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my identity can never come from within. My actions, my art, even my beliefs—all of these need to be rooted in soil other than myself.
Rather, my identity must continue to be found in the love of my Creator Himself. I am loved. Deeply loved. And when I let that love define who I am, I am suddenly free to be myself.
In trying to describe the transcendent mystery of Abba’s love, I employed a plethora of adjectives such as infinite, outlandish, mind-bending, ineffable, and incomprehensible. Put them all together and they are still inadequate for one simple reason: Mystery is spoiled by a word.
It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are—not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance), but with them. Though God does not condone or sanction evil, He does not withhold His love because there is evil in us.
No amount of spiritual makeup can render us more presentable to Him.
that ‘mature’ men and women would not get so upset over something so trivial, that one’s equilibrium should be maintained even if it means placing unreasonable limits on personal hopes and dreams and accepting life in a diminished form.”[9]
It would be left with nothing but its own nothingness, and to the false self which claims to be everything, such a discovery would be its undoing.”
Obviously, the impostor is antsy in prayer. He hungers for excitement, craves some mood-altering experience. He is depressed when deprived of the spotlight. The false self is frustrated because he never hears God’s voice. He cannot, since God sees no one there. Prayer is death to every identity that does not come from God. The false self flees silence and solitude because they remind him of death.
To acknowledge humbly that I often inhabit an unreal world, that I have trivialized my relationship with God, and that I am driven by vain ambition is the first blow in dismantling my glittering image.
Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence. It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or one name among many. It is the name by which God knows us and the way He relates to us.
Our identity rests in God’s relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.
I can only tell you that for the first time in my life I can hear Jesus whisper to me every day, “Michael, I love you. You are beloved.” And for some strange reason, that seems to be enough.[8]
Let us pause here. It is God who has called us by name. The God beside whose beauty the Grand Canyon is only a shadow has called us beloved. The God beside whose power the nuclear bomb is nothing has tender feelings for us.
But when the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and Infinity speaks, when God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, when His love flashes into my soul and when I am overtaken by Mystery, it is kairos—the decisive inbreak of God in this saving moment of my personal history. No one can speak for me.
God calls His children to a countercultural lifestyle of forgiveness in a world that demands an eye for an eye—and worse. But if loving God is the first commandment, and loving our neighbor proves our love for God, and if it is easy to love those who love us, then loving our enemies must be the filial badge that identifies Abba’s children.
Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the wounds inflicted by others.
He is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can be: truthful, blunt, emotional, nonmanipulative, sensitive, compassionate—His inner child so liberated that He did not feel it unmanly to cry. He met people head on and refused to cut any deal at the price of His integrity. The gospel portrait of the beloved Child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to His emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of Man did not scorn or reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive emotional antennae to which He listened carefully and through which He perceived the will of
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“If the risen Christ suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you, what would you do?” Chesterton looked the reporter squarely in the eye and said, “He is.” Is this a mere figure of speech, wishful thinking, a piece of pious rhetoric? No, this truth is the most real fact about our life; it is our life. The Jesus who walked the roads of Judea and Galilee is the One who stands behind us. The Christ of history is the Christ of faith.
No thought can contain Him; no word can express Him. He is beyond anything we can intellectualize or imagine.
Limiting the Resurrection either to the past or to the future makes the present risenness of Jesus largely irrelevant, safeguards us from interference with the ordinary rounds and daily routine of our lives, and preempts communion now with Jesus as a living person. In other words, the Resurrection needs to be experienced as present risenness. If we take seriously the word of the risen Christ—“Know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time” (Matthew 28:20)— we should expect that He will be actively present in our lives. If our faith is alive and luminous, we will be alert to moments,
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Christianity is not simply a message but an experience of faith that becomes a message, explicitly offering hope, freedom from bondage, and a new realm of possibility.
The present risenness of Jesus as “life-giving Spirit” means that I can cope with anything. I am not on my own. “I pray that you may realize . . . how vast are the resources of his Spirit available to us.” (See Ephesians 1:18-19.)
Without deliberate awareness of the present risenness of Jesus, life is nonsense, all activity useless, all relationships in vain. Apart from the risen Christ, we live in a world of impenetrable mystery and utter obscurity—a world without meaning, a world of shifting phenomena, a world of death, danger, and darkness. A world of inexplicable futility. Nothing is interconnected. Nothing is worth doing, for nothing endures. Nothing is seen beyond appearances. Nothing is heard but echoes dying on the wind. No love can outlast the emotion that produced it. It is all sound and fury, with no ultimate
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or would you let Jesus be who He is—a Savior of boundless compassion and infinite patience, a Lover who keeps no score of our wrongs?
The root meaning of infatuation derives from the Latin in-fatuus, “to make foolish.”[14] Experience tells us that life is not always lived to such a lyrical beat. Excitement and enthusiasm must eventually give way to quiet, thoughtful presence. Infatuation must weather separation, loneliness, conflict, tension, and patches of boredom that challenge its capacity to endure. If it is to survive, the illusory intimacy of the first fascination must mature into authentic intimacy characterized by self-sacrifice as well as appreciation of and communication with the beloved.
Other voices clamor, “Don’t make waves; say what everyone else is saying and do what they’re doing; tailor your conscience to fit this year’s fashion. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. You don’t want to raise eyebrows and be dismissed as a kook. Settle in and settle down. You’d be overruled anyway.”
Substituting theoretical concepts for acts of love keeps life at a safe distance. This is the dark side of putting being over doing.
False prophets, playing on people’s innate fear of displeasing God, will abound in the coming years, leading people on wild pilgrimages and creating panic. As we listen to the heartbeat of the Rabbi, we will hear a word of reassurance: “I’ve told you all this beforehand. Shh! Be still. I am here. All is well.”
We are to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). We are to claim our belovedness each day and live as servants in the awareness of present risenness. We pay no heed to the quacks and self-proclaimed seers who manipulate the loyalty of others for their self-serving purposes.
