This is a continuation of a journal of an evening I had at church. See part 1: Invitation to God to Draw Us to Serve.
How can we be deliberate and assertive about entering into and staying in a place with God where He is free to draw us into deeper love with Him — a love that has the consequence that we will naturally want to serve Him more?
This is a dangerous thing! (It is dangerous in a good way.) It will transform our lives.
Assertively Nurturing
In the MindFacets model of personality, there are 4 faces of personality, or put another way, 4 roles our personality can fill. Often, I and a lot of people have the Contributor face as the one that is active. This is the doer that gets things done and builds things and is valued in our culture as a commodity.
In the church service, I was struggling to see what we were doing or accomplishing, but eventually realized that we were flowing in another mode: the Pacifier. Synonyms for the Pacifier could include nurturer or guardian.
What we were engaged in that evening was committing to being present with God, and nurturing this commitment through worship.
In the spirit, I was seeing a sort of celebration and dance of this commitment — an expression that was proclaiming the commitment to be present with God, because we love Him.
Receptive and Expressive, Text and Context
The Pacifier can be defined by how it is expressive and receptive in text and context:
The Pacifier is expressive in context. It boldly proclaims “this is how things are to be.” The Pacifier is receptive in text. It says “given that’s how things are to be, what specific things will arise from this situation?”
For the servant in devotion to God, this is proclaiming “you will have my presence God, I choose to abide in You,” to establish the context. And the text is drawn out of a God who waits for us: “now that I relate to You and receive you, God, I am starting to see and take on Your desires, and the needs of Your body.”
Courageous Abandoned Love, Wooing God to Woo Us
God is dynamic, and infinite. Committing to God’s presence is committing to constantly being present with a dynamic Person that we will always be learning from. As we learn more about God, we will love more. This love will change us.
Committing to God’s presence, in earnest, is committing to reckless abandonment of how we are today, who we are today, because our lives will be transformed, over and over, as long as we stay committed.
Systematizing True Servanthood, True Love, and Wild Adventure
As an engineer, I love to be able to pin stuff down so that it always works.
These are specific and concrete things (for spiritual things anyway) that we can do:
- We can commit to being present with a God who has already shown us love (and that He is love.)
- He waits for us to choose love, by choosing to be with Him.
- We can commit to a God who shows Himself good over and over until He to waits for us to trust Him.
- We can abandon ourselves, knowing that as we are changed by His dynamic love as we abide in an infinite God, and “set our hearts on pilgrimage,” we will be continually transformed in our desires. If He has the right to transform our desire, He has us.
- We can celebrate our commitment to God, as an act of praise: by committing, we declare He is trustworthy and we can and do trust Him with our entire souls. If we can celebrate our abandonment, we can certainly persist in it in our daily lives, and stay in this adventure with God.
