Go {beyond}

Thought you might like an update on where that one word resolution has taken me this year.

Go! It’s literally a very racy verb. It captured perfectly what God had already been hinting at, so I climbed in, buckled up and revved the engine. I was so ready for God to launch me out of my comfort zone!

It’s nearly April and I haven’t yet ventured far from home—at least not physically.
No, I’m seeing that God’s Go! for me has been—Go deeper with Me.

I’ll be wading in placid waters—those familiar verses and Bible passages read time and time again—and He’ll stop me.
Wait now, don’t miss it.
Stay right here and look carefully,
beyond the surface. Deeper.
Deeper still.

“For God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son…”*

That one that can roll off your lips so easily, bypassing mind and spirit, barely skimming the surface of your heart on its way out.

“For God so loved the world…”
Stay with Me.  Hold right there.

Ponder that. Mull it over and over. Let go and dive with Me to where those familiar words come alive!

How have I loved you?
His words move like circles on the water,
expanding, rippling out toward unreached corners of my soul.

Linger here.
Look long and try to fathom the depths of My love.

See Him, My Son—Now run and watch Him. See real love—deep and wide and high and long.

Do you dare walk in that kind of love?

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Recently I sat elbow-to-elbow in a circle of women taking in John 3:16 together. Nearly all had memorized it at one time or another. We worked it through real slow. Posing challenging questions. Who is “the world”? Really.

How broken? How wounded? How messy.

“Let’s go to Philippians 2,” I found myself saying. That wasn’t in my notes, but that’s where we went.

We hit the passage where every phrase was steely sharp, like a tooth on a sawblade. Each cutting deep into my heart. And God’s planted something in those deep furrows that’s working its way in and around and through me.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves…Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ…he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” **

My attitude should be the same as that of Christ.

Is it?  How does His humility start messing with who I am, just what will that kind of love do to me. If I’ll let it in and let it transform my ambitions and motives. Let it rough up the carefully manicured image I wear out there. Even here.

With that kind of love, what I will do and where I will go.

How have I loved you? He asks.

It’s coloring a lot of long conversations I’ve been having with myself. With God.
And with a handful of good listeners. If you’re here—now—you must be one.

Wrestling with questions.
The good wrestling. The growing kind.
Good questions. The life-changing kind.

Not the least them is one that won’t let go:

“How then shall we live?”

Yes, you are in the we. I’m not going deeper without you.
It’d be criminal for me not to beckon you on.

There you go—you’ve been officially beckoned.

So come.

Pause.
Listen.
Peer.
Wrestle.
Learn.
Trust.
Love.
Go. Live.

No regrets.

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 “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.”
Psalm 90:12  NLT

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* John 3:16  ~ niv
** Excerpts from Philippians 2:3-8  ~ niv

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