“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43

Not surprisingly, grace once again flowed from the heart of Jesus to those around Him while on the cross. Situated between two criminals, Jesus is mocked as the first criminal shouts “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The irony of the question and statement was that Jesus was indeed providing salvation by the very act of being on the cross. But, the blindness of the one man didn’t lead Jesus to call down fire from heaven or to hurl insults in return.

The second criminal rebukes the first as He says, “Do you not fear God?” He shares that they have done something to deserve their cross but Jesus had done nothing wrong. Next, that second criminal utters a request that is at the core of what we all desire. He asks:

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

In this simple statement, he is acknowledging the Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the promised One – “the desire of the nations” (Haggai 2:7). Whether we have fully come to the place of identifying it or not, we all desire to be with Jesus. We all desire to do life with God. It is the desire that makes us human and a desire that we often deny.

John Ortberg writes: “What always drives us, at the soul level, is that if I believe I cannot trust God for the satisfaction of my soul, then I will take my soul’s satisfaction into my own hands. I may not acknowledge that even to myself.” For the second thief, He was at the end of his rope. He no longer had any ability to take care of His own needs and in that moment of vulnerability he reached out to Jesus.

And, Jesus did not say, “It’s too late” or “You should have thought about that before you committed the crime.” Instead, He showed infinite mercy and grace as He gently says:

“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Do you believe that being with Jesus, doing life with Him, is the satisfaction of your soul? When you reach out in simple faith, not able to bring anything to the table, He responds with “Yes, you can be with Me.” And, the hope of heaven is the hope of getting to be with Him.

Often, we settle for less than our heart’s true desire. Are you willing to be boldly vulnerable and ask God for what you really desire? To do life with Him … to be with Him.

Take a few minutes today and pray:

Father, I acknowledge that I am not only at the end of my rope but apart from You, I have no rope. I often take my soul’s satisfaction into my own hands but my prayer today is that I could be with You and do life with You. May I experience the “paradise” of living life in Your presence today as I look forward to eternity with You in heaven because of the salvation that Jesus provided on the cross. Amen.

“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.” Luke 23:34

As Jesus of Nazareth hung from the cross, He looked down and offered forgiveness to those who had tortured Him, mocked Him, and finally nailed Him to the pieces of wood. In an act of extreme grace, Jesus looked past their ignorance and even past their desire to be forgiven.

Romans 5:5 shares that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Just a few verses later, we’re told how: “but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” His love for us was extended while we were sinners – ignorant of our need and committed to our own agendas. When we reached out and received the gift of forgiveness that Jesus offers, we were still ignorant of the totality of our need because it is infinite but He still graciously gave.

Frequently, as followers of Christ, we find ourselves not experiencing the love of God that has been poured into our hearts. David Seamands, in his book on forgiveness, writes: “Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among … Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people … we read, we hear, we believe in a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The good news of the gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.”

How do we ensure that grace has penetrated to the level of our emotions? How do we actively live in His grace and love and forgiveness? Simone Weil writes: “Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”

There was an initial “void” or experience of emptiness that lead to that initial reception of His love. How is that void growing in you today? Is there more and more need in your life for His love? Often, as we go on in our life with Jesus, the perception is that maturity means we have it more together and more figured out. The opposite would seem to be true as the experience of His love in our depths requires a greater experience of our need for Him. Seeing the “void” or empty spaces grow requires letting go of things that we use to fill the void on our own. Our lack of experiencing His love and grace is predicated on self-love and self-protection.

Spend a few minutes asking the Father what you are using to fill the void on your own and then ask Him for the strength to let go of those things so that you might experience His love that has been poured out in your heart.

Through the ages, appealing to the “voice of God” has been used to justify everything from the silly to the profane. In addition, simply saying “God told me” tends to be a conversation stopper … if God tells someone something, how can you argue with that?

The idea that God speaks to people is as old as humanity itself but claims have been routinely met with skepticism from both believers and non-believers alike. From one who doesn’t believe in the existence of God, rejection of the concept makes sense. However, for those who believe, why would there be skepticism? The reasons range from over-reaction to abusive and sensationalistic claims of hearing from God to sincere theological belief that while God may have spoken in the past He does not do so today.

At the heart of the Gospel (good news) of Jesus is the reality that the experiential divide between God and man has been bridged. There is a real, loving experience of God promised to those who have come into a relationship with Jesus. Colossians 1:27 describes this truth as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The incredible hope is that the God of the universe spiritually dwells within us. This suggests the relational reality of presence, real presence! With presence comes the joy of communication. In John 10:27, Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” So, how exactly does this work? How do we listen to His voice?

When we listen to Jesus, it is the Holy Spirit who communicates the words of Jesus to us. In Romans 8:14-16, the Apostle Paul shares that: “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” We are led by the Spirit as He “bears witness” with our spirit about our identity as beloved children of God. Bearing witness is real communication. It doesn’t promise an audible voice but some sort of communication that is understandable. Perhaps, the best way to understand the communication is that of a gentle, discernible nudging in our spirit. 1 Kings 19 describes God speaking to Elijah as the sound of a gentle whisper.

Two questions certainly emerge from the idea that he speaks in a gentle nudges in our spirits. First, why doesn’t He speak loudly, in undeniable ways? What makes the most sense is that God never wants to force anything on us but desires a real relationship where we are free to choose. Yelling or screaming generally leads to forced submission or rebellion. God desires our hearts. He wants us – not forced submission – so He speaks quietly. The second questions revolves around how we know if it is actually the “voice” of God and not simply what we want to hear? Certainly, discernment is needed and required. 1 John 4:1 encourages us: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

How do we develop the needed discernment? At the heart of our discernment is the text of Scripture. We can test and affirm what we are “hearing” by the Word of God. And we can trust that God does speak to our hearts because He abides with us. (1 John 3:24) Our abiding with Him is experienced as we obey His commands. In this mutual abiding (or, indwelling), we communicate with Him.

So, at the heart of our “listening” must be the Biblical text. The Spirit leads us in our application of God’s written word and also leads us in the experience of our relationship with God. Like any real relationship, current and relevant communication is needed. Over time, that communication may come through silent presence like an “old married couple” sitting on the porch enjoying one another without a word needing to be spoken.

Robert Mulholland suggests a beautiful way that we can interact with Scripture that engenders this kind of relationship:

“The how of the role of scripture in spiritual formation is not so much a body of information, a technique, a method, a model, as it is a mode of being in relationship with God that we bring to the scripture … I suggest that your top priority be to listen for God. Seek to allow your attention and focus to be on listening for what God is saying to you as you read … Listen for God to speak to you in and through, around and within, over and behind and out front of everything that you read. Keep asking yourself, ‘What is God seeking to say to me in all of this?’ By adopting this posture toward the text you will begin the process of reversing the learning mode that establishes you as the controlling power who seeks to master a body of information. Instead, you will begin to allow the text to become an instrument of God’s grace in your life. You will begin to open yourself to the possibility of God’s setting the agenda for your life through the text. Not only will this exercise begin to transform your approach to reading (and prepare you for the role of scripture in spiritual formation), it will also begin to transform your whole mode of being in relationship with God in a way that will enhance genuine spiritual formation.” (Shaped by the Word)

As we live in a posture of listening throughout our days, what kinds of things does the Spirit tend to say to us? At the core of what we hear is that we are His beloved. (Romans 8:14-16) This is the gentle consistent whisper that we receive from the Spirit. In addition, Gordon Smith suggests the following categories in his book, The Voice of Jesus:

• assurance of God’s love
• conviction of sin
• illumination of our mind regarding Scripture
• guidance in times of choice

He desires for us to live in a real relationship of love and the heart of what He says regards the nature of our relationship, barriers to that relationship, and how we can live with attentiveness to that relationship moment by moment. He loves us deeply and only specific communication can catapult us into the transformation that love provides. The beautiful truths of Scriptures can be deeply trusted but it is His gentle whispers that allow us to know.

How do we best listen? Anthony deMello offers:

“There are few things that help so much for conversing with Christ as silence. The silence I speak of is, obviously, the inner silence of the heart without which the voice of Christ will simply not be heard. This inner silence is very hard to achieve for most of us: close your eyes for a moment and observe what is going on within you. The chances are you will submerged in a sea of thoughts that you are powerless to stop – talk, talk, talk (for that is what thinking generally is, me talking to myself) – noise, noise, noise: my own inner voice competing with the remembered voices and images of others, all clamoring for my attention. What chances does the subtle voice of God stand in all of this din and bustle? … Your tolerance of silence is a fairly good indicator of your spiritual (and even intellectual and emotional) depth.” (Contact with God)

Don’t neglect the gift of real communication with the God of the universe! Live with a listening posture and the fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. And more than that, the fruit is relationship with God Himself – who is the true desire of our hearts.

The theme of “coming home” is incredibly prominent in the arts … whether song or film or literature. The concept of “home” resonates deeply within the soul of all of us. As a young man living in the Middle East in the ‘80s, I’ll never forget being told that I was not in my homeland and therefore needed to act appropriately as a foreigner. It struck me deeply that home is a place where you feel at rest, where you feel loved, where you feel you can be the “true you.” We’ve all been hardwired to desire home.

At this time of year, the idea of home can elicit feelings of joy and/or feelings of disappointment that rival no other joys/pains in our lives. Why? Because there is something very primal about home.

In the beginning, the first humans lived at “home” with God in a garden of delight and trust and love. There was love, joy, peace, patience, and a general tranquility to their lives. The enemy of God entered the picture and led Adam and Eve to doubt the goodness of their home. As a result, they left that “home” of trust and love with God as their Father. Indeed, the concept of “home” and family comes from the God of the Universe.

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” (Ephesians 3:14-15)

As people made in God’s image, our concept of home is rooted in the very person of God. No matter who we are or where we come from, three things are true about us. First, we all desire to be at home. We want to be fully alive and at rest in our own skin. Second, we’ve experienced, and may even be experiencing in profound ways, that we are not at home. Third, our sense of “home” is most truly and fully found in the God. So, the theme of returning home resonates deeply.

At its core, Christmas is indeed about coming home but not in the ways we often consider. It is about “coming home” to the reality that He is our home – our deepest, truest desire in this life. Jesus is the One for whom we’ve been waiting! Jesus is the fulfillment of all our desires. No earthly family can truly fulfill our desires. No inheritance or financial windfall can satisfy our deep longings for security. No activity can finally provide peace to every square inch of our being. All other desires are shadows of our one true desire … consider the following poem:

Now I can see

that it was You.

It was always You,

behind every song

and every story

that ever captured

my heart.

It was You.

Every relationship,

a tutor.

Every desire,

a shadow

of my true desire, You.

It was always You.

The One whom my soul loves.

Christmas is an invitation to stop … to stop running … to stop looking … to stop striving after an earthly home and believe that you are already home. We can trust this and believe because Jesus, the One we celebrate at Christmas, made His home among us. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6) So, our return “home” is found in Christ.

Thomas Merton commented that “in prayer, we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. We already have everything, but we don’t know it and we don’t experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.”

A recipe for a great Christmas (really, a great life) might simply be this kind of prayer:

• Stop looking around you for “home.”
• Remind yourself in quiet prayer that you have everything in Christ.
• Rest in the reality that you have Him, the true desire of your heart.
• Enjoy living from a place of fullness rather than lack.

May this truly be a merry Christmas as you stop and consider that everything you’ve ever wanted is in Christ. Take a few moments right now and stop, remind, rest, and enjoy. Repeat moment by moment.

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:4-5

Anger is a very real, extremely common emotional response to the stuff of life. And, as a human race, we are not skilled at working through our anger to a place of peace or reconciliation. Most often, we end up doing things or saying things from a place of anger that we wish we could do over. Or, perhaps, we feel justified because we were wronged, but probably inwardly wish we hadn’t exploded or imploded or whatever the case may be. We all get hurt in this life and if we’re paying attention, we get angry. We might have learned how to stuff our anger or put on a smiling face in the midst of it, but it’s there none the less. In fact, if someone claims to never get angry, I wonder if they have a pulse. Is there any hope for dealing with our anger – our hurt – our violent thoughts?

In the Old Testament Scriptures, there are prayers that offer hope but they have typically been either misunderstood or ignored. In fact, recently, a friend emailed and asked me about a verse in one of these Old Testament prayers that troubled her:

“Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” Psalm 137:9

This is one of those verses in the Bible that legitimately bothers people.  The question is most often: how can a loving God condone the idea of killing children? Let me quickly say that there is more going on in this verse than meets the eye. So, what’s going on?

Psalm 137 is an example of what is called an Imprecatory Psalm. An imprecation is a harsh word or words that are said when someone is angry and hurting. The idea of the Imprecatory Psalms is that the Lord asks us to come to Him with the anger and hurts and deep frustrations of our hearts. Verse 9 of Psalm 137 is not a good, right, or holy thought but it is the real thought of the psalmist. The people of Israel were captives, slaves, in Babylon and they were hurting and angry. It could be argued that they were justified in their anger. Right? They were slaves! They were so angry that they wanted the children of their captors to die and die violently. We can all relate to times when we were so angry that we just wanted another to die, or at least go away, never to be seen again. God never affirms those thoughts as right or correct but invites His people to come and share everything on their hearts. Rather than simply “parrot” the right answers – God wants us to trust Him with our hearts which begins with honesty and pouring out our hearts. The hope in all of this and what I’ve seen over and over is that people’s hearts are shaped and transformed as they give all of themselves to God and not “stuff” the anger and/or violent thoughts.

If we look at the rest of Psalm 137, we notice that there is an expression of several things:

• Tears, or hurt (verses 1-2)
• Statement of the circumstances surrounding the hurt (verses 3-4)
• Lamentation of what seems like lost hope (verses 5-6)
• Violent, murderous thoughts (verses 7-9)

Here are several things that we can glean from the existence of this kind of prayer:

1. In times of anger, don’t worry about thinking the “right” things but give your actual thoughts and feelings and responses to God. Pour out your heart to him. He desires to hold your anger and hurt. The Imprecatory Psalms are not expressions of “good theology” but they are expressions of the kind of honesty that can lead to a transformed heart.
2. What is modeled in Psalm 137 is the beauty of honesty. Don’t ignore the feelings and emotions of your present experience. And notice that the psalm doesn’t end with a resolution but leaves things hanging. It is God who resolves and holds the hurts, not us. We may have to come back again and again over a period of time.
3. When we dismiss our emotions and anger, we are really just stuffing them under the surface of our hearts. The result is that we stop going below the surface of our lives and don’t live from the depths of who we are. And, those emotions will always come out and hurt others. We don’t live our lives based on what we want to believe but based on what is in our hearts.
4. We find Him in the midst of whatever is going on in our lives, not in some other imaginary world that we’d like to live in.

How do you deal with anger? Do you find yourself exploding, imploding, stuffing, or denying your anger? In Ephesians 4, we are encouraged to “be angry and do not sin.” There is an invitation (be angry) and a potential result (do not sin). All of us have experienced being angry and consequently sinning. Perhaps, the “do not sin” part comes as we experience our anger in the context of our relationship with God, i.e., in prayer. Sins are always the result of acting, thinking, and desiring independent of our relationship with God. Love, joy, peace, and patience spring forth from our dependence on the Spirit. When we pray an “imprecatory psalm”, we are depending on God through prayer.

So, today, as you feel anger arise in your heart (it could be small or big), stop and pray. Pray all that you are feeling to God. Give it to Him. Give Him your heart. And then, quietly ask Him to give you His heart. Repeat as necessary … (and, it will be necessary!)

Desire is a fire that burns in our souls. Desire is that which motivates and fuels us. Vitally important, and yet, we most often live with only a vague sense of how desire works in our lives. Frequently, we long to desire deeply but find ourselves trudging through life, tired and worn down. Or, we find desires in our lives that seem to control us and take us places we don’t really want to go.

Pure, true, deep, holy desire is present in all of our lives. Alan Jones, in his book Soul Making, writes that “Human beings are a longing for God.” The challenge of that statement is two-fold: first, desire is all too often buried under myriad concerns and burdens; second, desire gets misdirected. We misunderstand the nature of our desire and direct it toward things that are not its true target.

When we feel desire, of any kind, we can be sure that buried underneath burdens, sinful patterns, and/or misunderstandings is a desire for God. It has even been suggested that the man who knocks on the door of a brothel is actually knocking for God. And, rather than desire being something to fear, C. S. Lewis famously wrote:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

In the New Testament writings, we find the concept of lust which is described using the Greek word, epithumia. This word could be translated as “over-desire.” The connotation would seem to be that of a desire which, rather than hitting its target, overshoots and hits a target for which it is not intended. This would nicely explain why lusts (for power, money, sex, etc) never seem to quite satisfy or perhaps only for a season. And, the desire for those things is really a desire for relationship with God, only misdirected.

Whether we understand them as too-big or too-small, the net effect is the same. We have what the ancients called “disordered desires.” Our desires need to be “right sized” and directed well. We can feel pretty helpless. So, what do we do? How do we see our true desires directed by God?

I would suggest four things:

1. Don’t suppress desire. Desire is a beautiful, power thing. When desire is suppressed, it becomes more powerful under the pressure. Pay attention to your desires because they are telling you something. To ignore desire is to let it run rampant in the corners of our unconscious self. Look at desire (holy, unholy, or unknown) and notice what is truer and deeper. Discern how an “unholy” desire is really a desire for God. Brother Curtis Almquist suggests: “Our desires are worth listening to. They do need to be brought into the light. Many of us – certainly I – need help sifting through our life’s desires to see where they need to be deepened or purified, where they are connected to God’s gift of life for us.”
2. Pray your desires. Let God shape and redeem them. In the Psalms, we see our forefathers in the faith wrestling with God in prayer. Some of the things we observe them praying would certainly not be classified as pure desires but it is bringing desire to God that sanctifies desires. “One of the best pieces of spiritual advice I ever received from a spiritual director was to pray for anything that I desired, even if that desire seemed sinful. It was a kind of ‘prayer shock therapy,’ designed to break through dualistic thinking patterns and begin integrating prayer with life as we actually experience it, rather than as we might wish it to be.” (Br. Robert L’Esperance, SSJE)
3. Practice gratefulness. Many of our misdirected desires are the result of jealously and lack of gratefulness. The last of the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 encourages us to let go of covetousness. Covet is a desire word, and it means that we are desiring someone else’s life. It is perhaps no coincidence that after the challenges to be honest and honor others, the capstone of the ten deals with gratefulness and desire. Arthur Simon shares: “When things are valued too much, they lose their value because they nourish a never-satisfied craving for more. Conversely, when things are received as gifts from God and used obediently in service to God, they are enriched with gratitude. As sages have said, contentment lies not in obtaining things you want, but in giving thanks for what you have.”

4. Practice humility. When Jesus said, “Come to Me” in Matthew 11:28. He shares that life in Him is one of rest. Rest is a place of satisfaction and peace and quiet, even in the midst of life’s storms. I think of Jesus asleep on the boat in the midst of a storm. Jesus said “come and rest” and we find that rest as we learn His way of being which He described as gentleness and humility. Gentleness and humility are perhaps two sides of the same coin. Gentleness is strength under control … we might even say it is desire under control. Humility is the acknowledgement that God alone can direct our desires and strengths. As you experience desire today, practice humility by not suppressing, by praying, and by expressing gratitude. The result? A gentleness that leads to peace and rest!

Think through this list of four ideas … how and when can you practice them today?

Father, so many emotions and desires flood through my heart and mind each day. Desires to honor You and do life with You, and quite often desires to do my own thing or to do the “minimum” rather than entrust myself to You as a way of life. I don’t want to hide anything from You. So, give me the courage to talk to You about the desires of my heart even when, on one level, I don’t want to. Give me the wisdom to see how any desire is truly a desire for You. Give me the eyes to look at life with gratitude. Humbly, I accept my life as it is, not as I might like it to be. You are enough. Amen.

Identity is a huge topic of conversation in our world today. Confusion related to racial identity, sexual identity, gender identity, and national identity top the headlines. For some observers, these issues aren’t confusing at all and angst arises that confusion is expressed or suggested. However, for all us, we can struggle with the issue of identity. Who are we, really? What makes me who I am? We can identify with all kinds of things, whether acceptable or forbidden in our culture or sub-culture, and still miss our true identity.

I may identify as a husband or lawyer or biker. Someone else may identify related to their sexual orientation or their lack of having a spouse or their gender. Another may identify with their economic status or race or nationality. All of these may form a part of our self-understanding, but they are not the core of who we are. Whenever we build our sense of core identity on what we do, our circumstances, or even our own self-perception, we will invariably mistake or obscure our true identity.

In 1^st Century Greece, Paul of Tarsus proclaimed in Athens that even though we might have confusion, our true identity is actually closer than we might think:

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.” (Acts 17:27-28)

A few months ago in a conversation with a new friend, this new friend related a story about someone who shared “I am a ______________.” The blank was filled with a description of something related to behavior and perhaps desire. His simple response back was: “No, you’re not … you’re a child of God.” Every human who walks the face of the earth was created by God and this is why Paul could state “we are his offspring.” This is our created design, our core identity … God’s child … His beloved son or daughter.

What if that was the fundamental lens through which we saw everything else? We might know that there is a Father, but it isn’t always our experience. More often, we look at life as though we were orphans, doing our best to forge our own way in this world … without a name, without resources, without a Father. When the perspective of the orphan is ours, we adopt lesser identities as our primary identity and they can’t bear the weight. They may be destructive identities or untrue identities or perhaps accurate identities but not our core identity, and then, confusion and frustration consistently fester.

Seeing ourselves as a child of God gives us the perspective and the power to interact with any other identity which might be a part of our lives.

In Galatians 3, Paul also shares this perspective about core identity when he writes:

“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Gal 3:27-29)

Being male and female or slave and free are not unimportant but they are not core. Only when we see our lives through the lens of Christ can we make sense of being male or female. In a world where slavery was an ingrained part of the culture, the only hope for a shift in the enslaving mentality was to appeal to a deeper sense of identity.

In his excellent work on contemplative prayer, Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird shares a beautiful and poignant illustration of how this can work in our lives:

“The marvelous world of thoughts, sensation, emotions, and inspiration, the spectacular world of creation around us, are all patterns of stunning weather on the holy mountain of God. But we are not the weather. We are the mountain. Weather is happening – delightful sunshine, dull sky, or destructive storm – this is undeniable. But if we think we are the weather happening on Mount Zion, then the fundamental truth of our union with God remains obscured and our sense of painful alienation heightened.” (p. 29)

As we fail to interact with the weather appropriately, we end up making t-shirts or starting clubs that distract us from deepest reality. One of the amazing things (among many) about Jesus when He walked this earth is that He rarely got off message. His focus was the heart and directing people to live from the heart based on their core identity. People often criticize that Jesus didn’t talk about this issue or that issue, assuming that His silence is implicit approval of said issues. However, His seeming silence is best seen in the context of His affirmation of the theological emphases of Scripture which are simple summed up as “love” (Matthew 22: 37-39). Love of God and others directs us back to core identity which is indeed the context from which all issues must be viewed rather than getting fixated on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of lesser identities. Jesus trusted that getting grounded in the mountain would give the moorings from which to view all else.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross shares that:

Our concern must be to live while we are alive—to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a façade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.

The problem is not that we have external definitions but that we become attached to them. They become that core from which we live. So, how do we break free and settle into the reality of our core identity as children of God? I would suggest three things:

1. Acknowledge your propensity for attaching to lesser identities.
2. Release the control that you seek to gain over the lesser identities. Frequently, the storms on the mountain create tension in our lives … we become afraid and confused. We want to control through relieving the tension. Hold the tension before God as an act of prayerful trust.
3. Develop a daily habit of resting in your core identity as a child of God. Allow that to be the place from which you view all of your life.

Brother Geoffrey Tristam shares: “I believe God wants us to practice truly seeing every day. We can, if we desire it, learn to see the presence of God each day, even in the most ordinary things. As we grow closer to God in prayer we begin to see as God sees.” Consider the following as a way to grow closer to God in prayer …

Prayer Practice:

For a few moments, quietly recite the following truth from Colossians 3:2-3 as a reminder of your core identity: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Next, sit quietly in God’s presence as a child who is fully accepted and loved, not needing to say a word. Envision that you are sitting like a child at the feet of God (or any other image that helps you focus on your core identity).

As your mind wanders to the “things that are on earth” (and it will), simply go back to your mental image of sitting at His feet … resting securely in His presence.

Sit with Him in this way for as short as 5 minutes or as long as 20 minutes. Your mind may get distracted a hundred times. Don’t be discouraged, just let each distraction be an opportunity to return your attention to Him. As you grow in such a practice, it can alter the way you walk through your day.

Repentance is one of those words that gets associated with “off-center” people holding signs while walking downtown: “Repent for the end is near.” It is a word that gets thrown at people who are doing things that other people don’t like: “You need to repent of ______.”

However, repent is one of the most beautiful words in the world. From its usage in the Biblical text, the Greek word is metanoia which basically means “to change the mind.” It’s a beautiful word because it means that someone, by God’s common grace on the world, always has the opportunity to change their mind – to see things differently – to take God’s perspective on a matter. I love it because it means that redemption and change are always possible. If we open ourselves to God’s grace and presence in our lives, repentance is a beautiful reality every day. And certainly, we are in need of changing our minds about something every day … we are all in process. None of our stories have been written to the last chapter. (Note: I realize that metanioa has further implications as well … implications which get beautifully messy. For this discussion, I desire to focus on the simplicity of our perspective being redirected and refined which is the foundational idea of repentance).

As we look at the world around us, we very quickly notice that there are a variety of perspectives on almost every situation imaginable. There is very little consensus. How we engage with the differences is vital. Certainly, there are differences which are inconsequential: who is the greatest basketball ever? Or, what is the best ethnic food? There are other differences which have much more, and often ultimate, consequence: is there a God? Is a certain lifestyle appropriate? Does everyone go to heaven? Is there a life after this one?

When there are true difference which have to do with ultimate reality, the nature of the universe or our identity as human beings or the existence of God, the need for repentance is a very real possibility. A change of mind can be a beautiful thing. If I am on the “wrong” side of a situation, the opportunity to change my perspective is a true gift.

The way that we often engage with one another when there are differences do not allow for repentance. We attack and critique and judge which frequently keeps us entrenched in our understanding and leads others to a place of defensiveness which means putting up walls and protecting their understanding. Clearly, much of what we are doing on this planet isn’t working which leads me to ask: how does God deal with us? How does He deal with the fact that there are lots of things for which we need to repent (“change our mind”)?

In Romans 2:4, we are told that God’s kindness is what leads us to repentance. What is kindness? The other descriptions in the verse help us. It is also His forbearance, and patience which come into play when we talk about repentance. Forbearance and patience speak of waiting and being slow. All three of these words connote the idea of being lovingly present in someone’s life. The bottom line is that it isn’t attacks or judgmental words that God uses to bring us to repentance but loving presence, drawing us away from ourselves to a bigger, grander sense of what life is all about. We always get small and petty when we get stuck behind our walls of protection, but He draws us out with the glory and beauty of who He is … knowing that our perspectives will change over time as He becomes the defining reality in our lives. This is, however, a process and a journey. We might even give lip-service to things before there is true repentance (e.g., think about things which you publicly profess but privately do not practice). He is patient and slow. This discussion in Romans 2 is in the context of Paul challenging people who were being judgmental. His point? Being judgmental isn’t God’s way, kindness is.

So, I’d like to suggest that we learn to be kind to one another rather than positing our perspectives so quickly and rashly when we find ourselves at odds with another person or viewpoint. We aren’t sure who first uttered the words but I love the sentiment behind:

                “Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a hard battle.”

The implication is that we are all in process and all of us are struggling through life. If you don’t think you are, maybe pride or blindness is your struggle! None of us have it all figured out. Thankfully God shows us kindness that enables a relationship with Him … a relationship of kindness where we can change and grow over time. God is slow and patient (2 Peter 3:8) toward us.

There are certainly times when repentance is needed, and it will only happen when we lead with loving kindness. The idea of “loving-kindness” relates to a concept in the Hebrew Bible, hesed. God showed hesed  to His people by showing loyal love that resulting in personally pursuing them. When they were “at odds with” and in need of repentance, He pursued them. The prophet Hosea became a living illustration of God’s hesed by “buying back” (redeeming) His wife from a life of utter unfaithfulness. He patiently and persistently pursued the one in need of repentance.

As we live in a world where we experience significant and consequential differences, differences that we believe are ultimate and life altering, kindness is everything! It means that we open ourselves up to others personally and not making them a punching bag for our own views and perspectives, however “correct” those views may be. It also means that we humbly pursue their perspective, opening ourselves up to their world and understanding their experience. Jesus is the most amazing example of this as He took on human flesh and experienced all that we’ve experienced.

Ponder these few examples of what interacting with kindness might mean:

1. Lead with questions, acknowledging that we don’t know someone’s story. Perhaps, our questions will help unearth something not previously considering by the other person. Perhaps, our questions will cause us to rethink our understanding of things. Asking questions is always better than making statements.
2. Go slow, knowing that there are a lot of things we do not know. The Bible does not answer every question. The Bible leads us to “fear God” (fear is respect, honor, love) which is the beginning of knowledge. Note: the beginning, the path, not the end of the destination. We always live with a degree of mystery this side of eternity.
3. Give space for God to be the ultimate source of kindness and therefore repentance. How? Through listening. A Mennonite pastor, David Augsberger said, “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.”
4. Pay attention to your own heart and emotional reactions to a difference in another person. How is your reaction getting the way of kindness? Acknowledge it and through the Holy Spirit, let go of that reaction.

Father, may we show others the same kindness that You show us. Give us strength, wisdom, and patience in the name of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. Amen.