Freedom By Connection

The Brazilian worship leader was lying on the floor. “Respond to the Lord!  Respond to the Lord!” she moaned.  My first thought was to step it up a notch so she could calm down, but I knew this moment was about more than the awkwardness of a different style of worship.  I knew little about this woman, but enough to understand that God was probably speaking to us through her open heart.  And so my prayer began. 

“God, I feel like I came in pretty good shape with You this weekend.  If there’s somewhere You want me to go, I don’t know how to get there.  Will You show me?” 

Immediately a vision began.  Jesus was on one side of the street; I was on the other.  He looked at me and said, “Come to me.”  As I began to cross the street He held out His hands and said, “Come play with me.”  And at that moment, standing in the midst of a bunch of women at a weekend conference, my life changed forever.  The vision went briefly.  Jesus and I were running to the outskirts of the small western town setting.  We played in creeks, splashing in water, walking over stones.  We ended up in a meadow, and the simple dance He did with a now four-year-old version of me, looking in the eye with such delight that I have never forgotten it. 

The vision ended.  Christy continued into the song she was singing on the platform.  The women around me stood there, having no idea that a life had just been transformed. 

Although I had been a Christian at that point for 26 years, I finally understood that the God of heaven so deeply and simply just wants a relationship with us.  I saw it in His eyes.  For all the foundations we sort out and stand on, for all the programs we organize and try to implement, for all the good things we can do, for all the practices we develop and try to maintain (all of which are part of what He calls us into), let’s not miss the heart of the matter. 

The God of the universe loves us to levels we cannot imagine.  He thought up each of us.  He created us.  He set us in a time and place and put gifts in us that would take our simple lives to places of His wildest dreams.  We’ve gotten derailed, but He sent His Son to do everything in Heaven’s power to make the way so we could function and be free to love and follow Him, to live out the possibilities of all He imagined.  But we too easily reduce it to rules and formats and forget that it cannot occur at all unless we are in love with this Son of His and sense His love for us. 

“Come play with me.”  If your perspective is that time with Him is another pressure of your endless to-do list, maybe you too can just tell Him, “I don’t know how to get there; will You show me?”  And then give Him a little listening time to see what He might have to say to you. 

I love order.  I have expectations.  I can be a stick in the mud.  I believe that He has ways of us doing life that are for our good, and warns us about things that will harm us.  I try to live well.  AND, I know how easily I can shift the good things He’s set to something more rigid and less life-filled than He desired.  The only hope I have is to get to know Him, to be influenced moment by moment by the Spirit He’s sent to live in me to keep me company and to guide me.  To hang out with the amazing Trinity and see what they do when they get their plan in motion and the life they are breaking forth in and for and through us. 

“Come play with me.”  Young birds, the door of the cage is open now.  You are free to fly. You are free to come out and see what happens as you explore where He wants to lead you.  “Come play WITH me.”  We don’t get the freedom when we grab it and run.  It is freedom when it is connected to His glorious life.