Hidden Identities: Intimate

Have you ever caught yourself making lists in your mind? Maybe I do it so subconsciously because I’m a natural list-maker. For the two weeks in Italy, however, I forced myself not to think about all the things back home. In many ways, I laid down my list-making.

What I didn’t understand till now, however, is that my mental lists can influence how I feel. In their subtle, hidden ways, they can direct my perspective…and my emotions. 

My mental lists are organized, sorted by category. And somewhere in my deep psyche, I have a list that keeps track of all the things I’ve been praying to God about – a.k.a, unanswered prayers. Turns out, I have a real tendency to keep my attention on that particular list. And as I do, discouragement grows and closeness with God fades.

Here’s how God helped me see all this. It goes back to the day we got home from our two-week trip (which was amazing – thank you for all the prayers!).

As the plane descended toward Dallas, I opened my window shade, and the first thing I noticed was the DUST in the air. I inwardly groaned. I had not missed the dry, dirty Dallas air. The lungs that had loved the Italian humidity tightened in anticipation of what was to come. 

Then, as we pulled up to the house and I saw the forever-present For Sale sign in our yard, I groaned again. I had not missed living in the limbo of a move that cannot happen until the house sells. The heart that had thrived in the beauty and freedom on our Italian adventures clutched as it prepared itself for more waiting.

Over the course of that weekend of jet lag recovery, my grumpiness increased. Unhappy lungs and no showings, again. Discouragement became my uninvited house guest.

Then God woke me up Monday morning with His shiny presence – to get my attention. He wanted to remind me of the day He had called me to just watch Him work in this move. 

God proceeded to give me His own list – one that numbered off every single thing He’d done in the months since He’d practically shouted into my soul, “Just watch!” The list was long, including all the answers to tiny popcorn prayers I’d thrown His way and the HUGE moves of His mighty hand to find one son a home and to awaken another son to his unhealthy lifestyle.

I wept. Joyous tears. Repentant sobs. 

As the days clicked by, my awareness increased, realizing I’d been so focused on our house not selling, on the houses we didn’t get to buy, on all the things I’ve put on hold waiting to move, that I had too quickly dismissed ALL THOSE ANSWERED PRAYERS!

At my most emotionally grateful, I told my husband that I’d trade selling our house for what God is doing in our sons’ lives – any day, any time. 

Funny how once my mental attention finally got off the ‘negative’ list and onto all that God is already doing, my faith bolstered. My attitude lifted. And my sense of God’s nearness increased. 

I tell you my not-so-short story as one example of how easy it is for us to let sin separate us from our Father in heaven. I may not have broken any of the Big Ten as I grumbled and stewed, but I did let myself wallow in feelings of entitlement. I allowed myself to be disappointed in God to the point that I felt offended by God. I might have said something snarky like this in my head, “God, I thought You said just watch!” 

My pity-parties don’t happen often, but when they do, I over-indulge. 

All those thoughts that spiraled into out-of-control feelings, all those assumptions and self-focused irritations, they separated me from God – and that is the simplest definition of sin there is. Sin separates us from God. 

And when we’re separated from God, all intimacy breaks down. Trust fails. Faith flounders. And everything becomes about us. 

Let me tell you how GOOD our God is. He knows me – He knows us – so well that even in the middle of our angry shouts or pity-pouts, He doesn’t leave. The One who created us is more than aware that sometimes we have to hit those low points so we can rise up with Him. Our Father knows what’s best for us – even when we come kicking and screaming with all our aggravations and agendas, hurts and hopes, sourness and cynicism. He knows how to listen and to wait. He pursues us in order to build our faith.

The question is – will we listen when He speaks? Will we lay down our lists long enough to realize He has another one He wants us to look at? Will we give Him enough space to get His Word into our hearts and minds? Because that’s exactly what He wants to do.

God desires intimacy with us. 

• Think about all He has done since the Fall in Eden to restore His relationship with humanity – with us. 
• Think of all the people He has used in the past to bring His truth and His law and His Word into the world – to us. 
• Think of all the plans He’s laid out in each era of history so that His saving grace would actually reach the ends of the earth – and us. 
• Think of all the ways He has made a way when no one thought He could, across millennia – and for us. 
• Think of all the answered prayers.  

When we consider all the ways our true identities as children of God can get hidden, sin is right up there at the top. And sin has many faces and facets. It’s not always obvious or blatant, but it will always kill intimacy between us and our Father. And the farther we get from our Father, the hazier our view of Him gets, and the cloudier our view of ourselves gets. 

When that gap between us and God starts looking like the summer atmosphere of Dallas and our spiritual gasps for breath become more and more labored, it’s time to look at the root cause of such separation. It’s time to consider where the sin lies. 

Nope. I’m not preaching hell-and-damnation. I’m not shouting fire-and-brimstone. I’m humbly whispering, to myself as much as to you, what’s keeping us from trusting God? What’s holding us back from believing Him to do what He says He will do? What’s making us doubt our place in His family? What’s stoking our grumpiness or any other self-entitled state of mind?

For me, I’m realizing that I’ve been walking in the shadow of pride. I’ve actually just expected God to do what I wanted Him to do, when I wanted Him to do it, the way I wanted Him to do it. And when He didn’t, I got my feelings hurt. Like those stinkin’ Israelites in the wilderness, I grumbled… (I do realize I am those stinkin’ Israelites in the wilderness. LOL)

The way God woke me up that Monday morning was beyond kind. It was so subtle I could have chalked it up to my imagination or the remnants of a dream – but I knew it was Him. There was zero condemnation in what He showed me. Only love. Only grace. And I gobbled it up. I was so hungry for Him that I took hold of His list and devoured it. My inner awakening expanded my view to include God and others. I turned on praise music and started worshiping. I started reaching out to friends…

I marvel at the way our Lord in Heaven moves and speaks. I love the way He helps us move beyond the trap of sin and into the freedom of His love and grace. I stand in absolute awe of our Almighty God who yearns to be close to us – so much so that He takes time out of His busy morning to wake me with a list that reminds me that He is, indeed, worth watching! As I take hold of the forgiveness I’ve been given and refocus my eyes on the One who calls me His own, I gladly step into His presence and embrace the truth of who I am.

And I pray you do too.

The Post I Was Going to Write

I was always planning to write about intimacy this week, but the above flowed from my heart so fast that I knew it was of God. Then I went back into my research notes to find little nuggets that not only support my experience and exhortations but offer words and the Word to undergird all that we’re learning!

It’s as if Paige Allen witnessed my recent encounters with the Lord: “To find Jesus in places of desperation creates not only an intimacy of love but also a willingness to trust even when it makes no sense.”¹ She goes on to share that because we’re God’s daughters, we have the right to come into His presence. We’ve been invited into close proximity with Him in order to build intimacy!

There’s a crazy balance that needs to happen as we seek intimacy with our Maker. First, it’s to know that we don’t have to be fixed and healed and whole and clean to come into His presence.¹ Because of Jesus and His death and resurrection, we are invited into the Father’s presence – just as we are. And, here’s the counterbalance, we aren’t meant to stay as we are. A big part of why we seek God, His presence, His grace is so that He can heal all our broken places and cover all our sin. “It’s in knowing Him that we are mended and made whole again.”¹ 

My experience has been that the closer God and I get, the more layers He peels back on my brokenness. Ever so gently, He helps me recognize and repent of each unclean place so that He can redeem it. But – hear this – if we don’t step into His presence, we’ll be less likely to know His voice when He speaks. We’ll be resistant and defensive to His gentle revelations. 

While “proximity builds intimacy,” intimacy builds trust.² And that’s where we want to be. It’s what we want to have. It’s why we have to stay attuned when the God we love tries to show us something that’s separating us from Him:

“Sin separates us from God and others, distorts and destroys our deepest identity as the image-bearers of God, and poses a fatal problem from which we cannot save ourselves. It results in an ever-diminishing quality of life and ultimately ends in eternal death.”³ 

We cannot ignore sin – even if it’s as subtle as a grudge list against God – because sin separates. It spirals. Left on its own, sin steals the core of our identity as a child of God.⁴ But that’s not how it has to end:

“When we choose to sin—though we forsake our true identity, our Savior does not forsake us. These are the very moments when his heart erupts on our behalf in renewed advocacy in heaven with a resounding defense that silences all accusations.”⁴ 

God doesn’t give up on us! He will always pursue us, love us, forgive us, redeem and restore us. Our Redeemer has gone to great lengths so that we can draw close to Him. So, let’s not neglect the fact that it’s “from this place of intimacy that we discover who we were created to be.”⁵ 

Friends, I shared my current layer of sin that God has begun peeling back – one where I’ve imposed a too-self-focused, entitled expectation of God. My discouragement was beginning to fester into something much more sinister – victimhood. Self-pity can spiral into believing we’re a victim of our circumstances, which triggers the complaining (ie: grumbling) and leads to placing blame.⁶ I’m incredibly humbled and grateful that God nipped my discouragement in the bud. Nothing in me wants to live the perpetual pity party – or be the grumbler. But I have an enemy who would love for me to because that kind of party is solo, isolating, lonely. The opposite of intimate.

Yet, while it’s not healthy to hyper focus on ourselves to the point that we selfishly make demands of God, there is a flip-side: holy expectancy. It’s the kind of anticipation that seeks God’s agenda – and it’s sourced by faith and hope, joy and eagerness. Holy expectancy is living with the eyes of our hearts wide open so that we can just watch what God will do next.

Friend, step into God’s presence – and be awed by the way intimacy with Him allows you to be shaped by His love, to be your True Self.

Father God, we bow before You in humility and with gratitude for all the ways You pursue us and seek to redeem us back to Yourself. As we process this truth, we realize with a new sense of awe just how much You love us. So, we pray that from your glorious, unlimited resources You will empower us with inner strength through your Spirit. We pray that Christ would make his home in our hearts as we trust Him so that our roots will grow down into your love and keep us strong. We ask to have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep your love is. We deeply desire to experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully, so that we will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from You. All glory to You, our Redeemer, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to your power that is at work within us. Glory to You in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
(Inspired by Ephesians 3:16-21 NLT)

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Gretchen Saffles in her Bible study, Redefined: A Bible Study on Identity in Christ, P.76, Colossians 1:13-14
• 2 – Paige Allen, He Knows Your Name,^ p.110, 133
• 3 – JD Walt, Wake Up Call, 1/7/24
• 4 – Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly,^ P.92 
• 5 – Aimee Walker, Enough study, p.15
• 6 – Jennie Allen, Get Out of Your Head,^ p.173
• Beth Moore’s testimony and way of loving and worshiping the Lord have shaped me greatly. I have always admired how she has refused to be put on a pedestal – she sees herself too clearly. And, I believe, she has such clarity because of her nurtured relationship with the Lord. It’s intimate. She understands the damaging effects of sin on our closeness with God:  

”I could not break out of a relentless pattern of sin until I began to believe that what Jesus said He’d done for me was true of me. Daughter, be who you really are. Live out your true lineage. By the grace of God, my self-destructive pattern finally broke because my false beliefs finally broke. …How we think Jesus sees us has a direct impact upon whether or not we believe He hears us. Get through your head who you are in Him. …You’ve never gone too far to exceed the perimeters of divine reach. Wherever you are, ‘even there [His] right hand will hold on to [you]’ (Psalm 139:10).”  

Beth Moore in Align: 31 Days of Prayer, p.30

• Perhaps one Truth underlying every song on our Hidden Identities playlist is that God’s love for us moves Him to pursue us in order to redeem us to Himself. Over the last many years, God has been going out of His way to demonstrate to me that the Bible is His story. And while JD Walt has been unpacking that truth for a while now, Dr. Sandra Richter (in Epic of Eden) was the first to show me just how true that is. Since sin entered the world, God has gone to great lengths to redeem us — to restore broken, separated, severed intimacy with Him. [If there’s one resource out there in the world beyond the Bible that I’d have you read…it’s Epic of Eden.^ Let me know if you’d like to do that together some day!] For now, tune your hearts and ears to Hillsong’s “Who You Say I Am” for AAALLLLL the truths about how we are made free from sin — chosen and free. We’re each a child of God, and in our Father’s house there’s a place for us. Our Redeemer is for us, not against us. We are who He says we are!!!
• The next issue of The Abiding Life newsletter comes this week! I am calling it the Italy edition — beware. 😉 Subscribe here if you’d like to receive future issues.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• As we lean into the process of learning more about ourselves — our true identities in Christ — we are going to step into the spiritual practice of REST. It has been my assumption that sin leads to much UNrest, so I went in search of some support of that idea — and found it in Scripture and in this article.
  
  “It was disobedience in the Garden that started the problem, but obedience now will bring the rest that God so desires for us.”
  
  The writer of Hebrews spends nearly two chapters building the case that rest and sin/disobedience go hand-in-hand, using the wandering, unbelieving Israelites of Exodus as the prime example:
  
  “And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard his voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that they would never enter his rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed him? So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.” (Hebrews 3:16-19 NLT, emphasis mine)
  
  Chapter four, verses ten and eleven carry out this connection, commending us to choose differently than the Israelites — that we should choose obedience and enter God’s rest!
  
  Where in your life, friend, do you need to move from disobedience? What separates you from God? What is keeping intimacy between you and your Redeemer from happening? Sit with Him and ask. Give Him space over an hour, a day, a week, a month, to show you what needs to be confessed and repented. Then watch intimacy with God explode! And your rest in Him stretch beyond expectation!
   

• And while it’s not a spiritual practice or rhythm, I invite you to share this site. This is such an important topic that I want as many people as possible to join us here. Together we’ll find support and encouragement and the simple truth that we are not alone in our struggles.

Featured Photo by David Bumgardner on Unsplash. Fun fact: “Since about the late 7th century, Christian worship has commonly included a prayer called the Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”). The use of this prayer in liturgy is based on the moment when John the Baptist, upon seeing Jesus, proclaimed “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn. 1:29).” (quoted from this post)
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