Hope for the Pastor at a Dead End  – Part 4

Intimacy not Information

If you missed the first three posts in this series, you can find them here. Today, in this last installment, we’ll examine the third barrier we must overcome to move toward hope. We must shift from searching for information to searching for intimacy. Our appetite for information is voracious when we are hurting and need healing. We’re desperate to understand what happened to us, how we ended up here, and how we can move forward. Like hunting an elusive unicorn, this search is exhausting and never-ending. And the enemy of our souls loves to see us distractedly looking for something that doesn’t even exist. No magic bullet of information will make everything fall into place or help us make sense of our situation. What we need in those confusing moments is intimacy, not information.

When I first started homeschooling, I fixated on methodology. I wanted to know exactly, step by step, how to conduct a certain type of lesson. I wished somebody would hand me the necessary information to complete the work. Each month, I would sit in our couples’ homeschool support group meetings, frustrated that our lovely leaders kept turning the conversation away from the nuts and bolts of how to educate my kids and toward understanding the why behind their education. They kept pulling me back, over and over again, to the philosophy that should undergird my efforts. All I could think was, “Yes, I’m sure that’s important. But I have to wake up tomorrow and do this!”

Years later, I appreciate their wisdom. I know now how methods are meant to flow naturally from a deep internalizing of the principles those methods are based. You might wish God would give you a checklist of healing activities to get yourself back on track. But He isn’t going to do that. Because He will do the work in you, and that can’t happen through an exchange of information. It happens through intimate connection when you allow Him access to the deepest springs of your being and affection. It is an inside-out work of His Spirit, not an outside-in work of your own grit and determination. The closest I can give you to a peek at the journey that lies ahead is found in the opening lines of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. I have discovered that the Beatitudes outline the powerful work of God to literally transform a life. They are not just feel good, sentimental statements. The Beatitudes are not platitudes. I know this because God has woven them, painfully, miraculously, and beautifully, into the very fabric of my life.

If you have crashed and burned and find yourself sitting in dust and ashes right now, guess what? The journey has already begun. You’ve reached the first waypost on your way out. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs, is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3 NIV). Transformation starts right here, with utter soul poverty. It begins in the place you keep coming up empty, where you are too weak, too battered, too defeated, too exhausted, too deceived, too traumatized, too disoriented, too numb to lift a leg for a single step. 

Unlike the other steps on this Beatitude hike, the first one doesn’t require a step at all. It is simply a statement. It’s in the present tense. The poor in spirit do possess the kingdom of heaven. That means you, in your place of utter emptiness. Right here, right now, the kingdom of heaven is yours.

Jesus isn’t asking you to “step” right now. He’s asking you to sit. Sit with Him. Sit with your spiritual bankruptcy long enough to recognize it for the blessing that it is. It’s a blessing that will reveal His nearness, the nearness of His kingdom…and your place in it, where you truly belong.

In time, He will ask you to step with Him. Believe me, there are many steps on this way out. There is grief and mourning. There is more humbling ahead. There is going to be a redirecting of your appetites

and desires. There will be the giving and receiving of forgiveness. There will be a purifying that goes much deeper than your actions, all the way to the level of your heart.

But I guarantee He will waste none of it. He’ll use every painful step you take with Him to reflect His character through you and bring peace to others. And when His kingdom comes in you like this, it will make waves. It will have an impact, one that you may even suffer for. People will have opinions — about what you’ve done and what God is doing in you. But through it all, you will know yourself to be blessed because you will know the One who has walked each step with you more intimately than you ever imagined possible. The beauty of the Beatitudes is that they can only be lived out withJesus. They are not things we can do in our own strength. It’s as we meet Him in all these areas, in the emptiness, in mourning, in the forgiving…that we discover He is inviting us into the corners of our lives where we are lacking most and hurting most in order to find what it is, we need the most — intimacy with Him. Only Jesus can transform our greatest miseries and deficiencies into our biggest blessings. And as we walk this healing journey with Him, we discover that Jesus Himself is the ultimate blessing we find in the empty places, the sad places, the humble and hungry places. He invites us to forgiveness, to purity of heart, to peacemaking, and even to persecution. But He doesn’t send us there alone. 

He is with us every inch of the way.

This is not a dead end you’re facing. It’s a choice. Will you choose confession over confrontation? 

Will you choose humility over humiliation? 

Will you choose intimacy over information? 

Simply put, will you trust Jesus to make a way where you can see no way? He is the only One who can.