First steps, childlike.

Oh friends it’s so great to be back! What a treat y’all had, having Caila here sharing her beautiful heart with you, and although you may be disappointed that I’ve returned and had secretly hoped that she’d be the new voice here forever *smile*, I am so deeply grateful to be back here, back home, pounding the pavement of this sacred mundane life.

There is so much swirling around in my spirit I don’t even know where to begin. In some ways it’s as if God has unveiled a massive, mostly-unfinished, sculpture, looming large in my vision but incomplete. I’m not exactly sure what it looks like, but I see a general shape, and He invites me to discover the rest, to take His Word like a small chiseling tool, and get to work carving away at my long-held wrong-thinking, letting it fall away like dust, and allowing the truth of His Word to be unearthed in all its glorious greatness.

This will probably take forever.

The beautiful thing about blogs, however, is that unlike print-books, I have the freedom to share with you my works-in-progress. My thoughts-in-progress.

Me-in-progress.

Isn’t that what community is?

Sharing our real works-in-progress selves with each other, “iron sharpening iron,” is Christian community, ditching the cultural compulsion to only share, as Caila said, photo-filtered, ultra-flattering snapshots of our finished-product selves.

We do this spiritually just as much as we do it physically.

All it does it damage true community, forfeits the sacred fellowship that could be ours.

But what’s really damaging is that we do it with God.

It damages true community with Him, forfeits the sacred fellowship that could be ours.

In what is now my favorite book on prayer, The Praying Life, Tim Chester the “pray as a child” simile and carries it out into completion. What does it really look like to pray to our Dada-God, Abba, with a childlike faith and childlike spirit?

We don’t over-spiritualize.

We don’t pretend to be something we’re not.

We don’t stress over getting the words right.

We talk out loud.

We start wherever we are, with whatever’s on our minds.

We listen.

We ask for stuff, whatever it is we need.

We fully expect Him to hear, to care, to respond.

When we do not engage our real selves with our real Heavenly Father, we completely miss out on the real, dynamic, life-changing relationship offered to us in prayer.

Before I left on our trip, I had begun changing the way I prayed. One day in particular, I started praying out loud about some things on my heart. Instead of the usual super-spiritual way I had worded it before, I just poured out the most raw, childish, aching-hurting stream of true, real, heart-cries that I possibly could. It was like pulling a rotten tooth–extracting that painful thing that had been lodged in there so long.

But out it came, and in He came, with healing in His wings (Mal. 4:2).

And to my everlasting amazement, the issue (that had plagued my heart off and on for more than a decade) was completely resolved within the week.

Wait? You mean God actually answers prayer?

Wait? You mean God does stuff? He doesn’t just want me to pray because it’s a good discipline, and He doesn’t just respond by telling me to be more grateful about all the garbage in my life? Wait, He actually resolves some of it?

Wow! Maybe I should pray more! 😉

The first steps of my big, scary unknown journey, are just to live more childlike. To chisel away all my grown-up, faithless, pride-filled drivel. To talk to God frankly.

Instead of over-spiritualizing and explaining-away the outlandish claims in scripture, I will believe them.

I will take Him at His Word.

{Here’s to a week lived in childlike faith and frank communion with God and each other. Bless you, friends! Thanks for reading.}