God Loves You...

On platitudes and the contemplative life

This article explores spiritual formation in the spirit of Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart. We look at why we’re sometimes internally dissatisfied with people’s attempts to encourage us, and explore another way to connect with the deep love of God. Admittedly, it’s not a short read. If you’re short on time, I encourage you to bookmark this to come back to later, but please read to the end for an invitation to a 7-day devotional journey that we’ll be launching into next week. I don’t want you to miss it.

Platitude or Spiritual Nourishment?

Nursing my babies in the wee hours of the morning often proves to be a sort of contemplative space for me. Whether it be hormones, the quiet space between wakefulness and sleep, or the coo of my baby as I hold his hand and nurse him, the hum of the white noice machine and the gentle rock of my worn-in glider is often the backdrop of unique thought exercises and images given by the Spirit.

Yesterday, after spending the last several days contemplating God’s love, our love for Him and others, and the concept of originating versus responding love (see Richard Foster’s Streams of Living Water), I found myself honestly admitting that when people tell me that God loves me, it often falls flat in my heart. I’m talking flatter than flat. In some cases, my internal response to this beautiful truth is, “So?”

What is that? Where does that come from? Pondering this as milk flowed out of my body into my 5 month old’s mouth, I instinctively reached for his hand and his tiny fingers curled around mine and he cooed. Oxytocin surge.

In that moment I realized that “God loves you” has felt like a platitude for most of my life because God loves… everyone? The love I had always sought after (and since found) in my yearning for a husband, the uniqueness of the love that radiates between myself and each of my children, the inside jokes and assurances of presence from friends near and far… These expressions of love are meaningful to the human heart because they indicate a uniqueness of attachment, joy, delight, and belonging.

There is also some emotional unhealth wrapped up in my disillusionment with being told of God’s love for me. Be it personality, childhood wounds, or a combination of the two, I have come to associate someone’s happiness with and choosing of me as an external validation of my worthiness and purpose as a person. When a human takes time and energy to express love to me, that says, “You’re on the right track. People like you. This is good.” When someone is upset with me, that says, “Something is wrong here–either with you or with them.”

The problem, then, with telling someone like me (and maybe you, too?) that God loves me, is that the cognitive ascent neither satisfies the healthy intimacy I crave nor the unhealthy sense of external validation. My system receives the information into the prefrontal cortex and files it under the category, “Well, that’s nice.”

All of this pondering, then, brings me to wonder about the transformative love of God that the contemplatives know so much about. The apostle John, Brother Lawrence, and other inspiring names in history, seemed to have been driven forward by a compelling, physical, and very real love lavished on them by the Creator. Instead of mere platitudes, they carried with them an experienced love that both satisfied their inner spirit and inspired kingdom to come by their lives whether lived in isolation or amongst community.

Baby hand still wrapped around mine, I marveled at how unique my love for this third child is compared to my other two children. This baby snuggles closely more than my other two ever cared for. Holds my hand and coos while nursing. Quiet, steady, sweet love.

My love for my oldest child is highly verbal. She began talking with vigor at an age that most would deem precocious, and we have expressed our love through singing, joking, and answering umpteen questions a day ever since. She often will flit in and out of reach, accepting a hug here or a short back rub there, but physicality is not her style. She is both most enthused–and most easily torn down–with words and tone.

My middle son is quite the opposite. Rambunctious and highly physical, my love for him is rough and tumble play, long stretches of his weight pressing fully into me while we sit on the couch, and countless requests, “you hold me?” I’m quite sure his strongest assurance of my husband’s love for him is being tackled and squished firmly onto the floor with both parties giggling uncontrollably.

I love all of my children big. But I also love them all different. Because each of them is a different person, and they experience and express love differently. (The irony that this revelation is just dawning on me as a 30 year old child-development guru is not lost on me). Someone could tell each of my kids that I love them, and they’d certainly be right. But just as I connect to memory of my own mother’s love for me in memories of back rubs and long car trips together, I expect that my children would be more comforted in their unique experience of my love than they would be with the mere telling.

So, maybe then, the problem is not that God’s love for us is somehow untrue or incapable of transforming, soothing, and motivating our hearts. Perhaps Christ’s love really can be as compelling as Paul expresses in 2 Corinthians 5, but the problem rests in how we tell each other about it and how we try to convince ourselves of it.

A Case for Experience

My spiritual tradition are Bible study enthusiasts. We study the Bible with people seeking God’s truth, we study the Bible to grow and change, we study the Bible to feel close to God. I LOVE Bible study.

But, I think I’m learning that Bible study is not an adequate tool for guiding our hearts into a deep knowledge of God’s love for us–the kind that quiets discontented souls and spurs kingdom-come lives to be lived forward.

Recently, I was returning a switch plate to a freshly painted wall in my house, and I couldn’t find the screwdriver. We have one of those screwdrivers where you can exchange the head of the screwdriver to fit your needs. The flathead was there, in its place, but the screwdriver handle was nowhere to be found. (Yes, I really can be this disorganized, however I have a particular excuse this time as we are in the process of getting our house on the market to sell.)

With no screwdriver handle, I finally just decided to grip the flathead between my thumb and forefinger and use my pincer grip to my end of returning the switch plate to the wall. This, of course, took three times the time and effort that would have been required had I been able to find the handle of the screwdriver.

Spiritual practices can be a bit like this–the right tools for the right job can make all the difference. Bible study to prove God’s love to ourselves is a perfect example. I certainly know people who have deeply connected to God’s love through Bible study, so it is not wholly ineffective 100% of the time–the switch plate eventually gets on the wall. But perhaps it is taking us longer, more effort, and less efficiency than another spiritual practice might.

Bible study is the perfect tool for grounding ourselves in truth, remaining anchored to what is real amidst our very fluctuant emotions and life circumstances, for seeing clearly in the mirage of worldly promises and fix-me’s. It is a beautiful tool for the spiritual formation of the mind.

Turned toward the heart, however, it often falls short in transforming this more tender place. At best, we are ineffectively molding our hearts, like a toddler squishing her play-doh through the cap of a marker. At worst, we are missing our hearts completely and causing spiritual disintegration by trying to convince ourselves of God’s love through our intellect only and ignoring the heart’s longing for a deeper connection.

This job is better suited for the more gentle tool of listening prayer.

Pondering these things about love and the uniqueness of love, I turned to my husband this week and asked him, “What things remind you of God’s love?” My husband, not the contemplative I am, first rolled his eyes and groaned. “I’m not good at thinking like this!” Then, he turned my own question on me. “You answer first.”

My answer came quickly: God’s love comes to me most clearly when I am unsure, doubtful, or wavering in my decision making. It’s never loud or flashy, generally it’s gentle. A whispering nudge of encouragement, like the father giving a nod to his child climbing higher than she’s used to going– “Go ahead, you’ve got this.”

As a recovering people-pleaser, this self-doubt is a tender place in my heart, and I sense that God is trying to heal it past its shame-filled existence.

Listening to my answer, my husband was pensive. “I don’t know if this is what you mean, but sometimes despite my situation or location I can find these pockets of peace that draw me into soul-rest. That’s where I feel his love most.”

That’s exactly what I meant.

For some characters in the Bible, God’s love came in the form of clothing after being banished from the garden. Sometimes it was a burning bush. Other times it was a still, small voice. Sometimes it was a man’s spit falling into dirt and being spread over blind eyes.

I have a friend who recently desperately needed to know God’s love for her. A team of spiritual advisers, including myself, rushed in and tried to help. We tried showing her scripture, drawing pictures on white boards, praying with and for, sending songs. Our tried and true tools for a very important job. All appreciated, and still wholly inadequate at reaching her tender heart.

One afternoon in the North Florida springtime (the most beautiful time to be in this particular location on Earth), she was laying in the sun half napping, half pondering. As she lay, she felt the sun’s rays enveloped her, and she received this physical sensation as a hug from God. In that moment, nothing about her circumstance had changed, but her heart became assured of His love for her more fully than ever.

So, friend, I ask you the question I asked my husband:

How does God love you?

Because, it’s true, He does love everyone. He loves everyone big, just like I love all three of my kids big. But he loves each one of us uniquely, too. My hands wrap around his in those moments of self-doubt. My husband leans his frame fully on God in those seemingly random pockets of peace that transcend place or time. My friend hears the whisper of God’s love through the gentle rays of sunshine wrapping around her on a spring afternoon.

What about you?

I encourage you to start paying attention not only to your own cognitive awareness of God’s love, but your heart’s settling into that love. What are the moments that make you breathe deeply in your innermost spaces and release your death-grip on life? When does your faith touch something deeper than what you know in your head and reach your gut, intuition, and core senses?

Please hear me say, your mind is an essential mission-field for spiritual transformation. I am not discounting orthodoxy, doctrine, Bible study, or truth. But the mind is not the only part of us that must be transformed–we must reach the tender heart, too, if we are to be truly made into the image of Christ.

An Invitation

There’s a good chance this feels like a really good idea to you–especially if you’re still reading. And, if you’re anything like me, the question of reaching the heart becomes how?

I struggle with listening prayer. My body has layered intellect on top of logic on top of reason to cover up my emotional side after sensing throughout my life that my emotions were not what people liked most about me. So, unlayering myself has been a bit of a challenge, even for this contemplative-minded therapist.

For this reason, I write and record guided audio devotionals to help myself and you do the same thing. In this publication, I release one audio devotional a month for my paid subscribers, and quarterly I will release longer devotional journeys with the goal of guiding our hearts into truth.

Next week I am holding one such devotional journey–a 7-day journey through Psalm 139 to help our hearts connect to God’s unfailing, pervasive, and sure love for us. We will explore the secret parts of ourselves, the sinful parts of ourselves, and reach for the touch of God even here. This audio devotional will come to you each day for 7 days, and will also include a PDF printable with reflection questions to guide you into further reflection and connection with God. This Psalm has been incredibly transformational in my walk with God, and I cannot wait to share the insights with you, too. I hope you’ll join me!

A Prayer

Lord God,

We know you love us. Many of us have been singing since childhood, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” We are not unclear about this love, and we are so grateful for it.

And, Lord, you created us as complex individuals. With intellect, intuition, heart, and reason. You created us with heart, mind, soul, and strength. Our culture knows how to touch the mind well, but we are often so unacquainted with the other parts of ourselves.

My prayer for each person reading this is that you would assure them of the uniqueness and big-ness of your love for them. Would you open our eyes to see you in the things that mean the most. Would you assure us not only with words, but through our hearts and bodies as well.

My prayer is also that we would be friends, spiritual mentors and guides, parents, and spouses that would invite our friends to pay attention to their hearts. May we be aware of our instinct to fix and cover our loved ones with truth, and may we step back and invite them to experience these things for themselves.

Our intentions our good, Lord. Would you guide our hands, feet, and mouths to use the tools that are most effective for bringing your kingdom to our small corner of the world today.

Amen.