I’m sitting with the lingering smells of a butter pound cake wafting through the house on this drizzly Saturday. The recliner I’m sitting on frequently loses it’s balance and teeters backwards and just a few days ago I caught Eric on camera as he flew backwards with feet in the air =). I’m quite well balanced as we speak and have a fresh cup of mint tea to help me write what is deep in my soul today.
We can’t expect healthy intimate relationship without committing to honesty.
When we lie, we break trust.
Our “I’m fine, you’re fine, everyone’s fine and thankful and encouraged” is wonderful when it’s true, but superficially alarming when it’s unreality.
Trust cannot be built without facing conflict, wrestling, struggle, and pain. Conflict is the struggle for intimacy in our relationships. If we can face conflict and wrestling we can expect deep friendship with healthy people. Healthy relationship begins on the foundation of reality; our honest words, feelings, and perceptions. It is the wrestling dialogue we have with God and others that produces a solid trust.
And it is only when we trust that we can lean safely into intimacy.
How many of us long for intimacy (close familiarity and friendship) in relationships but have no idea how to start being honest and venturing into the somewhat frightening world of taking risks to build trust? Traveling in America this year has taught me something a bit alarming; we may be one of the busiest and most programmed church cultures in the world yet boast of the loneliest and most fragmented members. Our programs look delightful on a brochure, but the frenzy and money it takes to make them work has forced us to overlook deep relationship for giftedness or performance.
Honesty is only encouraged when grace is understood in the deep and true parts of our soul. I have been in environments that were not safe for honesty (I have been that unsafe person!) because perfection was expected. I have also been with people who asked gentle questions that uncovered the depth of my wrestle and I stood exposed, wondering what would happen next. These people that know grace enveloped me with so much understanding the reality of my heart tumbled out profusely. I could be honest. The words, hard and painful though they be, were met with eyes begging to understand instead of committing to judge.
I learned to trust with these people. They hold the deep parts of my struggles with gentleness. They are not watching for me to mis-step, but right there present when I do so they can catch my arm and give extra support. The dialogue I have with them builds a stable trust because I know they will be there when I’m not performing correctly. I have learned to trust their character. I know who they are up close when I’m suffering. I have let them into my struggle and seen gentleness, goodness, patience, and love. And because of this, I can lean in close. I can laugh deeper and cry harder in their presence and let all that is true both in celebration and grief be known.
We are friends in close relationship when we can be fully known.
Intimacy is impossible when we are caught in the web of performance, trying to say the right things instead of the true things. We cannot jump from a foundation of dishonesty and mistrust into close and happy intimacy, but far too many of us try, and this is why so many suffering daughters of God agonize and weep alone, wondering where the God they have heard of is in the dark night of the soul.
Job was a master question box. He teaches us honesty very well through chapters and chapters of honest wrestling with God. He starts with lament as he grieves all he has lost.
“Today also my complaint is bitter;
my hand is heavy on account of my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat!
I would lay my case before him
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would know what he would answer me
and understand what he would say to me.”
He tries to find God a the dark cloud of anguish.
“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
and backward, but I do not perceive him;
on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;
he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.”
And he doesn’t feel Him.
He continues his wrestling questions until God replies through pages of open ended questions back to Job. They have honest dialogue happening; as honest and raw as you can get! A deep and solid trust develops slowly through the conversation. Job has some light bulb moments about the character of God in suffering. He begins to feel His presence with Him. He opens his eyes to see the beauty of created order around him. His suffering still lingers frighteningly raw and close as he leans into intimacy with the voice of God over his life.
Job’s friends think he is suffering because he’s sinned. Their voices of accusation are loud in his ears because he’s vulnerable. But Job chooses to press God for answers with the din of criticism around Him.
God speaks to Job’s self-righteous friends…”You have not spoken of me what is right.”
How many of us are dictated by the voices around us because we haven’t learned to tune into the God above us? We’re pressured and anxious to do the right thing at the right time in the right way because we’re afraid the voices critique us. When people are not pleased with us we struggle to enter into the conflict. It’s too uncomfortable because we are not stable and defined by the voice of God over us.
We have not yet learned to talk to Him and hear what He says.
Daughters of God have the right to intimate relationship. Our deep longing to walk with Him on balmy Eden afternoons is sometimes dissuaded by a frenzied need for earthly friendships. We panic to be left out, feel uninvited and unwelcome, and every critical word lands like salt into a heart un-mended.
It’s easier to cower in hurt than to fight for the trust that leads to closeness.
I often hear the cry for friendship coming from the lips of beautiful and accomplished busy women. If this is you today, start developing close friendship with your God. Talk to Him about all that is real. Ask Him for answers. Give Him time to talk to you. Clear your mind of the debris of public opinion so you can tune into His divine definition of who you really are. Don’t flinch at the truth of negative emotion and real faults and sins, but wrestle through them with God so you can actually trust who He is.
We don’t trust people we never talk to honestly. We don’t want to be with people closely that we don’t feel safe with. But when we say what is true and face what is true, we can lean in and feel safety and love in the arms of our Father. We can repent there, weep there, be crushed with sorrow there, and rise to meet the faces of our communities and families with the emotional resilience to enter into the fight for healthy relationship.
If we perceive God to be harsh and distant in suffering, we will not want to be close to Him just as we don’t want to be vulnerable with judgemental individuals in our lives. Many daughters of God don’t trust His character because they don’t talk to Him honestly and get answers. This lack of safety with God leads to withdrawal and isolation and it is in this space that the devil speaks the loudest.
The din of his accusation becomes what we think is true about us.
It is the voice of the Accuser that will leave you fraught with fear and trying to be perfect, while the voice of God compels us with love into honest dialogue. Do you hear His voice over your life? No amount of spiritual grit and discipline will bring the intimacy of dialogue with God. We can pray a monologue to God for hours yet if we don’t know how to hear Him we might rise more desperate and more exhausted.
Imagine endeavouring to forge a close and lasting friendship with anyone in this world without ever hearing their voice in your life. It’s impossible. What if you felt pressured to talk to this friend for hours but it all became a programmed form of discipline with no response? Your monologue would become empty, routined, and maybe even desperate.
This is how many of us pray to God. We know we should pray, we know what we should pray, and when we should pray but we have no idea how to expect Him to respond to us in a close and intimate way.
Are you longing for intimate relationship with Him (and others!) today?
- Start with what is real and honest. God works with our reality, not an illusion. Stop saying the right things to cover what is true about you, and focus on what is reality. Talk to God about what you truly think of Him. Enter into conversation committed to honest dialogue even if it means conflict and discomfort.
- Develop trust by learning who God is when you are exposed. It’s hard to feel naked from the fig leaves of our false selves, but it only there we can be clothed with His identity for us. It is in our exposure and vulnerability that God moves in and we can feel His comfort overcome our shame.
- Lean into intimacy with a safe God. When you have a close connection with God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit within you, it is a deeply pleasurable triune friendship that has the capacity to delight and transform you.
- Learn to hear the voice of God through your whole being. Can God speak to you through impressions, feelings, dreams, visions, and His word? Are you comfortable with solitude and silence (even give minutes of your day) to clear your mind and ask Him what He wants to say?
God will work with all that is true about you today. He is not uncomfortable with your questions and has a response for you. He feels distant when we are committed to living a life of denial and illusion to look right and perform right for others. Let the fig leaves of what you have incessantly told yourself and heard about yourself fall off and let the reality of everything about you be exposed in His presence. Let Him redefine you so you can walk with a stable identity into a world of other voices, and stay unscathed.
Be a part of the true and honest church of Jesus Christ who is not afraid of imperfect people but invites them into conversation that leads to trust and the opportunity for deeply transformational discipleship. Lean in close to safe church communities who understand a God of grace in suffering. Ask questions. Have lightbulb moments with the truth deeply rooting in your whole person. Let trust be your reality. Weep together. Lean in when you’re afraid and let others help you unravel why.
Stay safe in closeness. His wings of protection spread wide so we can run beneath in our vulnerabilities with His arms around us and our arms around each other, your arms around me and my arms around you all in a radical embrace of grace. We can talk as friends there, conversing gently through sorrows and celebrating exuberantly in joys. All that is true can be voiced there, and the grace surrounding us all builds the trust to lean in and stay close. This is the way we heal and transform and truly experience the embodied kingdom of heaven on our fragmented earth.
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
(To be continued…stay tuned for the next blog Learning to Hear the Voice of God)
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