Going Deep

This year’s church retreat theme of going deep has a lot of significance for me. 'Deepness' has always been a highly ranked virtue of sorts in my personal schema. 'How deep are they?' was always the major determining factor in my choosing of friends.  My falling in love with Mark occurred during a very spiritually deep and intellectually deep conversation between him, my sister, and me that lasted until 4 am. As a teenage girl, I had never known boys could be so deep. He won my heart right there. I try to live a deep existence. When I teach, I don't want to just be giving students facts to learn; I try to help them understand the things behind the facts, the connections, the patterns, the themes.  When I coach, I don't just go make kids run or practice flips. I try to get them to learn something deep about themselves through their sport.  And as I’ve grown up in Christ I’ve found it was the going deep that drove the growth that led me deeper into God: deeper in the knowledge of God, and deeper into the experience of God.

Back in middle school my 'deep living' manifested as my perception of being 'more mature' than my peers. While they were having conversations about boys and tv shows, or entertaining themselves with the latest cheap jokes, I often found myself on the periphery just observing, not talking.  I remember thinking how silly and shallow it all was, and wishing they would talk about something more stimulating.

In high school I found my deep Christian side. 9th grade was for me the beginning of listening to God, and feeling a distinct calling on my life. Summer after 9th grade was when I (in the baptist tradition of walking the aisle to make a public decision) formally accepted a call to ministry.   High school is when I became fascinated with connections in scripture, and finding those little nuggets of truth. I loved figuring out how a particular Old Testament prophesy connected to a New Testament event. It was like I was discovering how Intricate and brilliant God was.  How he orchestrated this whole existence.  I remember making the connection between Jacob’s ladder and Jesus: reading the passage in genesis 28 where Jacob dreams of angels ascending and descending on a ladder that reached from earth to heaven, and then reading in John 1, Jesus declaring heaven open and the angels ascending and descending on him. I remember that 'aha' moment where I realized Jacob’s dream was about Jesus, who acts as the ladder to heaven, our connection, our way there. And then sitting in my freshmen Biology class learning about the DNA ladder, the ladder that creates all life. Jesus is the ladder to heaven. And its a ladder that chemically creates life, Jesus is also the creator of life.  And he's such a genius about it that he embedded that clue and that connection into the fiber of our being. This one little deep discovery sparked my obsession with DNA which led to a Biology major and a teaching position, and ultimately the fulfillment of that calling to ministry I accepted. When you go deep with God, he goes deep with you. He ignites your passions, stirs you up, fascinates you, and ultimately leads you into your destiny.

In college, deepness for me became an intellectual pursuit. At a school like Union, theology is being taught in every class no matter what the field happens to be.  And when a large percentage of the student body is Christian studies majors, theological questions often become the topics discussed over coffee or lunch.  At this time in my life I reduced my Christian walk to a purely mental exercise, unfortunately I lost a lot of my passion and zeal.  But God still honored where I was going deep.  Though I felt dry and complacent, He used this time in my life to  accomplish a very important task, what mark and I used to call "our great unlearning".  Through all those 100s of deep theological discussions and classes, I was figuring out what was real truth vs what was man-made doctrine, what were God principles vs what were dogma, and perhaps most importantly what was it that I believed because of real encounters, experiences, and convictions vs what I 'believed' because its what my parents or church body believed. And I gotta tell you, I threw out a lot more than I kept.  Once again, God had gone deep with me, and as a result, I knew myself on a deeper level. I became more genuine. I didn't just have talking points about Christianity, I had a real and true Christian belief system based on only a real relationship with a real Christ.  God used me going deep in my head to help me discover the depths of my heart.

In my early 20s, I pursued deep spirituality. I wanted to experience the full gamut of spiritual experience. I like to call these my crazy town years.  When Mark and I would discuss things during this time of our lives, we often prefaced it with 'ready to go to crazy town?' Other religions, the mystic traditions, other spiritual practices, I wanted to see what all that was about. And I wasn't just reading books about it, I was trying it out.  What I discovered though was all the truths that made any other spiritual pursuit worthwhile already existed in Christianity, many times I discovered something I thought was new and unique, only to find out later that it was, in fact all ready a part of my tradition. Jesus kept popping up in the most unexpected places. It was like I was trying to throw out the baby with the bath water, but no matter how hard I tried, the baby wasn't leaving the tub.  This crazy town era of my life freaked a lot people out. I know my mom had her prayer group praying for me.  I think they thought i had become a cooky new-ager.  But in reality, this time in my life was growing my faith exponentially. I no longer had a small God.  I had been everywhere and he was everywhere.  There are no depths, no limit of deepness you can go, that you won’t find Jesus waiting there yet again. So many people are scared to investigate things, fearing they will lose their religion.

But I would say to that, if it can be lost so easily, if God isn't really everywhere, why would you want that kind of religion in the first place.  Whatever depths you can go, our God is already deeper.

Recently going deep has taken on a whole new meaning in my life. And ill just be honest, it's a deep end that's freaky, one of those murky waters, not sure where the drain is, or what lies beneath, deep ends.  In all the crazy situations that come up with my new life as teacher, coach, minister, and now business owner, I keep finding myself in scenarios where it's like God is saying, 'lets just see what you're made of?' I continue to find myself in sticky situations, with very hard decisions to make.  And almost always these decisions have to be made very quickly.  And the choices have bigger implications, bigger consequences, they affect way more people.  Getting challenged on such deep levels, it's like being in a pressure cooker, it’s that deep deep water where your inner ears start hurting.  It's in this deep state, that weaknesses are illumined, not the general run of the mill weaknesses, the really deep, personal junk.  It's here that God is burning away the parts of me that don't reflect Him.  I don't particularly like my deep shortcomings being blaringly obvious to me, but if they're going to be dealt with, they have to first be found and acknowledged.  The cool thing about being in this deep dealing with my deeper self is: in the midst of all of it, Gods love doesn't wane, in fact, your experience of it deepens all the more.  I feel like I’ve made more bad decisions in the last few months than I have in years. But in reality it's simply that I am makings way more decisions, and so the frequency of the bad ones obviously goes up too.  But the amazing thing is, God's promise that he works everything together for the good of those who love him continues to be true all the more.  And the deeper I understand my own junk, the deeper my understanding of Gods grace becomes.

The analogy we used this weekend of the shallow end and the deep end of a pool is fitting in so many ways. The Christian life is not an above ground pool, 4ft deep everywhere. I had an above ground pool growing up, believe me they are not that fun, it gets boring really fast.  No, the Christian life is a big olympic pool with a variety of depths to choose from.  There are diving boards and slides, all manner of ways to jump in.  If the water represents God, then my question for you is how much God are you experiencing? Where are you in the pool? Because when you're standing in the shallow end, only the lower half of your body is submerged. You may be walking in God, following his lead, obeying his ways. But your heart and your head aren't wet. They aren't experiencing God.  If you've dove off that high dive into the deep end, every part of you gets submerged, you feel God all around you.  You feel Him making you lighter. You see him everywhere you look. You experience him on multiple levels in complicated ways.  If you go really deep, you feel his pressure that's forging you into the person He's called you to be.  And even though that pressure part is hard, it's worth it. The deep end is way more fun. It makes life exciting and adventurous. Jesus said he came that we may have life and have it more abundantly. The Deep life is the Abundant life.