Author: dhammerslag

We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.

Traditional Lutheran Liturgy

I could not know it at the time, but this adventure in my Pops’ Workshop was about to take a dramatic shift from invitation to healing. It is worth spending a moment to look back over the road I had traveled so far. I had met my Pops and experienced his love for me. I had encountered Jesus with his invitation to somehow help with his slow and gentle work of perfecting what he loves. I had begun to wrestle with questions of my worth and identity. Both Jesus and my Pops had invited me to help make him known and to bring words of peace, somehow, to untold numbers of people. I seen the mysterious inner work of the Holy Spirit and learned that, as improbable as it seemed, facilitating Holy Spirit’s work was also part of the invitation. Finally, I had been promised both peace for my soul and attacks by the enemy, with the assurance that any hurts would be put right.

All of this happened over a short period of time. My lunch with Danny, Mike, and Graeme was on February twentieth. I was first in Pops’ workshop ten days later, on March second. The Easter announcement that my peace is coming was only five weeks later, on April fifth. From my first time meeting my Pops to the warning about the enemy striking me was only sixty-two days. A lot had happened in a very short period of time. I am certain this timing was not happenstance.

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Understanding is not always helpful

The Lord knows that I am a thinker and an analyzer, often to the point of obsession. That tenacity can be a good thing, but often it is less helpful. A passionate desire to dig into something and to thoroughly understand it can run off the rails when it comes up against mystery and beauty. For example, if was were to discover a rare and beautiful flower, something completely unlike anything in my experience, my instinct would be to uproot the plant so I could examine it fully, compare it to other flowers, ask experts about it, and learn everything I could about. It would be hard for me to simply be grateful for the grace and beauty and enjoy a rare and beautiful thing.^[1] If I gave my nature free rein, I would, in all likelihood, destroy it in my attempt to understand it.

So it could have been with my time in Pops’ Workshop. By God’s grace, I was receiving a gift of exceeding beauty, power, and value. My Pops knew that, given the opportunity, I would have over-thought, over-reasoned, and over-analyzed what he was showing me. If the events so far had unfolded more slowly, giving me the luxury of time to really analyze them, I would likely have destroyed the experience.

I could easily have written the whole thing off as, at best wishful imagining and, at worst, a psychotic episode. I knew of no one who had experienced God in such a direct and personal way. I could have decided what I had seen and heard and felt was a fantasy, concocted by my subconscious as a balm to a hurting soul and a needy ego. There were times when I doubted my sanity, wondering if what was happening to me would be better addressed by a psychiatrist instead of a spiritual director. I could have set it aside and walked away.

Or, if I did believe the reality of what I was experiencing, it was so far beyond my understanding that my drive to understand it could have ended it in frustration. My pride was such that if I couldn’t understand something, at least well enough to explain it to myself, I would have rejected it as something false or something not worth pursuing. If I couldn’t make sense of something, surely must be a flaw in the thing I was analyzing!

If I had somehow surmounted those temptations to reject what God was doing, given time to think it over, I would almost certainly have disqualified myself. I would likely have decided that God’s idea of what I could do was intriguing and flattering, but clearly, he had the wrong guy: I was the bull in the china shop. I would not be able to patiently and lovingly sand anything to perfect it. I would grab a chisel or maybe even a chainsaw and “fix” what I thought needed fixing. Given enough time to really dig into what was happening, I would decide that I was not up to the job at hand.

That disqualification is a place where so many of us get stuck. We either set aside the idea that we can really be better and have the kind of life Jesus promises or we decide that we have to fix ourselves before God can use us. We have some ill-defined notion of the level of “goodness” God requires in us before he can complete the job. Believing that we launch ourselves on a doomed-to-failure plan of self-improvement. We try in vain to make ourselves good enough for God to love, forgive, and make new.

Trying to Fix Ourselves

Many of us believe that we really do need to get our act together and get our house in some semblance of order before we can approach God and before God will accept us. We have a very hard time believing that God loves and takes us as we are.  Most of us have heard the message as expressed in Romans:

“When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

Romans 5:6-8 (NLT)

Yet we act as if somehow, now God expects us to make ourselves righteous. We believe and affirm that Christ died for us while were still sinners and, almost in the same breath, doubt that we can have a real relationship with the divine until we tackle our sin and brokenness on our own. Accepting the reality of God’s love and acceptance of us as we are is vital. In his book Interior Freedom^[2], Jacques Philippe puts it this way:

The person God loves with the tenderness of a Father, the person he wants to touch and to transform with his love, is not the person we’d have liked to be or ought to be. It’s the person we are. God doesn’t love “ideal persons” or “virtual beings.” He loves actual, real people.

Philippe, Kindle loc 324

Our unwillingness to believe that we are not good enough for God to begin his work in us will always block our progress. But there is a way through:

The secret actually is very simple. It is to understand that we can only transform reality fruitfully if we accept it first. This also means having the humility to recognize that we cannot change ourselves by our own efforts, but that all progress in the spiritual life, every victory over ourselves, is a gift of God’s grace. We will not receive the grace to change unless we desire to; but to receive the grace that will transform us, we must “receive” ourselves—to accept ourselves as we really are.

Philippe, Kindle loc 338

My repeating pattern of sin and repentance I was lamenting on that Easter Sunday was not caused by any lack of sincerity or good intentions. Each time I realized my sin, my heartfelt vow was to reform myself, with perhaps a passing nod to God’s help. I desperately wanted to fix myself, to make myself worthy of God’s love. I did not, as Philippe says, “receive” myself. I was striving to change myself, to manage my own transformation. The peace I had been promised would come as I learned to accept myself as I am and receive God’s transforming grace.

My transformation would be a long process, one that is not yet concluded. It requires that I not dwell on my unworthiness and not give into my need to fix myself. Instead, I must dwell on God’s goodness and the beauty and mystery of his grace. Instead of trying to fix myself I must put myself in the hands of the one actually can mend what is broken in me. I must accept and embrace my identity as a beloved son of the Father. Author and psychologist David Benner sums up the dynamic of the journey this way:

Coming to know and trust God’s love is a lifelong process. Making this knowledge the foundation of our identity—or better, allowing our identity to be re-formed around this most basic fact of our existence—will also never happen instantly. Both lie at the core of the spiritual transformation that is the intended outcome of Christ-following.

Every time I dare to meet God in the vulnerability of my sin and shame, this knowing is strengthened. Every time I fall back into a self-improvement mode and try to bring God my best self, it is weakened. I only know Divine unconditional, radical and reckless love for me when I dare to approach God just as I am.

Benner^[3], (p. 49).

My peace was coming and the Lord was not about to let me over-think that promise or what I was experiencing in Pops’ Workshop. I needed to be open to the inner work God was about to walk me through. I will indeed be struck by the enemy, but I know where to go for healing. God, in his goodness and steadfast love, gives me the tools and the strength I need for where he is taking me which, it turned out, was down a hole.^[4]

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^[1]My tendency to yield to a need to understand and know was much stronger when I entered my Pops’ Workshop. To be sure, it is still with me but is now tempered with a desire and ability to simply “be” in beauty and mystery.

^[2]Philippe, Jacques. Interior Freedom . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.

^[3] Benner, David G.. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery (The Spiritual Journey). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

^[4]When I first wrote this paragraph some five years ago, it was in the past tense. I wrote as if I thought that my transformational journey was nearing an end. I could not have been more wrong, the journey continues; not always with the same intensity and rapidity, but it continues, pain and confusion included. I often need to be reminded of God’s goodness, acceptance, and strength.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

John 14:27 (ESV)

My experiences in the workshop so far had happened over a span of five weeks. I had met and spent time with each person of the trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I was experiencing them in personal ways and was learning to trust my Pops’ genuine love for me. I had received profound and direct invitations to ministry. All of this is more than I could have expected and felt like it was more than enough, but, as it turns out, it was only the beginning.

Clearly, God was up to something in my life; I was on an incredible journey. One thing I did not know was how far along the road I was. Was I near the end of the road or barely underway? If you, the reader, had a book in your hands, you could look ahead and see how many pages are left or how many blog posts you have not yet read and make a pretty good guess. I had no such clues. I had no idea what, if anything, would be next. For all I knew, I could have already reached the end. Each time I returned to the workshop could have been my last.

I now know that was then nowhere near the end, but I had reached a point where the story was about to take an important and dramatic shift; a shift from calling and encouragement to healing deep wounds and scars that would otherwise keep me from walking out my calling. My Pops knew what I didn’t: I would need some reassurance and fortification in advance.

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Why Me?

Shortly before my encounter with Holy Spirit, I had started asking myself, “why me?” I was pretty sure that my experiences were not typical; the few people I shared them with certainly thought them extraordinary. What was so special about me that I should have this ministry call to Spiritual Direction, especially in such a clear and personal way? Who was I that my Pops should bring me to his workshop? Many people wrestle long and hard to try to discern what the Lord is calling them to. I had received the proverbial engraved invitation.

In a time of contemplative prayer, I found myself at the back of the workshop asking Jesus these questions: “why me?” and “am so special?” He turned away from me and faced the back wall of the workshop. As he did, the wall faded from view. I looked where it l had been, expecting to see the forest or the side of the mountain. Instead, I saw row upon row and rank upon rank of people sitting at desks or workbenches. It instantly reminded me of a scene from King Vidor’s 1928 film “The Crowd.”^[1]

Vidor’s imagery emphasized the mechanistic, dehumanizing work environment where everyone is doing the same thing in the same way at the same time. He depicted row after row of workers, each diligently, if robotically, working — people as machines. In contrast, in the scene Jesus showed me, there was no sense of that dehumanizing environment. Instead of office workers, I saw people busy sanding blocks of wood, much as Jesus had. I was struck by the variety of people, young and old, men and women, some seemingly conservative and reserved and others more flamboyant and extravagant. They spanned racial, cultural, and socioeconomic spectra. All unique and yet all the same. Each was sanding carefully, thoughtfully, and lovingly. In the manner of Jesus, loving and helping to perfect what they were working on.

Although no words were spoken, Jesus impressed upon me that I was not alone in this calling. Legions of others are called to the same work. It was also clear, in this wordless communication, that I am unique and special to Jesus. I am not a nameless, faceless cog in a machine. I am known and loved by him. Many others, each known and loved, have been called to the same work. I am unique in my person but not in my calling; I am not alone. I am special, as each of us is in Jesus’s eyes, but not unique. This did not answer my “why me?” question, but it rendered it moot; the answer was no longer of interest to me. Why me? Because Jesus loves me and can use my natural and supernatural gifting to help him help others.

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Peace is Coming

Soon it was Easter Sunday, and I was once again engaged in what seemed to have been a favorite pastime: serial repenting. When I review my journals, I see an annoying and embarrassing pattern of repenting of some sin, trying my best to keep myself on the straight and narrow, then sometime later, I’d once again find myself repenting of the same sin. This time I was once again repenting of being self-absorbed and self-centered – that was one of my favorites for serial repentance. It seemed that no how many times I repented of this sin, earnestly and with every intent to change, I sooner or later found myself back in the same place. Those twisted places in my soul had not yet been straightened out, and, oblivious to Holy Spirit’s work, I was trying to do it myself. So, there I was, in church on Easter Sunday, once again confessing this sin, fully aware that I had confessed and repented of my self-centeredness over and over again, when I heard the Lord say to me, “Your peace is coming.”

Sometimes when I hear from the Lord, I struggle to understand if it is him or me that I am hearing. This was not one of those times. “Your peace is coming” landed solidly in my spirit. I was certain it was the Lord. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it meant! I did understand it as a “now” word, not a “someday” word. My peace, if not yet present, was on its way. The order had been shipped, whatever the Lord meant by “my peace,” it was coming. I wondered how that could relate to my repenting over and over again of selfishness and being self-centered.

I knew that part of what the Lord was calling me to was to “speak peace” to an endless forest of people, yet I couldn’t fathom what my peace would look like when it arrived. I mentally tried on a few ideas of what my peace could mean. Perhaps I would be less impatient and angry? Maybe I would be able to get a job that allowed me to not travel so much? Winning the lottery would surely make me peaceful, could that be it? But none of them rang true and none of them seemed to have any connection to what I was praying when I received that word. Surely there must be a connection there. But no answer was forthcoming. I was left wondering: what was my peace that was on its way? How would I recognize it when it came?

It is only now, as I write this years later, that I am confident in what the Lord meant. As I expected at the time, it was not a coincidence that the Lord’s declaration about my peace came after my repentance. He was telling me that a deep, interior transformation I was about to experience was even then underway. My Pops knew how anguished, disgusted, and distressed I was with my repeated failed attempts to renovate my own heart. He was telling me that the needed changes, things he knew well and which I could not have guessed at, were already in the works. The peace that was coming is the peace that comes with true spiritual freedom, with knowing that I really don’t have to do anything. Even more, I can’t really do anything about my condition. It is a paradox for many of us: as long as we are determined to mend ourselves, we are doomed to failure. We are fallen and corrupted creatures. We are absolutely incapable of saving ourselves. That was one of many lessons I was about to come face to face with.

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An Unexpected Caution

With the question of my peace not yet resolved, three weeks later, I had another vision, this time an ominous one. I was outside the workshop. The woods were thick, and there was an understory of dense vegetation low to the ground. I was walking down a narrow dirt path that wound through the brush and trees. Knee-high plants were growing up to the edge of the path. As I walked along the path, I glimpsed shiny black snakes in the underbrush along side of and sometimes crossing the path ahead of me. In the vision, I knew that the snakes were venomous. The Lord explained to me that the snakes were the enemy, Satan, lying in wait to strike me. Suddenly, the bucolic charm of the workshop was not so charming!

Then it got worse. I was told that I would be struck and wounded by the enemy. I saw myself being bitten on the foot. But as my injured foot swelled alarmingly, I was also shown a stream of cool running water, a stream of healing where I could bathe my wounds and be healed of my injuries. As I put my now bruised and swollen foot into the water, it quickly returned to its usual healthy state.

I would have expected that this revelation would alarm me. To know not only that Satan was lying in wait for me but also would strike me should have filled me with apprehension. But the promise of Jesus’ healing somehow made it seem all right. Without realizing it, I was starting to trust. It was easy to trust when Jesus was offering something good, like a ministry of spiritual direction. Now, surprisingly, I was finding myself trusting even when what is being promised is pain and difficulty. Perhaps my peace was closer at hand than I had realized. Trusting that whatever God has for me will be good is the beginning of surrender, and surrender is the beginning of peace.

Without realizing it, I was starting to trust. It was easy to trust when Jesus was offering something good, like a ministry of spiritual direction. Now, surprisingly, I was finding myself trusting even when what is being promised is pain and difficulty. Perhaps my peace was closer at hand than I had realized. Trusting that whatever God has for me will be good is the beginning of surrender, and surrender is the beginning of peace.

I had received three seemingly unrelated visions. I had been assured that I am not alone, I am unique but not unusual. I was promised peace for my soul. I had the sure knowledge that the enemy would strike me but that it would be okay; I would also find healing. None of these seemed to make sense in the context of the workshop or in the ministry I was being called into.

It is only in hindsight that I can begin to understand. I did not know it at the time, but I was about to be taken on a journey of self-discovery and healing. A journey that is necessary for me to be who I was created and called to be. A journey that will sometimes be painful and confusing. In those times of pain and confusion, it is vital to know that I am not alone and that healing was available. I was heading into turbulent waters, but peace was on the other side.

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^[1] Yes, I am a bit of a fan of old movies. But it is illustrative of a truth I discovered during my time in the workshop:  God speaks to us using images, references, or ideas that will resonate with us. For me, it was a scene from a classic film.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Immanuel Kant

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

John 3:8 (ESV)

This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the ‘spirit’ of God. Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two.

C. S. Lewis^[1]

Sometimes, as was the case with my first visit to the workshop and my trip up the mountain with my Pops, my experiences had cinematic clarity and realism. Other times, the way I came to know or understand something was quite mysterious to me, defying my desire to grasp and analyze and explain. My encounter with Holy Spirit was one such experience, way off the charts for mystery.

As my experiences in Pops’ workshop unfolded, I wondered about Holy Spirit. Both logically and theologically, he had to be there.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always together. I sensed he was there, but I couldn’t really see him, except as the swirling disturbances and shifting patterns in the dust and sawdust suspended in the air and caught by beams of light; patterns that were not from the movement of air but rather suggested a corporeal form – somehow there but not visible.^[2] When I could perceive him, he was in the back of the workshop, in a corner near where Jesus sanded wood. I had also become aware that there were stairs nearby. Jesus was in one corner, Holy Spirit in the other, with the stairs in the center of the back wall, leading down to a closed door, which I presumed to be the door to a cellar.

A couple of weeks after my experience with Pops on the mountain top, I again was taken to his workshop. In a way that remains a mystery to me, I knew that this visit was to spend time with Holy Spirit. I expected him to lead me down the stairs to the cellar I assumed lay beyond the door. This was the first inkling I had of something “below” the workshop. I had a growing awareness that whatever was under the workshop, it was very important. But that understanding would have to wait for another day.

I stood there, in the back of the workshop. I did not speak to Holy Spirit. I simply focused my attention on him, not knowing what to expect but assuming he would lead me down the stairs and through the door. To my astonishment, instead of being led down that stairs, I felt myself ascending upward. At first, I thought I was floating, but later, I came to think of it more as being “relocated.”

Without any perception of physical movement, I was somehow relocated from one place to another. This is not a very satisfying description, but everything I experienced with Holy Spirit was, like his appearance, enigmatic and hard to describe. The experience was real and rich, yet describing physical particulars remains elusive. I was experiencing something completely different from anything else I had experienced in my life.

I was somewhere else, but I did not know where I was. At first, the only thing I was aware of was darkness, complete and utter darkness. Slowly I could discern that there was some kind of structure around me. It was disorienting at first, but eventually, I discerned that I was, somehow, inside a piece of wood; Holy Spirit and I, were together inside a piece of wood. We were not in some void or pocket in the wood. You can put your hand in a beam of light or be “in” the light. You can dive into a pool and be in the water. That is as close as I can come to explaining what I mean by being in the wood. The wood was whole and solid. Our presence didn’t displace or distort the wood; we were simply there within the wood, almost a part of it. Reflecting on this now, I am reminded of Holy Spirit’s indwelling a Christian believer. He is inside us, but he is not physically detectable.

As I tried to get my bearings, being inside a piece of wood, I realized that Holy Spirit was reshaping the wood. From the inside, he was straightening and smoothing out twists and knots. To say that he was straightening the wood may give a wrong impression. As far as I could determine, he wasn’t actually “doing” anything. Yet twisted places in the wood were being straightened and knots smoothed out. His presence in the wood was all that was needed to cause the wood to untwist and become smooth. I came to understand that Holy Spirit’s presence is incompatible with imperfection or corruption. His presence is a perfecting force. Once he is invited in, given the opportunity, his very presence will cause the imperfect to move toward perfection. When Holy Spirit is within us, that is his mission.  Holy Spirit’s goal, like Jesus’s, is our perfection. We can put on the brakes and say “no,” but as much as we will let him, he will be perfecting us.

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The Work of the Holy Spirit

It is worth a moment to think about how Holy Spirit “works.”^[3] Each Christian receives Holy Spirit upon their conversion, yet growth and change varies wildly from one believer to the next. Why would that be? Perhaps we can understand it by a metaphor. Imagine that each of us is given a seed. That seed is planted in whatever soil we have. Most of us have pretty poor soil; if we do nothing, that seed will remain implanted but is unlikely to grow and certainly will not flourish. On the other hand, if we tend the soil by breaking up hard ground, removing rocks and other debris, and making sure the soil remains watered, the seed will grow and flourish, producing much fruit.

So it is with our souls. If we neglect our inner life, Holy Spirit remains but is unlikely to produce the internal changes needed for us to bear kingdom fruit. If we attend to our inner life through repentance, prayer, worship, silence, and solitude, and other spiritual disciples, Holy Spirit has fertile ground to make the changes needed for our formation. We cannot change ourselves, but we can make it easier or harder for Holy Spirit to effect change by how we attend to or neglect our inner lives.

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Another Invitation

As Jesus had done with sanding, Holy Spirit asked me if I wanted to help. I have no idea how exactly I received that invitation, but I knew I was being invited. I gave an enthusiastic “yes!” But as soon as I said yes, I realized I had no idea how I could help. I couldn’t even discern what he was doing, never mind helping him do it. But that mystery and confusion didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. Being in the presence of each person on the Holy Trinity was proving to be both overpowering and liberating. I was slowly learning to not need all the answers before acting, or at least before being willing to take the first step on the journey, saying “yes” to God’s invitation.

As Holy Spirit and I stayed inside the piece of wood, I became uncomfortable and wanted to leave. It was dark, weird, and confusing to me. Yet I knew I should linger. Eventually, I became more aware of my surroundings. While Holy Spirit was at work inside the wood, someone outside the wood was sanding the outer surface. They worked in tandem to the same end. Of course, the person sanding the wood was Jesus. This, too, shouldn’t have surprised me. It is part of the mysterious working of the trinity. Jesus and Holy Spirit are separate and yet the same, acting in different ways but united in purpose.

Their actions are not separable. Indeed, in the maddening (for me) mystery of the trinity, Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ (see, for example, Romans 8:9  and 1 Peter 1:11). Jesus and Holy Spirit are united in the loving action of perfecting that which has been corrupted. In the visions shown me, Jesus is working to reveal our true selves, the beings God created us to be. Holy Spirit’s action seems to be a bit different.^[4]

Holy Spirit was demonstrating an untwisting of our internal state. One of the key twisting is in how and what we love. Michael Reeves, in Delighting in the Trinity, reminds us that as fallen creatures, the problem is not that we don’t love, it is what we love.

Made in the image of this God, we are created to delight in harmonious relationship, to love God, to love each other. Thus Jesus taught that the first and greatest commandment in the law is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:36-39). That is what we are created for. What, then, went wrong? It was not that Adam and Eve stopped loving. They were created as lovers in the image of God, and they could not undo that. Instead, their love turned. When the apostle Paul writes of sinners, he describes them as “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:2-4). Lovers we remain, but twisted, our love misdirected and perverted. Created to love God, we turn to love ourselves and anything but God.

Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity^[5]

We are designed and made for love. First to love God, then, reflecting his love, to love others. In our sin, we stop looking outward, outside of ourselves, for the object of our love. As we look to the world to satisfy our wants and desires, we may feel we “love” what we find in the world. In reality, we “love” what makes us feel good or happy or perhaps dulls our pain. In our fallen state, we “love” what serves to mollify and serve the true object of our adoration: ourselves. We do not really love the things outside ourselves. Instead, we twist our natural inclinations to self-love and self-worship. What Holy Spirit was showing me in the piece of wood was his action of untwisting our souls away form of feverish self-love and back toward what we are meant to love: God and our fellow men.

Over time a tree develops knots, whorls, and twists as a result of damage, stresses, and wounds it sustains as it is growing. Any carpenter will tell you, knots in the wood, while they are hard and durable, they weaken the structural integrity of the wood that contains the knot. Where the knots are is where the wood will split, splinter, and break when stressed or carrying a heavy load. That is an apt metaphor for our souls, our interior states. As we grow, we often learn where we need to protect our hearts and where looking outside of ourselves for love can be painful. We become bent inwards, and in doing so, we become hard and brittle. Then, like knotty wood, we crack and break under stress. We do not have the interior health and strength we are meant to have.

I was being shown how Holy Spirit is at work: restoring, repairing, and untwisting us. I was being invited to help, but how could I help with what Holy Spirit was doing?  God only heals what we bring to him. We need to know that we need untwisting. Since this mysterious time with Holy Spirit, I have learned that part of what a spiritual director does is to help people become aware of and attentive to their interior state – to pay attention to the state of their souls. A director can help you become aware of the knots in your soul and walk with you as you invite Holy Spirit’s action of untwisting and smoothing.

This time in the workshop left me with the knowledge that somehow, I could help with Holy Spirit’s interior activities as well as helping with Jesus’ activities. It would be much later that I would better understand those interior activities of Holy Spirit.

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^[1]Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (p. 73). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

^[2]This description of Holy Spirit is very reminiscent of how he is described in “The Shack.” I cannot help that. I can only relate how God chose to reveal himself to me. I am not surprised that he used images I would find familiar and not disquieting. My perception of Holy Spirit also brings to mind C. S. Lewis’s eldila in his space trilogy.

^[3]Here is a great time to remind you that I am my theological understandings derive from my reading, which, with the notable exception of my training as a spiritual director, has not been systematic and is almost certainly lacking both depth and breadth. If you find my thoughts on the work of Holy Spirt helpful, that is fine. If you do not, please let it drop from your mind.

^[4]I do not mean to draw any sharp lines between Jesus’s activity and Holy Spirit’s action. I do not believe it would be wise for me to try to do so. The difference shown to me is what I needed to see and understand. I do not pretend to understand it as a theological truth and would be suspicious of any such assertion.

^[5]Reeves, Michael. Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (Kindle Locations 965-972). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.

2 Thessalonians 3:16 (ESV)

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly.

Psalms 85:8 (ESV)

About a week after the unexpected invitation to help people see Jesus more clearly, as I was praying, I once again found myself standing outside the workshop. As I stepped through the open door, my Pops took me by the hand and immediately led me back out. Together, hand-in-hand, we followed a path up a hill into the heavy woods, eventually coming out of the trees at the top of the mountain. Below me, as far as I could see, were trees—an unending sea of trees. As I stood looking out over them and wondering, Pops said, “Speak peace over all of these.” That one simple command, seemingly nonsensical, was jam-packed with meaning for me.

First, there are the trees. As I stood there with my Pops, surveying the vastness of the forest, I knew at once that the trees were people, just like the beautiful wood that Jesus was lovingly perfecting was a person and just like the wood my Pops was shaping in his workshop was a person. The sea of trees was a sea of people. The limitlessness of the trees, spread out before me in all directions, was my Pops’ way of indicating the universality of his command. Where I had been thinking of a particular ministry of meeting one-on-one with people seeking to know the Lord more fully, he clearly had a more expansive idea. Given the vastness of the forest, it could not be possible to “speak peace over all of these” one “person” at a time. My ministry could not be limited to one-on-one encounters. I did not understand how I might speak peace to large numbers of people, but that was the command.

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Speaking Peace

“Speak peace.” What does it mean to speak peace? Peace is a simple word. Webster’s dictionary^[1] tells us that peace is tranquility or quiet, as in a peaceful scene. It can also mean an absence of strife or conflict or freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts and emotions. I knew that my Pops had something more than that meaning in mind.

I had long been drawn to the Hebrew word “shalom,” which is usually translated as “peace.” When I say that I had been drawn to the word shalom, I mean that often, when reading the Bible, the word “peace” would stand out, causing me to stop and wonder what exactly was meant. It was an odd thing for such a common word to have that effect. I had spent considerable time reading about, thinking about, and praying about the significance of this simple word.

In Hebrew, shalom has a much broader meaning than the single English word “peace.” Mounce’s Dictionary says shalom “is one of the most important words in the OT [Old Testament]. In addition to ‘peace,’ this word can be translated as ‘prosperity, well-being, health, completeness, safety.’”^[2] This sense of completeness and well-being is what Luke has in mind when the angels proclaim Jesus’s birth, “Peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased” (Luke 2:14b, NLT). The angles were announcing the coming of Jesus, who would set to rights all that had been marred by man’s fall in the Garden of Eden. He brings us inner peace; he manifests wholeness and completeness. The angels were also proclaiming the peace between rebellious mankind and a loving, forgiving God.

Shalom can also be taken to mean spiritual as well as physical completeness and well-being. Considering that, we also get a better view of what Jesus likely had in mind when in John 14:27, he tells his followers, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (ESV). God is not offering simple freedom from conflict. The lives of the first Christians were decidedly not free from conflict. He told his followers to expect trouble (John 16:33). What he does offer is spiritual and emotional wellness and completeness. He is giving his followers the reconciliation of God and man, the only path to real spiritual completeness. That is the peace I am to speak.

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Power in Speaking

Even the simple verb “speak” is significant. In Genesis, God’s creative activity is carried out by the act of speaking:

God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. . . And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters. . . And it was so. . . . And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. . . . And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. . . . And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. . . .” And it was so. . . . And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” . . . And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. . . . . Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . .” So God created man in his own image.”

Genesis 1:3–27 (ESV)

God says, and it is so.

Over and over again, in both the Old and New Testaments, blessings (and sometimes curses) are spoken over people and nations. In the New Testament, when Jesus declares words of peace, healing, or forgiveness, the thing he declares is accomplished as he speaks it. The old testament prophet Isaiah, speaking for God, reminded us that as snow and rain, when they come down from heaven, do not simply return back to the heavens – they water the earth, bringing growth and life. So it is with God’s word: it does not return to him empty — it accomplishes everything he intends for it (see Isaiah 55:10-11).

Speaking God’s word is not an empty exercise. A Roman centurion who encountered Jesus knew this well:

Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him. When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant. And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.” And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

Luke 7:2-8 ESV

The centurion understood the meaning of Jesus’ authority. Jesus’s followers today have the authority to proclaim him and to be his ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:  20-21). Speaking his peace over multitudes will not be an empty exercise.

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Are You Sure You’ve Got the Right Guy?

The idea that I might have something to say was not new. Over several years I have had many people, at many times, speak prophetically into my life, telling me that I have important words to share: prophetic words and knowledge and insight. People have had visions of me teaching, visions of me carrying a scroll, visions of me carrying a book. They have had impressions of me telling people just what they need to hear, just when they need to hear it. They have indicated that I should write, I should teach, the words the Lord has put in me are important and life-giving and carry spiritual authority.

The Lord’s persistence in telling me that I have something important to say was matched by my steadfast refusal to obey. I would discount those voices, assuming they were making much ado about nothing. Even when I did believe the truth of what they said, I found excuses to stay quiet.

Prominent in my excuses to stay quiet was the fear of no one listening. What if I “speak” and no one listens? I stayed quiet to protect a too fragile ego; if I spoke and no one listened, that would reflect poorly on my ability to communicate. That line of “reasoning” keeps many of us on the sidelines and not fulfilling our kingdom purposes. The reality is that we are called to obedience; we must be content to leave the effects of our obedience to God. When we are called, we should do our best, but the results are not up to us. Knowing something and acting on it are two very different things. At the time my Pops was calling me to speak, my vanity and fragile ego were still ruling the day.

But the Father is patient – he has all the time there is. Now that I had come earnestly seeking him, had come to his Workshop, he once again, and very directly, reminded me of my call to speak. My Pops was reminding me of what I should have already known: part of my ministry calling is to be writing and speaking his truth, his shalom to many people.

Taken all together I was being called into a three-fold ministry: helping people uncover the beauty that God created in them; helping people, whose vision may be obscured, to see Jesus and his presence in their lives; and speaking God’s peace – his shalom – to everyone  I can. I am thankful that these are overlapping! In becoming a spiritual director and offering direction one-on-one, I can accomplish the first two purposes. In preaching and accepting offers to speak and in writing (this book even!) I can accomplish the second and third calls my Pops was placing on me. But all of that was still to come. I had barely begun my workshop journey. There was still much my Pops wanted to show me, and though I didn’t know it then, he wanted to heal many wounds I did not know I had. I was being called, but I was not yet ready, not yet equipped to answer the call.

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^[1] Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peace, retrieved August 14, 2016.

^[2] William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), n.p.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

Matthew 9:9 (ESV)

The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.

C. S. Lewis^[1]

One of the remarkable things about my experiences in Pops’ workshop is that I am just an ordinary guy. It is my encounters with God that were extraordinary. Once I had started down this journey, I found that God was not about to let go of me. I suppose I could have turned away, but that would have been all my action, not the Lord’s. I shouldn’t be, but sometimes am, surprised by the lengths the Lord goes to work out his plans. I didn’t know it yet, but he had long been preparing me for the ministry he was calling me to.

In my “real” job, I am a coach and consultant – trained and experienced in listening and observing and guiding and directing. Those same experiences and skills are needed in spiritual direction. I soon discovered the lines between my “real life” and my “religious life” blurring. Eventually, the distinction would be lost altogether.

A short time after my conversation with my Pops about my identity, I was in a three-day workshop to hone my coaching skills. The course was excellent, well presented, and facilitated by great instructors. Much of the time was spent helping me and others in the course understand others and, to a lesser extent, understand ourselves. We learned about understanding people and their behavior by comprehending their deep needs and longings. We talked about deep and valid needs we have as human beings: being trusted, being valued, and making contributions to something larger than ourselves.

I was struck by the irony of the class missing the single greatest need we have: to be in a life-giving relationship with the risen Christ. I was not surprised, this was, after all, a secular course. Nonetheless, we are created to be in a relationship of mutual love with the triune God, and as long as that relationship is not pursued and nurtured, we are necessarily not all that we can be. The needs identified in the course, to be trusted and valued and to be part of a valuable enterprise, are fully accomplished in our life with Christ. There we find our ultimate purpose, ultimate value, and ultimate source of trust and confidence.

My thoughts drifted away from the class material and towards the self-understanding I was starting to gain in Pops’ Workshop. Silently worshipping and praying, I found myself asking Jesus to show me where he was in the classroom.

Months earlier, through exposure to Immanuel Prayer, I had learned the value of looking for Jesus in everyday settings. Immanuel Prayer is a method of inner healing prayer where, with the help of a trained prayer facilitator, a person asks the Holy Spirit to bring to mind a painful memory; painful, but one that will lead to healing. The person is then invited to see where Jesus is in the memory and what he would say or how he feels about the events being remembered. A key truth behind Immanuel Prayer is that Jesus is always with us, in our past, our present, and our future, whether we are aware of his presence or not, he is there. In addition to looking for Jesus in memories, I had begun looking for him in day-to-day situations, starting to break down the artificial wall between my “real” life and my religious life.

As I looked for Jesus in that training room, I saw him behind the instructors, lounging in a corner, laughing. Clearly, Jesus found it amusing how the instructors explained human behaviors in terms of deep longings and needs without thinking of him or bringing God into the conversation. My impression was that he appreciated their efforts, but he knew that they were taking the long way around and were missing many key tools.

I asked Jesus if he was present at all in the secular content of the course. He showed me a full-length mirror like you might have in your bedroom. It was completely fogged over, as if by steam from a hot shower. Jesus was reflected in the mirror, but the reflection was so obscured that you could barely tell it held a person’s image, let alone discern that the image was Jesus. He was there but barely discernable. He was showing me that his truth is there in the course material, just very hard to make out. In this vision, Jesus offered me a towel, and I began to wipe the mirror, removing the obscuring condensation and revealing Jesus more clearly with each stroke of the towel.

This was remarkably like the offer to take up sanding wood that Jesus had made on my second visit to the workshop. Yet they are different. In sanding, Jesus was inviting me to help reveal the beauty people are created to have. The invitation to wipe the mirror is an invitation to help people see and know the Lord, not only where he is hidden in training material for coaches, but where he is in their daily lives. It is less about healing and more about learning to see God’s presence in our lives.

My initial thought was that this was a distinctive and personal calling. A ministry of revealing Jesus to others? That sounded like a calling for a missionary or an evangelist. Yet as I thought about I realized there is nothing unique about it. Each of us, as followers of Jesus, should be helping to reveal him. Our mission on earth is to continue the work of Jesus. Individually and collectively, we are to be his hands and feet, his body here on earth (2 Cor 12:27). One of the things that Jesus came to do was reveal the Father to the world (Luke 10:22, John 14:7). Jesus wiped away the fog so that we could clearly see what our Pops is like. In the same way, it is our job to show people Jesus, the only way to the Father (John 14:6). As Jesus reveals the Father, we are the next link in the chain, revealing Jesus to the world so that, seeing him, they will know the Father.

Understanding the universality of this mission, I realized that Jesus was not only reminding me of this call we all have but was also letting me know that the work he is inviting me into includes helping others to see him when their vision is obscured. He was again showing me, in advance of my later training and education, an aspect of spiritual direction: helping people see and recognize Jesus in their daily lives.

In a situation like this, my normal stance is to disqualify myself, to assert that I am not smart enough, good enough, or trustworthy enough. Like Moses in Exodus chapters three and four, I want to tell God all the reasons why he has picked the wrong person. I should have been intimidated by this new revelation. I am not ordained. I have no formal theological training. Even worse, I was still the proverbial bull in the china shop, leaving a trail of hurt and damage behind me. Yet Jesus’s invitation to help reveal him to people left me excited, not intimidated. To my own great surprise, I didn’t tell Jesus that he’s got the wrong guy for the job.

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Dancing with God

Instead of disqualifying myself, I asked the Father what this ministry of revealing him might look like and what shape it might take. His reply was: “Let’s just dance for now.” That may seem to be a cryptic and obtuse answer, but it made perfect sense to me at that moment. In my journey with God, I had a strong desire, nearly a compulsion, to know an outcome before I committed to a course of action. I was reluctant to take a step, even a small one, without knowing where the journey would take me. The Lord had told me years earlier that this is not how it works with him. If I know exactly where I am going, where the road leads, then I am not really trusting him. I am making my own judgments about whether that is a destination I want to travel to or not. The only way to travel with him is by faith, and faith assumes an unknown (if not an unknowable). Faith says, “wait and see.”

“Let’s just dance for now.” The invitation to dance was an invitation to step deeper into a relationship with Jesus. Since ancient times the church has used the metaphor of the dance to talk about the intertwining relationship of the three persons of the Trinity. Each of us is invited to join the dance, to step into a relationship with God. My Pops was gently reminding me to not worry about where the road leads and inviting me to spend time growing in my relationship with the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Step into the dance, don’t worry if you know all the steps or where it will lead you. Just start dancing!

Now I seemed to have a two-fold assignment: “Sanding wood” to help reveal the beauty that people were created to have and “wiping away the fog” to help people see Jesus so that they might also know my Pops.

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^[1]Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (p. 73). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

As I shifted away from trying really hard to “revisit” my Pops’ workshop and toward a genuine desire to experience God’s love, no matter how he might to chose to show it to me, I realized that I might have been trying too hard. I was looking for really impressive, unmistakable affirmations of the Father’s love. Was I overlooking a multitude of small, daily reminders? I shifted my praying in that direction, asking for the grace to recognize the small, daily tokens of my Pops’ love for me. I unexpectedly found myself back in the workshop, talking with my Pops.

I was in the front part of the workshop, where Pops shapes wood. That is just what he was doing, using a rasp or file to shape a piece of wood. Watching him work, I become aware that this is creative activity; he is creating something new from a block of wood. This is fundamentally different from Jesus’ work of restoring, his sanding and polishing. Pops is creating, Jesus is perfecting and restoring. What the Father creates is good, but we are in a fallen world where we invariably drift away from the good we are created to be. Jesus is about putting things back to the way they should be, restoring and perfecting the beauty that was there in creation. He undoes the hurts and camouflage we accrete as we go through life.

As I watched Pops working, I called out to him, “Hi ya, Pops!”

His response was matter-of-fact. “Hello, David.”

God kept at his work while I stood quietly to the side. When one isn’t used to having a conversation with God, thinking of what to say can be daunting. This level of conversation was different from my past experiences of prayer. Before my workshop visits, I mainly talked to God (or at him) but not with him.  Now I wanted my words to be profound and worshipful. Almost anything that came to mind seemed trite, if not irreverent. My thoughts turned to my familiar, casual name for him. I broke in on his work, “It seems formal when you call me ‘David.’ Shouldn’t you call me ‘Sonny’ or something?”

Pops paused in his work and replied, “How about I call you ‘Beloved’ instead? You know, you are my beloved.”

This was challenging to hear. Two things crashed through my mind. First, I was aware that “David” in Hebrew means “Beloved.” God seemed to be saying that my name fits me in his eyes. The second thing that came to my mind was what God spoke from the heavens at Jesus’ baptism:

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Matthew 3:16-1 (ESV)

Jesus was God’s beloved. How could that same honorific be applied to me? I knew God loved me. He had to; he loves everybody. I love Nacho Cheese Doritos, but I don’t notice or love any particular Dorito. I don’t differentiate one Dorito from another. I love them as a group. But here was God seeming to say yes, he loves everyone, and yet, he notices and loves me in particular. It is as if I were to pick one Dorito from the bag, a Dorito that is especially dear to me. But here the metaphor falls apart. Each of us is special to God. With our human finiteness and limitations, it is hard to understand it, but he sees, values and loves each one of us. Whether we know it or not, we are each his beloved. He knows me, and I matter to him.

It was unnerving to hear my Pops declare that I was his beloved and to think about what that meant. In the vision, I could see myself looking down, studying my feet as I lightly kicked at sawdust and small scraps of wood on the floor. I was decidedly not looking at my Pops. I had not yet accepted that I could be special to God. I was grappling with a reality that didn’t fit with my view of God and of myself. I had started this journey wanting some ill-defined “more” and found myself directed to experience God’s love. When the “more” came, when I came face to face with the love of God, and I was having trouble accepting it.

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Getting Real

Part of me wanted to shore up my crumbling defenses, to come up with some obfuscating reason, some glib response to mask my discomfort and avoid the truth: God’s assertion that I was his beloved was colliding violently with my view of myself as fundamentally flawed and unworthy of love. Set against my desire to avoid that internal incongruence was an increasing sense of safety and security; a sense that nothing truly harmful could come from opening up to my Pops. He is, as C. S. Lewis described him, good but not safe.^[1]

My discomfort and internal conflict did not go unnoticed by my Pops. After a few moments passed, he asked gently, with a hint of sadness in his voice, “Why is that so hard for you to accept?”

I choked on my reply but decided the risk of honesty was going to be worth it. I admitted, “I guess I think I am not much of a person.” This was no false humility. I carried an internal “truth” that I was somehow broken or defective. Sadly, many of us learn that growing up. In my case, I already knew much of the cause.

My mother was an alcoholic, and my father was all but consumed by co-dependency. Children have a remarkable ability to believe they are all-powerful actors in their families. As children, we believe that if anything goes wrong, it must somehow be our fault. Like many others raised in chaotic and highly dysfunctional households, I had a deep-seated belief that I was somehow defective and not lovable or worthy of love. Knowing that the belief was not rational or reasonable did not change its reality.

Besides, I could look back over my life and see a string of damaged and broken relationships. Even as a Christian, trying, in my own strength, to emulate Christ-like love and compassion, I often “failed” and hurt those I was trying to love. I knew God was good; therefore the problem must be me. I must be “defective.”

I had yet to learn that we cannot, by the strength of our wills or intellect become more like Jesus, we need to open ourselves to the inner transformation of the Holy Spirit. I am not saying that God didn’t value and honor my doomed-to-failure attempts to mold myself in the image of his son. Quite the opposite: he values and respects our desires to conform to his will. He knows the healing we each must go through before we can stop trying to do it ourselves and allow his spirit to transform us. Looking back now, I believe that my time in the Workshop, unexpected and unbidden, was a sign of God valuing me and my misguided attempts at righteousness. But in the moment, with my ignorance of that dynamic, my continuing misfires in trying to be like Jesus reinforced my sense of shame and worthlessness before God.

My Pops had asked me why it was so hard for me to accept that I was his beloved. He already knew the answer to his question; he asked it so that I could start to uncover the answer for myself; he knew that I needed to peel back the layers of pretending that I was “okay.” I needed to be honest with myself about how I felt before I could be honest with him. It was a painful truth to face. We cannot be healed of what we do not know and acknowledge

With the piece of wood he was working on still in his hand, my Pops, continued, “I don’t make bad people or unlovable people. I have always loved you.” As he said this, I became aware that the piece of wood he was shaping was, like the wood Jesus was sanding, a person.

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Who Am I?

My thoughts turned to God as the creator, specifically the creator of me, and I asked, “Who am I supposed to be?”

He replied, “You are supposed to be you.”

That seemed a less than satisfying answer, a throwaway, almost. Yet it was profound. My Pops was telling me that I am okay the way I am. I already am what I am supposed to be. I don’t have to be anyone else besides who I am, who he created me to be.

Then, as the vision ended, I could see myself trying to pile sawdust and wood scrap onto myself as if to undo what the Father and Jesus were doing. It was a futile and silly act, trying to go back into hiding, putting back the layers of defense and camouflage. Clearly, I was still not fully ready to accept that God saw me as his beloved; that I am treasured just the way I am.

Later that day I had a session with my spiritual director, where I shared this experience.^[2] His advice was to press into being known by God and knowing who I am. He suggested that I spend time asking my Pops how, specifically, he sees me. Who is it my Pops sees what he looks at me?

I did just that: I prayed, asking the Lord what words he would use to describe me. In response, I heard these adjectives: “compassionate, very smart, generous, and caring.” I was immediately dismissive of this list. It looked a lot like a list that a vain and arrogant person might come up with. If you had asked people who knew me even a few years before my Workshop experience, how they would describe me, you would not have heard caring, generous, or compassionate. Smart? Yes – I made sure everyone knew how smart I am. But not caring or compassionate. If I was anything, I was vain and arrogant.

I asked Pops specifically about arrogance. Surely arrogance must be high on the list. It was my number one character flaw; the very thing that was immobilizing me from going deeper with him! He led me to understand that his list was describing how he made me, the true me. In spiritual direction we often talk about the psychological concept of the false self and the true self. My Pops was describing my true self. Arrogance and all the other negatives I would use to define myself were a description of the false self; part of the paint and varnish I had accumulated over the years. My false self was the protective shell I covered myself with to try to protect myself. Those things effectively protected me, but at a very high cost to myself and others.

My defense mechanisms, learned and honed to a sharp point protected me but hurt those around me. Arrogance, along with pride and vanity, do not define me; they are not who I was meant to be and really do need to go. They are not me, and when I am in the hands of my Pops, they are no longer needed. In his hands, my defenses and protections are just in the way.

Striping off the paint, varnish, and other accretions we have covered ourselves with is what Jesus is doing with his sandpaper and what he invites me to help others do: helping people see themselves as they are meant to be, as God created them to be. Jesus was starting to model for me the ministry he was calling me to. I didn’t understand it at the time, but he was showing me the ministry of Spiritual Direction.

^[1]See chapter eight of “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

^[2]Now, as a Spiritual Director myself, I wonder at my director’s calm acceptance of my visions as I unpacked them with him. I felt like that sort of thing happed all the time.

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And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:7

Visiting my Pops’ workshop was astonishing and sobering. It was so unlike anything else in my experience that, at times, I wondered if it were real and how could know it wasn’t some psychotic episode. My experience was filling me with life, hope, and peace, leading me to think this really was from God, not from misfiring neurons or a mental aberration. As I convinced myself that my experiences were real, they became something I wanted to understand.

I am an analyzer. That description of me barely scratches the surface. A need to know and understand has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. I have always been inquisitive, wanting to know the how and why of nearly everything. It is a part of my nature. When I visit a new town, I want to know its history. How did it get its name? What drove its growth? Why is it the way it is? I am rarely satisfied with simply observing something. I dig in, research, and learn all I can. It can become an unhealthy obsession, this need to know. Some people go with their gut, others are led by their heart, and a third group is governed by their heads. I am certainly in that last group. I always want to know. The more that remains unknown and not understood, the more it troubles me. This presents no small difficulty when trying to comprehend God, who transcends time, space, and ultimately understanding (e.g., Philippians 4:7).

It is a paradox of our times. We are often tempted to embrace rumors and unfounded conspiracy theories but reject any mystery when it comes to our faith. When we do that we miss a lot. Faith is essentially an embrace of mystery; if we can fully understand and explain God then we are operating from reason, not faith. Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us we cannot fathom God or his ways:

⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV

The closing chapters of Job tell us the same thing, that God is wrapped in mystery beyond our understanding. As Job did not get an “answer” as to why he was suffering, neither should we expect to understand God’s ways. We can understand his nature and his character, but not his ways.

Embracing divine mysteries was not yet even on my radar screen, so after my first visits to the workshop, I thought about and analyzed the experience. I wanted to comprehend it, categorize it, and make sure that it fit within the grid of my understanding and nascent theology. Why this vision? Why now? Why not last year or next year? Why call me to this ministry? Trying to understand the “why” started becoming an obsession. I needed to get back to Pops’ workshop to work out the answers to my questions. Since my two visits to Pops’ workshop came from making a concerted effort to experience the Father’s love, I reasoned that if I wanted to once again experience the workshop, I should repeat the procedure. I should diligently try to experience the Father’s love.

I set myself to that task. I composed myself in the way I had before. I prayed in the same way I had before. I experienced nothing but frustration. No matter how hard I tried, going back to the workshop proved an elusive goal.

I was missing a major point. With my words, I was saying that I wanted to experience God’s love, but what was in my heart was the desire to get my questions answered. Motives matter.

At that time, my motivation was not to go deeper into the heart of God. It was to master a skill; to understand a process. My inquisitiveness was not always a good thing. Often, I used it to feed a needy sense of superiority. If I knew how to “call up” this intimate experience of God’s love and you didn’t, that meant that I was somehow, in my warped calculus, superior to you. Knowing was also a means to security; it was a means of keeping me, the only person I could fully trust, in control of the situation. My goal had shifted from “knowing God’s love” to “knowing how to know it” so that I could regain control of the experience and feed my need to feel superior and in control. That is our constant challenge:  to surrender the throne of our lives to God.

The Lord, fully aware of my motives, even when I was not, would have none of it. He would not be neatly packaged and mold himself to meet my unhealthy need to feel like I was in control. I had not yet learned that experiencing God is not a mechanistic procedure. We can’t call him forth like a genie out of Aladdin’s lamp. Nor can we prescribe how we will encounter him. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that a visit to the workshop was the only “real” way for me to experience God and his Love. He meets us in ways that allow us to grow closer to him, not necessarily in the ways that we want or expect. It would take a change in my attitude, not in the mechanics of my prayer to continue my journey.

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:48 (ESV)

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Philippians 3:12 (ESV)

My trip to the workshop had come on a Monday morning. All that day, my mind kept coming back to the piece of wood that Jesus was sanding with such loving attention. It was very beautiful, but that was not why I was thinking about it. I felt like I ought to know what it was; it seemed to be a very important detail to know what Jesus was sanding.^[1]

The next morning, I again sought my Pops in prayer. I didn’t try to return to the workshop. For all I knew, that experience was for that one time only. Nonetheless, I wasn’t surprised when I found myself back in the workshop. Pops was still there, but my attention was drawn to Jesus. I immediately went to the back where he was again sanding, slowly, carefully, frequently pausing to examine his work. Unlike my first visit, there was no spoken dialog this time. Even so, as I watched Jesus at work, I knew that the beautiful, richly grained piece of wood he was so lovingly sanding was a person!

What Jesus was so taking so much care with, what he loved enough to want to perfect, was a person. This made perfect sense. Jesus loves us so profoundly that he went to the cross. His sacrifice was much more than to save us from the eternal price for our sins. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, we are justified; that is, we are saved from the eternal consequence of our sin. But Christ wants so much more for us. He also wants our sanctification.

In “Renovation of the Heart,” Dallas Willard recounts the analogy of an ocean-going ship. If its mechanical systems are broken down, it can be towed to a port, made fast to a dock. Then it is safe; this is justification: safety. However, that ship is not sound; it could not go back out to sea. It needs to be repaired. That is sanctification. Sanctification restores our “soundness.”^[2] Jesus’ love for us is such that he not only wants us safe, he wants us to be the beautiful people we were created to be. He wants to perfect us.

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An Invitation

As I was absorbing the understanding that Jesus was lovingly perfected people, he paused from his work to offer me a piece of sandpaper, which I took. He was inviting me to join in his work, and without thinking, I accepted. Being in his presence is like that; we forget our pretenses and our fears and step into trusting acceptance. By anyone’s standard, I had no business thinking I could help perfect anyone.

I was painfully aware that in the past I would have reached for a chisel or a gouge and hurried to shape the wood to what I thought it should look like. My approach had always been the opposite of what Jesus was showing me. His approach is loving, gentle, and respectful of the “wood.” I was no respecter of people; I was a user of people. I wanted them to conform to my idea of what they should be. Jesus is not trying to shape people into something new; he is focused on revealing the beauty that is already in them. He loves us enough to want to perfect us.

It would be hard to overstate the impact of this moment for me – I was being invited by Jesus to participate in his work, even though I knew myself wholly unprepared and wholly unqualified. Jesus was at work, lovingly perfecting people, revealing their inner beauty, and he was inviting me to join him. I knew that I was receiving a direct, personal invitation to a ministry, a ministry of helping to “perfect people.” As he had said, “If you want to make something perfect, you have to love it.”

His approach is grounded in love. He knows the inner beauty each of us is created with. He loves us for who we are – who we are created to be, not how we appear to be today. He can see through the years of accumulated grime and crud and the layers of paint that hide what we are meant to be. He slowly works through those layers until the beauty God created in us is revealed.

My approach would be to quickly carve the wood into the “right” shape and then add yet another layer of paint. I would make the person look the way I thought beauty should look, probably a lot like me, or at least how I saw myself! I operated under a paradigm that says, “you need to be made beautiful before I can love you.” Jesus’ paradigm is “I love you so much that I want to show your beauty. I want the world, and more importantly, you, to see the beautiful person you were created to be.” This invitation to help with perfecting people was also a calling to love people as they are today, and loving them, help them see, understand, and walk in the beauty too often hidden within them. He certainly doesn’t want people to be like me, except where I am like him. His call to us to become more and more like him. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth:

So all of us … can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

2 Corinthians 3:18, New Living Translation

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Really? Me?

I am an analyzer. Almost anything that comes my way is analyzed. Why is this happening? What does it mean? As I considered Jesus’ invitation to be about his business of loving and helping to perfect people, I shouldn’t have been surprised. It makes perfect sense from a head-knowledge perspective. Each Christ-follower is called to be about Jesus’ ministry. As the church, we are his body on earth. Yet there was nothing academic about this invitation; it was personal, direct, and specific. I was invited to help perfect people, and that necessarily included an invitation to love them with Jesus’ love and my Pops’ love.

The thought of such an invitation should have filled me with dread. I should have remembered all the times that I acted out of arrogance, doing whatever I thought I needed to do to put the world in order, the order I thought it should be in. I should have worried that I would once again be the proverbial bull in the china shop, breaking and hurting where I intended to help. I should have demurred for fear of hurting people. Instead, inexplicably, I met this invitation with a calm assurance that it was right for me. That level of peaceful assurance comes directly from being in the presence of God. I know of no other way we obtain it. Asserting our wills leads to stress and contention. Saying yes to the Father’s gracious invitation leads to calm and peace.

Still, I was tempted to think that Jesus might have made a mistake. Perhaps he didn’t remember my history of hurting those I loved. Perhaps he had forgotten my arrogance, my bullying ways. But now, with the passing of some time, I realize that nothing Jesus could ask me to undertake could be a mistake. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is at work perfecting us. We are free to say no, but we can trust that anything he asks us to put our hands to will be okay. It almost certainly won’t turn out the way we think it should, but it will be good.

For now, I was buoyed by my experience with my Pops and Jesus. I could assent to this invitation, not even knowing just how it could be that I could join Jesus in his work of restoring and perfecting.

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^[1]Throughout my time in the workshop, the Lord would use my curiosity to tempt me to dig deeper. Indeed, that aspect of how I relate to God continues to this day.

^[2]Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 225). NavPress. Kindle Edition.

God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.

Meister Eckhart

The following Monday, the day after having heard the message about being out of place and the need to return to the presence of the Lord, I finally screwed up my courage and decided to see what it would be like to sit in the presence of God the Father.

This wasn’t easy. Like most people today, I was not very comfortable with stillness and quiet. Our culture seems to push us toward things that keep our minds occupied but not usually with things that have lasting value. We come to crave the constant inputs of music, television, podcasts, and so on. I, too, was hooked on distraction; silence and solitude tended to make me anxious. God seeks to break in, and we seek to make enough noise and keep ourselves so “busy” that we won’t notice him. Stillness and contemplation were not yet in my toolbox.^[1]

Moreover, I still struggled to conceive of a father who was reliable and safe. Deep down, I didn’t really believe I was worthy of love, certainly not the love of God the Father. I felt weak, flawed, and unworthy. Nonetheless, I didn’t think I had much to lose, so I found a quiet and comfortable place to sit, and I prayed, asking the Father to show me his love. He chose to show me his love in a vision. It was nothing I was seeking or expecting. It would turn out to be the first of many visions that would take me on a months-long journey of healing and transformation.

In the vision, I found myself standing outside an old wooden building. It stood in a clearing in a pine forest. I was standing on level ground, but I was on the side of a mountain. The forest continued up the mountainside behind the building. It looked like the kind of building you might expect to find in a remote corner of the Appalachian Mountains. The exterior was covered with vertical planks, roughly finished and of unequal widths. There were noticeable gaps between the planks. The wood was neither painted nor stained and was aged by years of exposure to the weather. Although this building was not finely finished and certainly not new, it seemed to be quite sturdy. I did not see any windows, but facing me on the left side were floor-to-ceiling double doors that swung outward. They were standing open. I dimly saw an interior with a wooden floor. This certainly didn’t seem to be the kind of place where one would find God. ^[2]

Despite the unlikely appearance of the building, I walked in. As I entered, I heard the hollow sound of my steps on the rough planks of the floor and the rhythmic sounds of woodworking: the sounds of handsaws, files, and sandpaper. This building was clearly a workshop; the air was heavy with the smells of freshly cut wood, machine oil, and old leather. In front of me, opposite the door, stood racks full of cut lumber. I stood in the doorway for a moment, drinking it in and trying to understand what I was experiencing.

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Meeting My Pops

As I moved further into the workshop, I saw someone off to the right at an old, rough wooden workbench built into the corner of the workshop. He was shaping a piece of wood with a file or rasp. I knew at once that he was my Pops. He looked over at me but said nothing and returned to his work. I sensed that he was waiting for me. It took me a few moments, but eventually, I overcame my nervousness at actually encountering the Father, the person of the Godhead I least understood and perhaps most feared. I said. “Hi, Pops!”

He replied, “Hello, David,” and returned to his work. After a moment or two at his work, he turned to me again. “Did you need something?”

This was not going as I might have expected. I was again being asked what I wanted! I could see myself half reclining on some lumber, leaning back, away from my Pops, my body language betraying reserve and uncertainty. “No, I just wanted to hang out with you.”

“Cool,” he replied.

While Pops continued his work,  I sat for a while, wondering what kind of God says “cool” and trying to figure out my next move. I was bold enough to break in again, “I love you, Pops.”

My Pops stopped his work and turned towards me. “I know, David. I love you, too.” This is what I came seeking: an experience of Father’s love. When it came so simply and directly, I was unprepared for the soul-stirring emotion that came with it. The nearest I can come to describe the intensity of the feeling is this. Imagine you had never before felt the warmth of the sun on your face and felt it for the first time. Or imagine if you had never tasted anything sweet before and bit into a ripe peach. Those imagined sensations, new, intense, and perhaps a bit intoxicating, bring to my mind what I felt at that moment.

I could now see that he was wearing a well-worn leather apron that extended from his chest to his knees. It looked like a blacksmith’s apron. I moved toward him, and he moved toward me. We embraced. I expected that would be awkward, I was not a hugger, and my Pops was very large and very strong. Nonetheless, I felt very safe and secure. I think I felt the way a secure child must feel in the arms of his father.

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Jesus is here, too

A moment after we embraced, my Pops spoke again, “Jesus is here, too, if you want to see him.”

I had not started out expecting to find Jesus, but emboldened by my Pops’ love, I walked further back into the workshop, which I now could see was L-shaped. As I got to the back, I saw Jesus. He was working too, sanding a piece of wood. It was about the size and shape of a football but more rounded. It reminded me of the body of a duck decoy, and at first, that is what I thought it was. It seemed such an odd thing for Jesus to be sanding.

It was beautifully grained with bands of lighter and darker wood. Jesus’ sanding was light, gentle, and slow. He sanded for a few strokes, then blew the sawdust away. Holding the wood up, he examined it carefully, scrutinizing the beauty being revealed by his labors, and ran his hand over it, gently testing its shape and smoothness.

He turned to me and said, “I love working with wood,” and smiled. He sanded for another moment or two and continued, “You know, if you want something to be perfect, you have to love it.” He returned to his gentle and loving sanding. That was where the vision ended.

Visions were not new to me. The Lord had often spoken to me in visions. But this vision was different in its vividness and intensity. I was used to visions that were indistinct around the edges. Like watching a movie where the “action” is clear, but the background and periphery fade away in a misty blur. This time I didn’t see scenes from a movie. I was in the workshop, I didn’t just see my Pops and Jesus there, and I was experiencing it; it engaged all of my senses. I smelled the workshop: machine oil, leather, and sawdust. I heard my footsteps on the rough wooden floor, and the sound of wood being worked. Where the sunlight came in through cracks in the wall, I saw particles of sawdust hanging in the air. When my Pops hugged me, I heard the creaking of his leather apron and felt the warmth of his embrace. Perhaps “vision” is the wrong word. This wasn’t something I was seeing; it was something I was experiencing.

I wondered why I’d had this vision, this experience at this time. What was different this time? On this day, I didn’t come to God asking for anything. I wasn’t interceding. I wasn’t asking for guidance or direction. I came simply wanting to “be” with my Pops. I wanted to get to know him, to experience his love. I wanted to be where we are meant to be: in his presence. Describing this, even years later, brings fresh reminders of the almost overwhelming power of directly experiencing God’s love. God the Father, the creator of all that is, knows me personally, loves me, and knows that I love him.

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Being Known

Healing and wholeness flow from knowing at our cores that we are known by God, loved by him, and valued by him – personally and individually. It still brings a lump to my throat and a profound peacefulness. It is one thing to know, in an academic sense, that I am loved by God. This was something else altogether: a personal, face-to-face encounter with God, who tells me that he loves me, who enfolds me in the strength and safety of his embrace.

One of the most important books I have read since my time in Pops’ Workshop is Anatomy of the Soul, by Curt Thompson, MD. Dr. Thompson is a practicing psychiatrist who writes on the connections between neuroscience and the human soul. He stresses the primary importance to our spiritual and emotional health of being known.

Our Western world has long emphasized knowledge—factual information and “proof”—over the process of being known by God and others. No wonder, then, that despite all our technological advancements and the proliferation of social media, we are more intra- and interpersonally isolated than ever. Yet it is only when we are known that we are positioned to become conduits of love. And it is love that transforms our minds, makes forgiveness possible, and weaves a community of disparate people into the tapestry of God’s family.

(Thompson M.D., Curt. Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships (Kindle Locations 298-303). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.)

Before my encounter with my Pops in his workshop, I knew, as a point of factual information, that he loved me. I could quote scripture to prove that he loved me. However, it is something else altogether to know his love experientially. Imagine, if you can, someone who spent his life in a desert. He has heard about the Pacific Ocean. He has read about it. He has seen it depicted in paintings and has seen photographs of it. He has talked to others who have experienced it. He has experienced small streams and ponds in the rare desert rains. He knows that the Pacific Ocean is a reality. It is quite another thing to experience the Pacific Ocean; to hear the crashing of waves breaking on the shore; to smell and taste the salt spray; to wade in and feel the tug of the waves pushing and pulling you; to sit on the beach and watch the sun disappear into the ocean. The difference between reading about and hearing about the Pacific Ocean and actually experiencing it begins to hint at the difference between knowing about the Father’s love and experiencing it.^[3]

I started out seeking an experience of the Father’s love for me. I received that almost as soon as I entered Pops’ workshop. However, there was much more he wanted me to know, much more healing he wanted me to experience. This starting point of experiencing his love was important: it gave me the strength and encouragement to press into the good my Pops wanted to give me.

I have known for years that God desires to be in relationship with us. I had tried to avoid the traps of legalistic religion. I knew that what I did was not the key; my relationship with the triune God is what really mattered. I knew Jesus; we talked frequently. I knew Holy Spirit; I heard him often. However, I did not really know my Pops. Not knowing him, I couldn’t really be sure that he knows me.

This may present a theological problem for you. After all, Jesus told us that seeing him is seeing the Father and knowing him is knowing the Father:

“If you know Me, you will also know My Father. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.” “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

John 14:7–9 HCSB

Perhaps, at the root, it wasn’t that I didn’t know the Father. Perhaps it was that I did not know my Pops’ love. More importantly, I didn’t trust the steadfastness of his love. My head knew about the love of the Father, but my heart knew the conditional, temporary love of my earthly father. As is the case for many of us, deficits in my relationship with my earthly father carried over to my relationship with my heavenly father. I didn’t trust the Father’s love for me, and that kept me from really trusting him.

I did not know it at the time, but this vision or experience of the presence of God and experiencing his love for me was just the first step in what has become a long journey.

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Notes:

^[1]To be clear, being still is still a challenge. Silence and stillness are in my toolbox, but I do not use them as well or as often as I would like to.

^[2]At this point, if you have read or even heard about William Paul Young’s excellent novel, “The Shack,” you may be calling a foul here, thinking that I am just ripping off Young’s work, which I have read – several times. That thought occurred to me as well and even led me to wonder if perhaps my imagination wasn’t running away with me. However, the transformation God worked in me is tangible and unmistakable. My experiences were real, not a work of fiction. I did not set out with the idea that I would meet God in a secluded old wooden building deep in the woods, but I am not surprised that God would take something that he knew would be comforting and accessible to me and use it to finally get me to experience the reality of his love. Yes, there are superficial resemblances between Young’s shack and my Pops’ workshop. It may be a coincidence, or it may be my Pops knowing what imagery would work for me; in the end, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the powerful, transformative love of God, who graciously met me where I was and showed me his heart.

^[3]I am haunted by the idea that I read this analogy somewhere, but I cannot find any reference. If it is familiar to you and you know where I saw it, please let me know so that I can credit it appropriately.