Would I be able to stay in the room for this birth?

I was.

Would I know how to hold a baby?

It worked out.

Would I be too rough or hurt our baby?

He survived the times I didn’t hold him “right.”

How would I do with diaper changes?

He pooped on me at two weeks old. It got better.

Everything I worried about centered on stuff that I feared I couldn’t do. I worried about my deficiencies and lack of experience.

These were the wrong things for me to worry about.

The far larger struggle for me over Ethan’s first year has been doing too much.

This has required a significant about face in my thinking. Instead of seeing myself as the rookie parent who sucks are nurturing and caring for a kid, I’m the rookie parent who is all in my kid’s face doing stuff for him that he needs to figure out on his own.

I first realized this when we were sorting out Ethan’s sleep habits. While he did cry more than we would have liked, he eventually figured out how to fall asleep on his own.

The same has happened with his play time. I used to surround him with a couple of toys, but I’ve been learning that he’s just as happy crawling over to the toy shelf, pulling himself up, and yanking down what he wants—which usually amounts to everything within reach. 

Still, in both of these things, I’ve been learning that I need to stifle my “desire to help” by standing back and watching him struggle a little. It’s one of the hardest things for me, and there are days when Julie has to remind me to let him do things at his own pace.

I knew that dealing with teenagers is often a matter of giving them their own space to do their thing and to become their own person. I just never realized that something similar would apply to our baby.

The stuff that I worried about came pretty naturally in a “sink or swim” fashion. All the stuff that I thought, “I can’t do that” is all pretty easy when it’s my own child. It’s the kind of thing I never would have believed a year ago and the one thing that is quite obvious in retrospect.

The stuff that I never thought about in the first place has been far more difficult to handle.

I never would have thought that one of my hardest struggles in my first year of parenting would be “doing less.”

However, many of these Christians unknowingly fight for a doctrine that, in every way, is a product of a culture’s influence on the way we read the Bible.

I’m talking about inerrancy.

If there’s one thing I don’t want to do with the Bible, it’s to let secular culture tell me how to read a divinely inspired document. I am 100% committed to listening to the guidance of the promised Holy Spirit. While I am aware of the influence of my culture on how I read the Bible, I want to let the Spirit speak through scripture rather than letting my culture determine what I can and cannot believe.

Inerrancy has unintentionally allowed the standards of our culture to determine how we use the Bible, creating a demand on scripture that would only make sense for a modern science or historian.

A few weeks ago my friend Zack Hunt wrote a post about inerrancy that got my wheels spinning: see the original post and the follow up post.

When I first saw his post, I hesitated to link to it because I have my own thoughts about inerrancy that I wanted to share with any link to his post. It’s one of those doctrines that’s so delicate and complicated, that I dare not let anyone read into my own story based on a link that I share.

Does Inerrancy = True?

The primary problem with inerrancy for me is that it has been equated with the truth of the Bible. If you’re not 100% on board with inerrancy’s terms and categories, then you’re a godless liberal who is “deceiving the sheep.”

I’m sure someone will offer to “pray” for you.

I completely affirm the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible, but the concept of inerrancy troubles me. It’s incredibly hard to have a conversation about the Bible in which I both affirm the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible and distance myself from the term that many equate WITH those concepts.

For many Christians, inerrancy is the only option if you’re going to accept the Bible as trustworthy. However, there are many traditions who affirm the teachings of scripture and view it as authoritative without affirming inerrancy.

In fact, I would argue that inerrancy came into being for the wrong reasons.

The Flawed Origins of Inerrancy

What we know of early church history is that the early Christians were trying to explain Jesus in a culture dominated in many ways by Greek categories. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Christianity to the Greeks was the idea that God would fully reside in a human body.

The incarnation was a non-starter that sent many Christians veering toward Gnosticism, a handy heresy that divided spirit and body into separate realms.

As Christian thinkers hammered out the nature of the incarnation, they used Greek words and ways of thinking, but they did not let Greek culture determine what they believed about God and the incarnation of Jesus.

In the 1800’s, the Enlightenment had challenged what many Christians believed, and a large part of Christian thinkers began to use the Enlightenment’s scientific categories for reading the Bible. Everything in the Bible had to be tested and proven, and if it could not be scientifically proven, then it was ditched.

We know that the Bible says it is God-breathed and useful for training us in righteousness, but it was hardly intended to be sliced and diced by the Enlightenment’s methods. We can look back in retrospect and see that the scientific approach was bound to rip the Bible apart. It’s a true document, but it’s also an ancient document that wasn’t designed to answer the questions of modern thinkers who imposed their own standards on it.

How could Christians demonstrate the supernatural origins and authority of the Bible in a scientific age?

Faith wasn’t going to cut it for the liberal Christians who dismissed the Bible as a series of myths invented by clever storytellers.

The Christians who called themselves fundamentalists arrived at a solution: the Bible could be proven divine since it was inerrant, completely without error. What other ancient document could boast such a thing?

Instead of pointing the doubters to Christ, the fundamentalists pointed them to the Bible.

By allowing the philosophy of the day to determine the way they spoke about the Bible, the Fundamentalists shifted Jesus away from his primary place as Lord of all and slipped the Bible above him. That’s why you’ll often find churches today who inadvertently affirm the trustworthiness of the Bible over the person of Jesus.

The Impossible Wager of Inerrancy

Inerrancy states that any kind of error in the Bible renders the entire book false and made up. If the entire Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit, then everything single verse must be 100% true and reliable.

The primary problem with inerrancy is that it has the wrong priorities. Rather than making Christ our one and only foundation, inerrancy makes an error-free Bible the one and only foundation of our faith.

The passion of Christians in their debates about inerrancy and the accuracy of the Bible testify to the consequences of this kind of thinking. Permitting one error in the Bible isn’t just annoying, it’s a disaster for the faith of many.

The impossibility of inerrancy is that we’re so far removed from the events described in the Bible and composition of each book and letter that we can’t possibly prove the truthfulness at the scientific level that inerrancy demands. I believe that the Bible is true, but not because of inerrancy or because I have 100% certainty about the events it describes.

My faith is built on the person of Christ, the only way, truth, and life, the only foundation for our faith, and the one central focus on the scriptures. Paul wrote, “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” 1 Corinthians 3:11.

I can’t point you to one verse in the Bible and say, “I know for certain that this is wrong.” At the same time, proving the “reliability” of the Bible according to the standards of inerrancy is a fruitless quest.

I’ll talk all day about the presence of Christ in my life and the ways that scripture has continually guided me to the truth, but I will not live as if my faith hinges on proving every little detail of the Bible. That’s simply not our goal.

The scriptures  point us toward the trustworthiness of Christ rather than the trustworthiness of their composition.

Inerrancy and Biblical Idolatry

I affirm the historical accuracy and the divine inspiration of the Bible.

I believe the writers of the Bible were truthful.

Could there be a discrepancy over the date of an Israelite king because a writer misunderstood how the rise and fall of kings were dated? (I spent a 3-hour class in seminary addressing this very issue.)

Rather than answering that question, I want to know if a detail like that really matters. If it does, then we need to ask why we think it matters.

Inerrancy demands this level of accuracy because it’s seeking a way to scientifically prove that the Bible is inspired by God.

I do not affirm the word inerrancy because it compromises the Christian faith to the standards of secular scientific thinking. It takes our devotion and worship away from Christ and substitutes a second-rate god that breeds fear and paranoia, threatening to crumble our faith in God with every scientific report, literary device, or historical discrepancy.

This second-rate god demands that we spend our lives worrying about the chronology of the Hebrew kings, the findings of archeology, the age of the earth, and the chronology of the gospels.

This second-rate god drives wedges between the people of God as we fight each other in the name of protecting this false “foundation” of our faith.

On its own, the Bible is incapable of giving life, peace, or healing. It only can give a fragile certainty that must be defended tooth and nail.

That we feel compelled to fight for this god suggests that we may have lost sight of the true foundation in scripture. Our faith rises and falls on the person of Christ alone. We trust that the Bible is true and reliable, but we don’t have to meet a modern, scientific standard in order for Christ to be Lord.

I hate the word inerrancy because it creates a super supernatural standard for truth that the Bible never set up.

I hate the word inerrancy because it clouds the ways that the Bible actually is true.

I hate the word inerrancy because it binds the Christian faith to a set of standards that were never intended for the people of God and that are completely foreign to the centuries of Christians who have gone before us.

I hate the word inerrancy because it has become a way to determine who’s in and who’s out, even though few actually understand what it means or where it came from.

I hate the word inerrancy because it provides a flimsy, easily combustible foundation for the people of God.

I hate the word inerrancy because it takes the focus of our faith away from Christ and places it in a book.

It’s time to stop fighting for inerrancy and to start living as if everything in the Bible is true.

When we see the words of scripture come true in our own lives, we’ll have all of the proof we need that the Bible is reliable.

It’s been a week of transitions, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short time as a parent, transitions are the norm. You move from one “new normal” to another. Traveling has a way of upping the stakes with new schedules, new time zones, and airplane captains who make loud announcements that cut a nap in half.

Not that something like that didn’t just happen…

I’m sure there are more seasoned parents who can share far better tips for dealing with these seasons of transitions and those moments when routines are trashed for the new normal. However, I’ve found that, at least for me, there is one little trick that helps me.

I call this the 15 minute rule.

If I’m ever in for a difficult moment with Ethan, I check a clock and time myself for 15 minutes. He’s at an age where 15 minutes can make a huge difference.

Sometimes he’s a little clingy when I put him down to play. If I walked away, he would just bawl. So I sit and play with him for 15 minutes and often before the time is up, he’s crawled away on his own to bang on the rabbit cage or to chew on a coaster at the coffee table.

I really need the 15 minute rule when it’s bed time and Ethan is standing up in his crib, crying. This is still a new one for us that we’re figuring out, but if we really need to get him to sleep, I pick up all 22 pounds of him and rock him to sleep.

When I start this process, his eyes are wide open and his arms flailing up at me. He’s often crying or at least kicking his legs. It feels completely hopeless. Most nights, I would just give up and bring him down to play.

But I just try to hold on for 15 minutes.

Almost every night, he’s sound asleep before the 15 minutes are up.

The 15 minute rule has been the ideal check against my impatience and hurry. I want Ethan to figure things out immediately, and if he doesn’t, fret that something isn’t working.

If I can make myself wait, that gives him enough time to sort things out.

As we spend a week away in Colorado visiting family and friends, I imagine there will be many days and nights where I’ll need to count off my 15 minutes.

It’s like a timeout for adults.

What helps you remain patient with your kids?

He just needed a time to relax and unwind. We’d both leave work, but I went home and he stopped at the bar.

I didn’t see the connection months later when his angry outbursts became more frequent. By the time I changed jobs and we cut off ties, he didn’t have any choices left. He needed to “unwind” constantly. Popping open a cold can of beer became a daily need, a way to keep functioning.

Looking back, I can connect the dots and see how one step led to another. I just never expected it. That’s the way with alcohol: You tell yourself that you should see it coming, but so many of us can’t on our own.

Read the rest of my post over at A Deeper Family.

I’ve been calling myself a “stay at home dad,” but that label has never really fit me all that well. I stay home, but I also work from home. My wife is a graduate student who also works from home. And even though her hours are more consistently full time, there are weeks when my part time work pushing me close to full time hours.

Our situation is far from typical. I do spend a good bit of time at home both working and taking care of Ethan. Julie does the same. If you added up the hours we spend with Ethan during “work hours,” I come out ahead. However, I also wake up early to get a chunk of my work done.

Am I a stay at home dad?

Maybe I’m more of a working from home dad.

However, that also implies that I’m “the guy” doing all of the childcare. That simply isn’t the case. Julie spends some time with Ethan after he wakes up each morning and also gives me a break in the afternoon. If a nap goes especially well or if I have a looming deadline, she’ll give me an extra block of time.

We pinch hit, shift our schedules around, and take breaks in the middle of the day to catch up. Dinner rarely has long “catch up” conversations because that’s what we do all day.

We’re a hybrid dual income family where both parents work from home and take an active part in caring for our son. I’m sure there are plenty of others who have their own versions of this. There may even be some families with the exact same set up.

When we started this crazy graduate school/writing adventure, we wanted to build our own kind of life together. We wanted to make it possible to put our values as a family first. Perhaps our inability to describe it shows that we’ve succeeded to a certain degree.

As I’ve been reflecting on my own writing and prayer life after the retreat, I’ve been realizing how slow I am to apply the same lessons from writing to my prayer life.

It’s easy to see that we need help with writing. An editor can spot what we can’t see ourselves, but many of us don’t have someone who can speak with the same kind of precision into our lives.

It’s easy to see that we need routines to help us with writing. They help us sit down to do the work even when we don’t feel like it. Perhaps we hesitate to think about prayer routines because we don’t want prayer to feel like “work” or routines are associated with legalistic religion.

It’s easy to see that a list or schedule can help us accomplish more writing. They help us keep our priorities straight, but I’m slow to think of my prayer life in terms of “to do” items or a schedule. It feels inauthentic. Shouldn’t I burst with love and passion for God? Shouldn’t I be constantly pining to pray out of love and gratitude?

Many of the practices that help me write regularly can also help me pray. In fact, the Christian tradition is full of similar practices such as confession, fixed hour prayer, and the church calendar. These relationships, rhythms, and structures provide the boundaries and wisdom we need to navigate our ever-shifting lives.

I was foolish to pursue my own path as a writer without anyone’s help when I started out. While I asked advice from time to time and read books, magazines, and websites, I didn’t experience any breakthroughs until I specifically asked someone for advice. I didn’t increase my productivity until I dedicated myself to lists, schedules, and specific writing times.

During the retreat, I experienced a tremendous amount of freedom to pray, and as I looked back at the experience, I realized that we were applying the same writing practices to prayer.

We had someone to guide us and offer us support.

We set aside time to pray.

We used specific prayer practices.

The more regimented and structured we made our prayer time, the more prayer happened spontaneously and freely.

Sometimes the only way to take a step forward is to first take a couple steps back.

You could boil it down to the conflict between Job and his friends. A complex, mysterious God vs. a simplistic, almost mechanical God who operates according to strict rules. I had no way of processing the difficult parts of life, let alone to face the difficult parts of the Bible.

My fragile faith depended on simple explanations for everything. If I couldn’t explain part of the Bible, then I feared that I would lose the Bible. If I couldn’t explain the hard times in life, then I feared I would lose God.

Atheism isn’t necessarily caused by asking hard questions of the Bible. I came closest to losing my faith when I asked a hard question about God or the Bible and could only find an unrealistically simple answer.

God does not owe anyone an answer or an explanation for the parts of the Bible or life that we can’t understand. However, we do God no favors when we brush away unspeakable tragedy or troubling passages with an explanation that fails to truly grapple with the full testimony of scripture.

Answers that don’t work for me in the face of difficult passages/circumstances include:

God is holy.

God is sovereign.

God is all-powerful.

I started writing this post with the goal of addressing difficult Bible passages like the conquest of Canaan where God essentially commanded the Israelites to commit war crimes. However, after reading about the unspeakable tragedy unfolding in the aftermath of tornadoes in Oklahoma, I’ve found the focus of this post widening a bit. Perhaps working through some of the difficulties in the Bible will help us as we grieve and process this tragedy as well.

A Complicated Picture of God

As I’ve been reading through the most disturbing passages in the Old Testament, I’ve seen the loving kindness, patience, and mercy of God come into tension with the justice, anger, and judgment of God. While God’s defining characteristics are love and patience, it’s a mistake to think they rule out his anger and justice.

There is sin and evil in this world, and God consistently makes it clear that he will not tolerate them forever. In fact, he will punish those who go too far down that road and never repent.

We don’t know how to measure God’s patience or his limits for dealing with evil. There aren’t formulas or clear guidelines. However, the stories in the Old Testament consistently show God giving time and warnings to people about their choices.

The Old Testament also shows that God is sometimes involved in natural phenomena, but isn’t intricately orchestrating every single thing that happens on earth. The “plan” of God is for people to obey him and to one day bring peace and justice to the earth.

When Jesus’ disciples thought that the Tower of Siloam fell on a group of people because they were wicked, he quickly rebuked them.

The Bible shows us that God is deeply invested and involved in our world. Sometimes we can understand the ways of God and sometimes we’re left confused and even disturbed by what we’ve just read. The story of the conquest of Canaan has been among the latter for me.

Why would God command his people to commit war crimes?

There are Two Ways to Ignore the Hard Parts of the Bible

I have found two ways to side step the difficult passages in the Bible.

I can avoid reading the hard parts of the Bible and settle for simple answers and explanations without digging deeper.

Or I can just rule out those passages as later additions, distortions, or myths.

There’s a part of me that wishes I could just rule out those passages.

The story of the conquest of Canaan is quite difficult to handle because I can certainly understand part of the story. The people of Canaan were doing some detestable things. They were killing children in order to worship their false gods. They prostituted women in the service of their gods as well. When the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, they attacked them.

The Canaanites weren’t powerless, innocent people. I can understand that God would desire to deliver justice and to end their evil actions.

However, when I encounter the story of the conquest of Canaan, I’m also hesitant to say that I understand why the Israelites were commanded to kill off all of the people in several towns. These are war crimes by our standards today, and it’s hard to reconcile that with God and a command for God’s people.

By confronting this story in all of its complexity, I have found that I don’t necessarily have to run from it or explain it away, even if there are still some aspects of it that I can’t quite resolve.

Jesus Makes More Sense

Some have argued that the “violent God” passages in the OT show that Jesus represents a radical change in direction. It’s almost borderline Marcionism, dividing the Gods of each testament. However, Jesus represents the culmination of God’s desires throughout the Old Testament.

There are far more passages in the OT that look ahead to Jesus, predicting a suffering servant, the triumph of God over evil, and the restoration of peace on earth. The matter of the OT isn’t that God is always violent. The picture is complex and difficult to piece together.

I’m all for discussing a variety of ways to interpret or classify a story in the OT. Modern history as we know it didn’t exist back then, so there could be some stories that function more mythically than we would suspect. However, I prefer to make my first move toward reconciling the narratives, laws, and prophecies of the OT based on the assumption that they happened as reported.

And while including a story like the conquest of Canaan puts us in a tight spot, I don’t think it necessarily ruins the whole Bible. We can look back through the ministry of Jesus and see God’s compassion and desire to save all nations. God himself was willing to come down and die for all people.

I can’t reconcile the conquest of Canaan with the radically different conquest of the cross, but there are so many significant stories, prophecies, and poems in the Old Testament that show us a loving, self-sacrificing God is far from a new innovation.

What Does the Bible Reveal to Us About God?

The full picture of the Bible shows us that God is just and holy, willing to punish those who persist in doing evil. However, God is patient, kind, and ready to forgive. God so badly wants to restore people to a relationship with himself, that he sacrificed himself to defeat the grip of evil on us, dwelling among us today through the Holy Spirit.

God chooses to live among us in a world where there is evil, pain, and conflict. While God will one day judge evil and restore peace to this world, things are not yet as God or any of us would want them to be.

I can’t understand everything about the past judgments of God, but I can see that God has taken action against evil on the cross, paying a price that few of us would ever want to pay.

A Complicated Bible for a Complicated World

Avoiding the hard passages of the Bible altered my understanding of God and didn’t prepare me for the complications of life.

If all we have is an easily understood, easily explained, neat and tidy Bible, then it’s not much good in a world that is confusing, mysterious, and extremely messed up.

I’m less and less convinced that the Bible exists to give us straight answers. If that was the purpose of the Bible, then it does a bad job of it.

Rather, the Bible comforts, questions, and disrupts us. We can see that our troubles today are nothing new and that people have been seeking out God for thousands of years, asking questions, making requests, and finding hope in the presence of God.

Krista Dalton

WHY LGBT EQUALITY IS NOT A DOCTRINAL DISAGREEMENT

(I don’t know enough to speak to the two sides mentioned in this post, but I am very familiar with the tension between choosing what you believe to be the right religious conviction and the beliefs of family members. This is an important post to consider and talk about.)

“Throughout the course of Christian history, personhood issues have evolved as the Church became more enlightened. And I am thankful for this enlightenment because without it, I as a woman would still be property. I’m thankful I can walk into my church building and sit next to any person of any color and of any race that I want. But let us not fool ourselves into thinking we have reached the end of our responsibility to defend human dignity.

To be honest, I just don’t understand. How can a word typed on a page mean more than family relationships? How can it mean more than respecting someone else’s humanity?”

Heather Kopp for Rachel Held Evans

Ask a Recovering Alcoholic

(I have seen the damage that alcohol can inflict on relationships first hand, and it’s terrible for everyone involved. This wonderfully written interview is vitally important for everyone to read because you never know when you’ll be called on to help an alcoholic.)

“I wish more pastors didn’t still view addiction in primarily moral terms. Yes, addictive behaviors often begin with a moral failing like selfishness or overindulgence. But full-blown addiction involves physiological and psychological components that go beyond sin or even choice. Trying harder, reading the Bible more, or praying more are rarely the solution.

I don’t think the answer is for churches to get more involved in diagnoses or administering recovery. But I do think they could do more to bring awareness to the issue, help people feel safe enough to admit to addictions, and help them connect with professional help or recovery groups.”

Micha Boyett

On Writing and My Memoir

(So much truth from a talented writer.)

“It’s lonely work, the punching of keys and the mirror gazing of memoir writing. I hate myself in this book. I love myself. I’m annoyed by myself. I’m proud of myself. And then a little boy busts free from his babysitter and runs into my office begging to watch a show or in the background I hear a little one sobbing for his mama and I think: Is it worth it? Dredging all this up? Is it worth every hour I haven’t spent with these boys so I can pull out the thought that was so cloudy and noisy in my head and now looks like a butterfly on cement, sad but also kind of beautiful?

What I’m trying to say is that I have no choice. I have always been writing and my mind has always been writing me.”

Tamara Lunardo at A Deeper Story

When He Met Me At the Mailbox

(I may have a conversation like this with God every week… if not most days.)

“I burst. ‘But I’m not who I thought I was, who I wanted to be, and it’s all wrong, I’m all wrong, and you could never love me like this, and I can never be anything but this, and so you can never really love me– and there is no way we can ever be together.’

He closed the space. ‘There is nothing between us.’”

Caris Adel

Paralyzed by the Slash

(This puts into words the challenge of putting anything into words when everything we put into words will be endlessly challenged, second-guessed, and questioned. Sometimes we do our best based on what we know, and it can be unsettling to always find out what you’ve done wrong.)

“I saw someone on Twitter last week say that the internet had made them afraid to say anything to any woman on Mother’s Day, with all the awareness of how difficult the day can be for so many.

I kind of feel that way about everything right now.  Afraid to write or say or share anything, because someone, somewhere is going to disagree, and people will band together to say ‘you’re not doing it right.’”

We are in the “Everything Goes in the Mouth Stage.”

Actually, that’s everything except for food—the one exception being his rice crackers.

Cheerios are fascinating specimens to be held up, admired, poked, and thrown. But they are certainly not for eating.

Broccoli is sometimes acceptable, but it has yet to become something that automatically goes in his mouth. It usually does, but you never know where it may end up. 

Banana is great for smearing on the tray.

Yogurt is for smearing in his face.

I’m astounded by how much a baby has to learn. I thought he would immediately grasp that a spoon full of food and a father with mouth gaping wide open would get the job done. THE FOOD IS HERE. OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND EAT IT.

It all seemed so simple to me.

Why are grass, hay, and cardboard eaten without a bit of fuss and real food is treated like poison?

It’s all a process of learning what to do. And even if he knows what to do, there’s no guarantee that he’ll do the right thing.

I experience this all of the time with writing. There have been plenty of days when I needed to focus on writing an article for a client and I give myself a “little break” that turns into a long break and by the time I’m reading my fourth article I realize that I’m almost out of time.

There have been times when I thought, “I’ll just peak at Facebook while I wait for this article to load.” Guess how that ends. Writing witty comments and promotional posts on Facebook does not count as writing!

There have been times when I needed to work my way through a belligerent chapter, but instead I let it kick me around and I ended up whining about “how challenging this chapter is!!!”

The rules are as simple as eating a bowl of yogurt.

Sit down. Put your hands on the keyboard. Engage your brain to start writing.

It sounds a lot like:

Sit down. Put your hands on the spoon. Engage the spoon with your teeth to start eating.

I don’t know why we both try to satisfy ourselves with the wrong things like cardboard and Facebook.

Some days we’re both just learning the basics.

I took undergraduate and graduate classes in the Bible. I learned Greek and Hebrew. All of this has been in the service of reading the Bible accurately and applying it to my life.

I’ll just come out and say it: I love the Bible.

However, loving the Bible has not made me feel loved by God.

I know it’s an old quip to say, “The Bible won’t love you back,” but this goes a little bit beyond that. what if you actually can’t “know” that Jesus loves you even if “the Bible told you so”? What if words fall flat sometimes?

Our fear of somehow losing the purity of the Bible rats out our true priorities. We don’t fear the loss of God so much as we fear the loss of the book that tell us about him. The fact that we can’t even distinguish the two in our conversations drives home the extent of this problem.

Just learning about God’s love hasn’t been enough for me. In fact, the more time I spend learning and relearning about the love and forgiveness of God, the more uneasy I’ve become.

Shouldn’t the love of God stick at some point?

Can you imagine a marriage where a wife has to keep asking her husband, “Are you SURE you really love me? Can you show me that love letter again?”

We know that God loves us, but actually claiming it and resting in it for ourselves is another matter.

Finding the Love of God Means Confronting God

Who has time to pray in quiet?

Who can escape buzzing phones, computer screens, and televisions long enough to sit in silence before God?

Nap times are short for small kids, and sometimes the baby wakes up way too early. It’s never easy to find the time you need to meet with God, but finding God’s love means taking time to meet with God.

Sometimes “meeting” God feels more like a confrontation. There is the confrontation of being in God’s presence and overwhelmed with the holy that can unsettle us. In addition, God’s love is not neat and tidy.

When I’ve experienced the love of God, I’ve been led to some uncomfortable and unruly places where I’ve been doubled over by the presence of God as well as God’s peace and acceptance. I can’t exactly make a simple comparison between God’s love and something else I’ve experienced. It’s something bigger and more complicated than whatever I can piece together.

I’ve loved theology for so long that it’s hard to step into the experience and mystery of God’s presence. Experiencing God’s love is a completely different matter when compared to “knowing” about God’s love. Both are important, but merely knowing about God’s love without sitting in God’s presence will leave us in an empty, uncertain place.

Confronting God Means Facing Our Sins

The really sticky part about meeting with God daily has been facing my sins each day.

If my mind is racing or I’m battling stress and anxiety, there’s a good chance that I’m clinging to my own plans or trying to force God’s hand in a situation.

If I’m angry, there’s a good chance I have expectations of others that are unreasonable or I need to confess some of my own issues.

If I can’t forgive, then I have something truly vile festering within.

If I’m hesitant to pray, there’s a good chance I’m trying to hide something from God—not that I ever could hide my sins from him in the first place!

All of these things come up when I want to sit down and pray. If prayer is especially hard, then it’s likely that I may have something to confess.

When I first started out writing full time and I struggled to find the right combination of paying jobs to make ends meet, I had a very hard time praying. I blamed God. I blamed myself. I blamed other people. I panicked. I made new plans. I worked longer hours.

Nothing worked, and I didn’t see how I could make time to pray.

Consequently, I felt alone and abandoned by God.

What happened?

My most important revelation has been that I’m failing to seek God and the Kingdom of God first in these times. If seeking first the Kingdom of God also adds everything else that we need to our lives, then it’s possible that seeking first “all of these things” before God’s Kingdom will leave us feeling like we have nothing.

When I don’t feel the peace and assurance of God’s love, I can convince myself that I’m not worth God’s time.

Have You Experienced the Love of God?

It still feels like a cheap trick some days to force myself into believing that God loves me.

Belief in my “unlovableness” makes it hard to love others, let alone myself.

I can turn to the Bible and try to rest on the promises of God, but sometimes those aren’t enough. There is a disconnect sometimes between knowledge and experience. You can’t bridge it by learning more. You have to do something else with what you know.

Some days it takes a tremendous amount of courage and will power to simply say, “I believe you love me, Father. Thank you for your unconditional love.”

In the back of my mind there’s a voice saying, “What about your sins? What about all of the times you’ve ignored God? You really suck at loving God!”

There are promises in scripture that I lean on at times like this, but the way I lean on them is by waiting in silence, believing that God will accept me. There is an assurance we can receive from God that is beyond words or description.

There is a peace that passes understanding because it defies description.

How many of us have stopped short at what we know?

God’s Love Is Immeasurable

If this sounds like I’m suggesting we take a leap of sorts off a ledge, that sounds about right. We’re stepping into the unknown, the unmeasured, and the indescribable.

Experiencing the love and acceptance that comes from the presence of God is not easily mapped or quantified. There is no method to it beyond the simplicity of hopeful waiting.

There are no boundaries for the love of God because it is deeper, wider, and longer than anything we can fathom.

If we can give up on trying to learn our way into God’s love and accept that he personally has something for us that surpasses anything we can conceive in our minds, we just may become desperate enough to wait with quiet expectation.

He will come—not on your timetable or according to your expectations. But he will come nonetheless. And in that moment when God shows up, the love of God for you will be without question.

That is, at least until tomorrow comes, when you need to start all over again.