I love honesty. As I’ve often said, “The truth will set you free, but it will really mess with you first.” Freedom is risky and discovering that God is loving and kind enough for you to let him into the most broken places of your life can look intimidating at the outset, especially if you’ve been good at hiding your scars and fears beneath fig leaves.
I got this email yesterday. It almost reads like a poem, and while the person writing it may be terrified of what’s to come, I see the beginning steps of a beautiful transformation. Letting him in is the hard part, because once he’s in there you’ll find him more loving, kind, tender and patient as any person you’ve ever known, and what’s more he has the power to heal our wounds and to walk us out of any place we got stuck and into his glory taking root in us.
I love this and can’t wait for the email I hope to get six months from now about what happened in the aftermath of opening so wide a door to him. Good things always begin where we surrender to his love, even if we’re not sure we can quite trust him yet. They will soon know that trust is no better placed than it is in him:
Your proposition about such a loving God scares the heck out of me.
I have never known this God, even though I have “known” him 30 years this year.
It scares me to contemplate this God you speak about. As part of the journey will mean revisiting old wounds and ugly scars that I have covered in layers of fig leaves.
I shrouded my wounds in religion and my shame wore clothes of assumption. I had to assume God to be a certain way to get past my painful past and my personally devastating history.
Religion told me I couldn’t ask God questions because He owes no explanation and the theology of an angry God made me look for reasons why I could have deserved all that I had grappled so long with.
I wept tonight tears that I had sealed in a private bag of pain. Now I must let God into these broken areas so that His love can heal me. This profound love you speak so hauntingly of.
We’ve been taught so many things unworthy of God by our religious traditions. This person is about to find out how amazing God is at dealing with our questions and setting us free. And I’m praying for him or her so that they will come to enjoy the outrageous love of a tender Father.
