Within recent weeks I’ve been gaining greater clarity regarding who I am, or might be. Here’s my story…
I grew up in a relatively stable family with strong moral values. Add to that the conservative/fundamentalist evangelical church of my youth and I was tooled with clear definitions of right and wrong… which I suppose can be a very helpful thing in some moments.
However, I am coming to see how I had bought into the distortion that said I was a “good follower of Christ when I separated myself from culture by avoiding a certain list of activities while engaging in another list.” The subtlety I bought into was that those activities defined me as a Christian… at the same time it was made abundantly clear that I could not “do” anything to earn my way into God’s good books,instead, I needed to acknowledge my need to have Christ’s spilled blood pay for my sin. I was taught to imagine myself a strong Christian if I didn’t listen to “secular” music, drink alcohol, smoke, or go to parties or dances thrown by people who held different worldviews than myself.
During my Chicago years the shades began to lift from my eyes and as encountered Divine love. I began to experience God’s grace as a reality I could live in, that I was safest and most secure when let go of the certainties of right or wrong to open my heart toward the love of Abba. Until this season I’d usually limited grace to Divine forgiveness received when I “accepted Jesus as my Savior.” As a result of my fresh encounter with my Loving Father, I began seeing other people through a different lens… as people of great worth, as loved, and as profoundly spiritual. I’m finding increased liberty to engage culture, participate in the arts, party, go to the bar with my co-workers and so on… to pursue life!
About six months ago I began to experience a crisis of sorts: How do I know that I am a follower of Christ? Since I was no longer defining my relationship based on the activities which I did or did not engage in, I wasn’t sure how to describe my relationship with God. So I reviewed the Bible passages which spoke specifically about following Christ, and assurance of who I am in Christ. But the truth of the proposition was not translating in a relief from the tension I was feeling. Through sharing my struggle and an extended break, God said to me, “
Dwight you are my child and nothing will change that. You are mine and I am yours.” In the words of Paul spoken through a friend, God’s Spirit was testifying with my spirit that I was His deeply loved Child.
This experience has left me with a profound desire to know and experience more of the Divine. It is birthing a practice of regularly and intentionally carving space in my live for listening, slow listening, and wonder. Which i guess is a form of “separating myself from culture,” but not as I did early on in my faith experience. I don’t have the best language, but I feels like purposeful withdrawal from cultural pace for extended times of solitude to meet God. It seems to be inviting me want to attend to the process of encountering God for myself and those around me.
I mentioned at the beginning of this article that I’m experiencing a renewed sense of what my role is as the pastor of Quest. I am starting to see that I need to be more of a Christian Mystic than the CEO of Quest. I am more a story teller, experience curator, and question asker than a general barking orders.
Pastor as mystic.
Exploring, discovering, and reveling in the mystery(ies) of God. Coming to know the Divine and God’s grand narrative so deeply that I come to rest in my place in the redemptive story, and might more faithfully guide others to finding their place of rest, healing, and purpose.
This is proving to be a life giving, eye opening body affirming experience.
Peace, dwight
