How to Begin the Inward Journey
Last week, we touched on the second of these two mysterious forces that sit on the bedrock of our hearts: our desires.
Some people (both those who follow Jesus and those who are curious about Him) operate under the assumption that our natural desires are universally bad. For those chasing after Jesus, some have been brought up under the assumption that all of our desires must be rejected, denied, or subsumed to truly surrender to God.
Though understandable considering the various legalist traditions in which some have been immersed, it also raises questions about why Jesus would ask Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus cared about what Bartimaeus desired.
I’ve never heard God audibly, but I did hear Him speak softly to my heart a few years ago. He gently asked, “What do you want?”
It took me a year to answer the question.
The reason is that, like the ideas we’ve been wrestling with, uncovering our true, deepest desires can be challenging and thorny. But hunting for them is good and necessary for our spiritual formation.
David Benner writes, “I suggested that we must be careful what we desire because we may get it. But desires are even more important than this. The truth is that our desires influence more than our acquisitions. They shape our being. Thomas Merton puts it this way, ‘Life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.’”
If we dare to search for our bedrock desires, they may well lead us to God and a deeper life.
He finishes his thought: “The only way to know our deepest desires is to start with the surface desires that we can access and to follow them downward to their underlying longings.”
One of the reasons we long to become more like Jesus is that He’s the only person to live in complete integration—His ideas, desires, and beliefs are always aligned and always good. He is, quite marvelously, all ideas and desires of light wrapped up in human flesh. And He desires for us to experience the same integration and connectedness.
The first step towards this integration, attunement, or awakening is to become aware of these forces that power us. However, exploring our ideas and desires is best accomplished under what is often elusive: when our hearts feel and experience safety. Yikes.
The Safety Dance
I first became acquainted with Dallas Willard’s work back in 2020. I remember reading one of his books, The Divine Conspiracy, and coming across this quote: “Jesus brings us the assurance that the universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be.”
When I first read it, I confess I was angry. “How ridiculous,” I thought. “How can anyone in their right mind call this world safe?”
We’re taught that if we follow Jesus, our eternal destiny is secure, and we will never be separated from God. But that does little to calm my insecure heart right now. Sure, I’ll be safe after I’m dead, but how can I possibly be safe in the face of betrayal, abandonment, violence, and a staggering host of factors in my life over which I have no control? Good grief, just turn on the news, Dr. Willard.
I’m now in my fourth year wrestling with his statement. I have found no theological reason to doubt it, so I’ve come around to intellectually agreeing. My heart, however, continues to lag.
Like Riding a Bike?
As you might imagine, the journey inward to discover our deep ideas and desires is not always pleasant. There are many wonderful elements to find, though we will also uncover our hidden motives, agendas, vices, loathings, and selfishness.
The only sane person who would take that journey is one who is sure that, no matter what she discovers, she will be loved, protected, and safe, no matter the outcome. Otherwise, she will likely fall headlong into self-condemnation, rejection, or reliving painful memories with no apparent hope for truth or redemption.
It’s like the small boy learning to ride his bike without training wheels. “You want me to do WHAT?” he cries to his father. The boy is unlikely to take the risk if left alone with no support. But if his father promises to keep his hand on the back of the bike, run alongside him, and not let him go until he is ready to pedal on his own, the boy cautiously but willingly agrees. His heart knows, feels, and experiences his father’s safety.
It is not enough to intellectually agree that we are safe. We must feel and experience the reality of living in constant care and protection.
Here’s the obvious problem: when we suffer tragedy, harm, loneliness, sickness, rejection, or betrayal, our hearts quickly conclude that the last thing we are is safe. We then tend to transpose our insecurity onto our relationship with God.
The typical human response to a broken heart and soul is to take control. Understandably, our hearts no longer want to suffer, so we orchestrate our environments and circumstances.
Our control tendencies are legion: we hoard our possessions, stay in a job we hate because the money’s predictable, withdraw from authentic, intimate relationships, find more comfort and security in our doctrine than in its Author, or demand that those close to us acquiesce to our passive, manipulative demands. Our hearts desperately try to create a new reality in which we can control settings and outcomes to prevent further harm. It is, of course, a fruitless effort, though it often makes us feel better for a while.
There is a paradox at work here. If we desire to become more like Jesus, was He always safe? He was routinely hated and derided. His life was constantly threatened. He didn’t have a “real” career or a steady home for at least three years. Was He safe when He was falsely accused, tried, convicted, and killed?
Perhaps we need to wrestle with what we mean by “safe.”
Can I Get a Withness?
Apparently, safety doesn’t mean the absence of trial, pain, and heartbreak but rather the embodied assurance of “withness.” Withness (yes, it’s a real word) is “the state or fact of being close to or connected with someone or something.”
God’s promise to be with us is woven through His first book (the Bible) and His second (creation). It’s written in His name, Immanuel. Though it’s generally the forgotten clause in the Great Commission, the last thing Matthew records Jesus saying is His promise to be with us.
This embodied sense of safety, then, is not so much about getting our way or living a life free from pain; it’s resting in the reality that our creator is with us. He rejoices with us. He celebrates with us. His heart breaks when ours does. When we suffer, He suffers. He is always close by. He is over all, through all, and in all.
In this part of the world, we’ve lost much of our sense of withness and genuine community and, as Mother Teresa once remarked, loneliness is now an epidemic. Perhaps it’s the new pandemic.
We struggle to experience the safety and peacefulness of “God with us” because our hearts haven’t enjoyed long-term, intimate, secure relationships with many people. There is a high cost to neighborhood fences, smartphones, transient lifestyles, working from home, and attempting to keep two, five, or ten different communities spinning at once in our lives. Even if we go to church, we spend, at best, a few hours a week with the people there, and most of that time is in a non-interactive weekend event. That’s not exactly a recipe for developing long-term, vulnerable, trusted relationships.
The “nuclear family” should be the initial soil where this sense of innate safety is cultivated. However, as many of you can attest, the family of origin isn’t always so relationally safe.
Withness and the Journey Inward
So if we desire to journey inward to explore these hidden ideas and desires, yet we’re reluctant to do so because we struggle to experience this safety that God promises, what are we to do? If we’re reluctant to uncover these forces that drive us because doing so feels too risky and painful, too judgmental and critical, should we stay where we are? Should we continue to live above the surface, as it were, and leave the depth and riches we’re promised for another day?
As I’ve contemplated this question, it seems that God is infinitely creative in His efforts to woo us into experiencing Him, to offer us this bedrock sense of security, this “withness” that transcends our trials, pains, and suffering.
For me, simply meditating on the phrase, “God not only loves you, He likes you,” bolsters my courage on the inward journey. Our Greenhouse (a small group of people who gather consistently to become more like Jesus) is practicing sitting still for five minutes a day and imagining God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit embracing them and delighting in them.
For others, it’s hearing God whisper in the wind. For my wife, it’s listening for Him in crashing waves on the beach. She also experiences Him as she tends to the extraordinary number of plants in our house. She senses His pleasure as she stewards His creation.
The more “traditional” means of experiencing God’s safety are wonderful: Bible reading, corporate worship, liturgy, singing, scripted prayer, etc. However, I found myself unconsciously limiting my experiences with God to them. He isn’t so limited.
Safety and Trust
You may have picked up on it, but this idea of living in the reality of God’s safety has a lot to do with trust. It isn’t trust based on intellectual agreement—it’s trust that’s embodied, felt, and immersive.
When you were a little boy or girl, chances are you weren’t running around wondering if your caregivers would be home at night, provide a meal, or care for your cut if you fell. At least, I hope you weren’t worried about that.
You went about your life freely, perhaps joyfully, without thinking about your innate security. You existed in a safe reality, even when you hurt yourself, someone else, or even your providers. You just…knew.
That’s the bedrock, deeply ingrained, assumed sense of safety and security God offers us, even after we grow up and become insecure, a bit calloused, and suspicious.
If we allow ourselves to experience Him and this innate sense of safety again, this journey inward may be a bit painful and challenging, but we will uncover a deep secret about the path as we go – that it’s good.
