My time in My Pops’ Workshop was ending. I would still see it in visions from time to time for another year or so, but those were less times of transformation and more times of illumination and encouragement. I continued, for a time to be taught and coached by the Lord through visions, but that season too came to end.
As I reflect on all that transpired in my Pops’ Workshop and all the healing that was begun there, I am literally awestruck. Looking through the lens of spiritual formation, drawing on what I learned when studying to be director and my on-going education and reading, I see three movements in play: Identity, Healing and Purpose.
Identity
My time in Pops’ Workshop started with identity. Who was God to me? Who am I to God? What was Father like? What about Jesus, could I understand him as a human and not just as part of the Godhead? And just what does the Holy Spirit do? More importantly, could I find, somewhere in the trinity, love and acceptance?
Father
I found a Father who loves me, whether I am covered in glory or covered in shame and who was was always ready to be with me. One of the unexpected aspects of my time in my Pops’ Workshop was the exposure of hurts I did not know I carried in my soul. My earthly father was neither the best nor the worst of fathers, but I never felt anything approaching unconditional love. That I knew. I had not realized that I had also carried a belief that I was a bother and my dad would rather that I not engage with him except on his terms and timing. As I spent time with my Pops, I was surprised that he always has time for me; if he was “busy,” he always dropped what he was doing to attend to me. When I am with him, I am the only things that mattered; he thinks of nothing but me and there is nothing else he needs to attend to. This was an incredibly freeing healing. I am not loved grudgingly or out of obligation. I am a dearly beloved son of the Father.
Son
I had experienced Jesus’ love for me even before my time in Pops’ workshop. Yet here again my soul was marked by hurts I did not know I was carrying. Without realizing it, I had come to believe that I was too damaged and broken to ever be of much Kingdom use. But I found Jesus accepting me and inviting me to join him in his redemptive work from “day one,” before we undertook any of my much needed inner work.
I came into Pops’ Workshop believing that while Jesus loved me, he would love me better or differently if I cleaned myself up and got my act together. Seriously, I didn’t even like myself all that much, so how could Jesus? I didn’t expect that he would stand in the slime and muck of my fouled inner life and gladly take from me all the things that were polluting my soul. And I certainly didn’t expect him to take on my sin of pride.
Holy Spirit
The third person of the trinity remains mysterious for me. Holy Spirit was not readily visible, and my interactions with him were the hardest to understand and to unpack. This does not surprise me. We are born of the Spirit that Jesus compares to the wind, we hear it and feel it, but we do not know where it comes from or where it is going. My encounter with Holy Spirit was healing, humbling, empowering, confusing, and enlightening all at the same time. I remain awestruck that I glimpsed the inner work of the Holy Spirit.
Healing
The second moment of my time in My Pops’ Workshop was healing. I was healed spiritually and emotionally. The Greek word usually translated as “save” is sozo, and means to be rescued, healed, and made whole. By that definition I was saved in my time in the Workshop.
With a better sense of who God is and who I am to him, I was able to let myself be known more fully to God, opening the door to healing and wholeness.
Purpose
One of the unexpected changes that flows out of healing and wholeness is a redirection of our hearts. Before I was in my Pops’ Workshop, I was my biggest concern. How could I get what I wanted?1 My number one question was, “what about me?”
Slowly but surely, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were about their work of replacing my heart of stone with one of flesh and blood,2 my focus shifted to God and to others. It began a shift away from being largely indifferent to others and to genuinely caring for and about others. I moved from asking, “How can I get what I want?” to wondering how I can love others as Jesus loves them. How can I help them find their way to the healing God wants for them? How can I be a responsible subject in the Kingdom of the Heavens?
Endless Iteration
These movements are neither discrete nor linear. And they certainly are not a “once and done.” They frequently overlapped each other and I have iterated through each many times. I find this picture a helpful visualization.
Even now, years later, I revisit my identity and my view of God. I learn anew and at a deeper level that my identity is rooted not in what I think, do, say, earn, or achieve but in in the reality that I am a dearly beloved child of the Father.
My spiritual and emotional healing is also an ongoing project. Of all the interior ills that beset me, I cannot identify a single one that is completely cured. Those ills have been attenuated, some to a remarkable degree and some not nearly as much as I would hope, but they are all still there to some degree. I have heard testimonies from people whose particular addiction or interior corruption was instantaneously healed. I have no reason to doubt those accounts, but that experience is foreign to me. My mystic prayer experiences, profound though they were, began but did not complete inner healing. My time in my Pop’s Workshop laid a strong foundation but did not make me “all right.”
Finally, my sense of calling and kingdom purpose continues to evolve and be refreshed. The broad outlines of what I am to be about seem to be well-established, but how I am to walk that out shifts over time. I write blog posts, not books. I preach much more often than I could have expected. I sit with others, offering them spiritual direction, but not in the numbers I thought I would. God is using the skills and knowledge I learned as a team and management coach in the information technology sector to help church leadership teams learn and grow. I am being used for kingdom purposes in ways that I would not have imagined ten years ago.
Formation Boot Camp
What Jesus was doing, I now know, was attending to my spiritual formation. My time in the workshop was a spiritual formation boot camp. Robert Mulholland defines Spiritual Formation as “a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.”3 It is only after the fact, looking back that I can see that was exactly what was happening in my Pops’ Workshop. I was being lovingly restored and healed to uncover the image of Christ in me, for the sake of others. The work was not completed, but the foundations were laid. A boot camp is the beginning of training, not the end; my time in my Pops’ Workshop was intensive and extensive, and it marked a beginning. I am still learning, being healed, and made new, ever closer to the image of Christ we each carry.
The gospels promise us a new life, one that is full and abundant; we are reborn. In Romans Paul declares that the gospel is the power of God for our salvation. We are saved from the power of sin and death, and we are rescued, restored, and healed of the ills that vex our souls. It was not until I believed these promises to the point of being dissatisfied with the shallow surface improvements I had managed to make to my old life that God could step in and offer true transformation. It was then that I could be transformed by the renewing of my mind.4
What About You?
What do you want? Are you unwilling to settle for a tidied up, somewhat improved version of your old life? Do you want a vibrant, spirit-filled new life? One of the hardest things for us to do is to trust that God is really who he says he is and that he really cares about and for us the way he says he does. I invite you to take the first small sip of trusting God, whatever that looks like for you. My journey began with sitting in stillness, trusting that God really did love me and would show me an expression of his love. That journey has taken me places I could not have imagined.
How will your journey begin? Mostly likely with silence, solitude, and patient waiting. Perhaps you will be accompanied by a pastor, soul friend, or spiritual director who can help you spot the road signs along the way. One thing is certain: God has more in store for each of us than we could ever dare imagine and he is waiting for us to be with him so that he can bless us with new, full life.
I pray that you will find the starting point of your journey. God will do the rest!
From Pops' Workshop 
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