With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

by Skye Jethani

What I find most among my peers in Christian ministry is a highly activist form of faith. Whether by fighting poverty, growing the church, or engaging politics, we tend to find purpose and meaning through what we do for God and his kingdom. The LIFE FOR GOD posture is highly celebrated and those capable of accomplishing the most receive great accolades and admiration.

Failure to engage the whole drama of Scripture, including the opening and closing scenes, may partially explain why we have little vision for a LIFE WITH GOD.

Fear and control are the basis for all human religions. From this common beginning the paths diverge dramatically, splinter, multiply, and finally terminate in different places. But each one is an attempt to overcome suffering, fear, and death by exerting control over natural, and sometimes supernatural, forces.

The reason, simply put, is that seeking control is not the solution to the human condition but is part of the problem.

I realize that in Christian traditions holding a very high view of the Scriptures, like my own, it may sound as if I am downgrading the importance of the Bible. That is not the case. It is God’s Word, inspired by him, and the authority for our faith and lives. Through it we discover who he is—and what greater gift can there be? And it does contain many useful and applicable principles for life and faith. But in our zeal to honor the importance of God’s Word and extol its usefulness, we may unintentionally do the opposite. We may reduce the Bible from God’s revelation of himself to merely a revelation of divine principles for life.

The belief that a church’s numerical growth or decline is the direct result of one person’s leadership is only possible with a LIFE OVER GOD perspective.

But what about those who are successful? What about the people who implement God’s principles for life, business, or ministry and find the outcomes to be wonderful? Surely their experience proves that principles can be the guiding force of the Christian life. This is the third great failure of the LIFE OVER GOD approach—it causes us to gauge success based on effective outcomes rather than faithfulness to God’s calling.

While studies may be able to tell us which principles of life, business, and ministry work, a research method has not yet been created that can determine whether a principle is right.

And the fact that there are more men, women, and children in slavery today than at any other time in history— approximately twenty-seven million—shows the tragic impact of this self-centered mind-set on the most vulnerable.13 Horrors like slavery, sex-trafficking, abortion, euthanasia, and genocide are only possible when people are seen as commodities—measured by their usefulness and not by their inherent worth.

But consumerism, and the LIFE FROM GOD posture derived from it, takes a slightly different tack. Rather than removing our fears and pains, consumerism tries to distract us from them. Commodified goods and experiences are used to keep us amused—anesthetizing us from the unpleasant realities of our existence. Neil Postman explored this phenomenon at length in his influential book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Amusement, he reminds us, literally means “to not think,”14 in other words, to be distracted. Filling our lives with trivial possessions and experiences is an attempt to distract us from the fears and pains of life.

But distraction is not the same as deliverance. Consumerism and LIFE FROM GOD may numb our fears and pains, but it does not remove them.

After documenting this phenomenon and treating its effects, Dr. Brand said, “I thank God for pain, I cannot think of a greater gift I could give to my leprosy patients.” When taken too far, the pursuit of comfort and the avoidance of pain can make us into spiritual lepers—we become incapable of experiencing the aches God uses to awaken us to the reality of sin and evil in the world and in ourselves.

When we look at God, we may see a reflection of our consumer selves—a divine vending machine to dispense our desires. But when God looks at us, he sees his child, created in his image, who is wholly and dearly loved.

Jesus.” When

LIFE FOR GOD takes our fear of insignificance and throws gasoline on it. The resulting fire may be presented to the world as a godly ambition, a holy desire to see God’s mission advance—the kind of drive evident in the apostle Paul’s life. But when these flames are fueled by fear, they reveal none of the peace, joy, or love displayed by Paul. The relentless drive to prove our worth can quickly become destructive.

Reversing the rebellion of Eden and restoring what was lost can only be accomplished when we learn that at the center of God’s heart is having his children with him.

They come expectantly but leave disappointed. Or they may still identify themselves as Christians but actually settle for a posture toward God quite different from the one intended by Christ. Trying to speak with these people about the wonders and beauty of LIFE WITH GOD is exceedingly difficult because they simply have no reference point for it. They cannot begin to imagine what it looks like; it has remained hidden behind the shadows cast by this dark world. As Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century monk, said about his rich communion with God, “Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.”1

Like the mosaic ceiling in Ravenna, LIFE WITH GOD is so far beyond our imagination that it must be revealed to us. We cannot begin to imagine the beauty that exists behind the shadows. A light beyond ourselves must be turned on so that we can begin to see. And this is precisely what occurred when God took on flesh and made his dwelling among us. The advent of Jesus Christ is what sets Christianity apart from other religions. We affirm that Christ is indeed Immanuel, God with us, and that in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He is the image of the invisible God. And with Jesus an entirely different way of relating to God is revealed to us.

The LIFE WITH GOD posture is predicated on the view that relationship is at the core of the cosmos: God the Father with God the Son with God the Holy Spirit. And so we should not be surprised to discover that when God desired to restore his broken relationship with people, he sent his Son to dwell with us.

One of the diagnostic questions I ask people when determining what posture they are living from is, What is your treasure? What is the goal and desire of your life? What would you give everything to possess? You can imagine the range of answers I have heard. But occasionally a person’s eyes will sharpen as if they are looking at something or someone past me. A subtle smile will appear. And they will answer, “Christ. He is my treasure.” That person has found the irreducible foundation of a LIFE WITH GOD. Sadly, this is what many churches and ministries fail to understand. The primary purpose of our worship gatherings, preaching, and programs should be to present a ravishing vision of Jesus Christ.

By granting us his presence through the Holy Spirit, we can, as Dallas Willard said, have our treasure now. We can live in constant, unending communion with God. Thomas Kelly wrote about this kind of life in his simple but profound classic, A Testament of Devotion. He described it as “simultaneity”—the ability to be engaged with two things at the same time: There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings. The secular world of today values and cultivates only the first level believing this is where the real business of mankind is done . . . But we know that the deep level of prayer is the most important thing in the world. It is at this deep level that the real business of life is determined.

But the LIFE WITH GOD posture departs from the other forms of religion because it accepts this simple fact: control is an illusion. No amount of control will ever be enough to ensure our safety, and no amount of control will ever remove our fears. In addition, whatever comfort we do gain through control is little more than a placebo effect. We are fooling ourselves into believing we are safe when in fact we are not. Jesus

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest, professor, and author, found the answer in the Flying Rodleighs, a trapeze troupe from South Africa. While in Germany, he attended a performance out of curiosity and found himself transfixed by the artistry of the acrobats. But in the flying and spinning Nouwen saw more than an exhilarating show—he saw theology in motion. Nouwen observed that the flyer—the person soaring through the air—is really not the star of the trapeze performance. While everyone is focused on the flyer’s arial maneuvers, they sometimes fail to see that the maneuvers are only possible because the flyer fully trusts that he will be caught. Everything depends on the catcher. This led Nouwen to a new way of understanding his life with God. “I can only fly freely when I know there is a catcher to catch me,” he wrote. To more fully engage his new metaphor for the Christian life, Nouwen was fitted with a harness and ascended the trapeze himself. The sixty-something former Yale and Harvard professor giggled as he flew. And like a child, after each descent to the net, he would ask to go up again and again. Knowing he was safe allowed any fear of heights or injury to be replaced with childish joy. He said, If we are to take risks, to be free, in the air, in life, we have to know there’s a catcher. We have to know that when we come down from it all, we’re going to be caught, we’re going to be safe. The great hero is the least visible. Trust the catcher.2 Nouwen’s trapeze exemplifie...

The total absence of the sea in John’s vision simply means evil will have no place in the new creation.

But LIFE WITH GOD offers a different understanding of hope, one not rooted in either our circumstances or in moral perfection. It begins by remembering that our calling, our sense of purpose and significance, does not come from any external construct. Os Guinness said it this way: “First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia).”17 In other words, it is not our circumstances or behaviors or radical decisions that give our lives meaning and hope, but our unity with God himself.

Second, finding our hope with God rather than in our circumstances means that if our external circumstances suddenly change, perhaps even tragically, our hope can remain intact. We can endure the storms of life that happen upon us suddenly, knowing that God is always with us. Remember, in the biblical stories of God’s triumph over the sea, it was never what the people did that gave them hope amid the chaos, but it was God’s presence with them.

It was Jesus’ presence in the boat with them that brought hope. This is why Paul drew the Corinthians’ attention away from their circumstances and back to fostering a communion with God wherever they were. Hope does not depend on what’s happening around your boat. Hope depends on who is in your boat.

Jewish followers would have thought to

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you, wherever he may send you; may he guide you through the wilderness, and protect you through the storm, may he bring you home rejoicing, at the wonders he has shown you, may he bring you home rejoicing, once again through our doors.

In a very basic form, my wife and I also practice this discipline with our children at the dinner table. We usually go around the table and share our “highs and lows”—the high points and low points of our day. Sometimes we ask the kids, “Where did you recognize God today?” Ideally this type of simple question begins to form us to be more mindful of God during our rush of activities during the middle of the day and not simply in the tranquility at the end.