The Hello Prayer

   

    The easiest prayer, most simple to say, is the single word, "Hello."

     Prayer so often sounds like an arduous hurdle we must skillfully leap over to reach a feeling of peace and closeness with God. My list of tasks piles up so high most days that connecting with God just sounds like another chore I must accomplish somewhere along the way. My soul gets overwhelmed as my mind races through all that needs to be done until I remember,

     “Oh! Hello!”

     He’s already here with me. There's no special incantation to chant, seven times, in just the right order, to get God's attention. No. He is here all the time. He is ever present, ever near, ever waiting for me to be present with Him. I can be, if I simply say,

     “Hello.”

     My mind gets cluttered with the countless tasks of the day, and the many days ahead. So much to do, so much I should be doing that I'm not. But I say Hello, I turn to Him mentally and spiritually with that word, and He reminds me,

     "Wait. Don't worry. Just focus on the tasks I assign you today. Still your soul's racing pace. I am here. I will walk with you through every task. Don't let your own thoughts carry you off without me. I will carry you in my arms, Peace and Joy, through every place you need to go."

     Hope stirs in my soul. Ah, He's right here. I can start with praying continually. I can talk to Him. I can listen to Him no matter what’s going on around me. I can access Him any time I want, if I simply say,

     “Hello.”

Loving Him Wholly

Four Loves, Two Camps

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was He gave a straight forward answer containing far reaching implications, “Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and the whole of your strength (Mark 12:30).” Priority #1: love God with the whole of your self, every part. This is the stated commission of every Christian.

Unfortunately, in my history with the Church, I've seen few embody a lifestyle of loving God with the whole of all four of these aspects of their self. We're not loving, and there not living, fully. Though there are a myriad of different denominations within the Church the majority of them boil down to two camps. Some do a great job of loving God with their whole heart and mind and strength, but aren't so great at loving Him with their whole soul. The other camp, focuses on loving Him with their whole heart and soul with all their strength. It is a rare thing to find people who steadfastly pour each part of their self into loving God fully, but she is a powerfully invigorating woman to encounter. 

Two Camps

  I grew up in what I call the ‘strongly intellectual’ side of the Church. This camp is exceptionally good at constructing systems for understanding who God is and how He operates. Reason and the mind are regarded most highly in their counsels. As a result, solid theological teaching, and growing in understanding of God stands as the cornerstone they build their lives on. They love to share insights which elucidate one or another aspect of a passage or idea. Sunday school classes, education, correct thinking, broad literacy, and academic acclaim are their cherished prizes, solid rationalized system of thought are their safety and homes.

There is another camp within the Church who holds a different aspect of the self as king - the soul. They live on the other side of the road dividing these two camps in the Church. They are the  ‘strongly spiritual’ side. These people are passionate about experiencing God in personal ways, having spiritual encounters, and demonstrating charismatic gifts of the Spirit. Their teachings are often based more on feelings and loose ideas than critical or historical study of scripture. There is a deep seated distrust of the intellect in many of these communities coming from a fear that it will “quench the spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19).

Warring Camps

Growing up in the more Intellectual side of the Church one hears a lot of warnings about “those crazy Pentecostal folks who abuse spiritual gifts, are easily tossed around by their emotions, and are quickly taken in by bad teaching.” If I didn’t hear these words expressed in these exact terms, they were hinted at from all sides.  Such warnings were born out of wounds many people received in the land called Pentecostalism or stories of such wounds. Some were called “not Christian” because they didn’t speak in Tongues. Others saw crazy meetings that looked and sounded more like mobs in riot than peaceful, enlightening, uplifting gatherings of God’s people. All this and more spurred a deep distrust and even animosity towards the other "crazy" camp which served to drive them further away from each other. 

On the other hand, the "strongly spiritual" camp looks across the tracks to see stifled Christians over-analyzing everything while neglecting and distrusting the Holy Spirit. They recount with distain countless lost opportunities of connecting with God and doing His work those "excessively intellectuals" miss out on. They blame them for keeping Holy Spirit locked in the Cage of History, neglecting the dynamic miraculous power He wants to soak our everyday lives in. Backhanded remarks are made towards the stoic intellectuals in their ivory towers of academia with so little connection to the Spirit of God. All this and more produces a deep-seated distrust and underemphasis of the mind. 

The tragedy is that neither camp alone is experiencing the fullness of what Jesus wants to bless us with when he says, “Love the Lord with you whole HEART, whole SOUL, whole MIND and whole STRENGTH." Jesus didn’t say, "pick your favorite few, the ones you're inclined towards and that’ll be good enough to live out the fulness of what you were made for." He was laying out the recipe for a full life you were designed to live! A lot of people carry around the general idea that we should just go with our natural strengths, some are wired to feel, some to think. Play to your strengths and don't sweat your weaknesses. Jesus is has much more than that for you. He said to everyone Love God with all four parts, implying that we all have all four and should pour the WHOLE of all them into loving God. 

The four parts of the equation are like four pillars in a building; the Heart, the Soul, the Mind, and the Strength. If we seek to love God fully with each of these parts then the building of our Self will grow up straight and true. It will become a firm and solid house in which others will find peace and safety, joy and life. But, if we aren't putting equal energy into building each of these pillars you can see how quickly it will become tilted, unstable and either cease its upward growth and stagnate, or topple over in a heap from confusion. 

But I hear the rumblings of a beautiful work rollin' down the tracks our way. Minds are clearing out their cobwebs, Hearts are coming alive, Souls are emerging from arid lands, passion for the Great Father's heart and face cracks electric in the air. Curious, hungry children are searching the other camps for the nourishment their upbringing lacked. And the best new is, they're finding it and finally filling out their empty trousers; growing full strong. They see the segregation of spirit from mind as immaturity acting out of insecurity and are searching for more. They are the mergers of the two tribes. They are becoming whole and true lovers of God.

Come Meet Me

Come meet me in the morning.

Refresh me like dew.

Let your Whispers, rustle my spirit.

Draw me into your Heart,

Up to your Face,

Down to your Feet,

Where my Soul finds its pace.

Feet me along, The Great Little Path

You Walked + Ran + Blazed.

Fly me up, your Heavenly Road,

Where all Know, and Sing Your praise.

Float me along,

Your deep river Joy,

Till I Burst, + Bubble;

Past my seams.

My trust in Your Hand,

Head on Your Chest,

No worry, can break-in my mind.

I have + I'll hold,

You for my Gold,

Every day, every all, of my Time.

A Balanced View

       As Christians, we believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Thanks to the innovative creativity of Tertullian, we call this beautiful paradox the ‘Trinity’ (he invented this word in Latin to help people think and talk about this idea). The difficulty of understanding the way Scripture describes this reality of one God in three persons has been the source of great confusion throughout the Church’s life, not to mention the lives of many individuals. 

        I won’t try to explain here how our Heavenly Father is unified with, yet distinct from the Son and Spirit--that is a massive undertaking which I have no intention of taking under presently. I want to look here at how we act towards the triune God in our everyday lives. 

        A Theology professor of mine once said, “Though we say we believe in one God in three persons, we usually treat him like he is only one and not three or only three and not one.” I’ve noticed something similar in most Church gatherings. Usually, a church focuses prominently on one person of the trinity, while the other two sit hidden in the background nearly forgotten. I grew up in the mainstream protestant side of the Church, where Jesus was the central focus. The Father took a back seat, and Holy Spirit was so far back He was barely holding on to the emergency exit door of the bus as He flailed out the back. Most of the songs, teachings and answers in my Sunday gathering were about Jesus. Many Christians know that the ‘Sunday-school’ answer to every question, no matter what, is ‘Jesus.’

        This may not sound like a bad thing, Jesus being the grand focus and all. But everything has a place and a measure it functions in best. When it is out of its place or experienced in a measure other than its best, there is something lacking in our experience, even if we don’t recognize it. For example, an action or idea may not be wrong because of being vile or wicked, it may be wrong simply because it pushes another thing out of its proper place and causes imbalance in your or another person’s life. If we focus solely on Jesus, we miss out on who He was always emphasizing: His Father. Or we might even be neglecting the very one He sent to us, the one He implored us to look to after He was gone: The Holy Spirit.

        Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was wholly for the purpose of connecting us, through adoption, with The Great Father. The means by which Jesus did and still does this is through the Holy Spirit and living continually in the Holy Spirit. This is what we were made for. It’s exactly what Jesus worked for and preached His whole life on earth: life as children of the Father in, by, and through His Holy Spirit.

        My point is certainly not that we need to value Jesus less. My point is we need to value the Spirit and the Father more. Or, perhaps it’s the other way around for you. Who in the Godhead do you talk with the most in prayer? With whom do you most often relate? Who do you connect with the least out of the Trinity?

        Are you relating to the Father as His son, or daughter?

        Are you living as a highly valued child of God?

        Are you being led into all truth and empowered to do great things by his Holy Spirit?

        Do you recognize and respond to the Spirit’s voice throughout the day?

        Are relating to your rescuer, brother, and King; Jesus?

        Who do you know the most deeply, and who might you be neglecting?

        Though it’s most simple to focus just on Jesus or the Father, or the Spirit, we mature most fully as we grow in our relationships with all three members of the Trinity. Practice addressing each person in the Godhead individually. Ask The Spirit to show you what is lacking and what is off balance for you here. Ask him to give you a balanced and more full view of life with Him.

Rough Days

                             

You know those days when you just feel like a pile of shit? The days when you can’t see the point of anything, least of all your own existence? I do. I’ve had countless such days. Days where I wake up feeling “blue” and nothing is going right. Days when I don't feel close to God or like I'm living like He would want. These days often drift into weeks -- or even months and years. Usually, it’s because I feel like I’m not living out the purposes for which I was put on the earth. When I feel like I'm not living up to what I should, a listless weariness starts to suffocate me. Soon anxiety sees a welcome spot to land and proceeds to do so. Then worry and depression creep in and all of a sudden, or slow and steady like water rising, I feel lost and distant from joy, life, God, people, and even my own self.

          At times like these, I have tried working my way back to joy and purpose and closeness with God. I read my Bible more religiously, pray harder, even try thinking of others more...but nothing changes.

          The only way I’ve found out of this Cave of Sadness known by so many names is by the simple act of remembering who I am and resting in that knowledge. I remember: God is my Dad (Father is not a used word in my relational history, so I use Dad). Good dads delight in their children; they simply want to be and do things and rest with them. That's what my Heavenly Dad has shown me. I've learned that God loves to lift up humble people and bring low the people who try to do things all on their own, because that’s just not how we were made to operate.

           In light of all this, to counteract the Cave of Sadness I literally get on my knees (first thing in the morning to set the tone of my day, though any time is good) and say, "Good morning, Dad!" I bask in my place in His heart, remembering that He has made me a new creation in Him. I remember that the New Self is who He calls my real true self. He sees me as completely covered by Jesus' sacrifice. God sees me as perfect and delightful and new -- right now! I relish and luxuriate in this place, in my true identity as God's son and the implications that furnish the reality of God being my Dad. I stop and let this sink in to the deep crevices of my soul. I ask Him how He's doing. Stop and listen for his response. I chat about the day ahead with Him, asking Him to lead and guide me through it to bless and enrich other peoples' lives and usher his beautiful desires into every situation, inviting Him into every second of it. I talk with Him about the people on my heart, asking Him to sow specific goodnesses into their days. All throughout the time I pepper in "thank you's" for every good thing I can think up, from my pillow, to food, to friends and his ever unfolding love. I build up an atmosphere of gratitude inside my heart and mind.

          Sometimes just switching my focus to these thoughts has snapped me out of the darkness that was shrouding out any light from my perspective. Sometimes it takes time for the shadows to flitter away. But, when I make these thoughts and prayers into a habit pretty soon joy and peace and healthy thinking set in. I don't have to strive after happiness, I just have to agree with the view my good, benevolent Heavenly Dad has of me...what a delicious place to live. I just receive God's view of me and trust that His is a more accurate view of a deep, eternal reality than what I can see. Joy. Peace. Rightness. This is your Kingdom, God? I could get used to this. So I try to (Rom. 14:17). I practice resting on my Papa's chest, letting His provision spread peace through my mind. Life becomes a journey in which I seek to sow this peace and joy and rightness wherever I go. In this place, my purpose is made clear: Do just that.

A note: If you are currently struggling with the lows of clinical depression, you might read this essay as imploring you to ‘try harder’--which is actually the opposite of what I intend. I believe God can bring healing to any situation, but only he knows exactly what you need. I encourage you to listen to Him and the Family of God around you. Mental illness is a real issue that deserves no shame, but only support -- listen to the Lord for where you should seek that support.