We all have a way that we do life. We might call it our personality, or our natural bent — the way we handle pressure, the way we listen, the way we look for happiness, the way we control our world. We didn’t sit down one day and willfully choose to adopt it but it remains a choice nonetheless. Call it your style of relating. It is a carefully crafted approach to life — and especially to relationship — that colors the way we work and the way we love and the way we respond and the way we simply have a conversation with people. This can be quite an epiphany — you have a style of relating designed to make life work for you!

Our style of relating is borne out of brokenness and sin, and it is the number one thing that gets in the way of real love and companionship, the shared adventure and all the beauty of marriage. It’s really this simple—the number one thing that gets in the way is your way. I don’t mean insisting on getting your way — that the lights be dim or finding a better parking spot. I mean your way of going about life, your style of relating.

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Maybe the most devastating limit is simply the idea that “Jesus doesn’t act like that anymore.” (Or, “Jesus doesn’t act like that with me.”) Sure —he was amazing in the Gospels. But that was then and this is now and things have changed. Or so the idea goes. In one fell swoop, this belief shuts down just about everything and anything we could hope to experience with Jesus. It simply slams the door and leaves us standing on one side and him on the other. You wonder if this isn’t implied in the famous passage from the book of Revelation where Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20).

This takes place later than the Gospel stories, mind you — long after the resurrection and the ascension. Jesus is asking for intimacy with us. Who shut that door and left Christ standing in the street? It clearly wasn’t Jesus. He’s outside, asking us to let him in.

So let him in.

Jesus, come in. I give you total access to every aspect of my life. Come in, Lord. Reveal yourself to me.

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Let me say this again: the story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it. I hope you are beginning to see that more clearly now. Otherwise, much of the Bible will not make sense to you. Much of your life will not make sense to you.

I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. (Isa. 45:2-3)

Doesn't the language of the Bible sometimes sound ... overblown? Really now — God is going to level mountains for us? We'd be happy if he just helped us get through the week. What's all that about breaking down gates of bronze and cutting through bars of iron? I mean, it sounds heroic, but, well, who's really in need of that? This isn't ancient Samaria. We'd settle for a parking place at the mall.

If we are in an epic battle, then the language of the Bible fits perfectly. Things are not what they seem. We are at war. That war is against your heart, your glory. Once more, look at Isaiah 61:1:

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
 to proclaim freedom for the captives
 and release from darkness for the prisoners.

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You are not your sin; sin is no longer the truest thing about the man who has come into union with Jesus. Your heart is good. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you" (Ezek. 36:26). The Big Lie in the church today is that you are nothing more than "a sinner saved by grace." You are a lot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ. The New Testament calls you a saint, a holy one, a son of God. In the core of your being you are a good man. Yes, there is a war within us, but it is a civil war. The battle is not between us and God; no, there is a traitor within us who wars against our true heart fighting alongside the Spirit of God in us:

A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death ... Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells ... if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus ... When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. (Rom. 8:2, 9-11 The Message)

The real you is on the side of God against the false self. Knowing this makes all the difference in the world. The man who wants to live valiantly will lose heart quickly if he believes that his heart is nothing but sin. Why fight?

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Prayer sets up a terrible dilemma for us. We want to pray; it’s in our nature. We desperately want to believe that God will come through for us. But then ... he doesn’t seem to, and where does that leave us?

I believe God is in the dilemma; I believe he wants us to push through to real answers, solid answers.

For one thing, this reality we find ourselves in is far more dynamic than most folks have been led to believe — especially people of faith. We hold dangerously incomplete understandings of our situation, such as,

God is all-powerful. 

He did not intervene. 

So it must not be his will to intervene.

Yes — God is sovereign. And in his sovereignty he created a world in which the choices of men and angels matter. Tremendously. He has granted to us “the dignity of causation,” as Pascal called it. Our choices have enormous consequences. We will have much more to say about this going forward, but prayer is not as simple as, “I asked; God didn’t come. I guess he doesn’t want to.”

We are embarked on the most exciting story possible, filled with danger, adventure, and wonders. There is nothing more hopeful than the thought that things can be different, we can move mountains, and we have some role in bringing that change about.

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Twice, in the famous chapter of Romans 7, where Paul presents a first-person angst about our battle against sin, he says, "But this is not my true nature. This is not my heart."

As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature ... Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it ... For in my inner being I delight in God's law." (vv. 17-18, 20, emphasis added)

Paul is making a crucial distinction. This is not me; this is not my true heart. Listen to how he talks about himself in other places. He opens every letter by introducing himself as "Paul, an apostle." Not as a sinner, but as an apostle, writing to "the saints." Dump the religiosity; think about this mythically. Paul, appointed as a Great One in the kingdom, writing to other Great Allies of the kingdom. How bold of him. There is no false humility, no groveling. He says,

Surely you have heard about the ... grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed [to me]. (Eph. 3:2-5)

Paul is unashamed to say that he knows things no man before him knew. He even assumes they've heard about him, the mysteries revealed to him. That is part of his glory. His humility comes through clearly, in that he quickly admits that it's all been a gift, and in fact, a gift given to him for others.

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Jesus is a fierce, intentional man to be sure. But his passions are neither reckless nor momentary.

Could a small, unintimidating figure accomplish such a sustained riot? To pull off driving “all of them out of the temple” would require more than a few seconds and repeated blows. This is a sustained assault. If a frail man with a meek voice tried this, he’d be log-jammed by the sheer number and inertia of the traffic. Jesus is a locomotive, a juggernaut. For all practical purposes here, he is the bull in the china shop.

But is this the Jesus of our worship songs? The religious fog sneaks in to obscure Jesus with lines comparing him to, “a rose trampled on the ground.” Helpless, lovely Jesus. Vegetarian, pacifist, tranquil. Oh, wait — that was Gandhi. Not Jesus.

Can you picture Gandhi or Buddha storming into the polling place of a local election, shouting, overturning tables, sending the participants fleeing? Now throw a small carnival into the mix, which they also need to rout. Impossible. Whoever did this would have to be really committed to clear the building. Fierce and intentional.

This is a breathtaking quality — especially when compared to our present age where doubt masquerades as humility, passivity cloaks as rest, and emasculated indecision poses as laid-back enlightenment.

Oh, Jesus could be soft, and he certainly was humble, but his fierce intentionality is riveting to watch.

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When Neo is set free from the Matrix, he joins the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar — the little hovercraft that is the headquarters and ship of the small fellowship called to set the captives free. There are nine of them in all, each a character in his own way, but nonetheless a company of the heart, a “band of brothers,” a family bound together in a single fate. Together, they train for battle. Together, they plan their path. When they go back into the Matrix to set others free, each one has a role, a gifting, a glory. They function as a team. And they watch each other’s back. Neo is fast, really fast, but he still would have been taken out if it hadn’t been for Trinity. Morpheus is more gifted than them all, but it took the others to rescue him.

You see this sort of thing at the center of every great story. Dorothy takes her journey with the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Lion, and of course, Toto. Maximus rallies his little band and triumphs over the greatest empire on earth. When Captain John Miller is sent deep behind enemy lines to save Private Ryan, he goes in with a squad of eight rangers. And, of course, Jesus had the Twelve. This is written so deeply on our hearts: You must not go alone. The Scriptures are full of such warnings, but until we see our desperate situation, we hear it as an optional religious assembly for an hour on Sunday mornings.

Think again of Frodo or Neo or Caspian or Jesus. Imagine you are surrounded by a small company of friends who know you well (characters, to be sure, but they love you, and you have come to love them). They understand that we all are at war, know that the purposes of God are to bring a man or a woman fully alive, and are living by sheer necessity and joy in the Four Streams. They fight for you, and you for them. Imagine you could have a little fellowship of the heart. Would you want it if it were available?

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“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus taught (Mark 12:31), implying a direct link between one and the other. Loving our neighbor is clearly an essential to Christian faith; I think we all get that one. But the qualifier “as yourself” is lost upon most people; it confounded me for years. It almost sounds too pop psychology, something you’d see on the cover of the magazines at the checkout stand, right next to the articles on “brain superfoods” and “how to talk to your pet.” Yet Jesus is pretty matter-of-fact about the comparison: Treat people like you treat yourself. Which I think has one of his brilliant hidden exposés in it, because we quickly realize if we treated our neighbor the way we typically treat ourselves, we wouldn’t be great neighbors. Jesus thus drives home healthy self-care as tied to loving others. If that still sounds like something from Oprah, and not the New Testament, consider this: Love your neighbor as yourself is “a horrible command,” C. S. Lewis pointed out, “if the self were simply to be hated.”

The difficult truth we don’t want to admit is this: the way you treat your own heart is the way you’ll end up treating everyone else’s.

Most of the time we are completely unaware of how we treat our own heart. Our “way” with ourselves is simply our norm, and we’ve been at it so long we don’t notice, in the same way we don’t notice how much we bite our nails or finish our spouse’s sentences for them. The father who doesn’t allow himself his own emotions communicates so much to his children by that practice alone, and he further reinforces the lesson when he is visibly awkward and uncomfortable with the emotions of his child. He tries to hurry them through a “comforting” process: “I’m sorry sweetheart. You’ll feel better tomorrow.” Or, “How about we get some ice cream?” He is thereby trying to rush the child through their emotions to a place of resolution, teaching them to be as abrupt with their own heart as he is with his.

So the fact remains: the way you treat your heart is the way you’ll end up treating everyone else’s.

None of this is meant to be shaming — not one bit. It’s immensely hopeful! For one thing, you’ve picked up this book and progressed this far—that means you’re seeking more of God, and learning to care for your soul (the vessel he fills). This right here is self-kindness and it will spill over into kindness for those around you.

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Every woman is in some way searching for or running from her beauty and every man is looking for or avoiding his strength. Why? In some deep place within, we remember what we were made to be, we carry with us the memory of gods, image-bearers walking in the Garden. So why do we flee our essence? As hard as it may be for us to see our sin, it is far harder still for us to remember our glory. The pain of the memory of our former glory is so excruciating, we would rather stay in the pigsty than return to our true home. We are like Gomer, wife of the prophet Hosea, who preferred to live in an adulterous affair rather than be restored to her true love.

We are the ones to be Fought Over, Captured and Rescued, Pursued. It seems remarkable, incredible, too good to be true. There really is something desirable within me, something the King of the universe has moved heaven and earth to get. George Herbert reached for words to express his wonder:

My God, what is a heart
 That thou shouldst it so eye and woo
 Powering upon it with all thy art
 As if thou hadst nothing else to do? (Mattens)

King David used a similar refrain:

What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. (Ps. 8:4-5)

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