'God works in mysterious ways' is a saying I have heard quite a lot over my short-ish journey as a Christian. At the moment however God seems to be working in breathtakingly obvious ways in a sort of smack-you-round-the-face obviousness that leaves little room for error. I find this comforting as stumbling down the wrong path is all too easy for me.
Sometimes in my walk with God its felt as though I am walking around a darkened room with my hands over my eyes trying in vain to work out what it is that I'm meant to do next. At the moment though God is being very generous and very clear on some stuff, one area of which I'm going to have a whirl at unpacking here briefly.
Getting in real relationship.
Over the last couple of months I have had the same conversation with six different guys on the same cluster of topics: Insecurities, loneliness, betrayal, boundaries and the feeling that they don't have what it takes to catch up with the calling God has put on their lives.
When God wants us to understand something He really drives it home. If I had only had the conversation with one other guy I think it could have just settled in my head as something that a mate of mine and I have in common, but, because the same conversation was replicated over six different occasions, it meant that I began to see the pattern and came to realise that something is changing in me and in my friends. That God wasn't happy for it to take up home in my head but that it was something destined for my heart straight from His. While the topics on the surface all seem pretty negative on the face of it, the fact that we are all coming to realise the same things and have the same issues weighing us down is overwhelmingly positive and so completely real.
For a man to admit to his insecurities is no simple thing. We like to project a calm confidence out to the world and lets be honest guys, most of us are very good at acting that out. Probably too good. Yes we all know deep down that we aren't as collected and as together as we like to show the world, but the better the projection, the better we keep our true nature hidden.
This outwardly fake confidence has started to break down between some of my mates and I and the fruit being born from this is exciting, fresh and new. This is not to say that we spend our time together in floods of tears and dwelling on our human failings. There is precious little better in that than being all fake and 'fine' to the world whilst being beaten up inside. What it means is that we are being real with each other. We laugh about what makes us happy, we joke about, do stupid things(in the name of banter) but we also come together and pray in such a brutal and honest way that stuff gets dealt with, vocalised and each one of us knows he is being looked after by the others.
Over time I'm going to try and unpack insecurities, loneliness, betrayal, boundaries and catching up with calling here but for now I'm going to bring this in to land with what I have come to perceive as Jesus' model of real relationship.
To understand how to be in real relationship we need to look to Jesus, our model for how to do life with one another.
Jesus loves. Love is honest, brutal, nurturing, supporting, trusting and forgiving.
As my mates and I begin to reach into this real relationship and as we grow to trust one another more deeply, the closer we are becoming to the ways Jesus modeled so perfectly for us and the more of His Kingdom we are going to walk in.
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