Desire: The Bowels of God

Somebody said something quite profound to me the other day. And I told it to my mate, and she said it really helped because sometimes she feels like she’s just a bit too crazy about God. Like she’ll read the bible and she’ll hear what it says and she’ll feel like actually, God is the thing. God is what it’s all about. He is so much better than even the best bits of everything else. Every second of her life belongs to him, and she wants it to be permeated, drenched in him, she wants to enjoy him and please him with every thought and every moment. And then she chats to other people, other Christians as well, and she starts to worry that maybe she just needs to take a more balanced approach…

But the thing that somebody said to me the other day was this:

“We do not have the capacity to exaggerate the goodness of God.”

And that’s true. And what’s really fun is trying. Trying out loud to exaggerate the goodness of God and realising that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing you can say – if you had a million years – nothing you can say that is truly good that is not true of him. God is better. Always and forever, God is better.

i will bless the King at all times
    his praise will always be on my lips
my soul makes its boast in the King
    let the humble hear and rejoice
 oh magnify the King with me
    let us exalt his name together.

And here’s something even better than knowing God is better. He wants to know us, he wants to know you – one of the hardest things to get my head around in life is the simple fact that the God of the universe yearns to be with me. There’s this crazy bit where God speaks through Jeremiah (its chapter 31 verse 20 if you’re interested) where the literal translation is, “I do thoroughly remember him still, therefore have my bowels been moved for him, I do greatly love him”. That’s right people. Bowels. God’s desire for us is genuinely gut-wrenching, and like every lover, he wants us to desire him back. He wants our guts to cry out for him, he wants us to run through a thunderstorm to meet him, he wants us to knock on his door at three in the morning just because we’ve missed him. And I know that all this sounds a bit pretentious and extravagant and weird, but honestly, I cannot exaggerate how much he desires you, or how desirable he is. This week has been a very important week in my life because I’m beginning to learn to desire him. Desire him. Run after him. Seek him.

i sought the King, and he answered me
    and delivered me from all my fears
those who look to him are radiant
    their faces are never covered with shame
this poor man cried, and the King heard him
    and saved him out of all his troubles.

The King hears us. It’s mental, it’s utterly mental and that’s partly why its so hard to remember that its true, but he hears us. And then, crazier still, he does stuff to us, does stuff in us. He takes away every drop of shame and makes us radiant with the reflection of his beauty. He rescues us from all our fears because if the King is for us then what on earth can stand against us? Can fear scare us or death kill us? I believe, wholeheartedly, and I have experienced before and I long to experience more and more, that God is a God who responds. So don’t stop asking, don’t stop pursuing, don’t stop searching, whether you’re a Christian already or whether you’re not, because he might not give you the answer but he will give you himself. And in my experience, when that happens, the questions start looking like they’re written in tiny, tiny letters. So concretely what I’m saying is, take a bible, get out into the quiet and call out to him. Desire him. Read the letter he has written you, and don’t stop until you’ve been changed. Until an exchange has occurred, until your heart has been warmed or transformed. God is real. I think all I’m really trying to share here is that even though I’ve known that for a long time, I still have to be reminded to act like it. And already this week I’ve discovered that its not always that easy; but I’m going to keep going, because – and I’m not exaggerating here because I do not have the capacity – if there is one thing in the whole of existence that is worth running for, worth waiting for, worth searching for: it’s Him.

As always, the guy who wrote Psalm 34 puts it better than I can:

oh, taste and see that the King is good.
    blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

(P.S. If you're feeling a hunger for this but you'd like to read about it from someone more eloquent and infinitely more qualified, I'm part of the way through a book called "The Pursuit of God" by A.W. Tozer and it is incredible, and all about this. So I would highly recommend!)

Sleepy

he will take great delight in you
he will quiet you with his love
he will rejoice over you with singing…

The juggling thing is a cliché but I’m going to use it anyway. A lot of the time I feel like I’ve got too many balls in the air. Like I’m trying to keep up all these different things at once – or, actually, trying to keep up with them. Work (although to be fair I am doing English…), drama stuff, sports stuff, church stuff, all the million things I want to read – at my stupidest I even find myself feeling like all the people in my life are balls that I have to juggle (for which I am deeply sorry, and about which I might write another blog sometime). Basically, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities – we all have, surely – a lot of good things we’re supposed to be doing, that we can’t forget about, can’t lose track of, can’t slacken the pace on, can’t relax about, can’t stop. Can’t really breathe on occasion. Maybe that’s an overstatement, but I bet that most of you know what I mean when I say: there’s something in my chest that feels like a fibre that’s pulled taut, that feeling of being in tension, of what’s in me never quite being able to lie down flat. When I can be watching iPlayer, or chatting and laughing, even in bed trying to go to sleep but still there’s something underneath that hasn’t quite relaxed. A weight that’s not quite lifted. Maybe it’s just me, but in case it’s not, let me tell you a story about what’s making it better.

***

She paces up and down the small hotel room, her too-tight boots move swiftly over the carpet. She stops, facing away from him, and starts trying to pull them off, still standing. She wrenches the first one off and almost loses balance. The second is easier, she picks the other one up and places them neatly beside a chair near the door. She stands up straight, starts scraping her back up into a tight – she stops – lets it fall, her brow creased – what is she doing? – she is supposed to be going to sleep.

“Dad – ”

He crosses the room, stands in front of her, takes gentle hold of her shoulders in both hands. “Rose, look at me.” She lifts her head, looks into his eyes. Dad and his big brown eyes. He smiles, and she can’t help but smile back. But she can’t quite hold it and she looks out the window and then down again, the constriction comes back into her eyes, you can see that her jaw is tensed. You never know what’s going to come through that door. She looks again to check that its shut and of course it is but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s not even like she’s planning anything any more, she’s just trying to hold everything in her head, keep it all in sight because if you can’t see it you don’t know where it is.

“Come on, Rose.” He has pulled the little chair up beside the bed, and he is sat in it, too small for him, slightly comical. She goes over and sits on the edge of the bed.

“Look at me, Rose. It’s OK.”

“Dad, it’s – ”

“I know. I know, Rose. I really do. Go on, just lie down.”

“But I need to – “ She stutters – doesn’t know where to start.

“Right now you need to rest.”

“But I need to – ”

“Not right now. Right now, you need to rest.”

She looked up and he looked into her eyes. And somewhere underneath there, there was fear. His heart ached.

“Rose. I’m here. Don’t worry, you’re old dad will be right here, right here beside your bed. I’ll keep an eye on you, all right? Just like I used to. I’m an old man now, I don’t need sleep like you do – I’ll be looking out for you.”

“Dad, you don’t have to.”

“No I don’t. But I’d like to.”

There is a moment of stillness. She looks at him – looks away. She folds back the covers, lies down on her side, slides her feet in and pulls the duvet up over her shoulder. He smiles at her again.

“Wait, what about you? I needed to ask – ”
He lets out a little breathy laugh – “Thanks, but, don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

She looks up at him, brow furrowed again, but then something seems to let go and she says, softly, “OK.”

Her head sinks deeper on the pillow, as if the pillow is breathing out.
And then, softly, slowly, his warm, melodic little voice, reedy with age, starts singing to her the song he always used to sing. Rising and falling, gentle, clear. And she can feel the water of a joyful tear gathering. As it escapes she closes her eyes.

Soundly, she sleeps.

***

One night, just before the start of this term, I was with some people singing to God and some thoughts struck me; struck me like a wave of warm water. It struck me that I don’t need to hold on to everything, that I don’t need to keep up with everything, that I can’t. It struck me that God, my Dad, sees me with my arms stacked high with stuff, struggling to balance all these plans and responsibilities and people without them all falling off, and he holds his hands out to me and says, “Let me take that for you.” And he can. That he says to me, “Mike, you’re quite little and tired and you need to rest, but I’ve got it under control.” In fact, I can only manage about 16 hours and then I find myself needing to stop again and he says, “Yes, sleep. I don’t need you to keep the world going round. To be honest, it’s not really your responsibility while you’re awake. I’ll be fine, and I’ll be here when you wake up. Sleep.” He tells me that I can take a day off in every seven and I can trust him that it will be OK. That the world won’t come crashing down around me. That when I’ve spent all week desperately straining to keep the weight up, and at last I take my hands away, it doesn’t fall – and I turn around and see him behind me, and he was holding it himself all along.

And the other beautiful thought that struck me was that with Him, there’s no rush. Everywhere else, in all the other hours in my calendar, there is pressure, there are time limits, deadlines - time is of the essence - but when I’m with Him, we’ve got forever. When I’m with Him, I get to taste eternity. And I like that. And I like what Zephaniah says… (chapter 3, verse 17…)

he will take great delight in you
he will quiet you with his love
he will rejoice over you with singing.

Try the Real Egg

This is an apology. I want to say that I am sorry - not just for me but on behalf of all my brothers and sisters – I am sorry that we have too often called the worst out of you.

What I mean is this: I seriously believe that you – and by you I mean you, as long as you’re a human being (and if you’re not and you’re reading this then fair play!) – I believe that you are wonderful. And I mean wonderful in the most literal sense: you are a wonder, you are something beautiful, something breath-taking, you are capable of doing profound and spectacular things way beyond everything they tell you in the stupid assemblies or the self-help books, way beyond anything you yourself could possibly hope for. I believe that you are not incidental or unimportant, that you are not unlovable but that in fact you are loved – right now you are loved beyond your wildest dreams. I believe that you are a creation of unparalleled potential and of infinite significance.

So firstly, I want to apologise, if you actually know me, for how often I forget that. For all the times when I don’t treat you how I would if I realised just how genuinely wonderful you are.

But secondly I want to apologise for myself, and for a lot of other Christians that you might have come across, for, like I said, calling the worst out of you. We have a tendency to start – whether it’s in a ‘talk’ or just a conversation about God – by talking about how sinful we all are, by trying to draw your attention to the worst parts of yourself so that you will see that you need forgiveness.

Now I’m not actually disagreeing with any of that – but I do apologise for giving the impression that we don’t actually like you. We do. Or the impression that we think we’re better than you. We’re not. What I realised the other day, is that much too often I’ve tried to shrink people so that God will look bigger. I’ve tried to make someone see the bad in themselves so that God will look better. And I realise now that God doesn’t need my help to be bigger or better.

Let me digress to an interesting fact and a cool little story…

An Interesting Fact:
Someone old once told me that in the war people used to eat powdered egg. It’s nothing on the real thing but it did the job. But they said there were some kids at the end of the war who had grown up on the stuff – who’d always eaten powdered egg – and when they were offered actual real life eggs they would say ‘Ugh no thanks! That looks weird, the powdered stuff is just fine for me!’ Because that was all they’d ever known and they were perfectly happy with it.

A Cool Little Story:

Don Miller tells a story about his mate Jason.* At some point Jason told Don that he was really worried about his daughter. They had found drugs in her room the other week, and she was dating a guy who smelt like smoke and only ever spoke in one word answers: “Yeah,” “No,” “Whatever,” and “Why?” She really wasn’t happy. And they’d tried grounding her, and forbidding her to see this guy but nothing worked, it just made things worse. And Don Miller said, “She seems to be living a terrible story.” Jason asked what he meant, and Don explained the idea that everyone basically lives as a character in a story. We like stories because that’s how our lives make sense – and we all understand ourselves in a certain role in a certain story, even if we don’t think of it like that. He talked about how good stories, stories that felt meaningful to read or to watch, all have certain elements. The character wants something, and overcomes conflict to get it. In better stories they have to take bigger risks, and in the best stories the thing they desire, what they’re aiming for, is something selfless – they sacrifice themselves out of love for somebody, or to change the world in some way.

Anyway, they chatted about this for a while and parted ways, and Don didn’t think much about it until he saw Jason again a couple of months later. Don asked how his daughter was and he said, “She’s better”, and he smiled. He said his family were living a better story now. He couldn’t sleep the night after that conversation and he’d thought a lot about what Don had said. He realised that his daughter wasn’t a bad kid, but we all need a story, and she’d taken the only story that was offered to her. Jason realised he hadn’t provided a better story for the family, a better role for her, and in that absence she had chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence – a role where she was wanted, even if she was only being used. So Jason decided to stop shouting at his daughter and, instead, to create a better story to invite her into. He did some research and ended up looking into an organisation that builds orphanages around the world. It sounded like a good ambition, something the family could try to do together. So he called the charity, and found out how much it cost to build one of these orphanages. And they didn’t have the money – they’d just taken out a second mortgage anyway – but he knew that a good story had to involve risk.

So he called a family meeting. He told his wife and daughter about this village in Mexico, and the orphanage, and all the terrible things that could happen if the kids didn’t get an orphanage. And he told them he’d agreed to build it.

They just stared at him as if he’d gone crazy. He said, “My daughter, her eyes were as big as melons and she wasn’t happy. She knew this would mean she’d have to give up her allowance and who knows what else.” She went up to her room without saying anything and didn’t speak to him all day. She was angry for a while.

But then a few days later, she came into her parents’ bedroom, and asked if they could go to Mexico. He said, “she crawled between us in the bed like she did when she was little. She said she could talk about the orphanage on her web site and maybe people could help. She could post pictures. She wanted to go to Mexico to meet the kids and take pictures.”

Then Jason said, “You know what else? She broke up with her boyfriend last week. She had his picture on her wall and she took it down and told me he said that she was too fat. Can you believe that? He told her she was too fat! But that’s done now. No girl who plays the role of a hero dates a guy who uses her. She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while.”

***

OK, where were we?

I was trying to say, God doesn’t need my help to be bigger and better. The more I get to know what Jesus is like I more I think – Wow, he is incredible. He is so kind, so surprising, and honest and humble and powerful, his life is amazing - he is ridiculously good. And I think – I’m nothing like that. I’m pretty normal, I’m quite pleasant, but I’m nothing like that, and I want to be more like that. I want to be part of what he’s doing, part of his family, his purpose, his team, but I’m about as qualified for that as I am to be at the Olympics. But he invites me onto the team anyway. Which is cool.

When Jesus was walking around he didn’t have to tell people much that they were small. They met him, they saw him live, and they knew it already. They looked at who they were, and realised that even though it had seemed fine before, really it was powdered egg. They were doing their best, things were alright, they were happy enough. Why would they want anything different? But then Jesus comes along and offers them the real thing. And they take one bite, and they never want to see egg powder again.

When I really discovered Jesus for myself it was like that – it was like God pointed at who I was and what I was doing and said, “Mate, you know that’s just the powdered stuff, right? Have you tried a real omelette?” And all I can say is, the omelette blew my mind. You should try it.

And so I want to stop calling the worst out of you, trying to make you look at all the bad stuff in you - to be honest I’ve got enough of my own to be getting on with. Instead, I want to tell you that God is offering you something so much bigger, so much more real, so much more meaningful than even the best bits of ‘normal life’. He’s offering you a role in a massive, beautiful story. He’s offering you your role, in the story. He’s whispering to you:

“My friend, you have no idea just how much I meant you for, you have no idea who you are capable of becoming. You have no idea just how wonderful you were made to be. Do you want to find out?”

*This is in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which I would thoroughly recommend.

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Dive Into the Deep Water

I wonder what the conversion rate is for New Year’s Resolutions, on average. Do fifty percent make it past January? Twenty five? Ten? I don’t know. And I can’t test this on myself because I really can’t remember if I’ve ever made New Year’s Resolutions before – it is an unfathomable mystery. Anyway. I’m starting now, and I’m doing so in public. The public thing is for two reasons: firstly so that if any of you notice that I’m not doing them you can shout at me, and secondly so I can invite any one that’s up for it to try them with me. So here are my five resolutions. (If you don’t feel like you’ve got time to read them, just skip to number five, everything else fits into that.)

One.
Go for walks with people. Have tea with people. Go on adventures with people: climb trees, play frisbee, whatever. Stop worrying that people will think it’s weird if you knock on their door and ask them if they fancy a walk – it’s not that weird. Go out of your way to make time to deepen your friendships with the people around you.

Two.
During these adventures talk about ridiculous, pointless, hilarious things – talk about Rastamouse and the legitimacy or otherwise of eating Nutella with a spoon – but also talk about stuff that matters. Ask about what they hope for, what they believe about the world, about themselves, what it is they worry about, what it is that makes them happy. Ask why they get up in the morning and do whatever it is they do. Get to know your friends hearts, not just their sense of humour. Invite them to tell you their story, because everyone has a story.

Three.
Respond to these stories with love. Always. Don’t condemn, listen. And maybe listening is the loving thing you can do right now. But if they invite you to tell your story back, go for it. Be honest, and wholehearted. And if you have something to say that really could help, say it. Say it in love.

Four.
Invite these people to speak the truth to you. Invite the people you trust to question you, to call your bluff, to dig a little bit and challenge you, call you out to be who you could be, to have integrity. Let them grow you. Be vulnerable, because only when you’re vulnerable are you really alive.

I am very aware as I write this that it sounds horribly pretentious. But if you ignore all the arty short sentences the basic idea that hit me the other day is that we waste a lot of time in our lives being shallow with each other and with ourselves just out of habit. So that’s it really.

Five.
Go deeper.