One of the first times I heard God speaking to me, I thought it was me speaking to me.
I had just lost my dad to suicide after many years of battling mental illness and alcoholism. This kind of spiritual warfare is devastating. It takes not only a physical toll, but it identifies and targets every weakness in your spiritual anatomy. Foundational truths that you have constructed an entire life around are shaken and bulldozed to the ground. Priorities and ways of being you once considered innate, are now revealed as falsities, simple masks of survival.
Anxiety, which was like a cute personality trait before, completely took over and morphed my life. I had so much internal interference, I had trouble holding even small talk conversations with trusted friends. The topic of my father's death lurked around the corner of every conversation. How do I explain this to someone else? I needed someone to explain it to me.
If there ever was a valley of the shadow of death, I was in it. I could feel myself becoming constantly distracted by my despair. I couldn't sleep for recurring nightmares that woke me up repeatedly in sheer terror. I was simultaneously afraid of nothing and afraid of everything at the same time.
Still, my faith persisted. I would remember a Bible verse or someone would speak a prayer and like peering through a dense fog, my heart would catch hope that there was something real there. I would faintly begin to remember, "oh yeah....God."
I'm ashamed to say in the throes of our despair I rarely remembered God. At times of exceptional desperation I would cry out to him. But most of my prayers were half hearted, half convinced. I was facing a reality that felt much bigger than the stories I learned as a child, the hymns that rattled around in the desolate chambers of my heart.
In my grief I was reckless. In my hurt I made things worse for myself. I was slowly digging myself a grave of bad decisions until I was finally in a place so dark, I didn't think anyone would be able to find me.
But He did.
I was lying in my bed sick with grief, sick with life, and all but spiritually dead. I remembered the story Jesus told about the vine and the branches. Abide in me, he says. (John 15:4)
Abide.
"Abide?!" I thought. If there exists a spectrum of faith where the highest realm is abiding, living in a home with God, I was on the complete other end of the range, like a homeless recluse, skirting around in the shadows of the house of God, afraid to go in but also afraid to leave the neighborhood.
If I lived with God, I reasoned, I would think of him in every moment of every day. He would become the orientation through which I see my circumstances, instead of my circumstances becoming the orientation of how I see God.
The feeling of hope came nearer now. It lifted me. But I could not sustain it for long. I could not hold with me the entire story, the entire truth, the entire comfort, but I could remember one word.
Abide.
So I started using it to remind myself.
Whenever I'd get distracted, walking down a mental path of hopelessness, the word would flash across my mind.
Abide.
And I would reorient myself.
Whenever I was problem solving and trying to figure out how this was all going to work out, the word would jump into my minds view.
Abide.
And I would remember there is a purpose, there is a plan.
Whenever I was talking to a friend or a stranger and I would start to believe that the human condition is random and lonely, the word would float to the top of my thoughts.
Abide.
And I would remember how God loves each person and provides for them.
Whenever I was navigating a difficult day, which were many at that time, feeling swept away by the overwhelming emotion, the word would appear as a whisper in my heart.
Abide.
And I would curl myself into the broad shoulders of Christ himself, hoping against hope this home he offered could shield me.
I repeated the word to myself no less than one million times a day. That was how many times I would simply forget to include God into the equation. It became kind of humorous, actually, to find myself in the grocery checkout line, trying to remember, “Abide. Abide. Abide.”
All these years I thought this was of my doing. Sure, I had thought at times how God had given me the word, how he might have worked it into my consciousness to latch onto like a tiny life boat preserver in the vast, stormy sea of my life.
But only recently have I looked back on this experience and realized this wasn't just a word I was repeating to myself.
It was a word God was repeating to me.
It was God reminding me, speaking over me, calling me back to him, pursuing my soul from the depths of this suffocating darkness, searching for me, calling for me, fending off the demons that threatened to claim victory over me, hang on!
"Abide. Abide in me."
Can we suspend our ego and control for just a moment to glimpse into the ways God may be prompting us even from what feels like our own inner ideas? Are there moments in your life when you feel like you really got it, you really felt it, and while there is one real level that IS us, could there be another real level that IS God speaking directly into our hearts?
That experience demonstrates the timelessness of God's Living Word. Written down in ancient story, read by us today, and revealed fully in our hearts and through our actions in our real, everyday lives and circumstances.
Abide.
Live in me.
As I live in you.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “It was not I who chose God but God who first chose me.”
We like to think we are doing the choosing, we are doing the saving, particularly when change seems to be sourced from our own thoughts and actions. But I know better than that now.
It wasn’t just me repeating a mantra to myself. It was God beginning a healing process in me.
Because, as it turns out, “The secret is simply this: Christ in you! Yes, Christ in you bringing with him the hope of all glorious things to come.” Colossians 1:27
Everything we do is sourced from our ability to abide in Christ. We simply cannot receive his provision, his blessing, his comfort, his peace, his healing, if we hold him at arms distance and refuse to let him in the door of the house he built.
The repetition of this word was sowing seeds in my heart and sewing his presence into the fabric of my life. Each repetition, a new kernel of potential, a new, strengthening stitch, as rhythmic as the needle of sewing machine.
Abide. Abide. Abide.
And even though it has been fifteen years and I think of God more often now than I don't (though still not enough), I don't get to graduate from this commandment. He still wants me to abide.
That is because He is my only true home.
He is your true home, too.
Maybe you've lived at many different addresses in your life. Maybe you were or are completely homeless and spiritually wandering. Maybe you thought you already were living in Christ but now are realizing you have related to him more like a temporary roommate and less like a permanent home.
He wants to say the same thing to you today that he said through Jesus 2,000 years ago.
"Abide in me."
The more we go to work, our kids activities, and church functions while discounting him, the more disconnected from his fruit bearing spirit we become.
But if we can put aside our agendas and timetables and open our hearts to his voice and allow him to rescue, remind, and reorient us, the abundant life will grow organically right out of this house.
Maybe the word for you isn't Abide, but another repetitious word you use to remind yourself of his love. Can you imagine it today as not just something you help yourself remember but a word he is whispering to you as he calls you back into alignment with himself?
Let him repeat it into your heart.
You might have to still yourself and listen carefully for the word God wants to repeat to you. In the same way God passes by Elijah not as powerful wind, thunder, or earthquake, but as a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:11-13), he calls into the inner most spaces of our hearts - “Softly and Tenderly.”
"Come home, come home;
You who are weary come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O [insert your name], come home!"
Thanks for sharing this and sharing is the right word. The courage and honesty it requires to share this kind of story probably did require 15 years of abiding first. What is left when the world is blown away and you are in free fall with no ground under your feet and no foundation for your house? We want God to catch us and put the old world back together in a way that feels familiar and makes sense to us. Your sharing helps us see that “I Am” and “I am here.” Is the flip side of the word Abide. That somehow beyond what the mind can understand Christ lives in us so we can live in Him. The image of Christ as a house is a beautiful seed for contemplation.
Thanks for sharing your gentle whisper with us. 🧡🧡🧡