Seeking God

1. Christianity is an active, lifelong journey of seeking another kind of life

When we cease seeking, we find ourselves in danger of dying spiritually.

The seeking heart. Many mistakenly believe that once they accept faith, their spiritual search ends. In reality, that is precisely when the true quest begins. Christianity is fundamentally a seeking faith, requiring an intentional, childlike wonder to navigate life's mysteries and avoid falling into dull, empty routines.

Wise spiritual companions. To guide us on this journey, we can look to historical and modern masters of spiritual formation. Author Trevor Hudson weaves together the sixteenth-century wisdom of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the twenty-first-century philosophy of Dallas Willard. Both guides emphasize that:

• God is a knowable, personal, and loving reality.
• Direct, interactive experience with God is possible for everyone.
• The greatest opportunity in life is to know, love, and follow Jesus.

Keeping Jesus central. Amid the maze of spiritual practices, Jesus of Nazareth remains the ultimate guiding light. By keeping company with him daily, he steps out of the historical pages of the Gospels to become an active, empowering presence. He uniquely leads us into the invisible yet tangible reality of God's Kingdom.

2. God offers an abundant, indestructible spiritual life here and now

The obviously well-kept secret of the “ordinary” is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows.

Zoe versus Bios. The New Testament distinguishes between two kinds of life: bios, our temporary biological existence, and zoe, the divine, unceasing, and indestructible life of God. Jesus did not come merely to secure our place in heaven after we die; he came to intermingle our ordinary, everyday lives with this zoe life in the present moment.

Five inseparable threads. This abundant zoe life is characterized by five distinct dimensions that transform our daily existence:

• Intimacy with God: Experiencing a close, childlike "Abba relationship" with our Creator.
• Shared life: Discovering our unique calling within a supportive community of faith.
• Transformed life: Being gradually changed into the compassionate likeness of Christ.
• Powerful life: Accessing the Holy Spirit's strength to overcome temptation and serve the common good.
• Indestructible life: Living with the confidence that our personal existence is eternally secure in God.

The ordinary transformed. This spiritual life does not require escaping to a monastery; it unfolds in the midst of washing dishes, working, and navigating family conflicts. By recognizing that we are unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny, we begin to see our mundane tasks as filled with everlasting significance.

3. True repentance is a joyful, ongoing turnaround of the mind, not a guilt trip

When God, in Christ, says “Repent and believe the Good News,” he is uttering an invitation, not a threat.

Rethinking repentance. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, literally means a complete change of mind and thinking. Far from being a shame-based exercise in self-flagellation, true repentance is a hopeful invitation to reroute our lives based on the incredible opportunity of God's available Kingdom. It is the essential doorway through which we step into zoe life.

An ongoing pathway. Repentance is not a one-time historical event but a continuous, lifelong pathway of conversion. As we walk with Christ, God gently reveals the deeper, hidden layers of our self-centeredness and disordered attachments. This ongoing process helps us:

• Confess the subtle sins of the heart, like jealousy and pride.
• Relinquish our desperate need to control outcomes and people.
• Reorient our daily choices toward the self-giving love of God.

The joy of turning. Turning toward God brings immense joy to both the seeker and the Creator. Like the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, God delights in welcoming us home and lifting the heavy weight of guilt from our shoulders. True repentance frees us from self-preoccupation, restoring our sense of worth and allowing us to share in God's happy laughter.

4. We must know we are unconditionally loved before we can face our inner brokenness

We will ask God to reveal our sinful tendencies only when we know without a doubt that we are unconditionally loved by God.

The beloved foundation. It is psychologically and spiritually impossible to be radically honest about our sins if we feel threatened by rejection. Before we can ask God to search our hearts and reveal our inner disorders, we must establish a firm foundation in our identity as God's beloved. We must know deep down that God is passionately attracted to us exactly as we are.

The Beloved Charter. To press this truth from our heads to our hearts, we can craft a personal "Beloved Charter" using personalized Scripture verses. This short, written declaration acts as a mirror reflecting how God truly sees and values us. Reading it daily helps dismantle:

• Dehumanizing social voices that tell us we are not enough.
• Deep-seated feelings of shame and conditional acceptance.
• The false belief that we must perform to earn God's love.

A loved sinner. Armed with the assurance of our belovedness, we can look at the cross of Jesus not as a symbol of condemnation, but as the ultimate proof of God's scandalous mercy. We become capable of identifying as "loved sinners"—people who are deeply flawed yet infinitely precious, safe enough to let go of our defensiveness and begin the work of real inner transformation.

5. Our truest, deepest longings are not enemies of God's will but pathways to it

Our desires imply a condition of incompleteness because they speak to us of what we are not or do not have.

The gift of desire. Many religious traditions teach us to suppress or fear our desires, viewing them as inherently sinful or contrary to God's will. However, desire is a vital, God-given dimension of our humanity that brings energy, vitality, and joy to our lives. Because we are created in the image of a passionate God who desires us, our deepest longings often echo God's own longings for us.

Sifting through distortions. While desire is a gift, it can easily become distorted into destructive addictions, greed, or self-obsession. Discernment is the art of sifting through our superficial, immediate wants to discover the deeper, life-giving yearnings beneath them. We can navigate this complex inner landscape by using a simple four-part toolkit:

• Noticing: Pausing to identify what we are actually craving.
• Sifting: Distinguishing between surface-level desires and core spiritual longings.
• Asking: Honestly presenting our desires to God in prayer.
• Attending: Focusing on our ultimate, insatiable hunger for divine communion.

The desire for desire. When we find ourselves lacking the desire to do what is right—such as forgiving someone who hurt us—we can honestly pray for "the desire for the desire." God meets us in our reality, not our pretense. By sharing our conflicting wants with the Lord, we allow the Holy Spirit to gently reshape our hearts from the inside out.

6. True discipleship is not about information or inspiration, but daily interaction with a living Christ

If the word disciple sounds off-putting or carries unhelpful baggage for you, then you may want to replace it with another word, like learner, student, or follower.

Beyond facts and feelings. Many believers reduce discipleship to either the "way of information" (accumulating academic facts about Jesus) or the "way of inspiration" (chasing emotional spiritual highs). While both have their place, neither is sufficient to transform our character. True discipleship is the "way of interaction"—a dynamic, daily partnership with the living, risen Christ.

Three interactive practices. We interact with the invisible Jesus today through practical, intentional habits that keep him at the center of our attention:

• Colloquy: Engaging in honest, two-way conversations with Jesus as one speaks to a dear friend.
• Guarding the mind: Intentionally keeping the Lord before our minds throughout the busy day.
• Gospel contemplation: Imaginatively stepping into the Gospel stories to encounter Jesus firsthand.

The power of imagination. Imaginative prayer is not a childish fantasy but a profound way of placing our minds at the service of our faith. By reading a Gospel story and placing ourselves within the scene, we allow the risen Christ to speak directly to our current struggles. This interactive relationship gradually renovates our minds, making us more loving, peaceful, and resilient.

7. We experience the fullness of life by daily dying to self-centeredness to grow in compassion

Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we don’t have to. He died on the cross so that we may join him there.

Dying to live. The central paradox of the gospel is that we must die to find life. Just as a seed must fall into the ground and die to bear fruit, we must daily deny our self-centeredness to experience the abundant life God offers. This is not a death of self (which destroys our uniqueness) but a death to self (which destroys our selfishness).

The fruit of compassion. The ultimate goal of this daily dying is the cultivation of divine compassion (splagchnizomai), which is the defining characteristic of God. True compassion is a gut-level, motherly womb-love that suffers with others and moves us to action. We grow in this virtue by:

• Contemplating Jesus' suffering on the cross to expand our capacity to feel.
• Choosing to be fully present to those who are hurting, even when we feel helpless.
• Sacrificing our convenience, time, and ego to serve the vulnerable.

Everyday opportunities. We do not need to seek out dramatic martyrdom to practice dying to self. Every day presents us with small, unspectacular opportunities to lay down our lives, such as listening attentively when we are tired, or helping a colleague when we are busy. These small "practice runs" train our hearts to beat in harmony with God's compassionate heartbeat.

8. The risen Christ meets us at the end of our rope to comfort and commission us

Small wonder that Dallas would sometimes say that “Jesus’ address in our lives is endoftherope.com.”

End-of-the-rope encounters. The Resurrection stories in the Gospels reveal that the risen Jesus consistently meets people when they are at their lowest points—grieving, doubting, fearful, or feeling like failures. He does not demand that we pull ourselves together before he appears; rather, he meets us in our desolation to offer genuine, life-giving consolation.

Three resurrection features. Every encounter with the risen Christ in our daily lives shares three common characteristics that guide our spiritual growth:

• Consolation: Jesus meets us in our pain to reignite our faith, hope, and love.
• Gradual recognition: We slowly recognize his presence through the "burning" of our hearts and the fruits of peace.
• Commission: We are sent out to be agents of resurrection newness in a hurting world.

Discerning the spirits. To recognize Christ's quiet movements within us, we must learn to distinguish between spiritual consolation (which draws us toward God, faith, and love) and spiritual desolation (which drags us into darkness, doubt, and self-absorption). By paying attention to these inner states, we can remain faithful during dry seasons and make wise, God-guided decisions.

9. We must heal our split spirituality to encounter God in the ordinary joys of daily life

For his Divine Majesty truly is in everything by his presence, power, and essence.

Finding God in all. Many Christians suffer from a "split spirituality," dividing their lives into sacred compartments (prayer, church) and secular compartments (work, leisure). Ignatius's final exercise, the "Contemplation to Attain Love," shatters this division by inviting us to find God in all things. It reveals a God-bathed world where the Creator is constantly working on our behalf.

Four ways to contemplate. We can experience the overwhelming depth of God's self-giving love by meditating on four realities:

• Gifts received: Recalling the people and experiences that have made divine love real to us.
• God's indwelling: Noticing how God's presence fills and sustains all of creation.
• God's labor: Imagining God actively working to bring good out of the world's chaos.
• The sunshine of love: Receiving God's love in every simple, good gift we enjoy daily.

Cultivating pure joy. We genuinely praise God when we take pleasure in the simple, ordinary joys of life, like a warm cup of coffee, a beautiful garden, or a friend's embrace. By identifying and investing in these sources of joy, we heal our inner splits and allow our daily lives to become a continuous, grateful prayer of self-surrender.

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