Covenant-Maker

Spiritual disciplines are a funny thing. We can't do them because we have to or they will always be lifeless. But if we only do them when we want to, they won't reap much fruit. Patterns that rely on fluctuating emotions cannot sustain us, but seeking God because we have to leads to a dead faith which puts the onus on us and our abilities in a way that is inherently destructive. So what do we do? 

People talk about Christianity being a relationship, and while I have heard this used in ways that diminish the authority of God, it is an essential basis for the Christian faith.

Wanting God, loving God, means coming to Him and choosing Him when we want to and when we don't. Just like it does in any other committed relationship. In the context of other relationships, we know we have to choose to love someone when we're feeling frustrated or selfish or indifferent or exhausted or whatever else, but when we apply that to God, we often feel guilty. Like our posture of surrender is a lie. Like our practice of spiritual disciplines is a farce. But love is greater than our emotions, and it doesn't rely on emotional alignment to be real and genuine. In fact, choosing to love--pursuing the relationship, spending quality time together, claiming the one we love--when we don't feel like loving speaks to the steadiness and strength of our relationship, not its weakness. 

Recently, I've been trying to get in a habit of meditation and silence. I don't like these. My thoughts are hard to silence, and it's a lot easier to track the Spirit's movement in words and thoughts than in stillness. And yet stillness is a primary means of operation for God. In my hurried life, I don't see the transformation taking place in moments of silence, and so not only am I not emotionally drawn to the practice but also I don't experientially see its value. But there was a time I felt that way about prayer too, and yet through its practice, my life has changed. And that was a long journey that included a lot of stripping and rewiring, but I now know prayer as a place of life whether or not I feel that life emotionally in a given moment. 

So why do I want to meditate? Because I believe in what generations of Christians have told me. That meditation is an act of surrendering to God and receiving Him. That it is a practice that draws us closer to Him. And even when I don't want to sit in silence, I want more of God. Even when I'm disinterested in God emotionally, I want more of Him. 

And that's why we do the things we don't want to do.

It's not to feel spiritual. It's not to have an experience. It's not to mark off a spiritual checklist for our faith. It's to take relational steps towards God.

It's not about the discipline but about who is on the other end. Spiritual disciplines are just another way of drawing us into intimacy with God. They can awaken our emotions when they are lacking, but sometimes this doesn't happen in the way or timetables we'd prefer. And even when we feel like we're in a spiritual drought, God works through these moments of honest intimacy with Him. We don't have to pretend we're pleased or joyful or whatever else. We come as we are--with all our fickle or substantial emotions--to the God who is forever unchanging and who continues to choose us each time. 

It's not about obedience--though it requires it--but about relationship. The choice to love when we don't feel like it, to take the relational steps we don't want to, is what relationships are built on. Any relationship. And that's as true in seasons of distance as it is in seasons of conflict.

Even when we're prioritizing and cultivating love, feelings fade and fluctuate. I am not always going to feel a powerful surge of love for my loved ones, but that doesn't mean I stop loving them. I might even become frustrated by or disinterested in our relationship, but that doesn't mean I stop loving them (though it could lead there if I choose to let those feelings separate us). Western culture limits love to a feeling, and while feelings are good, beautiful, and God-ordained (even ones we perceive as negative), they cannot sustain love. A marriage built on nothing but feeling, sustained by nothing but emotion, will crumble.

The Christian faith is built on love, so what is the core of love?

Love needs choice. Primarily God's choice. 

We choose to love God, but it is only because God first chose to love us, commit to us, and covenant with us, that we can choose Him without breeding insecurity or self-reliance. We are secure. We are held. We have the freedom to mess up because we are not the ones who keep the covenant. And even when we don't choose to love Him, even when we stray, He doesn't let us go. We may lose our sense of intimacy with Him, but He has committed to us, and He will pursue us. We are secure in Him. 

God's covenant doesn't end or fluctuate over time and space.

His commitment is the picture of our faith. It is not flimsy or insecure. God chose us, not because of our goodness but purely because of His love. Did Abram deserve the promise? Did Jacob? Did the children of Israel? Did we? God's covenant is not something that we live up to but something that we live into. We do not receive the blessing, the covenant, because we deserve it but because God delights to give it. And if we did nothing to earn it, then we can do nothing to keep it. And that's actually a terrifying thought before we remember who God is. 

We have no control over God, but we have His heart. And His heart will keep choosing us and stay committed to us in all our wanderings and all our emotional fluctuations and all the life-giving practices that don't seem life-giving to us. 

God formed His everlasting covenant with us, and He reiterates it throughout Scripture. And even when a passage describes a specific covenant (with Abraham or Israel or whoever else), we can hold the security it promises because ultimately, it describes the Covenant-Maker. 

The One who never forgets His promises.

We are forever secure in His arms. We are forever secure in His love, His choice, His commitment. No matter how our hearts fail, His never does. We are His, and we don't have to measure up. We are His even when we feel distant. We are His even when we doubt and question. We are His when we rebel, and we are His when we come back. We are His when we pour out our frustrations before Him and when He pours His life into us. We are His when we avoid Him and when we delight in Him. When we are angry and resentful and when we are humble and surrender. No matter where we are or how we act, our position doesn't change because He made us His. And that's a secure place to struggle. And that's a secure place to thrive. And that's a secure place to try and fail and keep coming back. 

We are secure to be inadequate. We are secure to flourish. We are as secure in the wilderness seasons and moments of spiritual dryness as we are in the bursts of living water and spiritual highs. We are secure to pursue Him when He's all we want and when our hearts are drawn to other things. Our relationship can grow when our hearts are distracted, when our hearts are angry, when our hearts are indifferent, when our hearts are ashamed just as well as when our hearts are hungry and driven and grateful and bursting with praise. 

We can talk about which is the better way for us to be, but what's the value of that conversation except in reaping guilt and distance? We can never be consistent with our emotions. They are not to be strong-armed, but they can be funneled into the God whose heart stays the same. Positive, negative, or ambivalent emotions all breed life when laid on the altar of His covenantal love. 

The mark of a strong faith is not the overwhelming desire to read the Bible, pray, go to church, fast, etc. (though those can all be consistent with a strong faith). Spiritual fervor is beautiful and spiritual highs can uplift, encourage, teach, and grow us--but they must be held by something deeper. And the deeper faith is proven in the wilderness. In the moments of dryness and doubt. In the choices we make to claim God when we don't much like Him or we don't understand Him or we don't really want Him. And more importantly, in the choices He makes to keep pursuing and holding us. 

So whether dryness or despair, spiritual struggle is not the same as spiritual lack. In fact, these deeper struggles with God can in themselves reveal the foundation of trust, belief, and relationship as "wrestling with God through persistent prayer is a confirmation of true belief, not distressing doubt . . . It is only those who believe and believe hard . . . who are offended by [God's] silence . . . 'The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without hope, faith, and love" (Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools 180, 181). 

The mark of steady faith is choosing God when we don't want to. Sometimes our percentage of doing this won't be very high, which is where the cross always covers us. And sometimes choosing God looks like wrestling with Him. Drawing into Him when we have problems with Him. Bringing them to His throne whether we have angry words, tears, or indifference to offer. Because no matter how our circumstances make us feel about God or about us, we are chosen by God. And He wants us even when us comes with a lot of complications. He can take it. He wants to take it. We can claim God and claim ourselves as His even when we're wrestling or spiritually tired or distracted by all the other things of life. Distance and dryness are discouraging--they make intimacy feel far away--but they may not be the mark of a dead, distant, or dying faith but rather of a deeply rooted one. Sometimes they are the very cultivators of resilient faith.  

Wherever we find ourselves in this moment--dry, seeking, overflowing--we have the freedom to come. We have nothing to hide. Whether we come before His throne forcing each step, panting for breath, or jumping for joy, we come to the same God whose love doesn't change. And it's His love that our fickle love depends on. It's His love that maintains our relationship. It's His love that gives us the freedom to choose Him time after time. And whether we've denied Him three or three hundred times, it's His love that allows us to remain in Him and be called His.