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Reason to Believe

I will inaccurately quote him. Maybe because I really didn’t grasp the gravity of what he was saying until after he walked away. But I do think I can pretty accurately convey his sadness.

He waited in the background. Until the students hanging around after chapel had dispersed. A handsome, bright, thoughtful, Midwestern college sophomore. He walked up to me, looked into my eyes and said something like this: “When I first came to believe in Jesus a few years ago, it all was so powerfully alive and real. I couldn’t believe I was given this incredible new life. Everything seemed vital. I felt great about me and was stunned at the love and wonder of God. I knew He was really there and that He really liked me. Life was suddenly very important and people deeply worth caring about. I wanted everything this new world was about.” He then paused before saying, “What happened?” Before I could answer, he answered himself.

“Looking back, it seems like the very pursuit of trying to get closer to Him has made Him seem further away. I’ve been pretty miserable for quite awhile now. I beat myself up for doing it wrong. I beat myself up for not doing enough. I beat myself up for not being able to figure it out. I beat myself up that He wouldn’t want to be close to me. I have no idea what happened. The worst part is that it feels like He’s grown weary and disappointed with me.”

This is not an over-sensitive student with an over-active conscience. He’s a really well-adjusted young man, who feels betrayed. He knows its nonsensical to blame God, but he’s tired of blaming himself for not knowing what he’s done wrong.

He represents the oft-unexpressed experience of millions. Our very pursuit of trying to get closer to God has made many of us feel further away. And now we are religiously uptight, second guessing our motives, and looking for some religious experience to make it all real again. He doesn’t doubt God is real, he just doubts that he’ll ever be able to figure out where it went-that unforced, beauty of sacred awe and wonder and playful joy.

Please don’t smugly dismiss his state as a young believer pining for that magical first season of experiencing God. He’s not describing infatuation. He’s describing a real, living, breathing relationship of worship, love and adoration. He’s describing the experience of loving and being loved. He’s describing a relationship he had every reason to believe would continue in its richness and unfettered delight.

So, what happened?

We’ve been trying to learn helpful and liberating words to his question for decades. The sad truth is that probably he unwittingly did it to himself. Like Peter on the water, he was walking by faith, overwhelmed that this kid in middle America could be so deeply and intentionally loved by the very God of the universe. And then something crept in. Shame maybe. A season of dryness or less dramatic day-to-day. And he wasn’t prepared for it, this tempo-changing, rhythm of God’s wooing and love. From the loud tapes of his existing insecurity still playing in the background, it would cause him to think he’d again done something to mess up the relationship. This might cause him to doubt if he’d ever been worth being loved like this in the first place. In that moment, instead of resting in the peace of undeserved love, he changes the terms of the relationship and sets out to prove to God that he’s worthy of His love. But how can anyone be worthy of the love of Jesus? So, he must never let himself rest, be content or at peace. He must become more consecrated, more diligent, always pushing to feel something approaching enjoyment and acceptance from God again. There was always more to do, more to prove, more to maintain, appearances to keep. Soon he would find himself drawn to teachers, mentors and books who would unwittingly dangle that carrot of what he could do to get back into God’s favor. And each time the effort would feel right for awhile…but always, invariably, each time, it would send him deeper into hidden disillusionment, feeling like there was something particularly wrong with him. He would live daily with the picture of God on the other side of his failures-justifiably impatient, frustrated and growingly disdainful of such slow growth.

This scenario is played out tens of millions of times each day all over the world. It is what happens when we try to make ourselves worthy of Christ’s love. It is what happens when we lose confidence in the righteousness we’ve been given and set out to manufacture one of our own. It is what happens when we try to employ old methods of trying to will and change myself into something else instead of trusting that who I now am is completely and already completely changed.

Many of us, we’ve been hoodwinked.

Love, lived out from a completely new nature is still hard work. But it’s the right work. The hard work that tries to prove you’re someone you’ve lost confidence you ever were, is wasted work. It is crippling, anesthetizing work.

…And this is why you and I get up each morning and keep risking this trust in what Christ has done in us, instead of trying to learn to run even faster and harder. Because we must model it and offer it to this next generation, many of whom have already taken the bait…


Posted on Wed, March 28, 2012 by John Lynch

8 comments (Add your own)

1. Phil wrote:
That truly describes so much of my early life. Yet in the process of all the book, and conferences that lifted me up for a moment, only to come back down I found that I continued to tend what at times might have only been a small glowing ember, and other times a blazing fire for the goodness of God. God true to Himself, saw that glow of trust in me and lead me into this wonderful truth you guys have been bringing out a few years before you came around. I am so blessed to see the goodness of this truth being openly shared, thank you.

Wed, March 28, 2012 @ 4:39 AM

2. Mark Munsey wrote:
I know I've experienced this twice, the second time being the clearest in my memory and the hardest to shake. My relationship with Him, more specifically my experience of Him, had a vitality, a daily freshness, an excitement I hadn't known in too long a while. But that long while was beginning to fade into irrelevance with my growing closeness with Him. This came about in part because of a slightly older man taking me under his wing and, though I didn't know it at the time, fathering me.

This lasted for almost a year since I'd finished college, and I began to grow concerned I had wasted my schooling because I hadn't gotten a professional job. So in part motivated by fear I headed off to graduate school. I thought I felt Him pulling away from me. My legs, as it were, went out from under me. I couldn't put my finger on anything I'd done, but I came to believe He wasn't much interested in me. So I just accepted it, put my head down and went about settling in for the long haul. I knew I was saved but had no real joy or experience of life - worse still, no one around me telling me much about grace for living.

I praise God I'm hearing it now, but where was the Church and the gospel that brings life and freedom all those years? I pretty well thought the answer to Paul's exclamation, "having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh?" was Yes. I'm growing in the truth & Spirit I trust each day. But after thinking that way for so many years it's hard to shake.

Praise God for His finishing of the work he started in me. I'd be toast otherwise.

Wed, March 28, 2012 @ 4:40 AM

3. Lee wrote:
Something about getting into His Word came to the forefront of my mind several years back. his Word is light and as I go tcloser to His light it revealed sin that I was unaware of that HE wanted to work on and made me feel horrible. I then proceeded to try and work on my sin myself. Not a good plan at all. The error wasn't in the revealing of the sin. The error was in the mentality that I could actually work on it on my own.

Wed, March 28, 2012 @ 6:05 AM

4. Lucius wrote:
The tapes are pretty loud and it's easy to be hoodwinked. I heard a sermon last week and one of the main points by Pete Wilson was that "you can belong before you believe".

I see that as the TrueFaced journey with the Cure. I am thankful that my friends in the Room of Grace make me feel like I belong in those times of unbelief.

Thankful for your work.

Wed, March 28, 2012 @ 7:07 AM

5. Joel Brueseke wrote:
It really is sad that there are so many people out there who have come to know Jesus and yet have this feeling of being distant from Him, or of shame, guilt, etc. I lived on that emotional roller coaster and I never want to go back. Thankfully the awesome truth of who God is and who we are in Him is spreading to people, one by one (and sometimes many by many). People are waking up and finding the love, grace and faithfulness of their heavenly Father, and they are finding the glory and honor, dignity and worth that He has crowned them with!

Thanks for pressing on with this awesome message, with such love for those you share it with.

Wed, March 28, 2012 @ 7:25 AM

6. Mark Warren wrote:
I have visited the tree of good and evil and tried to live from the good side many times.
I like to call it "Trying and Dying". Living from the tree of life takes practice. When I sense myself living in a state of unrest I say to myself, am I trying or trusting?
Thanks!

Wed, March 28, 2012 @ 5:26 PM

7. Jewels wrote:
this. Oh my soul!
there is a pre and a post for those who've been "graced"
and for our friends, sisters and brothers who are still trying.... there is grace for that.


"all I know is I was blind and now I see." indeed.

And I'm running, running free.
My love goes free, my love goes free Jesus,
because you are ever-with me.




I love that last, Mark, "trying or trusting" mmmm. So good.

Wed, April 4, 2012 @ 11:26 AM

8. Aasim wrote:
So will they not be starting prtacice this weekend 3/10/2012 as the confirmation email stated. I am just a little confused and need clarification which was not provided in your previous message. I think the above calendar is a great help for us to keep track of upcoming events. Thanks-Demetria

Thu, June 21, 2012 @ 1:54 AM

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