The Struggling Well podcast is a conversation between Jimmy and Suzi Kallam. Jimmy and Suzi are co-founders of the ministry Tandem Spirituality whose purpose is to support the church through cultivating healthy relationships in order to impact the kingdom of God. Welcome back everyone. This is episode 11. I can hardly believe that we've been talking for 11 episodes, but I could like for a million. How about you?
probably not quite as many as
half a million. No, maybe
half a million.
Maybe 11 more. I don't know.
11 more. Well, there's so much to talk about. this is something that Jimmy and I have been doing for decades where, after he would come home from work, we would sit and just talk. And we started out with 10 minutes of talking while the kids were outside of our bedroom door screaming and, you know, claiming they were bleeding and dying. And then it moved to 30 minutes when they were teenagers and now it we have the leisure of talking as long as we want. I try to talk through the question of what's for dinner because I would rather have all my teeth taken out without Novacaane than to think about what's for dinner. I'm just saying.
How do you really feel about that?
Oh my gosh. If somebody's out there that would like to cook for me, I mean the pay is zero.
Oh my. You do Never mind. You do a great job cooking.
I know, but I'm not enjoying doing it anymore. I'm not.
All right, let's get on to what we want to talk about today.
Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. One of the things that has been on my mind came to me through a conversation with a young friend. this is a young woman who has experienced a lot of loss and sorrow in her life. But she had she and I were texting back and forth and she asked me the question, "How was I?" And like we've spokeen before in some of these episodes. I wanted to just say fine, but this young girl is very intuitive and she just doesn't stop if you say I'm fine. She always goes to the next question, which I love about her and I'm learning as well to keep asking the second question. Anyway, she said a couple of things that were really profound to me. One thing was you can run but you can't hide. And she was referring to herself, but as our text chain went further. what she was really talking about was you can run from God. You can try to run from God, but you can't hide from him because he's everywhere. He knows your thoughts before you think them. and so what stirred in me was, "What in the world am I doing? How do I think that I can run and hide?" Mostly from God. And she went on then to she said to me, "I want you to lean into God in a way that let him them hold you or hug you, giving a real human characteristic to the Godhead of just holding me in the place where I was struggling. And she said, "It's like when you're in a situation with somebody and they go to hug you and you really don't want that hug, but they keep hugging and don't let go." You know, my rule is 20 seconds. You hug me past 20 seconds and I might give you a knee or a elbow. I don't know. But she was talking about how when you're in that hug, hug and you feel like you want to pull away, but the other person will not let go that at some point you have to just surrender and go limp and fall into that hug. And for me, it became how does that translate into my relationship with the Lord? And it's easy to think I can run, but there are times when being that vulnerable in front of him, it's crazy because I know he knows my thoughts and he knows everything about me, but it's like I can't do it. I can't do it. So, as we text back and forth, the last thing she said to me was, "Go limp."
Yeah. And it really is an interesting dilemma that you see laid out in places in scripture, too, where life's situations have gotten so complicated, have gotten so difficult that people are seen running in Genesis when and Sarah and Hagar and the whole issue of having a son and all the complications that come with Hagar becoming pregnant and then Sarah being upset about that and Hagar runs out into the desert. cuz life just had gotten too much
and it's in the desert that God meets her through an angel who comes to her. But then she calls on the name of the Lord and he and she says, "You are a God of seeing." And it's the only time that name is used for God in scripture, the God who sees.
And it hits to the core of what we really want is we want to be seen.
You and I talk about this a lot that people want to be seen. And we've used this illustration when we've been with pastors and their wives of saying we see you and then we hear you.
And yet when in those moments when life is out of control, and it certainly was for Hagar, and she runs I think of Elijah running out after the victory at Mount Carmel. but because his life is now threatened, he runs into the desert and wants to die. And yet there's this internal longing to be seen. and I love that she says, "You're the God who sees."
Yeah.
and yet we resist that. That's the that's the complexity of it all. As much as we long to be seen by people and more importantly, we long to be seen by God, we also resist it at times and want to run.
And you know why? Why? I with God. I it confuses me because I know him better than that. And yet there are times when I just want to hide. I think that you know David in his sin with Basheba, he was just he wanted to hide and he tried to cover up everything that he had done thinking that God was unaware and he knew God better than that.
Yeah. But I also think that we get to that place and we may not verbalize it often where we somehow don't think we're worthy of God seeing us of being in our lives. And to me, it's it goes back to a poor understanding of grace that he has forgiven and yet I think we have the sense that we're not worthy of it. Well, we're not worthy of it, but he has made us worthy through his son and he is still the God who's in control. What although there was the tension that between Sarah and Hagar and that tension didn't end in their lifetime. God was telling a story that was much bigger than that
and he sees it all and he embraced her in the wilderness. and I think sometimes we just we get to that place where we don't think we're worthy.
You know, in my mind it just came to me about Jesus last days. and how he was seen as one thing. You know, they thought he was a traitor and he was blaspheing against God, but you think about him, I don't know if this is going to make any sense, but you think about him hanging on the cross and he was barely clothed and he was people were spitting on him and poking at him and screaming epits at him. He was the most vulnerable that a human being could get and he did that for us to pay for our sin to atone for our sin. And if I can't grasp what he did and the vulnerability that he experienced there, then I probably will not want to go to him with my vulnerability. But he I mean, it just blows me away that he was in such a state of people seeing him
in at the very worst moment, humanly speaking. He allowed people to see him in that way. when he could have called, you know, that song he could have called 10, 000 angels. He could have changed that whole scenario, that whole ending. But even seeing him that way should be to me an encouragement that there's nothing that he can't see about me. Does that make any
Yeah, it does. And I think the other thing that's to me and as you recall that scene, you know, at one point he utters, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But then he also says, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Yeah.
And so there was a sense in which he sees the father as one who sees him in his distress. and ultimately he puts his faith and his trust into the hands of the father. even though he was in absolute agony as he hung on that cross. Not just physical agony but the spiritual agony that he took on the sins of the world when he hung on that cross. And it's that complicated place I think we get to where We want to be seen by God. We know he does see us and yet at times we fight against it. And so back to your conversation Suzi with your friend where she said to you go limp. It was to stay in the embrace of God.
to let him be the one that you ultimately trust that all of us ultimately trust even though there are times when we don't want to be seen by him.
makes me think of the book of Hosea with Hosea and Goomemer. that whole story of God telling him to keep going after her and after her and that's what he does with us is he keeps coming after me and after me and you know honestly there are times when I just want to say just stop. I can't take all this love. I can't take this grace. I don't deserve it. I'd rather you just leave me alone to rot in my own misery. But He will never stop. He's relentless.
He is relentless. And he I don't deserve it. That's the odd part about it. I'm not worthy of it. I didn't do anything to deserve his love. He poured out his love through his son, Jesus. And that's how he sees me. That's how he sees you. in a sense that he will embrace us. If we can use that kind of picture, he will embrace us because of what Christ did. for us and on our behalf. And his love is this neverending love, this covenantal love. And it's that odd place that we find ourselves in, I think, of wanting to be seen
and yet at times wanting to run from that because we wonder is he going to can I out can is he going to break that embrace?
Yeah.
which he never will.
I just want to close us with
passage from Ephesians because I think this is good to know. Paul says to the Ephesians I've heard of your faith and I love you and I pray for you. But he says I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance? in the saints. And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heavenly places. And then it says in verse 22, "And he put all things under his feet and gave him all head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." Let's concentrate for today on what God did, what he says he is, him sending his son, him sending us his spirit to fill us. And maybe today our prayer should be like Jesus, into your spirit, into your hands I commit my spirit.
Good words.
Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit tandemspirituality. com.