(The following notes provide a recap and structure for “The Love of God in Daily Life” podcast episode). 

I HAVE A WORD FOR YOU.  I KNOW YOUR WHOLE LIFE STORY.  I KNOW EVERY SKELETON IN YOUR CLOSET.  I KNOW EVERY MOMENT OF SIN AND SHAME, DISHONESTY AND DEGRADED LOVE THAT HAS DARKENED YOUR PAST.  RIGHT NOW, I KNOW YOUR SHALLOW FAITH, YOUR FEEBLE PRAYER LIFE, YOUR INCONSISTENT DISCIPLESHIP, AND MY WORD TO YOU IS THIS:  “I DARE YOU TO TRUST THAT I LOVE YOU, JUST AS YOU ARE, NOT AS YOU SHOULD BE, BECAUSE NONE OF US ARE AS WE SHOULD BE!” – BRENNAN MANNING

The above clip is from the Ragamuffin movie, the story of Rich Mullins.  This is a powerful clip because it frames the conversation that we all need: Our “come to Jesus” moment when we are honest with God about our condition, our struggles, our despair, our shallow faith, and our lack of trust.  The idea that the Lord will ask only one question on judgment day is something serious for us to consider, because it is the belief in the love of God that was manifest when God stepped into time for our redemption.  And it is  that love that manifests in our hearts when we stop fighting, depart from performance based Christianity, and by faith accept our calling to be a child of God.  This is where we move from Responsibility to Response, the place where the measure of our faith is no longer based on the scorecard of church programs, but rather the organic response to the gospel through our affections and humility.  This is the Gift of Compunction, where we can finally rest in the truth that by knowing that self-awareness is sin-awareness, and acceptance of this reality moves the love of God to blossom in our person, in our hearts, in our minds and in our lives.  This is a punctuation in our faith journey that changes everything, because up to this point we have given intellectual consent to the gospel, we have believed with the faith of a mustard seed, we have embraced the gospel for our salvation despite our doubts, our struggles, our ongoing work of trying to appear godly, and we have found the faith journey to be work.  This point of surrender is the part of our faith journey where the presence of God becomes palpable, and also the part of the journey where we see the world differently. 

From the time we first became Christian, Christ has been our magnetic north except when inconvenient, but now our field of vision has narrowed, the things we use to worry about are now secondary, the building of our own kingdom is abandoned and we have a new desire to seek the kingdom of God and make contributions with eternal significance.  Jonathan Edwards describes this in his journals when he says, “I can know about honey, know that it tastes good, even enjoy the aroma of fresh honey, but it is not until I taste the honey have I truly encountered it, truly enjoyed it, truly been satisfied by it.”  This is what I have come to call, “The Isaiah 6 Experience”, in which Isaiah, man of God, prophet of Israel, has an encounter with the holiness of God and sees his sin in light of the holiness of God.  Here is where our passion for God gets deeply rooted, barriers to faith fall off with the shift in our vision, and our priorities to love God and love people become our hunger and thirst.  We also see our blind spots exposed, often hidden by our pride, or worse yet, spiritual pride, and humility grows quickly in parallel with our fear of God.  This is also where we learn patience because this is where our church going friends will be upset that we are breaking the circle.  We begin to pray for them in new ways, not in a judgmental way, but for things of eternal value, spiritual warfare, surrender, and for rightly ordered loves.  This is the place where transformation takes us to a deeper place, where our moral standards get rooted as virtuous character, no longer a moral scorecard, but the fruit of the Spirit becomes characteristic of our life.  Now our thinking also begins and ends with God, with a growing desire to make God honoring decisions; and this is where the formation of Christ in us now makes outward appearances through us.  

NOTE: These articles might be helpful as I attempted to describe the punctuations in my own faith journey where God called me out to deeper waters.  Yes there was fear, but there was also trust that God would be faithful and would not have brought me this far to leave me alone:

• Grace in the Wilderness, 
• The Critical Journey 5 Years Later,
• And She will be Called Grace and Glory
• My Book of Remembrance
• Growing in the Forbearance of God.

What is to follow are some truths to consider and actions to take as a path to stepping into a deeper experience of the love of God.  As we constantly seek to remove barriers to faith in order that we might go deeper in our faith, we approach these roadblocks with the understanding that our sin and our pride are our biggest obstacles that prevent us from seeing.  This is not to replace the practice of spiritual disciplines such as reading your bible, prayer, fasting, solitude & silence, etc. but rather to augment it and to adjust our heart attitude in the midst of daily life. 

• Gratitude:  Cultivating a heart of gratitude requires a little work, because not everything in our lives naturally evokes a response of thanksgiving.  It is easy to be thankful for the things that make our lives easier, enhance our comfort, and make us happy.   We also have things we take for granted, which is easy to do in America were 99% of us are wealthy in the eyes of the world.  Then there are the things that hurt us, the pains we would not wish on anyone, yet they have come upon us.  Paul wrote that we should give thanks for everything (1Thessalonians 5:18), but to give thanks for the things that cause us pain is difficult.  I wish I had a magic formula to insert here, but I can tell you that my testimony is that different pains invaded my life and it required the distance of time in order to produce a thankful heart in specific situations.
  • Give thanks for one situation that you are praying for and thank God in advance.  For example, I pray daily for my future wife and our future children. 
  • Give thanks for something you have not been thankful for in the past.  For example, I often give thanks for clean water, my car, my shoes, my kitty cat Furbie, daily bread, my bibles, my bed, my health, and all the people who work hard to make my life better such as my church, my trainer, my chiropractor, and so on.
  • Give thanks for something hard.  A current struggle or pain that you are choosing to trust that God has a plan and though understanding may never come, ask for trust, wisdom, and for the peace of Christ to rule in your heart. 
• Gospel:  Preach the gospel to yourself daily.  Quote John 3:16 and insert your name into the verse, “For God so loved “State your name” that He gave His only begotten Son….  Do the same with Romans 8:32, 8:35, and 8:37-39.  There are truths in the gospel that can penetrate our hearts, especially if we have grown up in the church and have become numb to the good news of Jesus Christ!
  • Find other verses in which you can personalize and remember.  This will also produce heart work and further cultivate gratitude in your soul.  In addition, internalizing the word of God this way also makes it easier to share the gospel and have a verse handy for the person God brings to you so you can share at work, at school, at the gym, at Starbucks, etc.  We are daily surrounded by hurting people who need a word of encouragement, a light in their dark night. 
  • Personalizing scripture is also helpful in getting through our own dark nights to help us remember the promises of God and regain our eternal perspective. 
  • Pray Ephesians 3:14-19 with a focus on growing strong in belief in the Love of God and verbally commit to trusting that He loves you.
• Giving: Take inventory of your time, talents and treasure as well as ways that you already give.  Then pray for God to show you areas of your life where you can give of yourself.  In addition, be prepared to help out when a spontaneous opportunity arises.  In your structured giving, you probably tithe and volunteer for opportunities to serve at church.  Consider areas that you have a heart to make a difference such as helping the homeless, children, refugees, the elderly, young believers, etc.
  • Structured giving can be to volunteer your time for a task such as Operation Christmas Child which is seasonal and happening at this time.  Likewise, Angel Tree is a great cause to provide Christmas presents that hopefully can help restore relationships between children and their incarcerated parents. 
  • To go deeper, consider a sacrificial gift that involves your time, money and your life such as being a big brother or big sister, becoming a Foster parent, adopting a child, be a mental health volunteer, go on a mission to take the gospel to a far away place, or get involved with a recovery ministry for substance abuse, or human trafficking.  This sacrificial gift will be a blessing for those you serve, but will have a profound impact on your formation as the Spirit of God in you moves us deeper into the surrendered life. 
  • Unplanned giving may be a stranded motorist, a homeless encounter on the street, or perhaps just helping a neighbor move furniture.  All ways to love people in a tangible way. 
• Guard your Heart: Our hearts are idol factories.  According to scripture, they are deceitful and incurably sick (Jeremiah 17:9).  We need to guard our hearts because it is also the well-spring of life (Proverbs 4:23) and our connection to the Eternal (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  As we know from Romans 7, there is a battle within us in which our sin nature is waging war against the law of God in our minds, so we need to be aware of when this is happening.  We also need to know that there are multiple ways in which our heart is vulnerable which is by our mind, our emotions, our view of our-self, our view of God, our ability to minimize sin, and our biological and sexual desires.  I do not write that lightly, the struggle is real, but for every temptation there is a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13).
  • Read your bible daily 
  • Take every thought captive against the character and truths of God
  • Beware of making emotional decisions that can damage your faith, your testimony, or your future.  

The above writing is to share supplemental material from the Love of God in Daily Life podcast.  There is much more that can be shared, but for now I am sharing these to augment what we discussed as well as to be a preface for part 2 of the Love of God in Daily Life podcast, some afterthoughts from the November 13 episode.