Dear Beloved

My Dearest Beloved,

I am writing because I cannot look at you without seeing a searing pain just below the surface of your hollow eyes. When I listen to you, your words seem tainted with bitterness and your heart seems distant not just from me, but everyone. You are living in the shadow of the very life promised to you and though you are not content, you live as if you have accepted this as your lot in life, that you deserve nothing better, that this life can offer you nothing more. My prayers for you contain few words; instead I fall prostrate, begging the Lord through heavy sobs to rescue you, to reveal Himself to you, to speak to you. When I think of you throughout my day, I am paralyzed with a bottomless sadness for you. I am grieved, so deeply grieved for you.

I have been in the dark, where I cannot see, hear, or feel God. I have felt as if I had to make my own way through this life and have bent over backwards attempting to find happiness and fulfillment through the ways of this world: work, education, friends, and hobbies.  I would seemingly make headway, only to be setback by an unforeseen circumstance.  Life promises contentment if we would just do…. however, it was always just out of reach, which caused me to keep striving and continue to put off everyone and anything that got in my way. I came to a place where I didn’t need anyone, believing that people will always let me down. I became self-sufficient and though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was seeking out a life that was sad and lonely. I see this in you as well.

God got my attention many years ago, thankfully. Nothing inspires prayer and draws us closer to the Lord like adversity, sorrow, and humiliation. I got to the place where I realized I can do nothing without God (Phil. 4:13). I desperately needed Him, His love, and mercy and with that, my self-sufficiency went out the window.  So as I share with you some things I have learned along the way, I want you to know I have had to do most things twice---at least---the wrong way and then the right way. I don’t write from a place of being arrogance, but from a humbled place--- a place that wants so much for you to embrace the beautiful gift that is yours for the taking. I write from a place of deep seeded love and respect for you. I write as your friend.

First, I want to remind you that living for God is not going to feel like a mountain-top experience all the time. For some reason, we have come to believe that our faith, our walk with Christ, is supposed to be more than it currently is, that it should resemble a favorite author, pastor, or friend  whose faith just seems to come easier for them---their whole lives ooze intimacy with Christ. Don’t get me wrong, we will have seasons of incredible intimacy with Him where we hear, feel, and see Him and crave being in His presence, but true faith is lived when we don’t hear, feel, or see Him. Do we still believe He is with us when we don’t have something to hang our hat on; when darkness surrounds us and God seems to be nowhere in sight? Do we abandon Him when faith looks different or feels different than what we expected? Listen carefully, “Human feelings cannot touch him and human thoughts cannot measure Him. Our personal experiences cannot heighten the certainty of His presence anymore than the absence of experience can lessen it” (Brennan Manning). Do you get it? Just because we don’t hear, see, or feel His presence does not mean that He is not present, no more than when we do hear, see, and feel His presence.  God is with us. He will never leave us. He will never forsake us (Duet. 31:8). He is never out of reach.

I cannot stress the importance of abiding in Christ. Abiding is a fancy word that means “to remain”.  Like I mentioned, it is easy to walk away from Christ when we don’t experience Him like we desire or when the world feels as if it is caving in on us. As children, we feared the dark. It caused us to feel alone and unsafe. It caused our imaginations to spin wildly out of control; and if you were anything like I was, you concocted an escape route or practice Kung Fu fighting skills while laying awake into the wee hours of the morning, only to be awaken to the light and the security that we craved. I had nothing to fret and lose sleep over.  Everyone experiences dark seasons of life, where we cannot see beyond today, where we feel alone, unfulfilled, as if our joy has been stripped away from us, and we cannot look up no matter our efforts. It’s a painful season. It is also necessary in the Christian’s life because it helps us to reexamine our hearts and motives. In short, the darkness is a refining process. “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify” (Malachi 3:3) Like silver, we are often put through the fire, or darkness in this case, so that our impurities will rise to the top to be skimmed off. With time and abiding in Him through the darkness, our Savior will more readily see His reflection in our lives. Refining (sanctification) is a life-long process. An interesting fact is that silver means redemption. I think of redemption as rescuing which does not mean escaping the darkness, but seeing the light while in the dark.

As Christians, we are “in this world, but not of this world”. If you are like me even a little, this is a hard concept to grasp and even harder to live out. What this essentially means is that our true home is in heaven with Christ. Our lives on Earth are fleeting and when we die the things we have worked so hard to accumulate collect dust and eventually end up in the trash.  We are to live with the understanding and determination that life’s meaning for the Christian is to show Christ’s perfect, non-judgmental, humble, grace-filled love through our interactions and pure efforts to others.  I grew up in a legalistic church. Rules were everything, which made Christianity pretty easy. However, as I grew older, I explored my faith and relationship with Christ more and realized rules do not make anyone holy--- and honestly, make us the god of our lives. In my ignorant youth, I believed that surrounding myself with other Christians was the best thing I could do for myself and after awhile I did not have a single unbelieving friend and all my social outlets were in the Christian community. It took several years for me to realize how incredibly unhealthy this was, how arrogant I must have appeared to anyone outside the Christian faith, how unchallenged I was in my walk with Christ because I was living life and serving shoulder to shoulder with people I genuinely loved and respected.  Jesus reminds us in Luke (6:32-35), “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those that love them….But love your enemies, do good unto them, and lend to them without expecting anything back. Then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked”.

I have often used the example of the watery expanding rings left from a stone thrown into a river to refer to our lives. Beloved, the innermost ring must be comprised of like-minded people, people who will speak truth to us even when it is hard, people who will support, love, and encourage us to grow outside our comfort zone, people who will always point us back to Christ when we veer off the path, but also who will remain by our side when our seasons of darkness seem to swallow us whole. The outer rings are where our faith is tested more intensely because that is where the rest of the world dwells, where the light in the darkness is a mirage, promising that if they do this or get that---that they will finally feel fulfilled and live a life of happiness and peace. It is dangerous and if our inner circle is not intact, we can easily be swayed and fall prey to the ways of the world.

People, Christians and non-Christians alike, often believe that the only way to know Christ is through prayer, listening to sermons, attending church, and Bible Study.  What a beautiful checklist we have created in hopes to be holy! I balk at that--- really! I am not saying these are not incredibly important activities and won’t aid us to knowing about the Lord, but there is an infinite difference between knowing about God and knowing God. To know Him is to honestly, without abandon, trust Him;  to live in complete surrender to Him--- allowing Him to see us, all of us---the broken parts, the bitter parts, the sinful parts---all of us--- and believe that He loves us in spite of those things and so much so that He will not allow us to remain in this place. Complete surrendering is not having God and…anything else. It is the letting go of what you can do for yourself and relying on God to take care of whatever needs to be done--- and in His perfect timing. It is easy to get caught up in the music we sing, or the words we read, or even the prayers that we pray---again, these are beautiful, important, and potentially life-giving activities, but if they become our God or replace the relationship with Christ that we seek, we have missed the very function of these activities, the very One they are meant to point us to. Our relationship with Christ is a personal, up close, intimate one marinated in these activities, but not the activities themselves.

Another thing I must share with you as you reach for the Master’s hand as you crawl out of darkness is the gift of forgiveness---a gift you have unknowingly already received as well as the gift you must live from in order to dwell in the freedom God so desperately desires for you. Forgiveness is essentially living from the very heart of Christ. Man’s nature is to wound. God’s nature is to save. In all honesty, this has been one of my biggest lessons in life. Living in resentment towards those who have wronged us intentionally or unintentionally only hurts ourselves. Often times, the person who hurt us is unaware of the grudge we hold against them. It eats at us day and night, devouring the very part of us that God desires to grow in us: His perfect peace and grace for others. Our struggle to forgive or the resentments we clutch onto reveals how much we trust God to take care of the injustices done against us. There is an incredible freedom we feel when we forgive those who have wronged us. Don’t misunderstand forgiveness. It is not saying that what someone did against us is OK. It is saying, “I am no longer holding on to this. I will not allow my mind to dwell on this or allow it to rob my life a moment longer of the peace waiting for me on the other side”. Forgiveness is the signature of Jesus in our lives. We have been forgiven of so, so much.

There is so much more I could share. I fear I have overwhelmed you already. Please know Beloved, I want nothing more for you than for you to choose the less traveled road, a road that is not easy by any means. An authentic Christian life is, as Brennan Manning (once again) says, “a summons to strip ourselves of earthly cares and worldly wisdom, all desire for human praise, greediness for any kind of comfort, a readiness to stand up and be counted as peacemakers in a violent world; a willingness to let go of those pretenses that would have us believe we aren’t really worldly. Even the last rag we cling to—the self-flattery that suggests we are humble when we disclaim any resemblance to Jesus Christ---even that rag has to go when we stand face-to-face with the crucified Son of God”. This road, Beloved is a road that fills the deep longing you have been trying to fill with things of this world for so many years. It is a path that will challenge you at times, as it is not a popular path and it is often misunderstood.  It is also a path that often leads to persecution, but it is without a doubt, the path where you meet Jesus face to face, where you will discover what it really means to know Him, what it means to live out of your unfathomable love for Him at all costs, and to know the freedom you have only dreamt about.

I am eager to walk this humble journey along side you, my dear one. I am praying ceaselessly for you, knowing God hears my prayers and loves you more than I ever possibly could. I am here for you and will keep sharing what I have learned and keep pointing you back to Christ, but I know I am not the one who will change your heart, so I release my grip on you and eagerly watch as the Lord works in and through your life.

I love you so very much,
K