wants a deeper relationship with people and that may give us a clue. Belief is relational and it can manifest in both suffering and breakthrough. Unbelief is non-relational but it can also manifest in the same things. What is the tension between radical acceptance of my circumstances and radical belief that God can and will do amazing things on my behalf? I’m not saying that intimacy guarantees results. But I am saying that intimacy with God shows us which way to point our attention because we know that value system of the one we love. So if I know God’s main goal is to love me and to love others through me, then I won’t spend time protecting myself from Him. Instead I’ll get curious about what He is doing because I have a good taste in my mouth about doing His will. This morning I prayed with a friend who suffered from sciatica. It wasn’t because I felt I had any healing to offer or because it was her greatest need (there were probably more pressing needs in her life) but because when she was talking, my mind wandered to God and I got curious about what he might want to do. I felt His beautiful willingness to heal not just her nerves but her heart as well. After I prayed there were tears in her eyes and she told me about some emotional challenges God had been addressing with her and a desire to go deeper with God to find healing in those areas. Healing is God’s playground: it is where he creates and recreates things for better connection to him whether it is bones, nerves, or hearts.
On the other hand, if I am not healed, He is still good. Things get in the way of our healing, but those things are never connected to God’s good heart for us. I’m convinced His desire is for healing (otherwise Heaven would be full of a bunch of really sanctified sick people) but he knows how to work with illness, suffering, and death so that even those things work in our favor. I can accept the mystery of pain, and even appreciate the good things it is doing for me only because he is with me in it. The goal of my life is not to escape pain. It is to be wherever Jesus is. That’s why Paul even wanted to know the fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings. He was not a masochist. He was just a sucker for doing stuff with Jesus. I suppose that is where he felt the most meaning; the most indescribable love in the universe.
I once invited a group of Indian leaders to picture Jesus being with them right now. It was a total experiment but to my surprise, a number of people had powerful physical and emotional encounters with Jesus, describing a warm and cathartic sense of His closeness and love. One woman came up to me later that day looking radiant. She said, "you know for so many years in ministry, I have been working hard for Jesus. I never once had the idea that I could work WITH Jesus!"
I think it is good news that everything comes back to relationship with the Father. He is “With” . The world is a confusing and disorienting place. I never know how I will be treated and often I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing. Should I even be writing this right now? But when I picture the face of Jesus, and say “okay Lord, what’s up?” I get the overwhelming sense that He loves me, that he is delighted to do this with me, and the he is taking care of all the heavy complicated stuff.
