Longing for God
May God be with you.
May he renew all within you.
May his kingdom come thru you.
May God form you thru
the Spirit you house,
the disciplines you adopt,
and the afflictions you face,
into one filled with,
and filling the world with,
faith,
hope and
love.
#trianglesoftransformation
German author Rainer Rilke wrote several poems that were collected in The Book of Hours. They speak of a deep hunger for God. In one poem Rilke writes from God’s perspective. He imagines God speaking these words: [quote]
I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting:
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
God, Rilke proposes, is a fundamental longing we have–even if we aren’t aware of the longing.
- Underneath our greatest dream is a dream for God.
- The wanting that wakes us from bed is ultimately a desire for God.
- And the things we find most beautiful in life are truly glimpses of God.
We have a universal longing for God.
But what does it mean to cultivate a relationship with God, especially from a Christian perspective? What does it mean to pursue a relationship with this God for whom we long?
Christians often provide different and contradictory answers to that question. I want to use three triangles to answer this question. These three triangles can help us keep some of the most important elements of the Christian spiritual life in balance. And, at the end of this year, and near the beginning of a New Year, these three triangle provide a way of evaluating our life with God.
Three Aspects of Spirituality
The first triangle is based on content from a small book by Glen Scorgie. He talks about three “dimensions” of our spiritual life. I’ll use the word “aspects.” He talks specifically about our life with Christ. I’ll broaden it to our life with God.
We get a glimpse of these three aspects in this text:
4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Cor. 1:4-9 ESV)
Of many things in this text, Paul includes three aspects:
- He mentions the relationship we enjoy with Jesus (“fellowship” with the Son (v. 9)).
- Paul mentions the transformation Jesus will accomplish within us (“guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 8)).
- And, Paul mentions us having spiritual gifts like speech and knowledge–which we are to use in Jesus’ work on the earth (v. 5-7).
We can broaden these three ideas into three aspects of what it means to have a relationship with God.
First, in Christian spirituality, there is God with us. 
This is the relational aspect to our spiritual life. God desires fellowship with us. Part of pursuing Christian spirituality is just learning to be with God, learning to enjoy a relationship with God, not having to do anything.
This is one of the most difficult elements of the spiritual life for most of us in America. Because most of us believe spirituality has to be about doing something for God not simply being with God. But one of the most fundamental elements of a Christian spirituality is simply learning to love God, according to Jesus. Learning to spend relaxed and unhurried time with God.
This is what we see Jesus doing so often, as in Luke 5:15-16. Jesus stops doing something for God, walks away from the crowds who have come to see him, and he withdraws to solitary places simply so that he can spend time with God.
This is why the end of the book Revelation pictures a great wedding taking place between Jesus and the church. Christian spirituality is ultimately a romance. It’s not a religion. It’s about spending time with a God who is head over heels in love with us.
This is where all those practices come in–Sabbath, silence, solitude, and slowing. They strip away all the other things of life so we can be more present to God. “God,” Martin Laird writes, “does not know how to be absent.” He is always present. Always with us. And part of Christian spirituality is just learning to be present to God.
How is the relational aspect of your spirituality? Are you savoring time with God? Are you slowing down and enjoying time with God?
Second, there is God in us.
This is the transformational aspect of our spiritual life. God wants to be with us. So much so that he comes to live within us, makes his home in us, by means of his Holy Spirit. (Jn. 14:23). And from this internal location he transforms us from the inside out so that we will be guiltiness on the day Jesus returns.
This is also an often-neglected area of spirituality, especially among many in the Western world. We tend to focus on a spirituality of doing over being, of externals over internals. Dallas Willard thus calls this the “great omission” in American Christianity.
But in places like the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), Jesus teaches the power of a transformed community. There Jesus reveals that when a community of disciples is transformed into people who can live out a counter-cultural ethic of loving their enemies and not acting in anger, they become like salt and light (Matt. 5:13-16). The world is changed by disciples whose lives are transformed.
Sociologist Rodney Stark describes how Christianity became a dominant force in the Roman Empire. He shows that there were two great epidemics during those first few centuries. If those who were affected were cared for, there was a good chance they would survive. But often when a member of the family contracted the disease, the other family members left that person uncared for and left their homes for places not affected by the disease. The Christians, however, did not do this. The Christians cared for their own family members and also cared for those who were left behind by their family members. Because Christians were so compassionate, many outsiders were drawn to them and became Christians as a result. It was the transformed lives that drew others to the faith.
What is God doing in you? What priority do you give this in your practice of spirituality? Are you growing in Christian virtues. Are you growing in Christlikeness? Are you experiencing transformation?
Third, there is God through us.
This is the vocational aspect to our spirituality. God, as we are taught to pray by Jesus, is bringing a kingdom upon this earth (Matt. 6:10). And he desires to do this through us. Paul writes about his own participation this kingdom building in this way:
28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Col. 1:28-29 ESV)
As God dwells within us, his power is able to work through us so that we can participate in the work he has for us in the world. In fact, one of the roles of his Spirit is to give us gifts and talents that empower us to play a role in the body of Christ which helps bring his kingdom on this earth (1 Cor. 12).
But this happens also in our earthly vocations as well. In our work as parents, teachers, accountants, photographers, coaches, journalists, and truck drivers God works through us to further his purposes in the world.
Spirituality is not merely about being with God–spending time with God. And it’s not merely about ethics and morals–experiencing the transformation of God. It’s about joining God out there, in vocation, bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
How is this part of your spirituality going? Are you joining God every day in the work he has for you?
CIRCLE ONE OF THESE THREE ASPECTS THAT YOU FEEL YOU NEED TO WORK ON.
Three Attributes of Spirituality
But what type of person is God desiring to be with, live in, and work through? On the one hand, he takes us all where we are as we are. On the other hand, there is a certain type of person who is going to thrive with God, as God work in them, and as they work with God. That person, according to Paul, is one who has three attributes: faith, hope and love.
Paul writes about these three attributes here:
8 …As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away…13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:1-13 ESV)
Paul is writing to Christians who prize certain spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and spiritual knowledge. These gifts, Paul reveals, are temporary. What Christians should strive for instead are attributes like faith, hope and love. While there are other lists of virtues in Scripture, these three are three of the most critical. And they provide a helpful summary for us to use in evaluating our spiritual life.
Faith is this: our confidence in the character of God.
Faith is rooted in our understanding of who God is. Faith is built on the images we have of God. But often our images of God are inadequate. For example, Shauna Neiquist asks “How many images of God have I constructed out of my own wounds?” The reality is that long after we become Christians many of us function with images of God, and thus a faith in God, that is driven by the hurts we’ve sustained, the disappointments we’ve encountered, and the battles we’ve lost than by healthy and true images of God. A critical part of faith is learning to dismantle our false images of God and adopting truer and healthier images of God.
- B. Philips in his classic work Your God is Too Small writes about the many false images that we tend to function from:
| False Images of God |
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Our faith flounders when we have images of God like these.
How is your faith? Is your trust oriented in an image of God that is true and compelling or small and anemic?
Hope is simply this: our conviction in the course of God.
Hope is the belief that life isn’t falling apart or spinning out of control. It’s the conviction that God is guiding the course of our lives and our world along a divine trajectory.
- T. Wright argues that Christian hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus. Our hope is not just that God is going to raise us from the dead and send us to heaven. Rather, our hope is that also God is going to do for the whole cosmos what he did for Jesus in the resurrection. The resurrection was God restoring and renewing Jesus. In the same way, God’s cosmic plan is one of restoration and renewal. He has set our lives and our cosmos on a course of restoration and renewal, so that all things will eventually be as they were intended to be. This is our hope.
Timothy Keller writes about those who endured the suffering of at the hands of Nazis. Elie Wiesel would write how those moments “murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” Yet J. Christiaan Becker, former professor at Princeton, who also suffered at the hands of Nazis, went on to write about how the Christian hope in the resurrection and in God’s renewal of the world is what allowed him to endure.
Judah Smith writes that hope is the difference between a picture and a video. Hope doesn’t look at people or situations and take a picture, believing this is how it or they will always be. Hope takes a video, believing God’s work and story are unfinished, that the narrative is ongoing and moving toward a more satisfying end.
Peter believed hope would be the one quality that could so set Christians apart in the world that it would open doors for spiritual conversations:
15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Pet. 3:15 ESV)
How is your hope quotient? Would people describe you as a person full of hope? How do you handle hardship? Do you handle it with hope?
Love is this: our commitment to God and the creation of God.
Discipleship, James K. A. Smith tells us, is not just about what we think. It’s mostly about what we love. Following Jesus is about letting him form not merely our intellect, but our loves.
Later, in Galatians, Paul fleshes out what love looks like. Paul tells about the fruit, singular, of the Spirit. When the Spirit is operating in the life of a Christian, it produces fruit, singular. That fruit, Paul writes is this: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Many believe that the fruit is love, and the other words are meant to describe the different facets of love. This is what love looks like. It’s what we are to look like. That’s why Paul goes on to say in the same letter that the only thing that ultimately counts in the Christian life is faith working through love (Gal. 5:6).
How is your love quotient? Are you a person characterized by the fruit of the Spirit? Are you a person of faith, hope and love?
CIRCLE ONE OF THESE THREE ATTRIBUTES THAT YOU FEEL YOU NEED TO WORK ON.
Three Agents of Spirituality
Finally, we consider the gap between these triangles. On the one side there is God–this one who desires to be with us, transform us from within, and work through us. On the other side there is us–participating with God to become people characterized by faith, hope and love.
But as we dig deeper, how does this God work within us so that we can draw nearer to him, experience more transformation from him, and participate in more work through him? How does this God work within us so that we experience more faith, hope and love?
Dallas Willard, using Romans 5, describes something he calls “the golden triangle. Ideally, Willard says, God works within us by three agents, like the three sides of a triangle. 
First, God works within us by means of his Holy Spirit.
Rankin Wilbourne asks us to consider two superheroes: Batman and Spider-Man. Batman is a rich and strong man with lots of great gadgets. His superpowers stem from his external possessions. Spider-Man has a few accessories as well, but he is a superhero because of the spider powers he obtained when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. His nature has been changed. Now he has a new power accessible to him, within him.
The Spirit makes you more like Spider-Man than Batman. Something alien to you, from outside of you, has entered into you and changed your nature. You now have power that you did not have before.
This makes the disciplines of listening to the Spirit paramount in the spiritual life. Adam McHugh writes that “listening is the central act of the people of God” and that “listening is the first act of discipleship”.
How is your spiritual life in terms of the Holy Spirit? Are you cultivating the habit of listening to the lead of the Spirit?
Second, God works in us by means of spiritual disciplines which we choose.
John Ortberg uses a raft, a rowboat, and a sailboat to illustrate.
Some Christians assume that spirituality is like boating with a raft. God is going to do all the work. They just have to jump on the raft and let the waves and the currents do all the work. They can let God do all the work. In the end, however, they wind up going nowhere.
Other Christians assume that spirituality is like boating on a rowboat. They have to do all the work. They have to get in the rowboat and pull the oars again and again. In the end, they work themselves to death.
The truth is that spirituality is like a sailboat. God is the wind. He provides all the power. But we still have to trim the sails in order to catch the wind. Trimming the sails is what spiritual disciplines do. It’s how we catch God’s wind.
How are your spiritual disciplines? Have you intentionally, prayerfully chosen some spiritual practices to focus on in this season of life? It’s one of the key ways in which God works. Check out Adele Calhoun, in her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. She explores 75 spiritual disciplines.
Finally, God works in us through suffering.
Christianity is a spirituality founded in the reality that God does redemptive work in the midst of suffering. The cross is our reminder of this. Our religion is a religion of the cross. This means that our spirituality is one in which God is constantly taking hardship using it in formative ways.
Timothy Keller provides a summary of the way God uses suffering according to the Bible:
| How God Uses Suffering |
| 1 – Suffering transforms our attitude toward ourselves.
It humbles us and removes unrealistic self-regard and pride. It helps us see how dependent upon God we’ve always been. It reveals weaknesses within us (because it brings out the worst in us). |
| 2 – Suffering changes our relationship to the good things in our lives.
We may see how some things have become too important and how some have become not important enough. |
| 3 – Suffering can strengthen our relationship to God as nothing else can.
While pain can turn us from God, it can also make our relationship with God more genuine. Suffering drives us to pray as we’ve never before prayed. |
| 4 – Suffering is almost a prerequisite if we are going to be of much use to others.
Adversity makes us far more compassionate than we would have otherwise been. |
Paralytic Joni Eareckson Tada reflects on how God uses suffering:
“I’ll never forget years ago when I had the chance to visit Notre Dame Cathedral while I was in Paris. There it was, almost one thousand years old, standing there so huge and…black. I had never seen such a dirty cathedral! After hundreds of years of soot, dust, and smoke, Notre Dame was covered in layers of black grime…But then the grand old cathedral went though a year-long restoration. Scaffolding was erected, and the entire exterior was sandblasted. I was stunned when I saw a recent photograph of the cathedral. It was beautiful… The ancient stones glowed bright and golden. You could see details on carvings that hadn’t been visible in decades. It was like a different cathedral…I can’t help but consider that way God uses suffering to sandblast you and me. There’s nothing like real hardships to strip off the veneer in which you and I so carefully cloak ourselves. Heartache and physical pain reach below the superficial, surface places of our lives, stripping away years of accumulated indifference and neglect. When pain and problems press up against a holy God, suffering can’t help but strip away years of dirt. Affliction has a way of jackhammering our character, shaking us up and loosening our grip on everything we hold tightly. But the beauty of being stripped down to the basics, sandblasted until we reach a place where we fell empty and helpless, is that God can fill us up with himself.”
How are you responding to some of the difficulties in your life? Are you open to what God may be doing within them to transform you?
CIRCLE ONE OF THESE THREE AGENTS THAT YOU FEEL YOU NEED TO WORK ON.
