I sat shaking. Paralyzed. Terrified.
“Just talk to Jesus. Tell him what you’re feeling.” My friend urged me.
I gulped and whispered, “I can’t. I’m too scared.”
My heart was broken. I felt devastated. Hopeless.
“He’s the person I want to talk to the most…but He’s also the person I’m most scared to talk to.”
My friend squeezed my hand and whispered, “He’s not safe. But He’s good. He will not harm you. His power is strong and He is just, but he’s a good God.”
I had been on a long road of learning to bring my deepest pain to my Savior. And pain has a way of crossing my wires sometimes. In the process of unlearning all the empty “right answers” and embracing the honest questions I had, I lost sight of the gentle, loving God I wanted to talk to so badly. When I prayed, all I felt was the vengeful, powerful, wrathful God that could strike people dead on command. How could I be vulnerable with that God?
It all came to a climax one semester in college when I found myself unable to pray. I opened my mouth but didn’t know what to say. I would start to shake in fear and anxiety. I was terrified to be honest with the God who created me. I had spent my life being his “teacher’s pet”, telling him only what I thought he wanted to hear. So in the messy moments when I didn’t have any right answers – the confusing moments where all I could offer were pain and confusion, I didn’t know how to pray anymore.
It was in these moments when I experienced the heart of God most through His people. My close friends offered to sit with me and pray on my behalf. They would speak phrases for me to repeat or sit with me while we prayed together.
Needless to say, this was never a position I thought I would end up in. I had known Jesus personally for over a decade. We talked all the time. I had full conversations with him. I knew who He was. But as He drew me deeper and deeper into processing pain and trauma so that I could experience healing and wholeness, there were a few major speedbumps I had to get over. This was one of them. For some reason, I had lost sight of the gentle God I once knew.
A couple years later, I was sitting on a train headed to a retreat. God and I hadn’t talked in a while. I was in a place in my life where I felt like I was failing at anything I tried. I especially felt like I was failing God. So I backed off. When I pictured him, I just saw an angry boss ready to crack the whip if I stepped out of line. And yet, here I was traveling to this retreat to somehow draw closer to Him.
The train rumbled as it went over the tracks and I popped my headphones in with some soft worship music playing.
“Hi God. I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I can’t take any more shame right now. I know I’m failing you in a bunch of ways, but can we just put that aside this weekend? I want nothing more than to draw near to you, but I haven’t because I can’t handle another reminder of my insufficiency. Please be gentle with me. Please just be gentle with me. That’s all I know how to ask. Be gentle with me.”
So I sat around a table with several other women studying our Bibles. We prayed together and talked about faith and Jesus and discipleship. And when we broke off to reflect on who God is alone, I nestled myself in a small back room with my Bible and a pen.
“Who do I think you are God? What do I picture when I think of you?”
I closed my eyes and the picture slowly became more clear in my mind. I pictured a huge lion, with sharp eyes and a grimacing mouth. He was almost growling as he circled around me, ready to pounce and destroy anything in His path.
“Kayla”
“Yes, Lord?”
“That’s not me.”
My brows furrowed as I imagined the huge lion and then a verse popped into my mind.
Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
My eyes shot open. Oh my gosh.
I had been deceived.
“That was never me, my daughter.”
Ever since that moment, my view of God has been transformed – not because I no longer struggle to see His gentility, but because I know how deeply the enemy wants to feed me lies about the nature of my King.
The Lord is the embodiment of agape love, the epitome of compassion, and the truest form of peace. He desires that we would allow him to know us deeply. He does know us deeply. But he wants to be in deeper relationship with us. He wants to draw near to us as we draw near to Him. He is not standing apathetic with a clipboard checking off what we did or didn’t do, and ready to hound us when we mess up. He is not looking at our sin and pushing us away with disgust. Jesus says “come to me.” This is the God who feasts with sinners and tax collectors. This is the God that hugs lepers. This is the God who rejoices when darkness turns to light, pain turns to healing, and sorrow turns to joy. Yes, our God is powerful and just and mighty. But He is oh-so-gentle.
I am on a constant journey to discover my gentle God and walk deeper into communion with Him. It requires that I am sober-minded and watchful as 1 Peter 5 tells me to be.
This passage from 1 Peter 5:6-11 has become a passage I keep going back to. It reminds me that my God is one that cares about my every moment and wants me to share it with him.
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
It is promised that we will face suffering. It’s promised that the enemy will try to destroy us. And while there are a lot of external trials he throws our way, I’m finding that some of the most dangerous are the internal lies he gets me to believe. If he can feed me a lie about who my God is, it’s pretty easy for me to put distance between me and my Savior all by myself. If I feel doubt or fear or anger towards God and I believe lies about who He is and who I am, it doesn’t take much for me to self-sabotage my relationship with Jesus and go into self-destructive behaviors for my own life and sense of self. Sometimes the internal lies we believe are the hardest to recognize and the easiest to pull us away from God and others. The depression, the anxieties, the insecurities, the self-doubt, the self-pity. The enemy doesn’t always need to destroy our lives. Sometimes he just needs to make us believe a few lies, and we’ll do all the destruction ourselves. We’ll pull ourselves out of community. We’ll try to protect ourselves against the people that love us. We’ll tell ourselves things that only make us hate ourselves. We will let ourselves go to dark places. All he has to do is tell us a couple of lies.
So what lies are you believing? About who God is? About who you are? About what people think of you? About what you are capable of?
I’d encourage you to take a few moments today to think about this and write them down. How have those lies hit at your deepest fears, your deepest insecurities, or destroyed your deepest relationships? NOW talk to Jesus and ask Him to tell you the truth about those things. Scour His word for what is real and true. Because if you can speak the truth into the deception our enemy uses over and over, that’s how we resist him and draw near to the One our soul longs for the most.
I am working on a project that will help us sift through these lies and rebuild patterns of truth in our lives. Stay tuned for more info and resources. For now, subscribe to my email list and you’ll receive a FREE journaling prompt worksheet that will help you unravel the lies you’ve been believing about God and reinstate the intimacy you’ve been missing.
