Untangling the “magic words” that can (mis)inform how you and I connect with God and experience purpose can lead us to some surprising places.

“Please” doesn’t seem, at first glance, like it could be an entangling thing.

But when it’s tied to an image of a God who “holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked [sic]” ala Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” please can reinforce the idea we are not worthy or welcome in God’s presence; our trifling requests at best a nuisance and worst another cause for wrath.

But this is not the picture we see in Scripture — there, we find a God who welcomes us. Who invites us. Who pursues us. Who makes sure we know we are seen and we have purpose. We are made for dependence on him, and our dependency doesn’t surprise him:

When this reality hasn’t made its way to our heart, we find ourselves taking a “please (pretty please… with a cherry on top)” kind of posture and approach; maybe not uttered out loud, but still broadcasting we are convinced God is not inclined to act on our behalf, that we dare not approach or complain or ask or articulate without some magic word that lets God know we are unworthy to bring whatever it is we have before him. 

It reveals we have bought into a lie about how God sees us and what he wants from us.

What if you could boldly enter into God’s presence?

Not impertinently, but with a child’s casual and joyful connection in a secure relationship with their parent? To be first convinced of God’s love for you and his desire to see you grow up in strength, wisdom, and flourishing?

“One of my consistent prayers in these days has been a simple statement/request that I’ve sought to root in a deep awareness of God’s goodness and fondness for us: “God, I don’t know what I need. But you do. Give me what I need and don’t know to ask for.”

Please can be a reminder that God is God and I am not; that he can move and work in ways I don’t deserve and don’t comprehend. This kind of “please,” rooted in security and love, is a thing of beauty.

What would bold expectancy look like for you as you ask God to move on your behalf?

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• Detroit, Michigan
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• Baltimore, Maryland
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• San Francisco, California
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• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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• Mojave, California
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• Lake Wales, Florida
• Atlanta, Georgia

There have been 124 days in 2023, and 135 mass shootings in the United States.

Lord, hear our prayer.

“What’s the magic word?”

You probably can’t remember the first time you were asked that question—well-meaning but patronizing at the same time. It was probably asked by a parent, grandparent, or caregiver—a reinforcement and reminder that being well-mannered will get you things and being ill-mannered won’t.

(It doesn’t take too long to discover that some people are ill-mannered and still get all the things…. But that’s an aside for another conversation sometime).

“What’s the magic word?” 

Translation: “You forgot to say please or thank you.” Sometimes: “I am enjoying some small measure of power over you—I have what you want—and I’d like to be a touch passive-aggressive right now.”

What we learn is that there’s a specific order of things when we’re being polite. Please, followed by the request; thank you, whether that request is fulfilled or not.

These cultural norms aren’t bad expectations to have—they us a good shorthand when interacting with others and signal social awareness.

But social conventions can—some inadvertently and others purposefully—misshape the way we view and communicate with God and others, truly impacting our relationship with God, others, and our purpose. 

In our relationship with God and in the stuff of life—especially as we try to navigate our toughest moments like…

• The death of a loved one
• Job loss
• Losing custody of a child
• A suck-the-air-out-of-the-room diagnosis
• An indignity or assault or other victimization
• Wondering what has gone so horribly wrong
• Being desperate for something, anything to change
• A circumstance beyond our control; a problem beyond our solution…

—there are no magic words. There is no predetermined formula for how to make things new or set things right or find things better.

BUT I am convinced God wants us to experience what is new and find what is wrong set right.

Over the next few posts, we’ll look at some of the “magic words” we’ve been taught or become accustomed to and discover what it can look like to be free of them in our pursuit of wholeness and vibrant relationship with God.

A few weeks ago, I shared this “prayer of longing” during my final message with Heritage Church; I’m eager to see this longing fulfilled.

I long to see a church rise up…

…a force unstoppable, empowered by the Spirit of the living God to go into the dark and dangerous places. A people of selfless courage and holy resolve.

…who casts off its sin, lays aside its own agendas, releases its pride, and embraces fully the adventurous leadership of Jesus. A church that sets aside its preference and its legalism to be found in the way of selfless grace.

…who is so saturated by the presence of Christ and his Holy Spirit that wherever the church goes it is active in pursuing:

• Good news preached to the poor
• Broken hearts healed
• Captives freed
• Prisoners released from darkness
• and the very favor of God declared and experienced.

…who refuses to settle for what is easy to measure, neat-and-tidy to accomplish, and risk-free… and instead pursues transformation at the cost of comfort, Kingdom at the expense of self, and fresh imagination at the sacrifice of what is known.

…who is scripture-soaked, Jesus-anchored, and Spirit-enlivened. That doesn’t just welcome the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the marginalized but goes to them and sits with them.

…where the living Jesus is so present that whenever this church gathers, bodies are healed, relationships are restored, the dead are raised, and what was impossible becomes possible.

I long to see a church rise up.

 …he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

Luke 1:51b-53, NRSV

You probably have a plan–or at least an idea–of what Christmas should be this year. You may even find yourself longing for the magic of Christmas past, when everything seemed possible and a deep-rooted wonder infused the season. And, you may be working feverishly to try to create that space of magic and wonder…if not for yourself, for others–with all of the stress, anxiety, and debt it seems to require.

What if you could have a life- and perspective-shifting, real encounter with God this season?

Our family is big on tradition, especially this time of year: we’re a cut-our-own-Christmas tree, fire up the hot chocolate, trim-the-tree-while-wearing-goofy-hats, road-trip-singalong, but-this-is-how-we-always-do-it kind of people. And this year, a lot of our traditional observances just aren’t happening: we aren’t anchored to a church family and are taking advantage of being a “ministry family” without ministry obligations for the first Christmas in forever. We are processing what it means that our plans for the future need to adjust as we seek God for a new place of ministry and investment. Magic, wonder, and the coziness of the season seems far away. It seems like nothing is the same, but there is also an expectancy that this season is and will be good.

I think that place–where things aren’t what we thought they’d be, the future is unknown, and nothing seems certain–is actually the perfect place to experience the deep wonder of the Christmas season and have a powerful encounter with Jesus.

The Scripture quoted at the beginning of this post is the prophetic worship of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The verses above are sung as Mary processes what it means that she is carrying the fetal Christ child; remember, she is an unwed, teenage mother who was visited by angels with the news that the whole destiny of her life and course of the world were changing. With her, we are invited to go into Christmas/Advent with an eye toward (and posture of!) restoration and justice. Throughout her song, she declares what God has already done through the sending of the growing baby in her womb:

• Acted in and with favor
• Done great things
• Demonstrated strength
• Scattered the proud
• Deposed leaders
• Exalted the lowly
• Filled the hungry with good things
• Sent the rich away empty
• Come to aid
• Remembered his mercy

Somehow, the story of the coming of Jesus is the story of the powerful losing their power, the lowly and forgotten being empowered, the poor finding more than enough, and the rich discovering the depth of their poverty. The reality of Christmas and Advent must move us to ask: Am I on the side of the proud or the humble? The powerful or the weak? The important or the forgotten? The rich or the poor?

And we are reminded,

Jesus is found among the humble, the weak, the forgotten, and the poor.

I wonder, what does it look like to sit with him there in this season… and reject the draw to power for the sake of power, and wealth for the sake of wealth? What does it look like to experience the awe and wonder found in the presence of this Jesus, in the spaces where our plans fail and our wishlists go unmet, but our deepest desires come to new life?

We are tired.

Of all the places we look to find what is draining, wearying, and exhausting, waiting might surprise you.

The space of waiting can be both depleting and dangerous–a place where we are tempted to do things we would never otherwise consider. 

There’s a fascinating and powerful picture of this “waiting space” in the story of Israel in the midst of their exodus from Egypt. The people have seen God do the impossible in their rescue–parting the Red Sea, squashing the false gods of Egypt, and overcoming the region’s most powerful army; they have witnessed supernatural provision and experienced physical manifestation’s of God’s presence.

In chapter 24 of Exodus, God calls Moses up Mount Sinai again to meet with him. “Again” is an important word here–because others have seen something this happen before and have even been present at a distance when God has spoken in power to Moses. 

This time, Moses is invited further up and God speaks. God speaks for a long time–days and days and days.

The people of Israel grow restless. They must know God is speaking–every sign is there as it had been in moments past.

God is speaking,
he is just not speaking directly to them yet.

Moses’ job in this is to listen and relay; the peoples’ job is to wait, and the leaders’ job is to hold the line of faithfulness.

Listening, waiting, holding.
For most, it’s a waiting space.

It’s here that tragedy strikes: the second-in-command is afraid of losing the people as they wait and as their anxieties increase. So, after meeting with the God With the Unpronounceable Name who has moved day after day in power, this leader and the people craft an idol and start to worship it.

What should have been a place of confident rest instead became anxious, exhausting impatience where truth was exchanged for lie and God’s trustworthiness was called into question.

I wonder how many of us have a sense God is speaking and moving… but not yet speaking and moving in our specific circumstance. We can wait and rest in confidence so that when it is time to hear and respond, we are ready. Or we can–out of anxious impatience–shift to crafting our own way in our own time, buying into a lie that God can’t be trusted and his timeline is too long.

One of those options positions us so we can act when it’s time; the other fractures us and and leaves us absolutely exhausted.

Where are you waiting, and what does it look like to wait well–with confidence and restful assurance?

I’m pausing in the series of “Why am I so tired?” posts to interact with an altogether different kind of tired conversation. 

“This is not who we are.” 

I was recently sent these words in a correspondence responding to yet another instance of racism and bigotry caught on camera. But they were nothing new. It seems every time a person of color or other minority culture individual is assaulted, degraded, mocked, killed, or otherwise suffers at the hands of someone from the majority culture, we hear a similar sentiment. “That is sad and unacceptable… but remember, it’s not who we are.”

What a cop-out.

Let’s be honest here: This is who we are.

Until we are willing to acknowledge that who we are is broken and who we are is not who we want to be, I don’t know how anything will change. If we convince ourselves “this isn’t who we are,” then we minimize the voices inviting us to be better, to be different, to own our individual and corporate need to really see the image of God in each and every person. We hush the Voice inviting us to be new and we push away the invitation to be desperate in pursuit of real transformation.

When we say, “but this is not who we are,” we are saying instances of bigotry in all its sundry forms are simply outliers–acts perpetrated always and only by “someone else” with no connection to us or the systems and practices we engage with every day. It means we never have to look at ourselves and what we allow or perpetuate.

When we say, “this is not who we are,” then it’s only someone else who must do something; the rest of us don’t have to do anything–we can shake our collective head from a distance, wrapped in the warm embrace of imagining all of this to be someone else’s problem. We don’t need to be sorrowful or move into discomfort to take any ownership for where we are…because that’s not who we are.

Instead, let’s try, “This is not who we want to be, and we must find a new way.” By itself, this won’t solve or fix anything, but it’s a start.

Something is terribly wrong and we know it. 
Google “Why am I…” and a fun list of common questions pops up–

• Why am I always tired
• Why am I so tired
• Why am I always cold (probably because you’re tired)
• Why am I not losing weight (might be tired)
• Why am I dizzy (is this dizzy-tired?)
• Why am I so tired all the time
• Why am I so gassy (not sure if this has to do with being tired, but who knows?)
• Why am I tired all the time
• Why am I peeing so much (…)
• Why am I always hungry (I’m sure there’s a connection here…)

The truth is, you probably are tired.

I know I am.

Personally, trying to be a good husband, dad, pastor, leader, and communicator–on its most energizing day–is exhausting. The same can be said by you, I’m sure–whatever  your list of roles and investments looks like: breadwinner/entrepreneur/student/significant other/parent/caretaker/dreamer… even at its most energizing, we can be left exhausted.

Add into this trying to make it through a global pandemic, economic uncertainty, and new kinds of anxieties & pressures… and it makes you wonder how you’re going to make it through intact much less unscathed. Navigating all of it–constantly responding, reacting, ancticipating, adjusting… while working, striving, and managing within a space of tension, trauma, and anxiety. It’s no wonder we find ourselves depleted.

I’m convinced part of our tiredness and exhaustion is a kind of soul-weariness we find when we mis-engage in the spaces of waiting, in the places of confusion, and in the gaps where the world needs you & me to live into our purpose. Over the next few posts, I’ll share what I’m discovering about the space of waiting, being a person of truth, and how I’m finding a renewed energy even in the chaos.

For you bless the righteous, O LORD;
You cover them with favor as with a shield.

Psalm 5:12, NRSV