Made to love him your way
Knit together on purpose
Many sincere believers carry a quiet guilt they rarely name. They have been told that the way to be close to God is the early-morning quiet time — Bible open, journal out, a fixed half hour of silent prayer — and for some of them it simply never comes alive. They try, they fail, they try again, and conclude that something must be wrong with their faith, or with them.
The psalmist offers a gentler and truer light. You formed my inmost being, he sings to God; you knit me together in my mother's womb. Each of us is a deliberate, custom work of God — wired differently, moved by different things, made unique on purpose. And if God made us each distinct, it should not surprise us that we are drawn to him along different paths. The way that sets one soul ablaze leaves another cold, and that is by design, not defect.
This stage rests on a simple, freeing idea, one many have found helpful in the framework Gary Thomas called the sacred pathways: there is no single prescribed method for loving God that fits every temperament. You were made to love him in a way fitted to how he made you. The point is not to force yourself into someone else's mold, but to discover the pathway along which your particular soul most naturally comes alive to God.
“For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb.”
— David — Psalm 139:13 (WEB)
Set down the guilt of the devotional method that never fit, and seek the pathway along which God, who made you unique, wired your soul to come alive to him.
“Now there are various kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.”
Many of us carry a quiet guilt that the one prescribed way to be close to God never ignited for us, and conclude something is wrong with our faith. The interior work is to receive a freeing truth — that God knit each soul uniquely and so draws different souls along different paths — and to stop forcing ourselves into another's mold, seeking instead the way our particular temperament most naturally loves him.
This week, recall the times you have felt most alive to God — where you were, what you were doing, what stirred your heart. Look for the pattern rather than dismissing it, and begin to name the pathway along which God seems to reach you most.
The one-size-fits-all method can quietly convince you that you are a second-class Christian, guilty and discouraged because the standard path never caught fire, until you stop drawing near at all. But God knit you to love him along a pathway of your own — and a soul that finds its true way comes alive to him past the reach of that lie.
It is a strange and needless burden, the assumption that there is one correct way to be close to God and that everyone who does not thrive in it is failing. It has left countless believers feeling like second-class Christians because the standard-issue quiet time never quite ignited for them — when the truth is that God knit them for a different pathway entirely.
The God who made an astonishing diversity of persons surely delights in an astonishing diversity of ways they come to love him. The naturalist meets him on a mountain, the intellectual in a hard book, the caregiver at a sickbed, the enthusiast in a song. None is more spiritual than the others; each is a soul loving God as it was made to. As you begin this stage, set down the guilt of the path that never fit, and open yourself to the question: how did God wire you to come alive to him?
- Have I felt like a failure because a prescribed way to God never ignited for me?
- When have I felt most alive to God — and what was I doing?
- How might God have wired me to come near him?
Lord, you knit me together on purpose, unlike anyone else. Free me from the guilt of the path that never fit, and show me the way you wired my soul to come alive to you. Teach me to love you as you made me. Amen.