Three Is Enough

Yesterday, at our almost-weekly lunch hour meeting, my TiE Group discussed chapter two of Willard’s Hearing God. Each time we meet, as we practice the “grow” aspect of TiE, we ask ourselves “what ideas in the chapter helped us to better imagine and practice being a follower of Jesus for the sake of others?”

Hear are a couple highlights we noticed:

• It is common, at least in jest, to suggest that speaking with God “is a little nuts”. What’s worse is saying you “hear” from God.  But Willard says “what else can a personal relationship” mean if it doesn’t include individualized communication? We go down an unhelpful path if we assume that “personal” merely means that “some of Jesus’ merit has been assigned to my personal sin/debt account”. While that statement contains truth, it is not the main point. Forgiveness of sin is a means, not an end. We don’t come to forgiveness of sins; we come through forgiveness of sins to a relationship with God. The relationship—for the sake of others—is the destination; forgiveness is something like the gas money—which we could never pay on our own—to get there.
• Willard says “…nothing is more central to the practical life of the Christian than confidence in God’s individual dealings with each person.” This is important because in TiE practices we aim to be alert to and obedient to the movements of the Spirit in our actual “practical” lives. We need confidence that we are seeing and hearing God within that matter-of-fact life.

In our group we talked a lot about the importance of confidence; confidence on two levels. On the first level we easily recognized that none of us like to do stuff that we are not good at—such activities make us feel really uncomfortable. For instance I hate math. I’d say I’m a total loser when it comes to math. Thus I have no confidence in the face of complicated numbers.

But there is also confidence on a second, deeper level. This deeper level of confidence empowers the first level. This is the confidence that God loves us and is patient with our growth processes. This confidence is similar to that which a young child might feel out in the front of their house, kicking a soccer ball around, trying to make their feet obey the vision in their brain with the hope that the ball where go where they see it in their mind. They do this with real joy—it is a fun learning experience—so fun that it can seem impossible to get hem to stop, come in the house, wash their hands and have dinner.

Why the fun? Why the joy? Why the confidence? Because inside the house sits a parent or some authority figure taking great delight in seeing their child at play, learning to steer the ball and growing in confidence. Add this overarching confidence to the internal confidence of the child (they wouldn’t be playing for hours if they did not have confidence in their potential ability) and you’ve got a powerful, life-shaping force at work.

This is just the vibe I hope to create through TiE Groups. I want followers of Jesus to practice praying, growing and serving a joy-filled, guilt-free, and grace-inspired way—like the kid learning to curve a cocker ball left and right. God is always happy that we are even trying to follow Jesus and serve others. He would never condemn or scold us for mishearing or misunderstanding him. As the book of James says:

If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought.

Don’t give it another self-consciousness thought: just enter into conversational prayer with God; read good spiritual books and talk about it; serve others. In so doing you will enter life as God designed it.

Peace…