I went for a walk today, not a walk in the park or around the block; a walk through the woods of my child hood. They have changed a lot since I was a boy romping through them pretending that I was on some grand pioneering or hunting adventure. Trees have been cut down and new ones are growing, trails have been cut through places where I could never have walked just a few years ago. The woods aren’t the only thing that have changed, I have. I no longer see the woods through the eyes of an adventurous child, I don’t pretend to hunt or envision my self as some pioneer from long ago, learning to live off the land and avoiding attacks from the natives. No, these days I walk through the woods to clear my head, to refocus my self and to find inspiration. In these woods, with the calming sounds of nature’s less relentless pace surrounding me, I seem to be able to focus my self back to my creator, the one who created the beauty of this place in which I love to find my self. It is not that He hides Him self there and that I must go there to find Him, it is that when I wander through those woods my mind is set free to more easily recognize His quiet voice and loving hand all around me. And so this afternoon I went for a walk in the woods.
It was a beautiful spring day. Not wanting to spend such a beautiful day inside I put some water in my back pack and laced up my boots and headed out into the woods. The sun was high in the sky. It is getting warmer now and you can tell that summer is coming quickly. However, though it is warm, the air still contains that sweetness that is so easily tasted when the winter cold melts away and the spring flowers begin to bloom. I started to make my way though fields of alfalfa, fields filled with newly blossomed dandelions and lots of birds hopping around catching an afternoon snack. It didn’t take me long to reach the edge of the long patch of woods that separates the field that I was walking through from the one beside it. This smaller patch of woods grows ever wider as it makes its way up through the fields to the mountain.
I love this place. There is the beauty of the green that is bursting forth, a green made even more beautiful by the long grey winter we have just had. There is the sound of the little stream as it makes its way down through this little peninsula of woods. There are flowers and birds and all sorts of memories that I get lost in as soon as I step foot into the first shadow of a twisted old maple tree.
In this part of the woods there are no trails, and so there really isn’t anything to guide me as I wander through the ever widening expanse of forest. I could stick right along the wooded edge and follow it up the hill to the mountain or I could walk along the little stream but both have been done before and so I have developed a new way of guiding my wanderings. I simply follow beauty. I know that God is speaking to my heart and is always looking to show me something unique when I take the time to wander through the beauty that He has made, and so I try and look for His guidance when I am out. That is not to say that we have conversations in which he tells me where to go. God doesn’t tell me to head up to the big oak and then make a right and follow the stream for a bit, that would be more like following a compass course than going for a walk with God. No, I simply look for something beautiful to catch my eye and then see where the Lord leads me and what things the He lays upon my heart as I am going along.
Today I found that beauty in the first flowers of spring. I love flowers and am not ashamed to say that I am captivated by their beauty. So to see the first little dots of color on the forest floor set me on my journey. The first flowers that I saw were some little white flowers growing along the stream. Early spring flowers are generally small and low to the ground and these were no different. I pushed aside some branches and walked over to the flowers. I bent down and touched them, smelled them, did my best to soak up their beauty. I looked around to see if there were more and I could see that they followed the stream up through the center of this little patch of woods. So I followed them. Stopping to see the birds and listen to the stream, at points crossing over the stream as its cool clear water ran over my boot. I followed these little white flowers until I saw something else that caught my eye. Up ahead a short distance from the stream where some little pink flowers.
They were beautiful. They had little pink petals that faded to white at the tips. I began to follow these new flowers up and away from the stream. Through the woods I went, twisting around the occasional thorn bush and ducking low under the overhanging branches of the larger trees. I followed this trail of flowers until I came to an area that took my breath away. There before me was a place where the forest thinned and the trail of flowers that I had been following burst into a field of flowers; the kind of field that beckons you to lie down and breathe deeply; taking time to fully appreciate the delicate, aroma of thousands of little blooms. I stood there lost in the moment thinking of how beautiful this sight was and of how beautiful the creator of these little flowers is. It is in moments like these when I feel as though I am finally beginning to understand and appreciate the beauty of God. It was as though God had lead me beside a stream of color and I had finally burst into a beautiful sea of flowers; a journey that he was using to show me a special glimpse of His beauty.
My walk took me to other places in the woods also. I saw a couple of lovely springs as I followed the streams to where they start as a small trickle coming out of the mountain side. I saw and heard more birds than I could ever begin to name. I saw more flowers: violets, wild geraniums, some little blue ones, and lots of the pink ones that had made up the sea of flowers that had taken my breath away. It was an amazing time of slowing down, quieting my mind, and listening for the voice of God speaking softly to my heart.
So what did He say? To have my breath taken away by the beauty of the woods would have been enough but I have found that God often takes our breath away in those subtle moments in order to teach us something about Him self. Throughout my walk I began to think about a conversation that I had recently.
I was out to lunch with a guy that had just interviewed me for a youth ministry position at a church down south. He offered to take me out to lunch so that we could talk some more. As we were talking we found common ground in our early experiences of God. I had told my story of faith in the interview and he was sharing some similarities with me from his own story. We are both people that had come to faith out of fear. Most people are presented with the gospel as a way of salvation from sins and an eternity in hell. There is little said about relationship with God; it is usually where do you want to go when you die and do you know that you are going to heaven. We talked about how that often leads to a life of faith in a God who we are first and foremost fearful of.
As I walked I thought about it. I thought of my struggles and of times when I had failed God. The sad fact is that I wasn’t trying to overcome these struggles out of love for God and that when I do fail I don’t feel remorse out of love for God, I feel fear. So many times in life I approach God out of an attitude of fear rather than one of love. I asked my self, “why is it that when I fail that I feel more scared of punishment than saddened by the fact that I have just broken God’s heart?” That question is still resonating in my mind, turning over and over again, kind of like the ringing in your ears after a siren has gone off beside your head. Why? Why is it that I have more fear for God than love?
Sure I love God but at our lowest points the deepest feelings of our hearts pour out. I am at my lowest when I fall into struggles with sin, struggles that take me down through the depths of my heart, down to a place in my heart where I fear God. I love ministry but I must admit that when I fall I feel so unworthy. I fear that I may have pulled the last straw and that God is finally going to pull everything good out of my life. Shouldn’t I feel unworthy of the work that God has called me to all the time? After all it is His power and His wisdom and His grace that get me through, that give me the ability to do anything that I do for Him. There is nothing that I can do to make my self worthy of His calling and yet He continues to call me to it, to this beautiful work. Calling me to love people the way that He did and placing within my heart a special love for kids and students. I am wholly unworthy but sadly, many of the times that I feel this out of fear and not so often out of love.
It started to click in my heart the more I pondered this thought. Love needs to be the deepest thing to my heart. The God that made that stream of flowers that I followed through the woods was a God of love and beauty. That beauty called me to appreciate and love God. Not a love out of fear but a love that wells up from the deepest realms of my heart, a love that is a response for what He has already done for me. I started to feel, not a fear of impending judgment for past and present struggles but, a broken heartedness over the fact that He has done so much for me and yet I can so easily fail him.
Now I am not saying that God is not a God of judgment, and that He will not punish us when we willfully disobey Him. He has called us to live a certain kind of life and he has high expectations for us because he knows what we can be, He created us that way. This deep knowledge of who we can be is what causes Him to discipline us. He is showing us who he made us to be. I have heard it said that when parents discipline their children that it hurts them more than their kids. God is love and even in His discipline He deeply loves us and it hurts Him to have to discipline us, it breaks His heart just as it breaks a parent’s heart to have to discipline their child.
That thought rolled through my head and dove deep into my heart. My fear of impending judgment started to melt away and a better understanding of His love for me poured into my heart. God has given me so many blessings in my life and He has called me to a life in which His plans are what I seek in my life. I love the plans that He has for me. I love the “work” that He has called me to. That thought inspires love in my heart for God, not fear. I need a relationship that is built on love not one built on fear.
Being with God is a relationship and what that relationship is built on is the key. Fear is a great way to get people to say the prayer. Who in their right mind would want to go to hell who would want to, as was my case, be left behind? But fear does not lend to a deep and vibrant relationship with God. Fear holds us back and causes us to cower before Him, whereas the writer of Hebrews tells us clearly, in chapter 4, to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence. Confidence that God is going to, even if it is in punishment, do what is best for us, out of His deep and endless love for us.
A life devoted to God but lived out of fear of Him is a life lived selfishly. We through our fear are essentially saying God I don’t want you to take away what you have given me even if I do fail you. “I” don’t want you to take away what you have given “me”. I and me, both selfish words. We should be broken hearted when we fall, not because we might loose something and not out of fear that God is going to punish us but because God loves us and is broken hearted when we fall. We are journeying into the heart of a deeply personal God, and He is seeking to be allowed deeper into us as well. I used to be afraid to let Him in to deep for fear of what He might find and how he might react. I realize though that He knows my heart and that His love has the ability to flood deep into my heart and strengthen me to do his work and to resist temptation and struggle, not out of fear but because I am filled with His love and His Spirit.
I don’t have this all figured out yet. These are just the things that captured my heart as God led me on a journey through the beautiful spring woods one day. I am sure that this issue of fear and being drawn to God out of fear will continue to come to my mind for constant meditation and I will probably write more, the more God teaches me about it. I do know this, I love God deeply, and He loves me more than I can ever comprehend, so much that He sent His Son to take the penalty for those same sins and struggles that I was so afraid of Him finding out about. I know that He wants a deeply personal relationship with us, a relationship rooted and grounded in love but that also a relationship which has complete respect for his justice.
I love the little journeys that He can lead me on during a lovely spring day and I love the journey that he leads me on as I walk through life. I will continue to seek that relationship and continue to dive as deep as He will let me go into the mysteries that are faith and love and God. As I learn I write and as you read I hope that you contemplate the journeys that God is leading you on and the ways that He is speaking to your heart.
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