Intention #1 - Part 1

To freely receive Grace and Love from God and to freely give more Grace and Love to others.

I’m jumping right into the deep end with this one.

I’ve been staring at this page on and off for the last week. How do I best convey what I’m feeling? Okay, I’ll just say it. I’m bad at receiving Grace and Love from God. There are a lot of reasons for this, reasons I won’t get into, just know that this is true.

When I say “Grace” I mean the opposite of shame. When I say “Love” I mean like Guido in “Life is Beautiful.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiK3HFwNDV4 (Go ahead and watch this clip real quick, then finish reading)

The problem is that I have a wrong view of God. Before I can freely receive anything, that needs to change. I need to view Him as the God that laughs with me at my foibles. I need to know him as the God that actually likes my faults. I need to believe that he is the Father that would make a Nazi concentration camp into a game just so that I might not be scarred by it. I think that if I can change the way in which I view God then I will be able to receive Grace and Love from him freely.

The god I was taught, and told, and shown, was not this sort of God. And honestly, I don’t think the idea of God that I grew up with is real. That god gave grace as a side dish to shame. “Oh, you again? Listen, here’s grace because I’m God. But, you really suck at being a Christian.” His love was the gift that murdered his son. And that guilt was hard to swallow.

So I’ve spent my life doing my best to need as little Grace and Love as possible. Anyone else with me on this one?

And that is why the first part of my first intention is to freely receive Grace and Love from God. To release shame and receive the Grace that he lavishes. To claim my sonship and receive the Love that is his character.

To try and make this a reality in my life I’m doing a couple things. I’m trying to find this God as I live my life and make my mistakes. “Oh David, I love watching you search for your car keys every single morning! It reminds me of when Jesus would set his hammer down, and then couldn’t find it five minutes later!” That God is there to be found, and I want to get better at finding Him… “Life of the Beloved” by Henri Nouwen has, and I say this literally, changed my life. Read this book if self-shaming is a language that you’re fluent in - like I am. I read “Sacred Romance” by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis years ago, but this book was recently recommended to me again, and I have it on reserve at the library. The last thing that I’ll mention for this part is that I’ve been going to a counselor and she is really great. She’s been helping me work through stuff that I didn’t realize needed worked through and some stuff that was pretty glaring. Long story short, she’s been helping me understand the why and how of Grace and Love.

Okay, I hope that wasn’t too wordy. I’ll do part 2, the part of extending Grace and Love to others, next week.