Today, I’m overjoyed to host my friend, creative and church planter, Brian Hardin with some wise words and inspiration. Leave a comment for a chance to win his book, Passages: How Reading the Bible in a Year Will Change Everything for You (a great companion for those joining the #LentChallenge).
Once I took a ride south along Highway 1 in Oregon along the Pacific Ocean. When I came across a massive stretch of empty beach, I hiked down the sand embankment in the rain to the coast. A few more paces down the coastal prairie path and I was on the open beach, walled in by massive rock formations rising from the ocean floor that captured and amplified her roar. I was overcome by the sheer power of the waves. I felt like a speck, like one of the grains of sand.
Facing the roar of the open sea, I had to bow to the creative force of God, who first conceived it and then spoke it into existence—a mere symbol of his glory and power. Unexpectedly a wave of heartache washed over me with the thought of my children, who were growing faster than I was comfortable with. It wasn’t the kind of heartache that left me hopeless; it was the kind that any parent can relate to. We are caretakers for but a moment, and then we hold our breath, cross our fingers, and breathe a fervent prayer as we watch them float away to write their own chapters on the tablets of history.
This is the kind of longing and profound love our heavenly Father feels for us. He creates a world for us, new every day, perhaps holding his breath and hoping to draw us closer to his heart. He leads and guides, but when all is said and done, we each choose freely where we will go.
I have denied God in my life. I’ve questioned every value I was ever taught. I’ve resented. I’ve run. But time has allowed me to see that I was blaming God for everything I ever saw go wrong, heaping on him everything I could not explain on my own. It took years to realize that God wasn’t behaving questionably. People were. I was. And God was watching the whole time, sending me love notes in a sunset or in an unexpected snow covering the Tennessee hill country. I would have never understood this without the Bible. Never.
Finding your place in God’s story means listening with the ears of your heart and living life in the poetic rather than the purely rational. To find enrichment from Scripture while participating in an authentic relationship with God, we must reclaim the aspect of our faith that encourages a state of wonder, or a more poetic experience of faith. We can’t force the deepest of spiritual matters to submit to the will of reason without doing violence to them; this is not how faith operates.
The writer of Hebrews declares, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith includes more than the rational mind alone can perceive. In order to locate ourselves in God’s story, we have to place reason in its proper position and give faith its rightful place. We have to look at the world through the eyes of the poet by embracing more than reason. We must be open to things like art to capture and express what is otherwise inarticulate about our experience of God. This is where God resides.
Why won’t God speak more clearly to us? we wonder. Oh, but he is. He is always speaking to us, through everything, everywhere—and he’s given us this book, telling us the story of who we are and the enormous lengths he’s been willing to go through to bring us back home. Slow down and look around you. God is calling your name.
Leave a comment for an opportunity to win a copy of Brian’s book, Passages. A winner will be selected on Friday, March 28.
Brian Hardin is the author of Passages and may be best known for founding Daily Audio Bible (DAB), the revolutionary Scripture podcast, downloaded over 55 million times. He is a man of many hats, with numerous Dove and Grammy Award nominations in the Christian music industry as well as photography and graphic design work featured in numerous publications including CCM and Christian Retailing. He is a husband, father and the founding pastor of Four Winds Mission in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Connect with the DAB community on Facebook and Twitter.
This sounds like a book full of blessed information. It would be an honor to win a copy! Thank you for this opportunity! God Bless!
Most often it is easier for me to see in retrospect that God was working with me, rather than knowing that in the moment. Faith (for me) is remembering that God HAS spoken and acted in the past, which gives me the confidence that He IS acting now, and will CONTINUE to love me in the future. Thank you for the encouragement!
There are so many quotes in this post that I want to keep in my mind and heart!
I know, me too Elizabeth.
Thank you for this post, I was truly blessed by it, especially when he said, “And God was watching the whole time, sending me love notes in a sunset or in an unexpected snow covering the Tennessee hill country. I would have never understood this without the Bible. Never.” Inspired me to press on with my Bible reading!
Wow, what a beautiful article. I am going to read this again and again throughout the day. Thank you for speaking such tender, truthful words to my heart.
Thank you for sharing this encouragement….. it’s exactly what I needed to hear!
“We have to look at the world through the eyes of the poet by embracing more than reason.” ‘Love that! Just as the poet notices details and searches for the deeper meaning, so we can notice God’s hand at work in creation, in events, in people. We must engage our hearts as well as our minds. Thank you, Brian, for challenging us to watch, listen, and feel more intently.
An awesome post! Indeed God speaks to us in so many ways if we will but slow down and listen. sometimes it is not the listening but the obeying that is the problem.
Mary, you were chosen as the winner of Passages by Brian Hardin. Please send me your shipping address at shelly@redemptionsbeauty.com so I can send it to you. Congratulations!
Well, you had me with Hwy 1…I live in Portland but my heart belongs to the Oregon coast! Our church is walking through the Bible this year and finding our story in God’s story. I so agree how the Bible gives us a lens to understand what we see. I loved this post. Thank you for sharing it here.
I REALLY LIKED WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT STUDYING THE BIBLE ARTISTICALLY RATHER THAN JUST LOGICALLY!!!!!!! MY “INTELLECT” is WHAT STOPPED ME FROM REALLY BELIEVING THE BIBLE EVEN THOUGH I DESPERATELY WANTED TO!!!!!!!!!!! THANKFULLY I FINALLY MET A PASTOR WHO WAS ABLE TO EXPLAIN IT–THAT I HAD TO CHOOSE TO BELIEVE BEFORE I COULD BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND!!! THAT WAS 23 YEARS AGO!!
Sounds like a wonderful book! I keep trying to find my purpose and figure out any gifts I have to use to glorify God. Perhaps this book would help.
Praying for you to know purpose and calling. So glad you stopped by and left a comment.
“listening with the ears of your heart and living life in the poetic rather than the purely rational.”
I love that phrase “living life in the poetic”. A beautiful description of a life of faith.
Though I have always desired to read through the Bible in a year, it has taken the accountability of reading with a group to keep me hanging in there with the tougher places.
But I am also finding that it has helped me to recognize a deep hunger for the food of God’s Word.
Your book sounds like a chance to sit with other believers and share at His Table!
such a thought provoking post. lots to ponder!